Queen of West Procrastination

And then somehow I turned thirty-one

2011-12-09T17:43:00.001-08:00

I got back to Victoria on Monday, after a week and a half that I can only describe as being bittersweet, after a week and a half during which time I constantly told people that I needed to "play things by ear." (Read: "I have decided not to make plans in advance, other than with my brother.") It's impossible to describe such a trip as being "good," when you consider the circumstances, but I was glad to be home, glad to be with my family, and glad to have the family that I have.

I spent a week sleeping in my childhood bedroom, which gave the week an extra surreal quality: I was sleeping there on my own (Chris having flown back after the weekend), in my room of twenty-three years. In that room, there were small remnants of my years there: the colour of the walls, one picture, one shelf, snowflake stickers on the window. However, everything else in the room was from my Grandmother's years there, and more so from my sister's current occupation of the room. It's like when the five of us (my parents, my two siblings and I) sat together in my parents' living room: it was familiar, and I could not escape all the evidence of what all has changed (and the reason why we were all together).

Now I'm back in Victoria, trying to adjust back to my routine here, but also very aware of the fact that we fly back to Regina in a week, with all of my missed work looming over me. And, in the midst of all of this, my birthday was yesterday. I'm thirty-one now; I feel like I just got used to being thirty. I really liked being thirty. "Thirty-one" sounds strange to me. And I usually make a big deal about my birthday; I invest a lot of emotion and expectations into the day. This year, I could only handle small things. Before I left Regina, I invited a couple friends and all their wee daughters over to my parents' house, to share ice cream cake with me. (Having four kids -- all of whom call me "Auntie" -- blow out my candles was fun.) Yesterday, I met two friends downtown in the afternoon; we had tea and went Christmas shopping at my favourite little stores. My all-time favourite storekeeper hugged me five times and gave me a birthday present. Then, my cousin Ky and I bussed to a restaurant, where we met Chris and a couple more friends for supper.

Hm. Now that I wrote that out, it sounds like I still made a big deal about my birthday. It was all thrown together at the last minute ("The only day that's available for shopping is Thursday. Oh, that's Maryanne's birthday? Let's go for tea!" "You know, your birthday is on Thursday. Shouldn't we at least go out for supper?") but I loved it more that way. I've done the big-party thing, and that was a nice thing for other years.

So, yeah. Thirty-one. Thiiiiiirty-one. Not too bad. And it gave me an excuse to have a nice, relaxing day with friends.

Unexpectely Homeward Bound

2011-11-24T22:24:00.001-08:00

Chris and I are packing up, and tomorrow morning we're flying to Saskatchewan for an unplanned trip home. Normally, I'd be thrilled about the fact that I'm getting a week and a half back home, in addition to the two weeks we'll have at Christmas. But this is a trip that none of us wanted us to have to take: we're heading home for the funeral of my little brother's beautiful, funny, wonderful wife.

This is pretty closely connected to why there's been silence at this here blog lately. Well, for the first while I was just wrapped up in research and writing, in restructuring some dissertation plans and all that. But then we found out that my sister-in-law was sick, and out of respect to the more private members of my families, I kept all that off the blog. But it was all I could really think about, and so it was easier just to maintain radio silence here.

And then suddenly she was gone, and we hardly had any time to prepare ourselves for the idea. But tomorrow, I get on an airplane, and for a week and a half I'll be able to make myself useful to my family. I'm still trying to prepare myself emotionally for being home, and for how much more real this is going to become for me. But it'll be better for me to be able to help, instead of wandering around aimlessly here, bursting into tears while holding the soup bowls she gave me for Christmas a few years ago.

So, we'll see whether I keep up any blogging while I'm home. But I thought, in the spirit of the holiday that our American friends are celebrating today, that I'd mention a few reasons why I'm thankful today. I'm thankful for my amazing friends, who have been overwhelming me with their love and very concrete support over the past few days. I'm thankful for airplanes, unlimited phone plans, and computers that make the distance between here and home seem to be not as great. I'm thankful that I have a Christopher who takes care of me every day, and has even managed to make me laugh a few times this week. I'm thankful for my amazing family. And I thankful that one beautiful girl came into our lives and changed us, even though she left us decades too soon.

A little inspiration

2011-09-10T21:03:00.000-07:00

Today, my block had a big yard sale (a yearly event organized by our Block Watch Association, intended to help us get to know our neighbours), and in our classic style, Chris and I made a profit of -$3.75. Our landlady, Joyce, already knew this was going to happen. When we got outside this morning, she shouted across the yard, "I'll keep an eye on Chris! He always spends more than he makes at these things. Then you just have more junk to sell next year."

He was behaving himself remarkably well this year (meanwhile, I was trying to unload whatever I could at 25 or 50 cents apiece). While I was getting to pack up the rest of our stuff and get it ready to haul to the thrift store, Chris came over and said, "I need to consult with you about something I found. It only costs $5, but it's big." I may have rolled my eyes a little, because you have no idea how many pieces of archaic technology and how many semi-broken telescopes he has brought into our home. I should have noticed how proud of himself he looked.

Our next-door neighbour had offered him their 1926 electric Singer cabinet sewing machine for $5. (Which works!) Both of our moms have Singer cabinet sewing machines, although both of theirs are treadle-style. It's surprising how many women in my family have Singer sewing machines as side tables. It feels like home, having one in my home. It even smells like home.

It turns out that the only place in our apartment where it fits is next to my (new!) desk. I'm leaving it open for now, because what better inspiration for writing about working women in the late 1920s than this view:

I'm seriously thirty

2011-09-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

This was a text message exchange between Ky and me this morning:

Ky: "I keep singing inner city pressure, but saying dragons instead of pressure."
Me: "If I could draw, I'd draw a cartoon of Inner-City Dragons for you."
Ky: "Try"
Me (seriously two hours later): "As soon as I get the scanner driver installed, I'll email you some Inner-City Dragons. They'll amaze your face off."

I'm thirty.

My first course evaluations

2011-08-31T16:34:00.001-07:00

I stopped by the department office and got my course evaluations (from the course I taught in June), and it's pretty much what I expected: mostly positive, with some constructive criticism and a couple (but only a couple) of very negative reviews. In the comments section, most of the criticism will be easily rectified by making each day's lecture's organization more explicit (pretty much all I'll actually change is that I'll make a single slide that shows the roadmap for where we're going that day), and also by faking confidence. I learned how to handle questions that I didn't know by the end of the course, by when you're only teaching for three weeks, they remember the moments where you looked like a deer in headlights a little too well.

The percentage breakdown of the survey they filled out shows that the majority of my students rated me favorably, which is encouraging. My highest scores were regarding my availability to help and provide feedback, and the respect that I gave to students and their ideas. And by "highest" I mean "the majority of students rated me as 'excellent' on both counts, and the one student who was mad at me even conceded that I was 'adequate.'" I'm really happy about both of those, because I worked really hard on being available to help, and on creating a respectful space within the classroom, and it's gratifying that they noticed. With everything else, it was in the middling-to-good range, which I know is an okay place to start. (The lowest ranking was regarding my clarity in explaining things, and that will be rectified by making small tweaks that I've been learning. Hooray for teaching workshops!)

I had a small handful of really negative comments, but they're all a mixed bag. Like, one student thinks that I don't make any sense in my lecturing, and another one thinks that the grading system was harsh but my lectures were "very effective [and] well put together." I had one absolutely negative comment (likely the same student who gave me consistently low rankings, and likely the same student who was glaring at me on the last day of class): one student outright stated that I wasn't qualified to teach the course because I'm a specialist in an earlier period, but she/he was mostly was mad that they had to memorize IDs. (It was a pretty heated comment: he/she ended off that comment with the statement "This is not an education," because apparently the whole course was based in memorization?) I find that comment interesting, partly because other students specified that the IDs helped to guide them in their studies, and also because on an absolute basis, the short answer part of the exams (which is where the identification part came in) constituted a small part of the final grade, and put a lot of emphasis on evaluating significance rather than on regurgitating details.

What can I make of that? For one thing, it would have been interesting to get feedback after they'd gotten back their essays and after they'd written the final (with a three-week course, by necessity the essay is due right before the last class). After the final, a lot of students expressed relief at the fact that I really didn't ask them anything unexpected on the final, and found the IDs part to be easier than they expected.

So, on the one hand, I can be relieved that the majority of students had a favourable impression of the course, and then I can learn from the helpful comments. They all reflect things that I've been already working on improving, and so I'm glad that I'm on the right track. I'm a little amused by how some of the comments contradict each other (I'm both organized and disorganized? I'm both a passionate lecturer and uncomfortable in front of students? I should use slides both more and less?), but that's what you get from a diverse group. I'm learning how to reach out to different kinds of learners, and I'll be a lot less terrified when I teach my next course, and so the unevenness in evaluations should level out in the future.

Now, all I can do is put these away, attend teaching workshops when I can, and hope that these evaluations were positive enough to help me get further teaching work. And focus on finishing this dissertation.

Moments in the kitchen

2011-08-29T22:48:00.003-07:00

I'm back in Victoria, back in the land of moderate temperatures and occasionally remembering I live by the ocean. I'm wearing long pants but no socks, and actually wore a light jacket this morning. Classic late summer in Victoria.

It's so good being home after being away for seven weeks. The fact that I'm in my own home and that I'm away from the high temperatures means that I feel like cooking and baking all the time. It's not that I didn't have access to a kitchen while I was away: on the contrary, I even made this on my last week staying with the in-laws:

(The little-sister-in-law's wedding also played a major role in my being a little too busy to blog for the last part of our SK trip.)

But I didn't realise how much I had been homesick for my own kitchen until I made my porridge here on Sunday morning, and was all "Hello, My Own Measuring Cups! I missed you so much!" And so, between the cooling weather, the overwhelming joy about being reunited with my own utensils and appliances, and my need to work through some challenges with my current chapter, I've been finding myself retreating to the kitchen.

I've also been thinking about what I love so much about preparing food. I got reflecting on it again this afternoon, as I started making some polenta for our supper. And I started making an incomplete list of my favourite moments in cooking and baking (in no particular order):
1. That instant, when making polenta, when the cornmeal I'm whisking in the boiling water suddenly thickens, and instead of having a loose mixture of cornmeal and water, I have this gloopy cornmealy mush that's sputtering everywhere. (This is also one of the more exciting parts of my cooking process.)
2. The moment when sugar becomes caramel, and I have to pay close attention to the colour of it, so that it gets to be a satisfying dark colour but doesn't get burnt.
2a) The satisfying way in which caramel bubbles up and hisses when you add butter and cream to it, when making caramel sauce.
3. (2b?) Turning a crème caramel out on a platter, and discovering that the caramel really did turn to liquid while the egg mixture hardened into a custard. Simultaneously! In the same pan! Science!
4. Lifting off the lid of the heavy dutch oven and finding that a once-tough piece of meat has turned into something tender and wonderful, like pulled pork.

Those sorts of moments (along with that one when you open the oven and and see the golden tops of baked bread or pies) are what drive me to the kitchen, they're what get me finding excuses to make caramel sauce (admittedly more than my love of consuming caramel sauce): these physical and chemical transformations that, even when I understand the science behind them, seem like magic. I really still haven't lost my sense of wonder in the kitchen. (Okay, one more moment like that: when I first try something that I have made, and discover that it actually tastes like food! I still can't believe that's possible.)

I need a little more of a sense of wonder in my day. Because there's not a lot of wonder or magic in the process of trying to get the words in my head to cooperate with the words on the computer screen, or in trying to make some sense of this current chapter.

You know, I used to have a sense of wonder about history and about writing. Maybe it's time to reconnect with that.

(And now I'll stop rambling and eat one of those cookies that I made today. Chris sure isn't complaining about the time I spent in the kitchen today.)

Doing my best imitation of a Victorian invalid

2011-07-25T15:54:00.001-07:00

So, I think that the WWII course took everything out of me. After that whole "I was so tired after giving the final that I was pretty much sleepwalking outside, and ended up with a scraped nose and a concussion" episode, I finished all the marking, packed, drove to Saskatchewan, attended a church camp, and promptly caught the Cold That Ate Vancouver Island. Two and a half weeks later, I'm finally getting better. Well, I had been getting better, and then had an allergic reaction to a cat, and spent a few days where I hardly could get out of bed. So, that was an adventure. There wasn't much to blog, since my thoughts were mostly occupied with such thoughts as "Naps after taking Benadryl are particularly strange naps," and "It is convenient that my in-laws possess a fainting couch, because I really am doing my best imitation of a Victorian invalid this week. Sometimes I'm worried that this cold is just in my head and is an excuse to sit around on a chaise lounge and read Sherlock Holmes mysteries,* but then I try to move around and start coughing like I have consumption."

But today I'm starting to feel better. I even felt well enough to tease the in-laws' cat (without actually touching her, since that would cause an allergic reaction), which is how Chris knew I was feeling better. Maybe tomorrow I'll even leave the house, and start visiting people in town. You know, since I'm IN SASKATCHEWAN and all.

***********

In other news, I'm trying out Google+ now, and am still figuring out what I think about that. If you're trying it out too, you can find me using the gmail address on the sidebar.

* You know, it is a surreal experience reading the entirety of the Sherlock Holmes stories in the course of a few weeks. You start noticing funny things, like how apparently everyone's response to traumatic experiences is to suffer from "brain-fever"? What is a brain-fever? Dramatic things happen in Prague, secret societies happen in the United States, murder is apparently okay if a lady's honour was at stake, mysterious wives come from South America, and Empire and racism are everywhere (unsurprisingly). Also, I have trouble not picturing Holmes and Watson as Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, but I picture Mycroft Holmes as Stephen Fry, even though the new Sherlock Holmes movie isn't even out yet. But I digress.

Half-formed thoughts by the girl with the scraped nose

2011-06-27T21:28:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I gave a final exam, and then came home, packed and went on a camping trip. It was kind of an abrupt transition, to go from the insane pace of the three-week course to a camping trip by the ocean. I was so exhausted on that first night of camping, after all those late nights of lecture writing, and early mornings of teaching, and then that long drive through rush hour traffic and then setting up a campsite, that I was pretty much sleep walking while I was trying to get ready for bed. I thought that I was used to the dark enough that I didn't need to use my flashlight to walk between the tent and our car, as I went and got a few last things. I was wrong: as soon as I turned back from the car, I tripped over a large boulder, fell and landed right on my nose. I was so tired that I hardly even noticed that I was falling; Ky said that I fell in slow motion, and she thought it was strange how I didn't put my hands out to stop my fall. Really, I was asleep while walking, and while it registered a little bit that my shins hit something hard, it really surprised me when suddenly I felt my nose scraping against rocks.

