m.i.a.

yeah, i know i've been missing-in-action round here lately. last weekend's baroque-era level of sloth and poor eating habits (the land of the free also = land of the conspiciously absent non-battered, non-fried, vegetable) plus plenty of face time with my snot-geyser of a nephew means that i got sick. a miserable cold that has left me cranky, with a throat full of barbed wire, hitting apple cinnamon neo citron like it's going out of style. this past year has seen me be sick more times than in the previous five combined. all the work and school and the extracurricular activities and the general harriedness of my mind, the unusually cold winter, and the slacking on the healthy eating front mean that i've been felled by an army of bacteria and viruses to whom i'm usually quite impervious.

i'm in the homestretch of my degree, the last six weeks before i get to walk off with my kinda-sorta masters...and in each class, i've only handed in ONE assignment. which means that in the last six weeks i have 3 assignments per class to go...which means a total of 12. in six weeks. ai-ya. taking the day off of work was a double-edged santoku knife (which is a bit of a implausibility, as japanese style knives are usually only sharpened on one side. generally western style knives are the ones sharpened on both edges of the blade - but i digress): on the one hand, it gave me an excuse to go home to markham and be coddled by my family (insofar as my family coddles - essentially they left me to whine away in a pile of sweatpants and stuffed me full of shanghai style dim sum and when the whining got to be too much, i was told off in none-too-gentle terms). on the other hand, the fact that i really, truly took reading week OFF, means that i'm thinking about tomorrow filled with trepidation and fear. groceries for the week haven't been bought. readings haven't been accomplished. assignments have not been started in advance. eep.

throw in the fact that this weekend was a gong show. dim sum lunch with my grandparents on friday afternoon in a dated monstrosity of a restaurant in markham (think: tacky san francisco chinatown decor by way of a tangled multi-generational familial drama by amy tan). my mom had us trooping en masse to a dinner with her clients on friday evening. saturday was breakfast with my deadbeat dad and the woman he married. saturday evening i cooked dinner (it turned out fabulous: olive garden salad, my award winning garlic bread, penne with cauliflower, proscuitto and breadcrumbs, and a pork loin roast smeared with a paste of mustard, garlic, sage, rosemary, and olive oil, wrapped in pancetta, and roasted to a spitting, golden, bronzed magnificence). today we're going to a dim sum brunch with the dotytron's parents (!!!!!!) then "tea" with my grandparents at their mah-jong birthday extravaganza (where they manage to tear themselves away from illegal gambling just long enough to tear apart trays of pickle barrel sandwiches, assorted puff pastries from chinese bakeries, and some kind of green-tea or chestnut-filled chinese version of a western style birthday cake). then dodgeball. then BACK to the mah-jong den for a multicourse dinner and lots of toasting for my grandpa's 85th. whew.

then i have to come home and ready myself for the week to come. yikes and more yikes.

we also saw two movies this weekend. in the valley of elah and be kind rewind full reviews to follow later tonight if i have it in me (and if my nightime neo citron toddy allows) or tomorrow.

fin.

reading week slack

i have taken the sage advice of my friend at work and am giving way to the insidious, slothy pull of reading week's manifest. no school work! as she so wisely noted, there's no point getting ahead, it's not like there won't be more school to replace it. better to enjoy my reprieve and luxuriate in my 12 hours less of class time this week. so i'm indulging myself by watching the wire and knitting and having a grand time slowly and fastidiously compiling my list of restaurants/gelaterias/bakeries/trattorias/cafes/markets and food emporiums for my upcoming reverse colonial conquest of florence. my sister planted a most wonderful seed, and i've started an active campaign of cajoling, pleading and entreating to see if we might be able to pay a visit to dario cecchini's butchery/restaurant in chianti (on our way to a day-trip in siena, perhaps?). cecchini was featured in bill buford's excellent book (reviewed in a previous post in this very blog) "heat". he's known as italy's most famous butcher, and he sells lardo and guanciale in his store, along with choice cuts of prime florentine beef. apparently there's always a free-for-all antipasto spread at the shop, with whipped lardo (!!!!) being a featured dish, to be lashed onto crostini. he recently opened up a restaurant, and on weekends, he does a 70euro steak-only tasting of three different types of cow, grilled over a wood fire. since bistecca florentina is on my must-eat list, why not at a place that makes a point of specializing in it? there's also no corkage fee if you bring your own wine.

tonight for dinner i made my award-winning falafels. it's nice to know that i've mastered a dish by the age of 28. it feels good. mind you: i've only got the falafels themselves down. the lemon sauce had to be charmed from the boys at square boy (who wouldn't let me pay!) and the tzatiki and tahini sauce remain elusive. i made them in my brand-new toy, a 14 cup cuisinart. which i love! a food processor with a sharp blade! how revolutionary!!! originally my sister had bought me a 7 cup one for christmas, but i was concerned about the size, so i brought it down for an exchange this past weekend. i was only going to go one size up (11 cup) but then they had the 14 cup for only $100 more. because i had a credit from the one that i was returning, i only paid $100 US for it (total cost was $186 US), whereas they retail for $346 CDN at sears. i can taste the savings! plus it'll last me for life.

tomorrow is a regular work day, but then my sis is dropping off the wee kidlets to be babysat by me while she goes to a hockey game. i have to babyproof the house somewhat (read: stack some full water jugs by the stairs so little ze can't take a tumble). we're eating stromboli with genoa and calabrese and provolone and basil and roasted red pepper and a caesar salad. the kids are going to eat grilled cheese sandwiches.

fin.

vacation 4-life

it's really hard to explain how much i love small-town america, and specifically, the area just outside of rochester. for me and the dotytron, that and the cottage are the ultimate vacation destinations, your go-to happy place, where you know you're not going to be required to do a single thing except eat, find a comfy spot on the couch, and hang. even though the dotytron took some extra time off of work and we left toronto at 3:30 in the afternoon, we hit rush hour long weekend traffic, and it took us almost 2 hours just to get to hamilton. it was really trying. luckily, we had the best of heart to keep us company. oooooh barracuda! the lead singer of heart (i forget which wilson it is) is beyond awesome. she can belt it, but it never sounds shrill.

so i ate my beloved dinosaur bbq which was predictably delicious. we also ate at this place called "red robin", where they specialize in burgers. delicious, fatty burgers and bottomless fries, and the best damn onion rings i've ever eaten. my only complaint is that i didn't like the fact that they put sprinkles on my milkshake. i'm a milkshake purist. we also picked up slices of cheesecake from "the cheesecake factory". unf! so effin' good. creamy and rich and light and flavourful (and at $5 a slice, overpriced, but hella tasty). i love america!

we availed ourselves of my sister's netflix subscription and watched 3:10 to yuma which had the singular distinction of a) making me enjoy the western as a genre and b) make me like russell crowe (whom i usually dismiss as being too florid and hungover-puffy for my personal taste). putting him and christian bale together on screen is magic. the film maintains a fantastic pace, allowing the characters to unfold while keeping a sense of urgency filtering through the tension of the story - it was a finely tuned balance between action and character, and both actors fully inhabit their roles, with crowe really amping up his rapscallion, roguish charm (heretofore completely unnoticed by me). i liked it way more than unforgiven which was a bigtime snoozefest.

the bad thing about eating in the states is that we barely ever touch a fresh vegetable, unless you're counting the onion in the onion rings, tomatoes in my ketchup, and hot peppers that were once a part of my buffalo wing sauce. i came home craving vegetable matter which i rectified by making a wild (read: supermarket definition of "wild" - ergo, shitake and oyster) mushroom risotto with porcinis, and that radicchio, fennel, parsley, and romano bean salad dressed with lemon juice, olive oil, and fleur de sel. it was just the ticket.

i feel like i might be coming down with a cold (that's what a weekend spent with a snot-fountain of a nephew will do to you), which is crappy and is making me feel tremendously unmotivated to tackle the mountain of "getting-ahead-during-reading-week" homework i had set aside for myself. all i want to do is curl up with the wire season 2 and knit knit knit.

fin.

