Happy Dances for New Homes.

My parents have just picked up the keys to my new place in Vancouver, which is in the Woodwards redevelopment on West Cordova. The irony that I will basically be living in a department store will not be lost on anyone who knows me, including me.

Things I am looking forward to in the new place:

1. Having a dishwasher for the first time in my adult life (yesss).
2. Having a spare room for guests to sleep in, instead of my living room.
3. 5 minute walk (seriously) to work. Yes, I know this might also be considered a fail, but as this means I won't have to get out of bed until 30 minutes before I should be sitting at my desk, I'm going to go with another "yessss."
4. Rooftop terrace with BBQ and "W" shaped hot tub (seriously), as well as gym and movie screening room.
5. Stumbling distance from Salt Tasting Room and the Irish Heather.
6. 5 minute walk from John Fluevog in case of shoe-mergency.
7. 5 minute walk from the Old Spaghetti Factory, site of Annie and I's semi-annual "let's drink ourselves sick on cheap wine extravaganza." (Note: not recommended for non-drinkers, like Annie and I. It gets messy).
8. Being near to those who are dear.

During the Olympics, my place will be considered a prime location, so if anyone would like to sleep in my guest room for the duration of the games, it's yours for the low, low price of $3000.
And for that, I'll throw in breakfast (make it yourself, sorry, I'll be at work) and a cat (well, mostly her hair...all over your stuff). I'm also renting out my storage closet (it'll fit an inflatable bed) for $1000.

I think it's a deal. Spread the word.

Plus ca change...

When I was a little kid, my favorite, favorite thing to do was to close my door, pick up my microphone (actually the lever on my miniblinds) and wail away in front of my imaginary bedroom audience. This started with Disney songs on tape, but I quickly graduated to Michael Jackson (Bad) and Madonna (Who's That Girl). At some single-digit age, I discovered Casey Casem's Weekly Top 40 on the radio and I would tape it and play it back during the week, learning the songs by heart.

This bedroom-turned-performance venue continued into my teens. Favorite artists would emerge, and I would learn every note on their CDs, scrutinising my own performance over and over again: Bonnie Raitt, Sarah McLachlan, Jann Arden, Fiona Apple, Linda Ronstadt with the Nelson Riddle orchestra. These CDs developed scratches and smudges as I played them on endless repeat. I heard my dad play some Ella Fitzgerald and I quickly devoured Ella Sings the Cole Porter Songbook. I stole his The Very Best of Etta James, and to this day, I have not returned it. At night I would turn out the lights, and sing to the mountain I could see from my bedroom window.

You'd think that moving out of the relative safety of your childhood bedroom, you might also leave this musical comfort zone behind. Oh no. As a student at Pearson College, when things became too stressful, or engaging with my fellow students became too exhausting, I would close the door to my room which I shared with three other girls, throw a CD on, and sing away, not caring whether the other 40 students in my house could hear me. I would still buy the CDs of female artists whose vocals I particularly admired, and listen to them ad nauseum, trying to emulate each trill, each top note.

Now, as a fully fledged, no-excuses adult, I find that I come home to my own apartment, rush to my bedroom, close the door, and sing into my computer. Glad to see I've developed after all these years...but some habits die hard.

You can listen to some of my bedroom cabaret at www.myspace.com/daniellelemon.

Broken Hearts Club.

I seem to be in the unfortunate position at the moment of having a number of friends suffering through their own personal heartbreaks. I myself have been around this block a few times in the not so recent past, and so I empathise keenly, and find myself often thinking about why "it" doesn't work out: why love becomes too difficult, one-sided, or simply, and inexplicably, disappears and is replaced with anger, disappointment, and, most painfully, indifference.

With these things weighing heavily on my mind, I was probably in the perfect frame of mind to see "500 Days of Summer." It is the story of boy meets girl, but as the voice-over points out from the very beginning, it is not a romance.

