Fourth Wall

New Blog

2008-05-18T13:31:00.002-05:00

I've talked to a few of you about this (and I've been thinking about it for a year or so), but la de da da, I'm moving to a new blog... you can find it here.

Check there for recipes, knitting, and general playing-house-ness. I've had a good time here, but it was high time for a change. At the very least the title was off, as I'm no longer planning on being a playwright.

I AM SO BORED.

2008-05-17T19:33:00.002-05:00

I'm still sick, I have no fun reading, and there isn't even a deck of cards in this apartment. How do I entertain myself through another day sick abed, without poking KB every five minutes to say, "I'm BORED!"?

ADDENDUM: So far I have completed a NY Times (Daily) Crossword in like 20 minutes, eaten a candy bar that was annoying me because it disturbed the symmetry of my desk drawer, and poked KB about a gazillion times. His internal organs depend on you!

Three Thoughts

2008-05-15T22:13:00.003-05:00

Yes, I'm running a fever. (But all those blood tests they did came back fine.) Yes, KB thinks I'm safely in bed resting. No, I can't sleep.

Those weren't the three thoughts.

1). I've been missing my sewing machine of late, and this store isn't helping. The great deterrent to pursuing my sewing any further has been the hideous prints that prevail at the craft store closest to my sewing machine (The JoAnn's in Daly City, CA)... these prints may inspire me. Or they would, if I had money. Goldfish!

2) Heather, when I'm not sick we should make these mini pies in-a-jar. Somehow they remind me of you. Complicated fiddly desserts = Heather? Perhaps.

3) Celticist Roommate has gone home to study Greek, teach Latin, and decide what to do with her life. I envy her courage to defer her decision for a year, and I already miss her terribly. I was just going through old papers from last term, and found a bunch of old quotes from when we were just getting to know one another. Kels, these are for you:

Michael: Alice, have you heard of Cthulu?
Alice: Yes...
Michael: Have you heard of Fiddler on the Roof?
Kelly: Go on...

Peter: (on The Lion in Winter) It takes place at Christmas... and there's family tension, and backstabbing...
Kelly: I like Christmas! And backstabbing!

Alice: (trying to watch a playoff game on the mlb.com website) Baseball will not be as interesting when androids rule the world.

(As Alice prepares for KB to come over to make pancakes-- an event we now consider the first date-- Kelly pages through her 1960's cookbook, The Vegetarian Epicure. She finds a picture of a man and woman making pancakes.)
Kelly: Look! It's you and Tristan... only you're both better looking.
Alice: I'm so glad I'm better looking than a line drawing from the '60s.

Kelly: (On pick-up lines) "I like that book too... let's make out!"

One Other Thing

2008-05-12T09:54:00.002-05:00

For those of you in Toronto, I'm reading at a service for the 635th anniversary of Julian of Norwich's "showings" at Church of the Redeemer on Bloor & Avenue. (7:00 pm, Tuesday May 13.) The service has been arranged by one of my professors, and it consists of a talk on the visions, a reading of the complete short text, and some hymns.

I told him I had experience as a lector and he gave me some long bits. Now I'm going to go try to feel better enough that I don't throw up/faint at the lectern.

Radio Silence

2008-05-11T09:37:00.002-05:00

More procrastinating on the Chicago Trip post, mostly because I've been sick in three distinct ways and Tristan's grandmother has passed away, so things are up in the air. In the madness I have misplaced the cable/lace sock I was knitting in Chicago, although I admit I haven't had time to go to library lost & found to ask about it. I'm waiting until my undergraduate friend is working circulation so that I don't need to explain to a stranger why I'm looking for a knitting project in the library.

I don't expect to be around for about a week; there's too much else to be done, and I plan on putting some of the energy I use here into non-audience-driven writing projects.

2008-05-07T23:32:00.004-05:00

There's a long post about Chicago coming, but for now I'd just like to share today's revelation and the destruction of a childhood assumption: Chronicle Books has nothing to do with the S.F. Chronicle.

That is all. You may now laugh at me.

2008-04-27T23:26:00.003-05:00

I wrote a longish blog-post this morning with an involved joke involving my addiction to medical blogs, police codes, leash laws, and the 19 year old emo boys ("The Mini Mariachis") living across the hall. We had been having recycling wars with them of late, as we overheard them telling potential subletters, "yeah, we just put extra stuff in theirs. They never do it to us, so it's okay."

Thus ensued a few weeks of me sneaking out to leave presents of tampon boxes, nylon cases, etc. in their recycling bin. Minor victory was achieved when I heard one say to the other,

"Dude, is that yours?"
"Nah."
"Dude, man, that's totally yours."

ANYWAY, earlier this week I went out to put laundry in the wash and discovered that they had, in fact, piled their recycling bins and a broken desk chair ON TOP of ours in order to create space for moving. Never mind the plenty of other possible places to move your recycling bins... like, oh, inside? One of them caught me, in my PJs, starting to take a picture of it for the blog. Celticist Roommate and Italian History roommate both fled the scene and left me to a) scold him and b) die a thousand deaths.

As of about 5:00 this afternoon, however, the post I was writing is no longer applicable for the last boy has moved out and we now have female subletters across the hall. At about the same time of day they were BLASTING "I Would Do Anything For Love" which, while it always reminds me of how Colin & Nora got engaged, is nevertheless quite distressing.

I will have to leave the roommates to update me on the first week with the new neighbors, however, as I am running away to Chicago and will not be back until May 5th.

Too bad the boys moved out, though. Now what am I going to do with my horde of Tampax boxes?

PS: I woke up yesterday and overheard the two roommates discussing a surprise Toronto Transit strike. "Well, thank goodness I don't need to go to the airport anytime soon," I thought to myself. Then, promptly: "Crap. Chicago." But legislature met on Sunday and ordered them back to work, so it should be fine.

PPS: Happy Easter to those of you on the Orthodox calendar!

What Are you Doing Today, Dear?

2008-04-22T07:49:00.002-05:00

Goals for the day:

1) Have a good breakfast.
2) Hide in a nook in the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies and work with the primary sources for my Devotional Lit paper
3) Finish my annotated translation for Welsh
4) Drink much tea.

Yesterday started out extremely exciting (note sarcasm) with cleaning out the produce bins in the fridge, and ended with me falling asleep reading EB White as Tristan worked at my desk. In the middle it was quite exciting because I learned that I passed the MA exam, and then Tristan took me out for a light dinner and drinks, where I rediscovered my deep love of a Strongbow cider with blackcurrant on a hot day.

I'm quite sure I couldn't have passed without your prayers, thoughts, and crossed fingers (at the very least to prevent me from panicking myself into failure), so-- Thank You.

Theme for the Next Week

2008-04-20T07:51:00.002-05:00

One morning a few months ago, during a particularly busy time, when I awoke I didn't dare get dressed: I knew that my only hope of getting an overdue piece written was to stay in bed—which is where I did stay. I told my wife it was a slight sore throat, but it was a simple case of voluntary confinement. It was the first time I had ever taken to bed in the full blush of health simply because I didn't dare face the economic consequences of putting my pants on.

-E.B. White, One Man's Meat

End-of-Semester Mad Libs

2008-04-16T22:18:00.002-05:00

From Celticist Roommate:
"I wish I had been more [adjective] about [course title] over the course of the semester."

I think the MA exam went alright. I'll know Monday.

We have a mystery smell in our refrigerator eluding the best efforts of Celticist Roommate, Italian Late Medieval History Roommate, and myself.

Our knives have started to disappear. I blame CR's elf, or perhaps her boyfriend.

I almost--ALMOST--kicked Kolya out of my house last night for asserting (in regards to "The Irish Problem") "The problem is that both sides are right. The Irish are right, as the English should be Catholic. But the English are right, as they should be ruling Ireland."

Our large and expanding collection of tupperware-like plastic containers may be plotting our downfall.

Things we have learned from the U(C) blog network this week:
1) Don't lurk. If you actually know someone and you're reading their blog, let them know.
2) Assume that people are lurking.

I have one hour to get up the courage to go see my Social History professor about my final paper. Then I get to spend the afternoon in the library. The only hope of survival is the wearing of cute skirts and heeled shoes for the next week to try to convince myself that I'm doing a real job.

The first passage on the PhD exam was about an Italian fellow getting very worked up and weeping while recounting the Fall of Rome. CR and I are now in the habit of saying in unison, "oh, Rome!" and putting our hands to our foreheads in a woeful manner. Time will only tell how long KB and her boyfriend will put up with this behavior.

How do I spell "colo(u)r" for a paper written for an Iowan professor who has been living in Canada for decades? I'm leaning towards the British/Canadian spelling, to go along with my threat to write the entire literary analysis in the voice of a 1930's Jesus College Celtic Literary Scholar.

Oh man oh man.

2008-04-14T07:40:00.005-05:00

I've been writing posts in my head for about a week, but haven't had the time to really sit down and draft them out for you all. So what is there to say?

Tristan brought me flowers to mark the end of MA Latin class and brighten up our apartment for the days of studying ahead.

Celticist Roommate is looking for a job teaching Latin at a private High School. "Wow," she said last night, looking up from her laptop, "this one really is rural. It's at the corner of 'Walden' and 'Thoreau'"

She also may be the only one who understands me. Last night she looked up from a sock pattern I was working on and said, "Alice, is knitting how you get your math fix?"

Finally, I have my three hour must-pass-by-September-to-get-my-MA Latin exam today. I awoke to this:

The exam is from one to four, EST. Tristan is coming over to make pancakes for me. I don't handle exam stress well and am going to spend the morning trying not to throw up said pancakes.

Triumph!

2008-04-04T18:03:00.007-05:00

(I'm not sure what sort of victory exclamation I will have when I finish the shawl.)

Two very, very large (size 13, wide) cabled socks:

Dinner tonight is split pea soup and biscuits, with a side of homework

and Celticist Roommate searching YouTube for the The Rescuers Down Under pea soup scene.

(And KB watching "DinoRiders" on the same.)

Domestic Bliss

2008-04-03T18:13:00.002-05:00

This side of the door: critical studies of Middle English devotional literature, my favorite mechanical pencil, and knitting in progress.

That side of the door: KB (who wants to remind you all that his given name is Tristan) and the noises of dinner being made.

Wafting under the door: the scent of bacon.

Life is good.

Victory!

2008-04-03T06:15:00.006-05:00

Hurrah, I finished the second sock!

Given that I completed the first in a week in December, it really was about time.

(I call it, "the Grad Student, in her natural environment")

In other knitterly news, my colleague Lady Octavia has a post describing Tuesday's madness in greater detail, and some good pictures.

Ta-ta for now, folks... I have to go summarize articles for my Social History course. One of the articles on mystics/contemplatives is both relevant to my paper on virgin martyrs, and has broken my brain, perhaps permanently.

Whee!

2008-04-02T09:06:00.003-05:00

Sadly, this is a post without pictures because I was kinda spacy yesterday and forgot my camera.

I haven't been writing about knitting of late because everything I have knit has turned stupid and had to be ripped out. I finally got up my courage to go back to the never-ending Clapotis shawl earlier this week, and I can see the end in sight (especially as I've made early-mornings dedicated knitting-for-my-sanity time). This morning I wound the LAST SKEIN into a ball as I brewed coffee. I feel a little like the medieval scribes: "here ends the first book of the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, thanks be to God, thanks be to God". I don't lack love for the knitting of the Clapotis... I just want to wear it before it gets too warm to do so.

Starting up again has gotten me back on track with my other knitting projects, I note, because the long needles for the Clapotis are really not appropriate if you, say, are going to go sit in a crowded theatre on your campus and listen to the Yarn Harlot.

The babies were cute, I talked to people who are NOT MEDIEVALISTS (which I sorely needed), I made some knitting friends, and I made progress on both my own sock and KB's second birthday sock (yes, his birthday was February 26th, shut up-- it's been hibernating ever since I ran out of yarn in a pub at another student's birthday celebration), and her speech on the benefits of knitting for our patience and concentration made me feel entirely validated in the time I take from memorizing Latin verbs and thinking about Celtic saints to make things far more tangible. (And if you think of the number of people who will appreciate really nicely made hand knit socks as opposed to the number of people who will appreciate your ability to, say, put together a presentation on sadistic eroticism in Middle English saints' lives EVEN WHEN that wasn't the point of your paper abstract, I think the first group is significantly higher.)

And I was THIS CLOSE to the Yarn Harlot! I'm glad I didn't say anything to her, though, because that way I didn't spend the rest of the evening wondering if she thought I was annoying. Besides, it might disturb her teenagers to learn that someone this close to their own age thinks their mother is cool.

(I do sympathize with them, however, in the "my-parent-wrote-a-book-I-will-never-be-able-to-explain" category.)

PS: I know that KB is a keeper because he thinks Tricoteuses Sans Frontières is "awesome". I was pretty certain he was a keeper because whenever I get really low and think I can't do anything right, he adds "your knitting" to reasons he thinks I'm smart, but this clinched it.

PPS: Steph, if you ever run into this post, my roommate and I ENTIRELY sympathize with the "mistaking a chocolate sliver for a comma" problem.

PPPS: As much as I want to go cavort with non-medievalist knitters, I need to remember that when I say, "I study medieval religious history, because that's where the money is," not everyone is going to understand that I'm being facetious.

PPPPS: I concluded, while winding the yarn into a ball by hand, that for Christmas/my next birthday mama is getting me a swift, and KB is getting me a ball winder.

Conversations With The Assistant Director

2008-03-28T07:36:00.002-05:00

(On the dangers of burnout and the importance of the summer.)

D: If you do go [to London], don't take anything Medieval with you.
A: Well, there's plenty Medieval *there*.
D: Alice... go to the Tate.

***

And in the "Blogging Facebook" category, I'm completely at a loss when it comes to writing a response to the following message:

Sorry to bother you. I found you in a search for "papist" as religion, only you came up. I also go to U of T. Just wanted to say I enjoyed your choice. - (Random Undergrad)

Clearly my sense of humor has been misinterpreted. I am now tempted to change it to "Chalice Chipper" JUST BECAUSE. (Yes, I'm just a tiny bit wicked.)

Four Things: March 25, 2007

2008-03-25T16:33:00.003-05:00

1) It's raining. My only hope is that it will help the snow melt, as opposed to freezing on the sidewalks.

2) I have a presentation to give tomorrow in my 4:00 class. It is titled "Sadistic Eroticism in The Katherine Group". I did not title my presentation and I fear my classmates will be somewhat disappointed, since it is really about meditation and memory practice in reading lives of virgin martyrs.

3) Yesterday, I officially accepted my offer of admission to my PhD program.

4) KB--I mean, Tristan-- is coming over to make me Shepherd's Pie for dinner. So life can't be all bad. (Although he is a little peeved that I told you Chicagoans that he's scared of you.)

Orders of Business, II

2008-03-24T07:09:00.005-05:00

(Apologies for the editing; I don't know what it does to the RSS feed I didn't know I had.)

1) Carolyn quite astutely points out that I meant May 3rd and 4th, but I take it you all knew what I meant. Thank you for the offers of hospitality (and Aidan: oh, poor Myfanwe!)-- I will, of course, keep you updated.

