halloween nerds unite!

these are pictures from our neighbourhood walk last night. some places/houses really went all out! i LOVE people who go all out for halloween. one house had this giant spider that they controlled from the porch and half a skeletal body impaled on a spinning turntable. we want them to adopt us. halloween is > christmas, as fas as i'm concerned. it's like being kids again, and it's all for fun. christmas is a very phoney baloney holiday. it's stressful, lots of pressure, all about getting/buying STUFF under the auspices of "charity" and "giving", and then it's tied to depressing jesus ish all at the same time. no thank you. it's like fake togetherness and fake bonding because that's what you're supposed to do, as opposed to what you really want to do. halloween and thanksgiving trump it, x 10000000000 in my opinion. i like holidays where people and neighbours walk around, stand in the street and chat it up, etc. for some reason christmas just seems really inorganic to me.

so...we finished season 1 of battlestar. and there's a hole in our heart that can only be filled by season 2. which we don't have yet. eek! i've also started watching season 2 of this show called "top chef"...which i'm addicted to because i can relate to the challenges, and it's a (completely perverted) representation of what i used to do. so now my tv tally runs at this: buffy, battlestar, top chef, veronica mars, and bev hills 90210. it's packed!!! i'm also finding it EXCEEDINGLY difficult staying disciplined during reading week and actually doing work. all i want to do is bum around the house and make preserves and ride my bike.

tonight for dinner we're having that sweet potato-cheddar cheese gratin from monday...with oven-roasted brussel sprouts and oven-roasted asparagus. i made fudgy chocolate brownies for dessert last night as well. they're awesome, as was the curried jamaican pumpkin stew the boy made. it was fantastic...the only thing it could have used a little more of was heat from the habenero.

fin.

behold!

the spectre of marx!!! so the original plan was to do a karl marx pumpkin and a johnny cash one...but silly me, because i was captain last minute, i was left with the bottoms of the barrel, pumpkin-wise, from which to select my potential canvas. so yes, it has been revealed: i do have artistic tendencies, and my chosen medium is the humble gourd: the pumpkin. i have to say though, he looks pretty bad ass. we live on the bottom two floors of a house, and our entrance is at the back of the house, through an alley. if there was a chance that kids were actually going to come, then i probably would have staged some kind of performance piece, featuring the pumpkin all aglow and a recording of that stephen-hawking voice simulator reading from the communist manifesto or something. it was nice to get back into pumpkin carving...past years i've been so busy with restaurant stuff that i never had the time.

sooo...we totally bailed on the concert last night!!! i don't know what's wrong with us, but we really are the world's most reliable bailers. the good thing is, we surround ourselves with other bailers, so it's always okay. we also scrapped the original dinner plans in favour of trying a new fish'n'chips joint (new to us): duckworth's fish'n'chips. it still doesn't come close to beating harbord fish and chips in my fish and chips pantheon. duckworth's eating environment is much nicer (harbord is really only a summertime thing, when you can sit outside on the picnic tables), featuring a long row of red vinyl booths and roomy tables. the coleslaw was also much better: crispy, shredded, nice mix of vinegar tang and creamy mayo, with a good amount of celery salt and a touch of heat from dried mustard (the cole slaw at harbord is very much an afterthought...it's a little styrofoam container of coleslaw mulch...very very finely chopped). it was also nice that duckworth's had the option of gravy for your fries (gravy from powdered form, which to me, is perfectly acceptable in this kind of situation). however, the portions were much smaller than at harbord's. i had the haddock...the haddock was a thick brick, but the overall size was small. the batter was a thin sheath, and was crispy enough, although the real star was the fish, which came away in substantial flakes. at harbord, while the fish is thinner, the batter is shatteringly crisp, and the portion is larger. both serve fresh cut fries and packaged tartar sauce. overall it was a good, but not like harbord's greatness.

tonight's dinner is completely the boy's doing. i brought home a jamaican cookbook and he's been fixated on this curried pumpkin vegetable stew that he's going to be making for us tonight. it's got pumpkin, tomatoes, coconut milk, habenero pepper, and we're going to be eating it with the afghani flatbread that we buy down the street. afghani flatbread is a wholewheat bread, about 2.5 feet long, and lightly dimpled. it's real staff-of-life kind of stuff.

fin.

i've decided...

that chamillionaire is the best name of all time. the boy and i have also decided that should we ever tie the knot, we're changing out last name to chamillionaire, and we're exchanging grills instead of rings. my grill is obviously going to say "blood in, blood out" in diamonds. he's also going to get me an awesome japanese knife, and i'd probably get him a piano or something. hahaha! can you imagine dragging a piano to a wedding ceremony and then shoving it at your future spouse?

