yarrrr

regardez-la! my first completed knitting project. technically, i did 2 other prototype versions, but this is the only one i finished...i stopped the other two because they weren't perfect, and i tend to be from the "it's not worth doing if it's not worth doing right" camp (except in school,where i'm from the "it's perfectly acceptable to trade peace of mind for coasting on a minuses" camp). i credit my roomie for getting me back to knitting. when i used to try doing it before, i'd usually find it too laborious and slow-going and give up. having someone else around who knits makes it a pleasurable, social activity, AND it gives me something to do when i'm otherwise not doing anything (although in my universe, "not doing anything" means that i'm only doing ONE thing, instead of five, at a time). i can do this while i'm watching tv, which is nice. so i started up again when the roomie had a month off in december for her break. it's for my niece! i had to learn as i went along, it's a little ambitious doing a hat, on double pointed needles, with a contrasting colour pattern, but i'm nothing if not ambitious.

when my doppelganger was over the other week, she wanted to know why i don't drink, so i explained it to her, and then her boyfriend asked me what i do as a stress reliever, whereupon the boy answered on my behalf: "work MORE" it's kind of true. i don't really experience stress, per se. i get anxiety about stuff, rarely, but i tend to just buckle down and do it, and the anxiety i experience is more because i can't cross whatever it is off my giant list of things to do. but instead of stress, i just putter. take on even more little activities, futz around. i've been told that i have a hard time relaxing, but i don't think that's true. i just have a hard time doing what OTHER people do to relax (ie. lie prone on a couch/bed, slack-jawed at the tv). i'm actually a generally relaxed person. what stresses me out is when things distract me from achieving my goals. which is why i ABHOR it when people send me links via instant messaging, or when people interrupt me to go check out something on youtube, etc. i'm a very goal-oriented internet user, and i hate spam, or links, or the pressure to check that thing out RIGHT AT THAT VERY MOMENT, because it messes with the flow of what i'm doing. weird, eh?

for dinner tonight we're having chicken breasts, cut into 2" chunks, steamed with chinese sausage, and dried shitakes, ginger, and scallions in a sweet soy-sesame oil sauce. alongside some steamed rice, and stir-fried chinese eggplant and fresh shitakes in a chili-black-bean sauce. i love chinese sausage more than anything, but it's also carcinogen city from the amount of nitrites all up in there. it's wicked unfair. but i don't eat chinese sausage all that often, and realistically, all cured meats and sausages have 'em. BOGUS!

fin.

objects in the rear view mirror...

may appear closer than they are. perhaps one of meatloaf's better loquacious song titles? i think so. he certainly doesn't believe in song title brevity, that man, and he's pretty shameless about flagrant abuse of parentheses. note: "i will do anything for love (but i won't do that)".

now that i have some breathing room, i can comment on my weekend. a weekend where precious moments were stolen from me by that pernicious stats midterm. however! ameliorating the horridness of my grade on the midterm, i got an A+ on the paper (19.5 out of 20 to be exact), and the prof made a point of telling me that it was a really excellent paper (i disagree, it was good, but not great). everyone did really well, so i think they're trying to even out the overall class average, in light of the fact that almost everyone claims to have failed. some of my fellow students put my paltry attempts at studying to shame: people said they spent FIFTY hours preparing. i was proud of myself for spending 15! no wonder i failed!

i had a great time on the weekend. it included plenty of face time with my increasingly willful niece and perpetually jolly nephew. look at that outfit! it's a little grunge, a little classic rock. it also included a spirited rendition of the inception of the fourth amendment in the us constitution by my ever-charismatic brother, culminating in the following inscription on the crap-cake i so cravenly hungered for.

i've decided that my new guilty pleasure is the nelly furtado song, "say it right". because it's totally awesome eighties. timbaland did a f**king awesome job on the production, and especially on the processing on nelly's vocal. it's pure new wave-pop madness. i love it! i told the boy that it would make an absolutely PERFECT darkside sample. and he's all like, "you think?" and i said yes! that vocal is straight out of 93 jungle darkside. and he's all like, "but i can just put some reverb on a vocal, and make a new one." me: "but you're no timbaland" him: *look of withering disdain*

we had a buddy over last night to play some tunes with the boy, and the buddy is a fan of pranks. i told him in NO UNCERTAIN terms that i ABHOR pranks. so he replies: "even scary ones? like if i jump out at you and scare you and you get that adrenaline rush? don't you like the adrenaline rush?" me: "i will take that adrenaline and BEAT YOU with it" him: "oooookay. no pranks"

here is some of the food we got at my grandpa's birthday banquet. this year was a little odd, because things came out of the usual sequence. we were all extremely gladdened by the conspicuous absence of the sea cucumber "vegetarian" dish that usually makes an appearance at these things. the first dish is a favorite...it's like crab thermidor. minced up crab and veggies in a lightly curry-spiced sauce, topped with breadcrumbs and baked in the shell. there was also braised dried scallops with sauteed spinach, and stir-fried garlic lobster. the rest of the dishes i forgot to take pictures of, because i was too busy yamming.

this banquet also featured the Tremendously Auspicious Meeting of my new relative Kingsley. he's actually showed up at a few of these things. my grandma holds these banquets on a fairly regular basis...usually around 70-100 people, and we know the routine, we have a regular table we sit at, and regular table-mates, etc. so the past few times, we've noticed this new dude sitting at the table adjacent to ours. after much speculation (growing increasingly ludicrous with each subsequent pass around the siblings), i finally outright asked who he is. he's my grandma's #3 brother's grandson. i don't know what that makes him to us, but he's a pretty good sport. witness the picture. that's my brother to the left of my grandma. she and my grandpa always dust off their circa 1970 finery for these functions. it's kind of cute.

for dinner tonight we're having salmon fillets, seared skin side down to crisp it. then brushed with mustard, and topped with panko that's been mixed with some microplaned ginger, drizzled with olive oil, and then baked in the oven so the panko crisps up. i'm serving this with green beans, blanched, then tossed with some sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds, and sweet potato oven fries served with chili mayo. my roomie brought back some mint chocolate chip ice cream as a post-exam treat for me, so we'll probably have a small scoop of that.

fin.

bizzomb

well...i officially for the first time TANKED an exam in my semi-illustrious academic career ever (and allow me to say that this range goes back all the way to kindergarten, and covers almost 8 years of post secondary education). eek.

i tried, i really did. i studied long and hard, and didn't watch the oscars and didn't do anything fun, and was basically a wet blanket the whole weekend cuz i was mildly stressing about it, and cranked out largetime at the boy. so i can't say that i didn't try, and i'm pretty okay with how i did. the exam was ridiculous. we had to write out 20 randomly assigned definitions from a list of 74 statistical terms. now, that's all fine and good if the the definitions were a line or two long. but they're not...they're about 500 words each. and for full marks on each question you had to prove that you could contextualize the term and had read a minimum of 2 (!!!) additional sources. for 74 TERMS. of which you are going to be tested on 20. re-donkulous!

i have fun pictures to post from the weekend when i get home...in other news: my family has put the wheels in motion to RENT A COTTAGE FOR A WEEK this summer!!!!!!! oh what fun!!!! i'm trying to make sure that i get maximum cottage time this summer...which will basically mean living like a pauper the rest of the time, but well worth it in terms of peace of mind and r&r. and let's be realistic, for me, taking time off this summer means working 35 hours a week and probably taking a summer course...but compared to 70 hour work weeks! it's like 35 hours IS a part time job. ha!

