I am everything you want

I am everything you need.
I am everything inside of you that you wish you could be.
I say all the right things at exactly the right time,
But I mean nothing to you and I don't know why.

Sesame Street!

Furry Happy Monsters!



This helps me learn my letters. I suspect drugs were heavily involved.



I have never forgotten the 12 song. I think kids shows were better in the 70's and 80's.



I always thought Bert had a stick up his butt.

Shot through the heart

I wish I had something exciting to write about, but that is not the case. My life is pretty much doing school and freaking out about how much school work I have to do. Let's see, I have a final Semantics homework (guaranteed to take at least 20 hours to do, and no, I'm not exaggerating), final Phonology assignment (ooh, Mexican Spanish), a Syntax presentation, and then a paper write up of the Syntax presentation. I also have a big paper to write for my "guided study" course, which I have beent hinking about but nothing is actually written yet. There's a conference I'm presenting at on December 7th, and I haven't looked at the material for that in a while. Its a new paper, but its a works in progress type conference, and hopefully it will go alright. So that's the school front, one of the only fronts I have going on right now.

Seems that I'm getting out a little more often than I used to. Last weekend I went to a house warming party, and then we went to the Village (that's right, you know what the Village is) and hung out there. There was this drag queen sitting outside this one bar with this super huge ridiculous cardboard hat-type thing. I don't even know what it was, other than interesting (*shifty eyes*). Yesterday there was a talk in the Linguistics department, which is traditionally followed by a wine and cheese, at which I ate a lot of cheese. There was this really good dry parmesan-y cheese, and the wine wasn't too dry. But we went out to the movies after and I saw the Assassination of Jesse James. It was a good movie, but two important words come to mind: Hot Men. Namely Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck (there were a few others as well) who I didn't know about before, but he's better looking and a better actor than his brother Ben. We went to a Portuguese bistro after, really good.

Hmmm, this is all so fluffy. Something deep, something deep.........
Nope. Just fluff.

151

I don't really feel like writing, still. So I have more YouTube. I suggest you watch, especially if you're bored or need a 4 minute distraction. It picks up, so don't give up right away.



So many things to say, so little space on the internet. Although, doesn't "Indian version of Napoleon Dynamite" pop into your mind?

I will reminisce about how this video reminds me of the subway in Calcutta which had music videos playing while you waited for your train. Bollywood is one of the great mysteries of the universe.

Tho Awethome

The 90's was a magical time.



I feel educated now.

And if you need some perspective:



Hooray on my 15oth post.

Acou-tas-tic

I've been looking for some new music lately, particularly for acoustic type music. I have all kinds of alt-rock and other non-mellow stuff on my iPod and sometimes I need the yellowish tunes to de-stringify my state of mind. So here's a couple things, nothing too ground breaking in that you're probably familiar with everything I'm tacking onto my blog here.

Note: Its not about the video, its about the music.

Alexi Murdoch - Orange Sky
Love his voice.




Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski day
So sad, so serenely beautiful.




Jose Gonzales - Heartbeats
This is actually an acoustic cover of this really strange 80's type indie band called The Knife. You can find the cracked out video of the original on youtube.
I love the motion and reserved feel of this song.




Tegan and Sara - The Con
I know this isn't acoustic, but I love the weird harmonization. When I heard their stuff intially I wasn't into it but I might be changing my mind.




Now I'm asking for viewer participation. Let me know about acoustic or interesting music I need to check out. Its time for a serious trip to the big ol' HMV on St Catherine street where they have some of the more obscure stuff as well as the main stream albums. And they have fracophone music, so we're not limited to English.

A-dorable

My nephew turned one last week. Mmmm, we should all enjoy cake so much.

Doorknob

Something you didn't know about me: I hate using cash at the grocery store.

I will let you laugh at me. I've been sitting on my bed with my laptop doing work and procrastinating at intervals. My phone rang, and for some reason I usually jump with surprise at the vibration of the phone, I have no idea why. So I get off my bed to answer the phone sitting on my desk only to fall sideways. I try to get up again and fall to the floor again. It took me a second to realize my leg was a little asleep, so there was a crawling motion over to the phone and a conversation from the floor.

Forget forgotton

I felt like I should post.

Oh busy busy life, I'm trying to wait for it to let up, hold on just until the end. Then I should by all reasonable guesses explode at some excruciating point in the future in the painful slow death kind of way. I exaggerate, I have been much busier in the past and so much more stressed out. I feel like I'm not doing as well as I should, I got an A- on my Semantics assignment -- this must be remedied immediately before the D's start rolling my way. You laugh, you think me ridiculous but a fail is a C in grad school and I just cannot explain to you in a way you will find rational my expectations of myself. I realize I'm hard on myself, but if I'm not hard on myself, who will be? That's a misfortune I'm not going to take my chances with. Are these even grammatical English sentences? Reminder: I am not an English major, I am not obsessed with prescriptive grammar -- as far as I care, if people can say it then its grammatical. Its called descriptivism. See how I did that? A little switch from prescribe to describe. Subtle, I know, but what a difference.

I have a conference next weekend at York, which is good in terms of spending a few days in Toronto. I will miss my friends who have moved away from Toronto (I'm looking at you, Dinah) and it will be like a hole shot through the memory of my former life, but I will hold on. I will let those who remain in our province's capital (province = Ontario) spread inwards from the edges of that gaping hold like fibres in around the torn knee hole of a much loved pair of jeans. Maybe I'll have a big face tattoo when you see me, maybe I will have jet black hair. Maybe I will speak with an eastern Australian accent. How could you yet know? You haven't seen me in a while. Perhaps I have taken to wearing really long t-shirts with a belt around the waist. They go well with my knee high alligator skin hooker boots with that lovely rosy tinge that makes you think of a guy who has been punched in the face and has spit out his bloody saliva on the sidewalk for you to step around the next morning.

My phonology homework awaits. I am attempting to break wide open the wonders of feature licensing in a couple of Bantu dialects. The phonological world won't know what hit them when I come along, with my predetermined data set, and fully answer the questions I am obliged to answer for my mandatory course work.

Have you had enough yet?

Good-bye prime factors 11 and 2, Hello prime factor 23

That's right, today is the last day of my youth. Mock me if you will, point out the fine lines around my eyes and the graying hair on my head. (Actually, I do have some white hair, but that is not age related, who can tell with the blonde anyway?) I'm not planning on anything special happening this year, but perhaps this is the point people stop caring about your birthday. Actually I'm just not in the mood right now, I shouldn't pawn it off on other people. There is some consolation in my brother turning even older a few days later (he always was older than me....).

And I felt like playing around with the blog template. I know its still blue, but I just don't like other colours as much. My eyes are blue so when I see blue things they are compatible with the iris filter while other things get morphed into pukey colours, so can you blame me for liking blue? I have to respect it, my eyes provide the only discernible colour on my face.

