eye of the liger!

last night i cut class to work on my paper (aka procrastinate some more). but i did manage to get some job applications ready, to be faxed/sent today. and i did some small stuff (finished an annotated bibliography, etc), so it wasn't a total write-off. for some reason, they've been showing re runs of the office for the past month or something, which is pissing us all off.

we had strawberry milkshakes for dessert last night. heavy on the strawberry, light on the ice cream and milk. making a proper milkshakes isn't the easiest thing in the world. you really need it to be mostly ice cream.

tonight i'm working two different shifts at two different libraries, meeting h for lunch, and starting (and hopefully finishing) my presentation paper. !!!!! wish me luck!

it's takeout night tonight. i'm getting chinese bbq (duck, roasted pork, char siu) for the family, with rice and veggies and the char siu sauce poured over the rice. it's probably one of the cheapest and most filling meals you can get. it usually works out to well under 5 bones per meal, and we're talking one of those rectangular styrofoam jobbies packed FULL.

fin.

nothing to report

i ended up pissing the night away AGAIN last night. there's something seriously wrong with me. my brain feels like mush. but i'm so not kidding around anymore. i cannot afford to eff around. and i'm not GOING to eff around. this is the vow i make to myself, you my faithful readers (aka my sister), and oh, i dunno, wyclef jean.

what i HAVE been doing is eating myself into a pms-induced coma. the roomie bought a pack of girl guide cookies and i mowed all the vanilla cream ones. i didn't even TRY to offer one to anyone else, even though they weren't mine! those things are LOADED with trans fats! (evil little j.c.-loving girl guides). the vanilla cream ones, when dipped into milk, succumb to a transcendent alchemy of flavours and textures that destroy my ability to even put up a facade of resistance. then i ate all the wish chips (and a good number of non wish chips) out of a bag of lay's dill pickle chips. i used to have an unwarranted prejudice against condiment-flavoured chips (ketchup, dill pickle, etc) but dill pickle chips are THE BEST! it's like an amped up salt'n'vinegar. aces!

just to rescue this from the completely banal (arguable), i'm going to put in a pet peeve. i really really hate it when people claim their dog is "part wolf". no it's NOT you jackass and p.s. even on the slim chance that one of the 10 wolves left in canada decided to breed with your pug's mama, it doesn't make you anything but the dog-owner equivalent of some nouveau-riche lv sportin' dickface clomping down yorkville ave.

today is long day. i'm packing leftover chili, guacamole, and maybe some sour cream for dinner, alongside an apple, some strawberries, a banana, and an oatmeal cookie bar.

fin.

in the next three weeks

i have 5 papers due. and i still have 80 PERCENT of the coursework for one of my classes to finish. all i've done is hand in one dinky paper for that course. most yikes.

for some reason, i can't get anything done! i'm already on summer vacation! this sucksss! especially when the weather is all springy and fecund and filling the air with twitterpated-ness.

for this reason, i'm banning all extraneous non-school related interneting (save this blog, of course). no celebrity gossip! rien de facebook! rien de crappy messageboards! all work, until the last thing is handed in.

tonight for dinner we're having spaghetti, in a sauce made of proscuitto, chorizo, onions, garlic, diced and seeded tomatoes, chili flakes, white wine, clams, and some of the pasta cooking water. with caesar salad.

fin.

roman catholicism

yesterday i went to the second funeral in my life. the first one i've ever attended was for my dad's father, who i didn't know all that well. that one took place in a funeral home. this one took place in a roman catholic church. i was kinda weirded out about it. instead of a celebration of my friend's life, it turned into a big pitch for j.c., and how j.c. is awesome, and we should be happy that my friend is being welcomed back into j.c.'s loving bosom, and faith and blah blah blah. there was also a ginormous j.c. hanging on the wall of the church, right above the priest (it must've been 20-30 feet tall), all emaciated and shiz. that totally grosses and spooks me out. there was a lot of kneeling, and praying, and eating and drinking j.c. (i didn't participate in that). the one part i like is when the priest tells you to turn to your neighbours and offer them a sign of your peace and love. however, it totally caught me by surprise, so i ended up kind of awkwardly shaking the hands of people around me. i wish they handed out program books with notes in it, so that you know what to do. some people were pros.

after that, we went to the cemtery, and then we had a reception. the reception was wonderful, as close friends performed readings, and there was a slide show, and people talked and mingled and laughed. it was touching and sweet and personal.

we ran into a tonne of people we hadn't seen in a while. the boy's high school crew is an awesome group of people, and i fit in really well with them. there's always laughter and jokes when they're around, we see them a few times a year, so that was fine. we also ran into the boy's ex gf. and some old high school teachers.

it's so strange to me, the disconnect between our ceremonies to usher people into death, the pageantry and deep symbolism, and then the creeping realities - the man driving the backhoe who pushes dirt onto the coffin in the ground. there's something reaffirming about the inevitability of the mundane, however incongruous it may seem at the time.

i've decided that i want my funeral to be FUN. lots of laughter and talking and revisionist history of my life (family and close friends, take note!). at first i wanted a choir and the organist to do a rendition of omni trio's "thru the vibe", but i amended it to kansas' "carry on my wayward son" and i wouldn't mind having a CCR cover band provide the other musical entertainment. i would like the meal to consist of a southern bbq, or at least to feature a roast pig (my spirit animal) with some dietary concessions made to the vegetarians in my life.

