good friday!

and what a lovely friday lies ahead of me. even though i have to finish one paper, and hopefully start and finish another one, i'm excited to have the day off with the boy. we're going for a jaunt up to the mennonites, and then later, like the good food-tourist religious pilferers we are, we're obeying the "fish on friday" edict by going to reliable fish'n'chips on queen. they recently got the restaurant makeover once-over, and my favorite designer of the bunch, cherie, did the interior, and it looks fabulous. people have been giving the place good reviews for years, and it's walking distance! i do love me a good fish'n'chippie. i also have to bake a cake for the boy's mum's birthday today. it's going to be quite elaborate (if it turns out!)

last night was soooo much fun. the roomie's crew of friends (they all go back to grade school, and the "newest" friend other than me, they met in grade 9) are awesome, funny, smart people. my doppelganger made us a ricotta gnocchi, with a mixed mushroom-porcini-asiago sauce. we also had a big salad that someone else had brought with a poppyseed dressing. and for an appetizer, we had a platter of bread, crackers, gruyere, gorgonzola, st. andre, figs, and home-made proscuitto from the italian grocery up the street from me. the italian grocer up the street from me, masellis, makes me feel happy-sad at the same time. happy because i have access to amazing pastas, and the best cured meats, and a wonderful butcher. sad because people in my neighbourhood are idiots, and would rather eat the crap that they can buy from IGA. so it's usually me, and some old skool italian/mediterranean peeps, and i'm afraid their customers are going to dry up and then they'll have to leave. to say that i resist the gentrification of the danforth would be putting it lightly.
anyway, last night was so much fun! i loved it. i love it when you get integrated into a friend's crew and it happens seamlessly.

we're planning a big group vacation. at first, we were thinking of taking an RV and driving either out east, or out west. but RVs are FLIPPIN expensive! like you wouldn't believe! it was going to work out to about $1500 per person once you included gas and whatnot. so then we decided to either do an all inclusive resort, but to me, the idea of going somewhere hot during the best months of ontario seems a little silly, especially when it's hurricane season down south. so i think we're going to cheap out and rent a cottage together. you can get a SIIICK cottage that would work out to about $200/person, and then you just have to buy your food and rent a car to get your ass up there. and really, there's few things i love more in the world than napping on the floor of a screened in porch, listening to the sounds of cottage country and feeing that deep, clean air lulling me to sleep. it's like heaven for me.

full review of the fish'n'chips (with pics!) to come tomorrow!

fin.

dear globe and mail

i was just kidding. you could've hired me and i really would've been okay with getting paid 18/hour for the summer. really! sincerely, warmest regards, yukmouth.

so i didn't get the job. booooooooooooooo. this resulted in some self-pitying karl lagerfeld-style (which is more akin to shouty rage - most emotions k.l.-style are more akin to shouty rage) about how i'm never going to get a good job, and that all the ass-kissers in the world always win the cushy jobs, and me, with my lined, burned, scarred hands, am doomed to a life of menial servitude and drudgery. and i'm 28 years old!!! how is it possible that with 8 years of post-secondary education, the best job i've ever had is being a PAGE at the public library?!? howfor? whyfor?

after i was done hiding under a comforter wailing while the roomie and the boy observing my huddled, prostrate form, cheered me up with platitudes and jokes at my expense, i came to my senses. i'm going to be a librarian. we're valued in this society. my days of working crappy jobs are numbered, and i'm going to do great things. i don't even NEED all that much money, because i'm loving-life rich already. it just rankles, sometimes. because i see some people who don't work an honest day in their lives have convenient horseshoes shoved up their butts getting golden, while i've worked my ass off to get nowheresville. all that being said, in your darkest hours, it's always nice to have the succor of facebook on your side, to cheerfully remind you that it's way better being me, then being stuck married to THAT guy, or doing THAT job, having THOSE interests, and being THAT unfunny. yikes.