I became very upset with Linguistics this week. I heard some work from various people that just reminds me of all the bad Linguistics out there. People who only take into account one construction in one language and ignore generalizations made for other reasons thereby creating completely useless analyses. Its because of these people that the field is still Arts everywhere and hasn't been able to even break into the soft sciences (I mean, if psychologists can get science degrees its ridiculous that linguists don't). I want to do real Linguistics that actually means something, that actually gets insight on NATURAL language, and if anyone else asks me if I study Esperanto or Tolkien's elven language again then I just might freak out and give a drop kick followed by the sonic elbow.

Disaster.

I was at a conference this weekend at Concordia, so not very far away and easy to budget for. I though it would be ok, I saw a few people that I know from Ottawa, including both of my MA supervisors. I was presenting a paper I wrote with one of my supervisors this summer, and we're presenting this paper again at another conference at York. So presenting isn't my favourite thing in the world, there are many things I do hate about. Despite what some of you may think of me I do have a very shy side, but even worse I suffer from stage fright. Sometimes I am amply able to overcome my stage fright and I have been able to give even decent presentations in the past. Today this was not the case. I started our presentation, and my heart was pounding when I started but I could speak and get the words out, and it was relatively ok. As I kept talking it go soooo much worse. I turned bright red (as I always do), but I've learned to accept that I'm just someone who turns red and I'm generally ok with that. The main problem was that my voice started quarvering, I mean like rolling into big trembling gasp type sentences and this caused a problem for conveying the idea of our presentation. It was like when you're super upset, and you're about to cry and your voice goes and there's nothing you can do to control it. Now, I wasn't going to cry, but it was so difficult to talk, and I tried to take some breaths, but I didn't want to stop in the middle of my talk and do a big "Inhale. Exhale." That would have been even more embarrassing. I just did what ever I could to get to the end of my section where my co-author was supposed to take over. It was truly awful, I am so embarrassed. I felt bad b/c people in the audience felt bad for me. I took some time to recover while my coauthor was talking b/c I was supposed to take a few sections later on, but he forgot this and presented them himself, then remembered a couple sections later and asked if I wanted to do that part. I answered no b/c by that point we were on a section that was his speciality, although I was hoping to redeem myself after gaining some composure. The discussion was fine, I am much better at addressing questions, I think because it's more like a conversation and less like a performance. But I feel terrible. I apologized to my coauthor and promised this wouldn't happen at our next presentation. I don't even know why I went crazy, it was a friendly audience in a comfortable setting. I just lost it.

When I was a kid (and a young teenager) I used to play violin in the Kiwanis festival. I hate that stupid festival. It was ok when I was playing in an ensemble or orchestra, I could focus on what I was doing and blend in with the other performing with me. But I also had to do solos, where I stood up on the stage with no music and had to remember the whole song and hit at the right notes infront of an audience and an adjudicator who was scoring me. I remember once completely forgetting part of a song and freezing -- terrible terrible memories. I was never meant to preform, it is so not my forte. Unfortunately presentations will forever be a part of my life in this career. I've had a few good presentations, so I'm hoping that kind will become more and more frequent.

Today is a bad day

I was getting coffee in the student centre and this girl walked past me and bumped my bag and my elbow while I was holding the coffee. It splashed back and forth, so I thought it was ok, but they she continued her trek past me (and trust me, there was plenty of room for us to coexist contact free) and bumps me again, knocking my backpack off my shoulder and making me splash searing hot coffee everywhere, including on hands and on my pants. The worst part about this is that she didn't even turn around. She didn't care that she'd bumped into someone, and because of this did not see the disatrous effects of her gross lack of courteousy. What a freaking jerk.

My day was not stellar to begin with.

Why Georgia?

I’m going to try and post now, even though I don’t particularly feel like writing now anymore than I did before.

So vegan week was done a long time ago, and it really wasn’t bad at all. The first day after it was over I had pizza (and not very good pizza) but it was still sooo good, I do love cheese. The hardest thing was having to read labels and make sure there weren’t modified milk ingredients in things. I’m not sure how vegans go out to eat, that’s even worse. The soy latte was fine, but I got some soy milk so I could eat my cereal, and that tastes like chalk. I still have half a litre that isn’t going anywhere now that it has to compete with the skim in my fridge.

I’m presenting at a *surprise* (at least to me) conference on Saturday at Concordia. I guess this is one of the quirks of having a co-author. It’s all good though, since me presenting at anything is experience for me at this point. My fellow baby PhD-ers think I’m so experienced b/c I went to 2 conferences already, but I was like them 5 months ago so its really not a big deal.

I’m getting really nervous about submitting my article for publication b/c I saw what some reviewer marks are like and they can be way HARSH. I like my paper, but I can also see where people can pick holes in it, but I’m already at the page limit so I can’t really flesh out every forseen concern at this point.

I have to buy a new kettle, mine tries to electrocute me when I use it. No lie. I’m kinda scared to make tea now, even used a pot of boiling water instead. I drank more tea in Ottawa b/c my roomies drank more tea and would always offer, but its nice to have something warm to hold, and wait for 20 minutes to cool to non-tongue-burning temperature. I used to not let the water boil when I made powdered hot chocolate but my crazy death kettle boils in 24 seconds flat.

Maybe I’ll write more another time.

Deco

I have things to post.

I just don't feel like writing.

GTW!

Does it look like me?

In View

I bought 100 watt light bulbs today, which have made a huge improvement on the lighting situation in my apartment. The floor lamp that is meant to provide visible light for the majority of the volume came with the lowest wattage possible in a standard size bulb. I tried to find out exactly how many watts its taunting dimness emanated from, however it was completely blank, no brand no nothing.

Make fun of me if you will, but I’m going vegan this week. I’ve wanted to try it out for a couple months there but haven’t had a quasi acceptable span on time where I could feed myself the appropriate plant based only food products. Originally I was planning on going for a month like an old housemate of mine (in fairness he did it annually during February since it’s the shortest months) but I thought that might be too long for a first time veg-O like myself. I’m starting today since I finished my yoghurt yesterday – I had to wait until the dairy products were used up in my fridge. I bought a crapload of veggies and other vegan delicacies such as hummus and its been ok for today. I’m thinking within a couple days I’m going to be going crazy for some cheese. At least its not like I was a meat eater, so its only one food group being eliminated.

I went to the McGill bookstore and semi picked out the McGill hoodie that I will wear for days on end this winter. I didn’t buy yet because there were huge line ups b/c all the undergrads are still buying their text books. How I don’t miss those days. I picked the gray hoodie with the red embroidered letters. You may think grey is boring but it was incredibly soft and the other colours weren’t much more exciting. Black and navy blue are boring (and I couldn’t cheat on my U of T hoodie with another navy one for a school whose colours don’t even include blue – go Varsity Blues!*). Anyway, I think it’s a decent grey, very academic.

Ooh! And I should be in Toronto near the end of Toronto, so if you’re one of my friends who still lives in Toronto you might be seeing me on your couch. I was accepted to the Algonquian conference at York. Yes, I know, York, where the subway tunnel dare not approach, but I think the buses still go there. Its not like I’m getting an art degree (because I have no ability to do so) just going to the mall school** for a little conferencing.