so i saw "marie antoinette" last night. it was...boring. it dragged and dragged. i can attribute this to a variety of reasons. a) i believe that all of sofia coppola's movies are a projection of just how over-hyped and fundamentally BORING she is as a person b) there were too many scenes of cake being consumed, and the frivolity of court. WE GET IT. we don't need it shoved down our throats. essentially that IS the movie...and i understand how that was the point, but still, it makes you feel like hte movie drags and drags. c) sofia coppola has a very detached "gaze" as a director, leading to a general tone of disaffected ennui in all her movies. they're such trifles, and i don't know if that's the point, but she fails to make these trifles engaging. you feel like you're several steps removed from what's passing before your eyes. she also recycles a lot of the same shot composition and tricks in each film. for example, she LOVES shooting someone (a girl) reclining on something (a chaise lounge, a bed) gazing off into the middle distance. she LOVES depicting girls frollicking in tall grass with the sunlight beaming directly into the camera. it's becoming cliched! and the pastiche was aggravating. more because it's completely DONE. done done done. that font she used for the title, the new wave music, the quick shot of the powder blue converse kicks amongst marie's other "period-correct" shoes...it's just done. boring. it doesn't feel like a current juxtaposition. it was just monumentally uncreative as far as pastiche goes. the film does look pretty for the most part, and she made a good choice in kirsten dunst, who does vacuous coquette very well. all around, it gets a resounding "meh" from me.
tonight i'm going to see this man to my right...madlib, as part of the stones throw tour. the lineup is jam packed! it's going to be at the phoenix, and i'm seriously hoping there's going to be enough room to dance in and amongst all the scraggly dudes who are going to be there. this show is going to be dude-fest to the max. i'm hoping the vibe is going to be amped up though to get me going. madlib is pretty hit or miss for me, i like that he's from the dilla school of very organic sounding, sample-based hip hop, but some of his stuff gets a little too noodley for me. i need hooks, what can i say.

for dinner i'm making a sweet potato and cheddar gratin, which we're going to eat alongside some pan roasted brussels sprouts (I LOVE BRUSSELS SPROUTS) and some roasted asparagus. that banana tart i made yesterday was the ill na na. total rudebwoy dessert. it tasted very grown up and sophisticated. i made a pate sucree, blind baked it, and filled it with sliced bananas, topped with a brown butter mixture that puffed up when baked, and created a slightly chewy, baked crust...similar in texture to a baked frangipane, but with a meringuey crust. here's a picture. we're probably going to eat a piece of that for dessert with some whipped cream.

fin

when the pigs try to get at cha...

drop it like it's hot. halloween was a blast! there were some ups and downs though, some crushing lows and dizzying highs. despite the urgings of my brother, we left the house at 11pm, with my repeated assurances that "people in toronto don't go out until late". when we showed up at the boat, there was a long line, that didn't seem to be moving at all. we waited for about 20 minutes, and heard the music coming from inside. it was all 50s rockabilly, doo-wop kind of stuff (girl groups, etc). we conferred and decided that while the kitsch factor might be able to carry us for about a half an hour or so, we really didn't feel like we could dance and bruck out all night to that ish, so we high-tailed it up to supermarket. where we waiting in ANOTHER long ginormous line in the bitter cold. the saving grace was my brother having queued up toto's "africa" on his cell phone to boost morale and get us all hype (hahaha, i know! toto? who knew?). then when we were the next people in line, doofus mcgraw (aka me) realizes i FORGOT MY I.D.! which lead to some tense moments, whispered strategizing, and some more toto to get things going. the bouncer let me in, and we danced the night away to rick ross, snoop dog, JT, and all sorts of dancey goodness. only bummer was that we didn't hear thriller, and some people were WAY sloppy. plus, i dislike when couples hog the dancefloor, or even worse, the stage, to make out. that's valuable real estate! move along!!! hanging out with my bro was a blast...he's probably the most charismatic person in the history of life. EVERYONE comes up to him, boys, girls...his appeal cuts across most subdivisions and categories. it's crazy.

tonight for dinner i'm making the farfalle caponata, that i described a few entries back, before oyster fest started. i'm also going to make a baked banana tart with whipped cream for dessert. we earned it! this morning i had brunch at kubo radio. the food there is decent, and it's a good price. the main reason i go is for the babycake cupcakes. i've done an informal poll of the best cupcakes in the city, and the babycakes are the reigning champs. however, they're $3.50 a pop. which is EXTREMELY exorbitant. but they are the tastiest...especially the red devil.

fin.

c'est l'halloween - HEY! - c'est l'halloween!

woohoo! tonight is going to be teh fun! (although i'm not hyping it up too much...i find nights tend to be best when you go into them without too many expectations). me and the boy are dressing up as bill s. preston, esquire and ted theodore logan, respectively (circa excellent adventure, not bogus journey). r is dressing up as MK olsen, my roomie is dressing up as one of the dancers from thriller, and my brother is dressing up as charlie chaplin. i'm happy because this marks one of the first times that my bro and i have ever gone out together socially, outside of our usual carousing at family vacations and such. we didn't get along so well when we were younger, and when we were older, we had different interests and were at different stages in our life. now everything is awesome because we're at the point where family is the be all and end all...and i have to say, my family kicks about 10 different kinds of ass. i genuinely enjoying hanging out with them, as people.

as you can see, bill s. preston is sporting a belly-baring shirt. i cut up a sweatshirt and then silk-screened it with "wyld stallyns" but my plan was to wear a tank top underneath. my roomie and the boy are vociferously nixing that plan, under the auspices of method-acting and staying true to the character. eep! i don't want to go out dancing with my jubbly belly all exposed for peeps to see. it's unseemly!

i'm glad i've avoided the whole girl-trap of being the "sexy ___" for halloween. it's an interesting situation. there is a certain subset of girls who love to use halloween as an excuse to tramp it up: "i'm a sexy french maid" "i'm a sexy cat" "i'm a sexy mouse" "i'm a sexy piece of toast", which is completely weird and bogus and bizarre to me. i have nothing against tramping it up. and i have nothing against using halloween in the bakhtinian "carnival" sense as a time of transgressive role-playing, but the ladies who do the overtly sexy thing don't really fall into either of those categories. i'm all about being who you are (insofar as you ever know who you are), and i'm also about hilarious and creative halloween costumes. the chicks who do the sexy thing in the way that i'm talking about, exist in this hinterland of using halloween as an excuse to just amp up their trampiness, which exists in a somewhat watered down form usually. like, just be a skankbot if that's what you're about...ALL THE TIME!

