Christmas

Christmas was great. Dinner #1 (Dec 25th) was with my mom's side of the family, and will probably live on in infamy for the rest of our christmases together. At the very least, there will be a lifetime of teasing my aunt about what time the turkey will be ready (answer: hopefully before 10pm) and about her sitting on the floor & drinking martinis strategy for cooking dinner. Dinner #2 - also lots of fun, because for the first time ever, I beat my family TWICE when we played cards. Woo.

In gift news, my dad refinished my mom's old table set for me, and I'm really excited about not having to eat dinner on the couch every night. Mark and I got a ton of new books too, and I'm dying to just sit down and read for a month straight (alas, I will have to start mcatting before that will happen).

Titles:

The Upside of Down (Thomas Homer Dixon)
What is the What (David Eggers)
Black Swan Green (David Mitchell)
Heat (Monbiot)
Che (?)
Louis Riel: A Comic strip biography (Chester Brown)
Collected non-fiction of Joan Didion
The Children's Hospital (Chris Adrian) - I'm halfway through this one and it is soooo good.

and M's fantastic gifts:
Love that Dog (Sharon Creech; guaranteed to make hearts swell)
Elvis on the Trombone (Megan F. - probably guaranteed to be my favourite of the bunch)

Merry merry!

I'm home, alive, and skiinger than ever. I had a lovely time with the Kowgiers in Quebec; the mini-trip was a perfect balance of family, skiing, shopping and movies with wine. The only good ski day turned out to be Friday - it was cold enough, and a good base had been built on the mountain despite the lack of natural snow. Thanks to Matt's girlfriend Maria, the ski-instruction pressure was taken off me, and I was surprised that everything about moving around on skis came back to me quickly. The morning was spent on the greens, with a few blues thrown in for the challenge. Before lunch, Mark and I came across his parents, who succeeded in convincing me to try a black run (the same run I'd previously witnessed a spectacular wipe-out on). So, long story short, I skiied, skiied well, and skiied some black diamonds! Double-black, here I come.

Some photos:

Saturday was rainy and miserable, so I was able to rest on my superstar ski status from the previous day and go shopping. Mark's mom helped me find something nice for my mom, and aside for Mark (although now I have a plan), everyone is accounted for. We had a really nice night: dinner followed by Doctor Zhivago, and hugs all around.

I'm dreaming of a foggy Christmas?

Mark and I woke up EARLY on Sunday so that he could drive me back to Montreal. It was a slightly harrowing drive, not that we had problems, but we did see the tracks of a car that had run off the road. I called 911, and was transferred to a francophone who had no idea of what I was telling him. Eventually, an Eniglish speaker came on the line and I was able to give him an idea of where I saw it - hopefully everything worked out O.K. I definitely need to work on my French. We made it to the train station intact (despite going the wrong way on a one-way street) and I had a good trip home with my iPod, New Yorker (read! from start to finish!) and my Sunday Star.

Christmas at home has been really nice so far, and in about 5 minutes we'll be off to Newmarket for the big family dinner. More photos to come!

Finally, I wish I could say it in Polish... but to everyone: Have a very Merry Christmas, and I love you all :)

Shout-outy!

Hi Deborah and John! Thanks for being my favouritest geeks ever, for being totally fun and awesome, and for always letting me know about cool a)shiny things (Deborah) and b) bands (John)!

No Winter for a Year

Things are really starting to pick up. I can't believe that a week from now, Christmas will be over, I'll have been to Quebec and back for the Kowgier's lovely Christmas ski trip tradition, AND hopefully I'll have wrapped/given most of my gifts (which, for the most part, have been bought). I'm not even on my holidays yet!

Tonight:



Mom's coming downtown after work and we're going to see White Christmas at the Bloor, possibly with her Whitby friends - good times! I'm looking forward to it. I don't think I've ever seen the movie, and for some reason, I'm on a huge Christmas movie kick right now.

And now, the weekend recap:

Mark and I spent most of Friday night working on Christmas gifts, in preparation for the annual potluck with my high school friends. I'm so happy that I got to go to it this year; normally I miss it due to the ski trip, or other conflicts. Mark finally got to meet everyone, and I got to relax and chat with people that I haven't seen, in some cases, for six years. On a sad note: I may have ruined my reputation as the baker. Instead of making a cheesecake for the party, I brought (gasp!!) a store-bought Christmas log cake. I'm hanging my head in shame RIGHT NOW. The gang, all growed up:



On Sunday, Mark and I went with my mom's side of the family to Langdon Hall in Cambridge for a double birthday (mom's and nana's) brunch. It was beautiful - a great location, great food, and as always, a fun time with that group. Mark and I headed back downtown afterwards, and spent the night baking cookies and cuddling up on the couch to watch Elf. Hooray for the holidays!

New Arcade Fire!

Firstly: I'm not sure if he was the first, but Matt from You Ain't No Picasso has posted a new Arcade Fire song, Intervention, which was recently played on the BBC. Awesome.

