canned gravy!

is the best! it's so salty fake-tasting, i love it. i decided to go with the "healthy" choice and used heinz "mushroom" gravy instead of the meat one, i don't really think there's much of a difference between the two. they're both medium-viscosity dark brown syrups tasting mostly of powdered onion and salt, but the mushroom one has some indeterminate dark brown pieces of canned mushroom (or what was once canned mushroom) floating attractively on the surface like sunken bits of sodden leather. mmm!

i'm extremely happy with one pumpkin but not so much with the other one. i blame my tools, with the full awareness that "a poor craftsman blames his tools" my lino-block carving tools were brittle and a lot of my tips snapped off, so i didn't have the variety that i usually have. the foucault one i made a tragic error in judgement and instead of carving the white bits, carved the outline bits, so it's like a negative-foucault who doesn't look very foucauldean. but my eugene delacroix one turned out amazing, and the carving lines almost look like brushstrokes. we took silly amounts of pictures and then sat in the dark by the light of the pumpkins. it also amuses me to no end to see both of my favorite aesthetic periods (from a cultural-theoretical standpoint) represented at one time. cheek-by-jowl. now i know what it must feel like to curate the moma or the whitney.

my government documents class is weaksauce. the dude teaching it is trying really hard to be the "cool" teacher and i'm like, buddy, it's okay, simmer down, you're GROWN now, you don't have to be my best friend. he's a bit of a dweeb who's always like, "okay, let's make this quick because i'm sure you're tired of hearing my voice and i NEED TO GO FOR A SMOKE" or "oh yeah everyone shows up for the last class because i take everyone out for beers" or he uses the "call me by my first name because when i hear 'mr' i feel like i'm my dad" schtick. he used to be a roadie or something. anyway, he's trying really hard and it comes off a little weird. i'm not the kind of person who goes in for that kind of thing at any rate.

in other news, my dodgeball team-mate overheard the other team last night say something like, "i guess THEY didn't go out last night" (apparently they were late because they had partied hard the night before). WOW. so lame! i really have no patience for team "it's cool to be hungover because it shows i'm an animal" or team "here are pictures of me doing shots and roofie-ing girls in cancun with my stupid pucca shell necklace" which is TOTALLY the team they're on. AND they docked us spirit points! alls i know is: THEY'RE DEAD. you do NOT want to f**k with me, and if there's one thing i love doing, it's CRUSHING privileged jock goons. my brother's team is playing them this weekend and being the loyal family member that he is, he's getting pumped to DESTROY them. i love my brother. we argue amongst ourselves, but when someone is messing with one of us, we kick into protection mode.

tonight the plan is to go to class but leave early so that i can be home to wander around the neighbourhood with dr. rei and the roomie and whomever else happens to be kicking around.

since i'm at school all day, i packed that irie pumpkin stew with coconut peas and rice for dinner.

happy halloween!

fin.

D-day

or, the day upon which this awful oversize albatross of a midterm will be effectively banished from my poor back. huzzah!!! depending on exactly what sort of hard asses they're going to be, i'm feeling pretty good...i don't think i'll fail...i might even get a B or something, which would make me ecstatic. there's still nothing i loathe more than rote memorization. ESPECIALLY in a graduate program. please!

so in the interests of some last minute cramming i'm going to keep it brief today. suffice it to say that i'm going to treat myself with a nice night off tonight, consisting of some leisurely time carving my pumpkins for tomorrow, and a big, wintery, hearty delicious meal of meatloaf! canned gravy! mashed potatoes! and green beans!

fin.

like a bridge over troubled water...

last night's dodgeball game was INTENSE. we were playing a new team and things became NOT FUN very quickly. at first, everything was fine, but then we noticed one of the players on the opposite team "the mishandled balls", was squeezing all the air out of the dodgeball (it's against the rules) in order to get a better grip and throw it with more force. the ball was landing on our side with a THUD and would take a full 20 seconds to get back to shape. so we just called over and said, "dude, you're not allowed to squeeze the air out of the ball" and then things got SOUR. first of all, i should say that we were handing them their asses on a platter at this point. i should also note that the game started almost 15 minutes LATE because their team didn't show up on time.

anyway, at that point, things became weak-sauce. they started laughing at us and making fun of us and kept sarcastically referring to "the rules". who does that? yeah, there are RULES to the game, and kooks that we are, we ABIDE by them! how gauche! then they started making fun of us for having a "strategy" and all around being sore losers by loudly snickering and mocking us. it was so lame. they also called the game to an end REALLY early (like we were supposed to play to 8pm but they called last game at 7:50), i suspect because they were losing so bad. not only that, but when i made the usual suggestion that we play an all-in game, they got all confused and were MISERABLE about it, which is weird, cuz the all-in is usually a nice, fun way to end the round. then when they got out in the all-in, one of the dudes was all like, "THANK GOD" like playing all-in was the worst crap ever.

midway through the game, dr. rei was like, "go back to prep school" (just to me) and i thought it was funny. but when they drove away, the team drove home in an ACURA 4x4 suburban type thing, and a BRAND NEW VOLVO. so basically the richie riches couldn't take the fact that they lost to the boomtown gang. i was joking that next time we meet them, we should carry silver spoons in our pockets and then pop them into our mouths when we line up. anyway, we were totally good sports about it, but i think they're going to take away spirit points because we had the gall to observe the rules. WEAKSAUCE.

that's the only picture that survived of me and the dotytron as simon and garfunkel. i ended up looking like mario. it was a bit of a wash, but it was funny just seeing us in wigs. the surprise thatched cottage worked out swimmingly and was the hit of the night. the dotytron made the elements and i did the thatching. it was good all around. my deviled eggs and cupcakes were also a hit, but i kinda knew it was a no brainer.

tonight it's cramming-for-stupid-midterm night. woo. for dinner i'm making a spinach pasta with gorgonzola and fontina. and a salad on the side. nice, filling, cold weather grub. i just want this stupid midterm to be OVER.

fin.

hugh's room

last night was fun. i put on EYE MAKEUP for the first time since my dr. rei-facilitated liquid liner breakthrough of '07. it was crazytown! i bought a dark purple shade and this gold coloured shade for highlighting, but unfortunately the swarthiness of my skin doesn't make the colour pop as much as it does on dr. rei's alabaster canvas. anyway, it was kinda fun to get glammed up for what was a glorified high school reunion.

there were a LOT of old people inside the ride last night. it was kinda weird. like, over fifty was well represented. and hugh's room is a mostly sit-down place? so the only place to stand is right by the door and the bar...kinda strange. it's kind of faux-fancy, with the walls covered in 8x10 glossies of artists i've never heard of. anyway, the vibe was kind of odd, but i can deal with that. it was a *little* hard coughing up $18 for cover though. considering i thought that the cover came with a cd. BOY WAS I WRONG.

anyway, it turned into a big high school reunion of mostly the dotytron's old crew and random peeps. it was fun, but i don't know many of them well enough yet for it to be the BEST TIME EVER. it's a lot of small-talk chitchat and i feel like i'm running at 25%. which is different when i'm around people i adore and love when i'm running at 150%. it's like half-mast karl lagerfeld, which isn't quite as fun as i am capable of being.

anyway, we left at like, 10:30pm (we got there at around 8:45pm). i don't think we quite realized *how* early it was when we started making our goodbyes cuz we were kind of getting funny looks from peeps, but whatever, tonight is a busy night and i have a midterm and a presentation and an assignment due next week that i should be working on, in addition to starting sunday work tomorrow AND dodgeball. and honestly, the funnest part of last night was going home with the dotytron and eating pork souvlaki pitas and cupcakes in bed while watching "harry potter and the goblet of fire". all this AFTER eating that delicious dinner pictured above. pms is CRAZY, man. i felt disgusting last night. i'm quitting cold turkey.