Yes I did change my profile picture. It got a little distorted in shrinking à la blogger which gave me a little of the crazy eyes.

*No one goes to U of T for sports.
**As a U of T-er I am constitutionally required to bash York at every opportunity. Its surprising the reactions you get for bad mouthing York (which will accept you if you can use a fork) when not at U of T, a huge contrast to the “Ye-ah” you get on the St. George campus^†.

^†Also UTM and UTSC are not real U of T. This is also required from me, coming from downtown.

Boot to the head

This morning I had a feeling that today was going to be a good day. Last night I went out with some Linguists and Philosophers to a pub just down Sherbrooke from me. That was fun, it was nice to get out and not to just be by myself, wandering around my little apartment, washing dishes and putting things away for lack of more interesting things to do. I met some cool people, got to talk other who I already knew. There was an interesting discussion on the use of oral and written language for divine information to be passed throughout time and between peoples. The argument was that such a method of correspondence runs the risk of being eliminated from the face of the planet by loss of all physical text and people who know the stories and that it should be possible for us to start again from the beginning again. I assume this is fully possible since the whole people of God things started before written text and holy stories passed on between generations.

Anyway, it didn’t turn out to be a good day like I had hoped. Just because of reasons….

I talked to the head of graduate studies in the Linguistics department today trying to get more novel courses on my course list semester. It could turn out that I will end up doing work outside a course framework which could be really good anyway and give me a chance to write and learn about some things independently rather than being constrained to strict curriculums.

I went with a couple of other new linguistics students to grad orientation at the grad house. It was super boring. Just old people droning on and on mostly about things that were common sense. It would have been equally beneficial to give us all the info packets and let us go, but the lollipops were pretty good.

I like Montreal a lot better than Ottawa, and I’ve devised a reason for that. I have realized that my main problem with our nation’s capital is it underlying, yet undeniable, feeling of exclusivity. If you’re not from there then you don’t know where’s fun to go, and its very difficult to get in as an actual friend of an Ottoweenie amonst their Ottowanish comrades. I’m sure this is not true in every sense, but I am really not the only person who has made comments to this effect. Montreal, on the other hand, just feels very open and free, like its ok for you to be there. Perhaps this stems from the greater cultural diversity and size of Montreal over Ottawa, but I’m presently tempted to consider Ottawa snot-city. Toronto was somewhere in between. I wouldn’t say it was terribly welcoming and warm when I first got there, but it did not persist in its coldness for 12 months like Ottawa did.

Now my apartment smells like fried onions.

Silmarillion

Despite so many years of resistance, the circumstances have finally converged and I have a cell phone. It was either a cell phone or spend the same amount on a landline. From experience I know that the cordless phone doesn’t work much more than 50 feet away from the house, so instead of getting fuzzy calls that fade out as soon as I start making my way to class I opted for the cell phone.

I’m having a little trouble trying to practice my French. I start out saying “Bonjour” or answering “oui” to the question “ça tout?”. If it so happens that I am talking to a fellow non-native French speaker I continue the conversation with the opportunity to say things like “d’accord” and “bonne journée”. However, if I happen to be facing a real quebecois, they have this incredible skill of discovering from the first half syllable that comes through my mouth that I am in fact a stupid Anglophone. I’m not saying I think I sound like a native speaker, but seriously, my pronunciation isn’t that bad. Give me a chance people! It just makes me nervous for subsequent times trying to speak French again. The reason I am not yet fluent is because of my crippling embarrassment of saying something wrong why I try – this is so not helping. I’ve been told my comprehension is very good, so I’m not a total lost cause. I’m not sure where I’m going to be able to construct comfortable environments to hone my skills in this area unless the Quebecers give me a chance.

There is no Grand and Toy anywhere within the normal limits of Montreal. I checked, the closest one is way out by the airport. Similarly, the only “business supply” places that show up on a yellow pages search for the downtown area are pen stores. And I was hopeful that “Pens Ltd” and “Stylo’s R-us” would actually have binders and paper and, call me crazy, pencils, but no dice. No, I had to go to the undergrond central rail station where this is a Bureau en gros (that’s French for Staples, well, kinda, a direct translation would be Egraffeuse… sp… actually, that’s stapler, give me a break). There they sell binders for like $6.50 for some reason. Just cuz you print heavy duty on the side doesn’t justify a 237% markup. But I bought them, because I wasn’t going to trek out to the airport to get the ones I really wanted.

It also took me a long time to find a drugstore so I could buy some conditioner. There’s no Shoppers around, there’s this place called something like Jean Coutou instead. I just don’t automatically think drugstore when I hear Coutou, must be a sound meaning association lost on me in the early stages of my language development.

Anyway, if you want to call me, email me and I’ll give you the number.

Dans la belle province

Bonjour mes amis, je suis dans Montréal mainment, seule. So you’d all better comment. This coming week I have the Linguistics department meet and greet, course/program registration and ID card getting. It’s fairly depressing. I don’t have any friends, I have to go make them, but that will take a long time. And I don’t have any roommates this year so that makes it harder, I’m not sure living alone is something I should be attempting. I should be excited, but I’m too tired and worn out from the move, and of course I have become hopelessly nostalgic about years gone by and all the people I used to know. I’ll be ok, maybe after I get a few days of rest.

Its been a while since we sat over some black tea and had a chat, so I’ll catch you up. I left Ottawa at the beginning of August and went to Port Hope and attending a wedding party. Then I went with a couple other friends for 4 days into eastern Algonquin and canoed up a storm. I like going to the middle of nowhere once in a while, it makes you think about things in a different way, remember that civilization ridden life isn’t all that goes on the world, and its definitely not how it always was. So that was good, then I went home to the Sound. This involved much sleeping and reverting back to a useless sloth who can’t make her own food or bed.

I was at home for a week and a half, I think, and I saw some friends, went to the beach a few times and watched the sunset. That’s one thing I will always love about my home town, in highschool we would go to the beach in the evening and watch the sunset and play Frisbee. Then we’d get ice-cream and do it all again the next day. I missed that so it was great to go back and see it all again. This past week I was at our family cottage which involved more sleeping and a lot of reading. I’m over 700 pages into War and Peace, I’m hoping to knock off a few hundred more before classes start otherwise I won’t finish it till June. There’s only like 600 pages to go.

And now I’m here in Quebec, unable to speech French because I became so tired from moving and then arranging all my crap that the second language section part of my brain has been unable to boot up properly. I go out and wander about the streets in a daze, I don’t know what people think of me. Its not like I haven’t been resting excessively (because I have) its just that the past few days were a little more exhausting than average.

Enough about current events, I should tell you something interesting, the only question is what…. Yeah, I have no idea.

I don’t have internet in my apartment, but there’s lots of wireless café’s so you may hear from me soon, that is, if you want to.