i came back from visiting with the family with some kind of minor sickness, and feeling rotten from all the food we ate. it's bad...too many msgs and such...the food is tasty but sometimes is was quantity over quality. it didn't help that i had an epic craving for crap cake (ie. cheap, grocery store cake with cheap frosting...i LOVE IT!...you know, the slab cakes with the cheap frosting roses in garish colours? loaded with chemicals and stabilizers and the like). so for dinner tonight, it's healthy town all the way. we're having a cream of cauliflower soup with milk instead of cream...really simple. i sweat out a white mirepoix (onions, garlic, celery), add some cauliflower, enough water to just cover it, and let it cook. puree the mass in the blender, and add enough milk to just thin it out, season with salt and pepper. the resulting pablum is silky, rich, and the essence of cauliflower. we're having this with toasted fred's bakery potato bread and butter. and a giant ruby grapefruit for dessert. take THAT, colon!

fin.

r.i.p. sheriff don lamb

in a desperate bid to stave off flagging ratings and the rapidly declining interest of stalwart fans, the piss-poor, sensationalist writers at veronica mars decided to kill off neptune's resident bumbling sheriff, don lamb. r.i.p, don, you'll be missed...ask the wizard for some heart.

veronica mars is pissing me off...and yet, i cannot look away! how is this possible? i'm so trapped in the world, that even as they spiral off into ludicrousness and come up with plot twists that seem DESIGNED to piss off the faithful fan base they've built, i have to watch every week to see JUST HOW FAR DOWN they'll go. it's like watching a car wreck. now they're trying to set up parker and logan?!? so dumb!

sheriff lamb died getting hit in the head with a baseball bat, wielded by none other than a meth-crazed, heavily cosmetically altered, richard grieco himself. what a way to go! lamb's last words on the show were "i smell bread". i found this strange. the roomie explained that it's just a device to show that your neurons are misfiring and sending out wayward signals, like when you have a seizure and smell burnt toast. my question was: "yeah, but why is it always bread? and do indian people smell naan?" which elicited rounds of laughter, and proclamations that you can take the girl out of cultural studies and into library studies, but you can't take the cultural studies out of the girl.

dinnie last night was deliciouso! so filling and tasty and healthy, minus the sour cream (i don't count avocado fat as fat). this is a picture of my recent ebay spoils. how lovely! this summer is all about muumuus, tent dresses, smocking on dresses, trapeze shapes, etc...basically i want to dress like a cross between peter pan, my adorable mum in her late 60s early 70s heyday, and a version of myself at five. i wish my mum had kept all her fab old clothes! i'll post a pic sometime soon...she was beyond hep.

today and tomorrow are being spent with the fam up in markham. FUN! we're celebrating my grandpa's birthday with a big ole banquet...i'll bring the camera to post pictures of all the various rare and exotic animals hong kong chinese people viciously slaughter for the smallest and most arcane parts. ha! tonight we're having dinner at saigon star...an awesome vietnamese place which is to your standard, run-of-the-mill pho joints as a home-grilled ribeye is to the kack at the keg. the standout dish is curry crab. which they serve with crisp baguettes for dipping the sauce, a nod to the french influence in vietnam. so many dishes that you don't find at most of the viet places downtown. i can't wait! i'm fasting all day in anticipation.

fin.

love and marriage

i finished reading dan savage's latest book, "the commitment" last night before bed. i devoured the thing. dan savage writes the weekly sex advice column that's syndicated in most of north america's alternative weeklies, in toronto, you can read it in NOW. for all that he pontificates and offers up sage, considered, and weighted advice on the myriad little depravities that make up the panoply of human sexual proclivities, he's actually a very "traditional" guy: in a mostly monogamous relationship with his partner of 10 years, they have an adopted son, he goes out to earn the money while his partner is a stay at home dad. this book is like a memoir, detailing the year or so when america was whipped into a pre-electiion polarizing froth over the gay-marriage issue, when dan and his partner debated back and forth whether they should take the plunge themselves. beyond that, it's also a bigger rumination on what it means to be married, committed, to build a family with someone, and how one relates to others. it was funny and poignant and fantastically well-written.

in less positive news: my mid-term is a DOOZY. i'm trying to break it down into manageable parts: intensively studying 18 definitions a day, cumulatively day by day. it's just so pointless when i know that i'm only going to be tested on a randomly selected 20 out of the 74. it's even MORE pointless when you factor in that statistical analysis is the ultimate entropic concatenation of bureaucratic noodling. i can sum it up: variables, coefficients, relationships, operationalization, blah blah blah. keeping the "distinct" terms straight in my head is a pain. compounded by the fact that i also have to do my prof's research somewhere in there.

tonight for dinner, i'm making some kind of huevos rancheros variation. i soaked some dried black beans which were subsequently drained, and are now on a low simmer on my stove. i'm going to soak some guajillo and ancho chilis in some boiling water, mixed that with some drained canned tomato and add that to the cooked beans, along with some sweated onion, garlic, and definitely a chili or two. add in the usual chili spices (cumin, coriander, ancho powder, pasilla, mexican oregano, etc), and let them stew a bit. poach/fry some eggs, throw that on top, and serve the resulting yolky slop with a vat of my famous guacamole, some salsa, and full fat sour cream and nacho chips. there's been a lack of food porn up on here of late, so i'll try to remember to take a picture.

the remainder of the tarte tatin for dessert.

now to place my snubbed nose on the proverbial grindstone.

fin.

friends

i've always hated that show, friends. to me, it's like the worst parts about white people, condensed into one highly irritating little half hour. it's just not funny.

yesterday, against the odds, and against all my feeble attempts to elude her, i got to have lunch with my friend h yesterday. it was great! we hadn't hung out in a long time, and i'd just had a murphy's law-fueled morning, culminating in a semi-disastrous meeting with my prof for the r.a. stuff.

i'm kinda feeling meh about that whole situation. i got too much other s**t to do to focus all my energy on someone else's project. i'm too selfish for that ish. you can pay me, and i'll get the work done, but you got to pay me a HELL of a lot more if you want me to CARE. that's just how i roll.

but seeing h was lovely! then my doppelganger and her bf came over for dinner which was also BEYOND lovely. i love it when friends of good friends become friends. it's so nice and chummy. we hatched all kinds of crazy plans (the doppelganger and the roomie are turning 30 this year and want to celebrate in a grand fashion): driving to vancouver in a giant rv, renting a cottage for a week, driving to montreal, going to cuba for an all inclusive vacation. this summer is going to be a BLAST!

tonight for dinner we're having whole wheat fusilli with a broccoli and walnut pesto. and olive garden salad (but of course!). no dessert...i ate entirely too much roast boeuf last night to be good for me (but it was SOOOOOOOO tasty).

fin.

MASCARPWNAGE!

is the most hardcore pwnage that exists. so say we all.

here's a picture of two of my favorite baldies (captain jean luc picard should also be up there, and china mieville), my nephew, being held up by my brand spanking new MICHEL FOUCAULT magnet that my lovely friend t, in vancouver sent to me. so cute!

we watched part of this documentary called "aliens of the deep" last night. james cameron basically takes some of the billions of
dollars he got from making titanic and helped to fund this deep sea exploration. it's crazy down there! and really relaxing to watch these phosphorescent, prehistoric life forms, that somehow manage to survive in the very depths of the ocean. the pressure down there is insane, and there's also all these geothermic vents, so you have the earth's core literally spewing out volcanic matter that instantly hits the icy cold water and forms all kinds of inverted geo-formations, reverse stalactites and stuff. and the life forms are beautiful. when we went to vegas we checked out the underwater exhibit at the mandalay bay hotel and casino...you basically walk through a series of underwater glass tunnels. but they had one giant column in the middle of the floor that contained maybe 5 or 6 jellyfish. the motion of their bodies undulating and rippling is so calming. "aliens of the deep" is pretty good, but we're watching the extended version, which has less time spent just filming the creatures and environment, and a lot of time "getting to know" the crew they assembled. so you have all these nasa-physicists and alien life form experts and marine biologists kind of annoyingly yapping and saying stuff like: "this is so awesome! will you LOOK at that? wow!" which is all very well and good, but i'd kind of like either a) a deeper context for what i'm seeing or b) for them to shut the HELLS up. i don't need someone from nasa telling me that this s**t is awesome.
i recently finished reading another alison bechdel comic collection. this one is called "spawn of dykes to watch out for". this means that i've almost read them all, but out of order, and i'm missing the key one where sparrow shacks up with stuart and gets him to live in her co-op. i DEVOUR these comics. i love the characters and the story is so endearingly, accessibly, palatabley alty-lefty in the way that i can appreciate.