tonight we're dressing up and heading to dr. rei's place for a 50s food-themed party and then maybe going out dancing. people are making all kinds of weird marshmallowy salads and stuff. the dotytron is making a surprise! thatched cottage filled with spinach dip and i'm making deviled eggs and red velvet cupcakes (as previously mentioned).

fin.

baffling

nothing is more baffling to me than my COMPLETE AND UTTER inability to study for this stupid reader's advisory midterm. i honestly just want to fail it already so i can get on with my other, more pressing business (ie. my sociology of food presentation and my 10 gajillion other assignments). i chalk it down to a few things:
a) i find rote memorization of 104 terms to do with reader's advisory insulting as a graduate exercise
b) see above

honestly, if you can't think of another assignment, then just make the other three things WORTH MORE! how's THAT for a concept!

all this griping above is really just sour grapes on my part. pms-y, sour grapes. i ate a banquet burger at 10pm last night, after periodically nodding off from oh, 6pm onwards, but somehow i magically managed to muster up enough energy (suspiciously enough) to watch half of "harry potter and the goblet of fire". curiouser and curiouser.

today i have a short day of work at the leg, class and then home to prepare for a dinner party me and the dotytron are attending tomorrow, hosted by dr. rei. it's a halloween party with 50s themed food. it's based on a bunch of cookbooks the boy's nany gave us from the 50s which had absolutely hilarious offerings like "corned beef bunwiches" and various manipulations of gelatin and marshmallows masquerading as "salad" and various pre-packaged and processed interventions into food. anyway, i was leery of making something so weird that it wouldn't get eaten, so i'm bringing deviled eggs (always a winner!) and red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. still period-correct, but edible too!

then tonight we're going to the creaking tree string quartet cd release party at hugh's room. they do very winsome, plaintive, beautiful bluegrass music. they're really well regarded and gets tonnes of love from the junos and the cbc. with good reason! listen to them!

it's going to be high school reunion which means i might wear eye makeup and straiten my hair. so vain!

tonight for dinnie i'm ACTUALLY cooking and making that chorizo, kale and chickpea soup with bread and maybe a salad.

fin.

it's that damn cold night...

nothing sums up the bone-chilling, bed-romanticizing nature of the coming of winter like a plaintive avril lavigne lyric from the first ballad off her first album. sooo nippy! last night i got a fair bit of studying in. but the real shocker is how much i managed to consume in my pms-crazed fervor of hunger: 1 LARGE bowl of leftover macaroni and cheese, 1 slice of leftover pizza that wasn't mine, 1/2 tube of sour cream and onion pringles, 2 devil's food cake cupcakes with brown sugar buttercream (the roomie made them under my direction for a shower at her work), 2 rice krispie squares (i made them whilst procrastinating). that's pretty impressive. i got a bit of a tummy ache. thank god i mitigated the damage with an evening run with my friend the chief.

also whilst procrastinating i blew through the new adrian tomine book from drawn & quarterly, "shortcomings". it's a sad little number about self-absorbed, urban, lefty, vaguely hipster (but like, 35 year old hipsters from the west coast, circa the time when listening to dinosaur jr. made you a hipster, NOT simian mobile disco) people falling in and out of love, and in particular, an asian couple and their protracted relationship built on misunderstandings. there's an interesting racial dynamic woven in, with the boy in the couple preoccupied with nailing white girls, but essentially it comes down to gen xers not knowing what in the hell they want. i love his drawing style, so that keeps me coming back, even as i feel myself incredibly distanced from the actions and motivations of the characters.

we also watched "harry potter and the prison of azkaban". wow! alfonso cuaron does an AMAZING JOB! the previous two films felt like trials to watch, and i thought that christopher columbus made the whole pacing of the films feel very mechanical and plodding, not doing justice to the action and darkness that rowling crafts in her stories. this one was a legitimate movie in its' own right, and the dementors were fantastic! the darkness of the tone compared with the way the film cut from scene to scene was expertly executed. i know he didn't direct the fourth one, but i'm hoping the fourth one follows in the same vein.

tonight for dinner i'm going to make a portugese chorizo, kale, and chickpea soup with toasted slices of fred's potato bread and butter.

fin.

writeoff

i tried studying last night, but only getting four hours of sleep the night before killed me, and as i tried to read, my eyes were glazing over. so i switched to something i wouldn't be required to retain (entertainment weekly, which incidentally posted a HILARIOUSLY APT review of this pants season of heroes, featuring lines like: "this week on heroes: claire continues to marvel at the same powers of regeneration she's always had! hiro does cute things in feudal japan! and after a journey of approximately 42 million miles from one vague part of central america to another vague part of central america, our new, haplessly murderous hero maya, is still blubbering for her twin brother and bleeding black goo from her eyes! wait, which week is this? every week." or "hiro - the most neutered tv character since screech - is remaining in feudal japan to ogle a babe. stripped of any genuine mission, he now has little to do but smile like an adorable, gassy baby.") so true!

according to my bro, pushing daisies is the new show to watch, but i can't be bothered. i've got too much other stuff on my plate so tv is being put on the backburner.

anyway, i fell asleep ridiculously early and slept way into this morning, only to find that my afternoon class is cancelled. so i'm supposed to show up for NIGHT CLASS only?!? things that make you go hmmmmm.

i feel gross after over-eating on crap food yesterday, so i won't be doing any of that for a while. tonight i'm eating coconut rice'n'peas with an irie pumpkin stew with a surprising amount of kick from just one wee habenero pepper and one thai bird chili.

fin.

ladies in the front row touching toes...

ummm...hello, now THAT was a party. zomg! zomg! last night was the kind of club night that makes you want to give up all semblance of responsibility and normalcy and ditch job, school, grown-up life and be a non-stop, 24 hour party girl. it was soooooooo good!

first of all, revival was the PERFECT spot. it's one big, fat, large room. stage, dancefloor, bar, DONE. no flashy stuff because there's no need! the night started off with me and dr. rei eating some fall-y, starchy, porky goodness (pictured above) and then finishing "harry potter and the chamber of secrets" (dear chris columbus: i don't like your directorial style). then we got all glammed up (pictured at left). i had just been bemoaning the fact that my silver dress had yet to arrive from ebay, and lo and behold, as i came home from work yesterday, there was a jaunty little package care of u.s. post poking exuberantly out of my mailbox. for joy! what an auspicious start to the evening! that and my hair (which i had slept on while still damp) was a riot of kinky waves and controlled volume. huzzah! dr. rei helped me apply eye makeup which was fun, but i don't know if i have the chutzpah to do it myself.

we arrived at arrival to the sounds of catchdubs. well hey there dude i've neverheard of! you're the bomb! rude tunes that go people nicely warmed up for the kid sister/a-trak assault to come. those two are so cute! i'm in love with them both individually in equal measure, but put them together and it's a supernova of love/adoration for them. kid sister is an absolutely luminous, winning, energetic, consumate entertainer, and when she's on stage with a-trak, they do a back-and-forth where she chats to the crowd "nice sunglasses, baby, ooooh, i like that jacket" and then says stuff like, "play the track, baby, just play the track" and he's all like, "easy, tiger" as she unleashes her supreme dance moves 'pon the floor. it's OUT. OF. HAND. they're so in love! what a juggernaut of talent!

then dj mehdi and a-trak did a back-to-back set that rocked my world. oh okay, you're going to play T.I. WHAT YOU KNOW?!? wow. why didn't you tell me and dr. rei that this night was CUSTOM-DESIGNED for us? redonkulous! look at how hot and frrraanncche dj mehdi is! delicious! finally, the night ended with kavinsky (aka grandpa, aka the silver fox) laying the teardown. basically, he was everything that justice was not. he could mix, and he mixed it up, and won me over when he played "teenage wasteland" by the who.