La la la

Hey guys! I’ve officially passed my MA thesis and I’m done my summer job and now its time for canoeing and Sauble Beach! Ye-ah, I haven’t tossed the Frisbee around forever, last time was when my brother was home and I was home, and we were all at home playing Frisbee. No one ever accused me of being a good storyteller.

I’ve decided to live in grad housing in Montreal since I’m nauseated by the whole house hunting thing. I think it will be ok, but it will mean me living by myself and going insane for lack of social contact. I’m hoping I’ll have friendly, non-annoying neighbours (since I’m the only annoying neighbour any single floor of a building can handle). This reduces my stress and lets me enjoy the end of my summer such that I might be able to recover from my MA before starting my PhD. Why do I do this to myself? Wait, I know why. I like to see how shocked people are when they find out how “young” I am since they don’t expect a 22 year old to be doing a doctorate. But I’m not just 22, I’m a person too!

I’m going to be home for a while, which means lots of torturing-my-little-brother time. I have big plans, mwhahaha. But I get to see some friends in the Sound and go back to all my old haunts. I’m guessing I will be bored in about 3.27 days, but it’s not like I have a lot to do in Ottawa. (Besides packing and saying goodbye to everyone here… whatever.)

C’est tout.

I woke up this mornin'

My lexical entry of "grow" is intransitive, making it ungrammatical to say "We grew our profits by forfty-eight percent." I would require the causative as a valency increasing operation in such a situation (i.e. "We made our profits grow by forfty-eight percent.")

My roommate and I (girl roommate, that is) have a favourite set of commercials this summer. If they come on TV we call to each other to run in and watch it and to sing along. I think the little farmer dude is adorable.



Ok, I can't find the one where he's in the karaoke bar, but it is also very good. Remember the Ontario foodland song? Let me jog your memory:



This is what childhood memories are made of. That and Heritage minutes. And Polkaroo.

You're going to think less of me

But there's Queen, jazz hands, suspenders, and fuschia and turquoise spandex. What more could you want from a reality show?

Miss Attractions

Well, when did I talk to you last? Right, told you ‘bout my thesis. So I went to Montreal on the weekend and operation find-a-house was unsuccessful. After a few days of moping and feeling super depressed about it I’ve semi convinced myself that its going to be ok. I have to go again this Sunday and check out some more places. If it doesn’t work out this time I don’t know what I’m going to do. I guess I’ll have to live on the street, because whatever happens I have to go to McGill, that is not debateable. I could try and live in my office until I get caught and then give a whole sob story about my homelessness.

I’m almost done all my stuff here at the University of Ottawa. I might be sad about it if I weren’t so tired and preoccupied with other urgent things. I really like the Linguistics department here, but I will be glad to live somewhere a little more lively than our nation’s capital.

I was going to write more. But I tired. No make sense more.

Degree #2: Check

Or should I say check plus? I handed in my memoir (its really a thesis, but I don't have to defend it) and I'm done my masters degree. I invite you all to call me Master, it is now an appropriate form of address and and will be expected.

Actually, just kidding. Although I'm done the MA grunt work my degree won't actually get conferred until October, but in all praticality its done. Unless they fail me for some reason, that would be super upsetting. But it would be a good excuse to throw a public tantrum....

I know what you're all thinking, "That means you're free for the rest of the summer!" So not even close to true. I'm writing an article with my prof, and I also have a research assistantship this summer. There's linguistics yet to be done. But I'm planning on going easy for August, during which I must move to Montreal, and I think I have to report to McGill on the 26th or something for this "mandatory" introduction session. They told me I had to go.

I'm going to Montreal tomorrow to hopefully find a place to live, yeah, its a little important. Wish me luck! I'm very nervous about finding a place, I just want this to be over. It better be the case that one of the places I visit this weekend is where I'll moving into in August.

Go team Masters!

(All I need now is an MA from CGNU.)

7-7-7

This week I went to see TRANSFORMERS, it was robots-in-disguise-tastic. To be completely honest, I don’t remember that much about the 80’s cartoon, which now makes sense b/c I looked it up on imdb.com and it came out in 1984, and I wasn’t born till later that year, so its not my fault. But yes, friggen awesome, a very fun movie. However, I will say that the movie that I was the most crazy excited about when I left the theatre was V for Vendetta, Transformers didn’t scratch that, but will give it a break. The Wacowski (sp?) bothers were not involved.

Happy July 7^th, 2007 everyone! Isn’t it crazy it landed on a Saturday? Remember last year when a bunch of horror movies opened on June 6^th, 2006? People are so clever.

I started reading War & Peace, I’m like 10 pages in. Expect a post about this time next year when I will either declare that I have finally finished said cliché long book, or will have gone mad with the attempt to do so.

Ling-tastic

Click to make it bigger.

The Village

According to those Heritage minutes, that’s what Canada means. GO TEAM CANADA!!!! Happy Canada Day everyone! (even though it was on Sunday…)

Right, events update. Last week I went with my roommates and some of their friends to see Live Free or Die Hard. I wasn’t going to go, and was instead going to sit at home and do the work I sorely needed to do. Man, would that have been a HUGE mistake – this movie was wildly entertaining. You see the succession of bad guys, and you just sit there and wonder, “What crazy method will Bruce Willis use to kill this guy?” Because they can’t just simply be shot unless there’s a super unimportant character. The best was when he drove over a fire hydrant and the water shot up, taking out the helicopter directly above. AWESOME. I also like Justin Long, he’s funny, and everyone thinks its so appropriate that Mac would be a computer hacker. I’ve never actually seen a Die Hard movie before, but its not like a running plot line, so blonde little me was able to make it through the subtle complexities of the story.

And then it was Canada Day weekend! My mom and brother came and we ate lots of food and joined in festivities. If you do recall I have complained in the past that Ottawa is boring with not a lot going on, and that I miss Toronto. But if you’re going to be in the capital for one day in the year, make it Canada Day b/c it rocks. I’m just sad the rockingness doesn’t transfer to greater portion of the year. Ottawa is very beautiful in the summer, but all that beauty if green and trees, which does not show up in the winter and so I wouldn’t particularly say that winter-Ottawa has the same charm.

Anyway, there were people everywhere (usually the streets are empty, even on the weekends and Friday night and stuff) and there were all kinds of booths and stages on parliament hill and surrounding area. The Via rail tent was cool, b/c they gave everyone a little sapling red maple tree (hmm, I wonder why a red maple?) to plant and a balloon. I specifically requested a blue balloon even though the girl only had red and yellow in her hand, but I saw the blue ones. So we wandered around, met up with my cousins, watched a few jazz numbers and such.

The fireworks were incredible. So worth the millions of Canadian tax payer dollars, dead serious. Really big, really sparkly, there were even these ones that exploded in the shape of hearts. And the crowd was really vocally reactive to the display, you could tell which ones they were really impressed by. Oooh, awww, woah! The final fireworks were these red and glittery white ones, for good ol’ Canada. My favourite fireworks have always been the ones that give off a massive *BANG* and you can feel the force of the sound in your chest, love it.