Tom meets Summer and falls in love. He believes it's fate, that she is his soul mate. Summer wants to keep it "casual," but the two nevertheless become a couple. Tom feels he's met The One, Summer thinks it's nothing serious and doesn't believe in love. Within 300 days, it's over. Within 400 says, Summer is married to someone else. Tom is disillusioned and comes to the conclusion, over a steady diet of Jack Daniels and the Smiths, that the notions he had held dear of true love and soul mates were "bullshit" and it is this realisation, more than Summer, that breaks his heart.

In the final scene of the movie, Tom and Summer meet by chance at one of their favorite haunts. Summer asks Tom how he is coping, and he responds, honestly and angrily, that realising love, fate, destiny and soulmates were all a fiction has been the hardest thing of all. Summer is incredulous. Meeting her husband, she explains, she understood what Tom was talking about when it came to Fate, destiny, and soulmates: when she woke up one day and "knew," she says, she realised that Tom was right.

"Knew what," Tom asks bitterly.

"All the things I wasn't sure about with you," she replies. "You were right, Tom...you just weren't right about me."

And there it is.

So, to my own personal Broken Hearts Club: you weren't wrong, you were just wrong this time. Don't give up. I promise I won't either.

Book Tourism

Sarah and I spent a few days last week in Paris. As we have both been to Paris a few times (yes we are spoiled rotten), we didn't feel the need to rush from monument to museum at breakneck pace in order to fit it all in. Instead, we spent time meandering around Montmartre, spending hours (literally) in cafes and brasseries, and gazing at paintings in the Musee D'Orsay. I also made it my mission to spend some quality time in Shakespeare & Company on the Left Bank, which opened in 1951 and has been the haunt of many a writer who has found their way to Paris. It's chock-a-block full of new and used books, colorful characters, and hipster staff. In short: my mecca.

It will come as little surprise that I have always been a book tourist. I went to San Francisco primarily to visit City Lights: to worship at the altar of Ferlinghetti, chase shadows of Ginsberg, walk in Kerouac's footsteps. It was at City Lights that I found an out-of-print copy of the complete works of H.D., one of my favorite modernist poets. Happy days. In New York I got lost in the Strand, which really does have miles and miles of books. On our coastal road trip in 2006, Edy and I made a detour to Portland, Oregon, mostly so I could visit Powell's, where I got my famous "literary" waterbottle, which exhorts you to read at least 1000 pages a day for good health. Of course, in all these places I bought more books than I could afford.

I have to admit that Shakespeare & Company may have got the better of me. After the first 40 minutes, I still wasn't out of the poetry section...I hadn't even made it to fiction, and history was completely neglected. I had to make the difficult decision to leave the antiquarian section for another visit as I can't afford to be buying first editions when I will have trouble paying to have all the books I already own shipped home to Canada. I was overwhelmed, not just by the number and variety of books, but by the charm and atmosphere of the place, tucked into the Latin Quarter, in the shadow of Notre Dame.

In the end, I only picked up a few books on Paris itself; I had decided after my last visit in June that I wanted to "conquer" Paris the way I have London, to know its history, its streets, its neighbourhoods, its people. This will require frequent field work and disciplined study. So I look on the books I ended up buying, even though my wallet said I shouldn't have, as a necessary learning tool. Educational aids, if you will. One book I am very excited to start reading is a short history of all of the names of the various Paris Metropolitain stops. For some reason Sarah thinks that this makes me a nerd. But if lovin' books is wrong, then I don't wanna be right...


Ooh yes, here at last!


Happy bibliophile starting out her journey. Mood: optimistic, greedy.


Paperback writer(s).


Reminds me a little bit of some of the nooks and crannies at my own dear (and departed) Poor Richard's, in Victoria. Just need J.R., Finbar Magnificat, or Kiki le Douce (our store cats) to be wandering around and it will feel just like home.


Please God, if I am very, very good, can I please one day have a wall of books like this for my very own self?


A quiet corner for reflection (or reading books without paying for them, as these two did).

Still here, literally (or literarily) salivating over books. Mulling over option of asking for a job here and only returning to London to pick up Currie Cat.

Sheepshagging Wanker.

My cousin Sarah Lemon is here for a week and we are having all sorts of girly adventures. Just got back from a day shopping which neither of us could afford, and which I am going to pretend didn't happen until I get my credit card bill.