i danced my ass off and got sweaty alongside my bff which is basically the best you could ask for. in STARK contrast to the justice show, this place was TEEMING with hot boys. one guy was so hot that i was on the brink of going up to him and telling him, "there are a LOT of fine looking men here tonight, but damn, son, you are chewing them UP". seriously guys, i would tear that a** apart.
so let's have a rundown here: hype, dancefloor smashing tunes, expertly mixed, in an unpretentious club, with hot boys = a night to remember. nights like that don't come round all that often...i'm so glad we went. it OBLITERATED justice. the only small kink is that i'll probably never see that cool glass of water of a man again. le sigh.

since i ate like 10lbs of crap, i'm continuing the trend by ordering pizza tonight. mamma's, 1/2 veneziana, 1/2 devil's delight.

fin.

lateness

late post today as i went to bed completely nackered last night after watching half of "harry potter and the chamber of secrets". i find the books make for better reading when the characters are young, then the movies make for watching. i'm not so into kids in movies, and i think with the trend towards darker fantasy elements like "pan's labrynth" and "the lord of the rings" it's a lot harder to stomach magic that's geared towards kids. for some reason "labrynth" and "the never ending story" are exempt, but i sense a different tone to those movies than the harry potter stuff. anyway, here is a picture of my cat, smudge, looking terribly debonaire, like a 18th century, occassionally-rakish-but-consistently-charming nobleman.

that is the mac'n'cheese dinnie from saturday night. it was AMAZING. the best rendition ever! i made way too much sauce (which is how it's got to be, as the noodles continue to absorb sauce as they cool) and toasted some panko in oil with some thyme and seasoning. it was nice to have the crunch of the panko against the soft, smooth, richness of the noodles. the spinach salad is an old standby, but by jove, it works!

saturday night was fun. we hung with the dotytron's friend whom we haven't seen in years, and he ended up crashing at our place and staying into the next afternoon. he's a good kid. he's a drunken pontificator. so we had an in-depth conversation about existential stuff at around 4am sunday morning, which to me, is the hallmark of a good evening.

sunday we went for brunch at joy bistro on queen. i ordered the eggs benny with spinach and peameal, but the boy's sister ordered blueberry pancakes which were AMAZING. instead of just having crispy edges, they were crispy all over (like they had been fried in a lot of oil), and had an eggy, airy-yet-substantial quality...like a very large, thin crumpet, minus the salty-undertone that crumpets have. or a very thin, flat, donut. it was delicious and i'm committed to trying to recreate it. i'd eat pancakes all the time if they were crispy all over like that!

then we had dodgeball and then pho. we won last night! so now we're 3 and 2. this week we're playing the second-place-ranked team, so we'll see how we do. then i had dr. rei and our friend bw over (also from markham. all the best people are from markham), where our conversation ran the gamut from an extended riff on mordor, seedy samurais in burberry tearways and two dollar flipflops (a short film in the making, methinks), peace in the middle-east, and chicago-school economics. that's a LOT of ground to cover. i also decided on next year's halloween costume. it's going to be so awesome! this year's already a writeoff by comparison. much like this weekend, much to my dismay. i have an astounding amount of work due in the coming weeks. but tonight is no exception to the weekend's general trend as i'm going with my bff to see the fool's gold tour at revival (yay!).

fool's gold is a-trak's new label, and the tour features himself and dj mehdi djing, kid sister, and kavinsky. it's going to be hottttt inside! i'm looking forward to this show like 1000000000 x more than justice and i predict it's going to be OFF THE CHAINS! there's so much hotness inside the place that it's going to spontaneously combust, seen?

tonight for dinner i'm making braised garlic sausage with cider vinegar and pears and caramelized onions, alongside some sauteed golden squash and mashed po' (as you can see, i was counting on the cold weather trend continuing apace, and menu-planned accordingly).

fin.

almost at the end...

we're 15 minutes into the last episode EVER of buffy the vampire slayer and it's killing me. the show is so, so, so funny! and sweet, and dark, and scary and inspiring all at once. i've never in my life seen a better treatment of what it means to be a girl in contemporary society. i've never in my life seen a more feminist show than buffy, that tackles issues without being overly mannered, like northern exposure (ie. with blatant references to kierkegaard). it bridges the gap between fluffy entertainment and heavy, weighty, topics like no other. i love you joss whedon!!! best. show. ever. hands down.

anyway, we got interrupted midway by the roomie coming home. she hasn't seen it so we didn't want to ruin it for her. then her and i got into a big debate about being a mom. she tends to view it as like, THE most difficult experience and so isolating, etc., whereas i tend to think that most people in canadian, middle-class society CHOOSE being a mom, and seriously, it's NOT THAT hard. she thinks it's inherently isolating because our society doesn't welcome children (this kind of stems back to an argument we had about kids being allowed in fine-dining establishments...which i'm resolutely AGAINST), whereas i think that if you take on being a parent, there's going to be some places that you can't go with your kid, which is FINE, as long as you don't decide you want to be tied to your kid 24/7. if you are, then tough titty, you can't go see the 9pm saturday night show with your toddler and you can't eat at canoe. there's LOTS of other things you can do with you kid, tonnes of community centres, parks, free stuff going on. then she got into this thing about how people get irritated by the sound of babies crying, so people feel like they can't bring their kid places. i was like, dude, we're GENETICALLY DESIGNED to get irritated by the sound of babies crying. if we were like, totally okay with it, there would no impetus to assuage that crying.

anyway, my point was that for middle-class women, the construction of how hard it is to be a parent, and how isolating, and depressing is a by-product of their class privilege, and they participate in their own victimization. because there is stuff they can do to ameliorate their isolation, if that's how they feel. part of it is society and part of it comes from the women themselves, not like it's all society MAKING women feel isolated. i also think that for a lot of people in reduced economic subject positions, they don't have the time or resources to engage in navel-gazing about how hard it is to be a mom, they just DO IT, the same way people in the developing world just do it, when they have like 4 different kids and have to work, etc. in other words, that our modern construction of what it means to be a "child" is complicit in this narrow definition of what it means to be a mom.

my most controversial point is probably that if you're breastfeeding in public, it wouldn't hurt to put a blanket over your titty. my issue is an issue of fairness. if boobs secreting stuff is okay in public, then you can't really give people guff for picking their noses in public or cutting their toenails on the ttc. this is a more tenuous position, i know.

anyway, due to a large snafu on my part, i missed the chance to go on the tour of the cbc library yesterday. i thought i had a place and had done everything, but apparently i hadn't. oops. it's hard keeping track of all my ish!!!

today is a homework/errand-running day. then we're having the dotytron's friend steve over as he's going over to thailand shortly, for six months of hot ladyboy sex (and playing jazz in some hotel or sumpin'). i think we're going to go for drinks someplace, but i REALLY REALLY want to go dancing, and there's an intriguing thing happening at the drake...it's called "edumacation" with dj fase, numeric and the return of more or less (my favorite of the never forgive action djs) *hopefully* playing bomb old skool hip hop.

i'm making mac'n'cheese with asiago, mozzarella, aged cheddar and fontina...extra creamy! and a spinach salad with avocado, grape tomatoes, red onion, and a lemon vinaigrette. and a chocolate caramel pie for dessert.

fin.

circa nightclub

well, i heard that some idiots on craigslist were paying $50-100 a ticket for the sold out justice show last night, so the wheels in my mercenary little mind starting ticking away and i was thinking that if i could make an $80 profit on my ticket off of some goon, then by jove, I'M GOING TO DO IT! so we ate this amazing dinnie (pictured above) and then we ate some girl guide cookies (chocolate mint) and at that point, it was kind of hard peeling ourselves off the couch, but we got all dolled up (pictured at left), and soldiered out, with the express intent of making a tidy profit, and calling it a night. somehow though, when we got there, since we had already gotten done up (i was wearing eyeliner AND lip gloss!) and we were curious about circa, we kind of got funneled into the club before we even THOUGHT about scalping our tix. it was the most poorly executed scam, ever!

