!!!

Alert CuteOverload.com!

My thesis is finally halfway starting to make sense! Oh man. Exciting.

Weekend Update

Last week I ate cookies and pasta and drank water and beer. I have lost four pounds, which is confusing.

Last week I did not practice my Lucia music. I knew most of it for the concert tonight anyway, which is confusing.

Last week I demonstrated once more my exceptionally poor time management skills. I expect somehow to both finish my thesis outline and not fail my econ exam, which is unlikely.

Last week I went to my first capoeira roda and totally sucked but that is to be expected and I had fun anyway, which is also to be expected.

This week I'm going home!

Depressing Realizations

My life is less interesting than the lives of the people to whom my spam is addressed. Look what shot down the intertubes this morning, somehow bypassing my spam filter:

Hi James,

Here is the video of this patient interrogation / cross-examination. I think he doesn't say everything.

I'll ask the psychologist to work with him. I suppose he can fall under hypnotist's spell. Also I'll make him to pass lie detector examination, and then we'll compare all the information and make a conclusion.

If you need me, I'm online.

Gerald.

Intrigue! Lie detectors! Broken English!

Child of the 80s

Oh, no. I have a mullet. Must call hairdresser instantly.

International Relashuns

My IR paper is done, hallelujah. "Done Is Good," as Mum says. Now all I need to do before December 12 is an outline for my thesis and study for economics, and go meet my new boss (not the same as the old boss). Friday night the gang is getting crunk somewhere, I think, and I have to memorize the music for Lucia and on Saturday I am double-booked for a climate change protest for the Day of Action and a roda for capoeira. Overall, though, I pretty much feel jaunty. Maybe even as jaunty as these gentlemen are:

Did I hit my head on the ground today harder than I thought I did, or is this kind of awesome? I'm also curious about those hand gestures at 2:14.

Last Sunday was delightful because I went to Montreal to hang out with Boopsie at nationals. She wasn't too happy with how she performed but I'm proud of her for making it - and for beating the girl who won the silver medal, at least in the pools round. She wasn't competing the day I was there, we just trucked around the city finding great classical music stores and eating at bistros with Dad.

Friday night the B.PAPMers and Notl and Graham took some time out of studying and writing papers and generally freaking out to decorate the apartment. There were some complaints about the lack of oranges with cloves stuck in them all over. And that day it had snowed so we went to the park and sledded like big stupid kids. It all ended happily, the lights in our apartment are hysterically ugly, just as we like them, and our kitchen is full of booze and cookies (two of the food groups right there). Things are looking up.

Feminism Question Time

Hey, if you'd done a bunch of research and editing work on a group paper*, and one of the guys in the group thanked you for the typing, would you feel a little like that guy was being kind of sexist? Or do I just read too many Grrl blogs that make me even more angry and hysterical than uterus-bearing individuals are wont to be? Discuss.

Today is Paper Day. There are four more pages before my limit on this paper but tonnes of material to put in. I guess I'll be doing a lot of "typing". And then it's time for political science, which is terrifying to me and I do not know how I am going to finish it.

Katie has set up a blog to chronicle her adventures at pre-vet school! How very exciting. She also appears to be changing her name to Kat for the purposes of her Grenadan adventures. I may add her to my blogroll. Oh wait, I don't have a blogroll.

*Not to mention: if you were the only one of your group of three people to come to meetings consistently instead of failing to show for no discernible reason and then, later, failing to apologize. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Oh, French-Canadians

Radio-Canada is playing a song right now whose lyrics include, "les terroristes sont partout, jusqu'a dans nos culottes". The terrorists are everywhere, right down to our underwear. It's pretty jaunty, actually.

I Want For Christmas: Caffeine, Seratonin, and/or Hard Drugs

Please let this nonsense not be starting up again over such a great book: why do people think God does not want little kids to read fascinating, challenging, beautiful stories?

Haaarch. Hairball Noises Against Censorship is totally a good idea for a protest movement against this stuff.

Unrelatedly, group projects are basically never a good idea. Unless... nope, still terrible.

