Don't Wanna!

Man. Three assignments to go and I don't wanna. I just don't. It's not that I dislike the subject material or that I haven't started and am afraid to start them. Feh. Today I have spent five and a half hours in choir rehearsals, and it's been thoroughly mad. Our concert is Saturday night (come one, come all). But if I whine about it, the obvious response inevitably comes: "Well, you do this voluntarily. Actually, you pay to do it." This being true, I acknowledge that I have no right to complain. But try telling that to my feet.

On a completely other note, Katherine made salmon burgers tonight and they were delicious. And the other day she made Italian-style poached eggs, where you actually just crack the eggs into this tomato mixture, and they cook in the tomatoes. How crazy is that? The fact that these were both delicious seems to be a signal that she should cook all the time from now on. Yup.

So what else is interesting? Seventeen days until Death Cab for Franz Ferdinand! That's a happy thing. And soon after that, school will be done, and I can begin striving to be not incompetent at my summer job. Apparently Boopsie may seek to join the ranks of the employed this summer. It is very nice to have money sometimes, and I think she will enjoy that. Also, she is bored this week, so I will endeavour to think of Something For Her To Do. Spring break is a drag when one's friends have gone away.

I'm off to fold laundry as a displacement activity. Bonsoir!

Abuse! Abuse!

Here are my various injuries. The knee is from when Katherine flung me to the pavement at the bus stop in front of 50 people last week. Coming at someone out of their blind spot is not cool, for the record. Even when you are playing a wrestling game.

My finger is there to showcase the results of my encounter with the garbage chute on Wednesday. Also for the record, the Fatboy Slim CD I'm using as a background is totally and completely ineffective as an alarm clock CD. It has failed to get me out of bed twice in a row.

Send In The Klutz

Most of today was good: I slept in far later than I'd intended, after nine delicious hours of sleep, but still made it to choir more or less on time. In law, I got to watch everyone writing scathing evaluations of Professor-Wan (and wrote one myself, a great joy). We got our law assignments back. I did exactly as well as I had done on the previous one. Hmm. Then it was home and grocery shopping, because of the Food-Condiment Horizon. Katherine suggested that we play a game at the mall: each find one thing that made us happy and buy it, or, if it was too expensive, look at it and have fond memories and maybe come back to visit it. I resisted the temptation to buy shoes, but did succumb to some raspberry sherbert as my Happy Thing. I think it was a good choice.

However, once we'd gotten back to my place, things started going downhill. It was a slapstick comedy of errors, actually. There was dinner being cooked and there were groceries being put away when I decided to tip over a beer bottle that was on the floor, en route from the cabinet to the fridge. The bottle exploded all over everything (not helpful). As I was taking out the cleanup detritus from the beer bottle, the metal garbage chute hatch slammed shut on my fingernail. I came back to the smell of a burning pot because the green beans had gone dry, iced my finger, had dinner, then dumped canned peaches on the living room carpet. Like you do. This is what happens when I get a full night's sleep. Yesterday I felt fine, I finished my essay and was productive, and saw a fantastic movie, all on about five and a half hours' sleep. Really, I felt powerful and bionic. It was awesome. Today, because of sleep, I have descended once more to the plane of the mortals. It kind of sucks.

V for Vendetta is pretty cool. It is satisfyingly like watching a good comic book: there were a few moments where I could nearly see the speech bubbles and what a panel would look like. The sensibility of it was not just good-versus-evil, though: the side we're supposed to sympathize with is out to kill people, and doesn't mind killing civilians in the name of freedom. But they are clearly the good guys. A certain amount of violence, it seems, is sometimes the answer, when it is used to combat a greater evil. And hey, there were gouts of blood, too. You know I'm all about the gouts of blood. Also, Hugo Weaving can do no wrong. He's pretty much a minor deity to all nerds at this point: the man is Agent Smith, Elrond, and Tick in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Indeed, the audience at the film was like the honour roll of Geek School. It was most excellent. I was very happy to have gone. As Katherine said afterward, "V is for Awesome!" I leave you with this quote: A revolution without dancing's not worth having.

Et Sepultus Est

Hnnnnnnnngh. Holy man am I tired. OK, the essay is done, DONE! I have washed my hands of it. Washed them, I say. I'm not going to look at it again until I hand it in in two hours' time. Thank the Lord. Jordan is terrifying me right now; he's sitting across the aisle in the lab beside a nigh-architectural stack of books, most of whose titles involve Stalin. Even looking at them hurts my head.

This week I have to figure out where I can find the Arsey Empee to get my criminal record check done; it should be pretty easy, but these things have a way of escalating into impossible bureaucratic tasks. I also need to learn to operate a fax machine. Uh oh: I think that noise I hear is the Real World.

And so, to class. Hooray.

Fulmination Nation

My head is about to explode. Katherine has just laughed at me for making the world's largest pot of coffee to cuddle up with for tonight's essay-finishing extravaganza (just getting off the ground at this hour!). However, I laughed at her earlier for putting on oven mitts to open the fridge door, and then for declaring that she could "smell" the sound of the coffee bag opening. So HA! I have still got it together, after all. And I know someone who has all twelve pages of his essay left to write. Tonight. I don't think Wulfric reads this, but I wish him luck anyway.

