Doing my best imitation of a Victorian invalid

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.

And then I got very sick

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.)

Can't stop watching

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? 

We walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight

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.

Things that amuse me

I love following the American media's attempts to understand curling. Everywhere I go, I'm finding curling referred to in terms of Strange Sports That Don't Make Sense. And then today I encountered a claim on an American site that curling was a rich people sport, because it costs $450/year (in certain parts of the US, apparently) to join a curling club.

This is really funny to Chris and me, because curling's like bowling here. (I was going to clarify that by "here" I mean "back home," but I heard an Island-native friend complain about curling based on the fact that the only curlers out here are old people from Saskatchewan.) And it certainly doesn't cost $450/year, probably because prairie curling clubs have owned their (admittedly expensive) rocks since the dawn of time.

Curling is ubiquitous in Saskatchewan. Every small town kid I know has taken part in at least one bonspiel. I know more towns that have curling rinks than towns that have hockey rinks; they double as town halls, meaning that even though I've only curled a couple of times (in grade 8 gym), even I have spent a significant number of my formative hours in curling rinks. (Wedding receptions, small-town graduations, family reunions.) We came close to have each my wedding reception and my 10-year high school reunion in curling arenas, and I'm from a city. (A city that has named public buildings and streets after its first gold-medal-winning skip, and who treated her young death like the rest of the world treated Princess Diana's.)

It's just so funny to me; at the same time as I've been watching curling for the first time in forever and reflecting on how familiar and homey it is for me (every player for Canada's men's team either looks like my high school teachers or kids I grew up with, whereas most other athletes look like otherworldly aliens), everywhere I go I'm encountering references to curling as being strange or confusing.

It's just strange when you have a chance to see how other people view your culture.

Amaaaaazing

So, it turns out that this blog called Read Write Web had a post about people using Facebook login to log in to different sites. (This site also has Facebook login as an option for people to comment on their blog.)

It also turns out that a large number of people in this world only know how to find Facebook by Googling the phrase "facebook login," and that for a while the top Google hit for that phrase was the aforementioned blog post.

This was the resulting comment thread: a whole bunch of angry people asking why the "new" Facebook wouldn't let them see their Farmville, and complaining about the "new" Facebook redesign (ie. the blog they were reading, which they assumed was Facebook). My favourite is the one person who likes the change. And the addition to the blog post that begins with the words: "Dear visitors from Google. This is not Facebook."

And sometimes I wonder why every other storyline on the comic strip Mary Worth is about the dangers of The Internet, and about how The Internet leaves you open to scammers. This is probably why.

(via)

Food Network Fixation

Confession: I can't get enough of the Canadian Food Network shows.

Don't get me wrong: I could watch pretty nearly anything on that network, although I change the channel to avoid hearing Rachael Ray's voice, and I'm both happy and sad that the Canadian network refuses to air the trainwreck that Sandra Lee. I do watch a lot of the American shows (Good Eats; Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, and Iron Chef America are on constant rotation in this house), and I don't watch all the Canadian shows (I've given up on Restaurant Makeover). But those "Oh hi there, I'm a professional chef who happens to be cooking something in my home kitchen" shows with their bright, over-processed colours? I can't get enough of them. I'm particularly crazy about Michael Smith's Chef at Home, Anna Olson's Fresh, and especially Laura Calder's French Food at Home. They're the source of a lot of my meal ideas and techniques, and they get me off the couch on those cloudy days (right after they're over).

But they're also pure, relaxing escapism. For a few minutes, you can pretend to have a giant house on the seaside in PEI with the best pantry I've seen in my entire life. And French Food at Home is all about the escapism: on today's episode, Laura's having a swing installed on her porch, because she always wanted one when she was a kid. While gliding about the kitchen in an adorable dress, she makes a lemon syrup so that she can have lemonade every day. Roasted artichoke hearts, boiled new potatoes, and everything gets a little bit of fleur de sel. One minute you're sitting on the couch in sweatpants, and the next you're thinking about what you can braise for supper (and resisting the notion of cooking while wearing dress clothes). And they all speak in these calm, relaxing tones.

