I wish I had some progress report here, but things are continuing to move along rather leisurely. My dress is just about done, pattern-wise, but I still have to see fabric samples. The food continues to change as summer turns into winter; my mom bought a panini press on Tuesday so we could have hot sandwiches instead of more tea-type ones, and possibly soup. (I doubt if we will be making that, though.) There's a newer, better and less work & butter-intensive frosting for the cake, and the cake has an amazing stand, if I do say so myself.

Otherwise, it's a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. My wayward student has been pinned down for three more lessons; the agency that got me him in the first place (one guy, really) no longer has much interest in his agency as he has another job, so I am looking for new students for now. I still have my first and favorite student, who just turned four a few weeks ago, but I need more...

I have been buying music lately - wandering around stores as usual in a daze, wondering why so many album covers have to be so ugly, and why HMV in particular always has the one album I want in their 2-for-25 deal but no matter how many others they have in the same deal, it's always the same result (with different reasons of course - I don't want it, I already have it or Marcello already has it) - no, no, no. It became clear to me that I wasn't going to find anything no matter how hard I looked, so I went to Penguin Music and got the Putamayo Paris cd and then went to HMV for Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew's Spirit If... which is of course great. (So is Paris, for that matter.) Yesterday I went not to HMV but to Sunrise and got Stars' In Our Bedroom After The War and Rilo Kiley's Under The Blacklight at a price that was...the equivalent of the 2-for-25 deal! Ha! (They were both cheaper at Sunrise, as well.) (fridayfilms, I have been savoring the excellent customer service here, sopping it up like a sponge - I have already experienced the wall of indifference in London...)

Hm, what else? I bumped into my friend Kristine yesterday, who has assured me that the Women's Unit at MSH is hapless at best; I should know, as on Monday I was sent (against my figurative plaintive wails) to a clinic to have various tests done on me that anyone who had read my files thoroughly would have known I wouldn't have been able to stand; however, I did have an ultrasound (a good one) and a fine doctor on hand, who called the Women's Unit to tell them to do just that, amongst other things. Next Friday I get to hear their latest ideas on my uterus, and I am hoping my period arrives soon, just so I can avoid having to deal with them any longer.

I miss Marcello as usual, but I am listening to the mixtapes he sent me side by side, amazed as usual that great music can be found anywhere, everywhere, from (so far) Take That w/Lulu to Charles Mingus, Natasha Bedingfield to Rolf Harris, George Michael to The KLF, The Prodigy to Van Der Graaf Generator. This music and his eternal presence (here and there) are keeping me going, night and day...