Also, I got a pair of Chaco’s! For you out of the know, those are completely awesome sandals. We went to MEC and my mom found a pair that were on sale and that were my size (incredible, b/c I have issues with finding shoes the right size, they’re even womens sandals!) so now I have my very own pair. They are very pretty. But now I’ll spend a week or more adjusting the straps until they’re perfect.

Now I have to catch up on the work I didn’t do last week or this weekend. I have until 2pm to get it done, either that or I have to tell my supervisor I need more time. But I did make grand promises of having everything done last time I saw him, I’m not sure why…..

CANADA

Monster Sudoku

On Friday I was at a going away pub-party for a professor who is moving to Germany, and for some reason I started remembering some things I liked when I was a kid, but as of late paid no attention to (not surprisingly). I know everyone is quirky, but I seldom even notice my own quirks, I usually only find out about them when other people point them out to me. Like how I can’t sit still – which I am now very aware of, but didn’t notice at all until my friend told me in 3^rd year and I confirmed the fact with many other friends shortly thereafter. My office mate told me that I sometimes click my tongue when I’m thinking.

What made me think of this is that at the pub the nachos came out with some moist towelettes. I used to collect them when I was really little and dry them out and fold them back together exactly as they were folded in the package. I put them in my little teapot and pretended they were tea bags, I think I liked the lemony smell. And then I realized today that I love to use of all the ink in pens. I have several pens in my pencil case, but I almost always use the same one b/c I want it to be completely used before I go onto the next one. I’m also like this with paper. I have several different kinds of lined paper in my binder. You can tell they’re different b/c some says Hilroy and some doesn’t, some have thicker, blurry lines, some have greeny rather than bluey lines, and some is more see-through than other. They all come from different packages. I have an idea of which paper is better and which is worse, and I always try to use the worse paper and save the good paper. Not like it makes a big difference. I’m the same way with candy. If I have a package of Smarties I’ll save the green and blue ones (not the red ones) till the end b/c they’re the colour I like the most, and I always eat my favourite candies last. Like the red and white gummy bears come last, and the bananas and strawberries in a box of Runts.

I also really like colouring things in, especially with gel pens where the ink flows out in a very satisfying manner. When doodling in class (when I’m not drawing different geometric patterns) I’ll often draw plains squares or block letters just to colour them in. My mom sometimes buys me these paint things that you can make window decorations with and I love just drawing outlines and then filling them in. I know they’re for 5 year olds, but it doesn’t matter.

A few other things. When taking notes in class I always take out at least 2 (and sometimes 3, but not more) sheets of paper and write on the outside of my binder. One piece is not thick enough and makes the writing look scratchy. 4 pieces is too thick and squishy to write on.

I also have a mild fear of getting stuck. Some people might call it claustrophobia, but that’s not what it is, I’m fine with small spaces as long as I know I can get out. But if I’m in an elevator and a bunch of people get on after me and I get stuck at the back of the elevator, I get nervous that I won’t be able to get out at my floor b/c there’s too many people to weave through. Same thing with the subway or the bus and trying to get out at my stop, it stresses me out. I also get nervous if I’m somewhere, out with people, or at someone’s house and I feel like I will not be able to make my way home whenever I want to, or that I won’t have a ride and I’ll be stuck there. I similarly don’t like getting stuck in social situations, like someone comes and talks to me and I quickly find out that I’d really like an escape plan from such a person but I have no way of getting away without a serious social faux pas. I just don’t like getting stuck.

I get nervous in new situations when I don’t have really specific directions/instructions. If you tell me, “Meet me at such a place at approximately such a time,” and I get there and figure out that the place is bigger or more complicated than anticipated, I will probably start to worry that we won’t find each other b/c we’ll be waiting in two different places. Or when people tell you how to get somewhere, but they give directions using landmarks instead of street names and exact addresses. I hate landmark instructions, b/c if you get lost you can’t be like, “Do you know where the McDonald’s with the big oak tree out front is? There’s a produce store next to it? I need to turn left there.” Its better if I can ask the exact street and address b/c its much more universal. I know people think girls do better with descriptive instructions, but I am not one of those girls.

Anyway, you knew I was quirky and weird already.

Red and white, read and wise

"However I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me -- the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace."
-Acts 20:24

Engraved in stone, on Mount Pleasant, overlooking the glittering blue bay. June 24th makes me remember Canada Day, Canada Day is hardly about Canada anymore.

JFP

Everyone needs a little hip-hop in their life

One plus 6 out of 7.

Thomson

MacDonald

Johnston



Jackson


Harris


Fitzgerald


Carmichael

Yeah Vic

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

If you graduated from U of T today, that was for you (or should I say 'congratumalations'?). You know who you are, and if you don’t you don’t read my blog so you can suck it. Since I know they do read my blog, an extra I’M SO PROUD OF YOU to Dinah and Pyweon. I hope you guys have fun getting the piece of paper that you’ve been working for for 4 years (how many fo(u)rs can you jump?), and that somehow the prettiness of the paper makes up for all the pain, all the nights you decided to stay in to write about Husserl, all the night classes across campus in the winter and all the times your roommate wouldn’t stop pestering you or freaking you out by putting their head under the divider curtain which is really more creepy than you’d think (ok, that last part wasn’t so much for Dinah).

I went shopping this weekend! With my roommate’s girlfriend, who is a very lovely person. I got new perfume, since the days of Green Tea over-spritzing have been long lost. I got a shirt and a hott pair of Silver jeans. Kinda expensive, put really nice and comfy, and did I mention hott? I haven’t had a pair of Silvers since high school when my parents bought every piece of clothing I owned and I could convince them once in a while to go all in on the jeans. I also ended up in HMV at one point, which I told my shopping buddy was dangerous. At one point I may have had at least 7 (I think more) CD’s in my hand, but I was determined to limit myself to 2 so I got one of the 2 for $25 deals, now I have the new Incubus and Weezer’s green album. Many things were put away :(. I have a problem, and that problem is finding new good music – you have to search pretty persistently to find it.

Added comment: Guy in 2nd cup was totally chatting me up. He was pretty cute too! Hurrah Silver jeans.

Heroes in a half-shell

I have rediscovered online radio! I realize now that my less than awesome previous experience were most likely due to the dependence on Windows Media Player. I am muchly satisfied with the iTunes take on the whole radio thing. It began this week after I was getting very tried and frustrated with the Ottawa radio station I normally listen to and have my morning alarm set to. It’s the AtlRock station, which is music that I like, but the morning people are full-on tools and don’t even seem to like the kind of music they have to play for the station. Also, the repeat factor on this station is insane, and some of the stupid songs get played like 15 times a day. (Like that stupid “I’m not paralyzed but I seem to be stuck by you” piece of crap, what is it, Finger 11? As if anyone thought Finger 11 could actually make it past their first single….) On my little radio I am now trying this pop station, which is kinda fun b/c it plays N’Sync, Destiny’s Child and the Spice Girls, and all the other things that make me feel like I’m grade 9 again. But I’ve only been listening to it for a few days and, again, it’s the friggin morning show that I just can’t stand. Also, the commercials they play are baa-aad.

