word of the day....

proseem: please

(Warning: these are not correct Czech spellings. This is just how I hear it on the CD. And I was wrong about beer. It's actually bevo. So now I can say "bevo, proseem," if for some reason my body is taken over by aliens and I wish to drink a beer. I can also say, "oochet, proseem," which means I want the bill. I plan to keep y'all posted on my slow learnin', so proseem bear with me.)

In other news.... I'm professionally jealous of John Ghazvinian, who's written an entire book about something I've always wanted to write a book about -- or maybe just a few stories -- oil in Africa. This is similar to how I felt when I found out about Carol Off's book, which was also on a topic I'd planned to explore one day. Apparently I lack original thought.

And this story for some reason made a friend of mine very angry. Now, I don't want to steal her thunder, as she may take this time to post a comment on why she hates things. But in the meantime, I have to say Roy MacGregor's piece on a small-town hockey team losing its players to a bad road accident 21 years ago is exactly the kind of feature story a national newspaper should be covering. Because of the tragedy at Bathurst. Because mothers and fathers all over this country put their kids on buses on days when the weather is too bad to go anywhere, but we're Canadian and we muster through and hope for the best. Because MacGregor's a beautiful writer and this particular story brought me to tears. And I'm not a big one for the tears.