for dinner tonight we're having vegan shepherd's pie with tvp again. for the filling, i put in sauteed onion, garlic, tvp, carrots, celery, peas, and celery root diced up. for the topping, i'm making that root vegetable mash and coating it in old cheddar before it goes in for the final burnishing in the oven.

fin.

the globe and mail

well, yesterday i had an interview at the globe and mail for a summer intern position (paid) in the library. i've been keeping it mostly to myself, as i REALLY REALLY REALLY want the job, and i didn't want to jinx it. the interview was unlike any interview i've ever had before, it was mostly me and the chief librarian chatting back and forth for an hour. it was a lovely experience, and it made me want to work there MORE. the chief librarian just sounds like my kind of person, really relaxed and focused, and fun and kooky and feisty. also, the job itself perfectly aligns my two (seemingly disparate) skill-sets and professional lives: kitchens and libraries. it's a high stress, deadline driven, cuss-heavy environment, where you never know what you're going to be doing day to day, as stories come up and need to be researched. it requires an attention to detail, the ability to stay calm and focused under pressure, the ability to be an armchair psychologist, the ability to be a detective (!!!!!) and to think within and outside the box. it just felt like it would be a good fit.

here's the rub: she's interviewing 7 other people total (i'm pretty proud that i made it into that select group), AND one of the 7 is someone in my program that she's been mentoring for a YEAR.

boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. it sucks cuz i really really really wanted it. but that is the story of my life. i never get the jobs i really really really want. i get the crappy jobs that look like s**t on your resume. ie. i applied for a shipping and receiving job in the tpl warehouse, and i BET you that THAT'S the one i'm going to get.

in other news...battlestar season finale was not enough to make up for what was generally a piss-poor season 3. it really tailed off in the last half of the season, and then they threw a lot at us, very quickly. i suspect a lot of red herrings.

tonight for dinner we're eating vegan chili (tvp, what!) alongside a chopped avocado/lime/red onion salad (aka chunky guacamole), and sour cream.

fin.

humina humina

to say that i love clive owen might be one of the understatements of the not-so-new millennium. he's such a HUNK! here is my current trifecta of hunkiness (in no particular order): clive owen, christian bale, and mark ruffalo (i got caught watching that reese witherspoon cheeseball flick "just like heaven" on my sis' free movie channel while i was in the states, and it rekindled my love for his affable, likeable, averageness).

i got a lot of preliminary research done for two of my papers, so last night we watched the rest of "the inside man". it was fairly agreeable, in the way that most cleverly constructed bank heist movies are. there's nothing i like more than a well-executed heist. i love rooting for robbers. especially when they're as devilishly handsome and dulcet-toned as clive owen. it featured some interesting, periphery racial dimensions, as all spike lee movies do. my favorite spike lee film has got to be "bamboozled" by a mile.

we also watched sarah silverman's "jesus is magic". it's mostly a film of a stand-up show, except it's interspersed with these god awful song numbers that we learned to skip over. she's mostly funny, but in an uncomfortable way, lacking the genial anger of chris rock or dave chappelle, that somehow neutralizes the barbs by swathing them in pop culture familiarity.

this morning for breakkie we had corned beef hash with poached eggs. the design of the corned beef can is abominable. it's basically engineered in the most awkward way imaginable (it's one of those cans with the key on it, that you use to twist off a strip of perforated metal, bisecting the can so that it clammily pops open and yields its fat-sheathed goodness). the long and short of it is, i got impatient and cut myself on it. ah zoot. we washed our breakkie down with a carrot-apple-ginger-lime-beet-pear juice. very tasty.

tonight for dinner i'm going to be in the queen west neighbourhood, so i'm bringing us back ghandi's rotis for me and the roomie since she's been buying us dinner all weekend. two butter chicken rotis, medium spicy. and probably a ginger beer for moi.

fin.

test the nation

while procrastinating from real work lately, i took the cbc's "test the nation" IQ test. i scored about 115, which is slightly higher than the national average. i did uniformly well on almost all the categories, save the last one which i think was called "perception" and was based on spatial reasoning. i suck hard at those. however, as with all IQ tests, it should be noted that the testing conditions are uncontrolled, require a degree of cultural/spatial/temporal specificity, and one of the questions requires a broadband connection, thereby limiting the pool of potential respondents to those who are relatively affluent and located in or near urban centres. those are just a few of the possible biasing factors.

as a testament to how i may do well on IQ tests but fail miserably at real life, i ate so much jean's last night i thought i was going to puke. it's THAT GOOD. it's so good that even though me and the roomie had repeatedly proclaimed our fullness, with the sweetly comic sounds of the tbs broadcast film "legally blond" in the background, we STILL kept going back for mouthful after mouthful of our pad see yew, singapore noodles, pad thai, green vegetable curry with rice, and red "meatball" vegetable curry with rice. SICK. then to cap it all off in a glut of caloric excess, i ate EVERY SINGLE vanilla cream sandwich cookie in the last remaining box of girl guide cookies, while vocally questioning my sanity each time i stretched out my grasping hand for another.

edit: the roomie is taking over the stove to make presents for her placement co-workers (jams and such) so she has offered to buy us pizza. so we're going to be eating mama's pizza for dinner. no dessert! fruits only!