i also read a children's book called "the stone fey" by robin mckinley while i was at the library a few days back. i love her work. she does vaguely fantasy-fairy tale, medieval kind of stuff but her writing is beautiful and evocative and imaginative without being forced. this was about a girl who lives in the scottish highlands, tending sheep, engaged to her beloved, who gets wooed by one of the otherworldly folk that live high in the mountains. it was a lovely read, deeply satisfying in that way that fantasy books for kids can be deeply satisfying.

i have an r.a. meeting with the prof today...and then i'm going to see if i can meet my friend for lunch...hopefully it works out. tonight we're having my doppelganger and her boy over for dinner. he's from england, and i had some prime rib leftover, so i'm going to roast up a three rib prime rib, rubbed with salt and pepper, medium-rare. alongside: roasted garlic mashed potatoes, sauteed mushrooms (in butter, natch), steamed green beans tossed in shallot-mustard-red wine vinaigrette, and for dessert, tarte tatin with almond frangipane between the caramelized apples and the crust. the crust is an oatmeal-based crust which gets extraordinarily flaky, while still sturdy. i'm going to serve it with the last of my bourbon caramel sauce, and some whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. depending on how productive i'm feeling, i may or may not make yorkshire puddings, but that's already a lot of food for just the five of us.

fin.

home run!

these weekends lately have all been resounding home runs. what fun! and it was really sociable...a few of the boys friend's came over for short little visits so it feels like we saw a lot of people on the weekend. there was dancing, there was good food, and there was even a jaunt up to markham to have dinnie with my cute mum.

all you can eat hot pot pwned our asses. i love bringing people for their first hot pot experience... the roomie is BEYOND sold on the concept. plus, everyone was so full that they couldn't finish the complimentary dessert they bring you, which just so happens to be my FAVORITE CHINESE DESSERT EVER! warm, steamed, faintly ginger flavoured egg custard. so i ended up eating about a softball of ginger egg custard. i felt i was going to explode. AND it was chinese new year so we all got lucky money!

there was also fun with our wig on saturday. i think we're going to institute a new policy that any visitor to the house must put on the wig and have their picture taken, so we can have a wall o' wig fun. our eventual plan is to just get a tonne of wigs...you really can't underestimate how much fun a wig can be. for some reason, i end up looking like short-round from indiana jones. actually, basically any minute change i make to my appearance results in me looking like short round. the boy and my friend end up looking like emo-y a**holes, especially when the boy adds one of his signature novelty sunglasses. one of my favorite things to do in the whole world in the summer is to drag the boy to shopper's drug mart and make him try on women's/senior citizen's sunglasses. to say that hilarity ensues would be the understatement of the millenia.

today is all about my r.a. work and writing a paper. it's an itty bitty paper so i'm hoping it doesn't take too much time. tonight for dinner we're having a butternut squash soup that's chock full of textured bitties: corn, kale, red pepper, romano beans. alongside more olive garden salad cuz i just can't get enough. and i think i'll make us some gingersnaps for dessert.

fin.

i needed that

SO MUCH FUN last night! such grimey, sweaty, rudebwoy bruckness. i LOVE it! i love dancing for four solid hours and going buck. i haven't had a night where i feel like i really got the dance out of me in a long, long time. the thing i love about jungle jams is that i rarely get bothered or grinded up on, and am generally left undisturbed to do my thing (act like a ruffneck). i also love the dirty-ness of a proper party. the roomie tried to convince her friend to go, and he's from england, and when other people heard he was going to possibly go to the comfort zone, they basically teased him out of going. EFF THAT! yes, it was dark (like i could only see a foot in front of me dark) and yes it was all ages (but jungle crowds you can never tell how old anyone is, and they're mostly younger anyway), and yes it's grimey (the bathrooms are pretty gross)...but i would never let that stop me from going ANYWHERE is the music is hype. it really IS all about the music and the potential for dancing for me...anything else is very much a tertiary concern.

i LOVE LOVE LOVE jungle. i love dancing to other music, but i've been listening to jungle for 10 years now, and NOTHING does it for me like a wall of drums and sub-bass. it's like i jump out of my skin. i haven't been to a party in a while, and i guess i needed to be reminded how, when the jungle is proper (crashing, cacophony of drums, sinewaves, bass i can feel in my chestplate), there's nothing better. i live for 170-180 bpm. i would say that part of the credit goes to dj c64, my bff, and growing up in electronic music with him, but the harder, the louder, the ruder, the better! crunchy, abrasive, bass-heavy = karl lagerfeld goes OFF. it's one of the things that i can be counted on...i never stop moving at a party. and i don't really socialize either. love!!! i also love the crowds at jungle parties. i love the sketchiness, the skeezy kids, the fact that it's about 1 girl for every 100000 boys, but it's not really a sexual vibe at all, everyone is focused on the music. i love breakbeats! four-on-the-floor has never, and will never really do it for me.

breakage started off with some of the slow, minimal, sparse dubby stuff, then he kind of went a little early virus, wobbly, not as much bass for my liking (but people seemed to really dig it), then he went wall of drums mashup science business, then brought it back down again with the deep, choppy, slicey, but bass-heavy, minimal, sebadox-esque stuff. the mc was wack! i think it was dsypha's dad. probably the whitest sounding mc i've ever heard in my LIFE: "is everyone having a good time tonight? please. welcome. the. fine. dj. breakage" wackness!

it was fun though...and i went with an awesome crew. i'm glad the roomie came. things were looking a little bleak for a bit, as she was mad hungover...but she was a trooper...and i love partying with my markham buddy. he pwns! and seeing how happy the boy is in a rave-like setting also makes things very amusing.

we ended up at the silver dollar room for a bit...there was a local band, called methodology playing. they blow. they kind of do like a remy shand, very can-con version of soul/rnb revival MINUS the funk and MINUS the factors that make soul, rnb good (ie. soul, rhythm, blues). it's like buddies: jamiroquai called, and he wants his sound back, and furthermore, stevie wonder just called jamiroquai, and he wanted HIS sound back. i hate it when people don't DO their thing, but project what they THINK the thing is. a lot of popular music is like that or if you ever watch people singing on american idol, it's totally like that. they think that just because they can make the right sounds come out, it's acceptable to pantomime love lost, or soul, or that fire you get from proper singers.

today i'm skipping out on library sunday work, to work on my assignment some more, and otherwise be hungover and schluffy. it's also CHINESE NEW YEAR! for breakkie we're having steel cut oatmeal, and a carrot, apple, beet, cucumber juice. for dinner we're going for ALL YOU CAN EAT HOTPOT in markham! chinese hot pot is the shiznizzle. there's an element built into the table, and they bring out cauldrons of flavoured broth, and platters of meat, veggies, tofu, noodles, and you just cook your own. finished off with a steamed ginger milk pudding. my favorite chinese dessert! (or one of them). then battlestar when we get home! chinese new year/reading week rocks! depending on how gluttonous we're feeling...i might make us a batch of cookies to hunker down with.

fin.

against the odds

yesterday was a whirlwind. so my roomie tells me yesterday that the girl who rents the apt. upstairs told her that her friends were opening a restaurant in yorkville and were doing a trial run of the restaurant thursday, friday and saturday, and that they needed people to come in and review the food and in return they get a free meal. so me and the roomie are all excited, and we call the doppelganger and her bf and get ourselves a nice, happy little foursome going. then the roomie calls the upstairs girl back and finds out that she had got yorkville and YORKDALE confused. we were O.U.T.! yorkdale is hella far, and the resto was actually IN the mall, and that means the food is going to be of highly questionable integrity.