lurve

today is the valentine's day. huzzah. i spent the day at work, and then i took my ready-to-burst preggers friend hanners and the baby daddy out for dinner at pho, and then i went to school to record the audio portion of this stupid group presentation for advocacy. unfortunately, the technology was giving us mad issues, so now i've brought the powerpoint home and i have to try to record it here, with assistance from the dotytron. i'm *hoping* the dotytron doesn't get all audiophile obsessive about it and try to like, remaster it or add reverb or some s**t.

so, not very romantic round here. i DID finish my sociology paper though. i'm kind of proud of it. i continued my trend of writing chatty, informal, the-way-i-talk and not terribly standard-academic sounding style of essay writing i've been doing lately (at least, where i can get away with it - in sociology classes). this prof (the hubby of my food studies prof) is much more preoccupied with quantitative method and rigor though, so i don't know how well it will sit. i actually use the words "either you know your s**t or you don't know your s**t" (i even used asterisks to bleep out the key letters...ha!) and i used a line that goes like this: "We have been asked to situate the readings in relation to our own research. I do not currently have any research of any import. What I do have however, is an interest in popular culture and people and a burning desire to be paid copious amounts of money for my prescient, foundation-shattering, brilliantly-written opinions on said cultural phenomena that will allow me to lead a life of decadent leisure." this is a rough breakdown of my paper (cut and pasted from an email exchange with my lone cultural studies friend at school...he was at a loss as to where to go with his essay):

- i talk about how i don't technically have any research at the moment, per se
- i then talk about how i'm not sure that quantitative methodologies would be of much use to me
- then i go into a critique of thomas and griswold's pieces for their defensiveness
that's predicated on trying to resituate positivism with this "provisional,
provincialism", which denies (even as it reiterates) the impetus for using those methods. so, they're trying to argue FOR positivism, even as they're neutering it from the source of its' traction (the fact that you CAN analyze things down into discrete, measurable, comparable data sets), which to me, represents a failure in logic that hasn't adequately been resolved...ie. why go to lengths to make an argument for positivism's validity as a support for interpretative analysis, if you're going to contextualize away it's efficacy so that it becomes nothing more than an adjunct interpretative method?
- then i name-check bruno latour and thomas kuhn
- then i name-check some raymond williams quote about not turning people into the objects of your study, and that when you attempt to insert an "objective distance" you collapse your ability to apprehend meaning, nuance, tone...in other words, there's something to be said for "knowing your s**t" - so that i can say with confidence that no one gives a rat's ass about shakespeare anymore, except for old dinosaurs who don't matter. like, it seems like some sociology is just out of it. so we're still talking about the "virgin/whore" dialectic or "high culture" stuff that's completely irrelevant to most people's understanding of the world, and we're spending time debunking something that just exists as a paradigmatic discourse now. it exists because we're still SAYING it exists, instead of actually looking to see if that's the case...it's the problem of reifying academic examinations of culture - which is what williams was warning against, methinks.

so this could either go over REALLY well, or the prof will nail my a** to the wall for being a cheeky bastard (with good cause). i'm kind of proud of it, because for myself, i managed to isolate and express my misgivings about the readings in a coherent way...and that was a major block for me to get over.

the KEY thing is: tomorrow is a half day at work, yay! we rented a car and we're going down to visit my sister. i'm giddy with excitement. whoever thought that i would grow to love rochester, ny so much? my sis is grabbing dinosaur bbq for us for dinner. here's a link to the menu. i ordered the tres hombre (with mac'n'chese and the fresh veggie of the day) and the dotytron ordered the fandango plate with mac salad and cole slaw. i also put in an order for their chocolate icebox pie. gah! i'm salivating already! visiting my sister is always so relaxing (for the most part) because all we do is loaf around her living room and eat disgusting amounts of food. bliss.

i also get to see this little bobbin again, and my niece, and we're so stoked. it's been so long since we've seen them! the dotytron is worried that little ze has somehow developed a full vocabulary in the month and a half since we last saw him and will be talking in the queen's english with a clipped british accent. that BETTER not be the case, because look how perfect he is here (also note how the dotytron is so good with kids that it makes most women made of weaker stuff than i to feel an immediate skyrocketing of the maternal urges in their uteri):



have a great long weekend everyone!

fin.

the big snow of 2008

this winter has been mental! i love it! i really really love shoveling snow. it's like a tame version of survival camp or something (VERY tame, i do admit). but i like that it's something where the fruits of your labour are immediately apparent. you really feel like you've ACCOMPLISHED something, or you do when it's not storming like it has been lately around here. last night i came home from school and engaged in an epic sisyphysian battle against the snow. i shoveled and re-shoveled and re-shoveled until finally the dotytron opened a window and was like, "dude. COME INSIDE THE HOUSE" that's a pic of our backyard this morning. crazy!

i forgot to mention what monday night's dinner was. you got the picture, but no ingredient run-down. basically, i took a pound of italian sausages out of the casing and browned the meat, breaking it up with a wooden spoon, then threw in a thinly sliced white onion and some garlic, and sauteed that. added some chili flakes and smoked paprika, and some chickpeas. i thinly sliced a bunch of kale, and tossed that in the boiling water i had going for pasta. when it was bright green, i scooped it out with a chinese strainer and threw that in with the sausage and seasoned the mix with salt and pepper. while the pasta was cooking, i took a few ladle-fuls of the pasta cooking water and deglazed the sausage pan with it. when the pasta was al dente, i tossed it with the sausage mixture and a big handful of grated parmesan. served with a caesar salad. delicious. it's what i ate for lunch today.

i finished reading chuck klosterman's sex, drugs, and cocoa puffstoday. it's aight. i don't hate him as much as i thought i was going to. it's fluffy enough subway reading. he's not *quite* as smug as i thought he'd be, but he's still plenty smug sometimes, with his "i'm going to call myself out for my own dorkiness which makes me cool, but i also get to call out OTHER dorks for thinking their cool for being dorks" schtick. some of his stuff isn't as witty or prescient as he'd like to think it is. one essay on mtv's the real world in particular played out in a completely self-aggrandizing way, while advancing a thesis which is so obvious, it's painful. oh really, chuck klosterman? you don't say that the character tropes on reality television have supplanted real people? how creative and smart of you - EXCEPT THE FACT THAT BAUDRILLARD LAID THIS S**T DOWN 18 YEARS AGO. that being said, i did enjoy lines like this though (from an essay about how the dixie chicks are the new van halen):

"...you can't really learn much about a person based on what kind of music they happen to like. as a personality test, it doesn't work even half the time. however, there is at least one think you can learn: the most wretched people in the world are those who tell you they like every kind of music "except country". people who say that are boorish and pretentious at the same time. all it means is that they've managed to figure out the most rudimentary rule of pop sociology; they know that hipsters gauge the coolness of others by their espoused taste in sound, and they know that hipsters hate modern country music. they hate it because it speaks to normal people in a tangible, rational manner. hipsters hate it because they hate midwesterners, and they hate southerners, and they hate people with real jobs."

ahahahahaha! this is so true! then he goes into a bit about how lucinda williams doesn't matter. which is also hilarious for its truth. so for stuff like that, i have to give him some begrudging daps. mostly, the smoldering embers of my hatred for chuck klosterman draw breath from two things:


a) i HATE HIS F**KING FACE. like, seriously. i HATE his face. his face creates this visceral distaste in me that only happens with certain people. sometimes, you just hate someone's face, and that someone could be a totally decent, okay person (i have to put this in, but in reality, when i generally have this kind of reaction to someone's face, they're never all that okay...like, they're never someone i could be friends with. at best, they're the kind of person to whom i would wish no ill will).

b) i'm embittered by the fact that this fool gets paid insane amounts of money to write about stuff i've been talking about FOR YEARS (keep in mind that i'm also like, 7 years younger than him). stuff like: "you may find these people interesting and you may find them entertaining, but they offer nothing for anyone who doesn't already agree with their espoused stance [about michael moore and similar "egocentric iconoclasts"]" chuck's book was published in 2003. 2003!!! at that point, i had already been singing that gospel for TWO YEARS, this while michael moore was just starting to crest the wave of the zeitgeist. this WELL BEFORE the backlash against moore gained popular traction. not only that, but objectively, i don't think that as a writer he's much better than i. i mean, right now he is, but that's because he's had years of professional writing under his belt, AND he has a job that allows him to experience loads of stuff that provides great fodder. i'm harvesting from MY LIFE here, people, and that's a damn sight harder than finding stuff to say about dave pirner from soul asylum. anyway, i think that if you were to take chuckie "hatehisface" klosterman and put us at the same starting point, with the same starting material, we'd be neck-in-neck [i'm saying that out of false modesty - in all honesty, i think i'm better than him, mostly because i don't (or at least, try to consciously stop myself) from saying OBVS stuff that people smarter and better than me have already said (like baudrillard) about cultural phenomena and try to pass it off as new and insightful].