fin.

the wheel of time

last night we watched a werner herzog documentary called "the wheel of time". werner herzog is the documentary filmmaker who also produced "grizzly man", another fantastic doc. this particular film follows the holy buddhist kalachakra initiation. it was breath-taking, sombre, awe-inspiring, and visually and conceptually stunning.

unlike other documentary directors, herzog very much inserts himself and his voice (literally, as the narrator) into this film. what results is an aesthetic that bridges the (imagined, imo) divide we construct between "documentaries" and "feature films". it seems he has a very particular idea on where he wants the film to go, and through his visual and narrative framing of the subject, he produces a tighter, more thematically unified end product.

the kalashakra initiation is the largest buddhist ritual to promote peace and tolerance, and is held in bodh gaya, india. hundreds of thousands of buddhists make the pilgrimage to bodh gaya, where the ritual takes place near the tree where the sacred buddha first found enlightenment. it took one man, THREE YEARS to get to the site. he made the journey not by walking, but through a painstaking series of forehead-to-ground genuflections, which resulted in calcified nodes on his wrists, a wound that would not heal on his forehead (a result of millions of contact with the ground that he trod). this particular monk came from an area so remote, that he had to be translated twice. the idea of that removal of transliteration quite literally made me catch my breath with its conceptual dimensions.

the ritual culminates in the creation of the sand mandala, known as the wheel of time, made by the highest order of buddhists. the elaborate creation is made entirely of grains of sand. at the end of the ceremony, that gorgeous product of excruciating, assiduous hours of labour is systematically and methodically destroyed by his holiness the dalai lama himself, in a symbol that represents the impermanence of all creations. watching him run his hands through the mandala, bisecting the intricate and dense beauty of the creation, was an experience at once completely fitting and intensely jarring.

ever since i first read about the romantic sublime, it has been a concept that held great resonance to me, subtly influencing a paradigmatic shift in the way i view the world and my own place in it. the romantic poets (wordsworth, blake - my favorite -, coleridge et al) when faced with the stark and unrelenting beauty of a natural formation, like a mountain, enter a state they called the sublime, a moment when the limits of one's humanity is presented in all its awesome totality, in our inability to completely comprehend the vastness and entirety of this natural formation. at the same time, as our imagination nears its limits as it struggles vainly to grasp the enormity of the universe that surrounds us, the very presentness of its articulation in us and the world that surrounds us, our humanity is reaffirmed in all its blinding glory.

it is difficult for me to understand religious faith, especially in its more insidious, western articulations, imbricated as it is with war, conservatism, and fascist power. this film manages to capture the stunning vastness of belief - the quiet, internal stoicism of the faithful - a belief that seems implicated in the very materiality of the world that surrounds us. perhaps i have a tendency to romanticize buddhism (i think i do...as far as leaders go, the dalai lama is a heck of a lot cuter and jollier than the pope), but in the concept of enlightenment and the interconnectivity of life i can hear a very convincing, persuasive, and enticing call.

it was one of those rare films that presents a world, contemporaneous to mine, but removed by unfathomable distance. the film's ability to draw my attention to the coexistence of these disparate realities created a sublime moment for me, a moment of harrowing and poignant humanity.

the long and short of it is: go see it.

in a less ethereal vein, tonight for dinner (take-out night) we're having jean's vegetarian kitchen. pad thai, some kind of red curry, and another noodle dish. yum.

fin.

a little levity

in true me fashion, i've been completely pissing my days away. i think all the bad news has just made me supremely unmotivated and unambitious, and all i want to do is just hang around the boy all the time. plus, my roomate is almost done her degree. so, in one week, she'll be celebrating the completion of probably the most grueling 4 years of school that i could imagine for anyone. she's delivered 200+ chillun, has sacrificed nights and nights of sleep, has been tethered to a pager and the needs of others for FOUR YEARS, and she's going to be done in a week. it's so hard to stay focused on the last waning weeks of school when someone else in the house is going to be done, and is probably going on the bender to end all benders.

^^^ this is a photochop my friend mark did...it makes me laugh every time i see it. my body type is actually pretty similar to sharon's...so it doesn't look all that odd, surprisingly. haha! this is another photochop. we grafted my ex bf's face onto the baby of these two. the dude is a buddy of mine and my ex's from high school, and we all ended up at the same university together, along with his girlfriend at the time, now wife. i thought it was really funny! plus the fact that the guy blamed his subsequent distance from my high school crew on ME. yes, that's right, ME. even though i haven't seen him since high school. he basically said that i was such a big slut that it was impossible to condone my actions and that's what caused the rift. which is WACK. because a) i'm not a slut, i'm just easy, there's a difference, thanks. b) i'm still tremendously good friends with my ex (before he left, he literally lives one block away from us), and still tremendously good friends with the high school crew; and c) live in the now, son!

last night we watched "dave chappelle's block party". which was an endearing, lovable and warm concert movie...definitely a winner. dave chappelle makes a great host, and has an everyman affability that makes him very approachable. he also loves music, and the concert footage is great. jill scott KILLS it, and so do the roots and talib kweli. it really captures the vibe of a spontaneous gathering of people, and the magic that happens when you have a good time party-time crowd of people gathered together in a very non-aggressive way to dance outside in the sun to hype tunes. it's such an intangible, ephemeral experience, that doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, it really makes you love the world.