Chris and Ky came running, as they heard me quietly say "Owie. Owie. My nose." We got me cleaned up and I went straight to bed (and to sleep), and it wasn't until the next morning that we discovered that I had a mild concussion. (It is a good thing that we were camping with a nurse.) The dizziness and clumsiness made the rest of the camping trip interesting (I was like a baby deer, trying to walk around the beach the next morning), but I was camping with good friends and I enjoyed myself in spite of myself.

And now I'm back to the real world, and I have so much work to do. It's strange trying to get a lot of marking done while you're still in the midst of post-camping chaos. (Not to mention the post-concussion headache, and the scraped face that makes it difficult to wear my glasses!) It's even stranger realising that we will be leaving for Saskatchewan within the week. By this time next week, we should be with my family.

What a strange month June has been.

Finally

2011-06-23T22:46:00.000-07:00

I gave my last lecture today. Tomorrow they write the final. It was so nice spending the evening not panicking about my lack of knowledge about some battle or specific WWII event. (Because I seriously had a steep learning curve with this course. So much so that I worry about how the students answered the "Instructor is knowledgeable in the course content" portion of the course evaluations.)

But tomorrow I just give them the final, and sit and mark their essays while they write. Do you know how many times I've done exactly that, in all my years as a TA? Finally I'm doing something that's in my comfort zone.

And then I'm going away and going camping, leaving my marking behind for two whole days. Two days where I'm not thinking about limited liability strategies, total war, tanks, generals, atrocities, and students' needs. And where I'm far away from my email. Bliss.

Quick teaching reflection

2011-06-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

I'm deep in the midst of midterm-marking, but I noticed something that I do in my self-talk about my teaching abilities:

When I have a good day with the students, I think "Hey, today went well!" but when it's a bad day I think "I'm terrible at teaching and my students are probably disappointed that they decided to take this class from me!"

When a student does well on a midterm I think, "What a clever student! He/she really gets it!" but when a student gets a low mark I think, "I did a terrible job of teaching this! Was I really unclear that day?"

Huh. Apparently I treat the good things as nice little aberrations, or things outside of my control, and I treat the bad things as being The Norm, and There's Something Wrong With Me.

Blogging during my office hour

2011-06-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

No one has shown up for this office hour, which is okay with me. There was a big rush of students showing up for my office hours at the beginning of the term, because they were figuring out what to do for their major assignment, and some of the non-majors wanted to make sure that they understood what's involved in a history course. Now, they've written the midterm but haven't gotten it back yet, and are at the stage in their assignments where they've figured out what they're doing but don't need feedback on preliminary written stuff.

That's all a long way of saying that I didn't expect anyone to show up today, and that's cool with me, because it means that I can use this hour to wind down after lecturing for two straight hours.

I'm feeling a little more competent every day. I gave a midterm yesterday, and it took them all exactly the amount of time I designed for it to take. Nothing in the midterm surprised them, but it challenged them enough, and made them work for their mark. And so I'm pleased with the quality of the midterm. I know how I'd change it in the future, but I'm happy with how it turned out this time.

And then I spent the weekend giving myself a crash course in Japanese history, while reading a major book or two and one giant historiographical essay, and today was able to turn that around into a coherent lecture that the students understood. I was able to handle any questions they asked, and tie it to stuff that they've learned on other days. I sounded like an expert in the room and wasn't too self-deprecating. Most importantly, I managed to teach much more than was in the textbook, and reflect on some of the claims that the textbook author made. This is something that I felt like was lacking in my lectures that were about areas outside of my comfort zone.

So, I guess I'm gaining confidence, and am becoming more competent as a result of it. Maybe I'll survive the month after all.

Things are looking up

2011-06-11T18:51:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, I didn't know how I was going to make it through June. I was having trouble keeping up with writing lectures, and feeling like I didn't know enough about WWII, and then in the midst of all my stress I got a computer virus and ended up wiping my hard drive.* And then ended up having more problems with re-installing everything, and making silly mistakes, and ended up wiping the hard drive about four different times until I got it right. Because, you know, in a week where you're hardly getting enough sleep and are buried under a pile of work, you have time to wipe your hard drive and re-install Windows and all your programs and drivers four times.

Earlier this week, I also felt like I was The Worst Teacher In Existence. I worried that I wasn't understanding the content well enough and that my students were not learning what they needed to learn, and maybe were regretting taking a class from a new instructor.

And then things started to change. By the end of the week, I had a couple of really good classes, and worked to make sure that I went back and reviewed the important stuff so that they understood. And I started finding little ways to get through to them; having a couple of discussion classes helped so that we could all get comfortable with each other.

It's nice having 35 students, and seeing them every weekday. I'm gradually getting to know each student, and each student's particular learning needs and styles. I'm learning how to communicate differently with the science majors and the English majors, and how to get each of them to understand how a historian researches and learns.

And now? I love my students. They're all so eager to understand everything and to do well. They approach me before class, because they found a neat source and wanted to show me how cool it is. They send me emails about colorized footage that they found on Youtube. They humour me when I make them watch clips of Casablanca at the beginning of their discussion class, and laugh at the right parts.

I felt so proud when I saw the student that told me she was too shy to speak up in discussion class make a real effort and take charge of her discussion group. I get excited when I watch them all become friends, and watch as a class dynamic develops.

At this rate, I think I'm really going to miss them after the course is over.

* By the way, thanks to Laptopocalypse 2011, I finally ditched McAfee, which was useless and then so very user-non-friendly after I wiped my hard drive. I read a million reviews and have now switched to ESET, and I love it so much that I want to write about it in all-caps and many exclamation points all the time. Half the price of McAfee! And apparently it's amazingly effective! And it runs so quietly in the background! Why the heck did I stay with McAfee for all those years? Seriously, after the week I had, if I could hug a security suite, I would hug ESET.

Telegrams from Teaching Land

2011-06-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

I am very tired. Today I taught my third day (and sixth hour) of the 3-week WWII course, and each day it gets a little better. I'm getting more comfortable in my role as The Instructor, especially as I get to know the students. It's weird: I've done all the specific jobs that an instructor does (lecture, mark, design courses, facilitate seminars), but never all at once, and never as The Person Who Is In Charge And Has To Make Decisions. It's a little scary, especially since I've never had to lecture outside of my area of expertise before, and I need act a little less frightened when I'm borderline-faking expertise. (Why hello there, Second Sino-Japanese War and the entirety of China's history. I only dealt with you briefly in a single Japanese History survey course ten years ago.)

I like my group of students more and more every day. It's a big group for a June course, with the whole range from fourth-year History majors to first-year non-majors, from pretty much every single program at the university. That's been one of my big challenges: finding a way to make it accessible for the beginners (especially since this is an entry-level course), while accommodating for the fact that some of the fourth-years know more about specific topics than I do. (They intimidated me for the first couple of days.) That's getting better: on the one hand, I'm learning how to explain things better for the beginners, to time for them to take notes, and to anticipate their questions. On the other hand, I took twenty minutes this morning and made the class debate some difficult questions, which allowed the fourth years a chance to shine.

So, I'm surviving. Each day is a little easier, and maybe at some point I'll get a little faster at preparing the lectures, and get a little more sleep at night. But for now, if you're looking for me, I'll be napping under my desk, holding the textbook open at the description of Operation Barbarossa.

Tales out of school

2011-05-19T21:51:00.000-07:00

jo(e) asked about how the day at Chris's school went, and I thought that ought to be a stand-alone post.

Short answer: the day went really well, and it was exactly what I needed.

Long answer:

So, on Monday Chris took me with him to his school, where I was the "guest expert" in the Socials 11 and Film and Video 12 classes, which are back-to-back morning classes with roughly the same group of students. In Social, I gave the kids a talk about primary sources, about the variety of sources and the various ways that historians use them. At the last minute, the teacher asked if I could also talk with the kids about how Hitler came to power, and about how he managed to take as much power as he did, and I could easily do that (especially since I already had planned on addressing that in the Film and Video class). In the second class, I went and gave the kids a talk about the context of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, getting them to think about documentary and propaganda, and then watched and discussed the last ten minutes of the film.

The kids were fantastic. They were so excited that I was coming to talk with them, because Chris talks about me uncontrollably. They were also excited because they've been really getting into World War II stuff in class, and have been grappling a lot with hard questions, and with figuring out what historians do, and were excited to talk with a Real! Live! Expert! It was fun for me, because this was exactly the kind of low-pressure situation that I needed, so that I could get comfortable again in the classroom environment. There's one student who recently discovered that she's really interested in history, and it was so rewarding watching her get into all of this stuff, and watching her face as she grasped the more difficult concepts.

Oh man, that primary source was so fun. It really was like "Introduction to Social and Cultural History," as I got them to realise that potential primary source material is all around us. (A quilt or a dish could be a primary source! This was a big deal for them!) It was good for me, in terms of my research, because I brought along a bunch of my own primary sources, and had to explain to them exactly how I could use a fictional source as a historical source. Sometimes it helps me when I have to talk it out like that.

And then I sat down in a little office near the principal's office, and spent the rest of the morning making major decisions about the course I'm teaching in June, and the afternoon making some real progress on my dissertation. So, apparently it helped me to clear out my head and talk with some enthusiastic students for a couple of hours.

*****

In related news, I put together the finishing touches on my syllabus for my June course, and have finalised pretty much all of my plans, and I'm proud of myself. And really excited about teaching this stuff now. (Although I'm a little nervous about teaching about the war in the Pacific, because I really only know Europe and Canada.)

Back to high school

2011-05-15T22:37:00.001-07:00

Very soon (two and a half weeks from now!) I'm going to be teaching a three-week course on World War II. I'm terrified about this because: a.) after all this sickness and travel, I'm getting behind on my writing; b.) the syllabus is due on Thursday, and there is so much that I still haven't done; and c.) it's been two years since I've done any teaching work (and I've never been in charge of my own class all by myself). I know that I'm more than qualified: I did all the comps reading, I've helped to design courses, I've guest-lectured, and I've been a TA more times that I can count. But it's still scary.

Chris knew that I was getting stressed out about all of this, and so he offered me an opportunity to ease back into the classroom environment in a small, pressure-free way: he's bringing me in to his Film & Video 12 class, to talk with the kids about Leni Riefenstahl and The Triumph of the Will. They're going to be finishing watching the film tomorrow, and a required part of the course is to watch the film and learn about the context. And boy, do I know about the film, the filmmaker and the context. (I did a lot of research about Riefenstahl for a course I designed years ago.) So, all I have to do is go into a small class, full of kids that I already know, and talk about a filmmaker, a film, and a historical period that I can't shut up about anyway.

The principal of Chris's school heard that I'm coming to school on Monday, and asked if I could also talk with the Social Studies 11 class about primary sources and about research. He's encouraging me to show the kids some primary sources from my own research, to give them an idea of what a historian does.

You know, I'm actually giddy about tomorrow morning. I'm going to get a chance to get used to talking to a class again, in an situation where I get to have a laid-back conversation about things that really interest me. And then I'm going to get set up in an unused office and get some serious work done on my course and my dissertation. (And, having forced myself to write at Chris's school before, I know that I'll make some good progress tomorrow: talking about history will clear out my head, and then the unfamiliar office will be free of distractions, with only my work to entertain me.)

Now I must sleep. Early morning tomorrow.

And then I got very sick

2011-05-13T15:37:00.001-07:00

Oh hi there. While I haven't posted to this blog since I returned from Hawaii, I also haven't unpacked since then either! My allergies went nuts at the end of the trip, and then as soon as I got home, I pretty much immediately caught the bad cold that Chris had. He was actually sick enough to miss a couple of days of school, and so considering the fact that illnesses that make Chris a little sick make me VERY sick, I should have known that this "cold" would be bad news.

In other words, I went for more than a week having no voice, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've left the house since the beginning of the month.

In better news, I've been able to do AMAZING Carol Channing impressions all week. I've been working on being able to act out this scene from Alice in Wonderland for Ky:

Thankfully, I'm starting to get MUUUUCH BEEEEETTER (seriously, please watch the above video), which is a good thing, because I have a course starting in three weeks (and am still finalizing things like readings and assignments, not to mention the syllabus), and I've been postponing a meeting with my supervisor for a week and a half now, on account of me having no voice.

Of course, all I want to do is watch Star Wars and Youtube videos, but that's just the "I have hardly left the house" talking.

(Hm. I hope this post makes sense. My head is still very foggy. Basic tasks exhaust me.)

Maui Blogging

2011-04-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

You might have noticed that I've been missing for a while. Well, I've been in Hawaii for a week! Another member of my Teen Girl Squad got married. She's moved all the way from Saskatchewan to Maui and has married a local. And so most of the five of us TGS members flew out to Maui and helped with her wedding (member #5 is due to give birth in five days!). I can't begin to describe how beautiful it all was. I spent a week in an unimaginably beautiful place, surrounded by loved ones. The day before the wedding, we all went on a hike to the waterfall where Huey proposed to Shannon; during that hike, everyone proved themselves braver than even they thought themselves. And at the end of it all, we got to witness this:

I'm in the Vancouver airport right now, incoherent and recovering after a not-very-much-sleep-but-a-lot-of-sinus-pressure red eye flight, and even with all the busyness and my allergies going crazy, I'm so thankful that I had this opportunity.

I've been too reliant on Twitter

2011-04-06T17:38:00.000-07:00

I was just trying to type a tweet, which was getting to be too long and I thought "Oh wait, my blog has unlimited characters!" Right. But, because I've spent the day sorting through articles on the history of the German advertising industry, and I'm now mostly brain dead (but also because I'm more used to tweeting than to blogging these days), here are some small bits of ephemera for you:

I put some green apples in a shiny colander, and set them on the dining room table near our big window, because it looked pretty. Today was an actually sunny day and I discovered that my pretty fruit arrangement was not a good idea: Ky (who worked here today) noticed that there was smoking coming from one of the apples! When we checked, it turned out that the bright sun reflected off of the shiny, curved colander, and was starting to burn a hole in one of the apples! Science!
So, we keep buying cheap office supplies at the BC Government Surplus place (and then repeating to ourselves "Maybe these monitors are just cheap because they're replacing them! Maybe this isn't the result of mass lay-offs!"). Chris recently bought himself a second monitor there, so that he can be That Guy With Two Monitors. While he's waiting for a connector that he ordered for the monitor, I stole it and hooked it up to my laptop. Now, with the external monitor, external keyboard, and external mouse, maybe I should admit to myself that I'd rather own a desktop computer.
Also: I think I'm not giving Chris back this monitor. He can buy another one for $40 at the We'll Continue To Pretend We're Not Taking Advantage of Mass Lay-Offs store.
In six days, my sister flies out here for a one-week visit! And then three days after she leaves, I go to Maui for a week! And then it's May, and I have to have so much more writing done, and also I'll only be a month away from the three-week course that I'm teaching. Oh crap.
The above point may clarify why I suddenly feel like I urgently need to get a lot of work done.
But Hawaii and Sister Visits!
My brain is having trouble forming long, analytical thoughts. I feel like my current chapter is only slightly better organized and coherently-thought-out than this blog post. Do you know what would be nice? If my dissertation could just argue "Hey, look at all this neat stuff! Isn't it cool?" and then I just told stories and showed pictures for 250 pages.
But but but! I met with my supervisor on Friday, and boy does it ever feel gratifying to find that your supervisor also thinks that the Treasure Trove of Cool Primary Source Material you found is cool, and also gets distracted coming up with a million different ways to analyse it. I feel less like I've been wasting my time. And I have more ideas about how to bring this all together, so that this chapter is less of a Massive Hodgepodge of Stuff.