Last night was lots of fun (and too mush sushi). We went with friends (incl. special guest Jason Jang, back from Korea) to Sushi Island for all-you-can-eat (aka see how much Mark can eat), and pushed everything to the limit. Post-indulgence, we waddled over to Sneaky Dee's to see Germans and Bocce (w/ Faceless Lazers). Bocce really blew me away - I'd heard some OK stuff from them on CD but they were danceably great live. It was a good night.

Also, I bought a hat. I feel a bit like a hat poser, but I like it.

Edit: I have no idea who two of the bands showing up on my top five (look left) are. Apparently, I like them, and am listening to them without knowing their names.

Proof

My brain! Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with it (aside from maybe being a little bit strange). I do, however, occasionally participate in fMRI research - one of the cool opportunities for people in experimental psychology. Aside from having my head wedged between extremely tight pads for stability, it's a pretty comfortable setup, and the hardest part for me has always been to just try and stay awake. But I do have a brain, and now I have proof.

Hi?

Half of my readership (if I assume, generously, a readership of four) is away, in beautiful tropical locales, but I will update anyways. Hello Paula, Mom, Megan, maybe Mark? Things of note in the past week: I had FUN at the work 'Holiday' party (shocking even myself), and I've been invigilating to pick up some extra holiday money. Watched over a health psych exam onSunday, held by a very nice prof who handed out candy canes, and was told that I was "absolutely adorable" by a student. AWWWW.

Plans now are to finish up with Christmas presents this week, and maybe do some
more yoga to shape up for skiing. Also: all-you-can eat sushi, and doing some more fun stuff with Jaime, who is fast becoming my go-to girl for Toronto fun!

Friday Nothings.

TTC: you suck. Not in a terrible way, just in a terribly annoying way.

COFFEE: Too complicated for early mornings. It was fine back when all I had to do was order (although the fumbling for money part was always tricky), but now the space-aged free coffee machine is taxing my brain before it should be taxed. It grinds its own beans and is great and all, but only dispenses the equivalent of a Timmy's small. So you either have to have only a little bit, or get too much and have to have some spill over the top of your mug. I realize that I could just get a bigger mug, but the point is that I've found a way for it to be PERFECT. Push the buttons for a chocomilk (which is hot chocolate made with mlk instead of water, amazing!), and when that's done, add an espresso shot. IT FILLS TO THE PERFECT AMOUNT FOR MY MUG. Except I keep screwing up and pushing the Mocha button, and ending up with two espresso shots. Now I'm over-caffeinated and hyper-excitable. Two buttons is too much for my brain to handle, apparently.

Add-a-y day!

Last night was fun, lots of it. I got to see mom's bff Peggy & some of her family, as they were visiting from Australia. I also had a realization about my childhood that may explain some things about my post-childhood (i.e., NOW): since I mostly talked with adults, I thought I was more adult-like than child-like. Now, I realize that the adulty speak to me is a far cry from adulty speak between adults. Damn. I got stuck with the restrainty adulty talk.

The show was pretty awesome - I got to see Sarah, meet her friends and make a bad pun within 1 minute of an introduction to a geophysicist (school of hard rocks HAHAHA). Plus/minus were really good and really interesting to listen to - one part sappy emo lyrics, one part crazy technical rhythms, and one part super cool. I picked up the cd and it's been in my head all day. We didn't get home until close to 2am, but the tiredness today is more than worth it.

Tonight I'm going to sleep.

+/-

I'm getting excited about going to concerts again, mostly do to the realization that I'm really going to regret squandering my time in Toronto. This doesn't mean that I've decided to move away any time soon, I've just decided to stop taking the music scene for granted. I could probably see a good show 3 times per week if I wanted to. Things like money, laziness, feeling older than/disconnected from the music scene are holding me back, for no good reason. Shows are cheap, I'm not by nature lazy, and I'm not old - I just have an insecure brain that debates things too much.

While tonight's already pretty busy (I'm going to be seeing an old family friend who's here briefly from Australia), I'm going to try my very very hardest to get to one of my favourite places (Sneaky Dee's) for an amazing free show, +/-. I'm also planning to hit up some more in the next few weeks - passionate-about-music Jen is being reborn. Hooray!

One more thing.

I got distracted by the Mexico post, but I really want to thank everyone. I basically had the best birthday ever, between Mexico, Seema's phone call all the way from Saudi frickin' Arabia, and the fantastic iPod from my fantastic friends and family. So, thank you.

Also, in the Mexico post, I forgot to mention a really cool something: Dad and I had lunch with Peter Elkas' parents! P.Elkas being the singer/songwriter who used to front the Local Rabbits (Sally A-AANNN!) and whose ep Mark and I listened to together on the night we met! It was an utterly cool, completely random moment, and it's left me craving a listen to Sally Ann...