so we revamped the plan so that me and the roomie would eat dinner here and then go to the doppelganger's place for dessert (carrot cake!). then, against ALL odds, i did the reasonable thing: i stayed home, on the first friday of reading week, to work on the assignment i have due on monday. it was probably one of the hardest choices ever. i was so torn! socializing! CARROT CAKE! but no, i made the right call, because i ended up getting a good chunk of it done...which is what i really needed.

but that's okay...because today my little bro is going to try to get all the siblings and auxiliary significant others tickets to see THE POLICE at the ACC! wooooooooooo!!! what hilarious-fun THAT will be! also...tonight i'm getting CRUNKED, guy! i'm going to see this dj/producer i lurve named breakage at the comfort zone of all places (all ages too, eek! someone better not get bottled/shanked/shot while i'm there). his full-length album "this too shall pass" was wicked and really pushed the genre forward. tonight is going to be pure rudebwoy murderation mayhem, BOOOOOOOOOOYA! i'm so pumped! even if the music sucks (which it probably won't, at least not during his set), it'll be fun to be out and about as i haven't been to a jungle party in ages. AND, the roomie is off-call which means i get to go raving with her! what fun!

tonight i'm having my friend over for dinner and we're having braised lamb shanks in shiraz with mascarpone long-cooked polenta, pan roasted brussel sprouts, and green beans steamed and tossed in a red wine vinaigrette. for dessert, i made creme caramel (or flan). i haven't made it in years and years and years, it was actually one of the first desserts i ever tried to make when i was 14 or so...which is actually pretty ambitious for a first timer...as it involves making a caramel, and a custard, and cooking the whole in the bain marie. i wanted something that was light and cool after the heavy, round, wintery flavours of the dinner.

fin.

romance!

other romantic things: 2 christmases ago, the boy's mom got the boy this pack of socks featuring "arch support" (it's a thick band of elasticization around the "arch" part of the foot). it doesn't actually support your arches, but the socks are made of super-plush, thick, soft cotton...it's like walking on jesus himself. anyway, i've taken such a liking to the socks that i often wear them for days at a time (a gross admission i know, but i rarely sweat...so if my socks aren't sweaty...i figure they're good to go for another round or so? or, i walk around barefoot at home...so they're only on my feet for a few hours each day? maybe? i've totally lost you and you're looking at me with palpable disgust, i know). anyhoo, usually i do the washing and the drying of laundry and the boy does the folding. what do i find oh-so-cavalierly placed in my bounteous sock drawer? only the socks that i love and covet so dearly. romance!

in other news of saccharine delights, my alcoholic neighbour dimitri SHOVELLED our walkway for us. the whole driveway leading up to our entrance! i was planning on doing it all day, went to work, met the boy, did grocery shopping, and when we had come back, bleary-eyed dimitri had done it. how sweet! i don't know how to repay him...maybe he'll be the new recipient of leftover food, as the previous recipient has disembarked to scotland for god knows how long (come back, dj c64!). another funny thing about dimitri (stop me if you've heard this one before) is that in the summertime, he starts his bbq with a flamethrower. no joke. we were inside last summer and all we could hear was that blowtorchy-jet sound coming from outside, so we're all like, "wtf?!?" this is what dimitri does: he throws some coals in his little bbq (and i mean LITTLE bbq, the thing is like the size of a pan of lasagne, and about 1 foot off the ground), then he hooks up this giant blowtorch attachment to a propane tank, lets 'er rip and SHOOTS it at the pile of charcoal until it catches. it's actually about a billion different kinds of awesome. also, sometimes he gets so drunk he passes out on the picnic table outside, next to a little tv he has rigged up out there. it's quite endearing.

READING WEEK HAS BEGUN! YAY (BUT BOO!) i have a CRAPLOAD of work to do, especially now that i've taken on this r.a. work for the prof (i'm thinking it'll keep me in ebay muumuus though, so that's why i'm doing it...and the prof and i have similar research interests). tonight is probably going to be spent doing a good chunk of work, and then celebrating with the roomie who is off-call and is currently writing a murderous midterm exam...plus my doppelganger and her boyfriend have moved into the neighbourhood for the month, house-sitting her parents house, so we might go visit with them.

tonight for dinner is that stuffed eggplant from a few days back and olive garden salad. yum!

fin.

i totally gapped about yesterday being valentine's day. ah zoot. it doesn't really mean much around these parts anyway. usually, somewhere near the general vicinity of that day of waxy cheap chocolate and ritualistic spectacle of pre-fab excess, we find someplace to go eat a nice dinner, more of an excuse to go out than anything else.

when i was working my shift this regular came up to me while i was in the stacks shelving, and gave me that picture he had drawn on the back of an old library receipt, with the words, "i couldn't get you a real one so this will have to do." it was pretty nice (albeit creepy...is there ANY form of public library engagement that ISN'T creepy? or has my already-cynical and world-weary heart been hardened against any and all sentimental connections in a public library setting?). i thanked him and he made this self-effacing comment about the cross-hatchings being subpar. it was actually a pretty sweet gesture...but it still makes me feel icky.

i'm not hardwired for those kinds of things...flowers, crappy chocolate, and the rest of what constitutes romance (conflict diamonds, moonlit serenades, limousine rides, a weekend in niagara). this is romance to me: coming home from a long double day, dumping my crap upstairs, walking downstairs to change into my pjs, to be greeted by the following words from the boy: "hey. so, do you consider what happened to the indigenous people of canada to be a genocide?" and then getting into a 20 minute discussion about what constitutes genocide and looking up the u.n. definition and contextualizing the political motivations for designating one thing a genocide, and another not. be still my heart! other things that mean romance: pepperoni sticks from alex farm's cheese store, one for everyone in the house; doubles carted all the way from outer-etobicoke, one for everyone in the house; and finally, being able to use the line from willow to madmortigan in the movie "willow" that goes, "you are great" and have my partner understand the reference. that's love, right there folks. the other stuff is just hackneyed crap for noobs, imo.

today is a long day...but i'm going in with my friend to talk to the prof about the r.a. stuff, which should be interesting...i'm semi-nervous. for dinner i'm packing leftover gumbo, which turned out ULTRA-FANTASTIC! we cooked the roux out until it got all toasty and popcorny smelling and turned a leathery brown colour. we used my chicken stock and shrimp and tilapia chunks alongside some spicy sausage, and i threw in brown rice, which was a good call because it maintains it's chewiness through the long cooking process. i'm also packing one of my homemade granola bars...which, despite the inclusion of raisins, are surprisingly good, and a fairly healthy snack.

fin.

saved?

do i look like i'm in dire need of saving? do i wear the look of someone who is doomed for an eternity of hellfire and damnation? what is WITH me attracting all these religious peeps trying to convert me?

you've got the baptist mack, who after i've turned him down, makes a big show of IGNORING ME at the library. i told him i wasn't comfortable meeting people at my place of work, and that i like to keep work and play separate. so the next time i see him, i said "hi", and he gives me the big ROLLEYES look-away. as IF, buddy! that's teh lame0rz.

i'm sitting on the subway going home from work yesterday, reading a book, when an older asian woman gets up and sits next to me and says: "hi, do you speak chinese?" thinking that she needed help translating something, i tell her that yes i do speak chinese. then she asks me if i'm from china, and i say that no, my parents were born in hong kong but i was born here in canada. then she starts blabbing on about how she was born in china, and how JESUS helped her when she came to this country. then i look down at her lapel and see the "jesus christ of latter day saints" pin. at this point, i want to get back to my book so i politely interrupt her and say, "thank you, but i'm NOT interested in jesus". so she goes, "oh, you're not interested in jesus? what ARE you interested in?" what do you think i answered? what, in the entire pantheon of my interests do you think popped into my head and was blurted out of my mouth? oh, the entirely ingenious answer..."pop culture". she's all like, "wha?!?" and i'm like, "look, i'm just not interested in jesus." then she tries to tie it back into our shared chinese heritage or something. and i go, "if you're so big on being chinese, why aren't you interested in buddha, or some religion that has some roots in our culture, as opposed to something that was brought over by colonialists?" and she's all like, "wha?!?" so i gave up, thanked her, and got off the subway.