today is long day city, i'm packing leftover mulligatawny and a samosa for dinner, alongside my usual granola bar, apple, banana, etc.

fin.

dispatches from barrie

last night for dinner the boy's uncle made us sausages and perogies, and broccoli, brussels sprouts and carrots in cheese sauce. it was delicious. we visited the boy's grandpa, who seems to be doing okay (his spirits were in fine form) all things considered. hospitals are creepy no matter what the circumstances, and i really believe that they hinder the process of getting better.

today is all work, no play. i have to do a crapload of research, and the readings for tomorrow so i don't show up sounding like a dummy. we're reading something near and dear to my heart: donna haraway's "the cyborg manifesto". it had an indelible impact on the formation of my praxis in undergrad, and i think it's a piece that wears its age well. it is a piece that invokes the metaphor of the cyborg as a vehicle to allow feminists to move beyond essentialist narratives, and to see beyond binary oppositions and situate individuals on a continuum.

tonight for dinner we're having a oatmeal porter-braised lamb stew, with baby carrots and rosemary, served with root vegetable mash. maybe the last of the birthday cake for dessert, or some of the girl guide cookies i bought while in some pokey grocery store in barrie. i like the vanilla sandwich cookies best. i also don't like how they've inserted a layer of minty creme inside the thin mint cookies. i'm also not really sure what it is that we're supporting when we buy girl guide cookies, other than we're teaching a bunch of junior homophobes to tie knots (in the u.s., canada has proven itself to be more tolerant and welcoming).

fin.

dispatches from abroad v.2

yesterday's post was un petit peu triste, so i'm going to make up for it by posting this pic from the weekend with the family of us in happier times. the boy is wearing a xxxl "china" basketball jersey from this place called steve & barry's, which according to the boy is like winners for men. that jersey cost $5 or something. he's also wearing a plastic yellow construction hat, and he managed to artfully style this entire ensemble around his pajamas. we expect to hear andre leon talley from vogue knocking on our door any time now.

we also got to eat my beloved dinosaur! just look at those ribs! they were juicy, tender, falling off the bone, with a lovely pink "smoke-ring" around the meat. the picture is a little blurry because my hands were shaky in anticipation of CHOWING down. on the left, that's a little cup of the BEST macaroni salad i've ever had. and some corn bread. the corn bread i'm not as big a fan of, they glaze it with honey, which makes it a little too sweet for me, and i really love my cornbread to have a crispy, cast-iron derived crust for some crunchy texture. in the background you can see my draft root beer. one of the things i'm a connoisseur of, is root beer. this one was a little too sweet and not root-y enough, but it was a nice palate cleanser.

we recently watched the movie "stranger than fiction". now, i love my charlie-kauffman meta-films as much as the next person. "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" is probably my most beloved movie of the past 5 years. no question. this was not anywhere near as imaginative or clever or well-executed or endearing as a kauffman flick. it took an interesting concept, and turned it into something boring and plodding, that was neither funny enough to be comedy, or poignant enough to be an affecting drama. they also gussied up the film with these weird little directorial animation interventions that were meaningless and distracting aesthetic flourishes. none of the actors really seemed to commit to their roles (save maggie gyllenhaal) and it didn't go anywhere, and ended with an oprah-y, pat little banal observation on the meaning of life.

we also recently watched most of a documentary called "darwin's nightmare". about a species of fish that was introduced into the largest lake (lake victoria) in africa, and how it has subsequently decimated native fish populations. it also looks at the interweaving of the economic dependency on this fish as a source of income, supporting entire villages and populations, and how this economy might be implicated in the shipment of arms from european countries into africa, to fuel the ongoing civil strife. sounds pretty interesting, right? well, unfortunately, the documentary isn't very compelling and not terribly insightful. we stopped 3/4 of the way through, because we could tell where it was going, and it just wasn't very well executed. you can infer all you need to from my synopsis above.

today we're going to visit the boy's grandpa in the hospital and have dinner with his uncle who's visiting from the west coast. i've never met this particular uncle before. i have no idea what we're having for dinner, but barrie seems to be of the big box-franchise persuasion in terms of dining options.

last night's dinner was really yummy. i made a mulligatawny. mulligatawny is usually a spicy broth, rich with tomatoes, spices like fennel, cinnamon, cloves, tumeric, cumin and coriander, and coconut milk. i made the addition of adding red lentils to the soup, which cooked down and gave it a further element of rich thickness. then we deep fried some chicken and beef samosas the boy had picked up from "the sultan of samosas". they were delicious! calling oneself the "sultan" of samosas wasn't meaningless hyperbole in this case.

fin.

abstractions

yesterday morning we left rochester at 6am to get back in time to head to barrie for the boy's grandpa's 90th birthday. unfortunately, his grandpa has taken ill with pneumonia, and the party had to be cancelled. he had to spend saturday night in the barrie hospital (which was apparently overrun with patients) on a hospital bed in the emergency room hallway. which really makes me flippin' mad. what is happening to our health care system is completely OBNOXIOUS and objectionable, but people don't care. our health care system is basically an abstraction to us, until such time as we actually need it, and by that time, it's been eroded to the point where it's beyond our anger and immediate resources at hand to fix.