tonight for dinner we're having what i call an italian red-sauce meal. italian-american food. i'm making spaghetti and meatballs. the sauce is simmering in the slow cooker as we speak (the secret to a rich tomato sauce is TIME...and love, of course), and i'm going to make meatballs out of veal, ground beef, and pork and some bread soaked in milk, bound with a little egg, and then i'm going to simmer them in the sauce in the last half hour or so, throw in some basil leaves and top with a dusting of parm reggiano, and it's a very comforting thing to ingest when the weather is dour. with that, we're having what i call the "olive garden" salad: chopped romaine, croutons, tomatoes, mushrooms, red onion slives, black olives, in a simple vinaigrette. i *might* make a dessert if we have time, and if i do, it's going to be a chocolate caramel banana pie. which is a really toothsome, achingly sweet candy bar in pie form. it's very decadent and you're supposed to eat it in much smaller portions than i actually do serve/consume.

fin.

all is right in the world...

finally! our kitchen faucet was all bunged up and allowing us the teensiest trickle of water with which to conduct our daily lives. it was like that for 3 days, and with the way i cook, things were not looking pretty. we were about to start washing our dishes in the tub, which seemed a little ghetto, when the landlord came and fixed it all up. niceness! it was strange how we were completely held hostage by the littlest of things. it definitely tempers my dreams of home ownership.

tonight my brother is coming over to crash...and i'm just going to take it easy. finish silk-screening my costume, probably do a costume dry run with the boy...and prepare for the weekend fun to come. this weekend is pretty jam packed...and i have to remember to be disciplined enough to stay on top of my work in the midst of it all. no slacking!!!

dinner tonight is going to be cornmeal dusted, fried oyster po'boys, on a buttered toasted bun with remoulade. oysterfest 2006 went off swimmingly last night, although my rockerfellers were compromised by the citywide (canada wide?!?) spinach shortage due to that whole e. coli thing. quelle surprise, peeps. you spray your fields with untreated manure, you're going to get e. coli. sheesh. it's such a real world example of how effed up our food supply system is, AND how dependent we are on the states of california and florida for our food. not to mention guatemala. yeeks. we also brought fries and onion rings to dip into the remoulade. remoulade is probably one of my top 5 sauces. and i do make a particularly good one, if i do say so myself.

i think i'll just scarf a fruit smoothie for dessert.

fin.

change of dinner plans...

in a big way! the girl who lives upstairs just gave us a giant (10lb+) bag of PEI malpeques! her mom brought them back from the island for her and she didn't have the heart to tell her that she doesn't like 'em. so she gave them to us!!!!!!!!!

i don't even KNOW what to do with this decadent bounty! we're going to eat some raw on the half shell, with a squeeze of lemon and some hot sauce (i like mine straight up, personally, so i can taste the oyster, not the condiments). i think i'm going to make some rockefeller, and then maybe dip the rest in cornmeal and fry them and serve them with remoulade. ahhhhhhhh!!!! happiness!

take THAT, ogs deadline! yet another gentle reminder from the cosmic forces that life is a collection of these kinds of little wee moments of pleasure.

fin.

in the on-going history of me being a dummy galore...

i forgot that there's an EARLIER deadline for ogs applications. ahahaha *wan smile* i console myself with the knowledge that i probably wouldn't have gotten it anyway, which is very very very small consolation. i'm also blaming the program for sending out the email reminder 5 days before the application is supposed to be in. ah well, live and learn. this is what lines of credits are for, n'est pas?

ouch. i still feel like a colossal dummy though. it smarts, i tells ya. the good news is...today is my last class before the sweet sweet succour of reading week. in which i have to prepare a presentation and write a paper. in which i forsee myself procrastinating on the aforementioned until the very last possible moment.

also...the boy and i are staring down the barrel at five years together. eep!!! we're looking at places to have our celebratory meal (we commemorate all events with meals). i'm kind of torn between sushi kaji or oyster boy. oyster bar is way more casual...but we really do love it there. there aren't that many restaurants in toronto that i really super want to try that are worth dropping a lot of coin at, that i can think of. i would consider going to perigee again, but otherwise...i'm racking my brain trying to think of places. it's kind of telling of how conservative our fine dining scene is, when the options of stand out "destination" restaurants is so limited. the good thing is, toronto makes up for it with loads of ethnic restaurants, and lots of great restos that serve quality food without busting the bank.


i'm not really into the idea of marriage, which is unfortunate, as i've found the IDEAL image for our wedding invitation. i kind of want to do a half-assed un-wedding just to send out the invite. check it out! i also have the perfect wording: "___ and ___ invite you to join them beyond the thunderdome, as they celebrate their strange relations on ____" how hilarious would that be? it also kinda sorta looks like us too. the only way i could do a ceremony with a straight face, is if i made sure that it was completely for jokes. we're talking smoke machines, lasers, balls of fire erupting at random...i'm basically taking my cue from a motley crue show. the problem is...it's really hard for me to get behind the whole privileging heteronormativity thing. and of being MARRIED. it's like i can already feel the shackles holding me down. plus, i answer to no man!!!