why do those peeps travel in packs? and why do they prey on the lonely, confused, recently arrived immigrant peoples? and more importantly, why am **I** being lumped in with that sad-sack lot?!?

yesterday dinner was derailed. we visited my boy's da' in the hospital (he's doing very well), then the boy's mum, his sister, the boy and i ate dinner at sakawaya. i was famished and it was late so we all went. we had kabocha pumpkin tempura (yummy!). they do this thing called kushiyaki there, which is stuff grilled on skewers and then either glazed with yakitori sauce or sprinkled with salt. i had a skewer of chicken livers with salt, and a skewer of chicken skin (!!!!!!!) with salt. divine! then i had my usual, which is the spicy beef kimchi tofu pot, and i get them to add udon noodles to it. the boy had the chicken donburi bowl, which is a breaded chicken cutlet, on rice, flavoured with a sweet soy sauce, and baked with an egg on top. tasty! then i came home and made peanut butter cookies, as we had decided that the night was a writeoff and we were bunkering down for the perfect storm.

i LOVE storms! i love seeing the city slowed to a crawl. i love seeing people hunkered down and gathered together around warmth...like in our primordial past. winter's the best! because of all the pork fat i consume, i've convinced myself that the reason why i never feel debilitatingly cold is because i'm sheathed in lard. it's warm in here, lemme tells ya! but i love winter because in climates like ours, it's the time of rest, and gathering around food, and convivial company. that's my kind of ish! i love having reasons to hunker-bunker down.

tonight for dinner we're having a seafood gumbo. i make a very dark brown roux, then sweat out the cajun mirepoix (which is onions, garlic, peppers) in it, then add some chopped tomatoes, a mixture of clam broth and water, and some chopped okra. i'm going to let that stew, and then add some brown rice. let that cook out, then i'm going to add some salmon/firm white fish chunks, shrimp, and scallops. and we're going to eat this with some olive garden salad.

fin.

breakfast

i just discovered a new favorite breakfast, sure to be regularly included in the rotation: challah, peanut butter, nutella and banana sandwich, buttered on the outside and warmed in the panini press. sooooo tasty!

yesterday i made these homemade granola bars to sell at the AD&L cafe and set some aside for us to eat...they're hella tasty. i did good!

also yesterday, one of my profs (the one whose classes i'm in lurve with) asked me and my friend if we were interested in being his r.a.'s (research assistants) for an upcoming project he's doing! that's exciting! although i feel like i was just asked because i happened to be standing close by. here's how it unrolled: my friend went up after class to ask him to further expand on an upcoming assignment, after she was done, he said, "would you *seeing me*...or would the both of you be interested in perhaps doing some r.a. work?" see! it sounds like an afterthought! although the roomie says that profs aren't bound by the same social conventions as the rest of us. eek! why am i so hard on myself?

i hope this project goes into the summer...because this plus le bibliotheque would mean that i could cobble together enough not to get a full-time job, but work close to 35 hours doing a few part-time jobs...lovely! compared to last summer, when i was working 60 hour work-weeks, it doesn't get better than that!!!

for dinner tonight we're having stuffed eggplant. i cut the eggplants in half, season them, then sear them cut-side-down in some olive oil in a hot pan. then i take them out, and carve out the innies and chop them up, leaving an eggplant boat for the stuffing to go into. i dice up some onion and garlic, saute that in a pan, add some chopped tomatoes, basil, feta and the chopped eggplant innies, and cook that out a bit. season and put them back in the shells and bake them in the oven. we're having this with what i call the "olive garden salad": chopped romaine, tomato, cucumbers, red onion, croutons, sliced mushrooms and olives in a red wine vinaigrette.

fin.

okay, in what universe

does anna nicole smith's death constitute NEWS?!? like, i never think we've actually gone that far, and then what do i see but round-the-clock cnn coverage with resident silver-haired, stone fox, anderson cooper doing his best faux-gravitas as the tacky image of a cloth-covered body on a stretcher loops for days. insanity. not to say that anyone dying isn't tragic and sad (well, maybe not pinochet) but this?!? this fervour?!? not to say that cnn has any semblance of respectability anymore (does anyone actually think for one second that larry king is a good interviewer? that block of wood on "behind the actor's studio" out-charismas king!). it always reminds me of the john waters quote on the simpsons (about kitsch, but if this isn't kitsch-macabre, i don't know what is): "the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic."

to happier news: i finished my paper! LAST NIGHT! ie. more than 5 minutes before i have to leave the house to hand it in! i did a fairly respectable job, too. i'm not ashamed of it, at any rate.

there's been a lot of talk about amy winehouse's new album "back to black". my friend hipped me to her a few weeks back, and i've been listening to it. it's actually quite good, but more than anything, i'm impressed by whoever did the mixdown and engineering. it sounds like it's straight out of the 60s, minus the crackle. the recording is warm, the arrangements are pretty spot-on, it sounds rich and her voice does a really good job of capturing the soul and feel of the genre. the song "rehab" is pure motown girl-group fantasticness...the feel is sick! i'm glad i found out about her...apparently she's coming to the t-dizzle so i might go check her out, see if her live show tears me a new a**hole the way sharon jones did. i don't love this as much as i love sharon jones and the dap kings, but that's because amy winehouse is like a slow burn, whereas sharon jones and the dap kings are a raging inferno of funk.

for dinner tonight i'm packing a sandwich of provolone, bagna cauda, roasted peppers, red onion, tomato and basil on an ace francese bun that i'm going to throw in the toaster oven at work to get right melty. alongside leftover chickpea, leek, sweet potato and parmesan soup from last week.

fin.

wii

okay, i'm totally sold on the wii. my family needs to get one stat. nintendo's attempts at de-fatting the youth of today is well thought out, totally solid, and above all: fun. we played a bunch of the sports games: bowling, tennis, and boxing. i think i'd have to say that bowling and tennis might be my favorites. we also played a bunch of these wack "wario" 3 second games which were like video games on a lethal cocktail of pcp, meth and lsd. i actually broke a sweat for a few seconds there! i think if we had wii in the house and it came with some kind of dancing game, we'd have even LESS reason to ever leave. for the record: i'm as bad at simulated bowling as i am at real bowling. the search for the elusive strike is so compelling though. i would have kept playing and playing and playing and playing trying to get it.

making the mii characters is so much fun! mine for some reason ends up looking like a sour kim jong-il with long hair. haha...perhaps that's more apt than i would like to believe. that's a screen cap of some of these awesome mii characters some dude on flickr made based on the cast of the office.

today is all about the paper, with a 3.5 hour shift at the library, and a 1 hour break for battlestar and eating/snacking/personal hygience breaks.

sunday breakkie is swedish pancakes, mennonite bacon, and a carrot-ginger-apple-beet juice. dinner tonight is probably going to be leftovers to save myself some time. there's still leftover oxtail and then there's tonnes of leftover injun food from last night.

fin.

entertaining, hef style

i've come to realize that since about november, most of my friends who've come over have only seen me in my flannel pajamas. is that weird??? sometimes i can't tell anymore. should i NOT be having people over for dinner when i'm dressed in my pjs? is it demode? uncouth? does it make a difference what time i'm having people over?

i woke up extra early today to get a jump-start on my stats paper, and consequently whiled away my time doing some online browsing on ebay. if i could switch between flannel pajamas as my winter uniform, and muumuus as my summer uniform, i would be totally and utterly happy. i LOVE vintage muumuus! it's like having the freedom to be socially acceptable running around in your bathrobe...THAT'S how comfy muumuus are. i bought one as a lark last summer...even though it looked ginormous on the rack, it was only $10, and i couldn't stay away from it...and it looks freakin' SMASHING when it's on (or at least, i've convinced myself that it does). but i do get many compliments on it.