It's all like hanging out with my friend Terra. We drink tea (even over the phone) and talk in dreamy tones about Italian cooking and cake decorating.

Mmm. Maybe I should make risotto for supper. Just after I write a few hundred more words.

Distractions of the day

Two different cool (but unrelated) things from my day:

1. This evening I went to a practice for a band formed for the fundraiser auction we have each year. (This year I'm not Vanna.) Historians on guitars, mandolin, bongos, harp and flute playing Fleetwood Mac with lyrics altered to be about grad school. And it was ridiculously good, and kind of folky. (They have to raise a certain amount for us to play!)

2. My copy of The Blythes are Quoted arrived today! Here's my initial reaction to the book: I've only scanned over it quickly, but it looks like most of the short stories are the same as in 1974's The Road to Yesterday (with one exception, which had appeared in a slightly different form in Among the Shadows), but with the addition of poems attributed to either Anne or to her son Walter, and some framing dialogue between the Blythes. A lot of the "adultery, illegitimacy, despair, misogyny, murder, revenge, bitterness, hatred, aging, and death," which the editor thinks will shock L. M. Montgomery's regular fans, occurs in short stories that were already pretty widely in circulation. Like, I read these stories when I was a teenager and they weren't really that far off from her novels from the later 1920s and the 1930s. Instead of all that sensationalism (which is mostly targeted at selling the book to people who normally think of LMM as too cheerful or something), I'm more interested in the poetry attributed to Walter and the aftermath of World War I: you really see her backtracking from the idealism about the First World War that you see in Rilla of Ingleside. Between that and her clear ambivalence about the beginning of the Second World War: this is really interesting. (In fact, this ambivalence is clearest in a poem and discussion about the war that LMM herself had cut out but kept for posterity, which the editor decided to include anyway.)

So: it's worth it, and looks really good (and is much better in this original form than in The Road To Yesterday), but Benjamin Lefebvre really underestimates her fans by playing up the "shocking" elements.

GiST: Actually Remembering to Do This Edition

1. Breakfast smoothies, already made for me and waiting in the fridge by the time I wake up in the morning. (I am spoiled rotten.)
2. Encouragement from my academic hero (this happened several days ago now, but it's still keeping me encouraged), who reminded me that she did all her dissertation research in short trips to Germany, and got better work done because of it.
3. Finding out that much of the primary research material I need actually is available on microfilm in North America. And then ordering four years' worth of a newspaper on microfilm, after getting advice from the Interlibrary Loans librarian. (Translation: I'm about to start doing research that I thought I could only do in Germany.)
4. Ice cream
5. Making arrangements to have two different new-to-Victoria/from-Saskatchewan friends over for supper (one on Thursday and one on Sunday). Now I just need two good meal ideas.
6. My VCR (yes, I'm a dinosaur) is set for two versions of So You Think You Can Dance and for Glee! (Keep in mind that I love musicals, and was heavily involved in show choir when I was in high school.)

I'm a little nerdier than I usually admit

I spent yesterday evening watching The Empire Strikes Back (original theatrical version, of course), while surrounded by all my Star Wars toys. Right after having finished (finally) reading Timothy Zahn's trilogy that follows Return of the Jedi.

I've realised that I might be on shaky ground when I tease my husband about being a Trekkie.

(I blame my recent watching of Fanboys for the resurgence of my old fixation.)

Movie Review of Sorts

By the way, when you've had an emotionally exhausting week, where you're having to face everything all at once, perhaps it's not the best idea to watch Rachel Getting Married at the end of it. The film is fantastic,* but at the end of it you feel tired and light like you've been crying for the past two hours.





* Seriously, the acting was all so good, and so completely realistic, that I want to give everyone in that movie awards. I kept forgetting that the characters weren't real people, and I kept getting worried about them. And it was all shot in a way that you felt like you were there, and you felt like you were in a wedding reception that was getting a little too crowded. It was nuts.

A National Travesty

Via Lynnie: Please tell me this is a terrible joke. Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning, where Gilbert is killed off in WWII? Considering the fact that Anne and Gilbert celebrated like their thirtieth anniversary during the First World War...