circa blew. wow. it's like that joke about toronto: "how many torontonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?" answer: "two. one to screw it in and one to tell them how they do it in new york" it's such a horrible, mish-mash! and people were eating it up! people were taking pictures of all the stuff and it was so gauche, it was cringe-inducing. circa looks like it was designed by 10 year olds, given the project of designing a "proper, urban club". one 10 year old was in tokyo, one in new york, one in l.a., one in miami, and one in london. the aesthetic seems shoddily put together and poorly executed, with a bunch of dead space and warren-like corridors that lead you to yet another slap-dash room. it looks like they ran out of money, with some of the finishing coming out kind of cheap.

honestly, you know that episode of the simpson where moe changes his bar to "m"? that's what it looks like. "it's po-mo, you know, different for the sake of being different" there's stuff like corridors with plate glass, behind which there lie s&m motorcycles being "worked on" by a live person who kind of looks like kat von d from l.a. ink. or stuff like 15ft tall silver spray-painted, bald, mannequins with gaping red mouths. one floor looks like it was designed by whomever is curating magic pony for the week, and one floor was filled with american-apparel-ish pictures of gross, hairy, people giving glassy-eyed stares at the camera.

there was also lots of stupid digi-cute stuff. like one of the bars had a touch sensitive thing that would project your imprint onto the facing wall in blocky-tetris like shapes. just stupid stuff like that that doesn't MEAN anything if the sound sucks. and let me assure you, the sound SUCKED.

If you're spending 1.5 million, HOW'S ABOUT PUTTING THAT MONEY INTO THE SOUND?!? how can we have a "world-class club" and you guys haven't figured surround sound? you shouldn't be sacrificing volume for clarity. it was clear, but i could also have a normal conversation.

and justice kinda blew. they played straight tracks that were already a zillion years old and didn't mix it up or play around or drop fresh stuff. they weren't cheeky OR fun. like, honestly dudes, your concert shouldn't sound like me hopping onto your myspace page at a moderately higher volume, it just shouldn't. i think under better conditions, with a dancefloor better designed for dancing, it would have been more fun, but the combination of a crappy space with crappy sound and a lukewarm performance was no good. but i'm not that hype on justice anyway, i was going for a lark with my bff more than anything.

there was also an EGREGIOUS lack of hot boys. it was tragic. and people buy crappy vintage clothes. or, crappy vintage-seeming knockoffs from urban outfitters. anyway, the point was, it was worthwhile to go to circa just to know what i'm hating on, so that i can hate with authority (very important).

i'm way more excited for fool's gold tour on monday at revival. at least a-trak is french canadian, and therefore, capable of being funny. dj mehdi is also hot and i have high hopes his ethnicity will add needed levity and flava. kid sister is all kinds of fierce, and at least she knows how to ENTERTAIN. i also much prefer kavinsky's stuff to justice's, the revival to circa, etc., etc.,

tonight for dinner we have loads of leftovers so i'm going to eat that. after my run. eep!

fin.

d.a.n.c.e.

tonight ima going dancin' dancin' dancin', featuring the sounds of these two prats on the right. truth be told, i'm not the biggest fan of justice's music, i think i prefer kavinsky's bass-heaviness. but, tonight is for fluffy, sonic calorically-empty fun, surrounded by the best and brightest and most outlandishly dressed hipsters toronto has to offer. it'll be nice just to have a chance to go buck for a change, alongside my bffff, dr. rei. i am NOT going to be outlandishly dressed. i'm either going to wear the thing i picked up at the old clothing show (aka my kelly taylor-post-steve-sanders dress), OR this ^^^ number that i'm desperately waiting to arrive chez l'ebay. i'm hoping this dress magically appears today (i've been waiting for a WHILE) because it's so slouchy and shiny and silver, whereas my faux-velvet and rhinestone number is fiendishly tight and starting to come apart at the seams (literally).

i saw some interviews with kavinsky on youtube. french people are NOT cool. kavinsky is an idiot, who's not even funny. french canadians however, are a different story, as i find dave 1 from chromeo both hot and tres amusant.

tonight for dinner i'm making beef stroganoff with mushrooms, atop egg noodles and sided with sauteed or roasted brussel sprouts. i do love brussel sprouts so.

fin.

all these loose ends are a gong show

i'm currently working on no less than 5 different school assignments and it's driving me bonkers. this week and next week i have nothing due for school, so i figured i'd get cracking and try to get ahead, as the month of november is looking pretty intense for me. having 5 different things on the go without being able to finish any one of them is totally annoying. the biggest pain in the ass right now is my statute tracing assignment for government documents, if only because the wording of the assignment is very strange. today i have work, and then my multiculti course where we have a guest lecturer (read: no need for karl lagerfeld to attend), then a big long break before my class at 6:30pm so i'm going to do a crapload of work at school, while i'm forced to be there.

long day today, filled with work, but i need to get a proper night's sleep tonight as tomorrow evening i'm getting primped to go dance to justice all night long, at this new club in toronto, circa. apparently, circa is going to "put toronto on the map" (their hype, not mine) and it'll be the arrival of "new york style clubbing" to toronto. i'm sorry, but i don't care about toronto being on the map. the problem with toronto is that we so desperately want to be on this phantom map that we wear it on our provincial and parochial sleeves, making us look like fawning adolescents standing on the sidelines of the cosmopolitan city cotillion. i think we should be happy with our pokey little selves. there's so much to love about this city...it's a city that has the best of both worlds...you can know this city intimately and yet there's enough here to keep you excited and engaged. furthermore, who decided that "new york style clubbing" is what we're supposed to be aspiring to? i don't really need to be dancing ironically next to chloe sevigny, only to have my glassy-eyed stare and open-air exposed boobs captured by some sleazy "photographer" for last night's party.

dinnie last night was tasty as all get out. with the help of the dotytron, we made green beans thoren (green beans stir-fried with spices, curry leaves, and a shredded coconut-spice mixture) and that tomato-cream shrimp curry. we ended up buying some naan from the pakistani place, makkah, up the street, to round out the starches. it was all so good, with lots of textures and full-bodied flavour in every bite. i'm taking some for dinner tonight at school.

fin.

jobstress AND earbuds=wack

so i went for another jog yesterday. i think that did it. i'm officially a jogger. three times in one week means that you're officially the whatever you did three times that week. so i'm also a showerer, a dinner maker, and a narcoleptic. went to sleep at TEN pm last night! flannel is going to be my undoing.

anyway, i've been listening to my ipod the past two times running. usually i use these earmuffy type headphones the dotytron bought because they capture the bass and also because i hate earbuds. well, yesterday was a stark reminder just WHY exactly i loathe them so. now, i don't know if i just have the waxiest ears this side of madame tussaud's, but taking out earbuds is an exercise in abject, wax-derived humiliation. so gross! and let me assure you, gentle readers, that i go to TOWN on my ears. 1 q-tip per.

last night's dinnie was fantastic! that pasta is so easy and the returns are huge! i melted some butter and roasted garlic oil (regular olive oil is fine) in a pan and threw in some finely sliced red onion. let that sweat out for a bit and then tossed in a LOT of roughly chopped mixed mushrooms, mostly white button (one of those paper bags at the grocery store by the loose mushrooms, full). i cranked the heat on high so that the mushrooms seared all over, and then threw in some roasted garlic, smashed up, and chopped fresh thyme. added a splash of white wine to deglaze, seasoned with salt and pepper and turned the heat to low. cooked the pasta, drained it, and tossed the mushroom mix with the pasta and about one cup of the reserved pasta water, along with a knob of parmesan i had grated and some chopped fresh parsley. i served it with that romaine, red onion, toasted walnut and caramelized pear salad with the red wine vinaigrette. i'm in love with that salad right now.