So, that's how my brain has been working lately.

Small things, with a slightly melancholy turn in the middle

2011-03-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

1. A friend of mine (who is pregnant, is planning on moving across the continent while her baby is still small, and is trying to downsize her possessions right now) asked me if I wanted to try on some clothes before they were donated to the thrift shop. It turns out that "some clothes" means "a giant bin full of nice clothes, all of which fit me better than my own clothing." I ended up keeping everything, and now it's my old clothes that are going to the thrift shop. I'm so thankful, because I was seriously short on clothes that fit me properly. However, it's a strange feeling to wear all these clothes that I didn't individually pick out and purchase; I distinctly feel like I'm borrowing my sister's entire wardrobe.

2. I took a day off, in celebration of Chris's first day of Spring Break, and we cleaned and organized our bedroom. I ended up sorting through boxes of sentimental trinkets, plus the shoebox full of old letters that I saved from my teen years. It's strange going through things that you once deliberately saved and now don't remember at all.

3. I found a bunch of letters that my Little Grandma sent me through the years. It was so special to find them, because she was a wonderful letter-writer, and wrote to me like I was a grown-up, even when I was only eight. Two of the letters started with the words "I'm writing to tell you how much I love you." That made my eyes fill with tears.

In one letter, she said that, in herself she only saw faults and constant mistakes, and felt like she was getting more irritable as she aged. But then people kept telling her that her little granddaughter was just like her, and since Maryanne was a little ray of sunshine, she must see virtues in herself, too.

I miss her so much.

4. Quiet evening at home, with my until-today-lost Joni Mitchell CD playing on the stereo.

5. And my room is clean and dust-free. I'm even breathing more easily in the living room.

Steadily Improving

2011-03-16T13:27:00.000-07:00

I can mostly use my left arm again! Hooray!

I spent several days in Vancouver, and was able to tour around with my brother for hours with little to no pain. It was really exciting when I realised that I went for a couple of hours without thinking about my shoulder and neck at all, after nearly two weeks of constant pain. It was nice to be at a place where walking made me feel better (for the first while, any amount of walking meant that I needed to lay down for a few hours).

I'm so glad. I'd planned this trip to Vancouver with my brother a long time ago, and I was worried that my injury was going to make the trip difficult or impossible. But then I was fine, and we had a lot of fun. We took every form of transit available (including the Sea Bus), and talked cities and urban planning. The only time I had any trouble was when the bus driver in North Vancouver was driving like a maniac, and when I tried to stand up, he suddenly stopped and I fell onto an elderly woman. (Classic me.) But I was fine again after a couple of minutes.

By the end of the weekend, I was able to start reading again without neck pain. All I need to do now is be able to type for extended amounts of time, and I'll really be back to normal (I keep having to take breaks from writing this blog post, because my arm starts getting sore again). But I'm improving (and I just found out that insurance will cover all my chiropractor visits!).

Of course, it's a little scary getting back to work, after a couple of weeks of being physically unable to get anything done. Anxiety about the time I've lost makes it hard to face my work again. But at least I can work again.

Our House Hippo Has a New Hideout

2011-03-02T18:52:00.000-08:00

For those out there that didn't grow up with Amazing Canadian Commercials, here's a YouTube video that will fill you in.

In unrelated news, my chiropractor and painkillers are helping a lot. (And apparently I have mild whiplash? So, that's making my life interesting.)

I am fragile like a teacup

2011-03-02T13:03:00.000-08:00

On Friday, I was in the minor-est of minor car accidents. My friend Life of Turner was driving me to his house, where his wife was cooking supper for Chris and me, when his car got rear-ended at an intersection by a guy who was driving too fast to handle stopping on ice.

LoT's car was only scratched (the other car was a little more damaged), but the jolt of the crash was enough to injure the left half of my back, and particularly my shoulder. Because I am a fragile little teacup. I noticed the pain on Friday (until ibuprofen and multiple episodes of Hoarders made it go away), but then I was pretty much okay until Monday. On Tuesday I had my chiropractor examine my back for the insurance claim, and he told me that it wasn't my imagination that only my left half of my body was sore; in fact, the entire left half of my back had gone all puffy. But especially my shoulder! And it needs a lot of work! He also told me that several days after the accident were the most painful, and here I am now: regretting my choice to attempt to blog, because typing hurts my left arm and now I'm trying one-handed typing with limited success, and am unable to hold up my cereal bowl.

But! It's not as bad as it could be. I know someone who has experienced much worse neck and shoulder pain every day for the past several years, while I'm just looking at needing to go to the chiropractor a few more times than usual. And, even though I've found that it's really difficult to read and type today, it'll be better soon, and I can do walking-and-active-type activities with relatively little pain. So: how about I gradually clean the living room? Also, while I started coming down with a bad cold roughly at the same time I hurt my shoulder,* the combination of lots of vitamins and Cold-FX, a powerful dose of cold medicine, a lot of sleep, and my allergy shot seem to have knocked that cold out of my system. So, that's a big improvement.

So now, I'll regret attempting to type this, because that was seriously a bad decision regarding my shoulder, and I'll lay down on the couch and watch terrible TV for a while. But now you know what's going on with me!

* That was the worst: my cold made me have trouble keeping warm, but my shoulder necessitated a lot of holding ice against my body, and I ended up having to stop trying to ice my shoulder because I was shivering so violently.

I was proud of myself and had to share

2011-02-28T12:28:00.001-08:00

I've been doing more cleaning (thanks, Hoarders!). Yesterday, I reorganized the kitchen cupboards so that they don't annoy me anymore. Also, now there's room so that, should I magically obtain more cookware, I have room for more cookware.

And then this morning, I was looking at our built-in shelving, dissatisfied with how I'd organized it this weekend. Yes, it was much better than before. (I wish I had a picture of how messy it was before. There were stacks of VHS and cassette tapes, and cords everywhere. It was so messy that, when I started excavating the whole thing, I discovered the fondue pot that I lost. How do you lose a fondue pot in such a small space?) But I didn't like how the basket was sitting on top of my record collection, and I also didn't like how close the two baskets were, because then you could tell that they were different colours. And that hurt my brain. (And yes, that shelve really is devoted to Old Media, especially now that the cords have been relegated to The Basket Under the TV, Near the Router.)

So, after sitting under my SAD lamp this morning, I did this:

It looks better, right? I know it doesn't look like I did much, but I got rid of a bunch of records, so that the basket would fit beside my record collection. I also reorganized my collection so that I can find things again. Now, the records to the left of the big Sloan boxed set are from the 1960s and 70s (arranged by artist and somewhat by year and genre), and the records to the right are soundtracks (except for The Graduate soundtrack, which belongs with my Simon & Garfunkel records), classical, kids' music and Christmas music.

Now I need to write some dissertation, and limit the housecleaning to actually washing the dishes. Because the dishes are gross. Because I'd rather organize records than wash dishes.

I think this post will only really be of interest to my mother, but that's okay.

What happened after I watched a few episodes of Hoarders yesterday

2011-02-26T18:19:00.001-08:00

I now have an empty cupboard where all the tea used to be. Also, since that tea basket is full, I can't buy any more tea without getting rid of some first.

Chris has set our DVR to record every episode of Hoarders possible now.

(Also, I called my mom to thank her for not being like the moms I saw on the show. And asked my sister to hug Mom for me.)

Christopher is excited like a puppy

2011-02-23T07:33:00.001-08:00

Chris is excited because it looks like the rest of Canada outside now. Also: snow day!

Desperate Measures

2011-02-22T16:12:00.001-08:00

The day started off looking beautiful. The sun was shining and I thought "I'll definitely be able to get a lot of work done today!" I had a good start to my day. And then the sun went away and it started to snow. I started to droop. And so I decided to make it springtime inside this apartment, even if it's winter-ish outside.

Thankfully, Chris had brought home a bouquet of flowers a couple of days ago (he does that periodically when the sun hasn't been shining, because he's a wonderful Christopher who likes to find ways to cheer me up). I decided to take a break and arrange the flowers. I took one of our antique mason jars and cut the flowers way down to fit:

And then I drank my tea out of my pink teacup.

And now that I've used my SAD lamp for an extra five minutes, I can even enjoy the fact that it's snowing instead of whining about how dark it is outside. Maybe I'll even get a little more work done this afternoon.

Negligent Me

2011-02-20T23:00:00.001-08:00

Or "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Dijon Mustard."

I'm terrified by how quickly February's disappearing. This past month of non-blogging has been surprisingly busy with three things: 1.) writing my dissertation (and then realising that I need to look up something, and then realising that it's been too long since I last checked the journals for anything new, and discovering that my field has shifted...); 2.) preparing to teach my first course that's all my own (and oh my goodness, I'm supposed to finalise my textbook choice tomorrow); 3.) cooking a lot.

And so I'm going to talk about cooking, because it's been a really pleasant distraction between my angst about whether I need to assign a sourcebook (and whether the textbook I love is too expensive to allow for assigning as sourcebook), and angst about the fact that a historian recently referred to the study of the Neue Frau as "overdone," just as I'm making major findings about the Neue Frau.

But but but! In the midst of that, I've been reveling in French cookery. It started with a fascination with Laura Calder's Food Network show French Food at Home. And then I read Julia Child's My Life in France. And then I started to DVR FFaH. And then I bought Laura Calder's recent cookbook French Style. Since then, I've gone a little crazy in the kitchen. Like, buying-lots-of-fennel crazy. And making-crème-caramel-twice-in-one-week crazy. Basing-entire-meals-around-dijon-mustard crazy. (And I didn't even like mustard before.)

Speaking of crème caramel: it has seriously become an obsession of mine. I used to be a little intimidated by it, because I'm a little scared of anything that needs to keep its shape when you unmould it. But it involves two of my most favourite things to make: caramel and custard. Anything that involves a water bath? I'm there. Also, being encouraged to push caramel to be as dark as possible, but without burning it? Bring it on. In a consequence-free world, I would make caramel sauce every day for the next year.

I made my first crème caramels for Valentine's Day, and because I adapted the recipe a little too much, I ended up overcooking them a little, but they were still pretty:

I made a big cake-sized one on Friday for a potluck, and even though the whole thing broke apart because it jiggled too much in the car, it was amazing! And it worked! I keep raving to people about how the whole process seems like magic to me: you let caramel harden in the bottom of the pan, and then you pour custard over top of it. Then, as the custard cooks and sets, the custard melts the caramel! And then you flip it upside down on a plate, and the caramel sauce runs all over this jiggly yellow cake, and you feel like you just performed a magic trick using just eggs, milk and sugar (well, along with vanilla and sometimes orange zest). (And by "you" I mean "I.") Also, if you put a pan of caramel in a water bath without the custard, it doesn't melt, because it's actually the custard itself that liquifies the caramel and not just the heat. Science!

So, yeah. I've been seriously geeking out in the kitchen lately. Now, I just need to bring this sense of nerdy wonder back into my academic self. Because the angst thing is quickly growing old.

Even though it feels cheesy

2011-01-10T16:56:00.001-08:00

A few months ago, my counselor gave me an assignment. I'd just told her about how I keep having to remind myself that my dissertation and my PhD are the beginning and not the end of my career: this isn't the end result of a life's work, but a first effort that just needs to be finished. It doesn't have to be ground-breaking; it just has to be completed.

So, after I said something along the lines of "I really should post that message on my wall above my desk, because I keep forgetting," my counselor suggested that I do just that. She gave me an assignment: write down some affirmations and reminders and post them where I can see them when I work.

I got excited about doing that until I got home and started worrying that it seemed cheesy to do that. My desk faces a big poster! Where am I supposed to put a bunch of affirmations? Won't that seem especially cheesy to any houseguests who stay in our office?

And so I procrastinated from doing that. And procrastinated from booking my next counseling appointment. I got a lot of work done during that time, but after I finished my last of my research, I found myself stuck. And procrastinating a lot.

And so here I am in January, trying to get myself back on track, and trying not to feel guilty about how unproductive December was. I've done a bit of writing in this current chapter, but it's hard getting past all the negative self-talk. I think that the fact that I was also procrastinating from a task that I knew I ought to do didn't help. And then this morning, as I was trying to figure out how to organize my bedroom, I noticed that I have this little photo holder stand that was taking up too much room on my dresser. The pictures in the stand were several years old, and while I was trying to figure out what to do with it, I realised that this could be a good place to put my little affirmations, instead of finding places on my wall.

I've written up four so far. For a while, I wasn't even sure what to write (other than the first statement I'd made to my counselor), and so I went through my blog for some inspiration. This post from mid-2007 gave me a lot of ideas.

So far, this is what I have:
- I love my research
- My dissertation just needs to be finished, not perfect or ground-breaking. I am capable of doing this.
- I am going to finish.
- I can't measure my self-worth by external validation.

So. I'm allowing myself to be a little bit cheesy, with the hope that this will help. Because I really want to get this writing finished.

We're going to Hawaii!

2011-01-07T22:51:00.000-08:00

So, happy new year and all that, hey?

Today, Ky and I booked plane tickets for a trip to Maui in April. This isn't the usual kind of trip that you'd expect the two of us to take, but our dear Shannon is getting married, and so we're going to spend almost a week there at the end of April. (I'm going without Chris, because he's teaching, and because we can only afford to send one of us.)

Ky and I decided that we should fly out at the same time, and so we booked our tickets together. Possessing plane tickets has made it all seem more real. This means that we've now spent our day calling each other, alternating between reeling from sticker shock, and marveling at the fact that we are really going to Hawaii.

Okay, I've also been making hypothetical vacation plans entirely based on TV shows that had special Hawaiian episodes in the 80s and early 90s. I've decided that Ky's going to briefly fall in love with a surfer, while I'm going to try to save an old hotel (owned by a never-before-mentioned long-lost relative) from evil developers. It's a good thing that the Cunninghams only went to California, because neither of us will be jumping a shark while we're there.

What other wacky adventures do you think we'll have? (Don't worry: we've already decided that we'll do at least the clap/jazz hands from the Very Brady Sequel when we're in the plane, if not the entire "Good Time Music" dance sequence.)

