I wonder if political pundits here at home will make a lot of hay about the fact that John Kerry mentioned Canada exactly once during his speech before the Democratic National Convention (in relation to prescription drug costs).
Although it's just a single mention in passing, it's still exactly one more mention of Canada than I'm expecting from Bush's acceptance speech.
Sealwife Scorecard
My latest fiction project is entitled Sealwife. It's a short story set on a Newfoundland outport with some mystical elements. It's the first short story I've written that's not been fan fiction, and one thing that's been a feature of my writing since I started writing is that my stories typically have gotten longer as I've written more. I'm eager and nervous to see how this short story experiment will go. So, as I've done with The Young City, here's my scorecard for Sealwife:
3089 words
Single chapter
13 pages
Saturday Ramble
Spent most of the morning working on the :Trenchcoat Farewell Project:. I'm now most of the way through the layout work for Sentinel and once the draft of this story is proofread, the rest of the material should fall into place quickly. It's hard to believe that, after four years of working on this project, I may be actually at the end.
Stepped out of our overheating home and took the bus to Conestoga Mall today. We're approaching a full year, now, of being carless, and frankly we haven't missed it. We can count on the help of friends and family when large loads need to be brought home, and Grand River Transit has really done a lot of good work making Waterloo Region accessible without a car. This is over and above the fine work Kitchener Transit was already doing before the Region stepped in and merged the service with Cambridge Transit.
We didn't have to walk far for our bus; we didn't have to wait long for it either (thanks to knowing the schedule); it took us forty-five minutes to get up to our northern mall, and the ride was pretty comfortable and cheap. Though we miss Freddy our Faithful Ford, I'd have to say that cutting the cost of maintenance, gas and car insurance out of our monthly expenses has allowed us to live comfortably the past year on quite a low income.
What we do miss Freddy the most for, however, is the ability to head out of the city and drive somewhere to write. Today, though, we managed to head to a mall and walk down to a nearby Chapters to write (via an interesting nature trail). We also got home without too much difficulty. So, a quiet day in a pretty livable city; that's all I have to say.