Noooooooooooo!

Fernando's been home for almost 2 weeks, and I thought--well with all his coughing, if I haven't gotten sick by now, it's not going to happen...

Noooooooooooooooo!

I was congested the other day - now I have a sore throat, which he says is the first stage - and I might be getting feverish cause I'm having the whole "must put on 5 layers to get warm" "now boiling hot, must remove all flannels and put on spring pajamas."

It's 4 weeks til my deadline. I CAN'T get sick. I woke up at 7 this morning (engaged in the above pajama fever dance) and felt awful, just no energy. But after falling asleep again, I feel better now - just a cracking good headache, and still the sore throat.

Noooooooooooooooo! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

wouldn't trade them for the world

I've talked before about "the woman whose living my life" -- the blogger with a rich husband who lives in London and San Fran. But there is one obstacle that would prevent me from actually wanting her life: She can't have cats.

She's a huge cat lover, but because they travel all the time, and live in two cities, she can't keep one. In her old home the nabe had a bunch of cats, and one of them would live with her when she was home: Clyde. She talked about Clyde all the time, and took photos.

But they recently moved to a beautiful new house on a hillside, and she couldn't bring Clyde with her because, again, of the traveling. (Plus there might be wild beasts around where they are, or something.) So she's totally broken hearted about it. She has a fake cat in 2nd life named Clyde.

I can hardly read her blog entries about saying goodbye to him, because I know how she's feeling. I could not give up my 3 monsters.

(Of course, they would give me up for an extra serving of softies. But then that's the beauty of cats.)

Put the deco back in decorate!

Paul and I went down the hill to the store today, in the raging snowstorm. It was very exciting. Had to get decongestants for The Sick One. Looking out the window, this appears to be the wildest snowstorm yet! Craziness!

The Sick One and I have decided to move next year (lease up in April) so now I've started planning where I want to live, and what new bits I'd like to buy for the new place.

It's not that we really *need* anything, and I hate to be too Consumeree-Evil... but I am glad of the idea of starting fresh somewhere. We've lived here for 10 years. We decorated somewhat when we moved in, and we used to have people over etc. But the floors have worn out, and there's paint peeling in spots--it needs an overhaul. And it's harder to overhaul while living in a place than when you first move in. Plus the owners are cheap and never fix anything up. I mean, think about it... after 10 years surely something needs improving. (Well yes, they did install new pipes yesterday... after my kitchen was flooded last weekend.)

We need a new couch, because the current one (inherited when parents moved away) gives me an instant headache when I sit on it. I need something higher. Or maybe a couple of Lazyboys! Then we can be like old people, sitting around on our chairs, smoking a pipe or doing the knitting.

The beds are fine. Washer, dryer, dishwasher all fine.

We need new blinds. I have curtains up right now, but with Nombly the Peeing Wonder running around you never know what's safe. Nice looking blinds, but washable, would be prudent.

I'd like some new book cases. I have some old metal ones from the 70s that need to go. And some plastic ones that are buckling under the weight of my books.

And possibly I would like a new bread box (which we need to keep the cats from eating the bread.) There's a really cute one on someone's blog that I envy.

And maybe I'll get some cute dining table off Craigslist. Here's someone custom made Louis XV dining table. Heh heh.

Or "Scandanavian teak"?

Something chichi?



Mod?

Ahh that's more like it --you'd all want to be invited over to eat on that!


Art Deco, to get my Bertie Wooster on.

Or since the 80s are back in...!




Get my Regency on.

But nothing says retro like Formica. Love this photo--it's so my Gramma's house in the 70s.


Anyway. It's my new obsession. Now I'll have to start my millionth blog! Tscone Decorates!

Oh la oh la, 6 weeks to go.

I just got feedback for my MA essay, from one of my reviewers--she's one of the stats monkeys on staff, and she also does gender stuff. A great prof and researcher.

But as I feared, she gave me alllll kinds of advice for the stats part of the paper... sigh. The main problem with this is, I think somewhere along the way I lost my data set, which means if I want to make any improvements to the model I'll have to rebuild it up again. (I have the original raw data, but you have to recode stuff, and cut out what's not needed, and name things. Running the stats takes two seconds, but coding the data in the first place can be long, and prone to mistakes.)

I keep forgetting to check my folder at school to see if the data's still there. So... ugh. Might as well drag a sleeping bag into school and sleep there for a week. I wish I had this frigging stats program at home, but it costs 1000s of dollars.

