Thursday, June 28, 2007

In Poland!

I can'tbelievethat I'm finally here! Mark and I flew out of Toronto sunday evening and after spending 3 great days in Glasgow, we'vemade it to Krakow. We met up withour couchsurfing host, Craig, in Glasgow on Monday morning. After dropping off our bags athis flat (after noo sleep on the plane) we wandered around the city until he finished work. We went to a few beautiful parks, ate some fish and chips, and Igot us lost on theway back to the flat - actually ending up back at the fish and chips shop an HOUR after we'd left it. On Tuesday we wanered around the city again, visiting the Botanic garden and having a great vegan lunch (Mark had Vegan haggis!!). That night, we went outwith Craig and his friends to a great back alley vodka bar, and later to the student pub for some dancing. After the pub, we had some true Scottish street meat: the Scooby Snack. It's a bun enclosing a potato scone, hamburger patty, a sausage patty, cheese, and a fried egg. Toronto need them - they're truly the perfect afterbar food! Needless to say, we had a good sleep-in on Wednesday (yesterday) morning and then Craig took us up to Loch Lomond for some countryside. To thank him for everything, Mark and I took him out for Indiam buffet, and then he dropped us at the train station so that we could get out to the airport, where we spent a very uncomfortable night. Poland has been great so far, but there'll be more on that later :)

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

For Bookish People

I just got an email from McSweeney's, which is my favourite publisher due to it's consistently awesome releases (their Quarterly, The Believer magazine, as well as some swell books). Apparently they're having some tough times due to losing about 130K when their distributor folded:

"As you may know, it's been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney's included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000 -- actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn't hit right away, but it's hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there's really no way to absorb a loss that big."

I don't usually get advertisey, but I seriously love this publisher and a) think more poeple should know about them, and b) would be sad if they went under. Anyway, since it's summer, and most people like to get summer reads, maybe you'll order them from McSweeney's? I highly recommend The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian (except that it appears to be out of stock so maybe you're interested in The Secret Language of Sleep instead?) and Mark highly recommends What is the What by Dave Eggers.

PS - I'm done Chemistry! Physics ho!

Monday, June 11, 2007

Quick Update

(my mom - queen of the sale, on her throne :)

Our garage sale was a fantastic success!! Between people dropping off donations, and selling our junk, I managed to (I think) meet my base fundraising amount! Everything else is gravy (and by gravy, I mean cataract surgeries - don't serve them with turkey). I had a great time talking to people all day, which meant that not too much studying was done, so I've been cramming like crazy to make up for it. I think I'm in pretty good shape - I should finish up with Inorganic Chem tonight, which only leaves me with Physics to cover. Then, I'll hopefully have a day for review and practice tests.

I also happened to win an awesome contest hosted by an awesome music blog!! Hooray!! Tomorrow (eep! I'd better do a ton of physics before then) night I'm going to check out Pela (not, as I originally thought, Pele). To win, I had to make the best musical suggestion that Connor hadn't already covered. I knew if I suggested Basia Bulat, I'd be a shoe-in, and I was right. So thanks should go out to Basia and Co. for making such incredible music. At least its going to be not too long of a night... I think I'm only interested in seeing Pela due to the actual headlining band destroying my ears when I tried to listen to them.

PS - both Pele and Pela are great and deserve a good listen (as does Basia)!!

PPS - In other music-y news, YMG, I've finished your cd and hopefully will hit up a post office tomorrow!

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Interaction with inanimates.

Last weekend was the sort of weekend that I'd love to save up for times when my plate is empty. It was so full of wonderfulness that I even stopped worrying about studying for hours at a time! Seriously, why can't I save it? Why did it have to be right then? Oh well, at least it's pushed me into full-on panic and get stuff done mode!

By weekend, I mean weekend starting Thursday, which technically was my last day at York. I got a significant chuck of paper written (still have some brainstorming to do about the discussion, but that'll have to wait till post-exam), and was picked up by Mark in for our super-special anniversary dinner spectacular. Foregoing our typical fancy restaurant, we headed to a pretty sweet chinese supermarket where we split up and secretly gathered ingredients for our designated parts of the meal (me: appetizer, dessert, mark: main). We then headed back to his place and cooked in relative secrecy, and then feasted. Like crazy.