okay. now i have to write a paper tearing quantitative, positivist methodology a new a**hole. wish me luck!

fin.

apparently i suck at advocacy

who knew? this class makes me not want to try and i don't even speak the same language as the prof. i'm so not about business acronyms and buzz-words (S.M.A.R.T. objectives! [specific, measurable, action-oriented, responsibilities stated, timed] keep your presentations B.A.S.I.C.!!! [brief, appreciative, specific, informative, courteous]) so sue me that i think the acrostic is the lowest form of poetry. so sue me that i don't think ANYONE IN THE FREE WORLD ACTUALLY uses those terms. those words are like the "dirty sanchez" or "hot carl" of the business world (to the uninitiated, urban dictionary that shiz, but DO NOT - I REPEAT, DO NOT - google it). everyone knows what they're SUPPOSED to mean, but no one actually DOES it in the reality that you and i occupy. anyway, i got a B+ on my S.M.A.R.T. objectives assignment. i take it as a compliment. because in the REAL hierarchy, a B+ means that i know enough to punch myself out if i ever actually became proficient with S.M.A.R.T. and trust me, mom, i do! you gone done good, ma!

i'm so busy right now that i want to cry hot, salty tears of productivity. unfortunately, all i can squeeze out is a trickle of wasted potential. to that end, today's post will be brief. suffice it to say that the thought of traipsing around rome and florence with my two bffffffs is helping me along considerably. that, and the knowledge that - as next week is reading week - i'm at the halfway point! only around 6 more weeks and i'm DONE! my work is clearly suffering, but at this point, i care not!

we've ironed out our plans for the trip, and we're booking flights, hostels, and trains in the next week. we're spending 2 and a half days in rome, and 8 and a half days in florence, with a day trip to siena or pisa in the works. !!!!!!!!!!!!!! i'm going to try to basically bring an empty suitcase so i can smuggle back lardo and proscuitto and balsamic and truffles and tripe sandwiches. unf unf unf!

tomorrow is a long day...i'm packing the last of the grain soup and an egg salad sandwich in a pita with fruit.

fin.

reason #26848181 why my neighbourhood effin' rocks

- aside -

pps. that jesus jones song below is ALSO about playing witness to the fall of communism and how awesome that is. aka, it's the best song of life.

ppps. the dotytron just read what i wrote about his life and its relationship to gleaming the cube and agrees wholeheartedly. not only that, but he reminded me that gleaming the cube features ASIAN people! here's the plot synopsis courtesy of imdb: "Brian's adopted brother is killed when he discovers that the shop he works in sends weapons to Vietnam instead of medications. To the police it looks like suicide, but Brian knows better so he skates off to investigate the murder himself." wow. this movie is clearly me and the dotytron's story in cinematic form. not only that, but christian slater's skate double is none other than tony hawk. tony hawk is awesome. and by awesome, i mean i saw an episode of mtv cribs featuring his pad and he seems like a good dad and a decent, hard-working, honest individual, whereas when i saw an mtv cribs with omarion (aka the dotytron's nemesis) i wanted to cut his heart out with a spoon.

- resume part of post related to the heading -

i love my part of the danforth. it's right smack dab in the middle where riverdale's upwardly mobile greektown-ness starts to fade into muslim-ville, which in turn fades into scuzzy bars frequented by grizzled, gnarled men and women ravaged by time and cheap, low-grade newfoundland screech and king cans of lakeport.

as i mentioned, we need an outfit for the dotytron that will look good for his teacher's college interview (and that he can use to supplement his paltry "nice restaurant" repertoire). we also have limited time to find this outfit. so on friday after work, i walked along the danforth and popped into this store "five o seven" (all rock and republic jeans - too casual and mad overpriced) and this menswear store, kory's, where everything 50% off was STILL $200 and the staff were snotty, mean, shrunken men of middle age with mass amounts of hair sprouting from their ears. they were also profoundly unhelpful. things were not looking good.

yesterday, i went to a store that's literally around the corner from our house that we call "pants only" (because that's what their awning proclaims) but in reality is called lb uomo. i walk in and talk to a nice, friendly, stylish man named ashraf who's beyond helpful. the only day the dotytron has off is today (sunday) and even though the store isn't open on sundays, ashraf is nice enough to tell me to call him this morning and he'll open up for us (he lives above the store, but still). so i took the dotytron there and wow. the dotytron HATES shopping. this store is possibly the BEST possible place for him. he hates places with fawning, tit-faced 16 year old girls, snapping gum, vapidly nodding their heads at everything he tries on, and relying on a vocabulary of superlatives that consist of "hot" or "awesome". ashraf was SO NICE and so on his game, and so chill. he was completely sympathetic, very professional and straightforward and polite and warm. he didn't try to up-sell us at all. when i mentioned that at some point the dotytron will probably need a new suit, ashraf just said, "sure, when you're ready, come in and we'll find something for you" when you know that if you were at moore's or someplace, those guys would have seized on that statement like sharks on chum. we brought with us some sweaters and a sport coat that the dotytron already owned, and ashraf recommended a plain white shirt, saying that it goes with everything (again, not trying to up-sell us on a different shirt for everything) and suggested various outfit and style suggestions. it was such a pleasant experience. the store has nice stuff, reasonably priced and the dotytron bought a nice sweater, a shirt, a tie, and two pairs of pants which were EXACTLY what we were looking for (cut like jeans, jean material, but NOT denim). perfect! i LOVE my neighbourhood and i love supporting businesses on the danforth run by good people like that. yay!

last night was the bomb. not only did me, the dotytron and dr. rei sort out our italy trip (three little bears, say what!), we had the most hi-larious conversation which again, i don't remember any of. there were some choice lines about how the dotytron turned out so awesome mostly because of the movie ghostbusters, "the movie pi has done more to mess up the concept of math for stupid people than anything else ever" (me), and dr. rei's repeated (tautological) defense of the western canon: "i don't care about art i don't know about in africa" the dotytron: "the problem with you two [dr. rei and myself], is that you don't like things where you have to give yourself over to them" me: "i give myself over to foucault"; we also spent time bashing the social sciences; quantitative, positivist methodologies, and marshall mcluhan (of course) - "the medium is THE MESSAGE? seriously?!?" we also talked about stockhausen, automatic painting and guerrilla poetry (which we all agree is self-indulgent crap), and how the breakfast club sucks (me and dr. rei) and how lloyd dobbler is a colossal loser with no prospects (me and dr. rei).

i honestly think the three of us (and bwong) should teach a grad school course. or at least that we should be recording these convos for posterity...we can never remember the choice lines that make us laugh for ten billion years after.

breakfast this morning was babka french toast with bob evans sausage. i used really bittersweet chocolate in the babka, so the french toast was surprisingly unsweet. syrup doesn't really go with it...i think next time i'd top it with toffee sauce or sweetened whipped cream.

finally, heart is the best female band ever. joan jett? please. chrissie hynde? please. heart has a serious legacy of ace tunes. from the galloping chug of "barracuda" to the soaring snarl of "crazy on you" to the 80s fantastic mysticism that is "these dreams". so, so wicked.



fin.

p.s.

as i re-watch that jesus jones video, i'm struck by how i'm oddly attracted to the lead singer, as he seems to possess those slightly skid-ish, seedy, suburban-white boy qualities that i tend to be a sucker for. i'm also having vague recollections of having a crush on him when i was 11, watching this video. so maybe from the start i was doomed to be with a guitar-playing, rangy, string-bean physiqued, vaguely ridiculous, so-cal laid back homie?!?!?

fin.