Sarah is much, much sportier than me (which isn't difficult) and a big soccer fan so it was off to the football for us yesterday. Unfortunately, as a friend pointed out, Sarah picked a ridiculous time to visit from a football point of view as she arrived on a Saturday and there are not many Sunday or weekday games. However, we did manage to find a Premier League Sunday match, and so we were off to Portsmouth yesterday afternoon to see Pompey face off against Man City.

When I was booking our tickets, I had to spend considerable time debating which stand we should sit in. Should we sit with the Away fans? I did spent the better part of 9 months in Manchester, and admit my initial sympathies lay with Man City. However, I settled for a stand that was supposedly a "mix of Home and Away supporters." When Sarah and I arrived, however, it was almost exclusively Pompey fans. Our seats were good though, and just behind the home net (wait, that's hockey terminology. What is the football equivalent?)

Not being the *most* interested spectator ever, as the players warmed up, I was more interested in who was cutest. Since the keeper was closest to us, I focused on him. I nudged Sarah. "Goalie's cute," I said. She looked and agreed wholeheartedly. We looked him up in the program, and then I dug out my Blackberry to do a little mobile Wiki'ing and discovered...keeper was Canadian! Asmir Begovic is from Edmonton! That settled it for both of us. We were now officially Pompey fans. Those Man City fans could stick their inflatable yellow bananas (what IS the point of those anyway?) up their bums. We had some nice men who were Pompey season ticket holders sitting on either side of us who were very friendly and filled us in on all the Pompey players.

The minute the game started, so did the singing, and the swearing. There was much chanting of "Blue Army," which Sarah and I could not decipher until we asked someone. There were a number of songs that had what could barely be qualified as lyrics (lots of "ay ay ay" and "oi" and the like), and "Play up, Pompey!" We also yelled "tosser" at any Man City player that came within 10 feet of our stand, and also yelled "tosser," "wanker," and "oh, you fucker" at the ref on any number of occasions. Our particular venom was reserved for Craig Bellamy, a Man City player, and we called him (due to his Welsh nationality) "sheepshagging wanker" and booed whenever he approached our stand. We stood up whenever we came close to getting a goal (we never did get one, so there was alot of sitting down in defeat). We screamed and booed whenever Man City got a penalty kick. When I say "we," I mean the entire stadium of Pompey fans, and, much to my embarassment, Sarah. I devoted myself to the role of football anthropologist and bemused spectator, and took lots of Blackberry video camera footage of fans going insane.

I have never, ever been to any sporting event in my life where every single fan was so engaged. I can't imagine what hockey games at home would be like if people were even half that interested in what was going on. Canadian fans seem reserved by comparison. All in all, despite not being a big football fan, Ienjoyed myself thoroughly, although Portsmouth as a city as absolutely *nothing* to recommend it. But for the football, I'd definitely go back again.

The Globe. Finally.



For a number of years I had the pleasure of being the research assistant to Edward Berry, a professor in UVic's English department whose focus, among other things, was Shakespeare.  He taught a course that was a joint offering called "Language Against Law: The Rhetoric of Civil Disobedience," which studied famous speeches from literature on the subject (think Antigone, Billy Budd) and real speeches, by Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, even the Clayoquot Sound protesters.  I loved going to Ed's house and having an espresso in his kitchen and talking literature.  

Before I moved to England for the first time, Ed and his wife visited London.  We joked about how expensive everything in England was, especially at that time, in 2004, when the Canadian dollar was so abysmally low and the British pound so strong.  He joked that he and his wife had often popped into Tesco to buy a roast chicken for dinner rather then eating out in London's pricey and not-very-palatable restaurants.  A chicken cost 7 pounds and 50 pence at that time, I think, and he said that pretty soon, they started pricing everything in "chickens."  A day pass on the tube, he explained, would cost "half-a-chicken."  His wife had seen some cute shoes that were ten chickens.  

