7/10/2004

it is still summer

It is still summer. It is.

If I repeat this phrase often enough it will seem true, yes? Actually I'm feeling better today despite the fast slippage of my summer away from me because I took yesterday off. I realised that since it's summer, and I'm not on a teaching schedule, I also haven't been paying enough attention to time off. Everything is more relaxed in summer, thankfully -- but unless I specifically say a certain day is off, then I have some nagging anxiety about all the things I ought to be doing. So yesterday was my first intentional totally off day, and it was great. Went to the downtown library and stocked up on some free reading. I'm currently slurping my way through Gibson's Pattern Recognition -- this indeed feels like summer, to be able to gulp a book in a couple of days. I haven't read any Gibson in several years, and I'm enjoying this one so far (though Scribblingwoman's comments about the end are lurking in the back of my mind, pressing the brake pedal as I get closer to the finish). It's all about pop culture, internet subcults, the semiotics of fashion -- loads of fun. Weird tic, though: he's used the word "scrim" at least three times in the first 157 pages. In a novel where none of the other words stick out, that's kind of odd. Perhaps intentional; I can't say yet.