peep this

now, this video is striking for a few different reasons. 1) the song ain't half bad. 2) the lead singer bears a striking resemblance to the form and figure of the dotytron 3) the lead singer is also rockin' the style that i wish for the dotytron above all else. basically, the dude is wearing head-to-toe vision streetwear, a state of being that the dotytron covets like no other. i would probably pay $1000 for that hat alone. can you imagine how slick the dotytron would look? and it's so fitting! he's such a so-cal skater at heart. his life is like one long extended version of that scene in gleaming the cube where that pizza hut truck crests the hill and is shown in stark silhouette against the setting sun with a bunch of rag-tag skaters attached to it.

in other news, i managed to stick my foot in my mouth BIGTIME last night in the ride over to the restaurant. the dotytron got an interview at york for teacher's college (yay! i'm so proud of him! - this has earned him one week's respite from my incessant carping -) and we're trying to figure out what he should wear. a full suit seems a bit much, so i'm advocating for a sweater/slacks combo. the problem is, he doesn't have any pants that aren't jeans. so, i went around yesterday looking for men's pants that aren't jeans that are casual, and there's NOTHING. i commented on this fact in the car, and the dotytron's sister said, "sure there are. cords!" at which point i said, "umm...i can't respect a man in cords" at which point, the dotytron pater pipes up, "hey! i'm wearing cords!!!" this pretty much happens EVERY time i'm hanging with the dotytrons. i obviously didn't mean DADS. i meant any dude who i have biblical knowledge of. i can't deal with cords. they just seem teh lamez0rz to me.

today is a day of homework. ugh. but tonight i'm making a special valentine's meal for my boyfriend, dr. rei. and my other boyfriend, the dotytron. and the roomie. my favorite people! we're having pan-seared rib eye steaks with hollandaise (!!!!!!), frites, creamed spinach, and chocolate souffle with whiskey toffee sauce. it's the classic steak-house meal. i can't wait!

roomie-lagerfeld relations have improved substantially and have returned to normal love-in stasis. she's stopped messing around with this douche, which has eased me considerably. i'm not the kind of person who deals well with other people's poor relationship choices. it festers. and i'm ALSO not the kind of person who can deal with festering in silence...i'm kind of too honest for that so it comes out. it would be one thing if she would just acknowledge the a**holey nature and be done with it - that i can accept. i couldn't accept defending the person in question. and it was exacerbated by the fact that the person in question needed to be taken down a peg or two. but now everything is fine. i just needed to get it off my chest and we had an honest talk about things and the air was cleared. i'm a big fan of air-clearing. problems tend to arise for me when i feel like i can't be who i am and i have to suffocate myself under a veil of propriety and politeness.

fin.

sweater stories

so i'm knitting this sweater for myself. it's two things: my first BIG project, as well as my first project in a while that's for ME. i didn't get as far as i wanted to last night on it, because i ended up having to work backwards and undo a small hole that i had made by accidentally doing a yarn-over.

all this technical jargon basically means that i had to rip the project back a few rows and so i ended up working backwards instead of forwards. i'm about halfway done the back, and it only took me a week of VERY intermittent knitting, so i figure i have like 4 more weeks of the project to go? the yarn is lovely though...i'm obsessed with it.

today i'm working, then coming home, and at some point finishing my lecture stuff for my advocacy class this week (which i HATE). yesterday was the dotytron's sister's birthday, so we're going to some italian restaurant in yorkville, called spuntini. they seem to have one of those pan-italian, overly verbose menus with words like "splashed" liberally sprinkled throughout the descriptions. i generally dislike that kind of breathiness in my menu writing. i prefer a more terse, laundry-list of the main ingredients with simple connectors, ie. "served WITH mixed greens" versus "served on A BED of mixed greens". they also serve a caprese salad in the winter, and there's a vodka sauce on there somewhere, both of which tend to make me highly suspect. i'll post a review tomorrow...possibly with pictures!

fin.

gung hay fat choy!

happy year of the rat, F**KERS! i celebrated by waking up, working a long day, going to the government documents library for three hours after work, and sitting down to a very un-chinese dinner of beef and mushroom pie (although the sublime flakiness of my crust this time bespeaks of much auspiciousness in the year to come) at 9pm. what i SHOULD have been doing is eating the delicious chinese meal that my grandma rustles together every chinese new year's eve, involving all kinds of metaphor-laden, phonetically-prominent foods that herald wealth and happiness and health for the year to come. usually, we also troop down to my grandparents living room, where they have pictures of my grandpa's mater and pater displayed, and we offer them food and then bow three times to show respect for our mighty ancestors, without whom we wouldn't be rejoicing in a life of western idyll. i would also be collecting mad coin, as my continued spinster state (co-habitation does not a legally binding marriage contract make!) means that i can still be the recipient of lucky money from married people. this didn't stop my grandma from asking me pointedly if this year (the year of the rat) was going to be the year that i get married. i think once i graduate, i can start thinking about it. i'm sure i can throw SOMETHING together, if only to make grandmere happy. little does she know the spectacle that awaits!!!

part of my life's work involves driving the dotytron crazy. it's a slow, arduous process of constant adjustment and refinement. one thing that drives him crazy is the fact that the ACTUAL lyric to the theme from frasier is "TOSSED salad and scrambled eggs". the other thing that drives him crazy is that he knows full well that when i hear vocal jazz, what i supplant it with in my head is the theme from frasier. it drives him NUTS. he thinks i'm besmirching the whole genre. i probably am, but is it MY fault that the genre of vocal jazz lends itself to my muddled and muddied pop cultural associations? no.

shouts out to ms. s. green who saved me an additional 10 hours of work today. that's all that needs to be said, but know that i appreciate it. to the spirit of collaboration!

i think i'm going to take the night off tonight and watch my taped episode of project runway and knit.

fin.

oh baby i hear the blues are calling, hot salad and scrambled eggs...

the number of things that are capable of breaking my heart on a daily basis are almost too numerous to mention. some of them are no-brainers. like old people, and especially old chinese people. if you were to plot my output of pathos against the age and chinese-ness of a person, you'd see the line shooting out from the origin point (0) at a steady and true 45 degree angle. i have bottomless amounts of love and sympathy for (most) old people. i want to scoop them all up in my arms and take them home and give them makeovers and play old time-y music so they can slow dance with each other amid a pile of puppies and kittens and babies gamboling at their feet.

today this guy eating a sandwich on the subway almost made me cry. there's something so tragic about eating something you made at home on the subway. it's the way i used to feel whenever i went out to a restaurant and saw people eating alone. but i've chilled out on that some, because i'm the person eating alone sometimes...and i realize that it's just a fact of life. just like i'm sure someday i'll reconcile myself to the fact that eating a made-at-home sandwich on the subway is just another fact of life. but i'm not there yet. the tragedy was compounded by the fact that his pants were too short and exposed almost half a foot of calf above his ankle socks, which in turn were wedged into no-name slip-ons of the vans variety. he didn't have the face of someone you'd peg as a subway-sandwich-eater. he was actually quite good looking. but when he took out his blue-lidded no-name tupperware (!!!!!) and started eating the sandwich he had clearly packed, on a subway late in the evening, it struck something deep inside me. the sandwich didn't even look half bad. texas toast sized white bread, a slice of lettuce (romaine), a slice of cheese (white), some kind of thick-sliced beef, three halves, wedged together in that blue, no-name food storage container. in some ways, the fact that the sandwich looked semi-decent made it even worse. it's the semi in the semi-decent that is another compounding factor. if the sandwich was AMAZING, then i'd probably be all like, "right on, buddy. you eat that ace sandwich". or if the sandwich was a mayonnaise on white bread deal, then it would be kind of expected. but the semi-decent sandwich and the too-short pants conspired to make me unleash a tsunami of (quiet, internalized) empathy. i couldn't stop staring. the crunch the lettuce made with his first bite, how he hit a patch of tough roast beef and had to worry at the sandwich with his teeth to get a decent-sized bite...all the while packed in there between two other nondescript subway-travelers who were too typical to rouse my sentimentality. is it weird that i obsess over minutia like this? is it weird that i think i've deconstructed the semiotics of subway sandwich eating? does it make it even weirder that the only thing that enabled me to stop staring was the fact that i noticed he had a nice, new pair of name-brand running shoes on top of a gym bag, and somehow, the fact that this guy engaged in some kind of sporting activity necessitating both a gym bag and nice new name-brand runners assuaged the torrent of pained, shared humanistic connectivity that i was silently directing at him?