2) That's it; I'm cutting my hair when the weather gets warmer. Aidan & Heather have convinced me to donate it-- all you had to do is mention children, of course. I was so vain about my long hair as a child. (Goodness only knows why, since I hated to keep it brushed.)

3) KB is disturbed by the number of people who know him only as Kilt Boy and would like to be referred to by his given name of Tristan from now on. I think he was a little worried that people would call him "Kilt Boy" to his face in Chicago, aside from his concerns about false advertising when he is not, in fact, wearing the kilt.

He is scared of meeting people in Chicago, particularly the people at Calvert House. He is afraid Cameron will beat him up. He is also afraid that the Viking will taunt him for being a less manly medievalist.

All of these anxieties, of course, pale before his fear of the possibility of meeting Larry & Co in November.

4) Carolyn wonders if having a cute short haircut would ruin the "trying to fight vanity" aspect of cutting my hair. That's a risk I'm willing to take.

5) My weekend off was lovely, thank you for asking. I did spring cleaning (to The Hold Steady's Separation Sunday, which seemed an appropriate soundtrack), went to church a lot, read for fun, and then tCR and I had people over and we made a delicious Easter dinner accompanied by a Pinot Gris from Alsace:

6) My granddad is getting a pacemaker put in tomorrow. According to Grandma, one of his doctors is "New School" and the other is "Old School". I know it's not strictly slang, but I am a little disturbed by the idea of my grandma using the phrase "Old School".

7) It snowed last night. I am really homesick to be right here:

8) I remain unconvinced in re: my professor's unwillingness to eat me, fried in butter or no.

Some Orders of Business

2008-03-20T07:37:00.002-05:00

1) The issue of the haircut continues to frustrate me. Every once in a while I get really frustrated (especially now that it is down to the small of my back and too heavy to hold in a clip) and want to cut it off, but then I see how long it is and think it's pretty, but then I wonder if I should cut it off to fight against vanity, and maybe I should think about donating it since I totally have enough to donate and have some left for myself, but maybe I have too many split ends blah de blah blah I have good problems.

2) After all, I do not have advanced ovarian cancer. KB and I watched Wit last Saturday, and I ask you all to remind me the next time he wants to watch a movie with someone dying of a horrible disease that I am a hypochondriac.

3) We're almost set up with places to stay for Chicago... does anyone have space, either for the two of us, or just for KB (I can probably always crash at Steph's if necessary) for the 3rd and 4th of March? I travel bearing Chocolate...

4) I will be away from my computer from around 1:30 tomorrow, for as long as I last over the Easter weekend. I'm hoping for sometime Monday. I'm taking a rest from anything Medieval related but I know I won't feel rested if I spend the entire time browsing Cute Overload. May your Easter Vigil be giggly and sleep-deprived with the best.

5) For my two or so Haberdasher'd readers: Happy Purim, eat a hamentash or three for me.

And now, I must run or my very French Professor for Social History will fry me in garlic butter and serve me to her toddler.

In Which I Almost Have a Heart Attack Not Related to Biscuits & Gravy

2008-03-09T12:59:00.007-05:00

So I was sitting in a carrel in the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies Library, as one does of a Friday morning, taking a practice MA-level Latin exam when Kilt Boy stopped by to say hello. I took a short break to talk to him, and was about to turn back to the exam when I looked up to see Margaret running towards us, water bottle in hand.

"Is the library on fire?" I thought to myself. "Wouldn't she have her books, if it were?"

She was out of breath when she arrived, and I wondered if someone had died. "I just thought you guys would want to know," she said, "admissions letters... and rejection letters... are in our boxes. Well, I don't know about everyone, but I saw letters in your boxes."

Kilt Boy grabbed my hand and looked at me with some anxiety-- admissions decisions being something of no small import for our relationship-- and Margaret apologized as she returned to her class. Getting decisions this early is unprecedented. They've always waited for the results of the April MA Latin exam. I'd had a week of rejections from other programs, and Toronto was my last hope-- and I was pretty certain I couldn't handle another rejection.

I sent KB up to the Centre to get both of our letters, and I sat down on the floor in front of the Breviaries hoping to find something to meditate on (it was clearly ridiculous to consider doing the practice exam at this point). It felt like it took him forever to come back, and we opened our letters in the stacks of the library. In all honesty, I didn't get much further than "I am happy to inform you" before I made a happy noise and couldn't read the letter anymore because of the hug I was getting from the boy.

"Okay," I said, once I had verified through his reticent Canadian exterior that he, too, had an acceptance, "let's forget Latin and go celebrate."
"Dear God, yes," he replied.

Unfortunately, once we left the library, giggling and giddy, we realized that we hadn't the foggiest idea where we were going-- so finally, I said, "Over Easy is open until four-- let's go get pancakes."

"I like the way you think," he responded, and we were off, KB laughing at random intervals the entire way. Adrenaline makes you kinda giddy like that. When I pointed this out to him, he said, "Well, why shouldn't I be? We're two young, handsome, brilliant medievalists just accepted to the top program in our field, and we're going to eat pancakes. I like it."

After lunch, we came out into the faintest beginnings of the weekend's snowstorm and found ourselves in the Indigo bookstore browsing Children's books.

So, yes, that was my weekend and work has been shot ever since. We eventually dragged Platonic Boyfriend off to check his letter, and then had a midday half-pint to celebrate his acceptance. Because apparently our little trio is "pieces not sold separately", as Celticist Roommate put it.

("You three do come as a matched set," said the ex-Marine PhD candidate. "You're so cute together, I want to take you home and put you on my mantelpiece.")

(The half-pint, following half a carafe of coffee at Over Easy, was a mistake. We were attending the annual Etienne Gilson lecture and I spent much of the fascinating talk about Albertus Magnus and St. Tommy A wanting to go to the bathroom and drawing cartoons of sheep.)

I'm sure you're probably wondering about some of the other characters mentioned on this here blog-- Celticist Roommate was also accepted, although she tried to drive us all mad by not opening her letter for hours (HOURS!!). So was Margaret, and it took 24 hours of trying not to step on one another's feelings to figure it out.

There are some disappointments, of course, although not many, and I'm going to miss my long-haired, ear-ringed, wet-puppy-dog-like Welsh buddy next year.

So I've been procrastinating all weekend making my PhD student wish list. Number one on the list is a good magnifying glass, so I can stop making myself blind with footnotes, dictionaries, and eventually, palaeography.

ITEMS: One, Two, Three

2008-03-04T00:35:00.002-06:00

Item One: When I can get my act together, I go to the parish run by the Oratorians for a Latin N.O. mass. Maybe forty percent of the women in attendance cover their heads for the service. There is an old woman somewhat notorious both among the Centrefolk who attend the Oratory masses and the seminarians who live there for wearing a mantilla that consists of a lacy representation of Our Lady of Fatima appearing to the three children. KB's little Anglican soul was immensely disappointed when she was nowhere to be found the first time he came with us. He accompanied me yet again this past Sunday, however, and there she was sitting in the pew right across the side aisle from us.

Being in close proximity, however, meant that I got a good view of her mantilla as she returned from the communion rail. It does not say "Fatima". It says, "Lourdes".

This opens two possibilities. Perhaps we were mistaken, and her mantilla has always said "Lourdes." Perhaps, however, (and this is a thought that chills to the bone,) there are TWO marian mantilla ladies, each with mantillas from a separate miracle sight.

KB has informed me that I may in no way purchase or knit a mantilla with an image of Our Lady of Walsingham. (He ruins all my fun. When we went to the ROM on Friday to see the dinosaurs, he would simply not accept that adopting a juvenile sauropod (like that on display-- it had a lot of growing up to do) would be a perfect way to keep weeds down in the back yard. The problem, he pointed out, is that they do grow up and he wasn't sure the neighbors for three doors down would much appreciate his tail in their gardens. I counter that Clifford the Big Red Dog's (tm, probably) neighbors got on just fine.)

Item Two: Last night I had a nightmare that the conference for which I am writing an abstract wanted only the title of the paper, and I had to make it compelling in under twenty words. I was simultaneously relieved and terrified both in the dream and upon waking.

Item Three: I think I may be writing about the Katherine Group Middle English texts just so I can cite Tolkien in an academic manner.

How Vegetarians Give Themselves Heart Attacks

2008-03-01T08:16:00.004-06:00

1) Go to the store and wander the aisles until you find the "fake meat" section. (Hint: it's often by the produce, but in the old HP Produce it was above the yogurt.) Buy a package of fake breakfast sausage patties.

2) Go home, make biscuits. This step I contracted out to Kilt Boy, who gamely agreed to help with this experiment in the vegetarian recreation of an American diner dish he'd never had.

He did it like this:

Phillips Matriarch's Baking-Powder Biscuits
1 c Flour
2 T shortening (we use butter)
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1/3 c milk

Blend shortening with sifted dry ingredients. Stir milk quicly with flour. The dough should be soft but not sticky. Toss lightly on floured board and roll dough 1/2'' thick. Cut with a biscuit cutter or glass. Bake in a hot oven* for 12-15 minutes.

3) After your befuddled kitchen assistant has placed the biscuits in the oven, melt some butter in a skillet and heat four of the "sausage" patties. Cook until browned. You may hope that some little bits of the sausage will stick to the pan in shallow imitation of their models, but you will hope in vain. When cooked, place on a pan and try to keep them warm.

4) Now begin making a milk version of what I call "Dad's Emergency Gravy" because the basic recipe was explained to me as part of an "I have a kitchen emergency" phone call* as I stood in the aisle of the 53rd St Co-op.

Add 3 T butter, or thereabouts, to the same skillet. When it has melted, put in 2 T of flour. Enjoy the scent of toasty, beautiful, roux... I do every time. If it's too dry, add a bit more butter. When it's brown and lovely, add one cup milk while stirring briskly (I eventually ended up adding about 2 c milk, but that's because I started too early and had to keep it wet while the biscuits baked. Cut up one of the "sausages" into small bits and mix into the gravy. Add salt, pepper, and (because I am my father's daughter and the fake meat has less flavor), cayenne pepper to taste.

5) Split your freshly baked biscuits in half, and top with gravy. Serve remaining "sausages" on the side (hint: fake meat is always better with ketchup). Revel in having satisfied one of your few meat cravings. Wonder if it is appropriate to have done so on a Friday in Lent. Try not to think about the fact that the meal is, in fact, butter and flour topped with butter and flour. Serves 2-3, depending on size of biscuit, appetite, and whether or not you serve it with a side of fried eggs.

Especially good as a late dinner after a trip to see the dinosaur fossils at the Royal Ontario Museum.

(I'm recording this recipe not only for your entertainment, but because it keeps me from working on the conference abstract I have to do today. See how I love you?)
___
*We often interpret this as 350 because we have a very sensitive smoke detector, but it's probably meant to be more around 400.
** Actually, it was Vee's kitchen emergency, but I didn't know how to make gravy, either. So we called Dad.

In Which the Latin Clicks

2008-02-27T10:20:00.003-06:00

(This is probably going to bore everyone except Steph, Caelus, and the Celticist Roommate to tears. Fair warning.)

My MA class is full of strong Latinists. Some have over twelve years of the language under their belts. I am not one of these students. I have 1.6667 academic years* (I dropped the third quarter) of Latin at Chicago, and was a pretty mediocre student because I was lazy about memorizing, almost never prepared (until Dmitri and I started studying together, but then we were lazy and relying on online dictionaries), and trusted in my instincts from three years of the chant choir and eleven years of Spanish. I know I'm good at languages-- my Welsh abilities prove that I'm talented with at least one difficult language-- but Latin is a struggle, and an ever more frustrating struggle because it is a language that I want to love.

Em the younger (the Catholic one, for those of you keeping score at home) assured me, all through August and September, that one day my Latin would "click" and I would realize that I actually do know this language. But it wasn't happening, and it wasn't happening, and it wasn't happening, and I wanted to hit my head against the wall because the simplest Latin-- say, that inscribed above the altar at the oratory-- remained a puzzle I couldn't solve. This was true, at least until this past Shrove Tuesday, when I was checking the mass times on their website and it read as if it were English, "my house will be called a house of prayer".

So, yay me, I can read Vulgate Latin when all the words are words I know. This is actually progress, which makes me quite happy until I begin beating my head against Hugh of St. Victor and he makes me want to die-- at least until today, when an unfamiliar verb proved to me that I am, actually, getting better at it. "I think that's a second person present verb," I thought to myself, "'vilipendo, vilipendare?' But wait! It's in an 'ut' clause, so it's probably subjunctive! vilipendo, vilipendere!**"

It's not in my Classical dictionary, but it is in Whitaker's Words: vilipendo, vilipendere: despise, slight. A small victory, but one which proves that I am getting better at looking carefully at the syntax and at the morphology, rather than flying by the intuitive seat of my pants. The next step, of course, is turning these little victories into motivation to spend more time studying the boring memorization stuff.

IN OTHER NEWS: a whole bunch of Chicago girls were in town visiting Em the Elder. We had a lovely dinner on Saturday night for which I made dessert: poached pears, chocolate sauce, and ice cream. Em enjoyed reliving her math major days with Amanda, who is doing math at MIT, and there were many references to Amanda's obsession with prime numbers, and Em's childhood prejudice against the same. The best part, however, came later.

Amanda: I do, in fact, know someone who got married on March 14th, at 1:59 pm.*** And this man has reproduced!

There was much approving of Kilt Boy, and there is other exciting news from the New York faction which involves knitting itty-bitty hats, and sweaters, and booties...

*Taken out to the fourth decimal place, like a U Chicago GPA.
** No comments on how I should have realized that it's a compound on pendo, pendere allowed.
*** 3.14159, for those who have to think about it for a minute, as I did.

Latest Scholarly Discovery: Century-Old Question Answered

2008-02-22T18:49:00.002-06:00

From my Religious History Reading Group: What would Augustine have as a tattoo?

"Mater".

In other news, KB and I will be in Chicago from the 28th of April to the 5th of May (that is, arriving right after Orthodox Easter and Passover). So if anyone has a couch to be crashed upon for a few days...

(KB says he's not bringing the kilt. "It's immensely heavy," he says. Wimp.)

THIS JUST IN

2008-02-19T20:46:00.003-06:00

So, yesterday was this fake holiday, "Family Day," made up by the Government of Ontario, and a whole bunch of museums and so forth tried to benefit by adding special family-friendly activities. KB and I were much amused, in our Saturday morning reading of the Globe and Mail over breakfast (he came over and made me scones!) to discover that the Royal Ontario Museum had decided to mark the day by unveiling "Gertie," a 90-ft "balloonosaurus" as a "girlfriend" to their resident large dino fossil.

The subsequent, non-family-appropriate jokes are left as an exercise to the reader.

So I was on the phone with Tricky this afternoon, procrastinating on Chapter 9 of Hugh of St. Victor, and I recounted this event. He lost no time in getting the joke, and was quite distressed by it.

"You know," I sad, "neither of us really went so far as *imagining* a possible scenario."
"Well," he replied, "I just really *like* dinosaurs. Oh, shoot, wait, no..."