tonight for dinner we're having a caponato pasta with farfalle. i skin and cut two eggplants into a chunky large dice. i heat up a substantial amount of olive oil in a pan, and fry the eggplant until it's browned all over. i set aside the eggplant to drain on some paper towel...then i drain off any extra oil, leaving about 1 T. in the pan, which i then sautee some onion and garlic in. meanwhile, i've got a large pot of water on to boil, for the pasta. i've also got two pints of grape tomatoes roasting in the oven. i roast them rather than cook them in the sauce, because i want the sauce to taste fresh (ie. not long-simmered), but i also want to break down the tomatoes and let them get all jammy. when the tomatoes are ready, i add them to the onion mixture, throw in the eggplant, mix it all together, and add some chopped parsley, capers, and rough-chopped black olives. mix the cooked pasta into the sauce, with some pasta cooking water to lube it up, and season with salt and pepper. and that's it! in about a half hour's worth of work, i have a healthy dinner on the table.

i'm always surprised when people think they don't have time to cook. all it takes is a little organization and discipline, and you can be eating fresh, healthy, wonderful food EVERYDAY!

fin.

new gwen stefani single = bogus

i have the same kind of strange and morbid fixation with gwen stefani that i have with avril lavigne. i just d/l her new single...the beats are semi-okay, but as usual, she's doing her talk-singing thing with the most vapid lyrics known to humanity: "they try to bite our style, they try to steal our looks" are you SERIOUS? first of all, should someone who colonized a crew of japanese girls to follow her around and NOT SPEAK EVER really be talking about style-biting? secondly, are you in junior high?!?

nelly furtado's maneater is also completely puketastic. ESPECIALLY when compared to the relative brilliance of hall and oates' maneater. which is everything nelly's isn't. plus the video is so low budge it's hurtin on the eyes.

okay, now that the pop culture portion of today is done...on to dinner ish. tonight for dinner we're having french onion soup. i caramelized onions for about 1 hour, on very low heat, in a not-insignificant quantity of butter, then i deglaze the pan with whatever booze i happened to have on hand...this time it was a quite unorthodox addition of bourbon. add some thyme sprigs, season them with salt and pepper and add water (i haven't made any chicken stock in a while) and let it simmer. pour it into my french onion soup crocks (garage sale finds, every one) top with a slice of ace bakery sourdough and some gruyere cheese and throw it in a very hot oven. with this, we are having croque monsieurs, ham and gruyere sandwiches, buttered and toasted in the panini machine. and again with the no dessert.

fin.

QUOI?!?!?

another day, another round of butting my head up against this confounded program! i'm feeling comforted in knowing that my friend from school had a similar revelation today, to the one i had a few weeks back, when i realized that i was too much of a post-structuralist for library and information sciences as it is currently articulated at the U of T. she had a simliar realization today.

anyway, today in class, i was criticizing why even "new" research on user-oriented information systems still insist on imposing a series of structures and models, on what are highly cultural contingent processes and relationships. the prof responded along the lines of: "cut us some slack! we have a history of a specific service and relationship to information that we are beholden to, and foucauldean analysis has only entered into the dialogue in the last ten years" YES. YOU HEARD HER. LAST TEN YEARS. foucault has been DEAD for longer than that !!!!!! it's EMBARASSING that a graduate program related to the humanities is making this admission. the thing i don't get is, yes yes, the library is a social science, the MISt is a professional program...but COME ON. there's people PUBLISHING and RESEARCHING and RECEIVING GRANTS for this stuff. and FOR WHAT?!? THE LIBRARY IS A CULTURAL INSTITUTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it's the SITE for the procurement and dialogic engagement of culture!!!!!!! ai-ya.

i feel like the only way to bring this discussion to the table and feel satisfied with information studies, or to make it go where i want to go, and to explore what i want to explore and find valuable about the field, is to do my phd. but! the irony is...THERE'S NO WAY I'LL GET INTO A PHD PROGRAM WITH THE MARKS THEY'VE BEEN GIVING ME FOR THINKING/WRITING ABOUT THIS STUFF IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!! dear academia: why do you persist in being the thorn in my side? why can't you just submit to me, like just another luscious bowl of custard. whyfor?

phew...i'm able to safely put to rest this rant. only, i'm sure, to be revisited the next time i come up against the program and u of t acting like a bunch of dorkus malorkuseseses. tonight was my first round on the phone banks. QUELLE SURPRISE! i'm actually very good at it! i'm a natural! i think it was a valuable lesson for me in civic-based praxis. i found i rather enjoyed it. and it's making me want to run for city councillor.

i was put on the list with all the local 416 members on it, and it also helped me to be calling my fellow "brothers and sisters" in the union. i think the whole idea of talking to strangers fits into my schema way better than bugging people i know. the fact that i'm backing a good candidate helps too. all the positivity aside, people can be SO SELFISH! if i hear anymore boohooing about how the st. clair dedicated streetcar line represents the coming of the apocalypse, and how people are basing their voting decisions based PURELY on that ONE issue (which has already been decided, you potsers!) i'm going to scream. the good thing is though, i get to engage in spirited debates with randoms on the phone about toronto issues. it's so much fun! i love it!!!! plus the phone is the best insulator of my latent insolence when presented with narrow-minded people. it's the best of all possible worlds!

finally, the giant keloid scar that has taken up residence on my right foot is not dealing well with its first winter experience. when your scar resembles the many layers of an onion, it's not a good sign. i've also been neglecting it on the vitamin e oil front as of late.

fin.