i'm a giant ball of stress right now...i can feel it sitting in the middle of my chest. i'm not really sure how to move through it, other than to just keep my head down, plugging away. i have three assignments and a presentation due next week and one of them is group work and another one is about government documents and i hate that prof (same roadie, "beers after work" prof that i hated last semester) for being such a little pissant and giving us stupid assignments that involve blindly wrestling with the united nations documentation system. EFF YOU, BUDDY. am i wrong in thinking that ONE assignment shouldn't take me TWELVE hours to complete?

in other news, i've somehow managed to carve out a niche for myself as the resident "class clown" in my sociology class. i don't know how it happened. today we were having a discussion about how meaning is constructed. the author of the article that we were reading, wendy griswold, suggested in her piece that the way meaning is constructed is through this dialogic negotiation between the cultural product and the receivers. my question was: how do the receivers know HOW to read the cultural product? and the answer was that there are certain presuppositions that we draw from (which i kind of buy, but kind of don't). which then led me to question, how, if the available meanings arise from our base presuppositions, over time, (and this argument is influenced by my readings of kuhn) there'd be a narrowing of the available field of meanings. like, i understand fight club (a movie i intensely dislike) to be about x and y, and there's a generation of people who more or less agree that fight club is about x and y, and they perpetuate it, and then gradually, you create a canonical understanding of what fight club could be about, which allows for small differences of opinion, but overall, people agree on the general thrust, and this continues to reify itself over time. some of the people in my class didn't get what i was talking about, so this is when i got to say the following: "so, for example, nowadays, there's a general agreement about what hamlet is about. i mean, it's not like you can say with any traction that hamlet is about...ummmm...i don't know...CONSUMERISM" hahahahaha!!! this could be me being a colossal loser laughing at an esoteric, academic-style joke (and if this is true, punch me in the junk, because academic, discipline-specific jokes are THE WORST [even at the same time that they are THE BEST]), but the idea that hamlet could possibly be about consumerism is hi-larious.

here is the kind of academic, discipline-specific joke where, if i wasn't the one making it, i would have TOTALLY rollseyesdotbarfdotgif'd over (and hated me for): i was talking to my friend matthew in the class, and he was asking me how i was handling the full-time work and school combo. so i said something along the lines of, "oh, it's okay...it comes in waves where i get really stressed out and don't think i can handle it, and then other times where i think i'm okay. i basically move between repudiation and deferral" *insert collegial chuckling between us* it's basically a stupid, poncey reference to derridean philosophy...but at the same time as i hate myself for saying it...it's just so rare that you get to make jokes that play on derrida. so i'm basically turning into everything i hated about frasier. great.

fin.

life chez lagerfeld

is currently being lived in small, incremental pleasures. to wit: when one is stressed out and falling behind in both readings and assignments, the natural thing to do after 12 hours away from home is to take solace in the joys of hair-removal - courtesy of a home-waxing kit. you also find immeasurable happiness in wolfing down a big mac combo with a filet-o-fish chaser and sweet-and-sour dipping sauce for fries that a co-worker ever-so-obligingly procures for dinner to the shock and awe (and dare i say begrudging admiration???) of said coworkers as they witness the magic of iron stomach lee in action. you also multi-task by showing up for a lecture for one class, not listening, and take advantage of your boredom and lack of interest by finishing the readings for another class at the same time. the state of your bangs today is beyond satisfactory and you obsess over the potential of recreating the minute choices and multiple "butterfly effects" that lead to the hair gracing your brow to slant ever-so-rakishly and fetchingly. you rejoice in winning a 20 dollar gift card from rogers today during your all-day orientation session. 

the scenarios off-setting all these minor triumphs (the fact that you feel like a bloated pigz0rz, the fact that you're well behind on the three assignments you have due next week, the fact that you're labouring under the suspicion that your supervisors aren't all that impressed with your performance at the new job and it's making you mad paro) are conveniently pushed to the back of your mind for the time being.

instead, you eat two cheesecake brownies and call it a night.

tomorrow is another long day...i packed leftover pasta and seafood chowder and fruit for dinner.

fin.

stop jockin' me, girl

so i went to the law library at u of t today because i realized when i was typing up my assignment yesterday, that i forgot to get the citation information for a resource the prof wanted us to use. basically, the assignment involves using secondary legal resources to find materials for clients based on our selection of one of five different scenarios. now, i had already finished my research, and all i needed was the citation. i show up there, and i see some broad from my class standing by the section where this one particular legal encyclopedia that the prof wanted us to use is situated. so i go and grab the volume that i want off the shelf, and then ask her how her assignment is going. she's all pale and shiz, and is all like, "fine, i've just been in here all day." then i ask her which scenario she chose, and she says "employee drug testing" which is the one that i did too, and i tell her so. then i ask her, "which volume of the encyclopedia did you end up using?" and she gets all SHIFTY EYED and says, "ummm...well....to be honest....I DON'T REMEMBER." i think my mouth fell open a bit because i was all like, b***h, PLEASE. as IF i'm copying off of your sorry ass. that's how you want to play the game? i'm going to f**k you UP (savvy readers will notice that watching the wire is having a deleterious effect on my admittedly shaky self-control over inappropriate language - the amount of swears i drop at home has risen exponentially). i just f**king hate that s**t. it's so lame. why wouldn't you share? as soon as she "faked" not remembering i just said, "oh, well i used human rights because most of the articles i found kept referencing that" and THEN she's like, "oh, i think i might have found something under employment". pffft. what a slaggy ho-bag.

i'm feeling mildly stressed about school right now, or i WAS feeling mildly stressed, up until half an hour ago when i availed myself of a boiling hot epsom salt bath. now i feel puffy and wrinkly and sodden with a hazy, diffuse, foggy-headed good will. this is a pretty solid state to be in. i was going to do my sociology reading, but i'm seriously too light headed for that right now, so i think i might curl up with some knitting and watch firefly.

the first pic is a shot of our spread on saturday night. a & c brought some delicious cheeses, and i copied my bff chris' gf's stylee and put out olives and sliced cured meat and we had the seafood chowder with the salad and sliced toasted bread. the whoopie pies went over really well too. i'd forgotten how good they were...i don't think i've made them in a year and a half...actually, probably since before the roomie moved in. superbowl food went off really well yesterday. the wings were teeny tiny, but drenched in my buffalo sauce (and it's amazing how well equal parts frank's red hot and butter combine to become buffalo wing sauce), they were lip-smackingly good.

tonight for dinnie the dotytron (under my careful tutelage) made that grain (bulgur, barley) and bean (black) soup with dried ancho chiles and sliced shitake mushrooms. we had this with roasted pepper and cheddar quesadillas topped with mashed up avocado and sour cream. full fat sour cream is the best. i used to buy light sour cream, but really, for the amount of sour cream that i eat, it's just dumb.

in other news, one of the dotytron's students' little brother made him a HILARIOUS card. the kid (who is 6) drew this self portrait on one side and a mysterious, amorphous dartboard/character on the other side. the kid's sister, aliza, who is actually one of the dotytron's students, gave the dotytron the head's up: "cory is making you a card but he might make it out to steve because he thinks that's your name" (cory didn't end up doing that). what cory DID do however was make a little homemade envelope for the card (the construction of which is pretty top-notch for a 6 year old) and gave the card, in the envelope to the dotytron. when the dotytron asked if cory wanted him to open it now or later, cory said: "i don't care" and wandered out of the room (presumably to attend whatever after school program he is enrolled in). !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fin.

super bowl sunday!

not that i care (aren't the patriots going to win anyway?) no, the REAL reason i care about the superbowl is that we get to make football food round these parts, after playing my brother's team this afternoon in dodgeball. hype!