...

Cwino, Cwino, Cwino

2008-02-19T15:55:00.003-06:00

I'm feeling much better today, thank you for asking. As of Friday, I can remove my own boots! Another example: As of Friday, I don't need to be picked up out of bed "like a little rag doll" (Kilt Boy's words, not mine). (Technically, I've been able to get myself out of bed every day except the day I fell, but it was, and still is, much less painful to have help.) Today, however, is the first day that I haven't had the pain in the back of my mind all the time. Trying to get comfortable in bed remains one of the most difficult things (really, it's a lost cause), as does opening heavy doors and picking things off the ground, but today is the first day since Friday that I've seen real improvement.

The cold of winter, however, is always hard on my back as my muscles tense up in a sad attempt to stay warm, so being outside is quite difficult, as my poor bruised* muscles will start having little spasms. Today's low is supposed to be -13C, and with yesterday's rain having frozen on the sidewalks, I was told that even if I had wanted to go into campus from where I'm catsitting, I would have been strictly forbidden from doing so. This means that today's attempt at productivity involves going through bibliographies from the few sources I have for my Social History paper, looking them up on the library catalog, and then noting their call numbers for reference when I return to campus.

This may be the most mind-numbing task I have yet performed under the guise of Humanities research. It's mindless data entry, as (this is really good news and I shouldn't be complaining) so far every compilation of British charters I have wanted to look at has, indeed, been in the library system... so I haven't even had the excitement of the Inter Library Loan! (It will come, however, with the secondary sources, which are far more specifically Welsh in scope.)

I am, of course, doing all this because I am assiduously procrastinating on the next task for my other paper, which is to read The Book of Margery Kempe. I do not think that Margery Kempe is a transgressive,** proto-feminist laywoman. I think that, were she living today, she would be one of those little church ladies with sixteen pamphlets on Our Lady of Fatima and a rosary in a ziploc bag*** who write twenty-paged single-spaced letters to the archbishop about liturgical discrepancies. She'd probably pass out monthly handouts about the latest from Medjugorje.****

Other bad news: KB got a phone call from his credit card company yesterday, saying that they'd flagged some unusual activity. We rolled our eyes and assumed it was our tickets to Chicago, although it had been some time since that purchase. No such luck, however; it was indeed credit card fraud, which is unnerving even if the company is removing those purchases from his balance.

In entirely different news, for Nemo and Caelius: On Sunday, when fraternizing with the Anglicans (including the one I date) at Smokey Tom's, I heard a sermon from, and shook the hand of, Victoria Matthews, former Bishop of Edmonton and the first female bishop in Canada.

Finally, you know you're over-educated when:
Our resident ex-Marine ABD student: "I love you. Platonically! Oh, shoot, no, I've read too much Plato to say that."

-----
* On the "adding insult to injury" front, even though there's bruising somewhere down there, it is so far below the skin it is entirely invisible.
** KB would like a twenty-year moratorium on the use of Margery Kempe as a source for studies on lay piety. Personally, I just want a moratorium on the use of the word "transgressive".
*** There is a little old woman at the Oratory, where I attend mass, who has a mantilla depicting OLOF appearing to the children IN THE LACE. Every time I think of it, I think of John Zmirak, author of The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living: "if it were classy, we'd suspect something Anglican was going on."
**** *shudder*

Quick Update

2008-02-15T16:04:00.002-06:00

I've had x-rays, and I'm still in a great deal of pain, but the doctors think my ribs are merely bruised, not broken. Kilt Boy loves his Penguin Atlas of World History Volume 1

I'm heading northwards to cat-sit for a professor for Reading Week, so you probably won't hear much from me for a time. I promise, I'm getting better as fast as I can!

I leave you with the following classic from friend Larry:

"A:

Your mom gave a splendid reading LAST EVENING. She sampled pieces from various decades (including one or two depicting a very young and very precocious, incorrigible you) and read with confidence and elan. It was just fantastic, her work and her performance. Truly.

Afterwards, when we were out at SQUAT AND GOBBLE (one of your favs, I hear), your mom and I held court, breathlessly, about how cute and courtly the Kilted One is ... your dad chimed in with remarks about how NICE he was. But, I do believe we have everyone at S & G rushing to your blog to check out the pics!

I hope your rib is healing. Perhaps on next St. Blaise Day you'll have Father aim that beribboned candle set a trifle lower.

L"

2008-02-12T08:43:00.000-06:00

In "signs grad school may be driving me insane," I had a dream the other night that I was trying to describe the Lake Tahoe vacation cabin ethos to a group of Canadians, and came up with, "so, you know how Herculaneum was for the Romans? It's like that."

Furthermore, I had the Little Mermaid song stuck in my head the other day in the shower, with the words changed to, "how many bath poufs can one shower hold?". We have four girls in the apartment, and five little mesh bath poufs. It's ridiculous.

In other news, I slipped on the ice Sunday morning and may well have cracked a rib-- (I landed on my book bag. Such a Medieval Studies grad student-- I was taken out by my Latin dictionary!) I'm shocked and rather annoyed by how much pain can come from such a small thing, and how much my normal movements can be affected.

It also, of course, begs the question of what you do (with Valentine's and his birthday both rapidly approaching) for a young man who not only bakes fresh baguettes as he first promised to do over the weekend, but also helps you brush your hair, makes up ice packs, waits three hours with you at the health center, helps you in and out of bed, and does your laundry for you--all after nursing you through the stomach flu the week before, and with nothing but promises of weeks and weeks of helping you pick things off the floor and put things on high shelves, if there is a break? I feel like all of a sudden he's dating a needy old woman.

I'm also, it should be noted, trying to make it not be a break with my sheer force of will-- but if it hurts this badly tomorrow, I'm going to go in and make them take x-rays.

Add To: "Ways I Know He's the Only One for Me"

2008-02-06T19:11:00.000-06:00

Number 10:

(Staring at a sock that needs to be ripped out, again, past the gussets and heel flap.)

Yrs Truly: Maybe I won't fix it. Maybe I'll just bury it under a tree.
Kilt Boy: But could you live with the guilt? Every time you walked by, you'd hear its little heart beat... ka-thump...ka-thump...

Ah, yes...

2008-02-05T17:09:00.000-06:00

...because what I really needed in life right now was a low (three degrees above my average) fever.

No wonder the Latin was so difficult this morning. Tomorrow may be the second Ash Wednesday in a row that I will be too sick to fast.

Some Observations.

2008-02-03T22:57:00.000-06:00

1) Dominicans should not use the word "sucks". This holds true even when trying to "connect to the youth," but is especially true at 8:30 am masses full of old ladies.

2) When I go to 8:30 am mass, I forget it is Sunday. (I attribute it to a phenomenon something like this one, but less conducive to productivity. I realized it was Sunday when I found myself wondering, "why are all these people talking about the Super Bowl? Since when is the Super Bowl on a Saturday?"

3) I offer a short, very very rough translation from my Middle Welsh assignment for the week. Our ironic hero has just tied the bad guy up in a magic bag and given it over to his men for their entertainment.

"And as each one of his host went inside, each one struck at the bag with a blow, and asked, "what is in here?"
"A badger," they answered.
This is the kind of game they played: each one would strike a blow at the bag either with his foot or with his staff; and so they played with the bag. When each entered he asked, "what game are you playing in this way?"
"The game, 'badger in the bag,'" said the others. And so first was played 'badger in the bag'.

There is not enough punctuation in the world to express my confusion at the point of this little story. The note suggests that it either represents two, separate, imperfectly synthesized accounts, or that the redactor thought it was so funny he decided to make it funner with extra description.

Candlemas, 2008

2008-02-03T09:49:00.000-06:00

(Yes, I'm a day late, I had laundry to do.)

2008-02-02T10:19:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, a woman reaches a point in her life where she has difficult choices to make. Faced with these choices, she knows there are only two options for the evening.

--She may continue to make split-pea soup and biscuits in blissful silence, with the mopey, sick, eyes of her dearest boring holes in her back as he watches her, miserable in his sickness, or
--She may try to entertain him by introducing him to the new game she learned about from The Yarn Harlot, knowing that she will need to listen to the music for the next hour.

Of course, listening to him prove his dorkiness as he delighted in beating his previous records almost made it worth it.

From Today's Inbox

2008-02-01T08:51:00.000-06:00

Dear all,

The U of T Provost has announced that due to severe weather conditions today the St. George Campus will close at 11:00 am. The Mississauga campus is closed and the Scarborough campus will close at 10:00 am. All classes and on-campus activities have been cancelled on all three campuses.

Hope you get home safely, if you are already on campus.

I keep expecting a Chicago-style "except for you Grad Students who never get time off" or a CMS-style "we will still hold Latin class, come hell or high water... er, snow." But, no. I'm going to make a big pot of coffee and curl up with Wade-Evans's Grammar and F.G. Cowley's "The Monastic Order in South Wales, 1066-1349". Listen to some knitting podcasts, make some Latin vocab cards. Make soup. My only regrets are that the library is closed, so I can't go check out a movie for the evening, and that when I was running errands last night I did not get the one onion I need for the lentil soup. One onion is going to prevent this from being a "stay in your pajamas all day" sort of day.

(I note from facebook that one of the dissertating PhDs is complaining about being kicked out of the library in an hour.)

Can I Do This Week Over?

2008-01-31T21:29:00.000-06:00

It's been a down week over here, north of the border. My kilted fellow has taken ill with a bad cold that I fear may turn to something rather more bronchial, and I myself seem to have a much milder form of the same cold manifesting itself as a persistent sore throat. Aside from that, there's been a whole load of unexpected academic stress from Monday evening on, and although I think it's worked itself out fine, it sparked some panic and depression that I still find myself working out through academics... from complete apathy in my literature class, to an almost manic level of participation in my history course (that may have been the sleep deprivation, actually, since the class is at 9 and I'd gone to bed at 3:30am two nights in a row).

I brought my poor, sick Kilt Boy home from the library and put him to bed while I made him chicken-and-dumpling soup. While out running errands to buy ingredients, kleenex, and throat lozenges, I trekked down to the Chinatown post office to pick up my not one, but TWO packages: my birthday present of Y Geriadur Mawr, the standard Welsh dictionary containing the Middle Welsh glosses, and my shipment of birthday sock yarn from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. The entire way home, I was reminding myself, "Will not wake up sick, sleeping boyfriend to make him look at yarn. Will not wake up sick, sleeping boyfriend to make him look at yarn."

So here's some conversation snippets to give this post some semblance of a conclusion before I go off to bed to read Simon-Evan's "Middle Welsh Grammar":

KB: I'm not worried if some small part of your heart belongs to Hugh Laurie. I don't think there's going to be a situation in which you two will meet and he will say, "Come, Alice, and I will make sweet passionate British love to you..."
YT: British, in particular?
KB: British, in particular.
YT: What are they going to do, quirk their pinkies?

YT: Just so you know, If I get this cold from you, there's going to be hell to pay in the form of bidding on me hand and foot.
KB: I know.
YT: I mean, waiting on me hand and foot at my bidding. There will be no auctioning off of my appendages to buy yourself a less crabby girlfriend.
KB: However tempting it may be.
(Enter Celticist Roommate)
CR: All I heard was, "there will be no auctioning off of my appendages..."?!

In Which We Slay the Goat of Peace and a Bottle of Glenlivet

2008-01-27T10:49:00.000-06:00

In Medieval Latin, collapsed dipthongs are important. Even more important is expanding those dipthongs out properly before attempting a translation. The difference between e --> ae and e--> oe also happens to be the difference between:

He sent to Italy all his daughters who were pleasing in body, who the king Silvinus then joined to the magnates of Troy, by which deed the goat of peace revived.

and

He sent to Italy all his daughters who were pleasing in body, who the king Silvinus then joined to the magnates of Troy, by which deed he revived the treaty of peace.

Celticist roommate and I were rather disappointed.

It was okay, though, because then we had a Burns night.

(Mine!)*

We learned a new, culinary use for a scgian dubh:

We revisited favorite poems and drank some scotch (I noted that, while the first time I had it I was quite intimidated by the drink, now that I've had cognac, whiskey is small potatoes), Em the Younger proved her awesomeness on the violin, and Celticist roommate told a cat-hunting-shadows story that is still making me laugh. I realized that I know almost nothing about English language poetry between Shakespeare and Ginsburg, and sometime in the day I even managed to dig up that sock I've been working on, rip back to the mistake, and start up again.

So now it's back to the Metrical History of the Kings of England, and I'm hoping to get to the part where the Queen Mother bares her breasts to her warring sons before taking another break.

-----
*Kolya: What is this you're laughing about?
Yrs Truly: In Middle Welsh, one uses reduplicated pronouns for emphasis... and [Professor] tried to explain this to us by saying that the seagulls in "Finding Nemo" speak in reduplicated pronouns.
Kolya: "Finding Nemo?"
Celticist Roommate: You know, the movie, with the fish, and 'squishy,' and... you don't know.

You know where liars go, don't you?

2008-01-25T10:18:00.000-06:00

Well, I have almost entirely survived the week. I have met a goal of being able to translate for every Latin class (this goal will be especially met if I learn the vocab in time to pass the quiz-by-shame that our TA will be giving us in two hours). Even more exciting: in the first two weeks of class I have completed my discussion-leading requirements for both my seminars.

What else? Our current Latin text, a metrical (dactylic hexameter, AABB) history of the Kings of Britain, is really hard. Every once in a while I have fond flashbacks to reading Seneca. Then it gets hard again.

On Monday I spilled coffee on everything in my bookbag: Rule of St. Benedict in Latin, Ancrene Wisse in Med English, my wallet, my Latin Dictionary, my planner... everything. Somehow the coffee cup slipped out of my hand at a perfect time to punctuate the statement, made by a classmate, that the myth of Brutus's trip to Britain represents the eastward migration of prehistoric peoples.

But, now that Steph has gone public, I feel like I can direct you Got Guilt?, straight from the fertile and twisted imagination of Cameron and Steph's artistic abilities.

Some warnings apply: this comic is really not suitable for those who find themselves offended by... well, anything, but let's call it "sibling-rivalry-like jokes about violence against Protestants." Martha Nussbaum fangirls should probably avoid it as well.

Harrison's cartoon self is particularly... on-the-mark.

(Note you can click on everything to make it bigger.)

Some of the favorites that keep me sane are my cameo with Carolyn, Steph tries to take Veronica to 300, an example of the sort of thing Fr. Pat needs to put up with from his charges, Steph's desire to be a martyr, and the one that particularly makes me laugh my head off with the "Dress like your Doll" effect in panel 3.

Not to mention, of course, Comic 11, which has become something of a cartoon motto for my friends at the Centre.

My character was cut from the main storyline, but Steph sent me the character sketch for your edification... as you can see, the description was written when I was still with the Haberdasher'd fellow.

(Click for bigger.)

PS: Tommy A's statue really does come to the party in his honor. See?