i think i have a good shot at the globe and mail job in the fall, and that one is only part-time. which is a blessing in disguise, cuz i REALLY didn't want to work full time this summer if i could help it. this is supposed to be the summer of CRUNK. also, i really did hit it off well with the lady there, and she offered to mentor me, and she also offered to put in a good word for me and keep an eye out for me, so i think i made my first ever industry contact! i'm balls at networking most of the time. it's not my style to schmooze and "network", but this one came about naturally. so this whole experience was generally positive.

in other news, my new favorite breakfast is *drumroll* the guacamole sandwich. it's boom. i make a chunky guac with red onion, lime juice, salt and pepper (i skip the garlic and stuff, cuz i'm doing this in the morning on limited time). i toast a whole grain bagel, slop the guac on, and then cover the two surfaces with thinly sliced medium-old white cheddar, and melt it in the oven. HEAVEN! plus it really keeps you full for a hella long time.

dinner tonight is a potluck at my doppelganger's house. we're celebrating the roomie's LAST DAY OF SCHOOL. for those of you not living with midwives-in-training (and i do understand we're a select and chosen few) the magnitude of this fact cannot be underscored enough. it's HUGE. her school is worse than med school in terms of the degree of commitment you make to the job, and the degree to which you sacrifice anything resembling a real life. anyway, so it's potluck and there's going to be drunken shenanigans cuz tomorrow is good friday and we ain't go s**t to do (besides mountains of school work). i'm bringing my devil's food cupcakes with brown sugar buttercream. which are the best cupcakes ever. the devil's food cake recipe whips up so easy, but is moist and dense and chocolatey. and the brown sugar buttercream is beyond description. it's light, and moussey, and has that warm, caramel depth of flavour that you get from brown sugar. it's divine. we're also bringing juice, and pancetta wrappped, gorgonzola stuffed figs, to be popped under the broiler and served as an appetizer nibbly.

fin.

dear globe and mail

please just call me and tell me that i didn't get the job already, so i'll have one less thing to be neurotic about. sincerely, yukmouth.

i mean seriously! if you've already got some mentor broad (a mentoree?) why you be stringing me along?! how long does it take?!? quit playing games with my heart!!

in other news, we had lunch at the gallery grill yesterday at hart house on u of t campus yesterday. it was absolutely lovely. i had a house-cured duck proscuitto to start, and then the cassoulet. my doppelganger bought us dessert (we were celebrating the roomie's graduation from 4 1/2 years of the most grueling school imaginable), which was a chocolate scotch ice cream, a lemon souffle tart with rhubarb, and a maple creme brulee with little sugar cookies. the space is completely beautiful.

i got a lot of work accomplished yesterday, but didn't actually write anything. i'm going to try to start and finish a paper today, and then use good friday to start and finish another one. one of my profs is insane. he wants us to touch on 4 different topics, use 6 different sources, tie them all together, in a paper that is FIVE TO SIX PAGES LONG. like, why you gotta be like that, guy?!? seriously!

last night we ended up having mama's pizza for dinner. tonight is going to be leftover matzoh ball soup with olive garden salad. i'm back to eating healthy again. i kind of have to as i'm starting to feel gross. not as gross as this drop-dead-gorgeous contestant on "the search for the next pussycat doll", anastacia, feels when the other girls make her feel fat for eating a piece of dessert when she gets stressed out. nor as gross as when the "creator and visionary" of the pussycat dolls tells her she has to watch her stomach area because the dresses are very unforgiving. this show made me livid last night.

fin.

the pursuit of crappyness

my brother unleashed a zinger the other night. we were watching the previews before "casino royale" and one for the "pursuit of happyness" came on (SEE! EVEN THE BLOGGER SPELL CHECK DOESN'T ALLOW THAT ABUSE OF PROPER ENGLISH AND IS GIVING ME SOME PROPER RED-LINE GRIEF ABOUT IT). the roomie really wants to see it, but i'm considerably less enthused. anyway, at one point, i go: "so, does he live in a bathroom when he gets kicked out of his apartment?"
my brother: "i think his aunt and uncle take him in"
*pause*
my brother: "they live in bel-air"

