Leaving to Oregon tomorrow morning! Meanwhile, here's some more detailed stuff about the current state of the the Transgressive Sexuality in Science Fiction class, for those who are interested in following that. First here's the finished, or nearly so, reading schedule, divided into 'parts' because it's my class and I can be as pretentious as I want.

( Recognisably descended from my original plan. )

Second, a prospective student wrote me a while ago and asked me, among other things, about my vision for the course. I interpreted this as a question about what I wanted to deal with theoretically and went on about it at moderate length, which I reproduce (with minimal editing) here.

( A rather obscure discussion I'd like to have about genre and discourse... )

Happy year! 2010 semiotically speaking has acquired increasingly dystopian associations from a Canadian perspective, but maybe semi-omnipotent aliens will turn Vancouver into a tiny sun. Actually that wouldn't really help.

George R. R. Martin, The Armageddon Rag
CJ Cherryh, Destroyer
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison (reread)
Dorothy L. Sayers, Have His Carcase (reread)
Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (reread)
CJ Cherryh, Pretender
CJ Cherryh, Deliverer
Sara Ryan, Empress of the World

Somewhere in the middle of the month there I was evidently taken over by the urge to read about Harriet Vane for a while. I had forgotten what a lovely and assured prose stylist Sayers was, particularly in Gaudy Night, which in its own quiet way I think might be one of the best novels of the 20th century. I would like to read it together sometime with Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, with which it has a surprising amount in common (so perhaps it's not surprising that I should like it so much).

Speaking of Pamela Dean, I read The Empress of the World on her recommendation. There is something about both of the principals being women that breaks down my detached resistance to romantic tropes in a way that's very pleasant. (But the romance in this was not mindless or uncomplicated, and I've kept thinking about it since.)

When Rachel was here I introduced her to cryptic crosswords, which she got good at much more quickly than I did back when I first started. In the process of some incorrect speculation we came up with our own clue, "Editorializes to the trees. (6)"; later I encountered in a published crossword a very similar clue with the same answer, but I like our wording better. It is possible that we are nerds.

I've got out of the habit of linking things I write from this weblog, in part because I write things to link (or for that matter entries from which to link) so relatively rarely these days. But I did write a song and a poem I'm pretty happy with in 2009, so there's no reason not to get around to mentioning them.

This is what happens when I slip about being prompt with these posts; eventually my embarrassment over being late becomes a reason for further procrastination, and then it's the end of the month and it's still not up. I'll fight entropy with the next one, which means you should expect it, uh, tomorrow.

M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 2: The Kingdom on the Waves
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Sharing Knife: Horizon
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior's Apprentice (reread)
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game (reread)
Lois McMaster Bujold, Cetaganda (reread)
Lois McMaster Bujold, Brothers In Arms (reread)
Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance (reread)
Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory (reread)

Perhaps because I've spent less time treating them as comfort books, I was more impressed with the early Miles books relative to the later ones than I expected this time through. Memory and A Civil Campaign, traditionally my favourites, were too familiar to have as much of an impact, but Mirror Dance, which I've historically paid less attention to, knocked me right over.

Also in April I went to visit Rachel, which was awesome; I've meant to write more about that but right now I'm too tired. Time in Rachel's physical company always reminds me how important time in Rachel's physical company is, and what an absence it is in my usual daily life. Why hasn't living in the future solved this yet?

Every time I find a particularly intractable knot in my shoelaces or something, I'm reminded again of how completely impractical Alexander the Great's solution really is.

I leave for Oregon ridiculously early tomorrow morning, so if you see me around Vancouver before Thursday or so, it is probably an impostor.

Rachel and Heath came and stayed for (at least parts each of) five days (this is the power of trains -- in reverse!), during which we got what for us is not much sleep at all. We saw lots of people, including _Quinn, and all sans-David of the erstwhile B5 group, and Elise and Marilee, and Rachel's livejournalfriend Nicole; we ate at three different restaurants I am fond of, and omelets at my dad's house, and fish and chips my mother made, and my apple crisp; we climbed the VPL and looked down; we played video games and board games and Rachel and I stayed up late talking nearly every night. It was the first time she's properly visited me, though she's been through the city briefly a couple of times and of course I've often stayed down there, and it was a different sort of wonderful than I expected; I thought it would seem special and exciting, but instead it felt very natural, looking at Rachel together with the things and places I know, like it made perfect unremarkable sense that she would be here instead of a nine-hour journey away.

I did, in fact, finish all my essays on time, and on Monday we went out and, after some confusion, dropped the last two off at UBC. As such, I'm done with school until September; I guess I'd better figure out what I'm doing with the rest of the summer.

The other day I noticed that each of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles corresponds in personality (though not in bandana colour) with one of the four houses at Hogwarts. Leonardo is a brave and forthright leader; Donatello is scholarly and creative; Michelangelo is laid-back, humble and friendly; and Raphael is cunning and cynical. I wonder if anybody has written this fanfic yet?

I heard back from UBC about my application, so far toward the outer edge of the period within which they said they'd get back that I had meanwhile become quite convinced that I'd made some awful and disqualifying error in submitting it. Since I didn't, it seems very likely now that I'll be in and taking at least a couple of their summer courses in May (which is the term I applied for). They've asked me for official transcripts from Langara and Windsor House; I ordered the former sent, but I guess that I'll have to call them up and explain about Windsor House.