All is calm, all is bright

2010-12-24T23:46:00.000-08:00

It's been a long and busy day, and our house wasn't always so peaceful as it is now.

It was a busy day of errands, shopping, sharing in my family's Christmas celebration via Skype, cooking and preparing for house guests. And then it was mayhem for a while after they arrived, because Andrew and Uncle Chris were so thrilled to be together again. But then we ate rice porridge (I got the almond!) and cheese ball, lit candles, drank hot chocolate,* read the first part of the Christmas story by the light of the tree and the candles, and now Andrew's asleep (and eagerly awaiting Santa) and Meg and Karl are at midnight mass.

Merry Christmas, you guys.

* Really really real hot chocolate, with just melted chocolate, milk and whipping cream. And flavoured with cinnamon and cloves.

Back from Salt Spring

2010-12-22T22:18:00.000-08:00

Leaving town and doing something really relaxing for a few days, right before Christmas? Best idea we've had in ages. And the resort was just what we needed: we had a cabin all our own, with an ocean view, a wood stove, and a barbecue. Firewood was free, as were the bikes and the rowboat, but there was purposely no TV and no phone in the cabins (although you could rent a TV). Perfect. I got spa treatments, soaked in mineral water, and watched the fire.

Chris had a good birthday. He got a Lego game from my siblings (Creationary, the Lego version of Pictionary), and he spent most of his birthday building Lego. (Well, and we went to a restaurant for its Global Curry Night, which made it a red-letter day for Chris.)

On our last night there, Chris decided that it would be really pretty to have a big, roaring fire. Of course, that made the cabin way too hot for Chris to handle. I think I'll keep him.

To the Silliest 30-Year-Old Possible

2010-12-21T01:00:00.014-08:00

My favourite buddy is thirty today, meaning that he can no longer brag that he's in his twenties, while his wife's in her thirties. He decided that he wanted to go away with me for his birthday, and so I posted this ahead of time.

Happy birthday, sweetie! (Even though he probably won't see this until we're home again.)

Thinking like an alchemist by the Christmas tree

2010-12-19T20:11:00.000-08:00

Christopher's on his winter break now, which is the best ever. He's been so excited about having a chance to stop and rest, and so we decided to do as little as possible on Saturday, his first day of the break. Chris downloaded a game for his phone called Alchemy, which has you start with the four elements, and then build up to making things like atom bombs, animals and robots. It's turned out that I'm really good at this game, because I can think using medieval logic (or at least in metaphors), instead of actual scientific knowledge (which is, of course, what Chris has). I helped Chris to figure out that active robot+plutonium=atom bomb, and mammal+honey=bear.

We're mostly sticking around here for Christmas again. At least, we're not going back to Saskatchewan. (Flying is so expensive at Christmas.) Yesterday, we did a little bit of Christmas shopping (for the people we'll see around here), and we realised that, other than the fact that we miss our families and the snow, we're glad that we're here for Christmas. We're taking a relaxed pace over the holidays, and will get a lot of down time after a few hectic months. We're going to a nearby gulf island to spend a few days at a spa resort, around Chris's birthday. I hear that the resort doesn't get a lot of cell phone coverage, and there's only wifi in the building that has the front desk, and we're really cool with that: we're going to be forced to unplug for a few days. Our plans involve hiking and going to a carol-singing night with locals and aging folk rock stars (this is a peculiar island, where a lot of famous people from the 1960s seem to retire). And we're really hoping for some clear weather, because Chris's birthday begins with a lunar eclipse, and we're taking a telescope.

I'm so glad that we're going away for a few days before Christmas. It forces me not to over-prepare for our house guests (and also forces us to relax before our house is taken over by a visiting toddler!). It forced us to take care of Christmas presents early, and not to overdo the baking.

And so now I have a quiet evening of housecleaning and the Community episode "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas". (Again.)

Three-Oh

2010-12-08T17:47:00.000-08:00

Hey look! I'm in my thirties now. And I feel exactly the same (of course). Of course, I spent my first day of my thirties consuming too much sugar and going to a Disney cartoon, and so one might think I turned six instead.

I went to see Tangled with Ky. I decided to dress up and wear my Christmas Outfit, because I was all "HOORAY SPECIAL OCCASION AND I HAD TOO MUCH SUGAR ZOOOOOOM!!1!" Meanwhile, Ky is sick today, and also who dresses up to go to a Wednesday matinee? So, we took a self-portrait entitled "Rich Lady Takes a Homeless Person to the Movies."

Aren't we lovely?

I think this was my best birthday yet. I even got a present in the mail that I could open on my birthday (from my brother and sister), and my landlords gave me a box of cupcakes from the lovely shop near the beach. And now I don't have to cook supper and Chris and I are going to watch an episode of Community while we eat, and so I don't know what more I could ask of my birthday.

(Chris is very excited, because for the next thirteen days Chris gets to say "I'm only in my twenties and my wife is in her THIRTIES! I married an older woman!" He enjoys things like that. So, we're both happy today.)

My last few hours as a twenty-something

2010-12-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

Today I joked on Twitter that I would spend the last day of my twenties doing everything on Ted Mosby's Murtaugh List (from How I Met Your Mother), before I'm thirty and therefore too old to do any of that "stuff." And, as predicted, the closest I've come to any of that is sleeping on a futon.

But honestly, I've spent the last day of my twenties in the same way I spent most of the rest of the decade: quietly. I went to appointments, fussed over my dissertation chapter, spent too much time procrastinating on the internet, listened to melancholy Christmas music, and talked with my mother. I had to use my SAD lamp a little more than usual, and drank an entire pot of tea, because it was a little darker outside than usual. I got a little creative with supper.

I feel like my life is on the brink again: I am looking forward to the end of my years as a student (finally). I'm looking forward to my thirties. I'm looking forward to beginning sessional teaching. I'm looking forward to getting on to the rest of my life as a grown-up. And, even as my daily life seems to look the same as it has for years, I'm starting to make small, superficial changes. I became brave enough to chop my hair off, and found it to be good. Last week, I went out and bought some nice clothes that fit my no-longer-twenty-five-years-old body, including a new little black dress. (I got good wear out of that old one.) This new dress really shows how much more comfortable in my body I am than I was ten years ago: it is figure-flattering. Perhaps even figure-hugging. Like, I have to shimmy and wiggle in order to get into the dress. Actually, I pretty much have to roll the dress onto me like pantyhose. And it looks fantastic.

I like coming to a place where I'm getting a little more happy with myself.

What?! December?!

2010-12-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I looked at a calendar and realised that I ONLY HAD A WEEK LEFT OF MY TWENTIES. And now there are only six days left, and then I'm thirty.

What happened to November? Actually, that's freaking me out more than turning thirty. Thirty's not that old, and I think I'll like my thirties. But two whole weeks of November disappeared before I noticed! What?!

I just went through my Twitter feed, trying to figure out what I was up to during the past two weeks (it seriously feels like it should be at most November 20th here), and here's what I found:
1.) It snowed here! And the snow stayed for a couple of days! And it pretty much shut down the city for the first day, even though we only got like an inch and a half of snow at my house. And that's why Victoria is the Funniest Place on Earth to me.

2.) I completely finished reading that microfilm, and gave it back to Inter-Library Loans. Now I'm just translating the pertinent parts and piecing together my next chapter.

3.) Chris built a Van de Graaff generator in our living room.

4.) (This is more of something that's happened over the whole month) We discovered that we can play Clue over Skype with friends far away. As in the old-timey board game Clue. It was my friend Shannon's idea, while she was visiting at the beginning of the month, as a way for us to get to know her fiance who lives in Hawaii. We then also played it with friends in Regina. (It helps to have a good internet connection and a game board on both sides.)

5.) Chris and I booked a trip to a spa resort on a nearby island, as our thirtieth birthday/Christmas presents to each other. We'll be there on Chris's birthday. If you'd asked twenty-year-old me how I imagined celebrating my thirtieth birthday, I don't think I would have said "I'll go to a spa." But I'm happy with this plan, especially because neither of us has ever traveled to this island before.

6.) We just had a hectic weekend, during which not only did our favourite football team lose the Grey Cup again, but we also got bad news about several different friends and family friends (and then Janice spent Tuesday in the emergency room thanks to an allergic reaction), and so I spent a couple of days too emotionally tired and stressed out to blog.

I guess that's where those two weeks went. And now I have six days left until I turn thirty, and I think I'll spend those six days as quietly as possible (except for all the Christmas parties between now and then, and all the associated cooking).

And now I got a reasonable reply

2010-11-16T10:08:00.000-08:00

Well, good. I got a reasonable response from the university's help desk, saying that I can stop by and export all the stuff that I lost in their migration to the new system. Also, it turns out that I'm eligible for Microsoft Exchange (which is the system they're using for staff and faculty) and can migrate over to that. I wish that we'd been better informed about this switch-over: the information I found made it sound like I would only get access to Exchange during semesters when I'm teaching, and the idea of switching back and forth is just annoying.

The help desk guy also asked me for specific feedback regarding my problems with the school's webmail system, and I gave him a list. And now, for the first time, I have my university email set up with Windows Mail (because I have my personal email set up with Thunderbird, and it's annoying to switch back and forth between two accounts that you want to keep separate), and so the problems that I have with webmail will only be annoying when I am away from my computer.

I am not in Hulk Smash mode now. That is good.

Guess who sent an angry email today?

2010-11-15T17:49:00.000-08:00

Up until last week, all of the students (and staff and faculty) services were run through a portal called uSource. I loved uSource: it had a portal-based email system that I used heavily, and it had a calendar program which, until I got an Android phone in September, was my only way of keeping organised (especially because it was tied to my email, and sent me reminders about my appointments).

Mid-way through last week, I noticed that uSource was down, and there was an announcement that said that they were upgrading to a new "more modern portal." I didn't think too much about it, and used the university's emergency back-up webmail system (which they launched and hadn't updated since 2005) in the meanwhile.

So. Today, Ky phoned me and said "The new system is up! And they're making us all use webmail now!" I went and checked, and she was right: somehow, now the only portal-based email and calendar system is for faculty and staff, and students use the old back-up emergency webmail as their only option now. I went through the FAQ section and discovered that the university had decided to decommission the calendar system for students. And apparently the changes were as requested by us?

Now, I understand that maybe I was the only one who kept my appointments in the calendar system. And maybe I'm the only person who didn't know that I was supposed to export my address book to Outlook (a program which I don't own) before November 10th. But I've now lost my address book, because webmail didn't save anything you did in uSource. (Also: UVic's webmail is awful, and looked pretty rudimentary back in 2005. Hello, plain text emails from now on!)

Here's my problem (other than the lost email addresses and appointments, about which I've already sent a panicked email to the Help Desk): they've completely separated the tools for students from the tools for faculty and staff, ignoring the fact that grad students occupy a blurry in-between space. I am sometimes an employee, but I am not one this semester. When I teach during the summer session, apparently I'll suddenly have access to tools (including an email system and calendar) that will suddenly go away if I don't teach in the fall? Why would I use them, if I don't have the assurance that they're all going to disappear? They've restructured the whole system for students with the assumption that all students are undergrads, and that no students are sometimes (but not always) staff.

Grrr. I'm still in Hulk Smash mode.

Adventures in Microfilm-Reading

2010-11-13T21:41:00.000-08:00

I've been working my way through a newspaper whose title translates to the "Berlin Local Advertiser." During my time period, it was run by a far-right-wing wealthy industrialist who ended up throwing his support behind Hitler, and under his direction the newspaper was a mix of mundane local news and international news, a giant classifieds section, and Crazy Right-Wing Spin (Blame Everything On Communists variety). I've been reading it as a counterpoint to the liberal paper that I researched last year.

Reading this paper has been fascinating (especially because of its conflicted portrayal of Berlin women), but it got mysterious as I got near the end of the microfilm. I was looking forward to looking through the July 1932 newspapers, to compare its portrayal of the July 31st election with the Berliner Tageblatt's. However, I discovered that the June and July 1932 papers are missing from the microfilm. It's not that there's a roll missing: a single roll of microfilm skips straight from May 31st to August 1st. I looked through my box of microfilm a little more and discovered that a couple more months were missing: January 1933 (the month that Hitler was appointed as chancellor) and June 1933 (the month when Hitler disavowed Hugenberg, the industrialist who ran this paper, and Hugenberg resigned from his cabinet post). It's always full months that are missing.

This is simultaneously frustrating and fascinating. Were these papers lost, damaged or destroyed? Do hard copies of them exist anymore? (I do know that most libraries in Germany have just identical sets of microfilm to this one.) If they were destroyed, did it happen when the Nazis bought out Hugenberg's publishing empire, or after the war? Or is it just a coincidence that the months that are missing were really historically important ones? Is this just limited to the microfilm and are there hard copies out there in some archive?

****

In other related news, I may or may not have caused the breakdown of an expensive machine this week.

So, you know how I said a couple of weeks ago that the microfilm scanner had developed a quirk? Well, it broke down entirely on Friday, while I have only three rolls left to read. It no longer advances at all, and the IT guy and I suspect that one of its motors burned out. The fact that the scanner broke down after I'd been using it constantly for four hours makes me worry a little. Also, the possibility that I might have to use the 20-cents-per-copy old-timey scanner for the last three rolls worries me a little more.

But the library's bringing in a technician to fix the digital scanner, and I may have convinced them to temporarily replace it with the still-functioning scanner that they currently have in storage. I'll see what's happened when I go to school on Monday.

That (and the recent parade of visiting friends) has been keeping my hands full lately.

Update in Photo Form

2010-11-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

On the weekend, we went to Vancouver to visit Meg and Karl. And their hilarious wee one, who is no longer so wee:

He and Chris spent a lot of time staring at games on hand-held devices. I keep forgetting that the kid is only two and can't read, because he handles cellphones like a pro.

Sometimes, we got them away from the cellphones and carved some pumpkins.

And then Chris and I went to a football game. The weather was beautiful and the fans were great,* but the game itself was miserable. And we rode the ferry back surrounded by other Roughrider fans. It was like being in Saskatchewan for a while.

And then today I got my hair cut even shorter.

* The guys who had the tickets for the seats right beside Chris were odd, however. Dudes with emo bangs and skinny jeans, who showed up really late, took a picture of themselves, and then left after half an hour. Chris's theory is that they needed an alibi. At least it meant that we could spread out and have more room after they left, and so I'm cool with that.

Bleary eyes

2010-10-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

Hi. I'm still around, even though I seem to disappear for long stretches of time. I've become a microfilm-reading machine, ever since I lost two weeks' worth of productivity to The Cold That Ate Vancouver Island. I managed to read three rolls of microfilmed newspaper today, all of which was in old-timey-font German. Well, I read all but the last couple of days on each roll, because the microfilm scanner decided to develop a quirk today, and fast-forward whenever it gets near the end of the roll (and that can't be an intended feature, because it needs to be rewinding). (And it's never done that before today.) By the end, it was getting bad, and so I decided that both microfilm-reading machines (the scanner and I) needed to stop for the day.