Tomorrow, if I can muster (a) the energy and (b) the troops, we're going to see V for Vendetta. I am muy excited, because Hugo Weaving rocks hard, and apparently the art direction and angry political dissidence quotient are most satisfactory. This is how we can tell it's fiction.

I am very pleased with myself because I predicted Dad's reaction to a newspaper piece from all the way across the country. Some fairly asinine thing in the New York Times featuring a seed merchant fulminating about some imaginary lobby of "environmental xenophobes". Apparently the Aliens list-serv is abuzz (even more than entomologists are usually abuzz!). Boopsie didn't get to go to her fencing tournament because of dreadful blizzardiness. However, I am also told that Uncle Dick is feeling slightly better, which is good because he's been under the weather lately.

So very, very tired. But strangely cheerful! Good night, moon. Good night, sanity.

Mental Health Update

Wonderful run this afternoon with Mike, Jacob, and Barry. Mary joined us halfway through when we met by chance on the path. It was about 12km, I think, and the wind was fresh but not unpleasant. I feel so much better than I did earlier. I am ready to declare this a Good Day: stuff got done and I went for a run. Hooray!

Still plenty of work left on my political science essay. I must say, if the global political economy is going to be so troublesome, I don't see why we need one. It seems more difficult than it's worth. Wampum, anyone?

Out Like A Lion

What a long week it has been. I'm just a bit tired, and I feel like I'm spinning my wheels on some of these assignments. In the next couple of weeks I have a poli sci paper, a lab quiz, a public affairs proposal, paper, presentation, and short paper, a law paper, and then exams. Naturally, my work ethic has decided that now is an ideal time for a vacation, and that my time would be better spent doing some alternative research. For instance, I can now tell you with precision how many quarters fit in my navel (four -- top that!).

I'm done my last geography assignment, which is due this afternoon. And hey, Kelly is booking a bunch of tickets for the campus theatre company's production of Grease, which I eagerly await. And today I am going to book my train tickets for my Franz Ferdinand/Death Cab For Cutie expedition to Montreal with Katherine. So there's lots of stuff to look forward to. They could even bill this tour as "Death Cab For Franz Ferdinand". But that would be in poor taste.

After a week or so of deceptive niceness (only one bout of freezing rain and some genuine sun-warmth to go along with the wind-chill) the weather has decided to yank us around a bit by going below zero again. Thanks, March. And... that's about it, actually. I'm going to go back to my essay. I have a six-page outline and a page and a half written, so there's lots of work to do. Au revoir, my lovelies, and I hope everyone is coping well with school/work/life!

Neon Below

From my eyrie up here, i can see all the lights in the little strip mall opposite my building. It is at its most attractive at night, when you can't see it.

Earlier this afternoon I opened a package from a mysterious bookstore and found, to my great delight, a copy of The Crossman Diaries. It is out of print, but Terry hunted it down for me because he loves it so much. A former British cabinet minister called Richard Crossman wrote it about his time as the minister in charge of various departments. I'm reading the foreword right now and he sounds like quite a piece of work, but one with valuable things to say about the public service. I think Terry said there are funny bits, and I am perfectly able to believe that a work about the British parliamentarian-civil servant relationship would be hilarious. I mean this sincerely. What? Stop laughing! If it couldn't be funny they wouldn't have made it into a television comedy series, now would they?

Go about your business. Katherine has been playing her new Belle & Sebastian album all evening, except while we were eating dinner and watching a movie. I like it, most of it's just a little psychedelic and hyper-layered for constant consumption. And "Mornington Crescent" is a truly lovely song.

Blue Day Grey Day Heyday

This is a slapbanger of a good day. I just feel really good. I was up much too late last night working on a law paper, but I slept in a bit today and then got going and put various to-do list items out of their misery. I went to campus and had a good chat with my public affairs prof about global warming in general and my research paper in particular. Walking to campus along the canal is strongly disadvised just now, as the path is nothing but an icy-edged lake. Man alive. Anyway, after that I went to the secondhand book place and finally got my frelling refund, hooray! I then went and blew most of the refund money on a good haircut (badly needed) from a nice Costa Rican lady. After that, I walked along the street with my newly-layered and flat-ironed and fantastically flippable hairstyle, and visited a baklava merchant, who kindly supplied me with a selection of pistachio-based treats to enjoy during our movie tonight.

West Wing spoiler ahead!

Oh, man! Josh and Donna are finally putting us out of our seven-year suspense. It is spring, in West Wing-verse the election is approaching, and love is in the air I am so happy that this is finally happening, because it just wouldn't be right to end the show without those two getting together. It brings me right back to the first days of my West Wing fandom.

And so, to fold my laundry and deal with Katherine's sudden spring cleaning frenzy. I have been entrusted with the kitchen, which I gather is quite a pressing responsibility.