LOL! we all almost died laughing. the typing doesn't do my bro's comedic timing justice.

my presentation yesterday went okay...everyone else KILLED it, but i had the misfortune of having the prof basically steal my thunder and touch on everything i was going to broach during my portion, BEFORE i did my bit. boooooooo!

i also did something really bad yesterday, and it's making me feel guilty about my prospects of ever being a successful librarian. i told some kid off. we have a few kids in the neighbourhood, who come in and use the computers EVERY SINGLE DAY. now, the library sets a limit of 1 hour computer use per card per day, but these kids jump from computer to computer, and they break all sorts of other rules. we have computers that are designated "no games" computers, but the kids are always on there, and then you have to tell them to turn off their crappy online games (not even the good ones!) and then they give you guff. we have this one dude, who is in grade 9-10 who is in the library, every single day, from open to close. so he's playing games on one of the computers that you're not supposed to, so i told him to turn it off, and pointed at the sign. and he KISSED HIS TEETH AT ME. now, that's basically the same as slapping me in the face (imo). it drives me f**king NUTS. so i told him that if he doesn't like the rules, he can go someplace else, and use their computers and game all he likes. then he told me to GET OFF HIS BALLS. and insinuated that i was a lesbian (in an unkind way). so i kinda snapped and hissed back, "why don't you go get a LIFE" not the most stellar or cutting of witty rejoinders, i know. but i'm feeling really guilty about it, because we are in an economically disenfranchised neighbourhood, and i dunno...i just feel bad. i'm also questioning my ability to be cool and not smack other, future kids, upside the head when they give me lip. yikes.
worst. librarian. ever.

today the house-family is having lunch with the roomie's friend from out of town, at my doppelganger's restaurant. very exciting!!! it's on u of t campus. dinner tonight is supposed to be roasted squash and mascarpone pasta...but i'm really not feeling like cooking lately. all i want to do is eat take out junk. so we'll see what happens. last night we went on a nightly walk, and i suddenly had the urge to stuff the world into my gut, so we went looking for snacks. we happened on an indian sweet shop, purely by accident, and discovered one of the loveliest sweets EVER. it's like a little pistachio and cardamom flavoured spongecake, soaked in syrup. absolutely delightful. they also had a pistachio flavoured, version of what can only be described as indian fudge, coloured a violent and aggressive and very much artificial kelly green. it was my number 2 favorite. you can only eat a few of those sweets at a time, as they're so rich and sweet and flavourful.

fin.

almost-hunk

"casino royale" was thoroughly entertaining, although after "the holiday", i think we could have seen director's cut footage of the christmas burning log-fake fireplace show and we would've been happy. daniel craig is a good looking guy, but (sorry sis) he doesn't make my current list of hunkdom. i don't find blond-haired dudes attractive. eva green is stunning, but she wore entirely too much makeup for a lot of the film. it was fast paced and rough around the edges, and a big contrast to the almost farcical, dandyish, brosnan portrayals of the past few years. i think it's a welcome improvement.

something funny happened the other night. we (the immediate house family: me, the boy, and the roomie) were sitting around watching the previews before "the holiday", and we were all laughing uproariously at some witty banter between me and the boy. the roomie, suffused with the congenial atmosphere of our camaraderie, exclaims, "i like you guys!" at the exact same instant, in the same breath, i exclaimed, "i like spiderman!". it was very revealing of our respective personalities. the same thing happened during "casino royale" last night. as bond deftly broke some poor guy's neck from behind, with a neat little snap, the roomie exclaimed, "that's horrible!" at the exact some moment that i yearningly exhaled, "i want to learn how to do that." haha!