(Insert "gag" from His Haberdasherdness)

But it's not the worst indignity to which he's been subjected:

2008-01-25T08:59:00.001-06:00

I just read an article on CA prop 93 (the Legislative Term Limits one) that used the phrase "mirabile dictu".

The most exciting thing

2008-01-24T01:07:00.000-06:00

that has happened in a long time is certainly the discovery that the clock over my desk is still on Daylight Savings Time (it's analog, I don't usually look at the hour hand). I feel like I have a whole new lease on life! Or, at least, greater chances of finishing my workload in a satisfactory manner this evening... er, morning.

2008-01-22T07:58:00.000-06:00

Sorry, sorry, I got lost somewhere in the twelfth century for a while, but here's a quick update.

Item One:
The publications office that is supposed to sell us our Latin books is always, always closed. This means that I was photocopying the necessary Latin from Kolya's edition for both my own use, and that of Italian Late Medieval History roommate, who has a bad cold. An Arthurian scholar from my Latin class asked me to photocopy the entire book for him (in exchange for a coffee). Some observations:

A) That is illegal.
B) I don't own the book myself, I'm merely borrowing Kolya's. If he wants to photocopy the entire thing, he should borrow one himself.
C) He himself owns the book.
C) a) He doesn't want to write in his book.
C) b) He doesn't want to photocopy his own book because he doesn't want to crack the spine.

This all ended with me informing him, rather too loudly, in the middle of the coffee shop, "I will not be a party to your fetishizing of the British Book of Kings!"

("What does he want to *do* with it?" asked ILMH Roommate. "Worship it like a Pagan God," suggested Kilt Boy.)

Item Two:
Plans are afoot for Burns Night. I have been informed that, if Kilt Boy wears his kilt, he may be hit on/have his tush grabbed by both Chaucer Scholar and her boyfriend. I am planning on taking a big stick to ward them off.

Item Three:
The Ancrene Wisse is really, really hard Middle English-- closer to Old English than Middle, really, and it's been even longer since I took Mid E. That is why I am currently not in Middle Welsh, but am translating Latin to give myself more time for the AW later today.

Item Four:
I have to lead discussion in Medieval Social History on Thursday morning.

Item Five:
AABB rhyming Medieval Latin prose makes me want to put my eyes out with my mechanical pencil. (Although I had the same problem reading the Libro de Buen Amor last term, so maybe it's a rhyme scheme problem). Give me alliterative verse or give me... uhm, not death. Sonnets?

Item Six:
Vanessa came to visit. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for the following conversation:
Customs Agent: Why are you going to Toronto?
Vanessa: Uh... to see the shoe museum?
Customs Agent: Any gifts for people in Toronto?
Vanessa: A large Chicago-style spinach pizza?

Item Seven:
It's snowing!

Other than this, there's not a great deal going on that doesn't involve that-boy-with-a-kilt-from-BC, and we're hoping to visiting Chicago in April.

Observations

2008-01-12T11:56:00.001-06:00

1) Lazy Morning Knitting + Pancakes + Sushi + CMS Pub Night = An Awesome Birthday.

(Yes, I wore my Birthday Shoes.)

2) The Rankins CD "Uprooted" (a gift from Kilt Boy) = Magical Application Writing Powers.

3) I'm taking a course in Middle English devotional literature. This is Grad School; we're reading them (even the Ancrene Wisse) in Middle English. I'm a little nervous. It's been over a year since Chaucer, and I don't think reading Geoffry Chaucer Hath A Blog counts as maintaining one's language abilities.

1/11

2008-01-11T12:06:00.000-06:00

I've not always been the sarcastic-but-generally-happy medievalist you've come to know and, if not love, tolerate. There were some years back there, before I was an unhappy, stressed-about-college-applications adolescent, when I was a downright annoying preadolescent who was sarcastic about everything and responded to authority with a grumpy "hmph".

So when I saw this picture:

I naturally thought of myself.

So, I dedicate this birthday post to my parents, who never once in the most frustrating of my 23 years left me out to die of exposure (however much they may have pondered it).

2008-01-10T01:46:00.000-06:00

It is 2:45. I have a 9:00 am class. I am going to bed.

Unfortunately, the undergraduates who live next door are not. They are standing outside, next to my bedroom window, smoking and talking.

Shaking My Fist at the Weather

2008-01-08T07:23:00.000-06:00

The high today is 15 C.

The high in Vancouver: 1 C.

That's just stupid warm for January. I'm making up for lost years in California! I demand gorgeous, lovely, snow in my birth month!

So I present to you Bob the Snowman, which Veronica and I built outside Max East a few years ago.

Study of a Paper-Writing Session

2008-01-07T10:44:00.000-06:00

P.S. DONE DONE DONE DONE NO MORE JEWISH POLITICAL HISTORY EVER EVER EVER.

New Year Thoughts

2008-01-05T10:47:00.000-06:00

I don't eat well.

I mean, I love to cook. I grew up with both my parents in the kitchen. Mom taught me how to knead her homemade bread pretty much as soon as my hands were strong enough to do so. She read me "Little House in the Big Woods," and we planted vegetables in the back yard. My favorite sort of garden is a kitchen garden. Reading about food is one of my favorite pastimes-- and sometimes I even try to put that fancy French cuisine into practice (citation: my father's large-round-number birthday dinner in 2003, for which I served Cornish Game Hens in a port sauce).

Somewhere in Junior High, I became incredibly self-conscious about the amount I ate. My closest friends were guys, and I was obsessed with the need to appear small and delicate around them by not eating anything. So I'd take a vanilla yogurt and water to school... then walk home and binge on soda and chips and cookies.

I stopped dancing second year of High School, to make room for theater rehearsals and homework. I didn't gain much weight, though, because having decided to go Vegetarian, I was far more conscious of balancing my diet. Despite this, I hated my body-- so much so that my mother paid for Weight Watcher's subscriptions for both of us, hoping we could do it together and get me in a shape I liked before going off to College. (Irony here in that I spent that summer volunteering at a Soup Kitchen in the Castro... insert comment on socio-economic structures here.)

As so often happens, College didn't particularly help with anything. Soda, my great weakness, was readily available-- if not in the dining hall, then in the dorm vending machines with chips and candy bars I'd eat all night, staying up to write papers and do problem sets. I switched from Coke to Pepsi because I could drink more of it without feeling sick to my stomach, to facilitate all-nighters. When I wasn't drinking soda, I drank juice as a "healthier substitute". I packed my tea with sugar.

My eating habits didn't much improve once I had an apartment of my own. I was always too busy to go grocery shopping or cook, and ate with my friends at the dining hall. I sustained myself primarily on grilled-cheese-sandwiches-with-tomato and fries... with a soda on the side. I lived right down the street from CVS, which provided easy access to Cherry Coke and Peanut Butter Cups for working late into the night. Veronica and I would stay up until one, go get donuts and coffee, and then stay up even later.

Wales was full of excellent beer--which we went out to drink every night except Mondays-- and far, far too many potatoes. On my return I was once again a Vegetarian, in the hope of both losing the beer & potato weight and capturing the heart of a young man who had never touched meat. Once the semester started up again, I was eating like I always had. As I told Professor F, you don't want to know how many Peanut Butter Cups had to die for the writing of my BA thesis.

Unfortunately, Toronto, despite the easy access of Kensington market, hasn't proved much better. I've been relying on cheap chow mein (with the crispy noodles) from a take-out on Bloor Street. Somewhere along the line I developed an addiction to Pringles potato chips for when I'm writing my papers. I'm drinking too much coffee, not enough water-- and the local beer here isn't even good, but for some reason I order it anyway.

I see in myself the tendency to be careless about time for myself, including food preparation. I eat according to my emotions-- so I'll binge on chocolate and chips if I'm stressed, or writing (writing is SO an emotional state, don't tell me it isn't), but if I'm really into something that I'm doing, I'll forget to eat until it is far too late-- then I binge, and feel sick. I'll forget that eating well really does affect my ability to think, so I'll have macaroni-and-cheese out of a box with nary a vegetable in sight, to save twenty minutes for more... procrastinating.

All of which is a rather long-winded and somewhat self-serving background meditation to what I want to do this year. I'm not going to say that I want to lose weight (which I do) or that I want to eat healthier (which I do), but that I want to break this cycle I have with food. I don't want to see it anymore as a purely functional caulking for filling the hole in my stomach or my spirit when they hurt, or an annoyance that will take time I don't have. I'm tired of abusing caffeine because I don't know how to manage my time. I'm tired of late-night breakdowns because I don't know how to take care of myself by prioritizing. I want to take time for real pleasures, not false ones (reading a chapter of a book, rather than spending thirty minutes browsing cute cat pictures online, or savoring a Green & Black's bar piece-by-piece over several days, rather than swallowing a Snicker's bar only to wish immediately for more.)

And if, in the end, I can fit back into this dress--

(vintage 1950's. From looking at the inside, I think it's handmade by the original wearer, or someone close to her.)

Well, then, all the better.

Missive from the T.C.

2008-01-03T20:58:00.000-06:00

So, Carolynska and I went out the other night to a late show of "National Treasure: Book of Secrets," which comes highly recommended if you like the sort of escapism where the people who know dead languages are the best-looking people out there. As a medievalist, this tickles me to no end.

That said, one of the early scenes in the movie portrays Nicholas Cage giving a lecture. I'm always amused by lecture scenes, particularly the infamous example in The DaVinci Code where it seems all you need to do to give a lecture is show slides entirely unrelated to one another, ask the audience for their assumptions, and then zoom out on the slide to demonstrate how you have tricked them. How brilliant!

Anyway, going back to National Treasure, I'm not sure where there are lecture halls in which a video of those asking questions is projected on a screen behind the speaker.

This, however, brings me to my question. I'm sure you notice cinematic portrayals of, if not academics, your particular profession (I can't think of any movie paralegals, sorry, Aidan). What are some of the best? Or the worst?

I don't see many movies, so I can only think of the professor in Spider Man: 2 (I think) and, of course, Indiana Jones.

What can you guys come up with?

PS: Caelius is back! Yay!

PPS: We saw the preview for the next Narnia. I'm excited.

PPPS: Tomorrow night in Toronto!

In Which I Fall Into Mad, Mad, Shoe Lust

2007-12-29T21:21:00.000-06:00

(and get an early birthday present).

For when you need to feel sexy while producing 18-20 pages on electoral politics in 13/14th century Spanish Jewish Communities...

Yes, I read with my feet up on the desk. Just another way in which I disturb myself by reminding myself of His Haberdashedness.

The shoes model the sock yarn I plan to turn into lacy socks to wear with them:

On a related note:
This is my mother:

She's pretty cool. She taught me how to knit, and how to put a bridle on a horse, and how to make pie crust... all around, a pretty handy person, and most of my friends think she's pretty awesome.

Still, sometimes she even surprises me. Imagine, if you will, the two of us perusing the shoe department at a large chain department store. Mom sees a pair of ballet flats with a little skull and cross bones over the toe, and lifts them up to show me, whilst saying:

"Oohh... pirates. But, I've heard that zombies are the new pirates."

!!!?!!!!?????

Is this what she's getting looking at the pictures in French Vogue while waiting for her Belgian allergist to inject her with allergens?

Finally, for those who didn't believe me:

We have George Washington on our Christmas Tree.

(I'm going to Minneapolis/St. Paul to party with Carolyn & Steph. It is going to be great fun, assuming I finish this paper soon, but I'll be out of communication until January 4th, when I return to Toronto. I'm not going to waste precious Carolyn time blogging.)

News from Far & Wide, and too many quotes.

2007-12-27T13:54:00.000-06:00

In response to the previous poll:

1) I, myself, care more that the music be leaning-towards-traditional in scope, for, as pointed out on NLM,

The music of the Mass is not of our choosing; it is not a matter of taste; it is not a glossy layer on top of a liturgy. Liturgical music is embedded within the structure of the liturgy itself: theologically, melodically, and historically.
Hymns are not part of the structure of Mass. Nothing in the Mass says: it is now time to sing a hymn of your choice. Hymns are permitted as replacements for what should be sung but only with reservations.

.
How convenient for the Mssrs. NLM and people like myself, that what has been recommended by every council is also in accordance with our taste.

Random, not-really-related quote from the evening that the MA-ers all got together to watch "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat":
Celticist Roommate: You know that little kid's song, "Moses led the people up from Egypt..."
Yrs. Truly: I haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about.
C.R.: And you call yourself a Christian!
Yrs. T: I'm Catholic. I can sing "On Eagle's Wings" backwards, if you want.
Greg: Okay, that's just scary.

2) Since I have no home parish aside from Calvert House, that was obviously not an option. I love the Shrine because it is in North Beach, right around the block from our old apartment, so it has the feel of going home for Christmas. And I certainly don't think we should ask for a baptismal certificate at the door! There was quite a nice young woman in front of us (also wearing a Santa hat, that one with sequins) who sang along during the carols and shook hands with everyone at the peace. But this ONE COUPLE (and let us note that as soon as I sat down behind them I thought, "oh, I should move, this is going to be upsetting, but that would disturb everyone to move") who decided to come to Midnight Mass to watch it as a spectacle... talking and POINTING throughout the canon and the Eucharistic prayer made me feel like an animal in a zoo exhibit. I only wish I could have really let them get their money's worth, but I left both mantillas in Toronto. (Then the gentleman (term used with reservations) took it upon himself to go up to communion, as the girl with him waved him back and shook her head at him because she thought it was gross that the communion cup was communal.)

Okay. Rant over.

3) I don't think I'm going to cut my hair, and it has nothing to do with the sad puppy eyes my Canadian Kilt Boy* gives when he tells me that really, it would be okay with him. I'm a poor grad student with no free time. Really, I just need to find something to get the hair out of my way. The other day the phone got stuck in it.

It occurs to me, however, that my nomenclature may need some clarification: Kolya, the Platonic Boyfriend, really is just that... not really a boyfriend, despite the fact that I knit him hats and feed him on a regular basis.

My *actual* love life is more complicated and overlaps with the various religious questions I haven't been blogging about, perhaps because I've decided that the Blogosphere of the Shoreland Diaspora can really only handle one person's emo rantings.

*Yrs Truly: Tristan showed me his sporran!
(Irish) Celticist Roommate: ...uhmmmm...
Yrs Truly: It's the little purse that goes with the kilt. It's worn here.
(Irish) Celticist Roommate: Maybe you should explain what it is before indicating where it goes.

New News!
In New News from Far and Wide, the Viking called yesterday and we spent an hour and a half catching up. He's putting his raw, blond, masculinity to good use in some legal firm in Chicago working as as junior paralegal, so much of the discussion centered upon legal secretaries hitting on him, the lax nature of the dress code when called in on weekends, how unwise it would be to show up in not-pajamas in the office, and how unwise it would be to show up in not-pajamas on the CTA. We also talked about our conflicting views of when we met, the short, doomed period in which we were going on coffee dates, and him making exercise playlists for his friends' hamster's wheel-running sessions (before you ask: ragtime).