Course one (I really wish that I'd taken pictures): I made yaki nasu, which is one of our favourite things to eat when we go out for Japanese. I found the recipe through a google search, but it led me to a wonderful foodie blog, which I've added to my list of daily reads. It was sooo good, and will probably become one of my staples.

Mark's Mains: This is where it got crazy. Mark made a different dish for each of our four years together. And he made full portions of each. 1) Sesame-five spice grouper steaks. 2) Soy-ginger Mushrooms. 3) Asian pears poached in white wine. 4) Most delicious chicken that I've ever tasted. All of them were damn good, and we had a TON of leftovers.

After dinner we were getting kind of sleepy (like after thanksgiving, but worse) so we had some coffee and waited a while before dessert. I'd made a Shortbread-Blackberry pie (also inspired by tea&cookies), to try and recreate the magic of our BC trip. And then we basically exploded.

Happy 4 years, us.



Friday was mostly uneventful, except for the lovely lunch I had with, and courtesy of, Olivera. I'm going to miss working with her - I've honestly been so lucky in my lab to be surrounded by such warm, caring and intelligent people.

Saturday is when things really picked up: I dragged myself out of bed bright and early (ok, 9, it's still early for me) and made it into Toronto an hour and a half later. I met up with Paula at the ROM around 11am, joining the already-massive line to reserve tickets for the opening of the new addition. After an hour and a bit stationary, and another 45 minutes inching towards the front (past David Suzuki!!), we scored tickets for 2:30. In the morning. And then, we walked down to Travel Cuts and picked up my Brussels-->Accra ticket (by way of CASABLANCA).

OK now I am getting excited:



We finally headed over to Sharon's for some backyard relaxing (and guacamole eating). It was so good to just relax and hang out with Sharon and Paula, along with a few other characters who showed up along the way. We got ready without hurry, and at around 10 headed downtown to meet up with Maggie and possibly join a group of old friends from Western who were out for a pub crawl. I'm getting a bit overwhelmed thinking about recounting everything else that happened that night, so I think that I'll just link to Paula's post about it. And upload some pictures. And go to bed. Mmmhmm.









PS - going to be after the museum? 6:30 am. Paula and Sharon made it till about 3, but Mark and I wandered around until five, and then walked our way back to Sharon's. It was amazing - right before we left (maybe 4:30 am?) we headed down to the lowest floor, where there was an exhibit of Japanese art. It was probably the nicest exhibit in the museum, but aside from the security guard, we were the only ones in the room for the longest time. It was surreal and I loved every minute of it.

Friday, June 01, 2007

It's raining me, watch out!

I really can't wait until I am on a plane and everything that needs to be done in the next three weeks is either done or I've at least moved past worrying about it. I am starting to feel like a little ball of stress, and its showing. My hair is falling out! And I'm falling over! Damn. Don't pity me though, I'm starting to feel a little bit more in control of my to-do list, and I'm not going to let any of it fall to pieces.

And speaking of falling, I watched my first surgeries the other day. For part two of my eye training, I watched my ophthalmologist perform 4 cataract surgeries. My two major impressions: 1) Oh wow it is so amazing that we can do this! Your lens got cloudy? No problem! We will just suction it out and insert a new one and by the way, you also won't need to wear glasses anymore because it fixes that problem too!; and, 2) There is no way to wrap your brain around the idea that suctioning out part of the eye can be a good thing, therefore, it conks out on ya.

I was watching (through a high-res microscope no less!) the first surgery, thinking about how absolutely amazing it was, when I started to feel funny. So I went to go sit down. And then when I started to get up, I realized that I wasn't on the chair like I thought I was... I was right out on the floor. Beside the surgery-in-progress. I had absolutely no recollection of not being on the chair, just of things being a bit woozy. Yikes. The other ones that I watched went a lot better (for me - for the patients all of the surgeries went extremely well). It really is incredible.

Also, I'm officially done at York. I still have more things to do there, and they'll get done, but at least for the next few weeks I can focus on studying and getting other stuff done that I've neglected for far too long! Tomorrow, I study, and see Paula, Maggie and Sharon all in one place, and see the opening of the new ROM crystal. Amazing!

PS the other faint was more of a close call - I had a funny reaction to a needle and went all woozy on the nurse. Buck up, body!