my brother came over last night and hung out for a bit too. he usually comes over and mooches dinner off of me after his dodgeball games. it was a good crew...my new bfffffff is a card, and so is my brother, then the boy's friend stopped by briefly.

today is my long day. in honour or passover, i made matzoh ball soup. i took the chicken carcass from the other night, made a nice, simmered extensively, fragrant chicken stock. i strained this, and added in chopped: onion, garlic, carrot, celery, rutabaga, parsnip, celery root, parsley, thyme and dill. i made my special dilled-matzoh balls. and eaten together, they're going to be the ultimate restorative celebration of spring. i might also pack my new favorite sandwich: old cheddar on ace bakery foccaccia with thinly sliced white onion, toasted in the toaster oven. lots of fruit and stuff to snack on.

fin.

hip-deep in the ol' b.s.

i'm almost done my paper (i'm in the midst of writing page 8 of 10 as we speak). huzzah! i made so much headway yesterday morning that i allowed myself saturday night off. we watched a god-awful movie, which was about a million times worse than i had thought it was going to be (a holiday-themed, romance-based, middling trifle). it was beyond terrible. it's by the same director as "what women want" and "something's got to give", and i guess what the director thinks "women" want is depictions of themselves as fluttery, emotional, wacky, zany, shallow wrecks. it was sexist, racist, poorly acted, and the dialog made me want to gouge my eyes out. it featured women being taken advantage of by ugly cads, and then kind of structured it so that it was the women's fault the men cheated. laaaaaaaaaaaame.

it was also TWO HOURS LONG! who DOES THAT?!? tonight we have casino royale. so i have to finish my paper, abstract a 6 minute presentation out of it, and then d/l and print the articles i'm using for my online information paper on user assessment and i get to kick back to some debonair men, fast cars, death-defying stunts, and limpid-eyed women.

i also got into an argument (and almost made 50 bucks) on our friend who came over, who didn't believe me about the lamb's blood on the door for passover. i was like, dude! that's why it's called PASS OVER! so jesus doesn't take your first-born son! sheesh.

sunday morning family breakfast is soft-to-hard (depending on personal taste) boiled eggs on toast. with a beet-carrot-ginger-apple-cucumber juice. we're having my new bffffff over for dinner. she's vegetarian, so we're having: tofu and long bean stir fry in chili-black bean sauce on rice. and i usually make these pork-stuffed, deep-fried eggplant pockets, but i'm going to try replacing the pork with tofu mixed with garlic, ginger, shaoxing wine, sesame oil, soy, salt and sugar, stuffing that in the eggplant and see how it goes. we end up eating them dunked in sweet chili sauce, so whatever we do it ends up tasting ace, anyway.

fin.

what a deal!

i'd forgotten how insane chinese bbq is, deal-wise. for $4.00 you get two kinds of meat, a veg (broccoli, that surprisingly isn't overcooked despite being subjected to the rigors of a steam table), and rice, all soused in the char siu drippings. fantastic!

i finally started that paper last night. talking it out with the roomie worked. although i got really freaked when she said, "yes, but what's your angle on it? you gotta have an angle", and i TOTALLY didn't. i did some more digging around for sources and i think i got it now. it's still going to be a beast to write, as i'm not all that engaged by the material, but at least i have a point. that's always good!

tonight for dinner we're having a roasted chicken dinner. i've been craving a good sunday roast dinner for a while. it's chicken, rubbed with olive oil, salt and pepper, roasted at very high heat, stuffed with 40 cloves of peeled garlic. the garlic will then get pureed into the white wine pan sauce. i've got some cold cooked potatoes that i'm going to cube up, toss in some semolina, and then cook in duck fat until golden brown and crusty on the outside, steamy soft on the inside. i'm also making a cauliflower gratin with horseradish, cheddar and breadcrumbs, tossed in a little cream. and we're also having this with steamed green beans with lemon zest, olive oil, salt and pepper. no dessert!

fin.

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.