after the abuse that my body has been suffering at the hands of my unsatiable pms, i'm back on healthiness today. a big bowl of steel cut oats with lots of fruit is the rule of the day.

tonight i'm having some dear friends over for an indian feast. it's games night. they're bringing over a ps2 and guitar hero, and their nintendo wii so we can battle it out. i'm excited! for dinner i'm making: coconut almond rice, eggplant bharta, a chickpea curry in a spiced-creamy-tomato sauce, and i think there'll be samosas and naan. i think i'll make some tamarind chutney as well. for dessert we're having chai spiced creme brulee. namaste!

fin.

job interview

well, i got another interview for one of those $43000 positions. full time again, but at least it's at a location that's a little more accessible to me, though still out of the way. the interview didn't conflict with a school day, which is the only reason i'm going through with it, i don't think i have a realistic chance, as it's quite a senior position, and it would be a big jump for me, as i'm currently working the lowest position on the hierarchical ladder. i've thought it through...if i get it, i think it's manageable to juggle full time school with full time work. as it stands now, i work approximately 25 hours a week, so this would just be 10 more hours than that. it just means that i have to buckle down some more and not waste as much time. i might also consider taking a course or two in the summer to facilitate things.

but that's all hypothetical because i'm most assuredly NOT going to get this position.

let this be known: student councils of all shapes and sizes are the most annoying organizations in the known universe. for some reason, on my long thursdays at school, my self-appointed dinnertime happens to coincide with the student council executive meetings in the student lounge. it all sounds so banal! i tried opting out of student council fees this year during registration...let's say they were taken aback to say the least. i don't know if anyone has ever tried to skeeze out of the $25 before...there was some fumbling around and then they were going to say that they would have to take my name down to make sure i NEVER attended a student-council funded event. so i hedged my bets and ended up paying the fee. with two and a half months to go before the school year is up, i can safely say that i have yet to attend a student-council event period. i can't help it! they all sound so unremittingly LAME! i mean, if it meant sitting around talking about battlestar or something interesting, then fine, yes, i can deal. but hearing a representative of the ALA (american library association)?!? on MY time??? no thank you.

in other news, i came up with what i consider to be the most hi-larious t-shirt of all time, for the boy. it's going to say: "THE VENGABUS IS COMING" every single time i think of him wearing it in my head, i burst out laughing. i'm actually laughing to myself a lot, which probably gives me the appearance of some kind of loon. i'm sorry if i'm constantly amused by my own life!

dinner tonight is something i've been planning and looking forward to allllll week. fridays are usually take-out day (as faithful observant readers would have noted). however! this week i'm going to be making a box of kraft dinner and scarfing it down with some hot dogs. i haven't eaten kd and hot dogs in forevers and it's going to be ACES. i'm going to buy some all beef franks (not the skinny little schnieder's bitties, a proper frank, usually about 1" diameter), some squishy, soft, wonder bread hot dog buns, i got ketchup and mustard, and i don't even want to talk about how much i'm going to eat, because the pms monster is IN DA HOUSE. last night i came home from school, and the family had ordered pizza, and i was comfortably full from my oxtail dinner. so what do i do? oh, i ate THREE pieces of pizza, a hunk of kolbassa the size of my fist (for some reason pms = meat cravings for me), and the scrapings of hagen daaz vanilla ice cream left in the freezer that my friend brought over. at TEN PM. so consequently i woke up at 3am with some mild heartburn. but not even heartburn can best iron-stomach lee! i'm an old pro at dealing with middle-of-the-night-heartburn. i just prop up the pillows so that i'm partially sitting up and fall back asleep semi-vertical. if i have some liquid pepto, i take a chug or two and i'm good to go. heartburn doesn't happen all that often, and it's very predictable in me. it's when i consciously over-eat very late at night. for dessert tonight i think i'm going to make some cookies...either classic chocolate chip, or gingersnaps or those mona's mother's mother's favorite recipe ones, which are lacy and oat-y and super tasty with a glass of milk.

fin.

fait accompli

makes me sound real accomplished, doesn't it? almost as if my paper isn't a steaming pile of poo (albiet a DONE steaming pile of poo). i'm disappointed in myself. caring about school sucks! i'm off this train! no more! i also did this thing for the first time where i didn't write it sequentially, so i had to go back after and insert an introduction and a conclusion. it felt weird. like getting fully dressed and then putting on your underwear. never again!

ah well, at least i'm done. all of class today is supposed to be spent talking about our papers, but i don't wanna. i have an ultra long long day, and i was thinking of maybe going to see this dj, aaron lacrate, but it's at the social, which is on the other side of town, and i don't think i like dancing to baltimore club enough to haul my ass out there, especially when i have a mondo stats paper due on monday. i think i'm going to come home and watch the office with the family and be warm and happy in my new pajamas. that's pretty much what life comes down to, i'm not going to lie.

confession: i secretly LOVE my online information retrieval course. constructing boolean search strings is SOOOOOO satisfying to me. it's like being a detective! you KNOW the information is there, and you just have to plan, conceptualize, and plot your method to tease out the info. it's enormously fun (for me). however, the rest of the class time when we're NOT doing searches is mind-numbing to the extreme. the prof is wikked boring to the max. this is the stream of consciousness i unleashed during break time a couple of weeks back (in my outside voice, no less): "i HATE this class" "it's BORING" "i NEVER WEAR A BRA". hahaha! the poor recipient of these pearls of wisdom had to tell me that the prof was still IN the class, and sitting none too far away. oops! this is what happens when you have no filter.

people are always wondering what i'd be like drunk. i really don't think it would make that much of a difference. i'm not a terribly inhibited person under the best of circumstances. therefore, i don't really need alcohol to make me loosen up. i think the only difference might be a slight amplification in volume. it's weird when you see people get wasted and they turn into drunklor. it's like night and day in some people.

for dinner tonight i'm packing leftover coconut rice'n'peas, irie squash stew, and the jerk oxtail, with an apple and a banana and some of the those bargain basement almonds to snack on.

fin.

jumping the shark!!!

veronica mars season 3 is seriously, seriously, disappointing me. and if you haven't been keeping up to date, watch out: because i'm going to drop some mad spoiler alert bombs on yo' ass. first of all, the ongoing veronica and logan makeup/breakup situation is RIDICULOUS. it's worse than any other tv show i've ever seen, and what i've always liked about the writing for vm was that it was pretty smart and snappy, and not *quite* as given to those 12-year-old-girl pandering contrivances. they're breaking up for the silliest (and most inconsistent) of reasons. AS IF LOGAN WOULD HAVE SEX WITH MADISON SINCLAIR!!! she slipped ronnie the roofies that resulted in ronnie getting date-raped! she's a miserable b***h and logan has called her on that multiple times. it's so silly. furthermore the "cases" in each episode are starting to get really uncomfortable. last night a woman slipped her BEST FRIEND ru-486 to induce a miscarriage...even though her friend wanted to KEEP the baby. whatever happened to missing cars? or stolen test results? or pizza boy muggings, huh? and if wallace doesn't come back soon i'm going to lose my s**t.

phew. i really needed to get that off my chest. in other news: this paper i'm writing (not to be overly dramatic) is THE WORST THING EVER! it's so hard to condense TWO foucault texts into AN element in a FIVE page paper...i haven't even gotten to the other stuff yet because i'm not happy with my foucault framework. booooooooooooo hiss!!! i think it's a hunk of poo and i'm pissed off at it. we're not friends right now.

to procrastinate, i finished reading another YA book this week, "doing it" by melvin burgess. it's a book following a crew of british lads in late high school muddling through relationships and figuring out their raging hormones. the writing was pretty snappy and quick and funny at times, and it also got surprisingly racy, with lots of sexy bits. talk about embarrassing subway reading though! i would be engrossed in the book sometimes and look up to find some pervy dude giving me this knowing half-smile. ew! i KNOW quite well how to DO IT and don't need any help from you, thankyouverymuch. grody!

