Potpourru

Ter and I have been sick for what feels like forever though I’m sure it’s only been a couple of weeks, but it’s interfered with any sort of mystical magical airy-fairy philosophical wonderment that normally makes my day more hopeful. When I’m trapped in an ailing third dimension, I get no further than the first rung of the survival ladder, and that means little-to-no astral meandering while my compostable container fights off the flu bug.

Life dares to continue without me, however. Canadian women have won tons of gold at the Olympics, this week. Curling, halfpipe, bobsleigh. The hockey game was on in the boardroom at work yesterday and man, was I glad I hadn’t taken the day off to watch it from the beginning; by the time my 10:00 meeting was done, I dropped in to discover that the girls were almost done as well. 3.5 minutes to go and they somehow scored twice to force overtime, then scored on a power play. If not for Marie-Philippe Poulin and some questionable calls, we’d have been singing The Star Spangled Banner instead of O Canada. I was briefly kinda sorta maybe a little but not really sorry for the US team, given that I’d have been extremely bitter to lose the gold after shutting out the opposition through 56 minutes … but since the outcome went my way, I’m good with it.

Oh, and it’s always good for morale, when you’re in your fifties and feel like crap, to watch figure skating of any ilk. Ramp up the competition to Olympic caliber and prepare for tears. I’m grateful that I had no aspirations as a kid because my bones would have shattered bigger dreams, but I still envy the athletes who can create such memorable moments of grace, beauty, art and physical strength. I don’t always care which country they’re skating for, either. Yuna Kim skated a short program that was pure poetry; regrettably, she lost the gold to Russia. Controversy rages after that one, too, by the way. Will they never get past Salt Lake in 2002?

I’ve also been watching True Detective. Another grisly-crime-committed-in-a-southern-backwater-dump-cop show where said cops are polar opposites yet must forge a relationship if they want to bring the murderer to justice. This one is interesting because of the format—the cops who solved the murder are being interviewed 15 years later, and the story jumps back and forth between then and now—and because Matthew McConaughey plays the oddball in the pair. I want to see where he goes with it … and it’s entertaining me between sneezes and re-steeps.

I read more when I’m sick. I’m almost finished with Dangerous Women and am three-fourths through a steampunk mystery/romance that has pretty well assured me that it isn’t my genre. Then the author of Fifty Shades of Gray was in Vancouver for a book signing last week. She wasn’t interviewed but a few folk in the lineup were—the most amusing thing about the story was the one member of the broadcast team afterward who admitted to reading the first book and clearly did not get the cult obsession that sprang from it. The inevitable movie is in production, gods help us. Maybe I should start writing porn, since that’s what seems to be selling.

I’d have to lower my standards, though.

Augh! Can’t do it!

So much for that idea.

*cough, cough*