Over and over again, Kevin Sullivan keeps trying to destroy my beloved Rilla of Ingleside. He is even deader to me than he was before.

Discuss. Also: favourite LM Montgomery book. Also also: Barney Snaith from The Blue Castle: hottest of all the Montgomery males?

How I didn't win a car or a TV this weekend

Have I mentioned that Chris is the sort of person who enters contests and draws whenever he can? Of course, this is the only way you're ever going to win contests, but somehow he has this sense for the contests that are going to end up being a marketing strategy to try to force you to buy/sign up for expensive stuff.

So, last week I got a call from some contest saying that Chris was a finalist for winning some kind of Lexus SUV. (Because, you know, we really need a Lexus.) They said that they'd be mailing him a key that he'd try in a locked box. Also, because we were finalists, we were guaranteed one of their secondary prizes; they asked us which of their list of prizes we'd prefer and I said we wanted the 50" TV.

...the only thing is that we'd have to sit through a 90 minute talk first.

And yes, my gut instinct was right, and it was for (glorified) time shares. And Chris's key didn't work in the locked box, and in the end they gave us a scratch-and-win card to figure out which prize we got. At least it ended being a $100 gift certificate for a restaurant (which you can use it at several different restaurants in the city). So, it wasn't an entire loss, even though I had to spend part of my afternoon arguing with a salesman that, no, spending $20,000 on the right to stay in resorts around the world is not the same as saving for retirement.

We'll use the gift certificate on my birthday, ordering whatever we want at one of my favourite restaurants in this city.


In other news: all my Canadian readers who have cable TV should be watching Canada's Worst Driver on Discovery. It's seriously the best show ever. I was worried that I'd get stressed out watching it, being aware that there are people driving that are as bad as that (or that I'd discover that my driving is as bad as theirs), but the show is downright satisfying. The host is funny, and the episode where everyone learns how to drive standard is just plain good television. (And this week everyone learns how to drive in reverse!) And it's an actually good reality TV show: everyone's trying not to stay on the show, by trying hard and graduating before the finale.

Bits of Thoughts and News

• I ran a fundraiser auction this week (the same one as last year, and yes I did dress as Vanna again) and it went really well! We broke last year's record-breaking fundraising, which means that it'll be even cheaper for the students from my department to attend our conference. It makes me happy to feel like I've done something well.
• Canadian politics are suuuuper-interesting right now. I'm even letting Chris listen to all of the CBC program The House right now. (By the way, it's driving me nuts to hear the Conservatives saying that the forming of a coalition would be going against democracy, and would going against Canada's wishes based on how they voted. If you're a minority government, it means that the majority of the country voted against you, which theoretically means that the majority of the members of Parliament could form a majority against you.) Maybe it's the German historian in me that just loves the political potential of coalitions so much.
  
• The one thing that stumps Chris and me is who ought to be Prime Minister, if a coalition is successfully formed. This conversation has led to a lot of discussion of the hilarity of The Moustache as Prime Minister.
• I'm still figuring out what I thought of Baz Lurhmann's Australia. I definitely liked it as I watched it, three-hours-long notwithstanding. It was emotionally satisfying. But on reflection afterward...I'm not sure. I'm going to have to see it again. (I read Ebert's review and found myself agreeing a lot, even if Ebert did get some of the details of the movie wrong.)
• What should I do for my birthday? I'd like something special, but I don't want anything where I'm having to do a lot of work and planning, because those are the birthdays where I get stressed out and then cry.
  

Result of watching too much Man from U.N.C.L.E.

What's the rationale behind characters in 1960s TV shows always using the "ha-cha!"* chop to the back of the neck, whenever they need to knock someone out? Like, would that move actually do anything? Would it actually knock someone out? Was it just so much unlike real violence that it wouldn't get them in trouble?

This has been troubling me for a while.


* Incidentally, whenever someone does that move, or whenever Chris and I predict that someone's going to pull that move, we both yell "HA-CHA!"

Everyone's Favourite Office Linebacker Returns!

(I really hope that Ariann, Mark and Meg read this!)

Terry Tate's back! In election specials!