My wee Boopsie is off to Montreal with no parental supervision for her fencing tournament. On Sunday I will, hopefully, get out to see her! I am very excited.

Helpful Hint

When you have capoeira at noon, try to avoid waking up at 11:50. However, I did not get kicked in the head this week, so that's good.

Tis The Season

To wig out over papers. The last three people I have talked with have all been basically vibrating with stress. Everyone else is making me feel lazy with my normal course load and lack of job. Whatever, guys, I suck, okay? I'd rather have time to stay at home and make unappetizing bean stews from scratch. Also to fart around online. That's just how I do.

Today has been especially magical for me because I have managed to get coffee on my pants and also in my armpit. Then, later on, I learned that cocoa powder shows up on khakis, and does not come out of them. Frontiers in stainage!

This weekend my running shoes seem to have died. They were fine one day and then the next I made it 5km before developing hideous blistering and pain in my arches which has persisted to today.

Limbo

AUGH I am going to get 79% on everything until I die. I will never get into grad school, if I should ever want to do such a thing. Seriously, so far this year I have gotten five assignments or tests back and four of these have been exactly 79%. Fine, universe, I get it: I am almost good enough for an A- but not quite. Lay off.

Libvember

So I basically won't be leaving the library for the next three weeks. I'm comfortable with that; it's a nice library and there are usually comfy seats available. So here I am, assiduously working on my geography essay. I'm writing about the geopolitics of the oil sands, because my other (difficult, interesting) topic fell through. I probably could have made a case for it, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it would just be "hey, this is really cool and is sort of related to what we're talking about except it's fictional!" And I don't think I can sustain that in any convincing way for 12 pages. The oil sands paper has the very considerable advantage of being easy to write because I actually know a moderate amount of stuff. Now watch me get a B+, again.

Shortly after I arrived at the library this morning, some horrible little man began listening to metal at exceptional volumes, such that I could hear it through his earphones from two seats away. WHY would you do that? And then I read a BBC News article that convinced me I am going to get cirrhosis of the liver due to being an undergraduate, and that one day with no warning I am going to wake up with yellow eyeballs and esophageal bleeding. Nobody should ever read health articles, because they are a leading cause of hypochondria.

So yeah. This is a happy library.

Department of Things We Knew Already

1. Norse mythology is round the twist.

2. Colleen is awesome. We spent two and a half very lovely days bumming around eating bagels and giggling. She's en route to Toronto to begin her illustrious stage career in earnest. We hit most of the shopping and eating highlights we wanted, because she's been here before and didn't really need the "this is Parliament! Here is the Supreme Court!" shtick again. Nobody likes parliamentary democracy that much. Friday night we had dinner with the other Jessica, and made the discovery that pizza is delicious (see: post title). Nobody had taken the Colleener to the Glebe for boutiquing before, so we did that. The By Ward Market kiosk people were able to set her up with a very attractive green scarf. Katherine's birthday do was on Saturday night, so we proceeded to the dive bar for karaoke fun times. It was pretty awesome; some old sketchy guy proposed to Colleen and she was suitably horrified.

3. Sometimes Colleen and I are lame. This means we did not take any pictures, nary a one, that were not ludicrously grainy camera-phone snaps. My camera keeps eating batteries, I'm not sure what her excuse was. There are photos from karaoke, but we are singing in all of them and thus look ridiculous. Oh, fine, here is one plagiarized from someone else's camera. I call it "Karaoke Is Serious Business".

How humiliating for the seriously crazed girl on the left. I do hope she doesn't fail her international relations essay.

Goose Eggs

I got kicked in the head in capoeira today! It was (a) my own fault and (b) awesome in that now I have nothing to fear. It was just a little tap but it turns out that when you're playing with someone tiny you have to dodge really low otherwise you, well, you get tagged in the forehead. Fortunately my hair covers it.

In other news, I am the only person in my group of three for public affairs who has not sent me an e-mail saying that they can't come to a meeting we're supposed to be having in a half hour. I guess rescheduling is what Tuesdays are for. I'm not bitter, frankly I have some work to do anyway.

Maybe I should go do that.