the wedding was fabulous. it was a drunken rural affair out near where I grew up. a swarm of people came out from the city and a few from much further.

america

very shortly after the wedding we packed all of our belongings into the back of a rented Hyundai Entourage and drove the 900 km from Toronto to Philadelphia. as always, I was worried that they wouldn't let me across the border. It's always seemed to me that if they're going to bother having a border guard at all, it must be intended to keep people like me out. this was made worse by the unsettling revelation that it seems the canadian government shares certain elements of my arrest record with homeland security despite constitutional guarantees that only the Canadian Justice System be privy to it. apparently the new interpretation of the privacy act is that they can't show my arrest record to other governments, but they can tell them that i have one and the dates of the entries on it.

regardless, despite all that, they not only let me into the country, but put a nice big visa in my passport granting me the right to come and go as i please (but not to work).

philadelphia

i like this city a lot. it reminds me of brooklyn. E had never been to philly before we rolled in in the rental. for my part, i had only stopped in once and briefly on my way to points farther south. the gridwork street system is even more regular than toronto's, rendering it nearly impossible to get lost. and there is a surprising wealth of vegetarian restaurants for an american city. we've rented a large beautiful apartment just north of the art museum.

it's taking a little getting used to, having this much space. for both of us, the norm thus far in our lives has been living in situations like the shawshack, with seve people in a four bedroom apartment and the like. but rent here is much cheaper than in toronto or holland. we have a spare bedroom. how weird is that? now if only someone would come visit us.

on that note:

ATTN PHILLY AND AREA INFIDELS

we don't really know much of anyone in town yet, come, be our social network. I propose that we have a husi philly meetup sometime soon. we can grab food and drink at a pub in the area and then descend upon the Temple games room for ping pong, air hockey and pool. tell me that doesn't sound like a good time.

phone rant

is it just me, or is the practise of companies to call you and immediately put you on hold with a recorded "Thank you a representative will be with you shortly" absolutely repulsive? I always hang up immediately and I encourage the rest of you to do the same. maybe then they'll stop doing it.

reading

i haven't forgotten how much y'all helped me out when i was in holland with nothing to read. my plea for books resulted with me being inundated with more than i could possibly read. it was wonderful. some of them i still haven't gotten to (but i will), but i wanted to take a quick moment to say a few words about some of the ones I have read before i forget.

The Right Stuff - i think it was garlic who sent me this one, and i can't thank him enough. this is one of those books which i had always been meaning to read but had never gotten around to before. I'm old enough to remember Challenger clearly, which means I'm just barely old enough to remember when the space program was a bold and confident show of hope, glamour and virility. this book brought all that back as well as making me feel like an insider the way only good biography can.

Vellum - i can't remember who sent this one (ucblockhead?). the story is a good approximation of a Neil Gaiman Sandman plot, and there are few higher compliments than that when it comes to fantasy. unfortunately, the author seems to fancy himself a poet and i'm afraid that he is not quite that. in the end, i really enjoyed the book, but found that i probably skipped about a quarter of it because when the artiness of the prose went up and the plot content went down, i often found myself flipping a couple of pages ahead.

Eifelheim - i think i have aphrael to thank for this one. in the realm of science fiction, first contact stories have always been a particular favorite ever since i was a child, so it makes me happy when someone can finally put a fresh spin on it like this book does. my only real complaint is that the author forgot the cardinal; rule of science fiction: unless you are Greg Egan, do not spend too much time describing exactly how the magical futuristic technology in your book works; you will only make suspension of disbelief harder, not easier. an added bonus was that it was set in Germany, and I had the chance to read it on a train ride through that same nation.

Foucault's Pendulum - LinDze left this with me when he and his girl departed after their visit. i started reading it and was immediately drawn in. i was so enamored with the opening of the book that i was already considering ordering other works by Eco from amazon by the end of chapter two. unfortunately, in between the compelling opening and the compelling conclusion, he crammed a hundred and fifty pages of the worst of DaVinci Code mixed in with the worst of the Illuminatus trilogy. i am glad i made it through to the end, but i can't really recommend it in good faith.

The Descent of Man - misslake sent me this collection of short stories by TC Boyle (not darwin's tract of the same name). it was wonderful, the stories were hilarious and absurdist is a way that Will Self only wishes he could claim for himself.

Desert Solitaire - autobiography has always been one of my favorite genres. i have become convinced that everyone's life has the quality for a great autobiography, it is only a shame that so few of us have the talent and drive to produce them. i read this tale of american desert asceticism (courtesy of blixco) on the train and ferry as i left continental europe behind, my possessions packed back into two backpacks and a cardboard box as they had been when i first came across the ocean six months earlier. it transported me. i can't say enough good things about it. the book has a tremendous honesty and a genuine existential appreciation for the world. it toys with fatalism and idealism and in the end just reminds you that sometimes you should think about things more, and sometimes you should think about them less. i recommend it wholeheartedly.

writing

so, here i am in philadelphia without a job and legally prohibited from seeking one. and so i clean house and i do the grocery shopping and otherwise play housewife. but more importantly, it means that, for the first time, i can really treat writing as a full time job. i've buckled down and every day i am churning out new pages of my novel. looking at the outline, i'd say it's about half done now and i think i might be able to get the first draft finished by christmas. not bad, since i started it almost four years ago.

everything else

will have to wait for another diary.