6| saturdays are for...

• ...scrambling to finish interest statements for wonderful professors who are writing you letters for grad school {phew!}
• ...divine {however late} brunches
• ...mucking around with other people's printers to ready your wedding invitations
• ...playing with your niece and her friends {however violent}
• ...listening to old, awful music {that you appreciated when it first came out}
• ...taking photographs of dogs {that may not be yours}

after a conversation with eddyizm, i was determined to take my camera outside and remind it that it is loved, and is not just a tool with which i capture my other arts + crafts. so, off we went to bruce pit which is one of the few parks in the city of ottawa that dogs are allowed off leash. it is prime doggy-running-territory. camera in hand, i wasn't afraid to take some two-hundred shots of beautiful dogs and beautiful trees, running side by side. the owners of the dogs were equally pleased, and to my luck, many a hound believed that because i had a camera and therefore had treats {sadly for them, not the case}. this also meat a lot of close-ups, or near close-ups. some downright awesomeness {which i can't wait to edit}.

5| juggling balls, not fire.

there comes a time in everyone's life, arguably several times, when there is a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it in. if this is only one task, i'm usually pretty good. it's when one task becomes several that i lose my feet and end up yelling "wheeeeee" for the following week or so.

in addition to starting my etsy shop this past week, i am in the thick of starting two new jobs--one paid, one unpaid for school credit. i am also applying for graduate studies for two different programs {that have two different applications}. oh, did i mentioned that i was freaking about money until my student loans came through today! so, basically there has been a lot of stress under my hat for the last few weeks.

to make things even more up in the air, the buses in ottawa have been on strike for fifty {50} days. i would normally be pleased to do more walking and less driving or busing, but for fifty days, we have also had subzero temperatures and snow, snow, snow. so, my days have started at around 6 am, so i can get a ride in with my lovely boss. my days also end at around 11 pm because i can never get myself to sleep any earlier. but in the evenings, i veg, veg, veg, rather than work, work, work.

and so, with twenty-minutes left in the work week, i am telling you fine folks all about my procrastination, and how i tend to do this to myself when i have a lot on my plate. but it will all work out in the end.

it's almost like i juggle balls: i wait until the very moment that the first ball is at its peak before throwing the second one, so i can time it just right. i swear, it's all on purpose.

|credit infogirl |

4| shakespeare, william. {or, what causes me to read}

i feel like by the fourth blog, one can start talking about their username. mine happens to come from a quotation in shakespeare's antony + cleopatra. funny enough, i didn't really know that this was the case until recently. i am one of those folks who likes to take pretty words out of context. last summer, i attended shakespeare's universe {her infinite variety}, a play at the stratford festival {stratford is about an hour and a half drive from toronto, and the festival is a tribute to the bard}.

maecenas:
now antony
must leave her utterly.

enobarbus:
never, he will not:
age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
her infinite variety. other women cloy
the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
where most she satisfies. . . .

in context, enobarus is saying that there's no way antony could ever leave cleopatra, because her charm never fades. variety is a species of excitement, to hold on to.

the play was a marvelous homage and discussion of the role of women in shakespeare's plays, as both actors and as characters.

i love shakespeare simply because he is so playful with words, and was in many was a feminist in his time. by no means am i a student of english literature, but i really enjoy reading him {for fun}.

as for what causes me to read. i have been using part of enobarus' words in my personal email signature. i sent an email to a professor regarding graduate studies, something that was not even closely related to shakespeare. in his reply, however, he mentioned how he had fallen in love with cleopatra when he first read the play. we spent a good portion of time in his office discussing the works of shakespeare, and then when we moved on to my thesis topic, another discussion on mordecai richler ensued, and i left with a list of three or four books to have a look through.

i love reading because it gives me something to talk about. i remember, when i lived in germany coming down to breakfast and my host brother talking about genetically modified sheep whose wool would be as strong as steel because they had spider genes in them. i had read about this two nights before in margaret atwood's oryx and crake.

the problem with this wonderful reading business is that i have very little patience for long forms of entertainment. books and movies will be the death of me, unless i have knitting with me. and knitting with a book in hand is not easy--i've tried. this means that i have to be hassled to read books, and to actually get into them. i can start a book five times before i actually get into them. it took me three years and five tries to get through the poisonwood bible, but i did it, and it's one of my favourite books!

so, in the name of the new year, which is now a month old, here is a short list of books that i have started, and would like to finish this year, no promises:

• the yiddish policeman's union by michael chabon
• antony + cleopatra by shakespeare
• in praise of slow by carl honore
• everything is illuminated by johnathan safran foer
• the shock doctrine by naomi klein
• the end of poverty by jeffer sachs
• performing glam rock: gender and theatricality in popular music by phillip auslander
• history of sexuality volume two by michel foucalt.

credit simple to enchant

3| a tip of the hat to the earth (one)

i like sharing stuff. especially information. so, while i may be not so keen on the overabundance of unused blogs, i am quite happy knowing that my blogroll (mostly found through my favourites sidebar) is increasing in size. along the same lines, i like dialoguing, which is part of why i am a fan of blogs.

anyway, i'm not sure who all is aware of this, but most grocery stores still provide paper bags (in ontario, this was a pretty big revelation for me). you just have to ask, since they're more expensive. don't get me wrong: i prefer reusable cloth, cotton, et cetera (see photo). but today, for example, in the midst of lunch hour errands, i realized i needed cheese and hot peppers for tonight's dinner.

i really hate using plastic bags, because i reuse them once and then they get chucked. on the other hand, at the bottega near my office, i grabbed a paper bag from the bakery section, and loaded my tiny pile of groceries into it. the bag will then go into my paper scraps pile when i get home.

all of this is to say, if you have to choose between paper and plastic, remember you do have a choice, despite what grocery stores and bottegas want you to believe.

|credit greenbabyguide|

2| colouring books.

my work life, lately, has involved the following:

• draw map
• colour map
• file map
• repeat

sadly, there are no crayons involved, but i have to say that this might be the most fun project undertaking i've ever had (and to all those who say "my, you get the strangest jobs"...i could not agree more with you, my friends!)

|credit sir fish|

1| an overabundance.

this morning, i set out to start my umpteenth blog (because i get tired of names really quickly, and to be quite honest, kaitlinwainwright.blogspot.com is not all that inspiring).

unbeknownst to me, there is an overabundance of underused blogs in the internets. carboniferous (my etsy shop and twitter) and herinfinitevariety (my tumblr) were both taken on wordpress and on blogger.

i would have simply registered my name, if my name were registerably simple: there are as many ways to spell kaitlin as i have fingers and toes, and wainwright...well, let's just say that my father used to get mail addressed to Mr. Wayne Wright (insert obligatory chuckle).

which is not to say that i'm not thankful for my name, but simply that i'm a little miffed that carboniferous.blogspot.com and herinfinitevariety.blogspot.com have not been updated since their first post. (then again, i'm the pot calling the kettle here, having abandoned my previous blog for its hacking capabilities).