The Joys of Solid Food

One of the reasons I adore the BBC's website is that it shows you what other people are searching for. Right now, other people are searching for: pussycat dolls, iceland, kenya. Gee, I'm pretty sure I know where the last two are, but the first item is probably on tour.

This has been rather a good Reading Week, though as usual I didn't get nearly enough work done. I flew in on Thursday the 15th and got myself home before getting up obscenely early for my wisdom teeth thing. It was... well, it was pretty much like pulling teeth. They gave me Halcion, which was relaxing though not as exciting as the name implies. Friday was a day of drooly sleep (just like every other Friday, what?) but in the evening I felt pretty good and was able to talk to Simone when she came over, bringing me two lovely little jewellery boxes and many photos of her family visit to Goa over Christmas. Everyone looked so happy and warm and full of delicious seafood; we were all extremely jealous!

The weekend was not eventful. I wore pajamas and ate a lot of jello and soup, before getting back onto semi-solid food on Sunday. Hooray. Keith came over (Katie was in Whistler) and we watched Running With Scissors, the extremely insane film version of Augusten Burroughs' memoirs. It was good, but don't watch it if you have a low tolerance for substance abuse, family dysfunction, and Freud.

Monday morning Mom and I left for Jasper, and got in a delicious half-day of skiing/riding at Marmot Basin. Tuesday morning was insane for me because I chose to take another run before our hot chocolate break and got stuck at the top of the mountain in weather like this:

With blowing snow, aw yeah. Because I couldn't see where "downhill" was, I took a couple of good sit-downs before getting down into the basin where the wind wasn't so bad. Happily for us, it turned bluebird in the afternoon, or at least non-apocalyptic. By the time Dad arrived on the 5:45 Greyhound, it was actually pretty nice out.

Wednesday was another brilliant day of skiing. I did a couple of runs on the delightful mogully powdery stuff off the Knob chair. The universe decided to freak me out by peopling the chair behind mine with two guys who talked the entire way up about how "they shouldn't even stop this chair, ever, because if you fall over getting off this chair, you shouldn't be on this chair." But I survived anyway, and was rewarded with scrumptious dinner at Andy's Bistro. This is one of the reasons it is good to go places with one's parents rather than with fellow cheap students: cup-o-soups < assorted salads, wild mushrooms on corn bread, and vegetable stuffed green peppers. Also, there was a rather edifying discussion of Chomsky's Language Acquisition Device which ended with Dad insisting that linguists are wrong to say there is an infinite number of sentences in the English language, because that's the whole point of infinity. I volunteered that Chuck Norris has counted to infinity. Twice.

Anyway. Skiing good. We managed to be the first car in the lot on Thursday morning, much to our satisfaction:

Thursday afternoon we drove back, and Friday we had Katie, Keith, and Laura over for dinner, which was most lovely. This is probably the only week that I have seen Keith sans Katie since high school, which is sort of bizarre, but hey! We'll take whoever turns up, particularly when they are as nice as Keith is. Katie was both late and early for dinner, leaving for a couple of hours to go to a horse acupuncture demonstration. Well may you ask: she says the horses enjoyed it.

The downside of this week's schedule was that I didn't have much time with Boopsie, because Model UN precluded her coming along to Jasper. I did get to see her a few nights and go "BYE!" at her extremely early on Saturday morning before Dad took me to the airport. But we'll make up for it when she comes to visit in March.

Whoopee Hooray

Hm... I'm talking with Bev on MSN about my impending wisdom teeth removal, and have just realized that a weekend lying in bed drugged and eating Jello actually sounds really good.

Also, I think I have a stye in my eyelid. Because everyone who reads my blog needs to know this, as my personal medical consultant. This state of affairs would be fine if I could just close my eyes and sleep but no, I have to finish this public affairs commentary so I can get up early to study for Africa, which sounds like a charity event but again no, it's actually just me studying to save myself.

Libera Animas Defunctorum

It has been a while since my last post, so here I am! We got some sad news this weekend: Katherine's grandmother passed away on Sunday. It wasn't unexpected, she had been declining, but probably that doesn't help that much. Katherine was able to go home for the visitation and funeral, though.

Several days have passed since I started writing this. It's two performances at the NAC later, and it was quite delightful. The choir kids got to use the extra tickets for the concert to sit in the front row, because we weren't on until after intermission. The Ottawa Fesival Choirs led off the concert with Faure's Pavane, op. 50, which is meltingly gorgeous even if the program was very disparaging about the lyrics. These are described variously as a "saccharine poem" and "merely a textual overlay", but this is okay because it "adds nothing essential to the music itself". Burn. Amanda Forsyth then played Shostakovich's cello concerto no. 1 op. 107. The cello diva wears a great deal of eyeshadow, but it went with her blue-and-gold gown with a Cleopatra collar. Anyhow, that didn't really matter because hot griddlecakes, can that woman play! It was the orchestral equivalent of a rock concert. The fact that the piece she played is insaaaane helped, because it must be mindbogglingly difficult to play as well as being really cool.

Anyway, I must get back to my studies. Politics of War in Africa midterm is on Tuesday and I am terrified.

How Very True

Due to the apparently paucity of information on Mozambique and Angola in our school library system, I am finding myself driven to Wikipedia to find other books to look in. However, the following problem has presented itself:

(This image borrowed without authorization from xkcd)

Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby

New Kaiser Chiefs song on the radio = good week, apparently. Most things have been going well. I had a moment of doubt on Tuesday, but the usual fun in international affairs followed by a trip to the gym with Kelly did the trick! It looks like I'm coming back to the Birda for summer, too, so that's been cheering me up. It's not that I don't like Ottawa and my friends, my job, and my school work here -- actually, all of the above have been going quite well -- but it will be nice to have a change of pace and to be back home. Also, since the thing I've been really excited about is that Boopsie is coming to visit in March, it kind of made sense to go back where she is.

Monday I went to a pro-Kyoto demonstration in the morning, in -29C, of course -- nothing brings out the chill like global warming. Jack Layton was there, busily having Paul Dewar inform people that the reason Jack got into politics was climate change, not mentioning the fact that the day before he'd been really big on ATM fees being the anti-Christ. Oh, politics, what incoherent bedfellows you make. But I still love David Chernushenko, who was also there and who spoke very well from the depths of a hideous Gore-tex parka. Anyway, I then went to Zak's Diner for breakfast with Karen, who graduated a year after me from Facey and is now taking design at Algonquin. We had delicious diner food and caught up -- she's one of those people whose social circle overlapped with mine, but we never actually talked that much.

Internationally, the Middle East continues to wig out. This is sad.

And now, I have to go finish my paper outline on contemporary Israeli geopolitics. Right after I watch Ugly Betty. Actually, it's pretty much done. Yay for sleeping tonight!