New Blog

New blog is up and running at www.dayone.blogspot.com. You'll notice that the template looks much the same as this one, with some minor changes -- despite the fact that Julie tells me it's inherently and absurdly counterintuitive, I kind of like it, so I just played around with it a bit. The text of the blog is also mirrored at isolde_101.livejournal.com if you prefer livejournal, although there's less sidebar stuff there.

I have just one request. One of the main reasons I'm moving blogs is to adopt an internet handle, as opposed to using my real name. So, please, play the game with me and don't call me susan or suzy or suzy q...despite the fact that I love my name and these nicknames. And if you link to me, could you change the link name too? I'm definitely going overboard on paranoia here, but I've had to sign and swear to a lot of confidentiality agreements recently, and I'm not entirely sure what they entail yet. I'd just rather be safe than sorry. So, please and thank you, adopt my new nickname. :) If you have any similar requests of me in terms of linking/naming, I'm happy to oblige -- just let me know.

I'll leave Fragments up for a few weeks before taking it down, mostly because I'm a pack rat and want to keep a copy of all my posts. :)

Thank you all again for your reading and commenting over the past few years. I hope to be a better poster in the future.

signing off,

~SQ

Weather: Sunny but cooler -- the wistful late-August special

Goodnight and Good Luck

This will be my last post from Fragments.

I began this blog back in my first year of university. Now that I'm moving on to a new phase of my life, I feel that it's time to retire this space. Perhaps I do this too often -- abandoning old structures when my life changes -- but nevertheless, I feel that it needs to be done. I will let everyone know when a new blog-like space is up and running, because in all likelihood, there will be one.

In the meantime -- thank you all for reading, commenting, and putting up with my haphazard posting style. In whatever incarnation comes next, I would love to be a more regular communicator. We'll see how it goes.

love,

~SQ

Weather: rainy today, supposedly sunny tomorrow
Listening to: bass noises from the TV upstairs filtering through the ceiling
Taking a break from: cleaning my room. *sigh*

Oh, I so suck at this.

I do. I know I do. I'm bad. Writing is (theoretically) so important to me, and yet it's the first thing I abandon when time gets scarce. I have yet to figure this problem out and solve it. Bear with me.

The necessary updates:

Spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free...
Convocation is an interesting thing. I wasn't expecting it to be important. When my coursework was finally done, my exams written, and my keys turned in for the last time, I pulled away from McMaster campus and knew that I'd never be back there the same way ever again. And at that point, I felt sad, and happy, and wistful, and unfulfilled, and thankful, and relieved, and I figured that was pretty much the gamut of emotions that I'd get. And yet -- it still means something to be fussed up in fancy robes, to be called by name to walk across a stage, to kneel in front of the chancellor to be admitted to a degree, and to be awarded the calligraphied piece of paper that proves that I DID something in the past four years.

Yes, the calligraphy is a computer font these days. That should be an important note of irony for cynical little me, but it isn't, for some reason.

Hey, guess what: I actually AM going to be a doctor.
I was beyond exhausted at the time, but come 11:50 on May 15 when my family returned from our trip, I knew that I was going to have an MD. As it turns out, I'll have it from The University of Western Ontario. I, my friends, am going to be a doctor.

I'm sure 6 months from now, the novelty value of saying that will have worn off...but until then, please forgive me if I repeat it a few times. I'm just trying to work the reality of it through my head after this year of not-knowing.

ITOMSIE
It Turns Out Med School Is Expensive. And I have yet to work out any kind of financial plan for this whole venture. I'm getting incredibly mixed messages from the parents about how much, if any of it, they can finance, and I know that I certainly can't finance it myself. I don't want to put any kind of financial burden on them -- being retired and all -- and I'm willing to incur debt to prevent them from spending all their money on me. But when I try to discuss this with them, all I get is static.

Whatever the case is, I'll definitely be taking care of some of the associated costs of rent, food, utilities, etc. So I need to be careful and save this summer, in a way to which spoilt only-child me is unaccustomed. What can I say. ITOMSIE.

All aboard the Costa Fortuna!
There are things I don't like about cruises in general, and things that I did like about this particular cruise.

Things I don't like: the prepackaged/saran-wrapped way of seeing the world, the tacky shows, the plaster-faced heartiness of the "activators" or cruise staff, the unsettling sense that a metric shitload of food gets wasted every single day, the feeling that, in cruising, I'm doing something so exorbitantly touristy that I fully deserve to get taken on souvenirs.
Things I did like: making friends with other Canadians and our dinner table-mates, hearing tons of different languages (this was an Italian cruise line and carried mostly Europeans), being in a new place every day without having to repack or rush for planes or buses, Carthage, Sidi Bou Said, Aix-en-Provence, Barcelona, the cathedral at Monreale, breakfast served to our cabin, tanning on the open sea, the glitzy 1930s-inspired decor, 7-course meals, feeling glamourous, forgetting all about med school and teaching.