i also finished another comic, "mirror, window" a collection by jessica abel. it was pretty good, but filled with those late 90s alt-y slacker-y vaguely urban hipsters that seem to populate comics of a certain time and place. a bunch of mal-adjusted, generation x peeps trying to figure out their place in the world and dealing with a general malaise that i can't really sympathize with? it just seems so self-indulgent! i mean, fine, i understand, we all go through periods of that at one time or another, but it's such a genre cliche in comics!

in other news, in lieu of my requested valentine's present, which was (obviously) the largest conflict diamond the boy could get his grubby hands on, he brought me back a lovely gift yesterday...a double!!! i've never eaten a double before, and he knew and surprised me with one...so thoughtful! for those of you who don't know, a double is an island snack, consisting of spiced, curried chickpeas, encased in a fried, doughy exterior. they go down easy, lemme tells ya, perfect snack food: spicy, crispy, filling, tasty, hand-held. it basically fulfills all the snack food requirements.

today is a shift at le bibliotheque, and then home to wrassle with this paper some more. for dinner tonight, we're having a spicy clam udon. slurpy udon noodles in a hot-chili-sauce spiked clam broth with bok choy and enoki mushrooms and meaty clams. perfect for the cold weather we're facing.

fin.

dream a little dream

lately i've been having wack dreams. i had one on the weekend featuring scary goths hanging out at this souped-up, extra-sketchy sneaky dee's. then, last night i had this amazing dream that the boy and i were in buenos aires (we've never been there), with his dog, stella. we were in this gorgeous modern, bumpin' restaurant, that was filled with all these beautiful and unique antiques and knickknacks and sundries. the place was filled with gorgeous people and the low din of lots of clinking glasses and conversation and the most amazing food. then who should appear? none other than lou gossett jr. who tells us that we absolutely must go upstairs. so the three of us (me, the boy and the dog) go up this winding spiral staircase, to this room that is just floor to ceiling windows, and it's dusk outside, so it feels like you're standing in the sky. the woman who owns this place has suspended in the air, this gigantic wooden sailboat that spans the whole length of the room (similar to the whale at the american museum of natural history in new york city). it was really awesome.

tonight we're going out to jean's to eat with the boy's family, as it's his sister's birthday. i don't have work or school today, and woke up extra early so that i can start working on my foucault paper for surveillance and identity. hopefully we can eat jean's awesome pad thai and pad see yew, probably my two favorite dishes on the menu.

fin.

psych!

i totally posted something this morning but i guess i closed the window before i published it...weird.
last night went really really well, against my expectations (considering i was on the brink of cancelling). i think i have crazy social anxiety so i always dread socializing more than i should, so i frequently psych myself out of going out and being social. i've been told (and i suspect) that i actually have pretty good social skills, probably owing to the fact that my life is an open book, and i am what i am, in a very upfront way. there's no guessing with me! anyway, my social anxieties manifest themselves to the point where after a social gathering, i usually do a stage-whispered summation of the night's events with an: "that went well!" to the roomie and the boy. the roomie has asked if things have ever gone not well, and well, they haven't...but i'm a nervous nelly.

it was crazy convergence yesterday, as it was bob marley day, and i had prepared an irie island feast, completely unawares. this coincidence, plus the genetic bias of my keloid-scar producing body only reinforces my grand nubian-ness. the meal turned out really well, especially once i skimmed the fat off the oxtail...they were tender like you wouldn't believe!

i'm feeling kinda sicky, so i'm not going to work my night shift at the library. which means i have no excuse and i have to work super-hard on this upcoming surveillance and identity paper which is going to be a monster. it's like, "condense foucault and the articles and this campus initiative in FIVE TO SEVEN PAGES" whaaaa?!?!? [flava flav] woooooooooooooow [/flava flav] for dinner we're having a chickpea, leek and parmesan soup, with warm proscuitto sammies on ace bakery demi-baguettes, and that radicchio, parsley, fennel and romano bean salad with lemon vinaigrette.

it comes in waves

so, in addition to my other bad news earlier this week, my stepdad has to have spinal cord surgery again. boooooooooooooo. it's really weird and destabilizing to be getting to the age when people around you are experience the effects of aging and our bodily limits. like, when i was a kid, people getting really sick or experiencing mortality was a statistical anomaly, but as i get older, it becomes part of the fabric of your life.

to lighten the mood a bit, last night was so much fun! my other bfffff came over in addition to bff dr. rei and it was absolutely lovely. in other news...i think i'm insane. i invited like 6 of my cook friends over for dinner, so i'm making dinner for like 8 or 9 people tonight. when i have a paper due this week, a massive paper and an assignment next week. ah well, i've pretty much decided that tonight is a writeoff, so why bother, right? i doubt i would have been all that productive.

we're having jerked oxtail, coconut rice'n'peas, and an irie pumpkin (various squashes in lieu of pumpkin as pumpkin is unavailable at the moment) stew, and pecan cinnamon-sugar churros for dessert. yum! but...i'm an idiot!!! why do i take on all this work??? it was supposed to be a potluck. eek!

sunday breakkie this morning is a baby spinach, tomato, orange pepper, green onion, garlic and goat cheese fritatta with bacon from the mennonites and seven grain toast from st. johns bakery. alongside a carrot-apple-beet-ginger juice.

fin.

dreamgirls!!!

looks like a craptacular movie!!!! nothing about the ads or the material i've read indicate that it's anything BUT a dreary, boring, hopelessly typical depiction of exactly what it purports to depict. i don't even get the fuss. the oscars are going to be SUCH a snoozefest this year. i'm sorry, i don't mind the odd stephen frears' flick, but "the queen"?!? how good could it *possibly* be?!? and "little miss sunshine"??? are you people daft? why THAT? have people lost all sense of good taste and thoughtful consideration? this is going to be as bad as the year "chicago" won best picture. eek-fest, that's all i got to say. the only movies i want to see right now are "pan's labrynth" and "the last king of scotland" and well, OF COURSE "the pursuit of happyness" even with the gross injustice to english language meted out in the title (i jest! not about the butchering of the queen's english, but with the desire to force my eyes open for that dreck).

jean's was muy bueno last night. we ordered lots so we'd have plenty of leftovers. mock meat is the wave of the future!

this morning i'm have a cook friend over who is leaving toronto this weekend to move to new york with his girlfriend. he's going to be working for alain ducasse at ducasse's new joint at the st. regis hotel (i believe), and his girlfriend got a job at babbo. i'm semi-jealous...but i also have absolutely no desire to try to "make it" in new york city. lovely place to visit, but i don't think i'd want to live there, much as i do love brooklyn. not enough green space...too unmanageable a size. so we're having a little goodbye breakfast. i always get a little nervous cooking for other cooks (well, depending on what kind of cooks they are). but then i realize that i really cook from the hip, and that i'm not the emulsion-foam-xantham gum kind of cook. i'm like a composite-of-everyone's-grandma kind of cook. i want to out-grandma grandma. there tends to be very little pretension in the food that i make. anyway, this morning we're having corned beef hash with poached eggs. the extent to which i love corned beef hash knows no bounds. i absolutely ADORE it. one of my top 10 favorite comfort foods for sho'.

for dinner tonight, i'm having dr. rei over to dazzle me with her statistical expertise, gleaned from 6+ long years in the trenches of engineering. for dinner, i'm making a comfort food extravaganza. roasted maple-mustard-sage pork loin with crackling, caramelized onion gravy, cranberry-apple-pear relish, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, braised red cabbage, and pan sauteed brussel sprouts. for dessert, i'm making an oatmeal-crusted tarte tatin, because i'm trying to stick to a wintery theme, and nothing goes together like pork and apples. in between the caramelized apple layer and the flaky crust, i'm going to smear some homemade frangipane just to up the flavours a bit, and i'm going to serve it with whipped cream. unf unf unf unf unf! i can barely wait!