In other New News from far and wide, because Debbie LaV loves me, I got a Christmas card and the LaV family newsletter, such that I can report to all you Shorelanders that Dawn is doing a one-year internship at the Abbey of Regina Laudis doing all sorts of farm chores she's always wanted to know how to do. Sr. Diana received the habit on October 30, 2006 and writes letters home every month, and Nick got married. To quote, "The LaV family proudly announces that A.E.B. has courageously joined our (somewhat crazy) bunch and is now A.E.LaV. As you can see, she brings beauty, charm and grace with her, which we hope will rub off on the rest of us!" I'm sure that those of you who knew them would argue that the LaV girls are themselves charming and beautiful, but can agree that it would take some courage to join the family.

This is long, I need to go meet my mother downtown to make some necessary ameliorations of my wardrobe, and I'm sure you're all bored. So I'll just say one more thing: Heya, Aidan! I, too, wish I were still in Chicago, but I will say nice-to-meet-you-albeit-electronically, particularly as a kippa-ed gentleman of my acquaintance from Chicago and I were just discussing how we wished we'd run into you while there. I've heard of the Sinsinawa Dominicans, but I'm not sure if it was due to their retreats, or because their name is still on the sign to St. Thomas's school.

A Poll

2007-12-26T15:13:00.001-06:00

1) Which is more important, good music or a good homily/sermon/teaching/whatever your tradition calls it?

2) For a big holiday, would you rather go someplace with mediocre music/homiletics (depending on preference) BUT which will be full of faithful coreligionists in a familial atmosphere, OR would you rather go to a church/synagogue that has excellent music BUT is something of a tourist attraction, so that you will be, say, sitting behind people who (for example) don't bother to even pretend, don't kneel, and talk through the canon of the mass?

3) Would you ever wear a Santa Claus Hat to Midnight Mass? What if you were the woman in the aforementioned couple? When they were sitting back, nuzzling during the Eucharistic prayer, I really wanted to lean forward across the single pew between us and pull it off by the little dangling pompom.

4) The important question: Haircut/No Haircut? (Ignore Platonic Boyfriend Kolya's insistence that his heart "will break in twain" if I cut my hair. He's a strong boy; he'll pull through.) If No Haircut, I need a new way to put it up because the claw-clips just aren't cutting it.

Holiday Greetings, from Our Table to Yours

2007-12-24T21:17:00.000-06:00

Wishing you bright, full tables, happy families being silly after their glasses of wine, warm beds to climb into after evening services, and the prettiest throwback to German paganism that would make St. Boniface shudder that you've ever seen. If necessary, you can always take the advice of Dylan Thomas:

And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.

For several years now, it has been our Christmas tradition, crawling into our warm bed after Midnight Mass, to read two books: the first, "A Child's Christmas in Wales" by Dylan Thomas. The second is the Christmas section from E.B. White's "Writings from the New Yorker: 192-1976," and my Christmas gift to you is a selection therefrom.

Midnight Mass

Everyone has one Christmas he remembers above all others, one blindingly beautiful occasion. Ours is a Christmas Eve, during calf love, when we made the (for us) adventurous pilgrimage to a midnight Mass in a Catholic church. Church-going in our family had always been in the honest gloom of a Protestant Sunday morning, and we must hasten to explain that the purpose of this clandestine night expedition was far from religious; we simply had reason to suspect that if we visited that church at that hour, we would catch a glimpse of our beloved. Snow began to fall at sundown, and fell quietly all evening. The snow, the lateness of the hour, the elaborate mysteries of the Mass (we had never seen the inside of a cathedral before), together with the steady burning vision of the back of Her neck whom we adored, and then the coming out into the snow alone afterward, with the street lamps veiled in white: this indeed was a holy time.

-E.B. White, The New Yorker, 12/26/36

Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T16:46:00.000-06:00

Well, my darlings, it seems that my requests to the universe that it postpone Christmas to give me a chance to rest have not been answered. I can tell because of this:

and this:

and this:

and other telltale signs, such as pounds and pounds of butter softening for making cinnamon rolls, and four pounds of live mussels sitting in ice water on the back porch, tempting the kitties.

I have much I want to tell you about, such as High School pride (here manifested as an Urban Blues cookie-- the swirl is a "U") and the spider that has taken residence above the kitchen sink, much to my dismay. However, I also really want to go get a quick nap in before being called to help prepare dinner. So, here's a little Christmas present for you. Merry Christmas, dears, and try to stay awake through midnight mass.

(Gwynn wishes you a Merry Christmas, too.)

2007-12-23T04:33:00.000-06:00

IN a fit of procrastinatory procrastination, I updated the sidebar. Some new links, more later if I remember, which I probably won't.

I'm one page-- ONE PAGE of conclusion away from letting the door hit the ass of this [expletive] [expletive] [welsh expletive] paper on its way out, after which I plan to spend my Christmas in denial. Hmmm... yummy, yummy denial.

So, before I go off and write some crap about relic cults and how women's bodies were seen by medieval clerics as meat-sacks of rotting demonic iniquity (that's a technical term), here's a little segment from today's Christmas decorating party with gals from High School.

(Instrumental music ends)
C: Tequila!
Everyone else: Huh?
C: Wasn't that the song that was playing?
A: C., that was "Frosty the Snowman".

Addenda: This is why we don't finish our papers at three in the morning.

I ALMOST (but I caught myself) wrote the sentence:

"Another fruitful line of inquiry would be to compare the affective writings about the saints of the early church—the only saints who appear in Christine’s work— with the devotional practices of female saints who lived closer to Christine’s own time, such as Catherine of Siena. Caroline Walker Bynum’s Holy Feast, Holy Fast, as well as Rudolph M. Bell’s Holy Anorexia, could provide much food for thought..."

Damage Control

2007-12-21T13:53:00.001-06:00

I do this every time. Panic over papers, put them off and engage in serious avoidance... Which is how I have seventeen pages due tonight (I'm assuming by 5:00 pm PST if in hard copy, but I'm e-mailing it in, so I'm going to hold myself to a draft by dinner time, edit with food in my system, and send it in tonight.)

I'm tired, I'm feeling sick from too much sugar and caffeine, and the conversation that kept me up late last night is distracting me to no end (which pisses me off to no end).

But it's just time to go sit with a pen, paper, and my sources, and say: fuck it all, we're going full speed ahead. I'm too sick of this paper to think about it any longer.

And then I have that whole other paper to write, but let's not think about that for now, shall we?

The Happy Dance of the Finished Sock

2007-12-19T19:17:00.000-06:00

.5 of a pair of Broadripple socks, Knitty Summer 2003, Artyarns Supermerino 4, goodness only knows what color. I love it and can't wait to finish the second.

And one gratuitous kitty picture:

(Gwynn will eat your soul)

2007-12-19T01:11:00.000-06:00

I've been wasting time here. Here's some of the haiku poetry it has created from y blog hwn:

but remember this
is canada so you will
need two kinds of id

(clearly it misunderstood I.D. as id, but we'll give the artificial intelligence a break, shall we, since it is getting me out of real blogging?)

of doing all i
wanted for breakfast was a
dark and gloomy day

god for we are to
ask him about phd programs
toronto is still

And, my personal favorite:

the verb is in the
knitting basket next to the
futon plans double

Self-searching has revealed...

2007-12-12T22:13:00.000-06:00

that, in fact, I *must* clean my room before I leave. I am psychologically incapable of leaving behind a messy room.

It has also revealed that, when I am about to have a flip out and find myself reminding myself, "no, Alice, don't have a panicked crying fit over your final paper," the reassuring voice saying, "come on, what's he going to do? Fail you? After you were one of the few people who participated in the class?" is, in fact, the voice of Capt. Haddock.

(No, not the *real* Capt. Haddock)

I had a dream last night about the International Medieval Bibliography. I don't want to talk about it.

Some Things I Need To Do

2007-12-11T22:58:00.000-06:00

Before I get on the plane on Friday:

1) Pack.
2) Laundry.
3) Clean out my portions of the fridge.
4) At least sweep, if not tidy, my room.
5) Finish research for two papers and photocopy everything I may need.
6) Return books to library.
7) Finish two applications to graduate school.

So, because I may have forgotten by Thursday, or I may have gone insane from Xerox fumes or be dead in a ditch... Happy (Early) Birthday, Patrick! Twenty-four years and you're still not insane, addicted to illegal stimulants for the sake of a math career, or dead in a ditch. I approve.

(Tricky: Was it really only three years ago that we roasted marshmallows over the fireplace in your parents' living room?)

Life Continues (Amid Parentheses).

2007-12-10T21:31:00.000-06:00

1. Knitting.

(To answer your question, Vanessa, pretty much all my current knitting is going to presents for people. This is an intervention hat for Kolya, who has none and is still trying to live in Toronto.)

2. Papers.

(For the observant: Yes, those are two copies of the same translation. Different editions = different prefatory material.)

Let us not speak of the two hours spent on the International Medieval Bibliography online, during which the Toronto Library system substantially raised my blood pressure.

3. Applications.

Today was, overall, a bad day, and I'm not really ready to blog about it. I'm mourning the marriage of a dear friend and mentor to whom I happen to be related, and events in the Hobbit Hole have made me rather sour and bitter in: re love and men in general.

Arrrgh!

2007-12-09T11:32:00.000-06:00

So, I'm applying to six PhD programs. Toronto is still, probably, my first choice although the library system is souring it on me, and three others are really exciting as well. However: I just got an e-mail from one of my Chicago recommenders telling me that she thinks I'd be happiest at either of the two at the bottom of my list. Let general agony and second-guessing of self commence. (Of course, one of them has Marcia Colish as a visiting fellow, and I sort of love her.)

In other news, when things get bad here at the Hobbit Hole on Ross, we watch this video.

And things are rather rough here, as today's conversation about menfolk found me telling a roommate, "well, my pointiest #7 knitting needle is in the knitting basket next to the futon." Plans: Double Pointed Needle in the Spleen. Yes, yes.

I have a complaint to make. This:

Is not a bagel.

What else is up, Chez Hobbit? Knitting:

Misremembering the Pattern, (Oh Pain and Suffering):

Ripping-out and Reknitting:

Knitting Something Else:

... and 45 pages (two papers) due the 21st.

Sometimes, the Letter Home Says it All

2007-12-02T23:02:00.000-06:00

Dear Mama,

I hope your class goes well tomorrow and that they appreciate all your preparation. I'm absolutely swamped with Spanish History and have begun referring to Yitzakh Baer (with whose "History of the Jews in Christian Spain, Vol. 2" I have spent an inordinate amount of time this weekend) as "Yitz" in my head. Note to self: must remember not to do this when presenting tomorrow a.m.

Kelly and I went to Lettuce Knit so that I could buy needles. Bought: one set of #2 sock needles, and one 5' long circular for a scarf pattern I am designing somewhat in my head (knit lengthwise, hence the 5'). The kitten was not there, which was probably good, otherwise Kelly would never have wanted to leave and I would have been tempted to buy more yarn. Then we saw a life-size anamatronic dancing Santa Claus whose 'moves' bore a rather disturbing resemblance to those of Peter, Kelly's beau. Not in the yarn shop, out on Spadina. Sorry for the incoherence; it's been a long weekend.

Weather is miserable. Snow (yay!), and then an ice storm that, as Kelly said, forgot to freeze. I got lost on the way to the 4:30 mass at St. Basils (right across the Street from both PIMS and Urbana... i.e, where I go EVERY DAY) because I tried a new route to avoid the slush, but couldn't read the street signs with rain on my glasses. Went to Evensong with Tristan instead and when we got back to my apartment (he was afraid I'd get lost if he didn't chaperone) we were both properly soaked.

Plans are afoot (betwixt me and Kelly) to spend an evening this week avoiding papers by making latkes and having a dramatic reading of "Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins". If I'm really together I'll go to Zimmerman's and look for chocolate, too.

WHICH REMINDS ME, speaking of chocolate shaped like money, that the feast of St. Nicholas is arriving and I must needs acquire: 1) a teddy bear, 2) a hair brush, 3) a name tag that says, "Hello, my name is Aloysius" in order to torment our favorite Russian Orthodox Sebastian.

Due to my distressing habit of forgetting that I need food and then bingeing on junk, I have just received an e-mail from my boy reminding me to eat something; "coffee cake does not a dinner make." Leftover yellow curry: preventing scurvy in your northern-clime-dwelling daughter since Fall, 2007.

Love,
Alice

Define "Productivity"

2007-12-01T20:14:00.000-06:00

What I have done in the past 26 hours:

* Made Vegetable Thai Curry and Granola (the Granola came out rather bland... I think it has a distaste for Canadian ingredients)
* Balled 2 skeins of yarn.
* Made a nice dent in my pile of e-mails and messages that required responses.
* Knit 12 rows on the current pair of gloves
* Started my online Yale application
* Cast on 120 out of 144 stitches for a headband before running out of yarn for the long-tail cast on
* Did four loads of laundry, plus the hand-washing
* Bought wrapping paper, and wrapped birthday presents for Anne and Vee.
* Bought my plane tickets to the Twin Cites, and from the Twin Cities to Toronto, for the New Year.

Note: None of this (aside from the application, and the food) is on the list of the truly necessary things I should be doing, such as Latin, research for either of my 20-page papers (both due Dec. 21st), my personal statements for Grad Schools, or reading Vol II of Ytzak Baer's History of the Jews in Christian Spain, on which I am supposed to lead discussion on Monday.

I WANT ONE.

2007-11-26T20:43:00.001-06:00

Forget the Turkey. Find me a Bagel!

2007-11-22T17:12:00.000-06:00

Some things for which I am grateful:

* Coffee.

* Snow.

* Fantastic roommates who I have no desire to smother with a pillow.

* Margaret's inside scoop on where to buy good bagels in Kensington market (after being told that I had become so obsessed with the lack of good bagels, I dreamt about my search)

* Yarn.

* My cousins. Example:
Lydia (Ages Seven): Mommy, when a woman has a baby, do they cut her tummy open?
Kris (who is a nurse): Well, sometimes, but ususally--you know how you have a hole between where you pee and where you poop? Usually the baby comes out of there.
Lydia: I think I'll get a dog.

* The sight of snowflakes on yarn (that was previously knit into warm clothing).

* Being on top of my Latin, Huzzah!

* Did I mention coffee? And snow?

In Which I Am (Obliquely) Mentioned on the Shrine of the Holy Whapping

2007-11-18T09:35:00.000-06:00

It's what happens when this post about Neil and Garett meets the HWTN's donut shop:

The Infelix Eggo Waffle.

Okay, so it's not quite as cool a reference as my POD Pastry, but I feel almost famous!

I just died laughing.

2007-11-14T09:36:00.001-06:00

Kilt Hose!

You're my Axiom of Choice, you know it's Truuue...

2007-11-12T22:39:00.000-06:00

I've had this stuck in my head for two days, so here you go, with thanks to Em the Elder:

Yes, we talk like this.

2007-11-12T19:50:00.000-06:00

So today, in my class on social history, we discussed marketing arrangements between various religious groups in Medieval Spain. Like Muslim shoemakers buying leather from Christian tanners, and buying said leather on credit, and what that says about interreligious interpersonal relationships.

Then some of us went to the common room to do Latin, and the following ensued.

