I believe....

Anyone watching the Vancouver Olympics has heard it about 3.8 billion times already. It's now embedded in the collective consciousness of all Canadians, the most epic earworm of this new millennium thus far.

Of course, I'm referring to "Believe", sung by Montrealer (!) Nikki Yanofsky.

Our Canadian Olympic coverage is underscored by this instrumental at every turn. I find myself absentmindedly humming it while cooking, folding laundry or driving. And naturally, it blares from every loudspeaker whenever a Canadian athlete wins a medal, which means - seven times so far.

The Believe movement has its own logo, too, translated into hats, t-shirts and every conceivable article of clothing you can imagine. It's been reproduced on banners, copybook covers and scarves. In short, we're all being urged to "believe", as though having collective faith in our athletes will somehow improve their performance.

The logic (or lack thereof) doesn't matter. Our country has embraced the movement, and the song, with open arms (ears??)

As I stopped into my local hockey arena this afternoon, I saw yet another banner, this one made by schoolchildren from the local elementary school, posted prominently in the lobby. Hand- coloured and cut in a slightly wobbly hand, it nevertheless represents the hopeful anthem we've been singing for the past week...

A housekeeping note: I'll be out of town this weekend, and I'm not sure I'll be bringing my laptop with me (electronics and arenas are somewhat incompatible creatures). I'll keep clicking away, but I won't be posting any new pics until our return late Sunday. Have a good weekend, gentle readers.

Unplugged

I finally got the camera cord working again. I had been faithfully snapping pics, but couldn't download them either here or to my Facebook Project 365 photo album, so I found myself silenced and speechless.

As anyone who has spent a quarter of an hour with me will tell you, this is a most unnatural state.

Things have been strange here. My work is sporadic and the bills are piling up. We're having a grey but snowless winter, and the urge to sulk and hibernate has been overwhelming. My normally boundless creative and physical energy has deserted me, and I feel dusty and underused.

Also not typical, and quite uncomfortable.

This project has been a decent motivator over the past few days. Forcing myself to find interesting angles, or looking at everyday objects in new ways, has given me a creative push on days when I'd really rather fall into inertia.

And so, these photos are somewhat abstract and unusual. This first one is of our local library, as seen from the outside. Staff has placed a red plastic film over the windows, presumably to counter the bleaching effects of constant sunlight on their collection. As I peered in, the yellow lights gave the scene a rather chilling effect.



It kinda looks like The Library of East Hades, doesn't it?

This evening, as I drove home from my play rehearsal, I grabbed the camera at a stoplight, rolled down the window and snapped a few photos of the train tracks which run parallel to the highway service road right near my house. I suppose I wasn't entirely stopped, and so the lights near the tracks seem smeared and surreal...

Monday Monday....

Still no new camera cord. I was told by a knowledgeable friend to try downloading some drivers. He was supposed to send me links... but I'm still waiting.

In the meantime, I found one more pic from Friday. There is little capturing our imagination at the moment, other than the Olympics. The joy of winning Canada's first gold medal on home soil (despite hosting the Olympics twice before, in 1976 and 1988) has suffused the entire country. Even here, in our less-than-enthusiastic province, the gold medal mogul run by hometown hero Alexandre Bilodeau has generated huge excitement and momentum for the Olympic frenzy.

And thus, why not wave our flag a little bit, in a rather unCanadian way, and celebrate a true milestone in our sports history?

Oh dear

Well, it was bound to happen. I've hit my first snag of the project.

Yesterday, as I tried to download the day's photos, I realized my camera cord wasn't working properly. *sigh* So I've been unable to load or edit any new pictures, although I have been snapping away...

So today, you get two days' worth of "old" photos, all taken Friday - the last time my accoutrements decided to be helpful. Until I can replace the cord (hopefully tomorrow) this'll have to do.

Saturday: A whimsical photo. The sun was flooding in from the south-facing windows, and I happened to be picking something up from the floor and looked up. The shadows of the barstools on the wood-grain counter were stark and interesting.

One of the "tricks" I've been reading about in the Project 365 forums is to see ordinary things in new ways and through a different perspective. I think this photo (my skills notwithstanding) fit in with that philosophy.


Sunday: Later that day, I headed to the local mall. One of the boutiques there had an absolutely gorgeous chandelier, draped with iridescent satin. When I sat down in the "waiting" area and looked up, I thought I was seeing a giant suspended orchid in the ceiling. A beautiful effect, and definitely worth a shot!

The eyes of the world

There is little else being discussed here tonight but the start of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Seven years in the preparation, with countless thousands of volunteers working tirelessly to prepare a Games in this, the southernmost host city in the history of the Winter Games.