But, on the other hand, today I discovered that the grad restaurant on campus is now selling pulled pork tacos, which is the BEST NEWS OF MY LIFE. So, that makes up for the semi-broken scanner.

And now I'm going to shut off my computer and enjoy my quiet living room for a while. (Did I mention that the microfilm scanner is behind the reference desk in the library?)

Let me tell you about my Kindle

2010-10-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

I've had my Kindle for a few weeks now, and I can't stop talking about it. Seriously: Amazon should pay me a commission, because I know multiple people who have decided to get their own after using mine.

It's a big deal to me because I keep most of my research on my computer. There are an awful lot of scanned images from microfilm, and I've done a lot of transcribing. This is nice for making myself portable, but annoying when I'm trying to write, because I keep having to flip back and forth between windows, which is particularly annoying when I'm trying to transcribe a quotation from a .jpg file.

I've found that my laptop is not enough, on its own. I need my little (paper) notebook for brainstorming; sometimes it's easier to get my thoughts out with a pen on paper. And this new little guy helps too:

I'd originally said that I didn't want to get a Kindle until they put out one that used Wi-fi, had a web browser, read pdfs well, and was much cheaper. When I saw that the new one came out and fit that entire description, I put in an order, and it's seriously my favourite. I can rotate the screen and zoom in on my pdfs of my crazy newspaper articles, and it's made translating so much easier:

I'd read some disparaging/mildly amused reviews of the experimental web browser, but it does exactly what I need it to do: it makes web-only ebooks bearable. You know how Leslie M-B recommended The Body Electric a few posts ago? It turned out that our library only had access to the online version, but it was okay, because I could read it on my Kindle using Wi-Fi. You have no idea how many books I've been putting off reading because it's annoying and eye-straining to read books on my computer screen. The browser even has an option called "Article Mode", which picks out the pertinent content of an online article or book, and then reformats it to being text-only, and thus easier to read on the greyscale Kindle (I confess that there are a couple of annoyingly-formatted blogs that I read in Article Mode now).

Between all of that and the entire month of battery* in this thing, and it was seriously made for a grad student. And it's made my bag lighter, because it's also replaced my purse German-English dictionary and Bible. Best thing ever.**

* Three weeks with the wi-fi switched on. And I found the one way to run down the battery a little more quickly: I read an entire book on the web browser. But I still got more than two weeks' worth of battery out of the thing. And I charged it a week ago and is still running on nearly a full battery. Amazing!

** I received neither money nor free stuff from Amazon. In fact, I've paid them way too much money at this point. I just love my new toy and wanted to tell you all how it's working out. On that note, if anyone else out there is has any kind of smartphone (or iPod touch), I'm also excited about the Our Groceries app. I can add items to our grocery list from home and it updates on Chris's phone while he's at the store! Best ever!

Help me ignore my head cold

2010-10-13T22:05:00.000-07:00

It was probably inevitable, after being surrounded by sick people and then after hardly sleeping on the weekend. Today I realised that it wasn't that I was still tired from all the traveling and the cooking, but that the cold that has been pursuing me for a week has finally caught up. And so I've stayed home tonight, and I'm looking through the pictures from my previous week's adventures.

Last week I went, along with Ky and our friend Kristen, to the island's West Coast to celebrate Ky's thirtieth birthday. It's funny how worried I was about the weather, as the forecast (correctly) predicted rainstorms. In the end, the trip was better because we pushed through and were determined to be adventurous, in spite of (because of?) the rain. We felt more proud of ourselves because we kept going, and the hot tea tasted better, and the warm cabin after our hikes felt like a reward.

And, at the end, we talked most about that walk we took on slippery boardwalks through rainforest in the pouring rain.

It was so rainy that we discovered that our rain gear wasn't so waterproof, and we all resorted to using umbrellas.

But we were so glad that we pushed through and continued, because the rainforest is particularly beautiful when it's raining. I guess we were seeing it in its natural state, right?

(I stole all these pictures from Ky's Flickr account, because I forgot my camera in our cabin that day.)

Obsessive Hair-Blogging Again

2010-09-30T21:38:00.000-07:00

Call it "I'm approaching my thirtieth birthday and needed to do something spontaneous." Call it "I now have gone to the same hairdresser long enough that I trust her to do whatever she thinks looks good." Call it "I've been reading old-timey German on microfilm and was starting to feel haggard."

I got a lot of hair cut off today. A lot. I love it, but am also totally neurotic about it. (This comes as a surprise to no one, correct?)

Here it is:

So short, right? It feels so much better, since it had been an impossible length for a while, and I'd started putting it in strange pigtails while I was working. I was thinking it was a little Dooce.

But then I started watching 30 Rock and it occurred to me: do I have the same haircut as Kenneth Parcell?

Here's the comparison, using a slightly different shot of my haircut (brushed to the side differently):

Right? Right?

(Don't worry: I still love my haircut. And at least it isn't the Bieber.)

Patent Medicine

2010-09-23T10:34:00.001-07:00

My latest chapter is based around a book that was written in the early 1930s for "Berlin women" (and those who wished to visit or move to Berlin). This book is the one I was complaining about for a while, because most of the typeface is of the old-timey German sort. Well, one of the most interesting parts of the book, which I ended up spending some time carefully translating,* is the hundred pages of ads in the back

These ads are hilarious, especially after having spent some time listening to Terry O'Reilly and watching Mad Men. There is a three-page ad for gift baskets full of meat. (The gist: now that it's the Great Depression, you can't afford servants anymore! So buy a basket of meat instead.) But my favourites are the patent medicine ads. And by "my favourites" I mean "the ones that terrify me the most."

Medicine ads from the early 1930s are really interesting, because they have awareness of recent scientific discoveries without the full knowledge of side effects. For example, there's an ad offering radiation therapy at health spas (in either drink or bombardment form), as a treatment for rheumatism, sight problems and pain in your legs.

And then there's the medicine that was called "Phagocyte" (as in the white blood cell), which promised to make your blood "acid free." Ky's response: "Great! I always wanted to scrapbook using my blood." Chris's response: "But acid is what makes our blood able to absorb oxygen!" My response: "I really hope that the medicine didn't really contain phagocytes. Actually, I hope that this was a straight-up sham and people were just taking sugar pills."

Now I have to figure out whether to talk about these ads, and how to talk about them without "Maryanne's Present-ist Snarky Voice".

* Now using my new Kindle! Uncle Al is right: I have become Techno Bill. Even right now I'm sitting at my laptop, between my smartphone and my Kindle.

Technology Week (and a half?)

2010-09-20T22:33:00.000-07:00

Since I last posted (more than a week ago?!) I've had even more distractions than before. (Well, and I've also been translating German advertisements that were directed at women, which are simultaneously funny and terrifying, but I'll have to blog about that later.)

So, a few months ago, Chris got a text message from our cellphone company saying that we'd be eligible for upgrades soon, and that we could get free smartphones if we signed up for a data plan. This text message conveniently arrived a few weeks after we finally canceled the data plan we'd gotten so that we didn't have to pay a few hundred dollars when Chris text messaged himself an mp3 of the Saskatchewan Roughrider cheer song. My response was "Well, of course they want us to spend more money again." Chris's response was "I can get a smartphone?"

I was so insistent that I was going to hold on to my "old" (only two years old!) phone, and that when I did upgrade, I was just going to get a regular old phone. But then it turned out that, because my account is the "parent account" for our family plan, the only way Chris could get a smartphone was for me to get a smartphone data plan (and a smartphone) and to share my plan with him. Which meant I had to get a new phone, similar to whatever Chris got. And then it turned out that smartphone data plans are a lot more expensive than regular old phone data plans (like the ones we had before).

I was ready to walk away at that point, but Chris got puppy dog eyes (and his old phone, admittedly, wasn't really working anymore). So I started to negotiate, and got the connection fees waived, and then it turned out that their student plans are really inexpensive, and I happen to be a student. (Why didn't I get a student phone plan before?)

The moral of the story is that I'm now one of Those People, who is always checking the internet on her touch-screen phone. I seriously haven't been parted from it since I got it last Wednesday. (It runs Android!)

And then it got worse today: the phone company came to my house and hooked up our Nice! New! Cable! And Faster Internet! (The phone company finally offers cable here, which is cheaper than our old cable company, and because it runs through the internet the deal we got included faster internet.) As a result of this, I spent a few hours today playing with the new toys that arrived with the cable: a PVR (I put the VCR into storage!) and a new wireless router. (The router might actually be the most exciting part; apparently our old router was what was preventing me from printing over the network all these years!)

And then then I found out that my Kindle arrives on Friday.

Sometimes I forget to post

2010-09-12T21:24:00.000-07:00

A short list of the things distracting me from posting:

1. The fact that there's a Kindle on order for me!
2. Choosing books that I want to get for my future Kindle.
2.a) Phone conversations with my father, as we analyze the Kindle and its new features at length.
3. Finishing that book with the old-timey German printing (and converting -- ahem -- the entire book to pdf before I returned it to ILL).
4. The book that Chris picked up at the bookstore this week. I'm finding that I very much like the books that Chris picks out for me, particularly when they are whimsical, British, and found in the sci-fi section.
5. Getting caught up on Season 4 of Burn Notice. (Thanks to the burned DVD that my sister sent in the mail!)
6. Frustratingly bad football games on TV.
7. Getting our church moved into the nice new place!
8. Somewhat keeping our house in working order, while Chris had his first week of teaching.

Learning to be spontaneous

2010-08-31T22:06:00.001-07:00

This week, we were suddenly given the opportunity to go spend a night at a nice beach resort "up island." We decided on Sunday and left on Monday, making this the single most spontaneous trip I've ever taken. (I think. Except for short trips from Regina to Moose Jaw, but those hardly count.) And by "spontaneous" I mean that, as soon as we'd decided to go, I was doing laundry, packing food, and making lists like a madwoman for the next twenty-four hours until we left.

And with all this preparedness (I marinated steaks overnight, because I found out that our suite had its own patio with a barbecue), I forgot our camera. We were on the most beautiful beach I've ever seen, attempting to get photos using our cellphones. I also forgot to charge my cellphone, but it was kind of nice being away from technology for a while. (Well, there was wireless and so I did end up checking Facebook a couple of times...)

I'm so thankful that we were given this opportunity to go. Chris's first day back at school (just with the other teachers) is tomorrow, and so today was his last day of summer vacation. We've both been working heavily lately, and so I'm glad that we stopped and took a couple of days to relax before it gets busier again. When will we next have the chance to pick up and leave town on a Monday? When will we next leave town?

You know, for all my complaining about how crazy this place is, this island isn't too bad. But now I have to adjust back to a world without perfect beaches, king-sized beds and spas.*

This picture is so us, it's ridiculous. I'm squinting and am probably leaning so much because we'd been walking and I'm out of shape, and Chris is grimacing because he can't figure out whether the camera's taking pictures, because he shut off the shutter sound.

* Man, I wanted to take that bed home with us in the car. It was officially the Best Sleep of My Life and it saddens me a little that I will never sleep that well again. I miss it already.

Oh my Papa

2010-08-30T06:00:00.018-07:00

Today is the birthday of this shady character, who was spotted on Vancouver Island several months ago. I have it on good authority that he wants to spend his birthday practicing with his new RC helicopter and playing with his new iPod. I asked him where he wanted to go for supper for his birthday, and he said that he wanted to stay home and have "more of that pot roast that Janice made," and then "sit in [his] own big chair." That sounds like the right kind of day.

Love you love you, Papa.

Chris love bubbles

2010-08-27T21:59:00.000-07:00

This has been an unusual week. We've both gotten a lot of work done (I on my old-timey German reading, he on his prep), but we've also kept ourselves busy with hobby-like activities. I've been blackberry-picking and fruit-preserving, so much so that I'm covered in cuts and bruises and have a freezer full of peaches and blackberries.

Chris's hobby this week has been a little bit more entertaining for our neighbours:

I'll leave the explanation and videos for Chris at his own blog.

My old arch-nemesis

2010-08-24T14:37:00.001-07:00

So, remember how I loathe old-timey German typeface?* I've mostly managed to avoid having to read it, because by 1929 most Berlin printers had switched to the same fonts as we use. I was very thankful when I discovered that I only had to deal with old-timey German in the occasional Frankfurt newspaper article. I'm cool with that.

And then last week a book arrived via Inter-Library Loans, which I'd ordered two months ago. It's the single most important book for this current chapter, and I was excited that there was a copy available from a North American library (Harvard is the only library that has a copy I can order), because then I don't need to find it in a German archive.

I picked up the book, and it turns out that, even though it was published in Berlin in 1932, it almost exclusively uses Fraktur (aka Old-Timey German font). I'm getting better at reading it (although I have no idea what the handwriting on the front page says), but the only thing that's keeping me from periodically throwing the book across the room is the fact that it's a rare (and antique) book.

You might find, within this post, the cause for procrastination that drove me to spend an hour making pudding on Sunday.

In conclusion: please send magnifying glasses and Advil.

* I am so precise with my terminology.

Advanced Procrastination

2010-08-22T22:10:00.001-07:00

Just for fun, I took this easy and fast pudding recipe,* adapted it to be a recipe for banana pudding with nutmeg, and then took an entire hour to make it, including quite a while of stirring it in an ice bath to set it. All in the quest for the Best Pudding of My Life.

* Note to everyone: for serious. This pudding recipe. It's been posted by our stove for the past few weeks, because I keep making it. It's like a London Fog in pudding form. Trust me: you already have the ingredients in your house. Make it now.

Things are looking up

2010-08-20T18:35:00.000-07:00

1. So, you know how we were looking to find a new home for our church, after we lost our last place? As of next month, we'll be meeting in the multipurpose room of a private school. The place is nicer, better suited to our group (read: wheelchair-accessible), and cheaper. What?! It's fantastic and on the waterfront, and I'm ridiculously excited about this. Seriously, it was the first place I emailed, and I can hardly believe that it worked out so well and quickly.

2. Today, we took our car in to the shop, and it looked like we were probably going to have to replace the alternator on the car. Crazy things were starting to go wrong, and yesterday it was really stressful to drive the car. Instead of one big thing, it turned out to be a few small things (loose belt, blown fuse, and a loose gas cap), which meant that it didn't cost much money to fix, and we already have the car back. I can breathe again.