"what's wrong with happyjack?"

yet another quality line, courtesy of david silver. well ladies and gentlemen, it looks like david silver might have successfully kicked his crystal meth habit...which is too bad, i'll miss young silver tearing donna martin a new asshole, and her perpetual look of wounded befuddlement. ah well, such is life.

today is my first official day of phone bank work. no more calling in sick, no more shirking my civic duty, no more fearing the reaper (actually, i still TOTALLY fear the reaper). it's also my first time headed up to the st. clair and dufferin area. it will also be the first time that i won't be able to watch veronica mars, season 3 in real time, as i fear i'll be getting home way late. will the injustices ever cease?

in other news, i think i may be transitioning into a narcoleptic. freaky! i'm basing this on the past two days, when it was very difficult for me to wake up. i'm also basing this on my latent hypochrondriac tendencies, where i tend to blow potential symptoms out of proportion (ie. i spent a good chunk of last year fretting that i was becoming diabetic).

tonight for dinner is vegan chili, made with tvp instead of ground beef. this lady i work with at the library seemed fairly convinced that tvp was "bad" for you, but when she went searching for the source information, she just found some sketchy website that appeared to claim that everything under the sun was bad for you. so, i'm going to continue to eat tvp. to make my chili, i saute onions, celery, carrot, chopped chili peppers and garlic, chopped fine. add in my cumin, coriander, ancho powder, chili powder, and mexican oregano, saute. add a can of tomato sauce (plain, cheap tomato sauce), a can of beef (whatever the boy has on hand), my tvp, and chuck it in the slowcooker. add my TOP SECRET HIGHLY CLASSIFIED SPECIAL INGREDIENT FOR CHILI BIGGING UP, and let it simmer all day. then i add a can of kidney beans at the end, season with salt and pepper, and eat it with an avocado-lime salsa, sour cream, and chopped scallions. no dessert tonight! i've been pigging out like mad lately.

fin

p.s. my top secret ingredient is a little bit of cocoa powder. it adds a warm, round, deep backnote to the chili.

weekend roundup

i boo this real world, non-weekend business, heartily. friday night the party was good, but not great...although everyone seemed to have a really good time, and we got lots of people out, i guess i was over-tired and just wanted everything to be over. promoting is just very stressful and ultimately, i think i'm just too old to be doing all this...especially when my co-promoter is in scotland for the year, and i'm left working with his flunkies, who quite frankly, suck...it's basically i have to do 90% of the work on my own, and then babysit the fragile, seratonin-deprived, hung-over psyches of the people i'm working with. that's too much work!

saturday we rolled around on the couch all day, then went out to dinner with some great friends. we ate at el sol, this gem of a mexican restaurant on the east side, at danforth and coxwell. the only downside used to be that the service was painfully slow...but things are so much better now! and the food is amazing. i always have the tacos dorados with chorizo. the chorizo is extra crumbly and mildly spicy, the corn tortillas are freshly fried, and the refried beans and rice are amazing. i love it there. then i made a brief appearance at this dubstep show. dubstep is very hit or miss for me...the atmospherics imply a higher bpm than the actual breaks and bass would indicate. i find it very difficult to get into a groove and dance to it...which is a shame, cuz the bass is so sick! some of the stuff they played while i was there had some amen-y early-hardcore ish fills that were awesome, but if you're going to do that...then it's basically following the path to jungle all over again. basically, if they gave me 20 more bpm, it would be righteous.

sunday i worked, then we started watching "battlestar galactica" !!!!!!!!! holy crap! best show ever!!!!!!! it's like terminator 2 but longer...and it deals with all these moral/ethical issues. frackin' A! i was feeling kind of beaten up from the weekend, so i cancelled my movie plans for the evening, and stayed in and marathoned that. best call, ever. last night i made that macaroni and cheese with all the cheese odds and ends. it was quite tasty...although i should have extracted more of the liquid from the spinach after sauteeing, before adding to the pasta mixture.

i think tonight is going to be leftovers night. i'm working rather late at this library branch i'm none to fond of. other than that...i'm counting down the days until reading week starts!!!

fin.

tonight is the night!!!

after much planning, money, and anticipation, my party is tonight! i'll hopefully be able to post some pics tomorrow if i remember to take any in the midst of brucking out all night 'pon the dancefloor.

i almost want it to be this time tomorrow so that it's OVER...it seems strange i know...but the dj has been kind of acting strangely, my promotion partner is m.i.a. because he's too much of a party junkie, so i just want the relief of not having to stress and worry about it anymore. although i'm sure i'll feel differently tonight when i'm screaming my head off and surrounded by my friends and all.

i also got into a huge argument with a friend/former bf who has weird social issues. it's one of those situations where they like to belittle you and verbally put you down, especially when another mutual friend is around that they can put a show on for...and then try to play it off like they were "just kidding" because they've known you so long, so for some reason, that makes it okay. even if you've repeatedly said it isn't okay. i just find it way immature, and i don't have time in my life for that kind of crap, and quite frankly, i don't let anyone talk to me like that, thankyouverymuch.

last night we watched dave chappelle's stand up dvd called: "for what it's worth". i'm one of those people who doesn't find the chappelle showconsistently funny, but this was hilarious...it was just what i needed. however, we followed that up with what is possibly the most harrowing episode of buffy the vampire slayer ever, "the body". for someone who has issues dealing with their own mortality, and for a house that has had entirely too much mortality stuff thrust upon us as of late, it wasn't the best choice. we were all too scared and unsettled to go to bed last night! however, it does highlight why joss whedon is probably the genius of all television geniuses. it was brilliant...i've rarely have a tv episode affect me that way.