Yrs. Truly: Ooooh, I hope he calls on me to translate this sentence: "And we knelt down and prayed that God would take our souls, for our eyes had seen his judgment on the earth."
Nordicist from Winnipeg: Yeah, that's a good one.
...
Nordicist from Winnipeg: I don't like [our social history] class.
Yrs. Truly: Yes, you looked pretty miserable today. You looked about ready to kneel down and pray for death, as your eyes had seen God's judgment on the earth.
N. from W: Yes, and it is tanners.

I miss Carolyn.

2007-11-07T21:51:00.001-06:00

A: I don't understand this grocery store. How can they not have any cream cheese? ...Wait, why am I in this section of the grocery store looking for cream cheese?
C: Where *are* you?
A: I'm in the world's most yuppified Loblows' grocery store.
C: No, I mean, where in the store are you?
A: Oh. I'm in the cheese section.
C: It should be there, look between the butter and the sour cream.
A: No, I'm in the *fancy* cheese section.
C: Oh, the *fancy* cheese section. No, you don't want that. Go to the shredded cheese section.

C: Ooooh, Pop-Tarts! You should get Pop-Tarts, they're good for you!
A: No they aren't, you liar!
C: They're good for your *morale*.

More Language Madness

2007-11-07T07:35:00.000-06:00

Last night, I dreamed that 'craic' was actually a Scots Gaelic, not Irish Gaelic, word.

Let me make this clear: I had a dream. About a word. From a Celtic language. I do not know.

In the dream, I was terribly embarrassed about having thought it was Irish and having defined it as such to Podraig.

I'm going to attribute this to Language Madness and lie down with a cold compress to the forehead. Or, you know, brew some coffee and read some Latin. Yeah, Latin.

Latin is to Guinness as Welsh is to Bailey's

2007-11-06T20:14:00.001-06:00

It appears I hadn't yet seen the worst of my language overdose on Monday, as half-an-hour of lunchtime translation, followed by an hour of class and another half-hour of vocabulary, brought the 36 hour total to 9 hours of Latin.

... after which I went home and tried to do my Welsh homework (apparently I do not believe in rest.)

... after which I went to bed, picked up the primary source on which I am supposed to present on Thursday afternoon, and not noticing that it was not in English began reading the left-hand, medieval Spanish, page of the dual-language edition.

... but having read a few sentences, my brain went *poit* and I realized that although it was only 11:00, no more work was going to be finished that night. So I said Night Prayer and went to sleep.

The only way I can really explain what happened is by analogy to having too many and diverse mixed drinks at a club... it was, in fact, the Irish Car Bomb of language-mixing. Having already had about a pitcher. Or two.

(This analogy caused some discussion at the coffee shop over whether one makes such a drink with whiskey or Irish Cream. I'm glad to say that Wikipedia agrees with me,* and says both-- and can now report that it very helpfully (note sarcasm) explains the historical origin of the drink's name.)

*Not that I've ever had one. I'm going by Tom's description of his roommate's frat parties.

7 Hours

2007-11-05T07:43:00.001-06:00

That is how much time I spent translating Latin texts yesterday. Six hours of the Life of St. Macarius, one hour scanning Aragonese/Valencian law codes.

Studying languages with that much diligence rather warps your brain. On Saturday I had the following logical disconnect:

"I want to go to confession. Confession runs for an hour before Mass, and Mass is at 5:00, so confession should be between 3:00 and 4:00."

Catch that? It's just like August in the Llanbed Wlpan: Language Study Induced Insanity.

(As an example of LSII, the following conversation was once held in the Prifysgol Llanbed Refectory:
A: John, I'm terribly jealous, because all I wanted for breakfast was a raspberry yogurt, but they were out when I arrived... and you have two!
J: Wait, I have two yogurts?)

I'm on the bandwagon.

2007-10-31T23:31:00.000-05:00

By which I mean, the the Hold Steady bandwagon. Last Monday (that is, the twenty-second) was a dark and gloomy day of moping over male cluelessness and being anxious over my Augustine essay, so I decided to indulge and buy myself a CD. Thus, on the recommendation of both D-Robes and Nemo, I purchased "Separation Sunday." I haven't been able to stop listening to it (although I'm not *currently* listening to it... it's late and I have an Augustine essay to write). I made Kolya listen to it on Tuesday night after the CMS pub night, and then I made T. listen to it when he came over Wednesday morning to make pancakes.

As for the male stupidity, well, it turned out to not be quite so stupid. (Some) details on personal application, but remember this is Canada, so you'll need two forms of ID and a recommendation on proper letterhead.

(Oh, and today's lunchtime discussion saw suggestions for Reformation Day party games. My contribution: "Pin-the-Paintbrush-on-the-Iconoclast".)

(Never-you-mind.)

2007-10-26T23:50:00.001-05:00

Nothing to see here. Move along.

There's Collegiality, and then there's...

2007-10-26T08:58:00.000-05:00

"we must stop spending time together before we all fail out of the program, in the interest of being able to stay on for our PhDs and spend more time together."

Yeah, so Kolya had T. and me over for dinner last night. The plan was Dinner, Duffy, and Latin. It turned into a very, very long dinner, followed by a short period of Latin and a long, long conversation until 2:15 in the morning.

Best moment:
Kolya: "So, this is what I'm currently reading..."
T and Yrs. Truly (simultaniously): "Ooooh, Pelikan!

Images from the Weekend: From Duelling to Dancing

2007-10-21T23:12:00.000-05:00

* Tea with T. and Kolya, reading them Dafydd ap Gwilym in Welsh.

* Vigil mass at St. Basil's with a free-association homily, and trying very hard not to make Eye Contact with Emilie.

* Watching "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" with other members of the MA class. Never having seen it before, I spent much of the experience writhing in pain.

* The World's Worst Gin & Tonics, at the pub with the MA class.

* (Yrs. Truly and T. simultaneously rub their tired eyes.)
T.: Jinx... it's okay, I release you... I won't constrain you to silence...
K.: What? Are you constraining the woman I love? I'll fight you in a duel for her love. Pistols or swords?

Yrs. Truly: That's it, I'm out of this conversation.
Resident Brit: What's going on? I'll take your place.
Yrs. T: They're fighting a duel for my love.
R.B: Oh, then, you're on your own.

* Anglo-Catholic Service at Smokey Tom's, and singing "Be thou my Vision"... and being the only Soprano-type in a three-pew radius.

* Brunch & Coffee with T. & Kolya: Yrs. Truly: "I can't get the Huevos Rancheros... I'll want them to be just like the Huevos Rancheros at the Med in Hyde Park, and that can only lead to sorrow and heartbreak."
Kolya: "My dear, it is far too early in the morning for heartbreak, and I haven't had enough coffee for it."(1)

* Buying an Oxford Study Bible for $2 at the Trinity College Booksale. I also bought a book in Welsh, but I'm not yet entirely sure what it's about (I think "Wanderings of Carmarthenshire" is the best translation of the title.)

* Affirming that K. doesn't mind if Celticist Roommate and I refer to him as my "Platonic Boyfriend"-- in turn, however, he has threatened to refer to me as his "Platonic Presbytera" (which has the added benefit of alliterating.)

* Reading with Kolya in the Hart House Quad, removing my Sunday heels to walk in the grass, and taking advantage of the floaty Sunday skirt and Collegiate Gothic background to strike a few ballet poses.

* Watching Platonic Boyfriend read the first few pages of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (given to him by T.)... only a few weeks after I introduced him to Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. "It's so much fun to watch you begin to read books I love... it's like watching someone discover a good chocolate!"

* Evensong at Smokey T's (I swear I'm not becoming an Anglican, but it was just what I needed.)

* Red Sox, 11-2.

* Remembering that I have some Latin parsing due tomorrow. Cachu.

I shall have to hold on to these memories this week, because with Latin piling up and a paper on Augustine due, it looks like it's going to be hell.

(1) Note that this was said at approximately 1:20 in the afternoon.

Quick, Before I Go To Bed And Forget Them...

2007-10-21T01:59:00.001-05:00

Some sparse quotes from a CMS MA night watching bad movies and going to a pub.

Celticist Roommate: Why can't I date a guy who's masculine?!
Resident Brit: Oh, sorry, can't help you there.

Resident Brit: Real men get hiccups.

Celticist Roommate: What other musical were we thinking of putting on?
Yrs Truly: "Jesus Christ, Superstar."
C.R: Ah, yes. But who would play Jesus?
Yrs Truly: (meaningful headtilt)
T: Ah. *sigh* I see it's time for me to once again shave my beard in order to avoid comparison to the Son of God.

Rambling.

2007-10-18T08:15:00.000-05:00

I am repeatedly surprised how much colloquial Modern Welsh I pick up by following my friend James on Facebook. E.g.:

"Tudur Hwys Jones, Duw ym mysg ddynion." = "Tudur Hwys Jones, a god among men."

You know you've always wanted to know how to say that.

In other news, Tuesday's (day late) St. Teresa of Avila dessert-having was rather successful, and continued into the next afternoon when I brought leftovers to the CMS lunchroom. I really, really like the CMS-ers... and I really, really miss my Chicago friends. Particularly, having shown the boys Steph's photo album of St. Thomas Aquinas becoming friends with a paper cutout of Nietzsche, the inanimate ones.

And now, a short overview of what I've been doing in class.
Monday's discussion of The Poem of The Cid in my course on Medieval Spain ended with our professor announcing, "you know, those of us with beards *are* the most manly men...".

Latin continues apace as we translate the Vulgate account of David and Bathsheba-- in which, I would have you note, there is no reference to David's "siesta," no matter what the USCCB may think.

(Warning: Girl Talk)

There was one rather embarrassing moment in class when our future Benedictine asked why Bathsheba was "statim sanctificata est", since in the Vulgate it really does appear that purification is effected by the adultery, rather than as a result of biological things going on beforehand. Having already been the one who explained to the class that a whether is a castrated sheep, I didn't want to have to be the one to say, "well, once a month women get a little grumpy..." The instructor merely said, "Well, if you read the book of Leviticus, there are many things after which one is supposed to have a bath."

I am, however, disturbed by this particular student's question, because when I was wondering what was going on with the "sanctificata est" and the Douay-Rheims online provided no help, I went to the RSV (which--get this--*actually looked at the Hebrew*) for help. Is our Benedictine Rad Trad too much of a traditionalist to read a modern translation?

I'm sure Heavens will have something to say about the above two passages. Probably correcting my Latin.

Middle Welsh continues slowly, although we are supposed to start reading Pwyll next week. The professor walked us through the first few lines. "You see that particle? That's marking that the verb is in a weird place in the sentence. Now, that particle? That marks that the verb is in the normal place in the sentence." Yes. At least we're better off than Celticist Roommate's Old Irish class.

Then I went to his office hours to ask him about PhD programs where they would be comfortable letting me be both a Celticist and an Historian, and he kinda sorta maybe offered me a thesis topic. For which I would need to be amazing enough to actually get into the PhD program here. Yeeep.

Today's project: scandalous rhetoric texts describing how to write love letters to Nuns! Hurrah!

I apologize for the rambling... I'd edit, but I wanted to be at PIMS by 10, and I'm running rather late.

Before the Day is Out...

2007-10-15T22:41:00.000-05:00

"For God denies Himself to no one who perseveres but gradually increases the courage of such a one till he achieves victory."
-- St. Teresa of Jesus, Libro de la Vida, Chapter 11.

"At about this time there came to my notice the harm and havoc that were being wrought in France by these Lutherans and the way in which their unhappy sect was increasing...And, seeing that I was a woman, and a sinner, and incapable of doing all I should like in the Lord's service, and as my whole yearning was and still is, that, as He has so many enemies and so few friends, these last should be trusty ones, I determined to do the little that was in me--namely, to follow the evangelical counsels as perfectly as I could...
It makes me laugh, and yet it makes me sad, when I hear of the things which people come here to beg us to pray to God for; we are to ask His Majesty to give them money and to provide them with incomes-- I wish that some of these people would entreat God to enable them to trample all such things beneath their feet...
The world is on fire. Men try to condemn Christ once again, as it were, for they bring a thousand false witnesses against him. "
--The Way of Perfection

Life is Good.

2007-10-08T09:39:00.000-05:00

My Saturday Morning Eamon Duffy reading group exemplifies everything I love about the Centre for Medieval Studies. We, having read Duffy for fun (or for Major Fields Exam Reading Lists) sit around drinking caffeinated beverages and pretending to talk about Medieval English Religion. Of course, in practice this means that we discuss reenacting a medieval rogationtide procession around the boundaries of the new Centre building (to drive all the evil demons from our 'parish' to that of the Classicists) and Thomas More's earthy sense of humor. ("That's why he got along so well with Erasmus...'Amice Erasme, tracte digitum meum.")

-----

We had a Canadian Thanksgiving last night. Celticist Roommate and I busied ourselves around the stove and then opened our apartment to Kolya & T., who brought the fruits of their own culinary labo(u)r and copious amounts of wine to the table--especially exciting because Celticist Roommate had brought me a present of wineglasses from Canadian Tire.

And then I got to have pumpkin pie for breakfast this morning.

Our Menu:
Maple Syrup Brussels Sprouts and
Walnut & Cranberry Bread (both by T.)
Garlic Mashed Potatoes, a la Celticist Roommate
Roasted Root Vegetables, from Kolya
A ham about the size of a Nerf Football, baked by one or both of the gentlemen
And: Phillips Stuffing, Baked Squash, and a Pumpkin Pie with homemade Whipped Cream by Yrs. Truly.

The Walnut & Cranberry Bread made me terribly homesick for Mom's annual Easter Party-- specifically her Kulich. I may have to obtain her recipe, come April.

This evening I am attending a less traditional Thanksgiving at the House of Em, where I will be served Japanese Curry and we will watch British Comedies.

Dedicated to the Young Man Who Was Checking Me Out at Mass Yesterday

2007-10-05T00:13:00.000-05:00

The Girls of Llanbadarn

I am one of passion's asses,
Plague on all these parish lasses!
Though I long for them like mad,
Not one female have I had,
Not a one in all my life,
Virgin, damsel, hag, or wife.
What maliciousness, what lack,
What does make them turn their back?
Would it be a shame to be
In a bower of leaves with me?
No one's ever been so bitched,
So bewildered, so bewitched
Saving Garwy's lunatics
By their foul fantastic tricks.

So I fall in love, I do,
Every day, with one or two,
Get no closer, any day,
Than an arrow's length away.
Every single Sunday, I,
Llanbadarn can testify,
Go to church and take my stand
With my plumed hat in my hand,
Make my reverence to the altar,
Find the right page in my psalter,
Turn my back on holy God,
Face the girls, and wink, and nod
For a long, long time, and look
Over feather, at the folk.
Suddenly, what do I hear?
A stage whisper, all too clear,
A girl's voice, and her companion
Isn't slow at catching on.

'See that simple fellow there,
Pale and with his sister's hair
Giving me those leering looks
Wickeder than any crook's?'

'Don't you think that he's sincere?'
Asks the other in her ear.
"All I'll give him is Get out!
Let the Devil take the lout!'