tonight for dinnie we're having a shrimp curry in a tomato-cream sauce with curried green beans and steamed rice. i might also make a butternut squash and apple soup for tomorrow, which is everyone's late day.

fin.

first dodgeball related injury!

talk about a mind-funk. this weekend was so weird! i felt like my mind was fuzzy all weekend. the only time i felt like i was kinda with it, was directly after my run and after dodgeball. otherwise, the dreary unremittingly grey sky and the cold conspired to prevent me from doing a lick of work. i basically spent all weekend swathed in flannel pjs, in my equally be-flanneled bed, trying to do "reading" which resulted in my immediate departure to the land of nod. all that sleeping and napping meant that my head felt filled with wet wool all weekend and i was extremely unproductive. although unproductive for me, still means that i made butter tarts, cleaned the house, rearranged the closets, made a cloudy turkey stock and froze it, and organized my file folders - i still would have liked to have applied myself to stuff that actually matters - like my schoolwork.

last night dr. rei took a tumble during dodgeball. it was crazy! she got beaned in the melon and it literally took her off her feet and she tumbled onto her arm and ankle. first dodgeball-related injury on the team! so my thoughts are going out to my best friend.

hot pot was a blast though. trooper that she is, dr. rei sacrified her personal health and comfort in the name of all-you-can-eat mayhem. we ate a LOT. hot pot is a really satisfying communal experience, but OF COURSE i forgot my camera so it won't be documented on here, alas. see! i told you! mind funk!

tonight for dinner i'm going to make a wild mushroom thyme pasta with a big, leafy salad with greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion, and olives in a red wine vinaigrette.

fin.

i've become one of THEM

i went for a jog yesterday. yup. ME. running. technically, i walked 2 times around the track and ran once, so i only ran about 4 times. it almost DESTROYED me. no kidding.

then i met up with dr. rei and we went on a long, rambling journey through kensington, whereby she benefited greatly from my stylist advice. we also were in some weird confluence of hot guys yesterday. no less than four (4!!!!) extremely hot guys crossed our paths and engaged with us in some form or another. it was a lucky, lucky day folks.

deep blue fish'n'chips was a semi-winner. my chief complaint is that the portions are on the smaller side (the standard-bearer is harbord fish'n'chips) and the batter is of the bread-y, chewy variety that soggifies quickly, instead of the shatteringly crisp kind. the green pea hummous that came with my halibut'n'chips was quite nice, and if you venture from the standard, the jerk battered fish with the sweet potato fries is quite good, as was the corn-breaded fish, according to our dining companion, evil homer. i think if we go, it'll be for the non-traditional items, and for traditional fish'n'chips, go to reliable or harbord.

my butter tarts turned out AMAZING! homemade butter tarts are the best. my pastry is the bizzomb, first and foremost, which creates a lovely, flaky barrier between you and your first taste of the sweet, treacly filling. i also like my tarts on the firmer side (ie. not so much runny) and i made two kinds, half with pecans and half plain (the pecan ones are on the left, above). divine!!! the yield was quite good too, 24 butter tarts all told.

today is a day of productivity. i bailed on my book club meeting because i don't want to the book club to be me and two (2!!!) forty year olds. so i'm going to go for another few laps around the track, do homework, then ready myself for dodgeball and chinese all you can eat hotpot, after.

HOTPOT!!!

fin.

elizabeth I

wow, yesterday i sounded majorly b***hy. apologies! i think it was more of a general frustration with the art show in general, and then a mild bit of weirdness about the ex-gf being such an over-emoter. it's not like i genuinely wish her any ill-will or would be mean to her or anything...i mean, give me a few more times with her and i probably would tell her to her face that she could use 10 billion ccs of hot oil, cuz i'm honest like that, and this blog notwithstanding, i'm actually a very nice, tactful and gracious person, in person.

anyway, last night i ended up eating a quickie dinner of the last of the turkey and stuffing soused in gravy from thanksgiving. rip thanksgiving 2007, rip. i was in a hurry because i had to meet up with dr. rei and her roomie to see "elizabeth: the golden age" it was a little disappointing and i can understand why it's being panned by the critics. cate blanchett's performance is a little of the chewing-the-scenery variety. she overacts quite a bit and the delivery seems forced. clive owen is forced to be an overly swarthy and wild-eyed walter raleigh without very much to do. most of the movie is about political intrigue, with scenes that are sloppily executed (ie. some of them you don't know why you're being shown what you're being shown) and disjointed. then the last bit of the movie turns into this weird naval battle sequence with heavy handed, dramatic staging and lord-of-the-rings-y children's operatic choruses as beams of light shine auspiciously upon the virgin queen against an overly-theatrical stormy backdrop. it was a muddled mess, quite frankly. abbie cornish is an insipid actress, who manages to be full-of-cheeked and pursed-of-lip, signifying nothing. i didn't really believe the love story between raleigh and elizabeth, and furthermore, i thought it cheapened the story of a strong-willed, decisive woman. although, clive owen could make me do a multitude of things i wouldn't ordinarily consider. he is one cool glass of water.

i came home and then got a visit from the roomie's midwifery friend, whom we hadn't seen in a while, and that was fun times.

today i woke up and instead of doing a lick of homework, cleaned house like the dickens. i was VERY industrious, re-organizing closets, packing things away, and making my little label-maker churn out labels at a prodigious pace. i still feel like there's more work to be done, but i'm satisfied with what i've accomplished. le sigh. nothing makes me happier than reorganizing and cleaning.

this afternoon i'm meeting dr. rei for some rambles around downtown, searching for halloween costumes and stuff. then home, to meet the dotytron and another friend for fish'n'chips. we're trying this new place called deep blue fish'n'chips. apparently the deal with them aside from the standard halibut and chips card, is that there's 7 different batters to choose from. intriguing! there's a jerk batter and a tarragon batter, with all kinds of different chips (sweet potato, etc) and house-made tartar sauce. i do love me a proper chippy. and so close, too! then we're going to stroll our way back here and rent the harry potter movies (1 and 2) and watch them with popcorn and snacks. i think i'm going to try a hand at making butter tarts. i've made them before, but it's been a while...i've been craving them like mad lately. in depth review of deep blue tomorrow!

fin.

modern fibre art can kiss my a**

okay, so we wandered around town for 2 hours last night, ending up at the gladstone for "big fibre, little fibre" which was a juried (!!!!) show featuring fibre pieces, one of which was made by the doytron's ex, who incidentally, is in a DIRE need of a hot oil treatment. actually, more like 50 million. (yeah, i know i'm being catty as all f**k...you wantdemure class and tact, go to victorianfantasies.blogspot.com <-- doesn't exist as far as i know). she's so WEIRD! she was over-emoting like whoa. and seriously, if it's an art exhibit, why am **i** better dressed than thou? are you an artist or not? i mean, do you care about aesthetics or not? the show was kind of pants. some of the stuff was crafty as all hell and some of the other stuff was just plain awful.

that's her piece right there. it was kinda meh. she got GRANT money for it. like, wtf?!? her next piece is apparently some sound installation. i think if you're doing sound installations you should kind of be a sound engineer. you know, KNOW something about the physics of sound, perhaps? instead of like, projecting blood onto the wall and then having some echoing stereo play your murmurings about how your period ushered in your womanhood (i'm not saying this is what it is, but i'm guessing).