today i have to do a crapload of running around and stuff, and i'm working from 2:30-6:00pm. so if i get home with any gusto...i'm planning on making macaroni and cheese with sauteed spinach and mushrooms thrown in. i need to use up all these cheese odds and ends in the fridge (i hope all the flavours mingle well)...but it'll predominately be cheddar. i find when making a bechamel with all cheddar as your mac'n'cheese sauce, that cheddar has a tendency to melt with a very slight graininess...so i like to smooth it out by adding a gruyere, or a fontina, which helps round out the texture and provide a buttery undernote. generally i make baked macaroni and cheeses with some kind of panko/crouton/toasted almond topping, but i think for this version, i'm going to leave it very loose (to adjust for how much liquid the mac can absorb, even after cooked, and how it can seize up so much as it cools), and toast the panko in some butter and garlic in a pan on the stove, topping each bowl with some of the breadcrumb mixture to add that crunch. maybe more chocolate pudding for dessert.

fin.

the biblioblogosphere? no thank you!

so the fact that there's even such a thing as a biblioblogosphere, is (to use an internet meme from our time) teh ghey. it's definitely NOT teh r0x0rz. i find it mildly embarassing that people find it a worthy enough phenomena to a) name it, and b) feel all chuffed because it shows how techno-"savvy" library folk are. it's borderline painful for me. basically, the equivalent of watching your parents dance to 2 live crew (actually, that would be about 10 different kinds of awesome)...okay, it's more like when you're in grade 8, and you're walking with your dad in bi-way, and there's a rack of discounted new kids on the block t-shirts, and your dad points them out to you and says all loud like, when there are potential schoolmates within earshot: "hey! don't you love that band?" when you totally grew out of nkotb ten bazillion years ago. that's the biblioblogosphere.

look, i have no problems with people wanting to talk shop. but there's something about the idea of library people and "information specialists" nattering away in blogs that for some reason rubs me the wrong way. i suspect because they all kind of take themselves too seriously...and aren't funny. being unfunny is basically the cardinal sin with me...ESPECIALLY being unfunny in academia. it's like people who pride themselves on being dorks, but aren't dorks in the endearing, quirky way, but are TRUE dorks (the unredeemable, non self-aware kind). ie. that couple dave and lori from last season of amazing race (those who know, know). i think i kind of resent the implication that i want to talk to you, just because we're in the same field. it's like myspace. it reduces people to the sum of their interests...and makes people think they have something great and special that's worth sharing with the world at large.

i for one have ABSOLUTELY NO ILLUSIONS about that. i don't KID myself that i have anything worth sharing that's vaguely interesting to anyone but my 3 friends and assorted family. i've successfully blocked out the fact that this might be read by randoms. no surprise here: i don't LIKE randoms. i basically have a lot of pathos for complete strangers, and people who've succesfully navigated my intense screening process to be my friends...but with people i kinda sorta know but not really...i have no sympathy/time. thems the breaks. i'm basically like veronica mars. but a way less hot version. like, way.

my roomie has had a rough couple of days...so tonight we're going to loaf it up. i'm hopefully going to be done my last assignment of hell week...and then it's a weekend of slackery and crackery. yayayayayay! tonight for dinnie we're having a spinach, ricotta, and roasted butternut squash quiche, in a whole wheat crust. and my boy is being lovely and making us chocolate pudding...and we're going to rent a movie and veg out. ahhh bliss. chocolate pudding and brainless (probably teenage) movie entertainment? sign me up!

in other news...my friend got me this amazing cd of karl lagerfeld's favorite tunes. it's called "les musiques que l'aime". we actually have pretty divergent tastes...but the fact that my alter ego made a mix cd is beyond hilariousness.

one more day til party time!! woop!

fin.

2.0 fast 2.0 furious - the discourse of library 2.0

Walt Crawford’s piece does not make any claim to offer a concrete, authoritative synopsis, or to take a definitive position on one side or another of the on-going Library 2.0 discussion. What Crawford proffers instead, is a balanced dialogic overview of the various viewpoints and criticisms proliferating in the bibilioblogosphere, at conferences and in publications, coalescing around Library 2.0 as the sole crux around which the future of library services revolves. If one can synthesize any central argument from Crawford’s piece, it is that it advocates for a critical engagement with the discourses that make up “Library 2.0” and asks the reader to detach the discourse from the material attributes of Library 2.0 as an operating paradigm. By distinguishing between the talk about Library 2.0, and its practice, Crawford effectively pricks a hole in the hyperbolic grandstanding of the most vocal and visible proponents of “Library 2.0”, and calls for a considered, qualified, textual analysis of the underlying socio-economic imperatives, assumptions, and self-serving discursive constructions that disparage current iterations of libraries put forth by “Library 2.0” stalwarts.

people are so crazy!

first of all, if i ever met donna martin in real life, i'd punch her in the face. she acts like a child! it's so bizarre how they infantilize her on this show! david silver broke up with her because she hasn't had sex with him in over two years together, and i'm worried that it makes me anti-feminist that i'm on david's side. she barely even kisses him! on the christmas episode, there was also all this strange mouth-kissing going on between david and kelly, and then dylan and brenda and dylan and kelly and then dylan and donna.