3. We managed to make a supper tonight that was completely from scratch: grilled leg of lamb (marinated Greek-style), pita bread with baba ghanoush, and a spinach salad with blackberry vinaigrette. Since we were stuck at home without the car today, Chris and I decided to have some fun with cooking, and worked together to make our own pitas. (And now that I know how easy, cheap and healthy it is to make my own salad dressing? Why didn't anyone tell me this before?) I am far too pleased with myself now.

This entire city is nuts

2010-08-12T17:47:00.003-07:00

You know, you go away for a while and you start thinking maybe this city isn't as weird as you've built it up to be.

And then you come home and first discover that your church's landlords are kicking you guys out in favour of another church group that is offering way more money. The crazy thing is that the building you've been renting belongs now to a yoga business, and so, when you're trying to explain the situation to people, you realise that the story boils down to money-minded yogis playing two groups of elderly church ladies off of each other, and that the cast of characters is just so very Victoria. Because do we have any residents other than yoga practitioners and elderly church ladies? I guess we have homeless people as well.*

And then, in the same day, you realise that in the time that you were gone, your neighbours acquired Illegal Chickens. As in: they now own chickens, which violates your municipality's bylaws because their lot is too small, but that's the cause of a big fight right now anyway, because every other municipality in this area allow chickens more freely, a fight that reached the point that people brought chickens to a city council meeting last winter. And so there's a good chance that these are Civil Disobedience Chickens.

Yogis, elderly church ladies and Civil Disobedience Chickens (not to mention rabbits that cause court battles): this is my life in Victoria, and it constantly amuses me.

* On a serious note, our little church is looking for a new home for the first time in 41 years. It's the end of an era. We're racing around trying to find a suitable spot by the end of the month, or else we'll be meeting in members' homes. On the positive side, we're taking this as an opportunity to find a more suitable home for the church, one that is more accessible for our elderly members (where they don't have to navigate steep steps to get to the bathroom), and where Chris and I don't have to clean up gross messes after community dances and battles of the bands.

My Soggy Saturday Morning

2010-08-07T23:31:00.000-07:00

This morning, Chris and I grabbed our umbrellas, drove and picked up Ky, and then headed up the peninsula to a farmers' market. We'd arranged to do this on our trip back here, because we'd neither the time nor the space to stop at fruit stands in the Okanagan (I miss you, many kinds of apricots and cherries that I didn't even know existed before!). The next best thing was to check out the farmers' market, since we'd never been to one on the Island before.

It ended up being the first rainy day in a very long time. We didn't mind so much, since we all had umbrellas. And everyone at the farmers' market was extra chatty, because there were fewer customers because of the rain. (Chris in particular loved this. He went there dressed from head to toe in Saskatchewan Roughrider paraphernalia, including a giant green golf umbrella, and so he got to talk football with CFL fans, and meet a few people from Saskatchewan too.)

A few observations:
1.) There was a live music performance (this part is the same as the one in Regina), which featured women in long skirts, one of whom was playing a tenor recorder (this part is different from the one in Regina). When I saw the tenor recorder, I may have shouted, "Awww, sweet!"
2.) Farmers' markets out here are lacking in Hutterites. I really missed the Hutterite-run booths you get in Saskatchewan farmers' markets. Those ones are my favourites.
3.) It's really hard to balance an umbrella and a bag of produce while fishing money out of your wallet. I am uncoordinated.
4.) This is the same as every farmers' market and fruit stand I visited, but it's really a good thing that I don't bring too much cash to stuff like that. I could spend a lot of money on fresh food.
5.) Tea is the nicest thing in the world after you've been standing in the rain for an hour.

I'm glad we went, and I want to check out some more farmers' markets over the next couple of months. The food we bought completely made my day. We bought cheese curds! Ones that are so fresh that they squeak in your teeth! (And we made poutine for supper!) I'm also excited about the blackberry vinaigrette that I made from the berries Chris bought. (I did question Chris about purchasing berries that can be picked for free in this city's parks. He justified the purchase by saying that they were inexpensive and he didn't feel like going berrying this week.)

(My intention was to take a picture and write a more coherent post about this morning, but my hands were too full with my umbrella to take out my camera, and it's now bedtime and so I'll have to just let this post be choppy and stream-of-consciousness.)

Home. Couch. Bed.

2010-08-02T21:21:00.000-07:00

Traveling Minuses:

The air conditioning just barely works, and the temperatures were high. I was delirious from the heat when we got to Swift Current (only about two hours away from Regina), so much so that I ended up hugging a bag of ice in Safeway.
Driving through road construction in the mountains at night is stressful.
Why do we always travel on the long weekends? Why is the majority of the final day spent in the vicinity of Vancouver?
Half-way through our day today, we blew a fuse on our stereo (while playing the Glee Cast's version of "4 Minutes") and then for the rest of the day had to be a little more creative about entertaining ourselves.
Too little healthy food eaten and too much money spent.

Traveling Pluses:

We got through all 467 songs on my Driving Playlist before the stereo went out, and it was truly Epic.
Because I was in a car with Ky and Chris, it was not hard to entertain ourselves without the car stereo. Seeing as we were already at the punchy stage of the long trip, we ended up pretending to have a brass band while stopped in a traffic jam.
We also sang old-timey songs in rounds.
Bad air conditioning = good excuses to buy Slurpees.
Traffic was better than I've ever seen it on the August Long Weekend. We made the ferry three hours before Chris had predicted we would. We were home before it was dark.
We didn't have to drive straight through this year: in the middle, we got to attend the wedding of a good friend. I got to spend time with my oldest friends, and meet another one of this past year's babies, and it was good.
I did my annual Check For Spiders, Since We've Been Away For A Month, and I haven't found any spiders yet. It worked well to cover all of our drains before we left.

Neither good nor bad, but interesting:

It is disorienting to arrive home after a long trip. Everything looks a little different at first, as you notice things that you usually don't.

Last day

2010-07-30T22:18:00.000-07:00

Our suitcases are all packed. I just finished a list of everything we need to do tomorrow morning. I can't believe that our last full day in Saskatchewan is over now, and it'll probably be another year until we get out here again.

It's a strange place to be, at this point of every summer, when I've had too little sleep, have done too little work, and have not always been the best version of myself because I'm not getting a lot of time to myself. I'm longing for my bed and my own routine, and at the same time it's hard to face the fact that it'll likely be more than eleven months until I'm in this house again.

This was a funny summer, because I really only saw immediate family and a few really close friends, and didn't really venture further than that. There are a few friends whom I didn't even get a chance to contact this time. That's a first for me. This week, I spent a lot of time finding ways to stay home and be with my family. I originally planned to invite people over for a barbecue tonight, but instead Chris and my mom went for a bike ride, while my dad and I watched a football game while I packed. We were all happier that way.

And now I'll stop rambling and go to bed. I'll see you all either in Alberta or BC, folks.

More pictures, because my brain is moving slowly

2010-07-27T18:37:00.001-07:00

I'm staying at my parents' place, and we're doing all those last things before we leave and don't see our family for another year (unless we suddenly become rich people who can afford to fly at Christmas time). This week is/has been full of robots, laser tag, walks around the lake and fulfilling all my promises to cook for people. And some German-reading, which is usually followed by a big nap (why does reading German make me sleepy? Has it become a conditioned response now, or does translation just make me tired?).

We'll be leaving for laser tag in a minute (well, for Chris playing laser tag with our siblings and some church friends, while I read German in the waiting room with Ky, because there's no way you can make me do anything of the laser tag/paintball/water gun fight variety, unless you enjoy watching me have a panic attack). But I thought that, in lieu of actual content other than updates, I'd show you a nice picture Chris took this week:

Being Brave

2010-07-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

Today, I wore a brooch in public for the first time in my adult life. I think I'm going to become That Person Who Wears A Brooch That Is Her First Initial. Watch for it.

Also, I'm sitting in the cafeteria of my alma mater right now, and am having some serious flashbacks to the person I was twelve years ago. (That person: not someone who would wear a brooch of her first initial in public.)

Guess who has two thumbs and is no longer allergic to apples and aspergillus?

2010-07-20T15:58:00.000-07:00

This girl right here!

I just finished this year's allergy re-testing, and I've finally had some good news: it's starting to work on a long-term basis and not just make me feel better on the short term. I thought I'd been feeling a lot better. Of course, it doesn't mean that I get to go off my shots just yet (...says the girl who is still allergic to lettuce), but it's nice to hear that it's starting to work, and that there will be slightly fewer needles when I do my re-testing next year.

(And that's all I have the energy to type right now. I took an antihistamine and now I'm moving slowly.)

Five

2010-07-16T11:41:00.000-07:00

As beautiful as ever

It doesn't seem that long ago that we moved to Victoria. A new friend from my department found out that we had just gotten married two weeks before we moved there, and was amazed because we acted like we'd been married forever. Recently, another friend from the department found out that we've been married for five years and responded, "I had no idea you guys have been married for so long!"

Two weeks ago, Chris and I camped on our way to North Battleford. Somehow, we seemed to bring rain everywhere we went, and so five minutes before we arrived at our campsite, it started pouring down rain, which didn't stop until half-way through the night. Setting up a complicated tent in the pouring rain, with cold temperatures more suited to early winter than July: we kept joking that this was our anniversary trip. It reminded us a little too much of the camping we did for our first anniversary.

In the morning we were so amused by our horrific hair that we took a self-portrait (seen above), and I promised Chris I'd post it on my blog.

III

Before we got married, I confess that I fairly regularly mocked the whole "On This Day I Marry My Best Friend" variety of wedding invitations. My response was usually along the lines of "I wasn't aware that I was marrying Ky." We lived fairly separate lives, frequently lived in separate towns, and had such different interests.

But then Chris and I moved 2000km away from all of our friends and family. Before we moved, we talked to a few different friends who had done the same, who said the same thing: "It was the best thing for our relationship, even if it was hard to live so far from our family." And we found that to be true for us: Chris has become my best friend. (A best friend with whom I have far too many inside jokes and sayings, the origins of which we can't always remember.) I watch football as a result of him, and he grew his sideburns to look like Mr. Darcy's as a result of me. The general consensus is that we've each gotten stranger and sillier as a result of marriage.

Upon reflection, most of our in-jokes are the result of the katrillions of hours we've spent in a car together on road trips, not to mentions All Those Years Before We Had Cable TV. I keep wondering if I'll someday reach the point where I don't find Chris endlessly entertaining. It hasn't happened yet.

We're going to have a funny anniversary today. We've been helping Chris's mom with yard work, and now we're going to carve a helmet out of a watermelon for tomorrow's football game. This evening, we're going to a neat restaurant that serves local and seasonal food, so that Chris can eat wild boar. This promises to be a good day.

Thursday Cat- and Helicopter-Blogging

2010-07-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

I'm not formulating very big thoughts right now. I'm working on a fifth anniversary post for Chris, which means that I spent the early part of the week also processing that it had been five years since The Day When Everyone Died and Then My Wedding Was At The End Of The Week. And so there's going to be more Not Much Content, But There Are Pictures.

I've been keeping myself busy. We've been getting around to visiting a couple of people, and going back and forth between our parents. We got remote control helicopters for both of our fathers, and so our week has had a lot of this:

This morning, Chris and I were cleaning up around here, and I got distracted by taking pictures of his parents' cat (I take pictures of her because I can't pet her, on account of the allergies). And then it occurred to me "This is the sort of thing that people post on their blogs."

Eddie is thinking, "One of these days, I will destroy this strange woman who sticks a camera in my face."

And so, for those of you who are interested in cats with pink noses, helicopters, and pictures of my silly father: you're welcome.

I have a bucket full of sleepies

2010-07-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

I'm in Saskatchewan! In fact, I'm still in my pyjamas, hanging out at my in-laws' house, having slept for about a hundred years in order to recover from the busyness of summer camp. I apologize for all those commas in that last sentence: I'm tired and I'm moving forward.

In lieu of actual content, I provide you with three pictures of some of my odder moments from the past few weeks: the coldest July day I've ever experienced, cowboys on the highway (that were part of a parade that blocked off a major national highway for a little while), and a pug wearing a dress.

One more sleep

2010-07-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

I have a stack of papers beside me, with all the information for our accommodations and reservations for tomorrow and August 1st. I've been making a lot of calls, booking motels and campsites and ferries. The iPod and all our cell phones are charging. I spent a bit of time and put together an Epic Driving Playlist, with more than a day's worth of music. Every item of clothing in the whole house is now clean. Chris has emptied out the fridge. We have fifteen pounds of dry ice for the cooler. I've made so many lists and have talked to my landlady four times today. I've spent as much time as possible resting (with the exception of Chris's high school's grad) to get over this cold, and it's almost gone now.

All that's left is packing and a little more cleaning, and then we're ready to leave for Saskatchewan tomorrow morning.

I'm excited, because we'll be driving through Jasper for the first time in both our lives. People keep describing that road as "one of the most beautiful in Canada." [Note to self: charge all the camera batteries.] We've been making a lot of plans around making this trip enjoyable: we were going to take the first ferry of the morning, but then found out that the 8am ferry was the really nice new one, and so we made a reservation for that one instead. Tomorrow night, we're camping near Mt. Robson. And then, after another day of driving, we'll be together with almost all my extended family and oldest friends at Camp.

I'm more than a little excited. Home.

Madness

2010-06-26T20:56:00.001-07:00

Here's a picture from my hometown newspaper that shows one of Regina's streets this week:

That's the street our church is on! And have I mentioned the fact that Regina is the only city in Canada that wasn't built on a major body of water? (The "lake" in Regina is a man-made one from the Depression era.)

And we're driving out there next week. We're officially crazy. (Well, granted, we're heading further north than that next week, and won't be going down to Regina until a week after that. So Regina: you have two weeks to get your act together!)

In other news: I have laryngitis! Laryngitis is so strange. And just as I didn't realise how frequently I unconsciously touched my eyes until I was covered in VapoRub, I had no idea how compulsively I talked until it hurt too much to talk. (Everyone who has met me in person knows how compulsively I talk.) Poor Christopher: he's finally on holidays and I'm completely useless. On the other hand, because I feel guilty if he does too much work, I encouraged him to play computer games for half the day.

On the up side, I'm allowed to watch as many movies as I want, and I am getting better at Spider Solitaire. I tried to read German and my brain and my head weren't up to it. Relaxing without guilt is nice.

More Sickness Blogging

2010-06-25T21:48:00.001-07:00

You know those people who wear the same perfume for so long that they can no longer smell it on themselves and they start wearing it more and more heavily? And then when you walk into a room with them it's like being hit by a wall of perfume?

Tonight, I reached that point with Vicks Vapo-Rub. Chris is hiding in the office.