That brings me to now, on my computer listening to actual AltRock, and a bunch of stuff which I haven’t heard before. So much better, can’t even tell you, and most of the internet stations don’t have commercials or DJ’s, it’s like the sweetest deal ever.

More exciting news in my life: I did laundry yesterday! Since our washing machine (which was obtained at no cost) broke like 2 months ago its been way more of a hassle to clean my clothes. I’ve had to load up my tripping pack and walk to the Laundromat – but our dryer still works so I get to carry home the wet clothes while people give me weird looks from their cars, wondering whey someone is backpacking around Ottawa. But the cleanness of the clothes feels amazing, clean towel and everything. Now that I don’t have to wash sweaters the loads are smaller and easier to lug around.

I’m totally putting off the things I need to do. I’m actually using my thesis writing to not do the more imminent little things. I’m supposed to have a revised abstract of the presentation I did in Santa Barbara done for June 15th – what is that, Friday? – and haven’t done anything for it. It won’t take long, I just don’t want to do it. I also have other applications and reimbursement request to complete. Apart from all this I still need to find somewhere to live in Montreal. It sucks, but I’m hoping that I will find a good place and won’t have to move for 4 years! As if, that doesn’t sound like me at all.

"I have the Jew-fro, what's yours called?"

A little afternoon mild entertainment.

Who wants to be my sugar daddy?

Cuz I could really use one right now. You know, to buy me... sugar.

Thesis is going well, I'm going to MEC tomorrow which always makes for a good day. That is, I'm going if the weather report isn't cunningly lying to me by telling me its going to be sunny. I need a new bike seat. But I have to ride my old bike seat to get the new one.

Don't be a Dorkon

I write to you again from our nation’s capital after a travel stint. I am now sick of airports and layovers and don’t intend to fly for a few months. Since April I have been at the following airports:

Ottawa
Toronto

Chicago
Los Angeles
Santa Barbara
Phoenix
Philadelphia

Winnipeg
Saskatoon
Calgary

And that’s not listing the repeat airports (mostly Ottawa and Toronto). But this is what I get to flying to places that are not as major as they come thereby necessitating connections.

Last time I talked to you I was sick, and I’m still not completely better, but much better than I was. There’s still some sore of mucous phlegm thing going on in the throat nose area, but landing and the pressure change wasn’t as insanely painful as it was when the cold was in full swing. Now I don’t have a good excuse to not do my work and I have to get back to it all, I haven’t been writing my thesis for many weeks now so its time to shift back into gear – wish me luck.

I did my presentation in Saskatoon and it actually went pretty well. I didn’t turn red until halfway through my time, there were several good questions and I think I gave pretty good answers to them. One more thing to tack onto my CV to make myself seem like a real linguist. Saskatoon isn’t that exciting, but I knew that before I got there. I was there from Thursday until Wednesday, but at least I got to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3, even though it wasn’t the best but it did provide some much needed quality time with Johnny and Orlando.

Before I went to Saskatoon I went home for a few days and I got to see my nephew! He just gets cuter everyday. And he’s a really nice baby too, not fussy or particu-lar, just like the best baby to have ever existed.

I thought this was going to be a long post catching you up on all the witty things I had to say, but again I have misjudged my writing skills.

Boo food

This cold has made me lose my appetite and its really hard to work up enough energy to go get something to eat. I really hate those people who have a cold and they’re only really sick for like one day and then they bounce back. I’ve been pretty sick for like 5 consecutive days now, and I will be at least kinda sick for another week. Not that its better today, still in the pretty sick stage. So lethargic.

I’m at the office today b/c the weather has gotten mild again and my apartment is miserable and cold and I was home all yesterday, which made me unhappy, so now I’m just sitting in the dark with my head on my desk. Enough about being sick.

I get to see my nephew on Sunday! Also my sister-in-law and my brother, but I doubt they’ve changed as much as the baby-baby. I hope I’m well enough by then to hold him and not risk getting him sick. Maybe I’ll get one of those snazzy masks that people wore during the SARS outbreak. Those were the good old days.

Nothing is getting done. My brain is completely incapable of processing intelligent linguistic thought, which is not going well for me. I really wanted to have a good outline of the syntactic half of my analysis for my MA thesis so I could present it at the conference in Saskatoon. I still have a little time, but I’m a little worried about it.

I took an online IQ test (b/c it’s the kind of crazy thing I like to do for fun) and it came out with a modest 141 and said I was a “Creative Theorist”. Maybe if I retake it at full mental capacity I’ll do better. I usually find it easy to get genius status on the online tests, which doesn’t say much, just that I have a logical mind, which probably helped a little with the math/linguistics degree. Makes sense to me. These tests never tell me I have outstanding people skills or that I’m impressively socially adept, I figure it all evens out. Oh online quizzes, the internet time waster of the early new millennium. I’m undergoing some kind of throwback, I guess.

But seriously, I have to find something to eat. I have no idea what. Most of the food vending outlets on campus are closed for the summer which means extra energy needs to be expended to locomote to somewhere people still eat. So not hungry.

Optimistic

Its time for blog recap of my weekend in Santa Barbara, California. Let’s start with how I feel right now: like crap. But its ok, I had it coming. Major league sore throat, with lots of phlegm which makes me cough, but it hurts to cough. I could describe all my symptoms, but that’s just me whining. I haven’t gotten sick for like a year (I think a year exactly) and it was time, so I’m ok with it, I just hope my brain will keep working at a satisfactory rate so that I do the mass loads of writing that need to get done this week.

A few thoughts from my trip:
I hate American money. Frickin dollar bills.
How do they fill the void left by the lack of Tim Hortons?

In the Chicago airport:
I might like America – it makes me feel thin.
They probably assume I’m one of then, oh wait, there’s a big Canadian flag on my backpack.
At least I’m not wearing something so unnecessarily unflattering.

I flew out of Ottawa Thursday morning to Chicago, to connect to LA, to finally fly to Santa Barbara. I loved all the different vegetation, they have some really beautiful trees, and I’m not really talking about the palm trees, they have the ones that shed their bark and are really smooth. On Friday I went to UCSB, got hopelessly lost on campus, finally found the building and stood around awkwardly while they were setting things ups. Watched a bunch of presentation, realized how functionalist all these people were. I’ve come to the conclusion that I like functionalists because they do very important and useful work. They collect the data and figure out the distribution of different morphemes and provide grammars on numerous little known languages. But I don’t want to be one of them. Not the data collecting part, its just that what they call their “analysis” is something I would put in the introduction of my paper. Explaining how something works in a language, because as someone who is doing generative linguistics the analysis is the underlying mechanism that connects different cross-linguistics to some kind of universal or at least an accepted structure.

Friday night I went to the beach, and just walked for a long time with my fee in the water. I saw lots of seaweed, and a few surfers. It was very nice and relaxing, made me feel like I could actually see the world again, since, for a while it wasn’t being filtered through the mess of my mind preoccupied with academic things.