OK STOP COMPLAINING NOW

SHARON. Don't you have better stuff to do than read my blog anyways?

Mexico: Woowoo! Despite an ominous start (loss of sunny part of day 1 thanks to 5.5 hour delay at Pearson resulting from TOILET MALFUNCTION on plane), the trip was fantastic, with lots of guacamole and culture (well, as much as was possible from the day trips) consumed. Here is us at Pearson. Notice that its light outside - it's not supposed to be.


Dad and I were graced with wonderful weather (every day was sunny, nights were cool but clear) and lucked out with the resort. I'd recommend it highly. Pretty:



Since I'm not a huge fan of doing nothing for an entire week, we decided on three day trips to balance out three lazy beach days (and to hopefully counterbalance the excessive quantities of food available to us). Our first full day started with a breakfast buffet in a beautiful restaurant near the beach, where I satisfied the chorizo sausage craving that I've had since Cuba. The restaurant:


We soon realized that as good as this little place was, it had the downside of not having a serve-yourself station for 'champagne' and orange juice like the larger buffet. Did I mention that the resort was excessive? We then went to the obligatory 'meet your rep' meeting, where we met our rep and realized that she was a complete puddinghead, followed by a realization that she'd not be of much use. We did, however learn about the cheap taxis we'd find on the highway as opposed to the expensive ones to be found at the lobby. The rest of the day was spent wandering around on foot, and later on bikes. We had a late dinner at one of the a la carte restaurants (our first of four), and a fairly early night.

Saturday was our first excursion. We took the highway taxi into a town called Playa del Carmen, 30 minutes or so from the resort. It's a touristy beach town, with lots of little souvenir shops and many people trying to tempt you into buying timeshare property. Here's us after the animal guy stopped to ask us if we were from Canada:



It didn't take long to figure out that they're not actually interested in finding out where you're from, or if you're having a good time, but it's hard to just ignore them and keep walking. I think I would go insane living in a place as hectic as that, and I don't know if I would just develop a shell against the constant barrage of vendor appeals or if I'd become a complete shut-in. We did, however, manage to have a nice day once we found a spot on the beach.


Sunday was a resort day, full of snorkelling and reading and sipping pina coladas (beer for dad) on the beach. It was really cool to have actual reefs available to explore, and I managed to see a lot of fish. Dinner was at the seafood restaurant, where dad ate something called a hogsnapper.


On Monday, we went to Xel-Ha, a place that pretty much anyone who'd ever been to Mexico recommended to us. Paula especially recommended it, surprising because she is absolutely terrified by fish and by bridges, and there were many of each. Its name translates to 'place where the waters are born,' and is a lagoon that is fed both by the Caribbean sea and by three underground rivers emerging into it. It's become famous as a large, natural aquarium, where you can snorkel around and apparently see up to 100 species of fish. We meant to only spend a couple of hours there, and ended up spending the entire day snorkeling, walking around, and swimming in the (not-so) lazy river. It was absolutely beautiful.

Fish!

Hammock!

Courage!

Caves!


Tuesday was the Big Trip, to the Mayan ruins of Coba. On this trip, we learned that Cancun, in Mayan, means snake nest, that to 'wish' is to go to the bathroom, and malokine (sp?) means hello. We also explored some of the oldest ruins in the Yucatan, dating back to the first century. It was completely spectacular to see the immensity of the pyramids and structures, like the start of a road built perfectly level for 60 miles to a trading centre at a city near the later site of Chichen Itza. Here is the start of the road:


The ball courts were really interesting - they were ritual arenas where, in pre-colombian times relevant to Coba, political matters were settled peacefully by teams representing different cities (and later, not so peacefully).




From the top of the Nohoch Mul pyramid (tallest in the Yucatan peninsula), another large earth mound is visible, and our guide informed us that this is the site of another pyramid that could be even taller than the one that has been restored. To date, I think only 5% of the buildings have been unearthed from the jungle.

From the bottom:


At the top:
Inside the structure at the top (where the gods make the descent into heaven):


Looking down:


After the ruins, we went to a Mayan co-op, where each family sells their art to bring money into their village. We had lunch there, and I picked up a couple little things to bring home. Miriam, our tour guide, let me wear her beetles. They're real, but sacred, and have been adorned with gold and jewels - apparently their 'jackets' don't affect their lifespan.


Next we went to a Mayan village where we got to hang out with the little kids and give them school supplies. Here's a Mayan home, and garden (the most beautiful Mayan garden is the one which produces the most food):


A close up of the tree on the left - a monkey swinging!