this is the cake i had made for him. my friends sarah and maria, whom i used to work with at canoe, have started their own business, called maribelle wedding cakes. you should check out their website! they're fantastically talented. i came up with the design idea and concept, and they executed it beautifully. the detailing on the fondant leaves was incredible, with different shades of soft, springtime, mossy greens crawling over the sides of the cake. the leaves were different shapes and sizes, some of them were beautifully variegated and some had a slightly metallic finish. they're so good at what they do, i'm so proud of them both! not to mention the fact that the cake tasted delicious. golden cake, with a lemon curd filling, topped with vanilla buttercream.

in other sad news, a friend of the boy's and an acquaintance of mine from high school passed away suddenly over the weekend. we found out yesterday. rip s.s.

living and death are always abstractions, brought into the sharp focus of "the real" only in heightened situations dependent on spatial and temporal proximity. it's a lot to take, when our own mortality is suddenly and abruptly fixed before us. it's a lot harder when you don't have the faith of religion to buffer the effects of our lives and what living means. people in your life are abstractions, tied by a thin, delicate thread to "the real" only to become absolute abstractions in death.

it's been a really hard couple of months for us, and in particular the boy.

i'm taking the day off to be around him.

fin.

dispatches from abroad vol. 1

what fun we've been having! the boys and my sister were privy to witnessing a nail-biter of an NCAA game, where the winningest team got usurped by the underdogs, in a neck-in-neck game with the clock down to the last waning seconds of play. (the winningest team was duke, btw, for those of you not intimately involved in the ins and outs of u.s. college basketball.)

yesterday we got to go to red lobster. for lunch. now, red lobster is really one of those desires that's really best left unsatisifed. the yearning for red lobster is incredibly tantalizing, akin to the romantic sublime...a fantastic notion that exists just ever out of reach, stretching and testing the limits of consciousness, and providing an inspirational reaffirmation of one's humanity -doused in exuberant sprays of lemon juice and unnaturally succulent bouncing avalanches of breaded shrimp. red lobster in its execution is something entirely different. it's a paean to butter (or some kind of hydrolyzed vegetable fat that's better left to the darker recesses of the imagination), and indifferently cooked, uniformly tasteless seafood and seafood byproducts. strangely, there seemed to be a high number of geratrics, although it's been so long that i've stepped foot inside a red lobster, that the sample is too small for any conclusive extrapolations based on that particular observation.

we then went to see 300. in imax. the movie is aight. horrible dialogue, depiction of women, and plot holes aside, it is certainly entertaining. the greatest gift CGI has given the world is in the progression of the cloak-billowing and horse-thundering aesthetic. nothing sends goosebumps racing down my arms like an artfully rendered cloak, billowing ominiously in the wind (this effect is compounded when the cloak billowing directly precedes an oncoming battle, in which our protagonists are woefully outnumbered in body, if not in spirit). lemme tell you though, i've never seen an army with more well-definied abdominal muscles than the spartans. the shadows and valleys of their rippling torsos almost made up for the insidiously racist, orientalist depiction of the effeminate persian god-king, xerxes (edward said would be rolling in his grave). so of course, now my siblings and i have decided that when we descend en masse to disneyworld this coming winter, our attire of choice will be spartan-influenced diapers and flowing red robes. and we've taken to expressing our agreement and solidarity with each other using the spartan war cry of: "AOUUUU! AOUUUUU!"

last night for dinner we had my beloved dinosaur AND wegman's whipped cream-frosted crap cake. it was a double header! we also capped off the evening with a documentary called "bastards of the party" about the birth of the crips and the bloods and the gang life in south central l.a. guess who was really to blame? if you guessed WHITE PEOPLE, you'd be right!!! as usual, white people and their white people infrastructre and their white people institutionalized racism are to blame again. it was a bit of a predictable plot development, but the documentary was somewhat interesting from a historical perspective...i just thought the execution was a little dry and plodding.

tonight i'm watching the kids again, with my mum, which is kinda like watching an extra big and more vocally petulant kid (but just as loveable). we had a lovely brunch of scrambled eggs, jimmy dean sausage (dear canada, why won't you stock bob evans or jimmy dean bulk sausage?! why????), bacon, and monkey bread (cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread with a caramel glaze). delicious. after that, i doubt i'm going to eat dinner...if anything, i'll probably scarf some leftover crap-cake and black bottom icebox pie from dinosaur bbq. there's something about america that really destroys your will to eat healthfully and exercise nutritional discipline or good sense. god bless her.

fin.

mini-vacation hooray!!!

today i work an 8 hour shift at the library which is pooey, but after that, i'm getting picked up by my mum and the boy, and we're driving down to the states to visit my sister and her fam! that in itself would be enough, but my sis and the boys are going to the ncaa games on thursday and saturday, and me and my mum get to babysit the two little kidlets.

fun!!!

then on friday, when there are no games, we're going to hopefully be able to visit my sister at work (i want to see her in action in court) and then go for lunch, go see that movie, 300 and then maybe do some shopping. there's a pair of rocket dog shoes i'm hoping are going to be at DSW - discount shoe warehouse...i swear, shopping in the states is the BEST SHIZ EVER!!! only because the clothes and shoes are made by my poor underpaid, sweatshop compadres in southeast asia, of this i'm well aware. i'm also hoping that we can fit in a stop at tarjay (aka target), also one of my favorite stores in the world. but whatever, just hanging with my family and seeing a movie will be enough.