Ed gave me a fabulous little book on London as a goodbye present, and had tucked into the book two "chickens," which he noted would get be a standing ticket to the Globe Theatre.  Sadly, until this Wednesday, I had never gotten to see a performance at the Globe, although I had walked by many times.  I was working away on Friday afternoon when an email came round from a colleague who had a ticket to see Troilus and Cressida, but couldn't go, and said the first person to email her back would get the ticket for free.   This is a common practice when people have to work late at my office.   I often reply, but never win.  Anyways,  I emailed back, saying "I'm probably too late, but..." and she replied right away, saying, "Not at all...well done you!  But you'll have to leave here by 6:30 to make it."  I looked at the pile of work on my desk, back to the computer screen, back to the work, and...grabbed my bag and hightailed it out of my office right away, and off to Bankside and the Globe.

My seat was not a standing seat down with the plebs, but in one of the seated boxes, which was fortunate as it was somewhat rainy.  For 1 pound I rented a cushion to place on the wooden bench seat, and settled in for a great 3 hours of theatre, as the sun began to set.  Troilus and Cressida is a problem play; labelled a tragedy, except no one dies.  Love just sort of...fizzles away with no explanation.  Which I guess is the tragedy (it's certainly a modern tragedy), but hardly tragic compared to Romeo and Juliet's deaths, or Macbeth's fate.  The play disappeared after being published in the first years of the 17th century and has only enjoyed a staging revival since 1922, as the play emphasizes the pointlessness of the Trojan War and the empty nature of heroism, which somehow struck a chord with a post-World War One audience. Cressida is also a great heroine, mouthy, headstrong, and very modern in her approach to relationships: she is an independent woman and a sexual being, unconstrained by social conventions like marriage.

The production was long, but there were innovatively choreographed fight scenes, music provided by a live "band," and, um, lots of handsome young men running around stripped to waist in togas, as Trojans and Greeks, to keep me occupied.  Most of all, I was just happy to be sitting there in the Globe at last, soaking up the atmosphere, watching the crowds mill about around the stage, watch those of us in the seats lean over the rafters to get closer to the action.  

And it didn't even cost me a chicken. 

Inside the Globe...horrible Blackberry photo, but was unprepared.
I'm finally here (hair curly due to rain!)

What I'll Miss About London #1: Taylor Street Baristas

Taylor Street Baristas is a little gem of a coffee shop run by some Australians, on New Street, just off Bishopsgate, in London.  Two of my Aussie colleagues turned me on to this place when I lamented the lack of non-Starbucks, non-Coffee Republic, non-Caffe Nero, real coffee, and the fact that my all-time, lifetime favorite, Monmouth Coffee in Borough Market, was too far away from the office for emergencies.  Taylor Street is for serious coffee drinkers, as they say themselves.  Anyplace whose website exhorts you to "time the extraction, listen to the milk," is pretty much gonna know how to make a damn fine latte.  And they do.  And for cheaper than Starbucks, which is, in London as in the rest of the world, ubiquitous (or omnipresent? Not sure).

When I made the great vegan switchover, I feared I would be stuck with Starbucks as they are soya-literate, and alot of coffee places in the UK are not.  Not to fear, however: Taylor Street does soy, and for only 40p extra, which puts them pretty much on par with Starbucks, price-wise (when you're already paying 3 quid for a latte, these things count).  It's worth the extra 20p or so, though, to be served by someone who remembers you by name.

Visit Taylor Street Baristas online.


20:46: Less Ow.

OK, I still wasn't walking very well this morning but I hobbled over to my gym to do Jim-not-Gym's workout again:

-  Warm-up: Run 5 minutes
-  Push-ups: 2 sets of 20
- Kettle bell squats: 2 sets of 20
- Barbell Rows: 2 sets of 20
- Lunges: the length of the gym and back, twice, no rests or steps in between lunges
- Lat pull downs: 2 sets of 20
- Bench lunges: stand on bench, lunge down on each side, returning to bench and straightening after each lunge.  30 sets of 10 each side.
- Cross-pulls: 2 sets of 20, each side
- Bicycle crunches: 3 sets of 10, each side

I have to admit, it was tough going, especially the kettle bell squats.  I thought it would be the lunges that would kill me, but no, it was the squats that had me screaming.  I decided to follow this workout with an energetic walk around the docks to keep things loose.  It was a beautiful day, and there was even a black swan swimming alongside Swanee and Mrs. Swanee (my pet white swans).  Then I got home, still feeling good, and watched the World Athletics Championships on BBC for awhile, which inspired me, and I peeled myself off the couch and had a go at this new "30 Day Shred" DVD that Heather recommended.