You Can't Win If You Don't Play

A free doughnut is coming my way courtesy of Roll Up The Rim, exciting because I never win in little contests like this. However, I'm drinking more coffee than I used to, so that ups my chances right off the bat. In keeping with my Lent abstinences, said doughnut may neither contain chocolate nor be shaped like a cookie. Bless Mr. Horton's little soul.

On Mum's recommendation, I have obtained "In a Gadda da Vida", and have found it rather special. The first time I listend to it I thought it was kind of irritating (vocally, anyway) but then I found myself humming it later. It's overblown crazy rock music with a Hammond organ (?) and growly vocals, and is certainly out of place on my current Buxtehude-based playlist, but it's fun anyway.

Saturday Night, Dee-Dee Dee Dah Di Da Da Da

Have just returned from an excellent dinner at Kayt and Rachael's. What funny people I know! And on the way there, the 3/4 of the Res Redux that was going (me, Katherine, and Emily, but not Nate) got a little frisson of grownupness: we were going to a dinner party and bringing wine, and dessert, and salad in a big glass bowl! Admittedly, one of our mothers had bought the wine when she was up visiting (Katherine: "it's how we WASPs express love.") but it still counts. Anyway, dinner was divine. Our gracious hosts made Mediterranean shrimp and chicken on a mixture of brown and wild rice, Emily made asparagus with parmesan and balsamic vinegar, and I made a salad with stuffed olives, feta, and roasted red peppers. Katherine made a chocolate wafer cake-thingee with lots of whipped cream. It was all very tasty, and we laughed hysterically and gossiped away for a large part of the evening, then watched two episodes of Grey's Anatomy which we had fallen behind on. George is just emasculating himself mooning around after Meredith. It's a little pathetic, frankly. I think he needs to have a fling with Dr. Torres of the Overprocessed Hair and forget about Meredith, and George seems to agree with me, so all is well at Seattle Grace Hospital. The world spins on its axis once more.

In other news, [this passage about the writer's law paper has been censored for extreme whininess. Go about your business, nothing to see here].

Law Essay Might Have Something To Do With It

I slept for eleven hours last night. How is it even possible that I am sleepy?

Last night Natasha (was in my French class last year, ran into her at Jeanne's Wildfire show) invited me to attend a dinner and lecture at her house. It turned out to be a rather interesting discussion put on by the Campus Association for Baha'i Studies, about mysticism, modernity, and humour. The "humour" bit was sort of shoehorned in at the end, but it was still rather interesting. A lot of the ideas seemed fairly common (work of the hands as worship rather than retreating into an extreme ascetic lifestyle, et c.) but it was neat to see them occurring in the writings of a religion I'm not familiar with. Baha'i is also interesting in that it is a faith with little apparent ideological cohesion: members seem quite free to interpret the texts however they choose. There was a girl there considering conversion to Baha'i, and she kept asking about the Baha'is' stance on homosexuality and getting panicked looks because nobody was really comfortable speaking for the entire faith. Though, in the end, I don't think she got the "correct" answer, so that's one religion to cross off the comparison-shopping list! Anyhow, there was delicious spaghetti, so I'm all for that.

We now return to our regularly scheduled law essay. The topic is incredibly vague. I think most of the class is having an aneurysm about it as we speak.

Dead Russian Composers

If I were a Dead Russian Composer, I would be Sergei Prokofyev. I was born in the late 19th century and was a child prodigy, composing at a very young age. I kept this talent up, earning myself quite a name and fully exploiting the bragging rights. I was disliked by Stalin, however, and I died the same day he did. My most famous work is "Peter and the Wolf." Who would you be? Dead Russian Composer Personality Test

Iiiiinteresting.

B-I-F-A-O

Well, just when I didn't think he had any left to lose, Klein has lost it again. And you just know the voters will shrug this off, just like they shrug every other mad thing he's done. Every time I think to myself, "surely this is the breaking point of public patience with his lunacy" the populace lets me down again.

This weekend looks pretty quiet. I was supposed to snowboard with Jacob today, but then it was warm yesterday and even the Camp Fortune web site was admitting that there is an "ice base", which at Fortune means the hill is closer to "inclined skating rink" than "skiable surface". Just as well, I suppose: I have to read about the FAO this afternoon, and it looks like there will be a lot to do. Besides, my snowboard needs waxing before I take him out to the hill again.

Far below me, some ant-sized person is walking about on the lake with faithful hound in tow. It looks very idyllic, but since there is nobody else down there on the ice and yesterday was warm, I think it could be a Very Poor Idea.

This weekend looks quiet. I have a few essays to get through, though only one them is due this week, and not until Friday at that. Yesterday I got my geography essay back: A+! God bless introductory science courses. Sunday Katherine, Emily, and I are probably going over to Kayt and Rachael's for a potluck. I've yet to decide what to make. Ideas, anyone?

Neglected to go to Ash Wednesday Mass this week, because it conflicted with choir practice. Hey, I was singing religious texts in Latin! Fair trade, I thought. But I will tell you all if the Pope calls to chastise me. And so to my research.