it's my little brother's birthday, which means my dreams of wegman's crap-cake will be realized beyond my wildest imaginings. wegman's makes a crap-cake that puts all our canadian grocery store counterparts to shame. the key is they have an option for WHIPPED CREAM frosting. oh yes. none of that ceiling plaster, hydrogenated vegetable oil-based, sickly sweet confection that they have up here (although that's also an option). whipped cream frosting is the ultimate companion to spongy, soft, yielding crap-cake. i can already taste it!

and i think we're also going to hit dinosaur bbq for some real, proper bbq. and mac salad. *unbuttons top button of jeans in anticipation* i'll take pictures of dinosaur bbq for those of you who've never had the pleasure (and allow me to say that dipamo's or phil's original bbq in toronto, while okay, if you've never had dinosaur, looks like the pile of untended, dry sawdust it is when you first taste the juicy smokiness of dinosaur ribs). i'm a bit of a rib connoisseur...actually, i think i'm a general connoisseur. i like to endlessly discriminate tastes of all kind: aesthetic, sensual, relationship, etc. i've been accused of being picky, but i think that's a most egregious and inapt assessment. i just think there's a right way and a wrong way, and i attain a particular sense of happiness and well-being when i experience, or can arrange to have things result in the right way. i just put a lot of thought into everything. it's a quality i share with the boy. we're renaissance peeps, he and i.

last night's broccoli and rice casserole turned out amazing. i made a bechamel with sauteed onion, garlic, flour, olive oil and milk. then i added in cheddar and smoked gouda. mixed in the leftover cooked rice, and poured that over the broccoli florets in the baking pan. i mixed some panko crumbs with olive oil and salt and pepper, and sprinkled that on top and baked it in a 450F oven. it was delicious! the smoked gouda really gives it that x factor. you can't really tell it's there, it's not aggressively smoked like other smoked cheeses, where it tastes like you're eating ham, but it adds a subtle depth of flavour that brings everything else up a notch. we ate it with steamed green beans and roasted brussel sprouts. so it was a very healthy meal. i'm packing leftover casserole and a salad for dinner tonight at the library. the family is eating leftovers as well.

fin.

work-a-thon

it's official: i failed my midterm, we got the marks back yesterday. well, technically i passed, just barely...i got 43 out of 80. shazaaam! the professor went over all the midterms and bumped up the marks on individual questions, because t.a.'s are the harshest markers evar! it's because they're so close in age and education to the students, and because they have something to prove (in my opinion). it's like getting marked by an older brother or sister. i averaged out my midterm mark with my mark from the first assignment, and i'm going into the last part of the term with a solid B (75%), with still two assignments to go. so i can conceivably do some proper ass-kicking and still emerge with an A.

today is all work, no play. i've got to finish a paper, start and finish another assignment, and do random assorted stuff. i was supposed to go to a job interview, but i know i'm not going to get the position, so it's probably best if i duck out and i can focus on my real work. i've applied to a few part time jobs for the summer...i hope i get at least something!

short post today...i got stuff to do!

tonight for dinner we're having a veggie rice casserole. broccoli and brussel sprouts baked with rice in a cheese-y sauce (smoked gouda and cheddar), topped with breadcrumbs and baked in the oven.

fin.

i can smell summer!

my family is renting a cottage for a week near huntsville. the name of the person renting us this cottage is JACK MCKAY. that's right. DYLAN MCKAY'S FATHER. from BEYOND THE GRAVE. how awesome is that???

yesterday was amazing because the extra hour of sun made losing that hour of sleep so worthwhile. and i can already smell spring in the air. we have one of those four month washable calendars on our wall, and i took the liberty of erasing january and february and putting up may and june...and just seeing those months, perfectly blank except for concert and birthdays is so relaxing and uplifting.
by comparison, march and april are filled with due dates and other miserableness. it's so hard to stay focused on school when the earth starts to smell wet and soft. i just keep telling myself i have to get through just seven weeks and then i'm free!!! and i have to keep reminding myself that compared to last year, even the endless rounds of school drudgery are worth it.

this summer is going to be so much fun, i can already taste it! cottages, trips, family, friends, eating outside, riding my bike, reading and puttering and doing all the things i love. listening to music...outdoors! parks, and evening strolls with the house-family. frisbee and yoga lessons and gardening and FARMER'S MARKETS! i'm a farmer's market junkie. and this year, hopefully i can work it out so that i can hit riverdale AND dufferin grove. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so i gotta buckle down. tonight for dinner we're having seafood (tilapia, scallops, canned clams) new england chowder with a tiny dice of sweet potato in there, because i like having bits of texture in my chowder, and some chopped dill. alongside the olive garden salad.

fin.

i love christian bale!

he's the ultimo cerebral hunk. last night we watched "the prestige". it was written by christopher nolan and his brother, and directed by christopher nolan (batman begins, memento). it was pretty slick, although the roomie figured out the fake-twist pretty early on. it was entertaining and well directed, and featured a lovely, ghostly, phantasmorghic scene of a foggy field lit up with light bulbs. that scene alone was almost worth the movie rental. the movie features david bowie in a lovely turn as nicola tesla who was apparently hounded by edison (who knew that thomas edison was biff tannen of the inventor world? certainly not me)

i finished reading a book called "gastronaut" by a british author named stefan gates. i don't know how he got a publishing deal...it was pretty terrible and self-indulgent and a rather flimsy concept. basically, he delves into a random assortment of "out-there" food experiences, centred around his made-up tenets of gastronaut-ness (fairly predictable: you'll try everything once, there's no such thing as a culinary failure, etc) and then rambles on in a twee british way about how to gild sausages with gold leaf, how to organize and execute a pig roast, and eating assorted rarities (boogers, pee, etc). it was obnoxious, mainly because the voice of the author was so annoyingly britishly smug. and the research was haphazard at best.