Visitor
Before I left for the cruise, I got an e-mail from Aster -- longtime net friend of mine, owner of guide.subetha.net, fan of Douglas Adams, Douglas Coupland, and the Barenaked Ladies, introducer of Vienna Teng to my regular playlist, and the first person I didn't know IRL to comment on one of my OpenDiary entries -- saying that she was coming to Toronto and would I like to have lunch with her?

Well. Um. Let me think. YES!??!

So we met up face-to-face, and had lunch, and went to Kensington Market. Kensington is normally a pretty awesome place, but it turned out to be a grey, raw and rainy day. (Actually, when she heard about this venture, my mother said "You took a CALIFORNIAN to KENSINGTON MARKET today? Did she freeze? Will she ever come back?") We spent a lot of time taking shelter in a convenient Second Cup.
It was a great day in a lot of ways -- it reminded me of my early online-writing days, and now I can read her blog entries and hear them in her actual voice. It's like another dimension has been added, which is cool.

Deafness is now coming for me a few years earlier than before...
OLP concert. May 16. Seats in the 7th row of the floor. Directly under the speakers. After the first opening act, Julie and I turned to each other and said "Well, my eardrums are dead, how are yours?"
Show = basically good. Raine Maida is equal parts megalomaniac and genius, with a pinch of raving madman thrown in. He'd do things that would rub me the wrong way -- like go off on a political rant in the middle of a song, or walk through the audience saying that he "needs to touch everyone in this crowd" like he's Jesus, or sass off to the security people who are basically there to protect him from legions of psychotic fangirls -- and then come back and completely rock the next song, effectively washing away any hard feelings. So, you know. Whatever. And it was nice to see all the openers onstage with OLP for "Starseed".

As for unnecessary, whimsical and less-bland updates:
I've had plenty of blog-worthy thoughts recently that I haven't blogged about. I will try to talk about some of those as the summer goes on. Going to med school is a great honour and I'm thrilled, but I'm also worried: they don't exactly teach English there, and if I'm going to keep expressing myself in these nonsensical syllables I call 'language', I'm going to have to make a concerted effort to do it. My 'writing' -- whether here, or in my paper journal, or in story and poetry form, whatever -- isn't cute and extracurricular anymore; it's all I have left in that arena. So. It has to become a priority. And if I care enough about it, it will.

I hope that April treated everyone well, that May is being equally kind, and that I'll be back on here sometime before June.

~SQ.

Weather: Overcast...for now.
Listening To: Our Lady Peace, "Will The Future Blame Us"
Taking a Break From: virology essay...and by break, I mean a break from thinking about starting it.

National Poetry Month

April is a good month for poetry, for me. It's like I'm extra-receptive to it. For one thing, it's a month of madcap weather here: just today, it rained, and then snowed and then sleeted, and now the sun is glaring angrily through the clouds to glint off wet pavement and dirty cars. Everything is so changeable. The world becomes this crazy mosaic of light and wind and temperature of a million varieties, in combinations seen only once or twice a year. It's like Nature is trying on a hundred different outfits before going out for the day. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what I have to do: I'm stuck between winter clothes and true spring fare, which is just a further reminder that everything is in upheaval. It's my birth month, the time of year when I adopt a new age as my own, and it usually takes a few tries to get that straight, as well. It's typically my busiest time of year, as everything races to a close, and also the time when I want to walk to Westdale, to sit outside, to wear skirts and sandals and to laugh with people. It's time to think about the summer, which goes from being a distant memory to being a present reality in no time flat. It's normally when Easter pops in, a reminder of renewal, fertility, and life; it's also a memorial month for several of my family members, now passed on. April is changeful, whimsical and teasing, and sometimes as cruel as T.S. Eliot insisted it was. It's capricious and insensitive, and sometimes I wonder how I'm going to get through it, but there's always the sense that I'd like to hang onto it longer, just to see more of its rare gifts.

So I think because April is a time of such chaos, whether gleeful or wrathful, it's a good time for poetry. I appreciate how much calmer poetry makes me. Wordsworth said that poetry was emotion recalled in tranquility; so even if it's poetry about uprooting and unrest and uncertainty, the calmness of spirit needed to write it comes through to me as well. I appreciate that others feel the same way I do, and can describe it better than I can. And I guess part of it is that my spirit is just as rumbly for change as April is, sometimes, and that makes for a fertile rooting ground for new ideas and turns of phrase.