On Saturday I gave my talk, and I think it went ok. I was nervous, of course, but I had gotten sunburnt from being on the beach the night before so my turning red wasn’t a big contrast from what I was looking like in general that day. I wasn’t really shaking, and I think I talked slowly enough. People told me it was a good talk, and then when I told them it was my first talk ever they changed it to “fantastic”. Everyone was really nice and encouraging.

I tried to eat a variety of Mexican food. I had this massive veggie burrito one day for lunch which had like a half cup of guacamole on it. It was interesting there because it was like a parallel to bilingual Ottawa, only the other language is Spanish instead of French. The people at the university still had class too, they’re on this quarter system (as opposed to semester) and they don’t finish till mid-June. There were crazy bike paths ALL over the campus, and you had to be careful not to walk on them b/c you would get run over.

On Saturday night we went to a party at a professors house (who also happens to be a pretty famous linguist) and there was pizza and good times. I made myself introduce myself to people and not be too shy. People whipped out the guitars and had a little ho-down, how cute. On Sunday I went to be a tourist in downtown Santa Barbara, which is actually really nice, but by this time I was sick and spend a lot of the day just sitting and people watching.

My flight home involved leaving Santa Barbara at 6:30pm to fly to Phoenix and wait for 3 hours to catch the overnight flight to Philadelphia, to wait another 3 hours to finally fly to Ottawa so that I could catch the bus and make my way home. I pretty much took yesterday off, which I hope you can all understand.

Right, so just an account of the facts. If I recall any of my painfully witty insights about the states I will be sure to share them with you.

(Always assume a certain level of sarcasm, which is often lost in written language.)

Tequila Sunrise

Half Aspie

T-3 days to Santa Barbara.

I saw SPIDERMAN 3. I really like what’s his face… smooth face blue eyes, you know, the guy who plays Spiderman. Not Topher Grace, he was Venom…. I can see his face, Tobey McGuire. Wow, I actually couldn’t recall the name. Mild anomia I suppose. Nonetheless, a very entertaining movie, I like comic book heroes. I also watched the first half of Center Stage with my aunt and cousin yesterday. Super excited to find out that they owned it.

I think the world is a little spinny and dizzy today, it doesn’t seem to want to stay still. Walking to school was more of a challenge than usual. It was even spinny when I woke up this morning. I’ve been drinking more coffee than I usually do, I think my body is getting used to the caffeine, maybe that will mean that I can drink coffee like a normal person and not crazy go nuts for hours afterwards.

Did you know that its speculated that way more boys than girls have autism b/c girls don’t show the normal symptoms? Girls natural linguistic superiority cover up the underlying disorder. So really, there might not be the boy-girl divide, just girls who get on ok without the help.

There’s also a thing called Rhythmic Movement Disorder. I found that very interesting, indeed.

The first section of my thesis is done, in first draft form. Now I’m waiting to meet with my supervisor so I can start the next section. I took all of yesterday off, hanging with the cousins, eating the good food, sitting on the comfy couches. My one cousin braided my hair in pigtails, and I was super cute. I have my moments.

My face is hot, my head feels funny, like its having a hard time staying in a normal upward position. I don’t want to go home, its cold there. Its warm here in the office. Now my hair is all crimpy and fluffy. You know milkweed? I used to love that stuff, actually, I still do, if I recall last fall when I kept playing with it on a hike through Gatineau park. I remember as a kid wanting to collect a whole bunch and stuff a pillow with it, I think I even tried it once. Its so silky and soft.

Radiohead is my soulmate

“We hope that you choke.’

Hooray for being sick and lethargic, I love it when it takes 5 times longer to complete simple task and approximately 30 seconds of prethought before I can compose a coherent answer to a casual question asked in passing in the hallway. I’ve been preparing for my FIRST CONFERENCE EVER which is next weekend in Santa Barbara. It’ll be fun to go to Cali but I’m very nervous about the actual presentation, especially since I’ve never done it before (well, in the professional sense at least).

I made the brilliant decision of have a medium coffee (which used to be the large size) from 2^nd cup this morning, you know, because I was having trouble focusing and getting down to my work. Clearly ingesting half a litre of liquid stimulant is how you get yourself to sit quietly at your desk and write a syntax paper. I hate how Microsoft Word underlines the Canadian spellings of things (colour, labour, litre, centre, etc.), and don’t tell me to change it to the Canadian spell checker, because I’ve tried that and it does NOT work. Either it resets everything and still underlies the words in question, or it doesn’t underline anything and it’s a crazy whirlwind of spelling free-for-all.

Anyone have a clever title for my MA thesis? Its on the Ojibwe inverse system. I don’t care if you don’t know what that means, just give me a title! I've asked this before, and you sit there, in front of your computer screen pondering, talking to yourself, "I'm only one person! How could I ever come up with a label worthy of theoretical linguistics?" But I'm here to tell you that you can! Anything is possible! I don’t want to use my presentation title, which is “Argument Organization in Ojibwe: A quasi-morphological approach,” but would rather have something new and catchy. I haven’t done laundry in a really long time. Its such a hassle since our machine broke and I actually have to go to a laundromat. Who wants to do that? But its getting to the point where its not a choice anymore and my sense of annoyance has no weight in the decision any longer. I especially need clean clothes to go to a conference, at least one would think.

I’ve completely lost the sense of days of the week or even time of the year. If this were last year then it would be all about exams being done, summer starting, rejoining the workforce once again. But now it’s a kind of smooth continuum of school year for the full 12 months where classes have ended but there’s still plenty of work to do and things to procrastinate from, and feel guilty about. Its all the fun of school without those pesky night classes, like the perfect situation. Or something.

My apartment is cold, they turned off the heat like a week and a half ago. I don’t think this is helping me being sick. I thought I might have had something interesting to say today, or at least could say something in a funny way, but that sense has quickly disintegrated.

I've made a huge mistake

Day Day

Ow. My neck hurts, I’ve been sleeping on it funny. I have every blanked I own (and that is also in Ottawa) including my sleeping bag on my bed right now b/c our landlords thought that it was a good idea to turn off the furnace like a week ago. It got colder. I used to like our landlords, but now they’re jerks and its frickin freezing.

Today is about Phonology, all day. I’m going to hand in my paper tomorrow, which was the original due date, although we were all given an extension until a week Monday. But I don’t want to delay finishing it any more and I have other things – like my thesis which I have to present in less than 2 weeks at a conference – to work on. I never ask for extensions. Correction, I asked for one once in fourth year only b/c other ppl had already gotten it b/c the Friday appointments with the language consultant had been cancelled and we were all one hour of data behind, so I got the extension for the same reason. I’m generally not cool with missing deadlines and being late for things, I rarely even complete something just before the deadline and usually need at least a day and a half of done-early-buffer. You can ask Eendy about that.