A Mayan girl, with her pet badger:


After the village, we stopped at a cenote. Cenotes are caves/sinkholes, and are really common since the entire Yucatan peninsula is over underground river systems. This one was warm, and the water was clear, deep and beautiful. I jumped off an insanely high platform, since I knew it would make Mark proud. I ended up with the biggest wedgie ever. Here's my splash, unfortunately there are no photos of the jump itself:



Here's us with Angie, a really fun girl from Pennsylvania who was convinced to come swimming. This was after we gave up on our race to the far side of the cave:


The last day was the official 'relax' day, and we did nothing but lie on the beach, read, eat, and drink tropical drinks. Here's the sunrise:



The sunset:


And the coffee (so cool!):


Coming home:



It was a wonderful trip, one that I'll remember for the rest of my life, and hopefully I'll be able to visit again someday.

Coming home was really nice, as I missed Mark greatly. I have to send out a huge thank you to Mark and to my friends and family for the amazing birthday present. You guys are awesome and I will be appreciating you every single day (not that I wouldn't anyways). Hearts and hugs all around.

Back!

Mexican post soon... but first, happy birthday to Talon! Great things will come of him, just wait and see. And T, if you read this, I solemnly swear to never give you clothes again. Nothing but fun stuff from now on :)

Well folks, for the next week I'll be in Mexico trying not to be an obnoxious tourist. Promise you'll miss me?

Beautiful, Kiwi.

I NEED to get this project over with , so that I can move on and find some new passion for my life. I'm feeling so drained lately, trying to keep busy enough that I don't go insane. I'm also feeling like what I'm doing is not really leading anywhere - I'm not quite sure that I feel relevant, but I know that I want to feel relevant.

Also, I'm sick of dreaming of ex-boyfriends. I don't know what my mind is trying to do to me, but if it keeps this up, I'm going to get abusive. That's right, brain - one more Peter dream and I will hit you with a wall.

title track

I realized that I know the square root of three by heart, but only till five decimal places. Please comment with a random fact about yourself, even if I don't know you and/or you have just stumbled across this blog by accident.

Listening over and over to two versions of the title track to this post - I will maybe post it here later. Not now. Today has been a good day for music though, in the blogs AND SUCH, and I'm seriously considering caving and replacing my dear departed iBROKENFACEpod.

I'm getting scared at how much of a scaredy-cat I am in French class. I sit there, hoping not to be called upon, counting down the minutes and holding intense internal debates over whether I should stay for the whole thing, or skip out at the halftime break. I'm not sure how much I've learned over the past five (well, 4.5, see above) classes other than that making something into a past tense is a complicated ordeal, and maybe talking in the present tense all the time wouldn't be such a terrible thing. One good thing (?) is that after last night, I will now start referring to everybody as 'mon petit chou' and by chou I mean 'dear,' not 'cauliflower.'

Tonight, I'm finally getting around to seeing a St. Mike's Majors game after having lived across the street from the arena for the past 15 months. This is an OHL game, and they're playing the Saginaw Spirit (yes, I give full permission for the wtf? to anyone who knows anything about Ontario or Michigan geography). I'm pretty sure Mark and I will have Sufjan Stevens in our head the entire time (saginaw! saginaw! public trans! public trans!). If anyone is confuse at this point, let me know and I will email you a song.

Enzymatic!

I stupidly cut up a papaya (mmm - thanks John!) on the same cutting board that Mark had used to prep stuff for a yummy black bean soup without washing it first. Now my papaya tastes garlicky... damn.

Also - for anyone in Toronto - Borat tonight?

It's the weekend update!

Raptors! Since I don't know very much about b-ball, highlights included seeing some beautiful slam dunks, and the cutest little girl sitting behind us ("mom, when can I talk to Chris Bosh? I want to tell him that I saw him on TV!"). But the best thing ever: Samuel L. Jackson was there. So cool!

On Saturday, Mark, my dad and I went house-checking with Sharon. We saw a couple out on the Danforth that were fantastic - one felt like a really homey cottage, but would have been too small for a family. It did end up me want to buy a house... and it's nice to see that there are some homes that are nice, IN Toronto, and slightly affordable. The last house we checked out COULD be perfect - if nobody snaps it up before Sharon's house sells. SO - if anyone knows anyone who has a perverse desire to live outside of London, I know of a lovely end town-home for sale for a very reasonable price - jump to it! I also got an out-of-the-blue call from John, finding out that not only was he in town, but he wanted to do stuff! After I cured my withdrawal headache with an emergency choffee, Sharon, Mark and I headed down to the old Spaghetti factory and had a mini Cuba reunion (although, there was no ham in sight to go with the cheese). We took the party back to John's hotel, where Sharon and I bitched about the ignorant people in her life, and then watched SNAKES ON A PLANE - finally!!

Yesterday ended up being one of the most productive days that I've had in a really long time - Sharon dropped us off just past 9 am, and we proceeded to 'get shit done' for a whole 8 hours. Cleaning, laundry, cooking, purging... it was unbelievable. The result was a very clean apartment, and a successful (if tardy) Cuban feast (so the tardy kinda works if we think of it as a theme dinner...) with Mark's family, and a mini-celebration (also tardy) of Matt's birthday. John came by for that too, so the conversation was lively and the night was very enjoyable. So much John in one weekend!

