normal routine

is slowly wending it's way back into my life, greeted with open arms. today was my first visit of the season to riverdale organic farmer's market. oy-vey. the riverdale yuppie, earnest moms are out in full force, with fat, privileged babies hanging off every limb and trunk, snapping up all the goodies before my working ass can get there. wtf? what are you (or maybe your housekeeper) going to do with all that rhubarb, lady? i'm jonesing for rhubarb hardcore but haven't been able to find any...i grabbed a few bunches of ridiculously overpriced, tired-looking asparagus and called it a day. not many veggie sellers were out and about as of yet. i shudder to think what's going to happen once ontario strawberry season hits. i'm going to have to outsource my farmer's market trips to make sure that i get my fair share. any takers? i'll pay top dollar for you to throw some elbows and get me my zucchini blossoms, sweet peas, scapes, and strawberries.

these are some lovely pics of dusk in panzano, chianti, before we ate at dario cecchini's place.

i totally love the freedom that has entered into my life by way of only having to worry about working.

i've signed up next week to help out with a conference FIS is hosting called "the future of objectivity." bruno latour is the keynote speaker. i love love love him. he's got a foot in philosophy, anthropology, and sociology as well as the sciences. he basically studies and ruminates on the process of objectification through the discourse of science and he's a wonderful, witty, charming, droll academic writer. it's very chatty and disarming, like an armchair fireside chat with a heavy...possibly my ideal format for theory digestion. he'll do things like drop a "dear reader" into the text to make you feel all chummy and gregarious, before laying the intellectual smackdown. i've volunteered to help out for a 2 hour stint so that i can get the conference fees waived and attend his talk. i've also put myself down to be his student liasion. no one else had asked for that job yet!!! he's such a heavy!!! i can't believe it. i hope i hope i hope i can do it with my full time job. in my head, it means that i get to take him out for dinner and pick his brain, but in reality, i think it means that i fetch him water or remind him where his hotel room is if he gets lost. he's so smart! here's what he has to say about whether or not he's a relativist:

The question is not to decide whether one is relativist or not (who wants to be an absolutist?), but to see how can one produce the more lively, sturdy and vivid set of differentiations and contrasts. The general answer is to say that one big difference (like for instance science and non-science) is probably less able to express contrasts that many differentiations. In any case,whereas the discussion is opened when one aks what sort of differentiation is requested, it is definitively shut off when one profers the accusation of relativist," thinking" something important has been said.

huh. i didn't realize this stupid blog software had the option of verdana font. i love verdana. anyway, bruno latour is amazing. check out his website!

we're eating outside tonight...and i'm going to see if i can coax the dotytron to play some frisbee with me in the park. barring that, i'm going to catch up on some magazine reading and general reading. i've got a new book out from the library: "the sushi economy: globalization and the making of a modern delicacy." tonight for dinnie i made this baked fish thing, consisting of a layer of mandolined potatoes on the bottom of a casserole dish, topped with seasoned sauteed spinach, then a layer of seasoned, sauteed-and-deglazed-with-marsala "wild" mushrooms, drizzled with some cream, and topped with fish filets (supposed to be tilapia but bill didn't have any, so i got white tuna instead). the fish filets have been smeared with grainy mustard and topped with a parsley breadcrumb mixture for texture.

fin.