this morning for breakfast i broke the long-standing, irrational edict against non-swedish pancakes instituted by the boy. for some reason, he ONLY likes swedish pancakes. now, i love them too, but i also have room in my heart for the whole panoply of pancake representation in all its glorious multi-constituencies. but i must admit, i do love swedish pancakes best. i made banana pecan buttermilk pancakes with mennonite sausage, which we had after drinking a carrot-apple-ginger-lime-beet juice.

dinner tonight is a tempura feast! we're dipping and dredging sweet potato, chinese eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms and beans and eating that with tempura dipping sauce and rice. i saw some lovely baby artichokes, so i'm going to fry those up to, and maybe serve those with a lemon aioli. the last of the pouding chomeur with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

fin.

it's the most wonderful time of the year...

no, not xxx-mas, not my birthday...it's HOT DOCS TIME!!! we've already bought our festival passes and my saliva glands are going into overdrive just looking at the pre-program they've posted on the net. what's amazing is that, unlike previous years, where i was working two jobs, and trying to squeeze in documentaries when i could, hot docs conveniently dovetails with the END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR!!! which means that the boy and i have made a pact to take those last weeks of april off and unwind by stuffing our craniums with as much harrowing, depressing, socially-conscience-demoralizing documentaries as we can! there are a minority of documentaries that are of the testament-of-the-human-spirit calibre, but the ratio tends to work out to: 5000 from the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and people (read: the privileged west) are selfish, gluttonous, rapacious fiends to 1 people (read: the underprivileged can be self sacrificing and will find hope in even the darkest of circumstances). i can't wait!! it's going to be such a treat, and the perfect kickoff to the SUMMER OF SLACK!

this is the glorious plate of ethiopian food from last night. dukem was a raging success. the service (even though i was only getting take out) was warm and effusive and generous, and the food was top notch. for $34 we got four different dishes, that all came in those BIG square styrofoam boxes. the only quibble is that maybe they gave us too much food. each dish came wrapped in injera (the sourdough crepe that serves as flatware, utensil, and accompaniment, is the beige stuff in the picture), and then an additional piece of injera was included. we were drowning in injera. starting from the top of the picture is awaze tibs (lamb): cubes of tender lamb marinated and cooked with tomato, jalapeno, garlic and berbere sauce ("A common Ethiopian sauce that is hot and spicy tasting. Made with the seeds of cumin, cardamom, coriander, and fenugreek that are combined with garlic, ground cloves, turmeric, grated gingerroot, black pepper, salt, paprika, cinnamon, and dried red chiles, this sauce provides a distinctive tangy flavor for ethnic foods" - google). clockwise from that we have tikil goman: cabbage, carrots, potatoes, cooked in tumeric sauce. next we have the family's unanimous least favorite, sherro wot: highly-seasoned chick peas in berbere sauce, and finally, the ground meat mixture is dukem kitfo: a popular special kitfo mixed with the right amount of home made cottage cheese, herbal butter, cardamom and mitmita (all descriptions taken from the dukem take out menu). kitfo is actually generally served raw like a tartare, but they can also do it cold. i have no problems eating raw meat, but it's generally something i prefer in the summer, as opposed to winter. mitmita is an ethiopian spice mix, and it definitely lends a fiery glow to the kitfo.

i ate dinner before everyone else got home, and tried to do the traditional thing of just eating with my hands and the injera as my utensil, and consequently made a giant mess of myself. because i'm left-handed i also eat with what's traditionally regarded as the ass-wiping hand. boo the clumsiness of my ass-hand!!

tonight for dinner we're having my first attempt ever at brandade. "The famous brandade de morue of Provence is a pounded mixture of salt COD, olive oil, garlic, milk and cream. This flavorful puree is served with CROÛTES and often garnished with chopped black truffles. Other salted or smoked fish can also be used to make brandade" - from epicurious.com
i'm not serving mine cold...it's a popular atlantic province and quebec tradition i believe to serve the dish as a hot casserole. i've been soaking the salt cod in cold water and changing the water every 8 hours or so for 24 hours. then i'm going to slowly poach it in some milk, flavoured with a pinch of saffron, onions, and garlic. meanwhile, i take some yukon gold potatoes, peel them and boil them, and then pass them through a food mill. into the potato mixture, i'm going to fold the salt-cod poaching milk, and the milled onions and garlic. then i'm going to fold in chunks of the salt cod, spread this mixture into a baking dish, and cover with buttered panko and bake it in the oven until it's hot and crispy on top. i'm serving this with a steamed green bean and grape tomato salad. for dessert, to complete the french-canadian/acadian theme of the menu, we're having pouding chomeur, which translates to "poor man's pudding". it's a dish made out of very humble ingredients, consisting of a cakelike batter that's cooked on top of a brown sugar or maple syrup, and i find it very comforting and warm in its' modest splendour. we're having this with vanilla ice cream.