All in all, it was a successful, and unexpectedly friend-filled weekend. I'm declaring myself officially recovered from my blahs.

The Come-Down

So this week is supposed to be good. At least, the nights are.

Monday: Deerhoof concert. AWESOMENESS, right? And, I was feeling pretty awesome already, thanks to a new, wonderful coffee machine at work that may end up saving me lots and lots of money. And then I played stupid video games when Igot home and went to the deerhoof concert for 9:30 - to find out that they started playing at 9 - #$@#%$^%&^! The 15 minutes that we caught was fantastic though, with the encore (Gore in Rut) almost making it worth the $17/ticket. We left two songs into the next band (Fiery Furnaces), and were in bed by 11. Boo.

Tuesday: Halloween. Traditionally, one of my favourite nights of the year. I stayed in all night. Boo again. This I blame on everyone being to far away - I miss my girl's halloween nights! Also, I felt pretty uninspired in the costume department - even though I bought the clouds and snowflakes for my "cloudy with a chance of flurries" costume, I couldn't get over the fact that I was just ripping off Megan's idea. Again, this could be solved by having people live closer - my best inspiration ever came from Sharon's unfortunate raccoon-slaughter on her way over to my place one halloween (Jen = Roadkill Raccoon).

Last night worked out slightly better - after last week's class of defeat (I left halfway through feeling like I would NEVER grasp la Francaise), I had a good class last night. No feelings of panicked helplessness! Afterwards, I met up with Mark and Sara for some sushi, and felt like all was right in the world. Mark and I walked home, enjoyed our chats, and relaxed. Hopefully, tonight will be equally nice.

Also, I need to take Sharon's advice about appreciating things before you're forced to. But it's just so hard to be nice and rational and cheerful when you only have 25 minutes left for sleep...

Montre-awesome!

(two days late, sorry)

As expected, Montreal was filled with enough wonderful times to keep me going for quite a while :) My favourite part was how even though we did a lot, we were still able to make it feel, in part, that we were just doing some low-key hanging out chez Megan.

Thanks to weather and traffic, we made it to Megan's place just after 2am. Now, normally for Mark and I, this would mean that the fun would start whenever we woke up the next day. NOT THIS WEEKEND. Thankfully, Megan had started the party by herself (with some help from Tycho and some vodka and some mudshakes), and it was in full force when we got there. We then dug into Megan's bucket-o-kahlua and joined the fun, managing to stay up till after 4, when the sugar wore off and the alcohol wieghed down our eyelids.

Saturday, we woke (quite late) to downpour and decided (to Mark's dismay) to head to the underground malls for some shopping. I'm jealous of Megan's awesome new boots and coat - but am pleased that someone else is reinventing themselves via higher heels. We can compare our back pain and terrible knee joints in solidarity when we're 50. Around three, we caught a bit of Mark's underground mall hate - but thankfully stumbled into the movie theatre just in time. It was then, officially, that Saturday became all about the dark - we had a perfect amount of time to see "The Nightmare Before Christmas(IMAX!!)" before our dark dinner. The best part was when we all put on the glasses JUST TO LOOK COOL:





(yes, I lifted those directly from Megan's blog, which also has an entertaining description of the weekend's events)

On to the exciting part: I scored some BLOW! And by Blow, I mean this, not drugs...

On to the really exciting part: We ate in the dark!

I'm not talking moonlit night dark here, I'm not even talking moonless night - I'm talking can't see your hand in front of your face dark. It was absolutely pitch black, and gave a sense of what it might be like to be absolutely 100% blind. Unbeknownst to us, we were sat at a table with two other people, which was a little bit disconcerting at first. It ended up being a non-issue as the place got really loud really quickly, and we ended up only being able to talk to each other over the din. One thing that I noticed is that it's really hard to eat a meal without eyes - I had no idea how I was cutting my food, and as a result, frequently had forkfuls of nothing, or forkfuls of way too much.

It was interesting hearing how normal social attitudes fell away - the place was filled with obnoxious laughter and yelling - not normal restaurant behaviour. We had some fun imagining what they could be doing in the dark to provoke such laughter (some people must take advantage of the complete anonymity). It was fun though - I'd like to try it again, but maybe as a small party with friends rather than a whole bunch of strangers. Blackout night anyone?

We left the restaurant (with me making Megs and Mark carry out a recovery from dark adaptation experiment, massive failure) and headed down to Brutopia, where Mgan was convinced that she would get me to like beer (no dice), and from there we headed back to her apartment to curl up watching Donnie Darko. Sunday we shopped some more and had a fantastic Montreal breakfast of REAL hotchocolate and lovely flaky pastries, and then headed up to the marche Jean-Talon for some fresh veggies and final good times. We dropped M off, Mark got his poutine fix, and we hit the highway at around 3, with me falling asleep around 3:30. A successful, relaxing, and exhausting weekend :)

Hundreds and Thousands

Proof that people with posh accents are cooler than we Canadians will EVER be. Thanks to Mark for being the cute-finder.