in other news, i'm sure you've all heard that madonna is adopting a little black kid from africa. how is collecting children from developing worlds suddenly a thing now for celebrities?!? it's so wack! and then there are people who are making concerted efforts to block the adoption. who has that kind of time on their hands?!? madonna is soooooo boring. she's probably the most over-rated "transgressive" celebrity in the history of forever. hang it up, sister. it's just awkward.

regular readers of my blog may be confused by the post to follow this one. i have to post my conclusion for this paper i wrote for a class on library 2.0. i came up with THE BEST name for my paper though: 2.0 fast, 2.o furious. hahahaha! there are no ends to how funny i find myself.
finally made contact with the dj...he's coming into town tonight. usually the talent stays with me, but this guy wants to stay with this former acquaintance of mine who's completely unreliable, a pathological liar, and is a true "joker of the scene" (the tdot jungle scene that is). i was a little offended, but then i figured, if mister dj is that poor a judge of character then, by all means, go to it. one less thing for me to have to worry about, having a houseguest and all and worrying whether they're okay and whatnot. as long as he shows up to play...that's all i'm worried about.

veggie shepherd's pie for dinnie again tonight. it turned out teh awesome! except, i covered the top with foil to keep it from overbrowning, and most of the cheese came off with it :(
i think i'm going to treat myself to a nanaimo bar from daniel et daniel as well. things are going well...i just started the paper i'm writing today, but it should definitely be done by class, and if not, i have until 5pm today to email it into the prof. you know what takes the longest? writing out your works cited. it's such a bummer, just when you think you're done, it's like an extra half hour or 45 minutes sorting all that shiz out.

last nights episode of veronica mars was so good, i faked vomited and screamed into a pillow (twice) out of happiness and excitement. and tonight, top chef starts!!!!!!!! yayayayay! best shows ever! according to my brother "heroes" is an awesome show too...but i don't have time for anything else right now. top chef and ronnie is all i need.

fin.

one midterm done!

three papers to go! i'm feeling pumped! although a few things are bringing me down. they are:

a) my bestest library work buddy got another placement elsewhere, which means i'll have no one to goof off and pretend to work with anymore
b) i think i managed a B at best, and a FFFFFFF at worst on the midterm. i don't preform well under the gun, unless it comes to feats of supernatural endurance, and physical strength. ie. if there isn't any adrenaline involved, i crap out, muy pronto.
c) i still have three assignments to write
d) my headliner for the show on friday for some reason refuses to return my emails

things on the plus side:

a) i had a fantastic breakfast this morning of smoked salmon on a cream cheese slathered whole wheat bagel.
b) my work was understanding about me skipping out on my shift today to get to work on my school stuff
c) veronica mars is on tonight!
d) this weekend is shaping up to be hella fun and it'll be nice to be footloose after all this tension and stress

tonight i'm going to make a veggie shepherd's pie for dinner, featuring tvp in place of ground beef, because i'm feeling uppity like that. i saute up onions, garlic, celery and carrot chopped fine, sweat 'em down, then add my tvp and some boiling water to lube everything up. then i add some quartered mushrooms (for the beefy umami flayva), and some larger dice of random root vegetables (sweet potato, celery root) some peas, and some thyme. throw it in a casserole dish, and blanket the top with a thick, snowy layer of mashed yukon gold potatoes, and some cheddar cheese. throw it in the oven...and it comes out all melty and layered and tummy-filling. i love cold-weather food!!!

fin.

since i'll probably be cramming tomorrow morning

or making last minute, hasty, and inadvisable edits to my paper...i'm engaging in some premature procrastination induced posting.

my roomies have been very nice and let me off the hook for making dinner until everything calms down for me. actually, to be honest, it's more like they made me let myself off the hook. i feel really guilty about making everyone pay extra money for takeout during the week, when we've already pitched in for groceries, and i feel even more ocd-instigated guilt for not slavishly adhering to my pre-determined, carved-in-stone list. it sucks being a slave to lists and idiosyncratic systems.

tonight we grabbed hakka chinese food from "danforth dragon" around the corner. hakka food is indian-influenced chinese food. it was quite tasty. we kept it simple with a chow mein stirfry, and this caramelized chili beef which was standout. i came home from work this morning feeling very stressed out..i think sitting in front of the computer for long periods of time staring at the screen really messes with my head. my eyes were googly and i had a dull headache. my roomie came up with this relaxation technique that seemed to work. she dipped two cotton pads in witch hazel and threw them in the fridge. then we lay down, put them over our eyes, and "concentrated on our breathing" for 20 minutes. it definitely made me feel a thousand times better when i came out of it.

today's episode of beverly hills was a flashback one. david is at his wit's end with donna because she won't give it up to him. i'm kind of on david's side and i'm worried that it's means i'm not a feminist. she barely kisses him though!!! they're like brother and sister! it's gross!!! it was a christmas episode so OF COURSE i started crying when dylan gets a christmas tree for his newfound little sister. and then we happened to catch the video for johnny cash's "hurt" which basically reduced everyone in the house to tears. apparently we're all in an emotionally heightened state right now. that, and that video could squeeze tears from the most cold-hearted bastard out there (aka stephen harper or heather mills mccartney)

having to write an exam is totally giving me the wigouts. firstly because i haven't written an exam since grade 11 bio, and secondly because everyone goes all crazy when exams come around! this exam is for intro to bibliographic control. the whole course thus far is based around a thick tome that details various rules for every conceivable situation a cataloguer might be faced with. the exam deals with two chapters of the text, and we get to bring the text in with us. so basically...i'm worried because i don't really get what the stress is. we're being given the format...you basically just have to chug your way throught the rules. don't get me wrong, there's still a chance i'm going to go down in a blaze of glory, like the young gun i am, but it seems fairly straightforward...no trickery involved. we also got the layout for the exam in advance. all will be revealed tomorrow. maybe my ill-advised trust in my abilities to decipher the intricacies of the Anglo American Cataloguing Rules will be my undoing. AACR2= moriarty. and i'm picard. in one of those awesome ST:TNG episodes involving heavy use of the holodeck. god bless the holodeck.