doesn't my dinner look delish? me and dr. rei came home craving cookies "i need warm cookies and cold milk and then i'm OUTTA here" <-- while waiting for the dufferin bus, which took forever to come, for which i squarely placed the blame on howard hampton's shoulders, and specifically, because he looks like a guidance counsellor. then the dotytron's friend came over. and we came up with the best connection. he looks EXACTLY like count chocula. that's AMAZING. it was the most apt description ever!!!

anyway, it was a fun little mission. today i have my meeting with sociology prof. then i'm going to do some errands on the way home and then i may or may not go see "elizabeth" with dr. rei and her roomie, but more likely i should stay in and do some homework as the last few weeks of october are JAMMED PACKED with social engagements and debaucherous fun.

tonight for dinnie i'm making a shrimp tomato-cream curry over steamed basmati rice and sag from the pakistani joint up the street.

fin.

obligatory mid-term FIS rant

here i go: WHY OH WHY does the faculty of information studies INSIST on stretching course content that could conceivably fit into a well-organized, 10 page leaflet, over almost FIFTY hours of course time?!?

it's ridiculous!!! i walked out of my "public library service to culturally diverse communities" course yesterday because it was a big, fat, waste of my time. the ENTIRE course could EASILY be taught as ONE three hour seminar, not THIRTEEN. cripes. i actually get angry. it's insulting to the collective intelligences (assuming that exists) of everyone in that room, and the fact that they don't see it, makes me even MORE angry.

on a side note, my food course keeps getting better and better. it really gets me all fired up thinking of how i'm going to tussle with the other students and i'm really engaged by the subject matter. this week was all about fair trade, and one of the readings was soooo enjoyable and fun to engage with. it's called "reading fair trade: political ecological imaginary and the moral economy of fair trade foods" by michael k. goodman out of university of california, santa cruz. he basically synthesizes a cultural studies and a materialist-driven political economy-based methodology to look at how fair trade operates structurally and conceptually. i really dug it because it was all about various competing representations, coalescing around the banner of "fair trade". if there's one thing i love, it's talking about representations. he also brought up how producers of fair trade goods trade on a fetishization of their "otherness" (sometimes consciously, sometimes not), which has been missing in the readings and discussions around food-production issues that we've undertaken thus far. i can't WAIT to talk about it in class tomorrow. *faints from nerd love*

i tried to watch episode three of heroes last night and gave up. streaming tv is crap. the dotytron has a VERY low tolerance for low-grade technology that SHOULD be high grade (ie. reel-to-reel's get a pass, streaming tv that shows up all giant-pixelated get a big, fat, FAIL). instead, i'm only a couple of episodes away from the end of buffy, season 7. wow. this show is amazing. i can't say that enough. i want to get that super deluxe box set that comes with the stake.

tonight i'm meeting dr. rei after work and we're going on a gab-fest/re-con mission to check the dotytron's ex-gf's art exhibit (or we may or may not bail on this depending on the weather). i mean, i have a rabid voyeuristic fixation but it remains to be seen whether i have to truck across town in the pissy rain to fulfill it. alternatively, we can come here, and i can make cookies. something about rainy, cold, winter/fall days SCREAM cookies and milk to me. actually, i'm really leaning towards that option. for dinner i'm packing that sausage and kale and bean stuff.

fin.

karl lagerfeld, PHD?!?

or, DOCTOR karl lagerfeld, mayhap? my sociology prof emailed me about my last reading report and complimented me on my "insightful ideas" and "beautiful writing". she also was wondering why i wasn't doing a phd. which got me thinking: why AREN'T i doing a phd?

here are the pros:
- i can make everyone call me doctor
- a life of indolence, getting to teach and espouse on subjects i'm passionate about
- being able to school people and get paid for it
- daily reaffirmation of my genius

here are the cons:
- i'm too much of a dilettante to tie myself to one subject
- the hoops-jumping
- the non-guaranteed tenured job
- the 5 years of making student money

basically, i do produce my best work under these circumstances:
a) when i get to prove people i find stupider than me, wrong
b) when i get validation for my brilliance

which on paper would make me an ideal candidate for further grad work. i dunno. it's nice to be recognized. i've got a meeting with her to talk about it some more. she's also writing a book for routledge and she wants to run some stuff by me. it looks like routledge is just HANDING books out, nowadays. haha, j/k. apparently it's about "foodies". (btw, i LOATHE that term). i honestly doubt i have the drive to finish a phd. i wish i could just write witty, incisive, scathing cultural commentary for like, the new yorker, or harpers or something. like, if i could pick what i wanted to write about. kind of like here. i mean, if this isn't the blogging equivalent of harpers or the new yorker, i don't know WHAT is. ha! anyway, the prof thinks i'm teh awesome. which is nice. because i'm generally too uppity in my FIS classes to make much of a good impression (i don't think very highly of the faculty there).

the roomie ran into someone (the gf of a friend) at the bar last thursday, who as they were leaving, got up and mentioned that they had to get up early for class. turns out they're at FIS. so the roomie goes, "oh, my roommate is at FIS, do you know her? name's karl lagerfeld?" and the girl is drawing a blank, then the roomie goes, "short, tiny, asian girl, BIG MOUTH" and then the girl goes, "ah, yes, i DO know her". haha. i'm big mouth lee!

okay, i have to finish my multiculturalism paper that's due in 3 hours. and vote! go mixed member proportional! this whole election has left a sour taste in my mouth. john tory looks like a semi-strong leader, but chose a crap platform, dalton mcguinty's beady little eyes are creepsville, and even though i'm voting ndp, howard hampton is a mealy-mouthed ineffectual whiner. seriously guys, (and by that i mean, the ndp) FIX UP. INSPIRE PEOPLE! don't just go based on what you're NOT.

last night's dinner turned out really nice! i came up with a new salad (i don't know how original it actually is, but it's the first time **i** have made it). it was chopped romaine, with red onion, toasted walnuts, and caramelized roasted pears in a red wine vinaigrette. the sweetness of the pears was really nice with the richness of the walnuts and the bite of the red onion, cut through with the acerbic shot from the dressing. and my cauliflower soup is always a winner. it comes out like cauliflower velvet on a spoon. tonight for dinner i'm packing leftover turkey and stuffing slathered in gravy with a tonne of fruit. the boy and the roomie are having this slow-cooker concoction of braised navy beans with grape tomatoes, rosemary, thyme and sage and garlic, topped with italian sausages and kale. i love this dish. i'll eat it over the weekend sometime.

fin.

styx, a giant bird, a giant hunk of cow, family, and me

thanksgiving is about traditions, passed down over time and cemented through the annual coming together of family and friends. the way my family does thanksgiving is to make up strange and wondrous traditions by the seat of our pants, every year. this weekend we packed A LOT in. as predicted, we did indeed go to all you can eat japanese BEFORE the turkey dinner on saturday, which resulted in a wicked bout of heartburn for yours truly. the 16lb turkey cooked in (no joke) 2.5 hours. this was AMAZING. this meant that i had time to rest the turkey out so that the bird was extra moist, as the juices redistributed into the bird. i attribute the quick cooking time to two things. a) my mum has a convection oven. b) i also bring the bird or whatever protein i'm cooking to room temperature before i stick it in the oven. this means the bird wasn't sitting in the oven for extra time, getting dry (dryness is the MAJOR issue with turkey meat). so, after feasting on this delicious, moist, and juicy bird to my left, we waddled downstairs to my grandma's side of the house, to her family room, to partake in some post-thanksgiving dinner rogers-on-demand karaoke. did we have mics? oh no. instead, we aided and abetted our digestive enzymes at work by screaming the lyrics to styx's "come sail away" as loud as we could at the tv (doesn't every family do that?) before the tryptophan kicked in and we trundled off to bed. we also took advantage of the rogers-on-demand on my grandpa's tv to watch "mr. man boobs" and "cougar hunt" (we actually couldn't sit through the whole thing), thereby leaving some puzzling viewing history evidence for poor gramps to mull over.