THEY CALL SPRINKLES 'HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS.' How cute is that? Can you not picture a little British kid going and asking for a doughnut?

"That one, ovah there - wit the hundreds and thousands!"

Also, in all of the excitement of the past few days, I have forgotten to mention this:





(and, by 'this,' I mean being at stupid York all day on a Saturday)

Exciting times!

Things to be excited about:

In two days, Mark and I will be on our housewarming roadtrip to Montreal. We will warm Megan's apartment whether it is cold or not. We will also eat in the dark (expect a full report on MONDAY), eat croissants, and possibly dress up like zombie bears. Ce sera superbon!

More long-term excitement:

1. Sharon is moving to Toronto, with T, for an amazing opportunity. I couldn't be prouder! Looks like my wish is coming true - now I just need to work on Megs and Paula.

2. My dad absolutely has to use his vacation time by the end of the year, or he'll lose it. VACATION!!! Looks like we'll be going somewhere warm, possibly all-inclusive, and hopefully involving cultural exploration (Mayan ruins?) and sailing! I wasn't sure I'd be able to get time off, since I'm only here for a short time and Fran would like to get some papers written, but it turned out to be no problem at all. It's going to be soon, too - likely the week after my borthday. BORTHDAY!

Everything's coming up Jenhouse.

!!!

OMG I am so excited.

V&V

I have a new rule for my friends: get jobs that bring you to Toronto every once in a while. Better yet, get jobs in Toronto. I got to see Sharon last night thanks to a two-day meeting that she's in town for, and it was so nice being able to have someone just drop by and save me from my normal routine (home, six feet under, sleep). I think that if I could have anything right now (other than secured admission to med school), it would be to take Megan, Paula, Maggie, and Sharon and place them all in apartments on my floor. And I'd move my floor up to the top floor. Brilliant!

French is coming along.... I was able to tell my teacher last night that I forgot to bring my homework, and also to answer a question, in French, without feeling like a total dolt. Before you know it, I'll be able to talk about how much I don't know, but IN FRENCH! Mes devoirs pour cette semaine (Megs, Shar - is that right?): compile a list of 3-5 phrases about what I did this summer, oh THAT will be fun.

Tonight will be nice - relaxing, possibly look for something cheap and nice to wear to convocation on Saturday. Tomorrow Mark and I are going to a "velour and velvet" party with his Frisbee team (they won the B division national championship!!), but I have nothing velour OR velvet to wear. Salvation army? Or - American Apparel?! I think it might be a little bit cold to wear THIS (but think of the awesomeness!):



Also - got my mcat scores, and they're pretty much how I expected them to be. Not so swell in the sciences, since I had no time to study thanks to the thesis, but I'm really happy with the other scores. My essay score was shocking - v. high score for basically the worst writing I've ever done in my life. It's making me feel a bit more confident that if I can get down to studying for the January or (more likely, the) April exam, I can actually do a really good job at it.

Quiet-Time Activities

Despite my memory telling me that Miss M was not too fond of it, I started reading "No Great Mischief" by Alistair Macleod and I'm really enjoying it. It seems that as much as I try to get outside the rural/maritime themes in CanLit, I keep falling back into it. It's all Megan's fault. Upside: not having to read the Metro on the Subway. Update: The M loooooves the MacLeod. I'm just crazy.

The weekend was nice, lots of family and friends and time for naps. If you have naptime, and wake up early, you can print and colour your own Jen.



Alternatively, you can bake her some cookies (for the real Jen, please).

Avec... Grandmere?

Now that I'm in my down-time period, I've started taking French classes Two hours a week, nine weeks. Last night was my second class, and we discussed the importance of having a good French-English dictionary.

Mme. Francaise: (In French) you need a good French-English dictionary, with grandmother.

Me: (in head) Whaaaaa???

Me: (2 minutes later, in head, still stuck on the grandmother dictionary untilll... la bulbe de lumiere!) OHHHHH!

Avec grammaire! I, apparently, am more in need of a good translator even more than I originally thought. Ne grandmere PAS!



Aside from feeling very left-behind at times, I'm glad that I signed up for the Intermediate level. I've noticed that I can usually pick up on what's being said, even if I can't yet respond. I think I'd be grumpy if I had to look at picture cards name les chats, les pommes...

I'm feeling very challenged, which is nice, and hopefully, it will really force me into making serious progress.

Holi-dayyyys

Thanksgiving was super nice. I got to enjoy lovely family times both with Mark's, and with my family. I made rosebuds out of maple leaves found on the nicest drive of the year, and got all mushy about Mark. Mark's mom and I made a Bourbon (ok, we cheated and used JD) Pumpkin Cheesecake, and sipped some straight bourbon while we were at it. We finished watching season 4 of SixFeetUnder, and are going to try and hold off till we're closer to the Montreal visit to start on season 5. Also, I think I LOST weight this weekend - definitely a rarity on Thanksgiving.