or was it data who was sherlock holmes?

fin.

stressball

that's me! i gotta finish a paper and study for my midterm today, and i'm working 3.5 hours at some library branch. i *should* be okay...we'll see. then tomorrow night i have to write another paper. and repeat again on wednesday. then i'll be a free woman (somewhat), except i'll then be preoccupied with stressing about this party. it's too hard doing the promoting thing when chris isn't around. i don't know if i'm going to do it again, but there's another opportunity in december to bring this amazing dude paradox, who does a live p.a. that's the best show ever. however, he costs a LOT of money.

tonight for dinner is a sauteed kale and ricotta quiche with a side salad with sesame soy vinaigrette. the veggie pot pie last night was very nice, except for some weird reason, a lot of the bechamel got soaked up by the veggies, so it wasn't quite as saucy as i would have liked.

the people who rent upstairs made this big stink that we should turn on the heat and now my apartment is so dry...it's like a freakin' desert in here. i got a nosebleed in the middle of the night last week! they're kind of energy-wasting babies up there. the first hot day (or cold one) they phone down and start crying and complaining about how we need the a/c or the heat on. and they're the kind of people who run a whole load of laundry with two pillowcases and a pair of socks. waste-cases!

fin.

some party girl i am

so last night all my best-laid plans turned into bail-fest 2010. my roomies both flaked out on me - the boy because he was feeling under the weather and is already deeply sceptical about baltimore bass, and m because she was at a birth the night before and got about 3 hours sleep. it's really hard, when you love the people you live with, to get motivated to leave the warm beacon of your couch. when it's late, it's cold outside, the night's events are the great unknown, you already have a predisposition to be a homebody, and you have already have all the company you need within a 2 foot radius of you. the family we've carved out for ourselves here on the danforth is definitely a double-edged sword.

i felt bad because i flaked out on r and her crew, some of who are from hamilton, and i've never met before, but have heard alot about. i also flaked out from my school-chum s, which was a double bummer, because a) i haven't had a chance to do out-of-school socializing with school peeps yet, and b) because i talked up the night to her and now feel vaguely responsible if it's a bust. eek! i'm a bad friend! but when m and i started bailing, i felt guilty for going out when i have all this stuff due next week. plus, i justified it by saying that my party is this friday, and i'm going to get right crunked at that. and i have a whole year of partying to do...and this week coming up is particularly heinous for school ish. i just wish i had more time! my friend from canoe m called me yesterday, and i realized i haven't seen/hung with any of my canoe friends since i left in late july. gah! you get so caught up in your day to day and your regular circle that it's really hard to nurture new, long-lasting friendships the older you get, because there's so many things competing for your time, that weren't there in say, high school or university, when you could really spend hours with people hashing it out, and building strong foundations. booo.

so, we ended up staying in and watching "party girl" which h lent to me. it's awesome! it's really funny and individual and quirky and cute. it doesn't fit any one genre, and it feels like my life story: hard living party promoter girl starts working in the library by chance, then ends up deciding to go to grad school to get her MIS degree. whoa. looking up "party girl" on google images results in a LOT of NSFW ish. beware! people have VERY divergent ideas on what constitutes a party.

i went off my rocker in the food department last night. my beloved weekly meal plan is getting sorely neglected. i ended up at sushi delight, where i indulged in the "special box" which is the best deal i've ever come across in toronto, for boxed sets. for $10.99 you get: 6 pieces of california roll, 3 pieces of salmon sashimi, miso soup, a drink of your choosing (non alcoholic), ice cream, and a bento box with shrimp and veggie tempura, salad, rice, black cod fish or bbq beef ribs and edamame. they also sent out some steamed mussels on the house, which was a lovely gesture. THEN i came home and ate a slice of pizza and some chips and dip. my gut is suffering.

today i'm back on track with a vengeance. we're having root vegetable pot pie. i sauted some onions, garlic, finely chopped celery and carrot, then did a chunkier large dice of celery root, sweet potato, turnip, some yukon gold potato, and cremini mushrooms in quarters. mixed those in...made a simple roux, added milk, and salt and pepper, chopped parsley and thyme, and mixed it all together. threw it into a baking dish, and i'm going to top it with some frozen peas and a whole wheat pie crust i made, and throw it in the oven tonight. mmmmmmm.

the more i think about this baltimore urban appropriation thing...the more it gets me wondering. is diplo the ry cooder of urban youth culture? would people like baile funk if the ghettos of brazil hadn't already been presented to us in a fetishized way in "city of god"? if people could understand what the singers were saying? probably not all that original...although i don't know if anyone has researched diplo yet. maybe i can milk a phd out of this!

on another note: dane cook is enormously, gigantically unfunny. why do i know this guy's name? how is this guy famous? he blows!

fin.