Pretty payment, in return
For the love with which I burn.
Burn for what? The bright girl's gift
Offers me the shortest shrift.
I must give them up, resign
These fear-troubled hopes of mine:
Better be a hermit, thief,
Anything, to bring relief.
Oh, strange lesson, that I must
Go companionless and lost,
Go because I looked too long,
I, who loved the power of song.

(Dafydd ap Gwilym, fl. 1340-1370)

2007-09-30T18:04:00.000-05:00

Michael: I think you have some rage.
Alice: Oh, you noticed?
Kelly: Do you think that, if we brought an anger management consultant into the apartment, we could get a group rate?
Emilie: Do you all have anger problems?
Kelly: [Roommate] has three classes a day with [name redacted].

How I Spent My Day

2007-09-30T00:46:00.000-05:00

Woke up at 8:30 hating the world having gone to bed at 3-ish, met up with people for a 10:00 am Eamon Duffy reading/discussion group. We dispersed at 12:15, and Kolya convinced T. and me to bring our books and accompany him to the Toronto Islands for a picnic lunch and studying on the beach.

This being Toronto, where the weather will very soon be not-so-nice, and because T. and I have spines of Jell-O when being pressured to procrastinate, we acquiesced.

So we took a ferry out to Ward's Island, settled ourselves on the beach, and spent the afternoon wading, enjoying the sun and air, and reading selections from our history reading to one another.

Then I went home to make dinner and prepare for the evening activity-- movie watching and beer drinking with Celticist Roommate and our PhD friends at Massey College. Movies watched: Anchorman and The Lion in Winter. Yes.

(Imagine a more elegant transition.)

One side effect of the time spent on the beach was a conversation about proper names, in which it was revealed that Kolya has a middle name that he finds embarassingly preppy, I have The World's Most WASP Grandmotherly Full Name, and T. was named neither for the character in medieval literature nor for the character in opera, but for the young, gadabout veterinary student in All Creatures Great and Small.

One of my fondest memories of second year is that of spending time in the kitchen cooking with Mary Claire, quoting James Herriot at one another. Do any of you Breckie/Comptonite readers have contact info for Mary Claire H.? I haven't spoken to her in months and months, but I'd love to share that little story with her because I know she'd get a kick out of it.

2007-09-18T18:53:00.000-05:00

Today I briefly considered putting my religious views on Facebook as "Hell is Other Catholics".

...but I decided that I didn't want to alienate that majority of my Catholic acquaintances I do love, nor horrify those who would misunderstand it as me being more Catholic than, er, the Pope.

A Bit Late, But...

2007-09-13T12:58:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year to the few who read this and are of a haberdasher'd persuasion. I am eating sweet autumn apples (albeit with peanut butter, not with honey) and hoping that the sweetness of next year will be seeing you all.

Ughh...

2007-09-06T11:17:00.000-05:00

I have a pounding headache today, folksies, so I'm going to try to keep this short. Then I shall take some Ibuprofen and lie down until going to the Centre becomes completely necessary.

Yesterday was a surprisingly good day. I spent one last night at the house I was sitting, then made my way to campus where I bought pens, took myself out to brunch, and then sat the Latin exam. It was really shocking to see how many other people were taking it... PhD candidates from other departments and MAs who hadn't passed it last spring, as well as the new MA candidates. The first passage was a medieval paraphrase of Joseph interpreting dreams in his cell... "Ah-ha!" I thought, "People who know scripture... for the win!" I spent the next forty-five minutes having warm feelings for the Rabidly Lutheran Babysitter I had who gave me my first (Precious Moment's Children's) Bible. The other three passages were an Advent Sermon, a passage from the Latin version of the Ancrene Wisse, and Bede's account of the six ages of the world.

Then I went home to the apartment and put together Ikea Furniture. We now have a dining table and chairs, and I have a bed and a dresser. I would put together my desk today, but... pounding headache.

I think that's about all. Interesting eavesdropping over my brunch, but I don't really want to get into it. I start foaming at the mouth in fury.* Suffice to say, it was proof that secular people don't understand the scientific method, either. Dear friends who are planning to teach sciences: please to be kicking ass and taking names? Thank you.

____
* He was explaining to his friend that, you know, lots of doctors don't believe that HIV causes AIDS. There, I said it. Now I'm going to go lie down with a cold compress and be bitter.

The celebrant is simply not allowed to make a pass at anybody.

2007-09-04T21:44:00.000-05:00

Liturgical Referees, sent to me by Sukie.

Latin exam at 1 pm tomorrow. Eep!

Quick Update

2007-09-03T09:45:00.000-05:00

Moving went fine, still looking for a fourth roommate, blah blah blah. The internet here remains capricious, so I'm posting this as fast as I can.

Latin studying continues apace, thanks to the efforts of Em-the-Younger.

I had my own little Blackadder marathon last night, and I think I may be addicted. Very addicted.

Sometimes it is just a little too clear that I am my father's daughter, which I realized yesterday as I stood in front of the pepper grinders in the grocery store, trying to make up my mind. So far the only spices/flavorings I've bought for my cooking are crushed red peppers, sugar cubes, and peppercorns. (He reads this... Hi, Dad!)

Okay, I'm going to go research internet plans for our apartment. To entertain you, I present Matthew's "Radio Free Saxe-Coburg-Gotha" from The Shrine of the Holy Whapping.

Uhm, This is What I Get for Being an Extrovert.

2007-08-30T11:02:00.000-05:00

Some of you have had to listen to me rant about how much I've enjoyed meeting Torontonian Catholics who manage to be traditional without traditionalist or crazy conservative.

Last night, at swing dancing, the other shoe dropped. One young man was sitting on the sidelines, not going home but not dancing. Being me (and being somewhat more outgoing than I usually am, because dancing makes me giddy), I decided to harass him. Because I'm kind like that.

Yrs Truly: What's up? You haven't danced at all!
Gentleman: Well, I'm not feeling very well... my tummy hurts.
Y.T.: Oh, I'm sorry. Uhm, I'm Alice...
Gentleman: (His Name)
Y.T: Right. We met in the lesson, but I forgot your name.
G: Are you a first year?
Y.T: Oh, I'm an MA Student. You? What's your department?
G: I'm starting my first year in mathematics-- I'm an undergraduate.
Y.T: Oh, so did you move in already?
G: No, I'm a commuter student. My parents made it clear I wasn't moving away from home.
Y.T.: So, what do you want to do with that? Do you want to go on for a PhD, or do you want to teach?
G: Oh, I think I'm just going to work after getting my degree...

(Note that his lack of interest in a doctorate was where I realized that there was no way this conversation was going anywhere good.)

Y.T: blah blah blah my friends doing math PhDs blah blah blah... Do you have a distribution requrement?
G: Yes, so I'm taking Engineering, and Catholicism...
Y.T: There's a class called 'Catholicism"?!
G: In St. Michael's College.
Y.T: I have to get myself a TAship in that course. I do religious history, you see...
G: Yes, I've done my own reading on my religion in that regard. I'm a creationist, so I've done a great deal of reading on my religion.
Y.T: ... how do you define your religion?
G: I'm a conservative Catholic.
Y.T: Ah, I see. Well, I'll be seeing you around. I'd be a terrible TA in that class, though, I'd stand in the corner and tell Jesuit jokes. (Flounces off to dance some more.)

Yeah, so, I'd met one really traditionalist Catholic who refused to believe in the Doppler effect because, you know, red-shift is one of the bits of evidence for the Big Bang, but I'd never met a Catholic who willingly called himself a Creationist before.

Classics Joke of the Day

2007-08-29T10:08:00.000-05:00

This is a story about a certain Professor who teaches Old English at the Centre, and was related to Em the Younger and me over coffee yesterday by a member of Team Anglican.

One day, when Professor O. was a grad student at Oxford working on his thesis, there was a knock at the door. When he answered it, he found two Jehovah's Witnesses, who asked him if they could come in and talk about God.

He thought about this..."thesis, talk about God...thesis, talk about God..." and decided, like a good Grad Student, to choose procrastination. "Sure, come on in."

"Did you know," the Witnesses asked him, "that in the first chapter of the Gospel of John,* there are two words used for 'God'?"

"Uhm, no there aren't," he replied.

"In the Greek," they explained patiently, "there are two words for God."

"Um, I could go get my copy of the Greek New Testament, if you'd like."

So he did, and opened it up to the Gospel according to John. "You see!" the Witnesses exclaimed. "Two different words!"

"Ah, I see," he replied. "Let me tell you about cases."

And a Catholic Nerd Quote
E: It means "to take pity on." You should remember this, it's one of the BVM** verbs.

What I Did Last Night
I had my own little Wallace and Gromit marathon, and watched all three shorts and Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I can now find all the little references to the shorts that are in the full-length movie.

---
*Two cases: The word was God (nominative) and the word was with God (ablative or whatever they use in Biblical Greek for that).
**As in, Blessed Virgin Mary

Making Hay While the Sun Shines

2007-08-28T08:18:00.000-05:00

Or, um, making blogs whilst the internet Gods shine upon me.

Lest you fear that I've been slacking off out here in the land of the silver birch:

I don't know how that knitting got out there. Honestly.

In Other News...

YAY for the apartment on Ross! Yay for all those prayers, crossed fingers, and mithraic sacrifices! (Vegetarian, I hope.)

I'm still enjoying getting to know future roommate. We share interests in other religions, and it's pretty easy for us to talk about our lives. There's one thing, though, which I feel I ought to bring up now although it's awkward to say it (I don't want it to sound like, oh no, I'm shunning her or something). First, she's thirty. Second, she's Mormon.

I mean, I think I'd feel equally awkward living with anyone of strong faith in anything right now-- I'm still very very Catholic, but I'm still trying to figure out what that means for the rest of my life, and why I sometimes think the haberdasher'd view on things makes more sense. (Here's a sign of how my brain works: the religion with more paradoxes and debates makes more sense.)

However, there are some reasons why I think this will be okay:
* She ran into some LDS missionaries the other day, and since they didn't know her, decided to give them a hard time. "Aren't you the ones with all the wives?" etc. until they got really flustered and she finally said, "actually, I'm from Utah."
* She thinks that she might start dating a fellow soon, and has already given me permission to put up one of these magnets if it becomes an issue.
* There's no chance of her having Jack Chick pamphlets around, as did one of my roommates on Kimbark. (No, not J, of course. No, no the other historian, she's Jewish. Yes, that one. In her defense, she probably didn't know that J.C. is famously anti-Catholic and that I'd take offense at them. And, I mean, she had them in a box, it's not like she was leaving them out as bathroom reading. But still... again, a minor flip-out on seeing them in the box in he pantry.)

This One's for the 'Holy Crap!' Department:

Those who cook understand.

Speaking of Coffee...

Which we weren't, but it's a natural progression in my mind from the discussion of Future Roommate, I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone can survive the morning without it. Me, I'm even having a hard time making coffee without it. Yesterday, I went and got some sugar cubes for my coffee, and promptly overshot the coffee by, oh, two feet of counter space and dropped the first into the pan of oatmeal I was making on the stove. Today, I heated water and set up my little one-cup melitta filter, only to discover, just before I poured the water, that I'd forgotten to add the coffee.

While We're Spying on Other's Cabinets...

Here's a shot from the garden of next-door-neighbor-and-landlord (not my future
landlord, landlord to the girls for whom I'm housesitting.)

I would totally marry him for his garden, if a) that weren't extremely sketchy, b) he weren't already in a committed relationship, c) he weren't batting for a different team, so to speak.

This is the view from the kitchen window:

Note birds on the sunflowers.

Final Notes

I finished Gilead about a week ago. I read it in four lengthly sittings, and would have finished a month ago if I hadn't been distracted by sock knitting. It was good.
Recent Musical Discovery: Enter the Haggis

(P.S. The girl who designed the above "Shut Up about your Fucking Wedding" magnets also sells t-shirts that say "Christian Who Thinks" and, even better, these baby items. I had a good laugh.)

I wish the internet would decide to work during the day.

2007-08-27T23:13:00.000-05:00

Anyhoozle, we got the apartment. Hurrah! Much Latin. Much rejoicing. Sleep now, bye.

Fourth Wall Presents:

2007-08-25T10:17:00.000-05:00

1. More Cell-Phone Pictures

Somebody has painted a face on the observatory. Steph, I'm dedicating this one to you.

If, say, you were in the basement doing laundry and turned to see this:

would you not flip out? I had a little sub voce flip out. I'm accustomed to cats with bells on their collars.

2. In which I get my act together
...and actually dig out my camera. This was the second course of dinner last night: gouda from St. Lawrence Market, Carr's crackers, and the blackberries I was told I could eat from the garden.

3. The scene of the crime
Follow that yarn:

...down the hall...

through the railing...

...and down the stairs.

Now, I'm trying not to blame Bailey, having erroneously blamed him for knocking my phone off the desk, but... yarn does not have a "vibrate" function.

But who couldn't forgive this fuzzy one?

Groceries

2007-08-24T09:26:00.000-05:00

If I'm going to live here for a year or more, I really have to stop giggling every time something is French/English bilingual. Even the stove!

(Apologies for the craptastical phone pictures in this post... I'm playing with my fancy shmancy new cell phone and at this point of the morning (only halfway into my cup of coffee) it's far easier to send them to my computer via bluetooth than to go dig up my camera, take several pictures, find the camera cord, wait for said pictures to upload, and then copy the best one to the desktop. Today's post is brought to you by the letter L, as in laziness.)

Anyway, somehow Spanish doesn't faze me, and when in Wales the Welsh seems only just, but I went to the supermarket yesterday to stock up on provisions now that I'm on my own, and I find the fact that my cranberry juice is hypocalorique (low-calorie), my Quaker Oats are rapide (quick), and my laundry detergent is concentre (concentrated) endlessly delightful. My father was entertained as well. Really, grocery stores in other countries are fascinating. Let me loose in a London Sainsbury's and I'll be entertained for hours.

Actually, yesterday was really the day of shopping in general, because we started off with a trip to the Eaton Centre to find me a cell phone. We went with Rogers because the employees were the nicest and most helpful. If they're going to get paid by commission, we know who we want to get it. The phone is a sexy little Sony Ericsson "Walkman" phone that can travel internationally and takes pictures. (It also plays music, but I don't need that so much.) I'm trying not to get too attached to it. If I do it'll probably spontaneously combust on the subway or something.

Side note: we didn't buy a North American plan, on the advice that it would be cheaper to buy a phone card and then call the US during the unlimited local calling times, as the phone card would be a local call. This probably goes for those of you interested in calling me, as well. Just so you know.

After our soul-crushing trip through the temple to consumerism that is the 21st-century mall, we went to the St. Lawrence Market to play with local food. I took pictures with my new phone. Actually, the first picture I took was completely accidental, of some random woman in the market. So, if you are a woman who was at St. Lawrence Market yesterday and some strange bespectacled twenty-something with a pale green University of Toronto bookbag and a blue hooded sweatshirt took a cell phone picture of you, she wasn't stalking you. She was just trying to figure out her phone. (I don't need to worry about my attachment to material objects... I'm mortified enough by embarrassing myself on a daily basis!)