Also: Here's the whole Return of Terry Tate website

Odds and Ends

Sorry that it's been so long since I've updated, guys! My brain's been eaten up with my dissertation's historiography, which has to be in by Wednesday. All of my thoughts are in small and scattered form and so you get a bulleted list:

• I think I actually like my research again. That's a good thing, you know.
• Do you know what makes me happier than happy? The Montreal/Calgary auditions episode of So You Think You Can Dance Canada. You Americans should be jealous. SYTYCD is sustaining me through this autumn.
  
• I also have become obsessed with goat cheese, particularly with chèvre. It makes me endlessly happy to eat little pinches of crumbly goat cheese off of the block. It's such an obsession that, when the over-saltiness of the frozen chicken breasts ruined my stuffed chicken breasts, I actually wrote a letter to Westfair Foods to complain. (In my defence, we'd been buying these same chicken breasts for years, and in the past month or so the chicken we've bought has been inedibly salty. Uh, gross. And when it makes me waste goat cheese...) Wow. That was a lot of writing about cheese right there.
  
• I got to see my great-aunt and great-uncle today; they're from the same farming community as my grandparents, and so having them here was a nice little bit of home today.
  
• On a less joyful note, if I see another attack ad for the Canadian election, I'm going to throw a shoe through the TV. What country have we become?
  

Thinking ahead to December

I just found out that the TV series of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is finally being released on DVD! Huzzah! At last! My top most favourite show ever!

But the thing is that, so far, it's only being released as the complete series (and not in separate seasons). And it comes in an U.N.C.L.E. briefcase. And its list price is $222, but both Amazon and Chapters have the pre-order price at $155.

So...if there are any family members wondering what I'm wanting for a birthday/Christmas present...

Finally

Done. It wasn't pretty, but it's done. Now I just have to get through the oral exam and I'm golden.
Now? I'm eating McDonald's for supper and flipping back and forth between The Sting and Star Wars: A New Hope. I can't handle anything more complicated than that.

Partially live-blogging the Oscars

It's been a couple of years since I did this (and the time that I did it, Blogger ate the whole entry and I had to fake it), but Chris is at the school right now and my choices are: shouting out loud at the TV by myself while my landlady knows that I'm home alone, or live-blogging my responses.

5:28pm: Dear Regis Philbin: "Javier" is not pronounced "Xavier." Thank you.

5:30pm: Eeeee! It's starting!

6:46pm: Dear James MacAvoy: I love you. That is all. Also, I'm not doing well in my somewhat Oscar pool. I think I only got Javier Bardem right. Aw, and now Sarah Polley lost.

(By the way, I'm still scarred by Tilda Swinton, aka The Scariest Woman Alive, commenting on Oscar's buttocks. Eeeee.)

7:12pm: YES! My first (non-obvious) correct pick! I told Derek that the leading actress award was going to Marion Cotillard, and he didn't believe me.

7:36pm: There have been so many montages that I thought that the introduction to the Lifetime Achievement Oscar was yet another montage. And didn't understand why there seemed to be a Tribute to Hitchcock. Nope, they were just introducing a rambling and ancient man. (But at least he isn't speaking mostly in Italian. Although it was really awesome when Clint Eastwood was translating.)

7:43pm: "This is the first Academy Award and second nomination for Austria." Huh? Entire countries are making movies now?

7:44pm: Chris just confessed that he enjoyed Enchanted.

7:50pm: It's official: the best way to make sure that a movie doesn't win a Best Song award is to nominate it for three of the five awards. (I loved the Once song, by the way.)

7:51pm: The rule seems to be that only one person per group is allowed to say the thank-yous. That's the second time that the orchestra has started blasting the music as soon as the second person tries to say "thank you." The orchestra is feeling particularly bold tonight.

7:56pm: Aw, John Stewart is sweet! Take THAT, orchestra!

9:17pm: The Oscars are over (it was okay, but there weren't very many more reasons for me to shout at the TV -- also, Chris stole my computer for a while and so there was no more liveblogging), but I left on the Barbara Walters special for a while. And Vanessa Williams was just talking about how much she loves Botox? Odd.

9:19pm: Hey! Seattle PBS is showing the Complete Jane Austen after all! Huzzah!