okay, no word of a lie, last night was the latest i've been out in about months and months. we got to waterloo at 9:30pm and left at 1:30 (incidentally, time FLEW), and got home at like 3:00am!!! that's buckshot! and, this is a foregone conclusion but rockband is the BEST GAME EVER!!! i can't drum to save my life, but i'm aight on guitar (the less you think, the better) and i was on mic duty (and by "mic duty" i mean i hogged it) most of the evening. i think my strongest performance might have been stone temple pilot's "vaseline". i wish there were more songs i knew on there, or more classic rock, or power ballads. there's a lot of the kinks and the pogues and it's just not my scene...that stuff isn't as fun to sing! they should make a girl version with 80s pop hits...because if like, "total eclipse of the heart" was on there, or "eternal flame" by the bangles, it would be OVER. and don't the makers of rock band want to conquer the elusive girl gaming market? that's the ticket. POWER BALLADS. if there had been "carry on my wayward son" like there was for guitar hero, or "hotel california" you'd have to pry the mic from my cold, dead hands.

tonight for dinnie we're having chicken wings, deep fried and sauced in a mixture of frank's red hot and butter (aka, buffalo style), with baked potato skins topped with cheddar, bacon and chives, and a cold, crispy green bean salad with a red wine vinaigrette. cheesecake brownies for dessert. i've got to write up an assignment all day, which blows, but whatever. as long as i can spend a good chunk of the evening re-upping on the wire then i'm a happy industrious pig. i just heard the expression "re-up" fairly recently (like this week). i likes it.

this is one of the best pop songs ever made:



it's siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick. this is so getting played at my wedding reception. and you know who i can guess is going to be dancing front and centre?

me and my sister.

this is another one that's making the cut. this song KILLS.



fin.

there's a trouble a brewin'

last night was everything that a snow day evening SHOULD be. we ate a delicious dinner (pictured), feasted on whoopie pies (aka homemade joe louis to you and i) and watched the rest of season 1 of the wire, which managed to break my heart and mend it over and over again with its stellar writing, top notch performances, and amazing characterization. i couldn't recommend this show enough. omar! mcnulty! lester! daniels! wallace! stringer bell! d'angelo! buck moreland! kima gregs! bubbles! it's rare that a show has such a large, but evenly compelling cast. there isn't a dud in there to be found.

i also had time to go to lettuce knit to stock up on yarn for a project for ME. that's right. ME! i got this lovely jade-green (slightly mottled with wisps of purple and brown) that's 100% superfine merino. i'm obsessed with it. i can't wait! hopefully i'll finish this jacket in time to actually wear it while it's cold out.

we made our way to bed at around 1am last night (this morning). and i was awoken at 4AM by the sound of a DRUM KIT and a BASS coming from next door. now, we live in a semi-detached with a solid brick wall separating us from our neighbours. we've lived here for THREE YEARS and have seen multiple tenants come and go, with nary a peep to be heard. but last night (this morning) these new f**ks who just moved in A MONTH ago, decided to have a FREAKIN' DRUM KIT s**tty-ass band playing ALL NIGHT. i think it's the main floor tenants, because the roomie had the worst of it. she says they started playing shortly after we went to bed. WHO DOES THAT S**T? and more importantly, DO THEY KNOW WHO THEY'RE F**KING WITH?!? my revenge fantasies are as inventive as they are malicious and i'm just the kind of crazy mother to do it. they played from 1am to about 7am. and they were CRAP. the dotytron was offended mainly on the basis of lack of talent (which won out over the noise). next time, i'm calling the cops. and smearing dog s**t all over their door, AND hiding rotten eggs and oysters in their mail box, AND any number of other things tba.

i want to go over and preemptively talk to them, and let them know that there's someone living here who has to be ON CALL and therefore, sleep is kind of important, and be all nice but warn-y about it. the dotytron and the roomie advocate waiting to the NEXT time it happens. i disagree, because i think if you're the kind of person to set up a drum set and bass at 1am in the morning and play through the night, after you've been living in a place for a month, you're going to do it again and WORSE if it doesn't get nipped in the bud.

we'll see. nothing gets me all fired up than a grudge with the neighbours. i'll make them sorry they ever signed their names on that lease.

in happier news (kinda) i'm off to the government documents library to work on an assignment i have due in two weeks all day, then home. we're having our friends a & c over for dinner, and then they're driving us to waterloo to hang with my male doppelganger and his ladybird, where we're going to play rockband. the dotytron went and did yoga yesterday and is all sore, so he preemptively took some ibuprofen so he'll be in top shredding form tonight. i'm working on my vocal exercises. we're having seafood chowder, with that spinach bacon salad thingy, some olives and cured meat for snacking, and i'm bringing whoopie pies to waterloo.

fin.

winter storm watch!

is there anything more intoxicating to the hopes and dreams of young and old than the promise of a snow day? u of t closed at 11am today! and the rumours are running rampant around these parts that we might be allowed to leave early. i love love love snow days! nothing makes you feel giddy, spontaneous, and carefree more than state-sanctioned truancy. snow days around casa karl and the dotytron invariably mean the following: stocking up on videos (do you think that generations younger than i, weaned on blue ray and high def still call them videos? like, do they say "the video store?" or will that go the way of "mixtapes"? <-- this conversation came up during work the other day); filling our bellies with rich, wintry foods; enrobing ourselves in flannel and sheepskin slippers; ensconcing ourselves on the sofa bundled beneath blankets; eating warm cookies with cold milk or hot chocolate topped with a pile of fluffy whipped cream; knitting and watching and whiling the night away in the warm haven of our living room. bliss!!! why can't every winter night be like that?

nothing makes you love winter more than the promise of a night in your cozy home, surrounded by genial, quiet good company, lulled by delicious victuals and mulled by the warm glow of hot toddies, cold beers and such.

there was talk of going dancing to old skool hip hop tonight, but i was reluctant at best, and the snow gives me all the more reason to say boo to that s**t. i will however trudge down to the yarn store to get munitions. i've become addicted to knitting blogs and am racking up new projects exponentially faster than i can produce anything. i've stalled out on this lacy scarf that i was making because i widened it considerably from the original pattern (amy singer's montego bay - the one i made for the dotytron's sister) and i've run out of yarn and have to order more in the colour that i'm using. i LOVE KNITTING!!! i also especially LOVE KNITTING WHILE WATCHING THE WIRE!!!

anticipation of tonight is making the the day fly by (well, that and the piles of work i have to do).

for dinnie i'm making that chicken liver pasta, which i've tweaked in my head to now include: chicken livers, onions, garlic, crispy pancetta, a whole heap of mushrooms, parsley and marsala wine...and maybe a touch of cream, all slicked around spaghetti. how wintery is THAT?!? (f**kers). for dessert i'm either going to make some kind of warm, spicy molasses cookie, or maybe chocolate chip cookies, or cheesecake brownies. !!!!!!!!!!!!!

fin.

everything's coming up millhouse

i hate to tempt the fates, especially so close to the lunar new year of my people, when i'm sure the fates are just WAITING for you to slip up, get comfortable with your situation, actually allow yourself to be taken in, just a little, by the glimmer of hope that is the refuge of the incredibly naive or insane - before BLAM-O! out goes the rug from under your feet and your chin is striking the unforgiving surface of life's parquet flooring.

anyway, in spite of all this, this is what's going well for karl lagerfeld, esquire at the moment:

- i found out today that i'm the recipient of the mr. paul chan po sum & mrs. rose chan memorial scholarship. i think it has something to do with being chinese, getting good grades, and going to library school. i contacted the registrar for information on the family of mr. and mrs. chan so that i might send them a small token of my gratitude, but unfortunately, the registrar doesn't have this information available. thank you very much, mr. and mrs. chan, i appreciate your generosity and wish you and all your family all the best.

- the remainder of my UTAPs money will be arriving in my hot little hands shortly

- i got my grades for last semester: A, A, A+, A+, which is my best showing in library school yet! nary a nasty minus sign marring my lovely alphabet starters to be seen. i probably attended the least amount of class yet last semester, so it must be a winning formula.

- i really really really love my job. i had one of those "gee, i really love doing this" in-the-moment moments today, and i got a little hype, i must say. i love how my job is meaningful, and i love how it's restoring my faith in democracy. you'd be surprised just HOW many people go to their local government representative with their personal concerns. it's pretty effin' awesome. that's what they (the govs) are there for, and i'm here to help them. i feel so useful! and it's so INTERESTING answering the questions. 