(WARNING: the video is long, and probably not very interesting to people who don't know me or know my family. i find it hilarious.)



day 2 started with the family collectively deciding to exhibit some restraint by ordering IN cantonese dimsum, instead of going out to eat shanghai dimsum, which always results in the itis. we played some touch football in the afternoon, which was very upper-middle-class, wasp-y americana of us. as an aside, i'm an ACE football tactician. my plays involve whispered, frantic pleas, like, "but i can't CATCH ", or "okay, how about you pass me the ball, and i RUN" *taps forehead* like a steel trap, people, like a steel trap.

i did the prime rib dinner that night. we ate with my grandparents, it was a good time. the dotytron and the outlaw bro were going to see van halen. so me and my sister drop them off downtown and then head back up to markham, to await pickup. pickup was a DISASTER. the dotytron was WASTED. this is hilarious. he's a very constructive drunk, and the car-ride home involved lots of wondering where my other brother, killah cam, was, and stuff like, "where's cam? i want him to be here. where's cam? don't lie to me guys, i can feel him". the one black mark was when the dotytron opened the car door as we were zooming up the dvp. his explanation involved something about dustin hoffman, and how he "didn't want it to end up like that" and how he was trying to ensure "the seal was tight" (he had watched "outbreak" earlier in the day). then my bro (whose car it was, and who was driving) got REALLY mad. and then the dotytron went on a long rambling apologetic rant, which ended with the line, "not the least of which is, sterling, i love you". !!!!! when we had dropped them off, we had been playing the outlaw bro's van halen cd in the car. when we went to pick them up, my brother was playing the soundtrack to "les miserables". the dotytron gets into the car, wanting to hear "unchained" (by halen), presses play, and as the swelling sounds of "master of the house" fill the yaris, was non-too-pleased to say the least. i believe the words were, "what the f**k is this?!?"

the obvious thing to do at that point, was to go midnight bowling. which we did. disco bowling in fact. i LOVE bowling. i love sports, games, whathaveyou, where you each time you play it's a chance to get it perfect. my brother made the player's names up. at the time, he was still mad at the dotytron. i'll let you, dear readers, figure out who the dotytron was.

day three started with my little imp of a niece, pictured above, decking out wonder-woman in some stylistically questionable attire, not befitting her noble station in life. then we went to shanghai dimsum, then we came home, watched a lot of buffy season 7 (best show ever. ever. EVER.) then went to the dotytron's family's house for their thanksgiving, whereupon we gave his da' a dobro for his birthday. the dotytron's family is considerably more sedate than mine. it was nice to have a chilled out cap to the weekend.

the end result of all this family time, was that i have to write a paper tonight (boo!) when all i want to do is finish watching buffy season 7 (yay!) and then possibly start buffy all over again. tonight for dinner we're having cauliflower soup with a grilled cheese sammich.

fin.

the most wonderful time of the year!!!!!

last night was crazycakes. i came home at 6, ate dinner (pictured at right). i didn't end up making fried rice because i knew i had a crapload of things to do, so i ate what i had made for the family for wednesday while i was at school. it's a red lentil dhal on steamed rice with purchased sag and naan from makkah, this pakistani joint up the street. it was flippin' delicious. so i went buck yesterday and did almost all my prep for thanksgiving.

i've said this before, but thanksgiving, is MY christmas, kwanzaa, hannukah, martin luther king junior day, veteran's day, canada day, and may 2/4 all rolled up into one. i LOVE it. it's a whole holiday that's based around no other purpose except for gathering and eating (that nasty little historical bit about stealing from the first nations people and then ousting them from their land, be damned!). it's all about food!!! glorious, glorious, food!

it's actually funny how many people you talk to who actually DON'T like turkey. i actually hate turkey myself. you eat turkey for the acoutrements (gravy, stuffing) and the SKIN. everything else is kinda bland. tomorrow, i'm cooking a meal for my family up in markham, we're having:

- prime rib
- jus (aka gravy)
- creamed spinach
- buttered peas
- mashed potatoes
- sweet potato pecan pie (aka the ultimate pie. the pie of pies. the what-you-want-to-eat-if-the-end-is-near pie) with whipped cream

then, on sunday, my mom is making a turkey. i hate babysitting a turkey. it's a pain. it's like having a baby. you have to check on it every half hour, it's fat and bland and fussy, etc. so we're having turkey, with my contributions of:

- sausage and sage stuffing (the key to stuffing is LOTS of fat and LOTS of fresh sage)
- mashed potatoes
- gravy
- brussel sprouts and carrots horseradish casserole (cribbed from the doytron's mom...sidenote: it's actually REALLY hard to find HOT horseradish)
- sweet potato gratin
- pumpkin pie

then we get ANOTHER thanksgiving meal on monday, prepared by the dotytron's mom, to which i'm contributing a pumpkin pie. THREE feast days! and knowing my family, we're just crazy enough to preface a giant, carb-and-meat-laden feast with a giant, carb-and-meat-laden trip to shanghai dimsum or japanese all you can eat up in markham. cuz we're buck like that.

anyway, i'm thankful to have so much good food to eat, and to be upper-middle-class in north america, and to have amazing friends (they're few in number but grand in spirit) and a family that drives me crazy but that i know i can count on, and siblings that i'm super close to, and a dude who'll put up with my b.s. i'm also thankful that i have two jobs that i really like for the most part.

happy thanksgiving everyone!!! lots of pics of food to be all up in here shortly!

p.s. tonight i'm having fried rice and dumplings for dinner.

fin.

so i might have inadvertently

roped myself into starting a book club in the neighbourhood. WHAT AM I DOING?!?!? do i have time/resources/know-how to be organizing this? what the hell??? i live in a sub-neighbourhood that calls itself "the pocket". we have our own community newspaper and an annual car-free day and potlucks and pub nights and whatnot. in the latest newspaper i saw an ad for a pocket book club. so i emailed the address only to find out that they were full, at 12 members (because they meet in people's houses and s**t). so i was like, why don't you send me the extra emails of people who couldn't make it and maybe we'll start another one. so far it's me and one other dude. dude has a neighbour who might also want to join. that's THREE people! two of whom i guessing are going to be OLD! ai-ya. i tried to convince the roomie to come but she doesn't like reading. no, you read that right, i'm serious. i'm going to see if i can broaden it beyond the pocket, because a 3 person bookclub is kinda pathetic.

i'm kinda annoyed with the roomie right now for reasons that can't be divulged. i suppose it happens...we've become a family, so sometimes you get annoyed with family. last night i got home after being gone for 12 hours, and as soon as i came in, i was searching the house because the dotytron had called during the day saying he couldn't find his wallet. now, am i wrong in assuming that most normal people, with whom you share a house and for the most part, a life, upon hearing that you lost you wallet, would get up off the couch and help you look? maybe for at least, oh, i don't know, like 3-5 minutes, instead of watching "video on trial" and "the bachelor"??? that's kind of a rhetorical question because i actually DON'T THINK I'M WRONG.

for dinner tonight we're having fried rice with pork and leek dumplings (not made by me). fried rice will have eggs, bok choy, napa, chinese sausage, ginger, garlic, and the usual blend of herbs and spices (aka soy sauce, sesame oil, etc). BEEF: people who say "soy-A sauce". ANOTHER BEEF: that movie "the christmas story" about that kid who wants the bb gun. at the end, they do this EXTREMELY RACIST thing where they end up at a chinese restaurant and there's all this "culture clashing" and then the waiters sing "'tis the season" except (of course!) they can't pronounce the "fa la la la la" part, so (of course!) they sing it, "fa RA RA RA RA". it makes me want to punch the television.