I was thinking about Halloween, and I'm considering going as a Can-Lit heroine. I might have to think of something simpler, because to do justice to the image in my mind, I would need numerous unwieldly props. Like a dinghy, in which I would struggle through a stormy sea to get the doctor for my sister, who would be in chilbirth, and would later die and I'd have to raise the baby on a remote Newfoundland rock. I would also need a weatherbeaten window to look through, at my desolate surroundings. I'd have to wear some worn-out grey dresses, and maybe I'd hold a candle (that would keep going out). Possibly, I'd make myself up to look like I had TB. I'll also need to recruit someone to be the incestuous male in my life. I hope someone else goes as a psychologist that can give me some prozac.

I played a what?!

Yesterday turned out to be unexpectedly fun. Mid-afternoon, I received an email asking if anyone was available for a fill-in slot on CHRY that night... so I signed up. I haven't done much at all at the station in recent (and even not-so-recent) months, so I was a little bit nervous (and excited!). So I called up my Mark to be a co-host, made up a sweet-ass playlist from recently loved music on my computer, and hauled my ass up the stairs to the station. Mark hauled his ass too, but due to all the frisbee he's been playing, it wasn't so much a haul as it was a complete lack of effort.

The show started off well enough, with the new version of Basia Bulat's Snakes and Ladders, which is a thoroughly awesome way to start a radio show. Next, we tried to play a Polaris-themed set, starting off with the New Pornographer's "The Bleeding Heart Show, when we noticed that my newly burned playlist had not burned a track, screwing up the whole song order - oi. Anyways, no big deal.

NEXT - a girl from a group of people standing outside the studio comes in to talk to me. She was there with a band that was scheduled for an on-air interview and live performance on the show we were filling in for!!! 1) I had no idea this was going to happen, 2) I knew NOTHING about this band, and 3) I'd never had to set up the mics/etc for an on air performance before. Anyway, I would feel completely terrible if these guys had come all the way to York to promote a show (tonight, at The Absinthe pub on York Campus, 9pm, free) and didn't get to do anything. End result: we interviewed them, and gave them half an hour to play, which was really, really fun.

The band: Basement Arms, a happy, really nice, and really fun 3-piece jam band. Now, normally I don't go for jam bands, but last night I really saw the appeal. These were guys playing music because they love it, and because they're good at it. They're as big as the audience, and as diverse as the number of instruments and people willing to play them present. I played some hand-help cymbals on one of the songs, keeping my rhythm for the most part, and having a really great time. Finding out later that the cymbals were called a "hand-job", on-air? Probably priceless. Anyway, Mark and I are going to go see them play in a couple of weeks at Grossmans (Spadina and Collece, across from the ElMo) with Laura Barrett - should be very fun!

Anyway, the rest of the show went fairly well, and I'm looking forward to my next opportunity!!

Here's one song that we played - Lose My Breath by Deerhoof (the song was originally by My Bloody Valentine, and my favourite song of theirs EVER. I was SO excited when I found the Deerhoof cover, because they're the bestest). Deerhoof is playing in Toronto at the Opera House on the 21st of October, and it's the first show in a really long time that I've been super-excited to see! WOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Deerhoof - Lose My Breath

HAHAHA

Yeah, unbelieveable is right!
Originally uploaded by stevegan.

Ok - after yesterday's not so happy post, I give you this wonderfulness!

O RLY?

I really don't want to get into this too deeply because it's really upsetting me. I just want to vent a little bit. I've been thinking a lot about personal safety lately, as a woman. Nothing has happened to cause this, it's just been happening. But the gist, basically, is that it really sucks that as women, we have to be more cautious, more "on" in terms of awareness of our surroundings, because of vulnerability. Now, I know this can be remedied somewhat by taking self-defense classes etc, but that can only help so much.

Today's Star:
Page A1: Amish school shooting. 11 young female students bound and shot.
Page A16: Violence against women drops.

I can see why they buried that second one. Honestly, even if the statistics are showing that sort of a trend, does it make anyone actually feel safer? Not me. Generally, I try not to worry too much about this sort of thing. There's no way to see such an event coming, and realistically, it's very unlikely I'll ever directly experience something like it. I'd rather go around normally rather than be on the constant watch for __________ (pick one: terrorists, armed psychopaths, corrupted businesspeople, evil pharma companies, etc). But honestly? when something like this happens, something in me just feels sick. Why is this guy targeting young, innocent girls? I really don't even know where I'm going with this... I guess I just wanted to express a bit of how angry I am that as a woman, I can't feel completely safe, and how I don't really expect we'll ever get to that point.

And of course, my heart goes out to everyone affected by yesterday.

A brilliant, but old, 16 year old.