Anyway. I have no pictures of the cheese stands, where I spent a considerable amount of time, but I do present: King Crab Legs from Alaska. These things were about as long as the distance from my elbow to the tips of my fingers. I'm going to have nightmares about King Crabs from now on.

For you, Podraig: Live Mussels from Prince Edward Island.

And, finally, a picture of my favorite stand ever, which consisted of about twenty gazillion kinds of rice and beans in bulk.

I'm not sure I've ever mentioned my deep love for bulk grains, but there it is... my dream as a vegetarian is to someday have a pantry lined with class canisters filled with all sorts of grains, beans, and pasta. I think that my love of cooking comes from the mysterious, refrigerated bulk foods room in the back of the now-defunct health food store on 24th Street in San Francisco. As a child I loved those barrels full of beans and grains and flours, and the potential they held to be turned into all sorts of things.

Yesterday at St. Lawrence Market, it was all I could do not to stick my hands into the tubs to feel the way the grains felt as they ran through my fingers. (I resisted!) Have we discussed the fact that I'm a kinesthetic learner? I like to make/touch/build things.

An Old Joke, Revised.

2007-08-23T22:00:00.000-05:00

A young Catholic woman desperately wanted to get a nice apartment, and thought that it would be beneficial to get God on her side. The idea came into her head that she would say a rosary for the apartment, but she wondered if that was a selfish idea. So, having many acquaintances in local religious orders (she must have lived in Hyde Park), she decided to ask their opinion. First, she went to the local Franciscan house, where she found Friar Anthony outside having a conversation with some pigeons.

"Friar Anthony," she asked, "would it be irreligious to pray a rosary for an apartment?"

"Well," he replied, "what, my dear, is an Apartment?"

"It's a bit like a monastic cell," she replied, "but it has its own bathroom and kitchen and several bedrooms, and really nice new appliances, high ceilings, and tall windows."

"Our Father Francis taught us to turn away from material possessions," said Friar Anthony, "and that holiness is found in the vow of poverty. You should trust God to find you housing sufficient to your needs, and not say the rosary for the apartment."

Our protagonist didn't much like this answer, so she went to the local Dominican House of Studies, where she had to wait fifteen minutes for Brother Carlos to be brought from the library.

"Brother," she asked, "would it be wrong to pray a rosary for a nice apartment?"

"Well," he replied, "the Bible tells us to turn to God with all our requests, and then the great Saint Thomas, in his Summa reminds us that...

"Yes yes yes," she replied. "Thank you, brother."

Finally, she decided to go to the local Jesuit house, where she found Father Damien outside having a pint.

"Father," she asked, "would it be wrong to pray a rosary for an apartment?"

He paused. "What's a rosary?"

So, yeah, if you could all find a few moments to say a decade/burn some candles/make a sacrifice to Mithras to ask that Lorie and I get the apartment we applied for this evening, we'd be greatly obliged. We had the following conversation:

Landlord: "Well, say, if one of the applicants were a motorcycle gang, we'd be less likely to rent to them."
Alice: "um...we like to bake."
Lori: "And knit."

The Toronto Chronicles

2007-08-22T20:50:00.000-05:00

1. I'm getting the feeling (based on the 3/4ths of a cookie sitting here on my desk, uneaten) that Canadians like things really, really sweet. Too sweet. This should amuse any of you who have ever seen me try to limit the amount of sugar I put in my coffee.

2. My parents agree that the black squirrels are... weird. However, instead of shying away from them as I do, they have been taking pictures of them.

3. This sweetness thing does not, it seems, apply to yogurt. I ordered yogurt at breakfast this morning and was given plain yogurt, with honey. Yummy.

4. I am so incredibly sore from walking around today... it isn't even funny. I was tired even before meeting with the potential future roommate, but then after we hit it off and went to the housing center to look up rooms, and then went to see an apartment and scope out the location of another one. We're seeing two more tomorrow, and we think we want the one whose windows we were peeking through today. Keep your fingers and toes crossed for us! Thank you, Em the Elder, for pointing us in one another's direction...we both hate TV, neither of us wanted to live in a high-rise, and we both believe in keeping housekeeping schedules. And she's a crocheter and started referring to the living room we saw as "the knitting room". Clearly a woman cut of the same cloth (and also Welsh-- that -s ending is a giveaway!). Anyway, yes. Sore. And I get to move tomorrow! Yay!

5. Yup. My parents leave Canada on Friday, but I found temporary housing as a house-and-cat sitter for two PhD candidates. I will be spending two weeks in the company of one lovely Siamese, Bailey, who I shall no doubt refer to as Oliver the entire time because he looks almost exactly like my Grandparents' cat.

6. I have a bank account. I also have a P.O Box, a Student ID, an appointment with the MA program director, a familiarity with the Graduate Program secretary (Grace is my hero!), a stack of old latin exams from which to study, and a working knowledge of the subway system. In a week or so I will have a health card. I'm starting to feel settled... but only a little bit.

7. Obligatory Quotes:
M: "Isn't this a Christian group?"
Em the Younger: "What? No!" (Muttered Conversation) "CREED is a Christian group, not COLDPLAY!"

A: "I'm worried I'm going to be lonely and bored when my parents leave."
D Robes: "Well, you just need to keep yourself busy. Go to museums, go for walks, find a project..."
A: "Well, I do need to study Latin."
D: "Right. You should make it a project to study Latin outside of every building that's ever been Toronto's city hall. That will keep you busy."
(Dan: The program coordinator thought this was hilarious.)

Bank Guy: "Well, let's just take these traveler's checks downstairs and make your money a bit more colorful." (er, colourful)

8. The New Accounts guy at the branch of my bank on Spadina is a big football fan. He wanted travel advice on his fall trip to...South Bend. He's going to see ND against Duke.

9. Moving tomorrow is especially exciting as it means that I get to do laundry. This is fast becoming an extreme necessity.

10. Mass at the Toronto Newman Center (er, Centre) is an experience that requires its own entry.

11. Finally, many public thanks go out to: D Robes, for talking me out of some very dark and unhappy late-night places-- twice; Vanessa, who used experience from her internship to talk me out of a panic over filling prescriptions; former-roommate Kathleen, who agreed to be a reference for lease applications; Larry and John, who promised to treat me to a manicure/pedicure on my arrival in Toronto (Larry dear, in regard to your preference question... my favorite place in Chicago is here... I don't really know what category it fits.); that be-hatted fellow, for making time to listen to me babble despite his busy schedule and keeping in touch himself; EMILY, whose name should be sung with angelic choirs in the background for all the help she's given me in finding housing and getting settled; and, finally, my parents, who despite the fact that we've been sharing a hotel room for a week and a half, have not yet killed and/or disowned me.

Happy Feast Day!

2007-08-15T18:41:00.000-05:00

Today is the feast of the Assumption, the day when (for those not-in-the-know) we Catholics, basing our theology on the fact that the Early Christians, who were so into venerating dead bodies they changed the course of city planning,* never venerated any bodily relics of Mary. (There were some medieval claims to her body, but you know how those medievals were with the relics. I'd give you the sources, but they're packed up in boxes.) Connecting the lack of relics with the fact that Mary, you know, carried GOD in her womb and therefore it would be just...wrong for her body to decay (welcome to Catholic Theology as expressed by Sandy W.), we assume that God took her body up to heaven. There's some disagreement between East and West as to whether or not she had to die first.

The Assumption was made infallably dogmatic by Pope Pius Something-or-Other in 1950.

Last year, I did not make it to mass. This is because I was here:

And hiking here:

And if it's a new feast day, there must be a new liturgical pet peeve. This time, courtesy of Holy Name Cathedral: Sopranos with vibrato up to their ears. Honey, you just aren't an opera singer, and trying so hard to be one makes it sound like you can't control your breathing enough to hit the high notes.

The Judges Have Conferred, And...

2007-08-14T01:52:00.000-05:00

Everyone's a Winner! in the "Most Embarassing CD" Contest.

The prize for "Most Obscure Submission" goes to...
Steph!

The prize for "One-Hit Wonder" goes to...
Patrick!

The prize for "Picking a CD that the judge had in her collection" goes to...
Veroniquita! (And yes, dear, in answer to your question. I also had her first two CDs (and you can watch her descent to tart-hood in the cover art) and would tell you about the outfit I used to dress up in in order to sing/dance along, but this is a public forum and I want to be able to get a date again someday.)

And the grand prize goes to...
Caelius, for the "Dawson's Creek" CD! He also gets extra-special recognition for making (Darjeeling) tea come out of my nose with his very-special translation for the last post.

Unfortunately, one contestant was disqualified for trying to bribe the judges with sexy models, such as in the following submission...

I'm Moving to Canada!

We fly out to Chicago tomorrow, and we're going to be leaving Chicago mid-day Friday. Chicago plans include introducing my parents to Fado and perhaps a museum trip or two.

What *does* she think of that boy?

The Viking and I went out to dinner with our BA advisor before I left Chicago a few weeks ago, and as our food arrived I started to tell Neil a story which ended with meeting a girl who was working in a yarn shop, who happens to have gone to school with one of his roommates.

"I'm afraid this won't be of much interest to Professor Fulton," I said. "But I was in a yarn shop..."

"Hey!" said Prof. Fulton, "I knit! Its' what got me through graduate school.*"

So, the question that's keeping me up nights is... did she think that Neil was going to care about the yarn?

Speaking of Yarn...

I finished that hat...

Which, of course, necessitated taking the hat outside, posing it on the pedestal of the birdbath-in-two-pieces, and taking photos. Because if you're going to be bats, you might as well go at it full force.

Can You Find the Cat in this Picture?

Look for the ear.

Watch upcoming posts (when I can find hotel internet and I'm not so tired I'm spelling everything phonetically and my wrists feel like they're going to fall off) on such topics as my exciting weekend and why I'm too stupid for technology.

---
*That, and the postcard of Eeyore that she keeps over her desk that says, "This writing stuff, pencils and whatnot...overrated, if you ask me."

Also not an approved greeting.

2007-08-13T00:21:00.000-05:00

"Good morning, how are you, and did your team do well yesterday? This is not a part of the opening rite. If you find a lectionary with that opening rite, I'll give you a turkey."- (a butchered-from-memory-quote-by) Cardinal Arinze

ALSO not approved: "Good morning! I'm Monsignor So-and-so and I retired last year but I'm still in residence here at the parish and I help out saying the mass in Latin. All you children here today are going to get an introduction to what the mass was like a long, long time ago when it was said in Latin. Please, all of you who are over 50, try to remember how to sing along and say your "amens" and your "et cum spiritu tuos" You may have heard that the Pope has now given permission for the Latin...the Tridentine rite to be said where ever there are enough people who want it, but we are going to say the New Order of the mass...(rest of lecture redacted because, trust me, it went on). So, now, if you will turn to page four in the booklets, in nomine patri, et fili..."

This wouldn't be so bad, but he does it every week. Every time I've ever been to this parish-which-shall-go-unnamed, (but-which-is-right-across-from- Yerba-Buena-and-next-to-the- future-Contemporary-Jewish-Museum), this priest has given this same introduction. And priests wonder about a lack of interest in Latin masses. Well, maybe if you stopped apologizing for them.

Ze Garcon Haberdasher'd was quite surprised when I informed him, against his assumptions, that the readings from Hebrew scriptures at Mass are not done in Hebrew.
"Nobody would understand it," I said.
"They could learn it," he replied.
Um, yeah. We're having enough trouble with our own liturgical language. Once we teach the higher-ups enough Latin that they're not translating "et cum spiritu tuo" as "and also with you" and cutting out parts of the Gloria with a machete, we'll start pushing for Biblical Hebrew.*

ALSO NOT OKAY: Stopping before the Eucharistic prayer to tell people to "turn to page 25". Honestly. This is why parishes use song sheets. God made photocopiers for a reason.

*Deep Breath* I'm okay. Honestly.

LookLookLook

Did you know that there are people who do latte art?

Seriously. Because what I needed was a way to combine my addiction to making things with my caffeine addiction...

The kubuki mask is my favorite.

(Confidential to Carolyn: "You can stir the jam into your pudding, but you can't stir it out...")

---
* Some readers may remember the RCIA textbook I was given, which translated "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" as "I am sorry, I am sorry, I am heartily sorry."

What's that Strange Feeling?

2007-08-08T19:19:00.000-05:00

Oh, right. I'm in San Francisco, and it's Summer. It's cold.

We're tough San Franciscans. We don't turn on the heat in Summer until we're breaking ice out of the bird bath.

My hands, however, think that it is too cold to type. Or knit.

Fourth Wall

New Blog

I AM SO BORED.

Three Thoughts

One Other Thing

Radio Silence

What Are you Doing Today, Dear?

Theme for the Next Week

End-of-Semester Mad Libs

Oh man oh man.

Triumph!

Domestic Bliss

Victory!

Whee!

Conversations With The Assistant Director

Four Things: March 25, 2007

Orders of Business, II

Some Orders of Business

In Which I Almost Have a Heart Attack Not Related to Biscuits & Gravy

ITEMS: One, Two, Three

How Vegetarians Give Themselves Heart Attacks

In Which the Latin *Clicks*

Latest Scholarly Discovery: Century-Old Question Answered

THIS JUST IN

Cwino, Cwino, Cwino

Quick Update

Add To: "Ways I Know He's the Only One for Me"

Ah, yes...

Some Observations.

Candlemas, 2008

From Today's Inbox

Can I Do This Week Over?

In Which We Slay the Goat of Peace and a Bottle of Glenlivet

You know where liars go, don't you?

The most exciting thing

Observations

1/11

Shaking My Fist at the Weather

Study of a Paper-Writing Session

New Year Thoughts

Missive from the T.C.

In Which I Fall Into Mad, Mad, Shoe Lust

News from Far & Wide, and too many quotes.

A Poll

Holiday Greetings, from Our Table to Yours

Merry Christmas

Damage Control

The Happy Dance of the Finished Sock

Self-searching has revealed...

Some Things I Need To Do

Life Continues (Amid Parentheses).

Arrrgh!

Sometimes, the Letter Home Says it All

Define "Productivity"

I WANT ONE.

Forget the Turkey. Find me a Bagel!

In Which I Am (Obliquely) Mentioned on the Shrine of the Holy Whapping

I just died laughing.

You're my Axiom of Choice, you know it's Truuue...

Yes, we talk like this.

I miss Carolyn.

More Language Madness

Latin is to Guinness as Welsh is to Bailey's

7 Hours

I'm on the bandwagon.

(Never-you-mind.)

There's Collegiality, and then there's...

Images from the Weekend: From Duelling to Dancing

Quick, Before I Go To Bed And Forget Them...

Rambling.

Before the Day is Out...

Life is Good.

Dedicated to the Young Man Who Was Checking Me Out at Mass Yesterday

How I Spent My Day

A Bit Late, But...

Ughh...

The celebrant is simply not allowed to make a pass at anybody.

Quick Update

Uhm, This is What I Get for Being an Extrovert.

Classics Joke of the Day

In Which the Latin Clicks