fin.

representational entropy

so yesterday there was all this buzz about this world-wide "global warming protest" where people were going to have a co-ordinated 5 minute shut off of EVERYTHING electric. can i just say that i absolutely loathe pithy, futile, mass-gestures? it's the triumph of the empty signifier. first of all, turning everything back ON after is going to result in even MORE energy wastage then if you'd just left everything on, especially if those koo-koos go and unplug the real energy monsters like the fridge and the heat and the air conditioner. furthermore, how many of these switch-off people routinely waste fossil fuels by driving their lazy asses around instead of taking more ecologically sound transportation? how about making changes to your lifestyle? how about using your dollar wisely? it's such mis-directed, mis-used, and mis-educated politics.

we had an interesting discussion the other night about the idea of the "artist" as figure, and "art" as a medium. somewhat predictably, i'm sure most of my faithful readers will know where i stand on this...i don't believe in the popular conception of the artist as an autonomous figure, or rather, i'm skeptical of the reception of art-as-thing and artist-as-figure...i basically see it as ego-centric solipsism and a self-fulfilling system of cultural-capital elitism, that generally denies the culturally and temporally specific nature of its own system of adjudication. i'm not saying that some people can't do some things better than others along predetermined and pre-agreed upon variables, but i do think it's the height of hubris to designate oneself an "artist". i want to punch those people in the 'nads. so the roomie goes, "would it make you feel better if more people could call themselves artists outside of the elite few, or if the no one called themselves an artist?" ie. would it be better if the term encapsulated more people, or just ceased to exist. i'm definitely more on the "cease to exist" side of obliteration. i'm a destroyer, a nemesis enforcer, if you will.

the same issue came up in my "surveillance and identity" class yesterday. we had just read a few articles about corporations data-mining, and keeping extensive dossiers on people and their spending habits, their car insurance, their flight information, etc. (aside: i FREAKIN LOVE THIS CLASS! it literally makes me pumped and excited and exhilarated). my point was that concerns over these corporations having information on us are:

a) grounded in a particularly capitalist-driven (and i would argue, enlightened-modernist driven) conceptualization of the "self" as an autonomous, totalized subject. are YOU the sum total of your purchases? the fact that you prefer lay's brand chips to hostess? the fact that you shop at banana republic? the fact that you go to cuba?
b) further to that, how much are we actively engaged in giving "power" to these corporations? how much are we subsumed by this "information"? to what extent is the value of the information predicated on our own false notions of "privacy"? if we remove the stigma, then the company doesn't have power over us. ie. i don't care if someone goes into my home and checks out cupboards, i don't care if people know how much money i make ($13.35/hour), i don't care if people know that i had sex last night, or that i have eczema in the winter-time. our feelings of being subsumed are in part due to our engagement with the notion of "privacy" in a limited sense that's rooted in capitalism and "liberty" (tip of the hat to sarah). this is a bit reductionist...but you can see where i'm going with it.

so i came up with a concept that i'm calling representational entropy, related to baudrillard and his simulacra. that each stage of re-presentation only furthers the implicit space between what is being represented and the meaning implied in the re-presentation, and this space builds and builds, to the point where what the canadian government has in their tax or census files about the letters "karl lagerfeld" is completely discoursively removed from me, karl lagerfeld-as-body. and it is in these spaces, that are the sites of negotiations over my own identity, and where there's a constantly shifting dynamic of potentialities.

wow. i wasn't expecting to go there today with my post. in other news, i read THE BEST ARTICLE EVER!!! it's called "a political economy of librarianship?" by william birdsall, a canadian. it's available here: http://pages.globetrotter.net/charro/HERMES6/birdsall.htm
and it's about 1202020 different kinds of butt-kicking awesome. praxis! a critique of the current articulation of library and information sciences! here's a select quote: "again, librarians have increasingly narrowed their perspective, concentrating on how librarians as 'information managers' can contribute to the electronic transmission of information to the customer rather than on the role of librarianship in promoting access to knowledge in all its forms in the educational, cultural, social, political, and economic life of the citizen." !!!!!!!!!!!!!! effin A!

in other news, yesterday i had the (what i thought at the time) to be brilliant idea of toasting my bagel, spreading it with cream cheese and smoked salmon, and then packing it with me. it turned into a disgusting semi-soggy, semi-stale tasting mess, effectively putting to rest those of you who've ever wondered: "is it better to have toasted and sogged, then never to have toasted before???" no!!! i also found out about a graduate level course called "the social ecology of food" COME TO DADDY! i have a silly-long day today. two different shifts at two different libraries, then running around town to procure stuff for all the peeps i'm having over for various meals this weekend. tonight for dinnie we're having a jean's vegetarian kitchen feast: red curry with "duck", pad thai, padd see yew, singapore noodle, and maybe a green curry too. delish!

fin.

freedom of information

so i grew up in a pretty sex positive household. in the sense that sex was neither stigmatized or overtly in our face, but was just normalized as a part of everyday life, and that it was something that everybody did (including, to my dismay, my parents). this didn't stop my mom from mildly freaking out when she caught me smuggling harlequin presents (that's right, not harlequin "romance", harlequin "presents" the ones that come with extremely cheddar-tastic euphemisms for sex like: "he claimed her and brought her to ecstasy") into my room to read at the tender age of 11. this also didn't stop her from full-on freaking out when she suspected me and my first boyfriend of doing the nasty. in her defense, i was pretty young, and my first boyfriend looked like a total skid. his nickname was "bush" (for his unkempt hair), and he was an lsd-guzzling, off-the-grid, animal-tracker, super-wilderness survival kind of guy. he used to lend me books about his hero at the time, this dude tom brown jr. who goes off and lives in the new jersey pine barrens with nothing but a loin cloth for months at a time, even in the dead of winter. the boyfriend was also the kind of guy who was semi-into native fetishistic spiritualism, vision quests, dream catchers, mandalas, etc. okay, in MY defense, i was pretty young!!!

so the other night we're watching an episode of the daily show, and bill gates is on there, talking about the new windows vista, with it's onboard parental internet screening (read: spying) technology, and i pipe up that i'm kind of against that sort of thing. and the boy is like, "what?!? as if you don't want to screen what your kids are doing on the net!" and i don't think i do. i don't really believe in censorship. my dad, deadbeat that he is, taught me from a very young age that there's no such thing as "bad" reading, and by extension, information, and so as long as we're reading something he never really much cared. i think with my kids, if i caught them peeping some porn or something on the net, i would much rather sit with them and provide a context for what they're seeing. like say, "some people find this degrading because of ___ and ____, or this is problematic because of ___" to which the boy replies, "kids will find the wackest s**t out there, as if you want to be there when your kid is staring at some depraved stuff" and i'm like, "if anything is going to make my kid not want to see that stuff, it's the reality of having me sitting right there next to him, drinking a cup of tea, lecturing about it ad nauseum."

you have to admit, i got a point. i'm all about the hilarious disciplining. so if i was going to censor, i'd probably do it by rigging up an ultra loud alarm to the computer, so when the kid visits a questionable site, the computer screams: aooooooouuuugah! aoooooouuuugah! or "PERVERT! PERVERT! PERVERT!" that'd learn 'em good.

last night's dinner was totally delicious. i made a stir fry sauce with soy, cornstarch, chili garlic paste, sesame oil, water and oyster sauce. it was so tasty on top of the crispy noodle cake; i LOVE chow mein noodles. tonight for dinner, it's my long day at school so i'm packing leftover lentil and kale soup and a smoked salmon on cream cheese sandwich on a whole wheat bagel. i also got this sweet deal on almonds from this lady at my work who lives in mississauga and shops at this indian-targeted super-supermarket, so she got me two pounds of almonds for wikked cheap. score!