As one does on a cold evening in early winter, I have slid my copy of the Dictionary of Newfoundland English, second edition, off the shelf, looking for some nice words from a worse climate to warm me up.
It has not disappointed. Look at this lovely sentence it adduces for a citation:
I wasn’t frost-burned. My mitts were frore onto my hands. My face was frore, my collars was frore an’ everything was ballicattered.
Snow is snowing in this snizy season, even when you are out visiting. Be the house and the company ever so snod, and the room ever so filled with snapperdols, you will sooner or later have to snabble your snacks and slip out into the snivy snizeler, and soon enough you will snuist and snite a snevit until at last you can sneak into your own snug, snaste the candle, snerdle with your snugglebunny, and snouse… and hopefully not snuzzle. Continue reading
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Tagged snabble, snapperdol, snaste, snerdle, snevit, snite, snivy, snizeler, snizy, snod, snouse, snuist, snuzzle, word tasting notes
The view from here
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I’m sitting in Cochrane, a fast-growing town stuffed in a valley notch tied to the northwest of Calgary by a fifteen-minute stretch of highway with exactly the kind of scenery all of Alberta’s tourist guides include: wide sweeping farmland vistas with the ripped edge of the Rocky Mountains to the west. My view from this coffice space is those same mountains, seen across a strip-mall parking lot and over some rooftops. Continue reading
Cathryn walked into the hospital ward. It was settled into the twitchy hush of a nighttime hospital, its doors an Advent calendar of snores, TV shows, and random screams. Lily was waiting in the common area and instantly magnetized to Cathryn’s arm. “I’m so glad you’re here! Everything is just… weird.”
Cathryn darted her eyes around. Oh, nope, weird is a safe word. “Where’s Henry?”
“He’s over getting to know Matt.” Lily started walking her down one of the halls.
“Getting… what? They’ve known each other for years.”
“Ms. Espy!” The night nurse called from behind and strode mightily after her. “I’m glad you made it. A lot has happened.”
Cathryn flinch-stopped and spun back around to look at her. Continue reading
All four people in the room peered out the window, trying not to be visible to the suit-monkeys disgorging from the limo down below.
“They have to buzz up to get in, right?” James said.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Maxim said. “Also I’m going to assume they won’t all take the elevator.”
“How strong are your—” Marcy said, and then she heard sounds of banging metal and breaking glass from below. Continue reading
“I didn’t know that it was going to work,” Maxim said. The minivan cruised at an urban pace from traffic light to traffic light. “It was just a lark. We’re supposed to include a mountweazel or two as copyright traps. So I put in ‘marycela’ as one and defined it as ‘a lottery winner’. I didn’t tell her! Not until she won the lottery.”
“It was very sweet of you,” Marcy said. “Of course now everybody knows my secret true name. I’ve been Rumpelstilskinned.”
“Turandotted,” James tossed in. “And now nessun dorma indeed.”
Marcy inhaled as if to speak, and then paused with breath suspended as if to keep anyone else from speaking first. Then she said, “I don’t think Karly will be sleeping, with all those cats.” Continue reading
To: Cathryn Espy
From: Maxim Patryshyn
Subject: definition
Hope you like your dictionary entry. Let me know what you learn.
Maxim
Cathryn read the email on her phone as she sat in ÖL with James, waiting for whoever was in that black limo to go away. She replied: Continue reading
Here’s the old side
You can listen to this with ambient sound to give you more feel for it. Just go to Patreon (the coffice space audio tracks are always free for everyone!).
The Balzac’s on Market Street is the closest coffice space to where I live, but I don’t work here all that often. It used to be a narrow, dark, and often crowded place, which didn’t appeal to me so much. Now they’ve expanded into the might brighter space next door that used to be a juice bar or something. You can still sit in the old side in chthonic relative dimness at one of the eight marble cookie tables along the padded yellow wall bench, the three towards the window, the four stools at the marble counter right behind the espresso machine, or – weather permitting – the patio on Market Street (which is pretty nice), but you can also go to the new annex and occupy one of four marble cookie tables or a stool at one of two marble high-top counters that supposedly seat eight but really more like four each. And when you’re in the new part it’s bright.
Here’s the new side
I won’t say it’s any quieter in one part than the other. Obviously all the coffee noises are in the old side, but the two are connected by an open archway so it passes through. The music also plays only in the old side. But conversation tends to drown it out anyway. And when it’s busy with people talking with each other – as it can be mid-morning – there’s a bubbling swimming pool of noise, let me tell you.
Balzac’s is a chain, and I’ve already talked about their location at Ryerson. Each location has some of the character of its neighbourhood. This one is across from St. Lawrence Market. Market Street is the most charming little street in a neighbourhood that’s overall pretty charming, and I’m not just saying that because I live here. What the locations don’t differ in is their coffee – always good, no matter what you get – and their food items. I seldom get food at a coffice space, but I have difficulty resisting the peanut butter squares at Balzac’s.
Just look at it.
Another thing the locations have in common is that you don’t have to navigate steps to get into them or to their washrooms. And the washrooms are modern and clean. No stairways to hell or basement safaris.
I remember overhearing some nitwits talking about one of the Balzac’s locations – “Yeah, it’s named after a city in Alberta.” Just to clear this up: Balzac is not a city, not a town, more like a crossroads just north of Calgary. And it’s named after Honoré de Balzac, as is the coffee chain. Why name a coffee chain after a famous French author? Because he was a seriouscoffee drinker. Like a twenty-cup-a-day dude. No idea how he held his pen steady enough. I don’t think I’d even be able to type. Itt widuhok beeh liikjjke thsispaosbs.
Cathryn set her tumbler down with a rap and spun to see who had tapped on her shoulder. The tapper, a tallish, bespectacled man around 50, stepped back abruptly. “Sorry,” he said.
He didn’t seem obnoxious, aside from having tapped her on the shoulder. “No, sorry, I’m just a little jumpy right now,” she said. Then a thought stiffened her like a foot in ice water. Was she going to jump? She seemed not to be jumping. She looked down at her feet. They were not jumping.
“‘Jumpy’ isn’t one of the terms that have been updated, I guess,” the man said. He attempted a smile. Continue reading
“Wait,” Cathryn said into her phone. “How did you know I found him?”
The minivan that was probably carrying Maxim Patryshyn and Marcy (full name Marycela?) Coachman was now a pair of taillights merging in the distance and then turning a corner. It was cool and breezy in the concrete canyon. For want of anything better to do, Cathryn went back into ÖL and sat back where she had been, at the window end of the bar, as she listened to Pierre von Falk on her phone.
Pierre’s voice was now so professionally polite it was almost shiny. “I get the daily update notices for Worcester online dictionaries. The spelling of your name is…” There was a pause on the line. Then: “…I won’t say it’s unique, because apparently I physically can’t call it that, because there are other Cathryns in the world and the word ‘unique’ has lately been updated by Maxim. But so has the word ‘cathryn,’ heretofore unseen in Worcester Dictionaries.” Continue reading
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Sesquiotica 