The Shred may have been a little too much.  It's 20 minutes, and I thought, "Hey, what's 20 minutes?  It can't hurt."

Um, it did.

It's only 20 minutes, but it's intense:  a quick warmup, then 3 3-minute strength circuits, interspersed with 3 2-minute cardio workouts and 3 1-minute ab workouts.  And it's frickin' hard.  I don't normally do jumping jacks followed by pushups followed by crunches, with no rests in between.  I was definitely not a happy camper by the end of the 20 minutes.  

I blame the endorphins.  Once I get on an exercise kick, I just can't stop.  This is why I've gone through periods in my life where I've exercised compulsively, running for hours at a time.  I just love the high.  The problem is, I ain't built like an Olympic athlete, I just like to *think* I am, that I have that level of endurance.  Sigh.  It ain't easy bein' mediocre.

20:24. OW.

OK, Jim-not-Gym killed me yesterday morning.  I hurt today.  I hurt before we were finished the workout.  My gym is located underground: you walk down 4 flights to hit reception, and then another 2 to get the gym floor and the locker room.   There is no lift.  Since I was already beginning to ache by the time we finished, I thought, "Hmm.  Can I possibly shower, do my hair, put on my makeup, and get ready for work BEFORE my legs seize?"  Concluding that the answer was "probably not," I decided to get myself up and out before I was walking like a pensioner, and shower at my office.   

Mission accomplished, but, as predicted, as the day wore on, I was progressively walking a little bit slower.  A night out at Callooh Callay in Shoreditch with friends, drinking punch out of a gramophone (no, really-there are pictures, I'll post 'em),  and I wasn't feeling any pain.   However, during the night, when I woke myself up trying to turn over, I knew today wasn't going to be pretty, and it wasn't.  I screamed climbing into my shower (I have one of those typically English elevated tub showers that you really do have to climb into when you're 5 foot 2, like me).  I screamed climbing out of my shower.  At work, I had to make a little noise whenever I got up or sat down, because it hurt.  I popped alotta Advil.  

Really, I have no one to blame but myself for working rather than working out over this past year.   Ironically, a fitness DVD I'd ordered after my friend Heather blogged about it, "The 30 Day Shred," arrived today.  I think that one will be shelved until tomorrow...I'm shredded enough as it is.

Ugh. 6:23.

I am now leaving the house to head to the gym to see Jim, my personal trainer. Jim always likes to make it very clear that his name is spelled "J-I-M" not "G-Y-M," lest there be any confusion. Bless.

Eating a banana and staring at disbelief at Currie Cat that we are up this early. What happened to lunchtime or afternoon sessions? Sigh.

Operation Roxie Hart.

On Saturday night, some friends and I went to see Chicago. We had front row seats, and it was very entertaining. The most boring of the Destiny's Children, Michelle Williams, played Roxie Hart. She was an okay singer, but she was a) too skinny and b) not vixeny enough to be Roxie. Every time she tried to be even a little bit kittenish or sexy, she would mug and roll her eyes like she was a character in a high school musical. Fail.

I was especially offended as Roxie is one of my "must play before death" roles. For information, the others are, in no particular order, Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd (done! Can die happy on that score), Marion Halcombe or Laura Fairlie in The Woman in White (either one would be great but preferably both), and Eva Peron in Evita (also still on the list). Anyways, I watched Michelle Williams with my arms crossed, eyes narrowed, smarting the whole time, thinking, "I could do this better. It's just because she's one of Destiny's Children that she's in this."

Anyhow.

I've spent an hour tonight singing a few of Roxie's songs: "Funny Honey of Mine," "Roxie," and "Nowadays" into my computer, and posted them on my MySpace page: www.myspace.com/daniellelemon. Have a listen, try not to picture Renee Zellweger or that boring Destiny's Child girl, and then write a letter to the producers of Chicago asking them for a re-cast starring yours truly. Many thanks.