-----------

the next morning, young lagerfeld awoke to face the outcome of her peacock preening in blog drafting the night before

well, the fates got me last night. i have to admit, i gave them just cause...i was feeling rather invincible. so invincible that i convinced myself that ordering a medium tuscan sausage (hold the green peppers) stuffed crust pizza was a good idea last night at 10:30pm. that's right. 10:30 PM. eating three slices and going to sleep shortly thereafter plus my happiness at my life was a sure-fire recipe for the fates to gift me with a heart-pounding, fitful-sleep-inducing, nightmare-ridden night, and moreover, to wake up feeling like the proverbial business end of something with a disproportionately large a**. ugh. why does stuffed crust taste so good going down, but makes you feel like death warmed over the next day? ah well, life is too short for regrets. i'll probably make the same mistake in five years (the absolute minimum before i order stuffed crust again).

my nightmare was crazy. my family was being pursued by some deranged serial killer, and we were holed up at my parent's house up in markham, while the serial killer roamed around outside, putting christmas lights up in the evergreen trees that border our backyard (!!!!). he was kind of fat, with lank, chin-length dark hair, and very, very pale...basically like your standard-issue late-high school goth. anyway, we were all freaking out because the christmas tree light-establishment was taken as this horrific portent of impending doom and our grisly demise. we called 911, who informed us that they would be there shortly. while we anxiously waited, i made molotov cocktails (to lob at our attacker, presumably) and attempted to cajole my outlaw bro to come into my mom's room so that we could barricade the door. however, he was being all rambo about stuff, and was sitting in the room he and my sister usually occupy on their visits here, polishing a baseball bat, thinking that he was going to take down the fat goth and be a hero about it. when the police refused to show, i called 911 again, only to find that the line had been TAPPED by fat goth! i looked down on him talking to me in the backyard as the horror at our increasinly desperate situation sank in. then the scene switched to me sitting at a table in the backyard with fat goth and some other dude, and fat goth was basically humouring us and toying with us by making idle chit-chat, knowing full well that soon he would do what fat goth serial killers do - dispatch their victims. somehow the idle chit chat turned to talk of the tv show lost, which gave me an avenue to profess how i gave up after a few episodes of season 1 because i didn't buy the whole polar bear thing and that it was bunk.

then i was awoken with my heart pounding by the insistent pressure of my bladder, full from washing down said stuffed crust pizza with two giant glasses of water in a bid to circumvent the effects of heart burn. i think the dream represents a few things: a) that stuffed crust right before bed isn't a good idea and b) that i really dislike the show lost and fail to understand its' appeal and c) that i associate fat goths with those things i dislike (in this case, the show lost).

tonight for dinner i'm making a mushroom, port and chicken liver spaghetti with a caesar salad. that's provided that my high work load and pms don't conspire to convince me that the better option is really delivery or fast food something or other.

fin.

skunky la rue

another short post as i've got another mother of a day today. and i was informed yesterday that i'm basically not going to be getting any more formal training sessions as we're so insanely busy, and that i'll effectively be "trained on the job". this has pros and cons. pros: no more falling asleep! cons: working on live questions! but i'm not going to bore you with tales of my workplace and how i spent half an hour last night (sneakily waiting until everyone else had left the office, of course) to practice and re-record my voice mail message about 10 dozen times.

in other news: there's a skunk that's taken up residence underneath our back porch. we knew he was there, we tolerated his presence, we had established a mutual policy of ignoring each other, and it was working out rather well (it's analagous to my relationship with geddy lee from rush - we just go our separate ways). then two nights ago, he had to go and drop some stinkbutt on us. and while i don't necessarily find skunk spray overwhelmingly repugnant (less offensive than say, rotten eggs or oysters or too-strong perfume, or b.o), the sheer stink-to-air saturation point and the speed with which this air-colonization occurs is a little off-putting. so i've put in a call to the landlord who will commence eviction proceedings sometime this weekend. serves you right, geddy lee! i mean, skunky la rue.

dinner tonight is more lasagne. i'm quite taken with it. my usual begrudging resentment at eating leftovers isn't coming to the fore as much. but i'm also waging war against captain pms - which means i REALLY want to be eating a wendy's baconator stuffed inside of a burrito made out of popeye's fried chicken skin sauced in packaged gravy.

fin.

ummm...wow

okay, so i didn't actually listen to the aforementioned clip before posting it...i figured a live version of "big empty" would be hot, right? considering that all the other offerings on youtube are either spliced together homages to brandon lee in the crow, or like, someone doing a poorly-edited video mashing up scenes from sin city and the song and posted by "grungelord74", i thought i'd play it safe with the live version.

but damn, son...he's mad pitchy, dog!

suffice it to say, the tune rocks. nuff said.

fin.

big empty

won't have time for a proper post today, but this is my new (again) favorite song.



fin.

this post is brought to you by the letter "p"

tonight i'm having a friend from high school over for dinner. we COMPLETELY lost touch when we both graduated (me a year early because i fast-tracked) and i've probably seen him a total of 2 times (enough for a "hi, how are you" and that's it) in the intervening 10 years. his name is paul, and through the magic of facebook and us having friends in common (there's considerable overlap with his crew and the dotytron's highschool crew), he suggested we get together while he's in town. you'd think that i would meet this prospect with considerable trepidation, but we met up with him when we went to see a movie (the other "p" in the post) on saturday with my friend deena, and i remembered how genial and personable he is. he's really easy to talk to, very engaged and engaging, and all in all, i'm glad that he's kind of come back into my life (although for a brief time, as he works in south america - for the last 3 years in guatamala, and in a few weeks, chile).

that's the big thing i like about my friend deena, too. both her and paul and 99% of the people that i'm drawn to and take onto my limited roster of "friends", all tend to be really confident, self-possessed people, who have a really good sense of "who" they are. i don't like it when people don't have a sense of who they are, because it tends to bleed into other aspects of their personality, and tends to be really palpable. anyway, the point is: i think the fact that paul is so cool and chill and easy-going and down with who he is, means that i can see him being a long-term friend and i'm glad he's back in my life.

we also watched the movie persepolis on saturday. it was fantastic! the drawing style was fluid, evocative, stark, and expressive and supported the narrative beautifully. some of my favorite parts were when marji was a young girl, as the character is spunky, rambunctious, and seems real in a way that dakota fanning only wishes she were. it's a really poignant coming of age tale, made all the more urgent by the historical elements woven throughout. we in the west are so inundated with one dimensional depictions of countries like iran and china that it's very difficult for even the most left-leaning liberal not to construct stereotypical straw men to bolster our political ideals. from our padded, cushion splendour in the decadent north, it's really easy to think that we would never do what others do, or allow to have happen, not understanding the massive upheaval that prolonged war can induce and the myriad factors that allow certain political forces to hold sway.

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dinner with paul was a success! everything i suspected about how the evening would unfold was true - that is, we spent 3 hours talking like we've been holding weekly salons for the past 10 years...and nothing escaped us...the nature of death, ourselves, politics, travel...it was stimulating, funny, and everything you want good conversation to be.

i made this little BATS salad (Bacon Avocado Tomato Spinach - just kidding...i think all these restaurant attempts to use acronyms to play on the BLT concept is ridculous "BALTA" "BETS" etc)...that consisted of baby spinach, crispy bacon pieces, red onion, chunks of plum tomato, and croutons, dressed with a light, lemon-mayo dressing. delicious. the veggie lasagne also turned out really well. it was made with "fresh" (prefab) pasta sheets layered with a butternut squash and mascarpone layer, then a spinach and gorgonzola layer, topped with a parmesan bechamel.

now i'm doing homework. i'm reading these fabulously catty articles for my sociology of culture. this woman, wendy griswold, used reflection methodology to talk about the differences in "national character" between England and America as reflected in late 19th century novels. then we read a letter to the journal that initially published the work savaging the piece...one of the critics said it [the methodology]: "consigns itself to vacuity and inconsequentiality if it accepts the project that reflection theory recommends. But this is the very theory and project that griswold would like to exhume, tart up, and put back on the streets" (!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ahahahahaahahaha). i LOVE the cattiness and snippiness of academics. "the tenuous of the argument is matched only by the hubristic self-reifying rhetoric that griswold employs in a painfully transparent attempt..." <-- i just made that up on the fly, but that's the general gist, and it also goes to show you that if you could make an academic career out of savaging others, i'd have it MADE.