Here are a couple of Philip Larkin poems that speak to me these days. They are both from 1955's The Less Deceived, although they're not deliberately put together like I've put them together here. They also speak of changes, in days and seasons, and of the different ways change can affect us. I cop to being affected in both ways by the prospect of change, recently; I think that's just the way spring is going to be for me, for a very long time.

Happy April, everyone.

~SQ

I'm not trying to host a pity party, or anything...

...but between now and April 8, in order (with the stuff in italics taking place over 2 days:
-senior project draft due
-Ottawa interview
-Mac interview
-senior project poster day
-Western interview
-virology oral exam
-virology essay due
-Toronto interview
-English exam

I'm happy to have interviews and all, but they still require preparation and engender nervousness. Also I'm stressed over the virology and concerned about screwing up Shakespeare and confused about poster/project stuff and scared for absolutely everything and I have developed a strong, strong aversion to getting out of bed.

I'm not writing this to get comments about how everything will be fine (because I know it will be, eventually) or about how I should be grateful to have interviews (because I am, believe me) or about how stress is a useless and time-consuming emotion and how I just need to get down to brass tacks (because brass tacks are things I want to stick into my eye sockets, right about now). I'm writing this because, as per usual when overwhelmed, I'm a bit paralyzed, and this felt slightly more productive than reading TWoP reviews of seasons of The Amazing Race that I didn't even watch.

~SQ

Weather: today was bright and sunny, and I sunbathed in our living room window

Interviewese

Brazil trip?
why yes sir
and yes ma’am,
a Group Trip.
A tight ship.

A Lesson in
Communication.
I Learned So Much about
Mediation
and Realized My Potential for
Dedication.

I Modeled A
Role
to Achieve Our
Goal
of Performing As
A Whole.

It Taught Me So Much about
Group Dynamics.
Group Enhancement.
Personal Development
In The
          Context Of
                              A Team.

Whoo-eee.

(but how to explain the heat?

        we bathed
        in the air.

        we breathed
        ceaseless waves and newborn sun,
        the temperature of a heartbeat.

        we were
        suspended
        in a broth of sea and sky and skin.)

I am Grateful To Have Had
this Learning Opportunity

These Skills
will Serve Me Well
As A Physician

I Have
Developed As
A Person


(but how to explain the heat?)

~SQ

Weather: cold and sunny, periodically snowing
Taking a break from: thinking about starting to study psych

Suit. w00t.

The suit hanging on the right side of my closet is the only indication you'll find in my life that I have a medical school interview on Saturday. The interview used to be scheduled for the 25th, but it conflicted with another non-moveable one, so it got moved to the 4th, and I never actually updated my wall calendar. I didn't write it in a day planner (although my mother did). I think I'm mostly trying, and failing, not to think about it.

But yes, I have a suit. It's black, which is precisely the colour I DIDN'T want to get, but it has a fairly obvious pinstripe, so that's okay. (I had, like, an hour to buy one, so it wasn't exactly choice central.)

Actually, it's just the suit jacket hanging in my closet at the moment, since the pants are in being hemmed. I am very unused to having pants hemmed. I generally have the opposite problem with pants -- of them being too short. Zara, however, is a store that fits small and long, and my (size 6) suit pants pool over my feet when I have them on, even with the heels I plan to wear.

So I took the pants over to the alteration place on campus, and the lady there pinned one side up for me until it was just the right length. Perfect. I sit down in the dressing room to take them off, and -- horror of horrors -- the pants ride up to mid-calf. Of course, this is with my legs crossed, and I don't plan on crossing my legs in the interview -- but still! The right length standing is too short sitting; the pant leg that WASN'T pinned up is of course just perfect when I sit down, despite turning my foot into a puddle of fabric when I stand. I think the problem is that my leg from hip to knee is just too damn long. I look normal enough standing, but if my knee joint only came a few inches sooner, the fabric woldn't ride up so much when I sat down. (I'm not the first woman to curse her thighs, but I might be the only freak with this particular problem.)

In the end I just handed them in to be hemmed as they are. If they're a complete disaster when I get them back, I'll just rip it out and do it again myself. It's only $8. Seriously, of everything this week, this is not worth my stress. But I keep thinking about it nonetheless.

Oh, the trials and tribulations of office wear. It's a clothing category I've never had the cause or opportunity to dive into. I'm not sure how I feel about wearing a suit -- "Old", "Serious", "Professional", and "Costume" are all words that come to mind when I put it on. I'm not sure a suit really showcases my personality, but on the other hand, I do want to take these interviews seriously. Problem is, wearing a suit kind of makes me feel like I'm playacting the role of someone serious.

Ah well. It's all good. As long as I don't burst out laughing mid-interview.

~SQ
P.S. Yes, I did just discover the link-making tool in Blogger. Yes, I am slow.