I went over to Maggie's last night to help her practise administering clinical tests - specifically the wisc-iv. The plan was for me to go, get tested, and the rest my brilliant brain in her hot tub. Instead, I went over, and got tested for 3.5 hours, and then dragged my tired brain home on the subway because it was too exhausted to fathom staying up any later despite the lure of the hot tub. I learned that I'm a pretty smart lady (well, compared to the average 16 year old), and that I have better memory for reciting numbers backwards than forwards. Also, I'm pretty decent at finding missing eyebrows. Downside: I STILL have a headache - this brain apparently doesn't like being put to the test when it is supposed to be resting.

Tonight: I'm going to hit up some shops to fins some cute but cheap longer sleeved shirts to get me through the winter. I'm going to also try and arrange some transportation to fun things. I'll most likely watch House, possibly pick up the new issue of the New Yorker, and generally just enjoy my newfound temporary freedom from responsibility. Hooray for me!

This weekend? It's application time. Yikes. I'm managing to hold off my urge to procrastibake an apple crisp right now by blogging (hey - I'm at the computer at least), but I know that I'm getting close to my 'git down git'r done' point. Speaking of - I saw a big-ass sticker on the rear window of the truck the other day that read "Git'r Done." Yee-haw.

At this point though, I'm afraid that anything I do will be in vain - I was informed of another BRILLIANT York administrative policy stating that no student shall have their transcript updated to say they've finished their degree untill after the graduation ceremony. This is the most ridiculous piece of garbage I've ever heard - it basically means that my transcripts that I'll be sending off with my applications (which are going to cost me $500+) are going to list my master's degree as as-yet incomplete. Which basically means that I'm no more competetive than I was last year, which means, yay me, I'm screwed. But, I'll be trying my best and hoping for the best anyways.

Pass the tissue...

Argh - It seems that I'm getting sick. I debated for a while whether to come into work this morning, but decided at 8 that I felt significantly better than at 7, I made a mad rush to get in by 9. I probably would have stayed home had this been a less busy day, since I really don't want to pass anything to people here or on the subway, but at the moment I'm not feeling anything worse than a runny nose. It's funny though - being sick is really encouraging me to take good care of myself - I'm eating really well, tons of fruit, juices, soups - and wondering why I can't just do that all the time.

My childhood best friend got married over that weekend, which was strange and wonderful at the same time. My mind kept flitting to memories of us going to see movies, drooling over rock stars and having sleepovers. We haven't kept in touch as much as I'd have liked over the past few years, but hopefully that can be changed in the coming years. The wedding was nice, and most importantly, they both seemed really happy. Also, everyone got some good entertainment out of me attempting to watlz (can't really count to three sometimes...) and polka.

Also: apple picking! Yay! I had the best apple of my life on Saturday morning, fresh from the tree. The orchard we go to has an attached winery, wonderful for relaxing after picking bags after bag of apples - I tried about 5 different types of fruit wines, and picked up a few for Girls Christmas!

Savoury Dreams

In my dream last night, I cooked a Turducken. For some reason, I missed consuming the actual bird, but did get to try some of the skin, which apparently was mighty delicious.

I DREAMT ABOUT A TURDUCKEN.

WITH BACON.

SFU (not STFU, that would just be rude)

I suppose it's fitting that with the onset of Fall (Ok, I know it's not techically for another couple of days, but c'mon), Mark and I have started a new TV addiction. Following the lead of Megan, we've started going through the seasons of Six Feet Under. For those who are unfamiliar with the premise, it's a drama (also, comedic) that revolves around a family that runs a funeral home. These characters are all incredibly flawed, but interesting. Magnetic. Each episode begins with a death, and the focus of that episode is shaped in some way by the death. I think part of how wonderful the show is is that it forces the viewer to confront death, accept it as a natural part of life that not only brings sorrow, but also can be the starting point for some very positive shange, or at least some honest introspection. My point: excellent show, not guilty about watching due to instructiveness of content.

I'm being truthful when I call it an addiction: we think about it when its not on, we're driven to consuming far too much of it, and when we run out, we almost instantly need a new fix. Over the last week, we watched all of season one (it was fantastic, of course), which was a wonderful intro to a series that hooked us last year with only a few episodes late in the series. Anyway, on Monday night we finished the season by watching four episodes. FOUR. Yesterday, I felt withdrawal coming on - no episodes waiting for me to come home and watch them. That, coupled with a lack of yumminess in the fridge and no desire to go grocery shopping, led me down to Bloor, where I placed my takeout sushi order (mmmmmmmm AND cheap!), and headed on over to Queen video (yes, Queen video is on Bloor, but named after Queen st...?!) and grabbed season two. Saw a look of confusion enter sales clerk's eyes. "Umm, so did you know that Mark, the other person on the account, already took this same thing out a couple of hours ago?" I left feeling absolutely elated, Mark beat me to the punch on my sweet surprise, and I have the comfort in knowing that my addiction is fully and completely shared.