Blogathon apologies
Topic: WC - Blogathon
Well I have to apologize for my lame entries of last week for the blogathon. I know last year I was a lot more fun and tried a few different things and even went so far as to do my faux blogathon for 12 hours.

I honestly thought that I'd pick up steam at some point last week but the steam evaporated and well, nothing happened.

Maybe next year, but who knows. But thanks for all those who came over to the Writing Zazen side in hopes that I'd be someone interesting.

Especially you Lolo, because you thought it was fun last year and were probably all hyped for more fun that didn't come through. ha ha!

Speaking of Lolo, she sent a very funny email yesterday with her apologies for not being the great emailer that she'd claimed she was going to be. It's okay, it's like quitting smoking, it's easier to talk about it and not quite as easy to follow through.

Any way, I wanted to publish the exceptionally funny (made me laugh for at least a good minute) portion of her email because anyone who has read me for more than a minute has read my mentions of my fair Grinny Lolo.

Grinny Lolo in her own words from Korea :
"On another note, it's come to my attention recently just how unobservant I've been on this trip. Whereas when I was in Japan I walked around all wide eyed asking questions about each and everything I saw, I sort of just focus on what I recognize here, and ignore what I don't. For example, there is this restaurant on the first floor of the building that I work in. It always smells really horrible, and puts me in a fairly bad mood, as my sense of smell is so keen. However, it never even occurred to me to find out what kind of restaurant it is, rather I just make an effort to hold my breath well in advance of walking in it's vincinity. Well, after walking by it for over 3 months, I've come to learn that it is a DOG restaurant....yuck yuck yuck, I've been breathing in the scent of cooked dog, and I didn't even know it! It smells repulsive for those of you that are curious! It doesn't smell like anything I've smelt before, so I can't liken it to anything for you. My students claim that like everything else it tastes like chicken...puke puke puke!!!! I have to say though, that there appears to be a 50/50 split between the people who eat dog and the ones who don't.

Dog is eaten primarily in the summer, as it's said to improve stamina. Because the hot/humid weather is so draining, Koreans down some dog soup to combat the fatigue. I think I'll stick to naps thank you very much ;-) Like with other meats, domestic is cheaper, and the imported stuff is more expensive. The majority of my students haven't tried the imported dog because of its high cost, so they were unable to tell me if different breeds of dog taste different. Don't know why I asked...it's not like if they told me that Dalmation was particularly tasty, I would try it. I think I was trying to make polite conversation when I asked :-)"

It's not the blogathon but it's funnier than anything I wrote last weekend. Enough said.
EY

Power Struggling Leo
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
8:48am Saturday 4Aug07

Well, July Leo was all about power struggles. The person who took on the main Leo characteristic of wanting to be the king of the beasts was making a good go at beating me down and proving her point. It brought me back to my childhood, to some extent. I mostly didn't get it, why the one step sister was in such big competition with me, mostly because I wasn't in competition with her. I didn't get that she believed I had some sort of mysterious power that had she paid any real attention she would have seen that power was not one of the things I could have put on my list of stuff that belonged to me.

When I finally got mad in my late teenage years, I came into my own power but that took a good 6 years before I tried those shoes on and a good year before I could walk comfortably in those shoes.

As I look at present day power struggle, I realize that, a portion of it has to do with my looks. When people can't tell how old I am they have a tendency to think I'm 20 years younger than I am. When in a position of power, the people with the power treat a person of 23 years far different than a person of 43 years. And of course there is the assumption that I'm out partying all the time, which the people who don't know me well assume I'm doing. Plus I'm also, God forbid, not married. So clearly that means that I don't have the same level of seriousness as those childbearing marrieds. And finally, just like in childhood, I feel no need to prove myself nor set the record straight.

Believe what you want to believe about me. I feel no need to control your thoughts or perceptions.

As the one who wants the power puts on the pressure, camps are created and my everpresent predictions. If she fucks up she will have the rude awakening when no one covers her ass nor backs her up. I hope to see this prediction happen in Scorpio. Scorpio is such a great time for revenge. Scorpio's as a whole are the best people for remembering a slight and preparing for that one time when they can sting you to death. I'm not wishing this on her, mind you, I just know that it's inevitable. You can only step on so many toes for so long before all hell breaks loose.

And in the meantime, in order to cope, I've written myself a new affirmation:

I believe that the daily frustrations are the Universe's way of telling me to focus all my energy on my writing. Power struggles are a waste of time.

