Rural Observations

If you've missed my always charming bloggin lately, I apologize but it's really all Bell Canada's fault. If I were a true Italian I'd have put a hit out on them by now, but we lost our mob connections decades ago. I still have no phone, and thus, no internet at home. Damnit. At least it's "desk cleaning day" as my editor describes it, and since I have nothing on my desk I have chosen to blog.

Working and living in a small community is an intersting experience. But the strangest thing I've encountered is editing my editor. It's a wierd process, when your editor hand you his copy and I'm supposed to check it over. Yikes! As many of you know my grammatical skills are far from perfect, especially when it comes to the use of a comma. I'm slowly getting better but I don't want my boss to know what a comma idiot I am. And he loves the M-dash. That confuses me even more than a comma, but I think he was using them wrong but I don't know what else to do - sometimes I just replaced the dash with a comma! Some of my suggestions were completely ignored, as expected, like a suggestion on rearranging the lead (it was like a three sentance lead). Any grammatical tips are welcome at this point.

I had forgotten that in a sick way I love production day. I just get to sit and yell at my computer all day long. I enjoy Quark, but it's hard to figure out what style to use for what when you've never been shown. At least I know that even if I'm no quark-master I'm fairly fast. The only thing missing from production day here is the post-production beer and cheeseburger. That was the light at the end of the tunnel on a Tuesday at the Ryersonian, Andrew and I would do a dorky dance and then we would eat grease and drink beer. I went home to watch Canadian Idol drink water and eat left-overs, with a few two-bite brownies for dessert. Not the same.

Other wierd things I've noticed here in rural Ontario; Ontario morning - the morning program on the CBC - is even more annoying than Metro Morning. The CBC TV station I get out here is also crappy, a plea to all broadcasters out there, move out here and fix it. And I can't explain how wierd it is to live in a land without a daily newspaper. It's a very odd experience for me since I've had a daily paper with my coffee every day since I was 15 and as a creature of habit this throws a huge kink in my morning and makes it that much harder to get out of bed and into my ridiculously small shower. Seriously my shower is tiny, I'm 5'4 and think it's small and I apoligize in advance for anyone bigger than me who comes to visit.