tomorrow is a long day. i packed leftover lasagne and a crapload of fruit and i have some mixed nuts for dinner. i'm also going to venture into the law library to work on my first assignment. snooze.

fin.

disaster...averted!

but it was a close call. i defrosted the frozen roast overnight and into yesterday afternoon, hoping that that would be sufficient time to let it get to room temperature (i always try to roast from room temperature, or at least warmer than fridge temperature), in time for an expected 2 hour cook (8 lb roast @ 15min/lb for medium rare). at 4:30pm, as i finished rubbing the outside of the roast with salt and pepper (and my new innovation - rosemary that i blitzed in the coffee grinder to a fine dust), i slid in my digital thermometre and hit a chunk of resistance (read: icy centre) in the very middle of the roast. aiiiieeee.

as the read on the thermometre plummeted to -2 (with an expected final temperature of 120[medium rare]), i queasily threw the roast in the oven, hoping for the best. one hour later, and the temperature had climbed to +2. things were NOT looking good (considering that i usually throw a roast in with an internal temp of 20 degrees or so). bwong came over, and we both fretted over the temperature for a while, as i unburdened myself to him and stewed in my eternal shame. we both thought that the roast would start off slow, and then gain momentum - that it wasn't a steady incremental rise in relation to time (this is actually the case, generally). after an hour and a half with bwong there (total time now, 2.5 hours in the oven) - the temperature read 25 degrees. at this rate, we were going to be eating at midnight. our machinations became increasingly frantic. we thought about turning all the clocks in the house back half and hour to an hour to mislead our soon-to-arrive guests; we turned the inexorably, pitilessly stagnant read on the digital thermometre away, to spare it the piercing scrutiny of our pathetic attempts to will it into action; we considered butterflying the roast, deep frying it...anything! our oft-repeated denial-based statements that the roast would be done in time, to leave things to the fates, were a cruel mockery of the reality of the situation. finally, as things were reaching a frantic, fevered pitch of desperation, i screamed, "bwong, what are we going to DO!?!????" and he, equally fevered, pushed to the breaking point by a recalcitrant icicle of a hunk of beef, pointed at the thermometre and blurted out, "i don't know! switch the temperature away from celsius!??!?!!", and as those words fell from his lips, our eyes both moved, aghast, to the smug, indifferent themometre. we were indeed, waiting for the meat to come to 120 CELSIUS, and it was sitting at about 27 celsius, which, when you click the switch on the back to make it read in farenheit, is actually a perfectly respectable 88 degrees farenheit. phew. can you IMAGINE if we had waited for the roast to get to 120 centigrade? it would have been charcoal!

the dinner went off swimmingly. we had a small problem with my oven smoking up (my fan isn't very effective, and my oven has all kinds of gaps and holes in it for some reason, and they release a lot of the smoke from whatever is cooking in there). which meant that we had to open doors and windows and consequently, some of the veggies were cold. boo. and the yorkshire were slightly leaden. but the roast and the sauce were delicious (bwong made the sauce and it napped the meat and potatoes beautifully). my pumpkin cheesecake tasted divine, even if the sour cream topping pooled a little bit in the centre of the cheesecake (i'll have to give the cheesecake a bit longer in the oven next time - before adding the topping).

today is a homework day, and i think i'm going to drag my ass out to the law library (ugh). then dodgeball, then home. for dinnie tonight i think we're going to have roast beef, avocado and swiss melts with salad. and leftover pumpkin cheesecake!

fin.

sensual seduction

oh man. yesterday was a gong show. it started with me coming home, having to bake a cheesecake in an hour, and having like a minor breakdown because when i walked in, the dotytron had left all kinds of lights on, and had gone grocery shopping and hadn't put stuff away properly, and wasn't tidying up after himself. i'm only human, i'm doing a LOT right now, and he only works for like 2 hours on fridays (teaching his class). so i BLEW UP! and left a message on his phone, detailing why i was pissed, as i scrambled around simultaneously making the cheesecake, and cleaning up after a mess that **i** didn't make.

so i figured he would check his messages, come home, say sorry, and all would be forgiven. he steps in the door, and hadn't checked his messages, so i kind of lay into him a little bit (not yelling...more "stern/displeased" voice). then he gets pissed at me, because he doesn't like coming in the door from work and dealing with my shiz. which is valid, but the thing is...THAT'S WHAT I WAS SAYING. i don't like coming in the door, after a full week of job and school, and having to deal with someone else's shiz. so whatever...just a petty little domestic squabble,

dr. rei come over, witnessed some of the tension (she's family now, so it's all like, whatever) and we talk about it, and it's cool. basically, some people JUST DON'T THINK LIKE THAT, and i happen to live with two of them. two people who magically think that the kitchen floor sweeps and mops itself, and that there's ALWAYS SOMEONE THERE IN YOUR LIFE to remind you when our garbage day is (after three years!!!) and WHICH garbage day it is, and think that a home-cooked, constantly varying, balanced meal just APPEARS out of thin air each and every night. there are people EVERYWHERE who blissfully capitalize on the fact that there's people like me and dr. rei who DO these things. it's like the invisible domestic help or something. anyway, so whatever, it's fine.

ANYWAY, before we leave for the night, i know dr. rei is coming over to sleep over after the show, so i tell the dotytron: "can you please get out the blankets and spare pillows and put them on the futon for dr. rei" and he goes, "right now?" and i say, "no it's okay, we gotta go, just make sure you do it before you go to sleep"
SO, when dr. rei and i walk in the door at 2:30am, there's NOTHING on the futon. not only that, but the throw pillows and stuff that are always in the living room on the futon ARE GONE. so not only did he NOT do what i asked him to do, he NEGATIVE did it. there was LESS there than when we left the house!!! (he had taken the pillows downstairs to lie on the floor to watch stuff on his computer). then, when i go into the room, and just kind of exasperatedly tell him (not angry, just rollseyes): "dude, you didn't set up the bed for dr. rei," he says THIS: "you didn't tell me to" !!!!!!!!!!! and ladies and gentlemen, THAT'S why i've got to be a hardass. you give the dotytron an inch, and before you know it, we're living in a flophouse eating beans out of a can warmed over a candle.

hotpot with my mom was awesome. she was on point last night (being really funny) and hotpot is always stupid good...except i forgot my camera! boooo. suffice to say that we ate lots and lots of thinly sliced meat and meat-related products.

the show was also awesome, though not as good as the last time i saw tittsworth. there wasn't as much bmore as when i saw him last winter at crosstown, and he played some banging' house stuff a la the jokers of the scene. however! tittsworth is looking hella fine lately. i think he lost some lbs...he's hotted up bigtime. it was also amazing being there with the k-w-g crew, whom i love. they just radiate good vibes.

i was going to go to the law library today, but i think i'm going to stay home and do homework here, and nap a bit, because i woke up at 8:30 this morn. i'll go to the law library tomorrow and do my tomorrow homework today. i'm having my friend d and bwong over for dinnie and then we're going to see persepolis. in case you're not as detail-oriented as i and didn't notice, i've started notating titles with italics, as per academic style. it's not because i'm putting a stress on the word, even if that's how it looks. it just seemed neater than encapsulating titles in quotation marks. the dotytron's nany and popa do the cutest thing with quotation marks. when you get a birthday card, the hand-written portion will read - "happy birthday" love nany and popa. i'm guessing that they do it like that because that's what they're saying to you, but in written form, but then it always gives us a laugh, because the quotes kinda makes it seem like they're being snarky about it. "happy birthday" "merry christmas". haha.

tonight for dinner we're feasting! we're having prime rib, rubbed with rosemary, jus (aka gravy), smashed baby yukon gold potatoes roasted in duck fat, yorkshire puddings, broccoli, and roasted brussel sprouts. AND the aforementioned, breaking-point cheesecake (pumpking cheesecake with brown sugar sour cream topping) for dessert.

p.s. this is the dotytron's favorite musical thing in the world right now - snoop's sensual seduction. he didn't go to tittsworth with us last night (he hates bmore), and i like to think that he spent the night playing this on repeat. it IS all kinds of fantastico. snoop + voice box/vocoder + 80s production + talking about making sweet love to a woman = AWESOME.



fin.