We've heard the jokes about the lack of snow... but what was not lacking tonight was joy, creativity and pride. The Opening Ceremonies were a mixture of cultural stories, music and sparkling visuals, marred only slightly by the malfunction of the indoor cauldron right at the end.

Speaking of which... this Games featured the longest-ever Olympic Torch Relay, spanning 106 days and nearly 45,000 km, through some of the world's harshest winter conditions. Our country embraced these Olympics, and in particular this Torch Relay, with so fervent a spirit of national pride that most commentators were left speechless. It's never been done before, and will likely never be attempted again. But what a spectacular event it was.

What broke most people's hearts, however, was the news this afternoon, even before the official start of the Games, of the death of a Georgian slider. The horrific accident was looped on all our news segments, and cast a pall over what should have been a joyous afternoon and evening. A moment of silence was observed, and athletes were urged to compete in his memory, in a spirit of international brotherhood and sports(wo)manship. So tragic, and yet a reminder of the tremendous lows that form the shadow side of victory and sporting excellence.

With that sober thought in mind, here's to a wonderful and successful Olympic Games, Vancouver! This girl's totally on board, right down to the mittens.

Ugh

I've been felled by the late-winter equivalent of Chinese Water Torture - an insistent, long-lasting cold that I've managed to ignore for days. Today, it decided it would be ignored no longer. So I spent most of today curled up on the couch, blowing my raw red nose and feeling like I'd been run over by a snowblower and spit out the long chute onto my front lawn. In a word - yuck.

Since I didn't venture outside the bounds of the living room today, it became a bit of a challenge to figure out what to post as today's picture. At 11:15 pm, I figured I would just snap a pic of my constant companion today.

Not every day's an adventure, I guess.



PS Very, very excited about tomorrow's Olympic Opening Ceremonies from Vancouver. I'm hoping to spot my BFF among the 3,000-strong children performing in the choirs at the Richmond Olympic Oval (affectionately nicknamed the ROO) as part of the Opening Ceremonies. It helps that she's about the size of the average 5th grader... she's been prepping for this for well over a year, and tomorrow is the day it all goes down.

Go Vancouver - I'm cheering for you, as you reveal your beauty and attitude to the world!

The Write Life

Anyone with a modicum of sentience has realized by now that I'm a frustrated writer.

Check that - I'm often frustrated, and I'm a writer. And sometimes, yes, my worlds collide and I strain to express what's inside.

It's been a curse and a blessing since I was a kid. My classmates would bemoan the 2-page composition they needed to write for English class. I'd have trouble limiting myself to 5 pages, and often used a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a typewriter to bang out my ideas.

And this was in the fourth grade.

Although I make my living from business writing now, fiction is what truly nourishes my spirit and tugs at my heart. And so, in a fit of mad inspiration, in 2007 I signed up for National Novel Writing Month, which (as the name implies) is the insane attempt to write a 50,000-word manuscript in 30 heady, creative, and likely unhygienic days.

I won NaNoWriMo in 2007 with 5 days to go, completing my first novel, a thriller set in the 1980s in my hometown. In 2008, I went for something completely different: a magical realism story about a mythical painter who exists across multiple eras and countries, and whose work changes the lives of everyone who encounters it. I won that year too, hitting the magic 50K mark in a coffee shop at about 5 pm on the last day of NaNo month, after a marathon 36 hours without sleep in which I wrote nearly 30,000 words. If it wasn't for the last minute, I'd get nothing accomplished.

2008 is also when I met Pat and Mike, at a Write-In for NaNo participants. Pat is a gifted writer of fantasy, crime stories featuring a unique detective, and lately, a four-book trilogy (yes, I know what I just wrote) in the science/thriller genre. The woman is utterly possessed when writing; she won the Muskoka Literary Festival last year, outwriting her closest competitor by many thousands of words, and emerging from the 3-day event with the complete first draft of her scientific thriller.

Mike is quieter but no less fierce. He's into dark stories and historical fiction. I'll always think of him as The Professor because of his penchant for research - before, during, and after he writes his pieces. He's no less successful, having just sold his first short story for publication, and working on the second draft of his 2009 NaNo novel.

Together, the three of us hang out in coffee shops across the city on the occasional week night, summoned by someone's impromptu message on Facebook, and drawn together time and again by the prospect of laughs, ideas, coffee and conversation with fellow writers.

And so it was tonight that after my play rehearsal and without prior notice, Mike dropped in to pick me up and drive me over to yet another Second Cup location with Pat. Several fun, productive and laughter-filled hours ensued... along with, maybe, a pretty good short-story idea...