so, i've been away. well, away-ish. i've been a mixture of busy and slacking.

my ultrasound was this morning. anyone ever had a kidney ultrasound? it's kinda strange. they must warm up the tube of goo, cause it wasn't cold when the woman squirted it onto me. it was halfway between warm and hot. so, the woman pressed the wand thing into one side and into my ribs, then the other side, and then the middle.

it was a very odd experience. odds are the next ultrasound i have will be if i ever have kids.

so, my thing was at 7:30am. i got there at 7, found the right desk at about 10 after, sat in 2 different waiting rooms, went into the room at about 7:35, and was driving away from the hospital (i almost put hotel ) at about 10 to 8. i was home not long after 8am (i stopped at Starbucks on the way home. i love that they've brought back the Espresso Truffle drink, both hot and iced. it's so good. it's like a mocha but with extra fancy hot chocolate).

so, i was supposed to take a midterm for my American lit class this semester. he kept pushing it back for lots of bizarre reasons, and 2 weeks ago said it would be on the 17th.

today.

*head-desk* jerk.

last week my seminar was cancelled because he was going to be away at a conference, so on Tuesday he cancelled that seminar and held office hours instead. i went (cause i had an hour to waste until the sis got out of class) and reminded him that i'd brought this up the week before in class.

he was very understanding about the whole thing, he's a fairly laid-back kind of guy, and we agreed that i'd write it on Thursday during seminar in a different room. it was what i was prepared to do.

so, for today and tomorrow, i'll be writing out some rough notes for the short essay (cause he gave us the question last week) and reviewing the past 4 weeks worth of notes.

my YA fiction writing class is half over and i'm going to miss it. it's been lots of fun. downtown Vancouver isn't so bad, even with the closed roads, but i'm not driving down there. i take the SkyTrain. it's also not so bad cause it's not the Olympics. it's going to be so busy in February, but school has said they'll be closed for those two weeks, so i get those two weeks off (to study, probably).

i haven't heard anything about the creative writing seminar in the spring yet. they said they'd left people know after the 9th, and it's the 17th. i'm okay with not getting into it cause i know what else i could take, but i'd still like to know if i got in or not.

if you're interesting in writing short 14 to 16,000 word YA stories about big ideas, check out Orca Books and their Orca Soundings books. they're a publisher based in Victoria (yay, go Canada), and the Orca Soundings books deal with high-impact stories and ideas for reluctant teen readers. we had a YA writer come in on the weekend who writes Orca Soundings books and she said she really enjoys writing them, and that cheques come in repeatedly because high schools and prisons and literacy councils and groups like that buy up the books like hotcakes.

i think i'll look into writing a story like that over my Christmas break.

so, i guess that's it. i'm going to try and write something this weekend, but it's been weird because i can't write while listening to podcasts.

lindsay e.