l'ennui apres midi

So the system has crashed today at the library...which actually means that I CAN'T do any work. But I can still go online - just not onto the university server.

Huh.

I was in the middle of a lovely long email to our friend who lives in Turkey and I'm kinda annoyed that I couldn't finish that. I was in a really good email-writing space - I was planning to go on to write other equally witty and thought-provoking, yet intimate emails. I just know that when I can access it again, that flow will be gone. Alas.

Friends made us dinner last night - despite the fact that it was actually our turn to make them dinner. It worked out well for us as she is a wonderful cook and both are fantastic hosts and company. They work our allotment with us so we planned and dreamed about the spring and summer gardening season.

I start teaching this week.

We think Laila might be getting hormonal - fortunately for everyone (especially Logan, who is getting confused), she's getting clipped 'n' chipped in a week...!

Loose ends

Just tidying up a loose end from an old post...

Emily Dickinson, 'It is easy to work when the soul is at play'

It is easy to work when the soul is at play --
But when he is in pain -- The hearing him put his
playthings up Makes work difficult -- then -- It
is simple to ache, in the Bone, or the Rind --
But Gimlets -- among the nerve -- Mangle
daintier -- terribler -- Like a panter in the Glove

(poem 244 in Johnson's 1955 edition)

Can't say I am or have ever been a fan of Dickinson's poetry.

Close Guantanamo!

Guantanamo Bay detention centre was opened in early 2002. That makes it 5 years old.

Five years too long.

Please go here and do what you can - Amnesty International puts it well: Guantanamo degrades us all.

not always to the swift

Marking exams...ugh.

My friend and I went to our first pilates (p'LAH-tees, not pie-LATE-ees apparently) class today. It's an 8-week course with our favourite instructor for a tenner. A nice mix in the usual work-out routine. I didn't expect it to be so tiring!

Lamb cawl for dinner - sounds exotic but is really just lamb stew ('cawl' being Welsh for 'stew'). The real highlight is Nas's home-made bread which makes any meal into comfort food. I made soda bread the other night (from The River Cottage Family Cookbook which I found in Skipton before Christmas for 1/2 price!) - it's cheater's bread, but tasty. But since it doesn't use yeast, it doesn't fill the house and heart with the right smell. Nigella Lawson writes very well about how food creates nostalgia where none should really exist. She's talking specifically about cherry pie (something distinctly American rather than British), but I think home-made bread does it for me. I adore bread and to wax philosophic about it is far too easy: bread is undeniably mysterious and amazingly simple - it also requires the kind of intimate labour that very few other foods demand. Nasser makes it with a calm assurance and tranquility that I admire. I'm sure these things transfer somehow into the food itself - yes, I loved Like Water for Chocolate - and I'm afraid that, right now, my bread would be tough and brittle no matter how long I stretched and pounded.

Things I like about my job

1. Shelving books. This sounds like jobworthiness. It's not. To be honest, having to shelve books does me more good than the collection. I have found most of the research material for the historiography issues in my thesis from shelving in the modern history section than from endless searches on the e-catalogue. Today, for example, I will be spending my lunch perusing The Writing of History by Michel de Certeau.

2. The building. It really is inspiring in that way that always seems to evoke classical music and warm cosies in my deep-down-ivory-encased academic heart. It's only in the last few years that I've begun to understand and pay closer attention to the dynamics of space. Most people, including myself, are familiar with the usual sentimental plea of appreciating natural space - all that 'stopping to smell the roses' (literally) drivel. Not until my oldest friend in the world married an aspiring architect (who continues to aspire - after all, says Dr Freud, the end of desire is death - but has achieved architect status) and I went here, did I pay much attention to the construction of space. Anyway, to make a long story short, I love this building. And I think it might love me back.

Okay, that's all I could think of - just to balance out all the days when I hate my job and don't post about it...

Stuck in my head: Death Cab for Cutie - I will follow you into the dark (I've actually had this in my head since I read about it here)

hum-erica

today was the first seminar for my 19th century american literature class. in the midst of an exercise, i overheard a student confess: 'everything i know about america i learned from...' (and here the student named a very influential film)

[i'm not being cagey - i just don't want to get dooced]

which led me to steer the discussion into a very interesting direction, based on completing the sentence:

'everything i know about america i learned from...'

my answer was the album Tricks of the Shade by the little known hip-hop band, The Goats.

NOTE: the lyrics for this album are posted on this website, and there are some definitely Not-Safe-For-Work words published here, so proceed with caution. (having just visited their site, i discovered that they are selling an mp3 version of their album to download for a pretty reasonable rate - i'm not necessarily plugging the band, but if you've taken the time to read the lyrics and are impressed, why not shell out a bit and download it? it's one of the few albums i know of that repays repeated listenings...or perhaps i'm thick and just needed to listen to it a hundred times to figure it out. either way...i like it, and if you are not of the faint-hearted, you might, too.)

I would love to hear from you all about your american awakening...it's a topic of almost endless fascination for me.

stay tuned

I'm starting to feel old every time I turn on the telly. Not that I'm becoming vaguely uncomfortable with what the kids are wearing these days or why anyone would be interested in watching [insert reality TV show here]. It's all the death.