EY

Blogathon... again
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Well it's the blogathon again. Last year I stayed up and kept my friend Che of the shattered prayer company while she blogged. Plus I did my faux blogathon. Not sure how much I'll manage today as I'm not feeling well. But I'm here. Any extra posts will probably be at my Writing Zazen blog

And if any one comes by, go check out Che at the Shattered prayer and give her a shout out and better yet, donate some money.

EY

Incognito
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Friday 27July07

Seems I've been missing in action. I didn't realize that it's been a week since I've blogged. Hmm!

Well the wedding last Saturday was beautiful and a whole whack of fun. I got to see a number of friends that I used to work with at the Science Centre. People, for the most part, that I haven't seen in close to ten years. Tall Girl who has been in Newfoundland for close to ten years. VanJanDan who I did see last year but has been studying in New Mexico. I don't know why I always say Arizona. A brain fart, I guess. The bride who I haven't seen in about six years. It's all crazy how the time flies by and you look up and your this age and...
Good laughs though, good dancing and too much eating. I managed to keep my tears in check during the wedding but shed some big tears at the reception.

I bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the Saturday morning before the wedding and read about a chapter and a half. It took me four days to read the whole novel simply because I was trying to savor it. It was a nice end, a meaningful end and the expected redemption happened which was deeper than I'd expected. No spoilers here because Lolo is on Book 4 and I'm sure there are other people who may pick them up one day. And we all know how I feel about the media slipping out spoilers.

Do I get into a rant about the Tour de France and the doping scandals? sigh! Why bother? Cheating to win at your so called passion. You guys suck! Vinokourov, Michael Rasmussen, you suck!

Frog legs graduated from cop bootcamp and I got to meet her family. Proceeded to maul her youngest neice for about a half hour. It's not even right how cute that kid is. Told her she was like my kitten who I must kiss about 8000 times a day and proceeded to kiss her cheek about 8000 times.

And my Facebook surprise. My high school best friend found me on facebook. We traded emails yesterday since I had plans last night and was too excited to save the conversation for the phone tonight. Laughed at the memories we both had flooded back about each other and the silly things we used to say.

We spoke voice to voice this evening and she read me some of the letters I wrote her. Seems I was quite the letter writer then. And I'm not all that different now from the teenager I was. Even then, I'd back away from the crowd to take a time out. Clearly, I come by that trait honestly. She said, after I'd told her some juicy family tidbits, that she'd only been to my house once. As I think about it, she had to have been my best friend to have ever seen the inside of my house. Very few of my high school friends had ever been inside.

I was tormented by my relationships with boys then... Shawn, Derek, Floyd... nothing much has changed. As she told me her traumas, all I kept thinking was how we could have been there for each other. I lost my mother in Dec 1996 and she lost hers in Nov 1997. And all the other things that we barely survived.

It's wild how life works. How people disappear and reappear. How we drop out of sight for supposedly important reasons when we could be offering support. And now I live in Toronto and She lives in Brampton and it's not that far away by any stretch and we're still quite similar and I can see us being best friends all over again and it makes me smile.

She's planning to send me my letters so I can see my teenage handwriting and read what I was thinking and get in contact with so much of myself that I hadn't realized that I'd forgotten. What a gift as a person and as a writer.

And back to the Tour, I can't believe that on two occasions a rider has collided with a stray dog. What kind of dumbass brings their dog to the Tour de France and lets it run loose? I guess there are stupid people in France too. ha ha. They're everywhere.

That's the kind of week it's been. All about people.

EY

Fans finally get Harry Potter book
Topic: Someone Else Said It
By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer 15 minutes ago

LONDON - At midnight, like magic, Harry Potter appeared.


Bookstores across Britain, and as far away as Singapore and Sydney, threw open their doors to sell "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and final volume of the young wizard's adventures.

Eager readers, many of whom had lined up for hours, rushed from the tills, opening the thick hardback book to take in the opening words: "The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow moonlit lane."

Inside were answers readers have waited long to learn — and that J.K. Rowling and her publishers have labored, with mixed results, to keep secret. Will Harry kill evil Lord Voldemort, or die in the attempt? Who will be slain in the battle between the good guys and the wicked Death Eaters? And what are deathly hallows, anyway?

"It's all that matters to him, to get this book — he couldn't eat or sleep," mother Laura Helmy said of her 15-year-old son, Bobby, who purchased the novel at midnight in central London.

The family, from Northfield, Ill., had been vacationing in Paris but hopped on the Eurostar to London for the day.

Shops throughout the world were putting the book on sale at the same time — a minute past midnight British time (7:01 p.m. Friday). Readers in the United States have to wait until midnight strikes in each time zone, from 12:01 a.m. EDT Saturday.