fin.

traitor!

so we kinda watched an episode of "the search for the next pussycat doll" (the show that bumped veronica mars off the air for 9 weeks or something). the roomie was actively campaigning for it (i guess when you deal with the miracle/disaster of birth on a semi-daily basis, you need to unplug), because she thinks that the show will feature some funny challenges, like how to pole dance or something. the first episode was basically everything you would expect. the "creator" of the pussycat dolls is a heavily botoxed and reconfigured woman who after much obvious plastic surgery, now looks like that uniquely l.a. curious amalgam of the 40 year old/20 year old cross. the girls are also wicked trashy. it also featured such breathy endorsements as: "the pussycat dolls like, defined my generation" now, i'm not 18 anymore (although i was mistaken for a 21 year old by a coworker at a library i was doing extra hours at), but haven't the pussycat dolls been around for like, 3 years? is that what it takes to make a generational imprint nowadays? sadly, postmodernism would indicate, yes.

after the show, i was trying to illustrate that i can't do that stripper-dance body roll (that fluid motion where you stick you butt out and roll it in, while standing...trust me, you know the one). so i tried once. the boy's face drained of colour, mouth gaped open, aghast. "don't ever do that again". then the laughter began. at my expense. the best way to describe what i unveiled is to call it the body-vomit. in my defense! i'm not that bad when it comes to dancing to something with a beat! i'm just not made for stripping, dammit!

i ended up eating dinner at 5pm yesterday, in between my classes, and didn't get home until 9:45 (blast you, night class!!!). i was ravenous. the CLEARLY sensible thing to do was to eat 2 hot dogs and a box of kd and some bbq chips. in bed, watching buffy the vampire slayer, season 6. obvs. i created a highly questionable cooking technique that i'm going to call: boiling-the-hot-dogs-in-the-kd-water. you start the hot dogs first, take them out, and then let the kd cook in the hot dog-sweat infused water. trust me, you'll start seeing it on menus soon 'nuff.

it's a measure of how hungry i was, and the cavernous capaciousness of my stomach at the time, that i didn't wake up with heartburn once. although i did have a dream where i was working in france at some parisian juice store, while waiting to learn enough french so that i could work in a french/english library.

night class was a monster drag. i basically spent the time on msn web messenger and ebay, bemoaning the fact that i totally slept on amy winehouse tickets and now they're all sold out. oh well, she'll be back, and quite frankly, i blame pitchfork for it. you know what we DID get tickets for???? THE POLICE!!! all my siblings and attendant significant others are going. it's going to be so much fun! i'm a "best-of" police fan, and i mean, that's what they're going to play, so it's going to be aces (as if they're going to be unveiling rare b-sides). i've never been to a huge rock show at the acc either. AND the fact that the whole crew of siblings is going is awesome! right down to my 18-year old little brother, who, when i asked him if he had heard ghostface's "more fish" gave me a withering, "that's so old". yikes! we didn't get seats together because ticketmaster is nazi. they only let you get FOUR (4!!!) tickets on one credit card. if you try to get another four on the same credit card, they cancel your first order. i mean, i understand setting a limit...but FOUR?!? it should at least be 8 so that you can organize a group of friends to go together. laame.

tonight is take-out night here at the ranch. we're going to be trying a new place: dukem ethiopian around the corner from our place. review and pictures to follow!

fin.

rip jean baudrillard

jean baudrillard passed away yesterday in france, after a battle with a long illness. however far you want to go with his notion of the simulacra (the idea that we live in a world of continually perpetuating and profuse representations, and that "the real" no longer exists or is relevant), you have to respect the dude for being a righteous badass. i was lucky enough to hear him speak at a conference a few years back. he was sly and clever and well-spoken, if a little abstract. all the hardcores are passing away: derrida, baudrillard. i don't really know who the new theoretical bigwigs are to take their place. slavoj zizek? paul virilio?

i finished my surveillance paper last night. i'm comme ci, comme ca about it. there simply isn't enough space for me to articulate what i want to say. we basically have to condense the most salient parts of a 300 page book AND relate it to this proposal for this technology that's being called "smart campus in your pocket" (teh ghey name, i know). it's basically a pda type of thing, that will be a social networking tool, allow you to access information in one place (tutorial locations, map the campus, etc), a navigational device, allow you to tag locations and personalize your features (so you can be directed to a place that has chinese food, if that's what you're feeling on a particular day), a means of communicating with your peers, and a whole host of other features. i'm on the fence about it. i do think that u of t needs to condense their information in some kind of cohesive and cogent fashion, i just don't know how much use i would get out of something that tells me to go to starbucks when i want something to drink (since i always pack my own food, this isn't the most pertinent example, but you get the drift). it's being co-developed by bell in association with the university, so the economic imperative isn't being veiled very well. i also get ornery about having to carry something fat and bulky around. whatever happened to the days of the syllabus? i'm not the type to get all dystopian anxiety about technology... the fear of being watched and having my motions and data taken and used for marketing purposes. i just don't give a s**t. not in a glib way, more in the sense that i believe in the failure of representation. so the chimera that whatever data-mining company has on me as a subject, will inevitably fall short and fail to account for the complexity of my desires.

today is long day city. i'm packing leftover beef-barley stew and some root veg mash.

fin.