wow, i've been mad beefy lately.

fin.

bi bim bap!

turned out amazing! the flank steak was seared on the outside, practically raw on the inside, which caused the boy a bit of grief, but in the end he ate it and LURVED it. the flank steak was surprisingly tender...i'm pretty sure this was my first time cooking flank steak.

not much to report, folks. i watched an episode of "top chef" last night. good god, i love that show. i absolutely love that show. although i'm pissed that they kicked off some of the best people on that show (tre, cj) and the people left in the final four aren't the best competitors (except for my current favorite, hung). it's the best reality show on tv right now (along with project runway - they're made by the same people).

i think i'm going to reduce my hours at the leg library. i haven't talked to my supervisor about it yet, but i'd like to cut back to 15-17 hours. right now it's a little crazy for me and with all the stuff going on in my life, it's a little hard for me to handle.

i also finished watched "manufactured landscapes", a canadian-made documentary about the photographer ed burtynsky, who does large scale pieces that depict environmental degradation and the impact of humanity on earth. his latest series, or the one upon which the majority of the documentary is focused, is on the by-products of industrialization, so there's a lot of chinese factory workers, and people in india stripping apart giant cargo ships for scrap metal. it's quite a neat book-end to bbc's "planet earth", both show the different levels of environmental impact, one by focusing on the natural world, the other on the highly industrialized world. it's depressing but visually stunning. although, i find that a problem with burtynsky's work. he aestheticizes the images to the point where they become almost de-politicized...you get lost in the haunting beauty of the image as an image, divorcing it from it's real-world context. they become abstractions in a way. the music, which was kind of boards-of-canada-y, was a little heavy-handed, so i was kind of so-so about it. we had to watch it over time, because it got to be a little difficult to digest.

i'm trying to donate my old monitor to this company that refurbishes computers and donates them to the needy and schools and stuff. computers are like, horrible for the environment if they end up in landfills and whatnot. so, i found a place...but i have no idea how to get there. they're like at, dupont and ossington. that's FAR on the subway if you're lugging around a monitor. they'll come to pick it up, but it's a $50 fee. which is a little steep for one monitor, but i think they're used to dealing with companies that do big drop offs when they overhaul their entire system.

today is my long day, so i'm going to bring leftover bi bim bop for dinnie and eat it at school

fin.

we're about due...

for a patented, karl lagerfeld "list of dislikes", don't you think? even though this blog is one long litany of my worldly complaints and grumbles, it's nice to have a condensed version every now and then. so here goes:

a) "flight of the conchords" (or whatever the f**k they're called). last week before primo we went to visit the roomie's old house (filled with stupid old people whom i universally dislike). we're having some great conversation (amongst ourselves, NOT including stupid old people i universally dislike...SOPIUD for short), when one of the SOPIUD decides she has to show us something that's "so funny!!!" and brings out her little 15" macbook or ibook or whatever silly "i"-prefaced linguistic injustice masquerading as THE hot new toy that apple is foisting on the public. first of all, i HATE laptops with puny screens. it's like, seriously, just save your monies and GO UP A LEVEL. what's the point?!? then i also HATE people who have to interrupt perfectly good conversation with something "funny" that usually tends not to be funny. unless we're talking expressive/emotive hamster, then most things are too long for that shiz. so she cues up these "flight of the conchords" dorks who, from what i can tell, sing stupid folky songs about subjects (gasp!) that aren't usually the subject of folk songs. how drole! one of my principle complaints here is that one of the dudes looks so simian that i find him disgusting. anyway, it was a bust. an interminable, awkward bust, because she had prefaced it with how much this stuff was going to MURDER us. it didn't.

b) mythbusters. there. i said it. mythbusters is SO DUMB and the problem is, it's masquerading as "intelligent" television because it's on the discovery channel. honestly, it wouldn't be so bad if the episodes were like, 10 minutes long. but no. you have to sit through an HOUR of watching jamie and adam figure out the best way to replicate if pirates REALLY could cut through a canvas sail with a banana in their pocket. "jamie and adam realized that the weight of the 20lb canvas was too strong, so they switched to 15lb canvas. jamie and adam realized that 15lb canvas was still too dense, so they switched to 10lb canvas" it makes me want to gouge my eyes out. it's as bad as those stupid "how it's made" shows on discovery that present the process of manufacturing say, televisions as something PURELY done by machines, in this neutral, linear process, devoid of the tonnes of factory workers that make this possible. mythbusters is a show for people who fancy themselves "nerds" in the annoying, non-endearing, medieval-renaissance role-playing way (ie. people who like to dress up as wizards and druids on weekends up in coburg or some shiat). remember that "nerd" couple on amazing race a couple of years back (the same year those two hippie dudes won) who kept prattling about how "nerds rule"? it's for those people. people who justifiably deserve to have the snot beaten out of them.

c) season 3 of heroes. wow. how boring. and how racist. first of all, hiro's storyline in ancient japan is KILLING the momentum. "ooh, look at the little man-child frolic in the cherry blossoms!" second of all, why are they acting like all these heroes haven't met before? weren't mohinder and the juju haitian voodoo man all in the same room at one point last season? why can't they find ANYONE in LA who can ACTUALLY do a convincing irish accent? also, the dominican brother and sister team are super-annoying. all the girl does is cry about how bad crap is getting and then her (simian-looking) bro (with a porn stache) comforts her and then she starts to bleed from the eyes. great. that's a great freakinn' power. then claire's dashboard confessional love interest is all peeping tom. and somehow, mr. bennett is working at kinko's and is living in the LARGEST HOUSE I'VE EVER SEEN. gah! i'm throwing in the towel. which means my shows are now project runway, because the whole jim and pam romance on the office is making me not want to watch. jim, yes, passive aggressive pam over HOTTIE rashida jones? no.

d) that "scrabulous" application on facebook is effin racist. they don't accept "xie" as a word, but they accept "chez". EFF YOU, SCRABULOUS!

/end rant.

something that DOESN'T go on the list is my dinner from last night. just look at it up there, all over-exposed and delectable looking and s**t. it was amazing. tartar sauce + fried fish + bread = happy happy karl lagerfeld. that's why, no matter how many big mac combos i eat at mcdicks, i really need to follow it with my patented, filet-o-fish chaser.

tonight for dinner we're having bi bim bap. flank steak grilled or seared, sliced and served over stir-fried snow peas, grated carrot, bean sprouts, and mushrooms on rice, with a ginger-soy-garlic sauce, and a fried egg on top. yummy.

finally, to leave you with something actually funny (assuming you haven't seen this already, but being savvy internet-ers, i'm sure you have), here is the expressive/dramatic hamster:



fin.

go pirates go!

we effin CRUSHED the team last night. their team captain looked like the singer from iron & wine (aka he was a white guy with a beard) and they were kind of hippied out. they were very nice though and were really good sports about everything. we won 18-5. the problem was, it was such a massacre that i barely broke a sweat. that's not so good. but we saw it as a chance to build up our skills, so it was almost like a practice game. good times!

other than that, nothing new to report. i finished my paper and submitted it last night...making it TWO days early, whon whon. i want to finish my next wednesday paper by the end of this week if i can swing it, and then go get a leg up on november when my calendar is littered with red notes about due dates and stuff.

i'm still feeling poochy which means it's going to be some healthy living for the next while...leading up to the BEST HOLIDAY OF THE YEAR (thanksgiving). woooooooo!!!! i LOVE thanksgiving!!! my only beef is that i wish canada would move it back a bit. it's way too early. it's not even that cold and crisp out yet.

tonight for dinner we're having a panko-crusted fried salmon filet on a bun with lettuce, tomato, tartar sauce and sweet potato oven fries.

fin.