The nice bits of my day

2010-06-24T17:36:00.000-07:00

1. Brand new lemons --> lots of hot water with honey and lemon.
2. I took an honest-to-goodness sick day today. I stayed in my pyjamas until Chris came home and didn't feel guilty about it at all. And watched a lot of the Food Network.
3. I spent the whole day thinking "I wish someone would show up with a pulled pork sandwich. I think I'd feel stronger if I had some meat." And then Chris got home, heard that I was craving barbeque, and picked up pulled pork and brisket from a place downtown. And that made me feel much better.
4. I thought I was supposed to be starting preparations for the staff end-of-the-year party for Chris's work, and then he called to say that he was wrong and the party is on Monday. Not only do I get to do nothing today, but there's no pressure to do anything tomorrow now either. Bliss.
5. Chris is done all his prep and marking for the year. Now it's just supervising one more exam, awards day, and grad.
6. A book I ordered from England (for the dissertation) arrived in the mail, while all the delivery estimates thought that it would arrive after we left.
7. Dissertations being available online in pdf form: I love living in the future. No ordering, no waiting. (Dr. Supervisor discovered that someone wrote a really relevant-to-my-research dissertation and defended it last year.)

Ouchies

2010-06-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

It's always this way: "Why am I getting nothing done? Why am I tired? Why does my head hurt? Why does my throat hurt? Oh." I'm sick. I've been fending this off for a few days, but it hit me mid-way through the afternoon. By 4:00 I couldn't even stay upright.

And so I'm home alone, because I've decided that I'm too sick for prayer meeting. I might go to bed soon. I need to get better immediately, because I don't want to be sick when we're traveling.

But before I crashed I got a lot done, and I'm so proud of myself. I have a BC driver's license now! Well, I have a yellow piece of paper that says that my license will soon arrive in the mail and I'm allowed to drive. And I have no photo ID until my new license arrives, which is a little bit terrible. At least we're not flying home.

And now I'm going to stop writing. I have a bucket full of sleepiness. I think I'm going to drink hot water with honey and lemon and stare at the dancing people on the TV.

Looking more like a local

2010-06-21T19:16:00.002-07:00

Until today, we had Saskatchewan plates on our car. When we moved out here, I read through all the requirements for students living out of province, and I did everything that Saskatchewan's auto insurance company required. We kept renewing our plates and buying insurance, and then some friends of ours were in an accident and found out that the province had stopped covering married students (but their brokers didn't stop selling insurance to married out-of-province students).

And so today we went and got BC license plates. It wasn't too much work to import our car: Chris always makes sure that our car gets properly maintained, and so the only thing that didn't pass inspection was a small burnt-out light bulb that illuminates the plates. Which cost $2 to replace. Getting the insurance took some work, but we found a good company, and we aren't paying too much money because we both have been driving for more than ten years, with good driving records.

But it's all so strange. Our Saskatchewan plates made us stand out around here. It was so easy to find our car, and it was an easy way to show people that, while we may live here, we aren't from here. We're permanent residents of another province, and we think that this province is insane. We still get to keep our Saskatchewan permanent residency as long as I'm a student, but not very many people look at my health card or my tax forms. It feels like we've given up a part of the prairies.

Chris is especially sad because we can't have our Saskatchewan Roughrider front plate anymore. BC requires two license plates, and so our Rider plate is now in the back window. He'd been hoping to get the real Roughrider license plates this summer, and then he found out that we had to give up Saskatchewan plates altogether. It was a sad, sad day in Christopher land.

I'm just glad that I know that we'll be fine if we're in a car accident now. But with a Toyota with BC license plates? Our car just became much, much harder to find in a Victoria parking lot.

To Papa

2010-06-20T09:05:00.000-07:00

Two more weeks...

2010-06-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

...and then we'll be in Saskatchewan! And we'll be leaving in less than a week. (Which reminds me: we have nowhere to stay in Edmonton so far. I'd better deal with that.)

I can hardly believe it. Chris finished teaching last week, and this week it's all exams. I have so much to do before we leave. So much to do. I need to write as much as possible before we leave, because it's going to be hard to get work done in July.

and yet I'm not frozen by anxiety, which is good. I'm taking each task one at a time, and am trying to get real work done without burning myself out. It helps that it's June and it's gorgeous outside. And much of my busyness right now is happy busyness: I'm baking a pink birthday cake for a certain silly person, we're preparing for some more house guests, and I'm going with Chris to his high school's grad sometime soon. And the chapter isn't unhappy busyness: it's an enjoyable chapter and I have so many ideas.

It's just so strange when I realise that June's more than half-way done, and I'm going to see my family soon. (That weather in Saskatchewan had better clear up soon: I'm dreaming of sunny skies, and the news tells me that I get to look forward to flooding and mosquitoes.)

Evening in the House of Procrastination

2010-06-17T23:51:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty nearly already asleep (and this is far later than I'm used to being awake), but I keep checking "one more thing" on the internet.

I just looked over at the bathroom, and Chris is standing in front of the sink (I think he's planning to brush his teeth), reading a novel.

Sometimes we're well suited to each other. (But we're going to be very sleepy in the morning. At least Chris doesn't have any more regular teaching left; it's all exams and fun days from tomorrow onward.)

Gute Nacht, bloggy people.

When your husband's a mad scientist

2010-06-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

What do you think?

2010-06-13T14:43:00.001-07:00

For the first time in the five and a half years since I started blogging, I've given in to the temptation to change the template. I thought I'd stick with something reminiscent of the original. And so, what do you think? I don't love having a dark background and light print, but I may keep playing with the colours.

And now for something completely different: pictures from my weekend, with a few stories.

On Friday night we went to see all the navy ships that were in the Esquimalt Lagoon for the International Fleet Review. (8000 sailors from all over the world took over downtown for the week, which made this city even more interesting than usual.) On Friday night there were fireworks, and Fisgard Lighthouse had a lantern festival in honour of its 150th anniversary.

And then on Saturday we went to Lee and Andrea's wedding, which was held in one of the historical gardens in town:

It was gorgeous. It was a sunny day, and we gathered under huge trees in a garden planted by the former crown prince of Georgia and his British wife. There were thirty-four people at the wedding, including the bride and groom, the vast majority of whom were from our department. (That's what happens when kids from far away meet and get married during grad school.) It was neat being at an event like this with profs and most of our PhD candidates and recent graduates. When guests started arriving, Chris looked around and asked if anyone would be presenting papers at this event. (As it was, Lee began his speech at the reception by pretending to give a lecture about Confederation, and then he and Andrea got into a historiographical debate. Those kind of jokes kill in a room full of historians.) Chris said that it reminded him of the wedding in Rachel Getting Married, except that instead of professional musicians, everyone in the room was a historian.*

The whole thing was funny and sweet, and it was a good reminder about why I like this history department so much. People care about each other here.

And now I'm sitting at my kitchen table, while Chris snores in the other room. (He's been having migraines this week.) I'm sitting by the flowers I brought home from the wedding (they asked that people take home the centerpieces, which reminded me very much of my own wedding), and I'm drinking tea.

Other than Chris's migraine, this is not so bad of a weekend.

* You know, and without the recovering drug addict or all the white people in saris.

Rewarded with dinosaur stickers

2010-06-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

This morning, I was collecting online journal articles for the chapter I'm putting together. This chapter builds a lot on research that I did for my MA thesis, which got me wondering where I put the journal articles I photocopied for that.

And then I got reading Lifehacker's "End-All Guide for Getting Out From Under Your Office Crap," which got me realising that the closet in my office was filled with file boxes full of papers that haven't been purged ever. Since I started saving papers in file boxes in 2003. I had one box for all the papers associated with my MA, one box for everything from my PhD (mostly from coursework), and one box marked "Misc", which I hadn't opened since we moved here five years ago.

Huh. This might be a problem.

And so I got sorting. I started with the newest box, and found that I could put most of the articles and handouts from my coursework into the recycling. At this point, I can recognise what will be useful for teaching and what I need for my research, and was able to get rid of the rest. I collected all of my assignments into a single file folder and marked it clearly. I purged most of the paperwork associated with past TA work, keeping syllabi and anything else that looked useful for future teaching work, and kept that in a single folder.

And then I got looking through my MA file box. It turns out that half of the box was filled with drafts of my MA thesis, and other paperwork that I couldn't bear to throw out five years ago. I found the useful journal articles, collected the syllabi and other helpful teaching resources, and by that point the recycling pile looked like this:

It was good for me to go through that box. I found a file that held my favourite papers that I wrote during my undergrad. I found all of my acceptance and award letters and remembered that I have received many letters that began with "Congratulations" rather than "We regret". And, as I found my old research notes and teaching work, I remembered my old enthusiasm and idealism.

And then I tackled the "Misc" box, and found that it was mostly filled with junk and office supplies. I got through that box quickly, wondering why I was always too intimidated to open that one. And I'm glad that I didn't go through it too quickly, because I found a stack of cards that I received when I finished my BA in 2003, and one of those cards had a $20 bill in it. (Good thing it wasn't a cheque.) I also found dinosaur stickers!

I needed that. I went back through my past and was able to let go of everything that doesn't matter anymore and keep everything that was good. I'm not done yet (my office looks worse than when I started), but I feel like I'm in a better place to deal with my dissertation now. And with the future.

That chapter + hair-blogging

2010-06-09T16:15:00.000-07:00

Hey, remember That Chapter That Won't Die? It no longer deserves its name! Yesterday, I sent off That Chapter to Dr. Supervisor, and can finally move on with my life. And by "move on with my life," I mean that I've already started working on another chapter, but I picked an easier chapter this time.

And by "already started working," I mean that today I looked through a few books, took a few more out of the library, made a bit of an outline, and then spent more than an hour trying to figure out how to do my hair for Andrea's wedding on Saturday.

I think I might do something like this (which takes much more work than you'd think, considering the fact that my hair has absolutely no curl to it, and doesn't hold curl very well):

So, after sending off That Chapter, and struggling to come up with enough ideas and analysis to make this chapter Not Embarrassingly Short, this morning I woke up and had three good ideas for that chapter. After it was already sent off. After I finally sent it off and relaxed, then my brain started working again. But I won't worry about that; there will be many revisions, and I can add those ideas in later. In the meanwhile, I wrote down my ideas and moved on to writing about Berlin women.

Far from lonely

2010-06-04T20:15:00.001-07:00

I've been home alone for the last half of this week, as Chris is the teacher chaperon for the high school seniors' camping trip. When I first found out that I'd be here by myself from Wednesday until Sunday, I thought I was going to get lonely: I've been such a home body/hermit these days that usually Chris is the only person I see all day. And so I made a few plans with people.

It's now so funny that I thought I was going to be lonely: I've been more social this week than I've been in a long time. The non-stop people started as soon as I left the house on Wednesday morning: when I went to the chiropractor, I ran into three different friends (two of whom where the only other two people at the chiropractor's office). Then, when I got hom, my Mom's cousin Cheryl called me (she's in town for the week) and I ended up spending the afternoon with her. Then yesterday, the women from church and I had a Girls' Night (someone else's husband is away this week, and we thought that it would be nice to take this as an opportunity to get together) and I stayed out way too late. Tonight, Cheryl's coming to stay here and then tomorrow we're going to do some sight-seeing, after which Ky and I are going to have a sleep-over (to celebrate the fact that she passed her quals!!, because she's going to Ukraine next week, and because I need a ride to church on Sunday). In the midst of that all, I've been spending all my time trying to finish That Chapter That Won't Die (tm Styleygeek).

In short, today was the first time I had a chance to wash any dishes since Monday or Tuesday. I've been so busy. And, because I didn't have to go anywhere today (even though I had to get the spare room ready for Cheryl, and wash that pile of I Didn't Know We Owned That Many Dishes) I worked all day on That Chapter, starting as soon as I woke up this morning. I made crazy amounts of progress today, but also managed to take care of myself and get housework done. I even did some research outside in the sun and took a break to make lemonade from scratch!

I think Chris is going to be surprised when he comes home on Sunday and finds that the house is clean and I'm all peopled-out. He'll be especially amazed if I have this chapter close to done by the time he gets back.

Bird Update

2010-05-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

(Because I just know you were eagerly anticipating this.)

So, the robin's been attacking our office windows more today, but only when I'm in the office (our place is small enough that I'd hear it), which makes me suspect that there's a nest somewhere around that corner of the house, and that the bird sees me as a threat.

What should we do? I don't want to disturb a bird's nest. I think we'll have to close our office blinds for the next while (sadly), and maybe warn the landlords to avoid that part of the yard. Except that it's also near the garbage cans and bikes, and so I don't know if that plan's too feasible.

(Today, I've set up at the desk in my bedroom, so that I can stay out of the robin's way. Particularly because I get a little too jumpy when I'm anticipating that a bird might start attacking the windows at any moment.)

The inevitable result

2010-05-27T17:24:00.001-07:00

Do you know how easily I can get scared? I talked on the phone with Karl and joked with him about how a robin was trying to send me a message through my windows, and then he joked that the bird might have been trying to lure me outside to where all the other birds were hiding, Hitchcock-style.

And now I'm home alone this evening, and I've managed to scare myself for irrational reasons.

I'm officially a dork.

It might be time to leave the house

2010-05-27T15:21:00.001-07:00

I've been sitting at my desk for a very long time now. I haven't left the house all day, and I'm at that point where I have a blanket wrapped around my legs, a pashmina wrapped around my shoulders, and my space heater running, but it might actually be a normal temperature in here but I can't tell anymore because I've been inside for so long.

And I just might be going insane. A few minutes ago, I looked out the window beside me, and was surprised to see a robin starting in at me, right up against my window. It sort of gave me a jolt to see it, but then I also realised that it was surprising because it was the first living creature I'd seen all day. (Not to say that I've seen any dead creature. I just couldn't think of a better way to say it, on account of the fact that I've been reading German all day.)

So, I Twitttered about it and tried to get back to work. And that's when I heard a sound behind me. I turned around, expecting to see my landlord working on something on the back of the house, but instead there was that robin again! It had flown around the house and was now staring into the office window behind me, and was pecking at the window.

And my first thought was "If this was a movie, I'd assume the bird was trying to tell me something."

My next thought was that I really need to get out of the house, because I've clearly reached the hallucination stage of cabin fever. But that I'm a little too creeped out to leave the house, on account of the red-breasted robin that's stalking me.

And then I realised that those last words I typed were the craziest words I've ever written in my life.

No more caffeine for me.

Further Adventures in Dissertation Land

2010-05-20T18:28:00.000-07:00

I went back through some of the resources that Dr. Supervisor sent me, while I was trying to write a difficult part of this Chapter That Won't Die. It turned out that one of the sites that he sent me had a link to a site I'd never encountered before, which had scanned images of all the relevant newspaper articles about different German historical figures from the 20th century. This means: a.) it had a bunch of stuff that I already found and scanned when I was doing microfilm research, but b.) it also had a bunch of stuff from newspapers I haven't had a chance to see yet.