Anyway, back from Montreal, slightly distanced from the freak out. Fortunately I got to meet 3 students who will be in my class (out of 6, 5 not including me) starting to grad program with me. They were really nice, and it made me feel better about moving and starting over alone again. As far as I can tell I’m the youngest person of the group, but I kinda like that, its like a free success at no cost, since I didn’t do anything extra for it. Except, I did fast track through high school, but its only 4 years now anyway so its not that special.

I should be working on my Turkish data. Maybe I’ll go and come back and write a little more later.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I’m sick of long hair. I want to chop it off – who votes for chop it off? My only concern is that I’ll look like a long haired boy and then spend several months wishing my hair was long until it is again. Never happy.

Right, onto typing my new hand written pages on Turkish. Ta!

in Montreal

Why do I always do this to myself? I have this crazy masochistic need to move every few years, more commonly every year, it seems. Once I left the sound it was Langley, to Muskoka, to Toronto (for the longest stint, 3 years), to Ottawa and now I’ll be moving to Montreal in August. I say masochistic because meeting new people, getting new social networks is a very painful and awkward process for me. I’m not what you might call socially adept, unless you were being sarcastic or trying to be really nice for some odd reason.

So I’m here, in la belle province visiting my new department, feeling terrified about starting over again. But its not like I can stop. Sure, I’ll be in Montreal for 4 years, but then it will probably 2 years of a post doc somewhere else, perhaps another post doc yet another place, and then an actual job another place. Its craziness.

I know, I know, it would have been worse if I stayed in one place, I would have gone crazy, felt regret for the loss of opportunity, blah blah blah. Whatever. Just having a moment. I’m really tired. I was up early this morning and took the bus to the train station (the buses this morning were particularly moody for some reason, but what can you do). The train ride wasn’t bad, things were pretty easy to find once I got here. I’m just super tired. But I have my very own hotel room. The only time I ever had a room to myself like this was in Varanasi, but that’s hardly comparable b/c it was a hostel. In India.

I think I’m going to go to this Mexican restaurant down the street for supper, but really I kinda want to stay in and work on my Phonology building. Also the I like the U of O ling building better. Gah.

Right, ok, I’m going to take advantage of the cable TV while I have immediate access to it. Let me know if you (ie anyone) want to move to Montreal with me and be my friend. It’s a great city, I really do like it. I’m just a bit of a freak out.

Sandals from here on in

I’m in such a good mood today, things are looking up! The exam proctoring was super easy, and I was really nice to the ones who asked me questions, I tried to remember myself writing exams (as if it were that long ago). I’m getting my passport tomorrow and I can proceed with planning the trip to Santa Barbara – exciting! I have to book my ticket to Saskatoon and in May I get to see my nephew! It’s been months since I’ve seen him and he’s a different baby now, I can’t wait. I hope he doesn’t think I’m some sort of scary stranger, maybe he’ll remember me, or notice that I look like his father.

This week I’m finishing and handing in my Syntax and Phonology papers, then its hardcore thesis for the rest of the summer. I’m such a dork, I’m super excited. I’m feeling good about all my papers, at least at this exact moment, so I’m going to run with the feeling, which will hopefully turn out to be the same thing as productivity.

It’s sunny and warm and I don’t plan on wearing shoes again any time soon, I love sandal weather. Usually I don’t want till it’s this warm for sandals, but it kinda jumped from crazy slush snow season to very warm spring days.

Onto conquer syntax now!!!!

Something I stole from my sister-in-law’s blog:

(He got the fish from his cool aunt, whose name is Phinny.)

Anii!!!

Hi there. I’m back from the Sound and all the lovely field work that was had there, or rather close to there. Its weird to go home for work, of all things, but that’s what I did. So yes, super tired, don’t have a lot of time to waste, which is why I haven’t posted in forever. At 2 today I have to give an exam to the 1^st year class I TA for, they better not cheat or I’m going to take them all down, give them all 0.

I have 3 papers on the go, 2 due this week. One is almost done, for that one I really just have to write my abstract for it, which shouldn’t be too bad but I’m not very experienced with abstracts so I’m hoping I can model it after another I had help in writing.

I’m really just posting for the sake of posting, since its been so long. I don’t know what to say and I’m very distracted since I need to get back to work. Its like I’m procrastinating from my blog to do my work, but I’m pretty sure that’s allowed.

It's like a mind puzzle, and AWESOME mind puzzle

Things I bought today:

k-os -- Joyful Rebellion








the Tragically Hip -- World Container

Metric -- Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?

Donnie Darko

This was my excellent Easter treat myself to keep me motivated such that I can continue writing my 3 intense papers (one is my thesis) and studying for my exam on Friday the 13th. My recent purchases nicely complement the care package full of candy and toys I got from my family -- Easter has the best candy by far. I got k-os b/c I love Atlantis, and wanted more k-os, since I think I'm in on him. I have Metric Live it Out and though I might expand that tiny part of my that dares to be indie. I got the Hip b/c I've been thinking for a long time that I should get into them, and their new single "The lonely end of the rink" is awesome, so I got that album. Normally I'd get an older, more trusted album, but I guess I've just been doing crazy things these days.

Oh, and Donnie Darko way $9.99, so I had nothing to lose. I wanted to buy V for Vendetta (since I'm currently reading the comic the movie is based off of, thanks to my big brother and Amazon.ca) but the cheapest version was the full screen, so I'm putting it off for now.

I wanted to get some new Oasis, seeing as I only have What's the Story Morning Glory, but I don't know what album I should venture into next. If you have a suggestion, I'd love to hear it (this is partially a test to see if Ben has been keeping up with my blog, since he should have something to say here). I was also looking for some more Sufjan Stevens since I really can't get enough, but neither HMV nor Music World in the mall had the Michigan concept album, or anything else I was ready to invest in there.

Does anyone know South? Kristina sent me a few songs by them, and I really like them, so let me know if you have any suplemental information. Also, Dinah: If I were to get another Shins album, which should I go for next? If anyone has recommendations about artists with really wicked acoustic guitar I would be very interested.

I was really supposed to be shopping for dress pants to wear when I present at the conferences in May, but I'd much rather go media shopping than clothes shopping. I was successful in staying away from Chapters, however, since I have a backup of books to read already and don't need to go there right now.

Anyone familiar with Freaks and Geeks? My roommate bought the DVD set, its entertaining, with a lot of recognizeable actors, before they were recognizeable.
"Everyone knows that freak guys only date freak girls, and freak girls go all the way." Oh the 1980's, I was a small child, it wasn't actually that cuturally exciting for me at the time.

I actually have a full first draft of my phonology paper now. My supervisor was putting the pressure on when we met on Thursday, which I think has helped me get my act in gear (does that make sense? am I mixing the wrong kind of colloquialisms?), but also makes me stressed out. Its snowing again. I was looking forward to wearing my sandals and getting out on my bike but that will have to wait. It also means I can put off getting a new bike seat for a while, the current one is not super awesome.

Why, I thought I started out in this point with a coherent theme and everything, but it has disintigrated (sp?) into my usual rambling. Its a sign.