I admit - I am as guilty as the next person for my taste in crime drama (which only worsened when I started studying Gothic literature): I can happily sit through the scientifically-squeaky-clean crime scenes of everyone's favourite forensics drama, languish for hours with the ever-so brusque Brisco and the forever young and sexy (female) DAs of Law & Order. I can even sit through the spin-offs if nothing else is on. I'll watch Bones, if only to prove to myself over and over that acting wasn't what kept Angel on the air for five seasons. I've seen more bodies since those shows started than my entire previous experience of action-flicks. Nine times out of ten, we mock the shows - they are just great for TV-karaoke. Seriously lacking in narrative or character depth, they defy the viewer to formulate a reason for enjoying them other than plain old Freudian fascination with other people's dirty secrets, voyeuristic pleasure of being behind that yellow tape instead of being admonished to 'keep walking' and blatantly lied to with 'there's nothing to see here', and just a smidgen of self-righteous smugness.

I love 'em.

But what is with the horror? As a sensitive soul (Planet Earth makes me cry), I've had difficulty watching Unexplained Mysteries; now, I'm supposed to be entertained on an average weekday night by (admittedly, AA-15) horror programs? It's turning into some ghastly repeat of my childhood: happily singing along to the end credits of Today's Special and suddenly being glued to the carpet with fear as the freaky therumin-theme of Dr Who filled the room.

I note they've brought over Intelligence to match the Can-con of Da Vinci's Inquest. I wish they'd brought over Little Mosque on the Prairie. I caught 10 minutes of the pilot before I flew home after Christmas. How is it?

you+are+a

today at work was so boring. so much so, that i found it necessary to study on the job in order to liven things up a bit. (what did emily dickinson say about the soul-at-play? bonus points to the geek who can find the relevant text and finish the sentiment...)

apostrophe is a really neat poem/online poject. (c)lick away, clicksters, and let the era of posthuman poetry reign!

egad, i geek.

Baroness Felicia von Kittenstein and the Zeppelin

...are the nicknames I've given my cats.

I'm home! Just back from drinks with my wonderful Leeds friend at our wonderful local. I managed to get home early Thursday morning (about 3.00am) by running from the plane, dashing through customs control (thank you residency visa!), and hoofing it to the underground. I made the last train out of London with 30 minutes to spare. The flight was okay - the seat beside me was taken by a lovely woman on her way to Rome. I ended up giving her the book I'd finished (Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden - fantastic if anyone's looking for some new Canadian fiction) and she gave me a hug and wished me a wonderful future. I hope she has an amazing stay in Italy and gets home safely. I very much enjoyed talking to her.

Flights are strange that way. I like them - they feel at the best of times like a kind of pilgrimage: what better way to spend the time than telling and listening to stories?

Tomorrow it's back to The Thesis. Today we woke up very late and spent the first few hours cleaning our room of junk, unworn/old clothing and such which all went to the charity shop down the road (where we found our friend a £1 squash racquet). It's easier to breathe without all that excess over my head at night.

Currently reading: The In-between World of Vikram Lall by MG Vassanji
Currently watching: Law and Order: SVU and Buffy, season 6

Snow and other revelations

It finally snowed! Okay, there's none left on the ground, but at least it was snowing. It's not that this was the first green Christmas that I've ever experienced, (tho it was by far the warmest), but it seemed particularly eerie this year. Maybe it's just hang-over from An Inconvenient Truth, or a pervasive national guilt about dropping out of Kyoto - either way, I'm pretty sure stories that start with 'when I grew up the snow was so high...' are no longer exaggerations - or the product of an increasingly faulty memory (blame the dissertation, not age!).

And I've become comfortable with the fact that I like Beyonce's 'Irreplaceable'. Even outside of the gym. I may have to put it on my little MP3 player for those chilly walks to campus...

In other news, I'm still in Canada. My teeth turned against me suddenly the night before Nas and I were due to fly home.

Changing my flight: $228
Emergency root canal: $700
Incredibly powerful painkillers and assorted Tylenols: 6-7

The relief when my gorgeous, wonderful, lovely dentist finally gave me a shot of local anaesthetic: priceless

Believe me when I say I have stories about British dental care - at least my own experiences of it - but at least when I called my British dentist with my emergency last spring, I was in the office and he'd frozen the offending tooth toot sweet. The dental clinics here at homesweethome list 'emergency appointments' in their yellow-page adverts but when I called the receptionists calmly explained that their 'emergency appointments' were filled up for the day. Huh?!

Thankfully mum's dentist - who shall henceforth be known as the enamel angel - agreed to shift round her schedule and see me that day (the day I should have been on the aeroplane home!).

Other revelations: Christmas is great, my family is amazing; winter just isn't the same and whatever happened to seasons?

Oh yes, Catan is a great game - particularly when you've friends like ours to play. Thanks all for a great holiday - I miss you all already.

And - how 'bout a Simcoe website to go with the Simcoe party? I know a pretty amazing web-designer...