(Dr. Russell suggested I think about trying to get into the honours philosophy program -- as though this whole thing weren't complicated enough! But it's tempting, and I am considering it, though I don't know how feasible it will be given the awkward angle at which I'm approaching the university 'years' system.)

Spring is progressing; it's raining a lot, but warmer, and when the sun does appear it is wonderfully moderate and fresh-smelling. The cherry trees have blossomed but not bloomed, or maybe the other way around, but anyway I mean that the flowers are colourfully in evidence but still demurely closed. Formal spring begins with the equinox, the perfectly balanced day, which is Wednesday (on the equator, where all days are so balanced and the seasons understood very differently, the sun will reach zenith). (Can you tell that I'm having fun in Astronomy?) Around here, because of daylight savings, that twelve-hour day's sunrise will be at 7 AM, its sunset at 7 PM, and its noonday sun at 1 PM! As weird as that is, though, when the light is still there in the evening I can never but consider whomever came up with it to be the most marvellous sort of Promethean thief.

Today being the 18th, it is clear not only that Wednesday is the 21st but that Friday was the 16th of March, which is one of my personal anniversaries -- or rather twice-personal, by which I mean that it is celebrated by twice as many people as it were by me alone. Specifically, it is the seventh anniversary of the time that I looked over through the window of the car next to ours in a parking lot off the I-5 in Oregon and unexpectedly met the eyes of a waving red haired 13-year-old, which was the first time Rachel and I had ever seen each other in the moving, present flesh. I'm not sure how we got to be marking and celebrating this, except that I guess the date stuck in both our minds. (Also, I delivered a time-delayed '0th anniversary' joke at the time.) Sometimes one of us will do something especially and premeditatedly affectionate for it, and sometimes, as this year, I'll just go through my day periodically noticing what the date is, and smiling unbidden whenever I do.

My sister is interning at the North Shore News, which is the culmination of her time in the Langara journalism program. So far she has had something like 8 stories in the paper, at least one of which was on the front page, and has conducted a couple of those "man on the street" polls (like The Onion parodies), with names, photographs and encapsulated opinions of people she met walking down Lonsdale. Right now I understand that she's working on a story about the local vandal who has cut holes in certain people's hedges. I've been seeing the North Shore News around all my life, but I've never read it, so for me, opening it and finding Tess there is almost like she was in there all along, if I had thought to look.

At Karen's birthday party at the Elephant House last Sunday, I saw Keely for the first time in ages (and then I saw her again the next night, after B5). She told me about how she is planning to bike from Vancouver down to Mexico with these guys, in May, to help raise money for the implementation of those moneylending systems designed by the fellow who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. She suggested that it would be cool if people put the word out about the project, so here I am doing that to the best of my ability.

Elise has a gig today, but although I am tempted to go watch I have some homework I really ought to do. Dear Elise: I hope it goes awesome even though I am not there.

I am at Rachel's house and Rachel is next to me. That is the power of trains.

Here is Rachel: "Andy doesn't like animal crackers! Why not, yo?"

Why not, indeed. Meanwhile, I read some books last month. Perhaps everybody has seen enough of these posts by now that I don't need to rephrase my assumptions and expectations?

Ken MacLeod, Learning the World
Steven Brust, The Paths of the Dead
Steven Brust, The Lord of Castle Black
Steven Brust, Sethra Lavode
C.J. Cherryh, Chanur's Legacy
Roger Zelazny, Isle of the Dead
Diana Wynne Jones, The Pinhoe Egg
Tim Powers, Declare
Rob Thomas, Slave Day

Rachelagain: "I like animal crackers."

The year is new! I am still at Rachel's house. (Her Monmouth house, so technically, as she reminds me inaudibly to livejournal, her parents'.) All right, then. I should post this before the book-stuff is overwhelmed by nonsense.

I am home from Rachel's wedding; J. is headed home from same. (We parted ways in Portland.) He and Rachel's friend Kathryn (armedwithanoboe) were very pleasantly useful in distracting my from my usual return-trip train-desolation; after they were gone, I (among other things) began to work on this entry in my notebook. Now although I am sleepy I will attempt to type it up and complete it.

The fact of Rachel's marriage is too big to fit in my head all at once; I catch occasional glimpses, but for the most part I have to focus on some smaller detail in relative isolation. This makes it difficult to properly talk about. ( In which I try anyway. Has its own unnumbered list. )

The wedding was, of course, only the climactic culmination of J.'s west coast visit, the previous week of which was spent in my own fair city. The brevity of the daylight hours and the obligation of my schooling kept us from ranging about Vancouver as much as I would have liked, but we did accomplish some things, which I shall present in approximately chronological order.
( Here is the J. section. Also includes birthday stuff. )

Probably that's the end of this entry. I have some other things to write about; watch the walls.

This is about the time that, in the autumn, I thought there was a good chance that Rachel might be here.

It's actually probably a good thing she wasn't, when that essay was extant. Even so, the thought is wistful.

It's been nearly a year since I've seen her.