And that's how I ended up spending the rest of my afternoon squinting at old German typeface (because the non-Berlin newspapers were still using this until long after 1933):

Oh boy.

Where I'm at in my dissertation right now:

2010-05-20T16:00:00.000-07:00

Fighting off the urge to describe the phrase "moral parrot-sickness" as being "both awesome and wonderful."

Can't stop watching

2010-05-19T13:13:00.001-07:00

I just emailed this video to Ky and Janice, and then decided I needed to share it with the world. Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segal singing "Confrontation" from Les Misérables. And now I swear I'll get back to work.

I just posted this and then found out that this was my 1500th post. Yay me?

Toddler Aftermath

2010-05-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

Meg and the wee Andrew visited for the weekend, and now that they're gone the house is weirdly quiet. It was not so quiet this morning:

Always with the photos

2010-05-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

Mom was trying to show me her new haircut over Skype, but Dad kept being a trouble-maker in the background. And so I told him that if he kept it up I'd use the "Print Screen" button and show people how silly he really is. (With bonus "Maryanne Looks Demented" in the corner.)

So... (aka More Hair-Blogging)

2010-05-10T14:24:00.000-07:00

In the end, we decided against bangs after all, but to have the hair swoop across my forehead a little. Here's what it looks like in the back:

Mom

2010-05-09T08:43:00.000-07:00

To the woman who chats with me every morning, while I'm sitting under my SAD lamp and she's finishing her coffee and crossword puzzles. Who has put up with every annoying nickname from my siblings and me. Who saw an art installation that looked like tulips with a canoe on top and said "Take a picture of me standing under that thing." Who takes care of everyone, far beyond just our immediate family.

Happy Mother's Day. I miss you, Mom.

Return of the Compulsive Hair-Blogging

2010-05-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

So, Anastasia's planning on cutting off all her hair, and I've been feeling tempted to do the same thing. I haven't had a haircut since the week before my brother's wedding (last summer), because I've been too lazy about figuring out a hairdresser in this city. First, I only got my hair cut whenever I went home (back when I went home more than once a year). Then, I went to one place in town that was not too expensive, but hairdresser said "I'm going to give you some layers" and proceeded to give me "the Rachel" more than a decade too late. And then I went to someone recommended by my fabulous hairdresser back home, and while I got a fabulous haircut, it was so expensive that I haven't been able to afford to do that more than once a year. I ended up getting my hair cut at my salon back home in the summer, and then I've been procrastinating from figuring out anything else ever since.

But I'm going to be brave: I'm going to the salon on campus. A couple of my friends have gone there now, and even the cost of getting a "senior stylist" is affordable (especially because they offer a discount for students). I made an appointment to get my hair cut by the salon's manager, because the website says that she specialises in fine hair.

I'm even getting braver: I'm going to talk with her about the possibility of getting bangs. This will require me to get my hair cut more frequently than once a year, and I'm getting tired of the Vast Expanse of Forehead that I've had since grade 9.

But it's scary, because the last time I had bangs, they looked like this:

Or this:

I just want light bangs, and maybe something that slopes to the side. But I need reassurance that I won't end up looking like this:

Here's the most recent picture of my hair (and sorry Ky for putting a picture of you as well, but I can't figure out how to crop you out):

What do you think? Cut to chin-length with light slope-y bangs?

Amazon meme

2010-05-05T22:29:00.000-07:00

I've been seeing this around my corner of the academic blogosphere, and thought it would be fun to check.

I made my first purchase over Amazon at the end of 2003 (and I think that's also when I got my account), and that purchase was A&E's Pride & Prejudice on DVD. (I remember it well: Meg was tempted to bid on a used copy of it over Ebay, and I decided that maybe I should find out how much it cost new, and it turned out that it was way cheaper to get new through Amazon.)

After that, in 2004 I got the boxed set of Schindler's List (I pre-ordered it when it came out) and a book of my friend's poetry. For the rest of the year it was all stuff for my research. (Okay, I also got the Mighty Wind soundtrack and songbook.)

Huh. It's funny to go back and reflect on the past six to seven years as reflected through my book and movie purchases.

We walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight

2010-05-03T23:42:00.001-07:00

I am That Person Who Owns Every Simon & Garfunkel Album And Doesn't Care If That Means She Has Really Bourgeois Music Tastes, Seeing As It's Not The 1960s. I blame my mother: she took out some of their albums (especially the Graduate soundtrack) from the library and I listened to them so much and she'd tell me about how much she used to listen to them when she was young. I ended up buying all their records. The only one I have on CD is The Sounds of Silence, a fact which used to cause the owner of my favourite used book and record store to harass me that I ought to buy the record for that one as well.

When I heard that they were going to be playing in Vancouver soon, I looked at the prices of tickets, made muttered comments about being so jealous of my friends who could afford tickets that I might karate-chop them in the face (sorry about that, Karl) and then played the B-side of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme a lot.

And then today I heard that they had postponed their tour in Canada because of Art Garfunkel's voice. And then Chris's Dad called us to see if we wanted to go with them to the Saskatoon concert, because it'll now be happening in July when we're back home. Our tickets will be our early birthday presents from them.

So, yeah. I'm going to see Simon and Garfunkel in concert. I haven't really processed that fact yet, but I'm listening to "The Boxer" right now and am singing the harmonies.

The nicest kind of afternoon

2010-05-03T15:41:00.000-07:00

I decided that I needed to work from home today. I'd been putting off laundry and bread-baking, both of which are tasks that I do during weekdays while I'm dissertating. They're the two household tasks that are exclusively mine, because they can be done in little bursts of time through the day, forcing me to take breaks. They also give me little pockets of time in which it's easy to get a lot of work done: there's nothing quite like "Let's see how much typing I can do in the next forty-five minutes while this bread rises." And it means that I'm not sitting around checking my email during my breaks: I'm up kneading dough or hauling baskets.

I don't have much of substance to say. I just am feeling happy because I managed to scan through a difficult German-language book quickly, and then I got to knead some bread dough, and rewarded myself by sitting down in a sunbeam with a good cup of tea. A sense of accomplishment, a little physical work, some sunshine and some tea. That's all I need in a day.

Cubicle Living

2010-04-30T20:06:00.000-07:00

The building that houses my department is undergoing repairs for the next few months, and so we're all in exile until the Fall. Our department office is operating out of a seminar room in a different wing of the building, while the grad offices have been relocated to what Trillwing calls a "cubicle farm." But a really, really nice cubicle farm.

I only vaguely recognised the name of the building when the department announced where we were going. Okay, and I wasn't putting too much thought into it, because my main thought was "Ugh, giving up our office for cubicles in a space we have to share with other departments? I guess I'm really going to work from home this summer." However, when I got talking to my friends from the department it turned out that I was just not recognising the new name for the library (now that the library has been doubled in size to include office space). In fact, it turned out that our new space is on the same floor of the library that holds all the books I use; you go to this obscure corner of the floor, to this unmarked door that has a keypad on the handle, and behind that door is a huge, airy space that is surrounded on three sides by floor-to-ceiling windows. I had no idea. Actually, I was talking to one of the head librarians this afternoon, and he had no idea either.

So, I decided to work from one of our cubicles today. On Twitter I started to list all the pluses and minuses of working in that space: we have wonderfully bright light and full wireless signal, and all the windows were open meaning that we had a lot of fresh air. I did a whole lot of research that I've been putting off, because it was so easy to go and grab more books. However, it also meant that I spent far too much time gazing outside at the nice view (this is not a problem in my basement-suite home office) and it got really cold when the wind picked up. And the construction site is right next to the building, and so I had to use my iPod to drown out the "beep beep beep" of the giant trucks. Also, I had to have Chris come and pick me up because I ended up bringing home half the library.

I'd say that today went well. I got a ton of work done, and while I shouldn't work there every day, I think this will be a good summer.

Music Monday

2010-04-26T22:31:00.004-07:00

Chris has been spending all his commuting time listening to CBC Radio 2, and has been listening to Radio 3 online when he marks, and as a result of all that, he now has better taste in music than me. Today he told me that I should start listening to the Canadian singer Basia Bulat. I actually showed him the video for her song "In the Night" a year ago (I think Kate Beaton had linked to it on her Livejournal), and then I promptly forgot all about it. He ran across the song again this week and thought to himself, "My wife would really like all her music."

I had an iTunes gift card to use up, and so I ended up buying her whole 2007 album Oh, My Darling. Chris is very pleased with this development.

And then I used a little bit of the rest of the gift card and bought the Nina Simone song "Feeling Good," because it was featured on tonight's (fantastic) episode of Chuck and I was reminded of how much I love this song.

I'm having fun putting together a new writing soundtrack, because I'm tired of my old study music right now. And I needed some more cheerful music. Cheerful is good.

Friday Baby Bunny Blogging

2010-04-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was sunny and all the baby bunnies were out. I also managed to remember to bring my camera, which never happens. (My cellphone is full of blurry bunny pictures.)

My weird writing habits

2010-04-22T18:26:00.000-07:00

I've been stuck for the past few days. I wrote out all the ideas I had for this chapter, in disjointed paragraphs, and found myself stuck after having written just a little over seven pages. And then that was it. I couldn't think of what else to do, and I was dissatisfied with the seven pages I had written, knowing that there was so much more to say on each little point I made, and yet unsure of where to even start.

And then, for the past few days, there wasn't even the staccato, over-thought, under-developed writing. I was just stuck. I did some reading to try to figure out secondary materials that I could work in to what I've already written, but I couldn't get past this vague feeling of frustration about the chapter as a whole.

But today, while I was walking to the bus, I started trying to figure out how I could discuss one movie that I hadn't discussed yet. And then I realised how it fit together with everything in the chapter. And then I realised that this movie ties the whole chapter together, and that I should start the chapter by discussing it.

And that's how I ended up writing a page and a half of my dissertation in my wee purse notebook. Most of it was written on my short bus ride to the University, and then I developed the rest while I was sitting after my allergy shot. I came home and typed it up, and then spent some time moving around the rest of the chapter so that it all worked. I came up with some more to say, and started writing it this afternoon, but then I stopped at an obvious place where I can begin tomorrow.

It's funny how I'm right back at the same place I was when I started this blog, and learning the same lessons all over again: sometimes I just need to break out of the routine so that I can get the creative part of my mind working.

The Verdict (aka More Meat-Blogging)

2010-04-16T22:25:00.000-07:00

I tried the Simply Recipes method for roast beef, using the eye of round cut, and it was ridiculously good. It was so tender and the gravy was so good that I keep going back and sneaking extra little pieces out of the fridge. Seriously: wow wow wow.

Also, it was really fun making little wedges of garlic and putting them in incisions all over the roast.

In other words: Stamp of Approval! (In other other words: Mom, try this recipe.)

****

In other news, what is it with Friday evenings and my dissertation? For the second Friday evening in a row, I've suddenly had better writing ideas than I've had all week, sat down and made a bunch of progress. I'm not complaining; I just wish I could get this kind of work done during the daytime.

Pictureless Food-Blogging: Pork Breast

2010-04-16T17:15:00.001-07:00

This week Chris brought home a bunch of different-from-usual meat from the Wholesale Club, because they had some good sales going on and he was feeling adventurous. One cut of meat that he brought home, because he had no idea what it was and it was about $1/package, was a cut of pork called "pork breast." I did a lot of scratching my head and blinking when he handed it to me.

"So...would it be from near the udders?" I asked.

Google yielded some helpful information, including the news that this is actually a new cut of meat, and that the meat comes from near the shoulder and the ribs (more like "breast bone"). They look like ribs, since the cuts we got were still on the bone. I didn't find many recipes that called for this cut of pork, and so I took the "moist cooking" suggestion from the pork website, and treated it like a cross between pork shoulder and side ribs. I put a dry rub on it (the Southern Barbecue Dry Rub from the Joy of Cooking, which contains brown sugar, paprika, chili powder, crushed red pepper, cumin, mace, salt and pepper.) Then I browned all the pieces in my dutch oven, clamped the lid on the pot and put it in the oven at 350F for between an hour and a half and two hours. If I'd had more time, I would have cooked it for longer at a lower temperature, because I think that would have made the meat even more tender.

But I turned out nicely. (Much more nicely than the first attempt, when I just tried to cook them on the skillet. That was a little too tough, but still tasted wonderful.) The texture and flavour reminded me of dry ribs, and it went nicely with roasted parsnips and baked potatoes.

Next time, I'll try outright braising them, and then I'll try marinating and grilling them. (We have several packages left.) Maybe I'll braise them with orange juice and soy sauce.

(Tonight I'm trying the Simply Recipes method for roast beef, using the giant Eye of Round that Chris also found at the Wholesale Club.)

Now my empty cup is as sweet as the punch

2010-04-15T14:08:00.002-07:00

Those of you who read Chris's blog know that we have a cell phone data plan for the month, thanks to Chris's ring tone that would have cost us $175 if we hadn't immediately signed up for a data plan on the same day. So, Chris has been encouraging me to go through my music library and pick a song or two that could serve as ring tones, so that we take full advantage of the data plan this month. (And so that he won't have to say he spent $20 to get one ring tone.)

So. I've been trying to decide what to use. I've been subjecting everything to the "what if my phone rings while I'm on the bus, or around people from the department" test: I'm trying to decide on something not too stereotyped, something loud enough that I'll actually hear it when it's in my purse, and something that wouldn't embarrass me if my phone rang while I was on the bus (so, no Glee soundtrack).

I'm thinking about using "Along Comes Mary" by the Association. What do you think?

(Alternate ideas: "C'mon Marianne" by Frankie Vallie and the Four Seasons, "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard," by Paul Simon.)

(Okay, so the one that I'd really love is "The Girls of Rock 'n Roll" from The Chipmunks Adventure, but I'm pretty sure that any Chipmunks song wouldn't hold up to the "doesn't embarrass me in front of people from my department" test.)

I need your help! Suggestions?

Just the kind of day I needed

2010-04-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

It's sunny and warm outside, and I went walking on campus with a friend. The sun shone and we walked through the university's flower garden.

And then I went to the library and found a really helpful book, that uses the same basic framework I'm using in my dissertation. (This initially panicked me, when I discovered that he is even drawing from the same theorists as I am, and I went momentarily to the "Oh no, am I just rehashing someone else's work unwittingly?" place, but he only looked at newspapers and at a different time period, and so I've decided that this is wonderfully helpful rather than scary.)

And then I came home to two packages in the mail, both of which contained cards for me: one from a blog pal whom I'm helping with a secret mission, and one from my friend Gillian in England, who sent me a necklace from her trip to Italy.

And then I made some Earl Grey tea and sat in a sunbeam.

How we've spent all our spare time today

2010-04-12T19:58:00.000-07:00

(Because Bronwyn asked for pictures.) (Also, please ignore the pile of laundry.)