Rowling, who created her magical character in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" a decade ago, was giving a midnight reading to 500 competition-winning children in the grand Victorian surroundings of London's Natural History Museum.

Rowling sat in a large wing-backed chair and read the opening pages — description of a mysterious assignation, a clandestine meeting and important news for Voldemort.

For many of the keenest Potter-maniacs, the place to be was Waterstone's bookstore on Piccadilly in central London. More than 5,000 people lined up for hours before the midnight opening, in a festive, colorful line stretching around the block. Among the fans from as far away as Finland and Mexico were dozens of witches and wizards, a couple of house elves, a pair of owls and a woman dressed as Hogwarts castle.

Ken Zwier, 42, from Phoenix, Ariz., grew and bleached his hair to achieve the golden tresses of villain Lucius Malfoy.

"Tomorrow I'm buzzing it all off. It's been a couple of years," said Zwier, who was lining up with his wife and two daughters — all in costume. The family planned to read the book aloud to one another on their flight back to the United States Saturday. They said anyone who complained would be offered ear plugs.

Rowling's books about the bespectacled orphan with the lightning-bolt scar have sold 325 million copies in 64 languages, and the launch of each new volume has become a Hollywood-scale extravaganza.

"Deathly Hallows" has a print run of 12 million in the United States alone, and Internet retailer Amazon says it has taken 2.2 million orders for the book. Britain's Royal Mail says it will deliver 600,000 copies on Saturday; the U.S. Postal Service says it will ship 1.8 million.

From London to Los Angeles, Potter-mania spans the globe. Tel Aviv's Steimatzky bookstore was due to open at 2:01 a.m. local time Saturday, defying criticism from Orthodox Jewish lawmakers for opening on the Sabbath, when the law requires most businesses in Israel to close.

In India, stores were opening at dawn for special Harry Potter parties. In Bangkok, British ambassador David Fall was to hand over Thailand's first official copy of "Deathly Hallows" to the first customer in line at the Emporium Shopping Complex. The mall was decked out with a recreation of King's Cross Station's platform 9 3/4, where Harry and friends catch the Hogwarts Express to school.

Phnom Penh's Monument Books — Cambodia's only outlet for the book — expected its allotment of 224 copies to sell out within hours.

Enthusiasts, some rereading previous Potter volumes, lined up in sunshine outside book stores in Los Angeles. In New York, a clock outside a Barnes & Noble store counted down to the midnight launch, publishing's version of a trip to the moon.

Portland, Maine, was going all-out with a 12-hour Mugglefest to celebrate the book's launch. Fans wearing cloaks and carrying wands were riding the Hogwarts Express into a re-creation of King's Cross station, and an old red-brick warehouse foundry along the city's waterfront was converted into the magical shopping street Diagon Alley.

Across Latin America, bookstores were staying open late for the Potter faithful.

Mexico City's Gandhi bookstore planned to keep the party going on all weekend, with showings of the movies and readings in Spanish of excerpts from the book, quickly translated by "Mexico's Club de Fans de Harry Potter."

Security for the launch was fist-tight, with books shipped in sealed pallets and legal contracts binding stores not to sell the book before the midnight release time.

But despite pleas from Rowling and leading fan sites, spoilers sprouted on the Internet in the days before the release, including photographed images of what turned out to be all 700-plus pages of the book's U.S. edition.

In France, the daily Le Parisien revealed how the final installment ends, in a small article which it printed upside down. The book's French publishing house, Gallimard Jeunesse, condemned the newspaper's revelation, saying it showed "a total lack of respect for J.K. Rowling" and "disdain for readers."

As many as 1,200 copies were shipped early in the United States by an online retailer, and two U.S. newspapers published reviews Wednesday, more than two days ahead of the official release.

Rowling said she was "staggered" by the embargo-busting reviews and called on fans to preserve the secrecy of the plot.

But she had little reason to complain about what critics actually said. "Deathly Hallows" has received universal raves, with The New York Times and The Associated Press among those praising it as a worthy conclusion to a classic series of children's stories.

Fifteen-year-old Patrick Atkins of Twinsburg, Ohio, thought Harry would survive the final book, believing Rowling would come up with an unexpected ending. He avoided the Internet spoilers, as did Wayne Kelley, who walked through downtown Hudson, Ohio, dressed, quite convincingly as snide Severus Snape.

"I will wait until I have the actual book in my hands," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Lindsay Toler and Romina Spina in London, AP National Writer Hillel Italie in New York and correspondents around the world contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070720/ap_en_ot/harry_potter