What I would rather do is throw that model out, and use my other data set, which I think has less problems in it. But at this point I think I'd have to ask one of my advisers about that. Oh la oh la.

Meanwhile--last weekend was wasted because I had building plumbing problem. The pipes apparently freeze in the garage below, and everyone's kitchen water, from me up to the third floor, all backs up through my sink. I was pushing the building manager to send someone to fix it, from Friday evening onwards, but she insisted all I had to do was ask my neighbors not to use their kitchen sinks til Monday. And when I insisted that they might not listen to me, she hung up on me.

So Sat night the upstairs neighbour used his washing machine, which hooks up to the sink, and my kitchen was flooded. So then she sent a repairman Sunday morning. After calling the neighbour an asshole and trying to blame it all on him.

All in all... I was a total stressazoid. Really it's fighting with her that does it, more than anything else. Fernando's still in Calgary, with bronchitis and pneumonia. When we talked on the phone about this, we decided we should finally move.

This place is cheap (hence the crappy cheap landlord) and well situated (4 bus routes and walking distance from our jobs) but we're willing to pay more money to escape the manager and owner. And this time I want a building that's newer or been renovated. But we can't move til next year, cause it's too late to not renew the lease.

Anyway. I'm excited about moving, but I have to get my mind back on the school work. Come next week I'll have almost non-stop grading until May, so time will be tighter. And if I don't meet the April deadline for this paper, then I'll have to pay another semester's tuition, and that would ruin my summer anyway.

Okay. Off to make supper and do some work. Oh la oh la.

UPDATE: I just remembered I can check my McGill folder from home. It looks like the datasets are still there. PHEW.

Posts from my Week Off

Tue, Feb 26

I don't know how many times I've sat by this bedroom window writing political science papers. I can't wait until it's over and I can associate this parking lot view with beautiful beautiful fiction writing.

If I'm ever published, and writing becomes Real Work, maybe I won't regard it as so beautiful. But for now it's a lovely fantasy sitting at the end of the next 7 weeks.

*

I'm sitting here reading about gender inequality and the connection to violence in Somali society... and I have to admit that I do like paper writing a... a little bit. Ahem. I do still love to learn new things. I just don't want to have to write about them and be tested on them. But even the writing isn't bad... I mean, it's still writing. I ahem ahem kind of enjoy the wrestling with verbs and punctuation and adjectives and sentence structure. Ahem ahem. Cough cough. Don't tell anyone.

*

Poor Nombly. He's trying to sleep next to me, but I keep singing along with the Purple Rain soundtrack that I'm listening to under headphones. Sometimes the cats won't stay in the kitchen with me because they're fed up with the constant barrage of sound coming from the stereo.

"Let's go Nombly! Let's get nuts!" I try singing TO him, to make up for it.

...Probably I shouldn't scream out the finale of "The Beautiful Ones."

*

vacation from airwave land

I'm handing over the internet cable very shortly, for the week. Here is one last post--an old one that I wrote on my computer but never put up.

*
I took the day off today as my *weekend.* Since I work both Friday and Sunday, and I need to do readings on Saturday, I realized that I need to do my Nothing At All Without Guilt day earlier in the week. Let's see if this works out (aka feel more like working on Saturday.)

So here was my nice day, which I don't want to end...

12 hours sleep
woke around noon i think
ate homemade bran muffins and baking powder biscuits
watched some things i'd taped off tv, this and that
started a Bond movie
started laundry
looked at new cookbooks, while tv-ing
made Rice Krispie dessert, put to cool in fridge
6-9 PM took a nap with Nombly
half watched High Fidelity on tv, and half cooked
ate pesto & pasta, with mushrooms (new Italian cookbook)
ate huge piece of RK dessert
did internet stuff, mostly sampling and buying music until 5 AM
now i'm sitting in bed listening to my music, and i needed something to do while listening so i'm typing up recipes to blog
maybe i'll read some of Pyongyang (comic book about Nth Korea)

The History of Me: Chapter 1

I've been trying to trace, lately, the origins of Me. Take the veganism for instance--where does that originate? I loved animals as a child, but don't most kids? I watch a reality show about this family with sextuplets and there's one boy who is ALL about the animals. He knows all their names, and teaches them to his brothers and sisters. How does that happen? I mean, this kid's growing up in the same environment as the others.

Is that genetic? Was I born with the Crazy About Animals gene? You'd think we'd have been weeded out thousands of years ago when we refused to eat meat. Maybe that's why I have a genetic *defect* that retains too much iron--it's most prevalent among Celtic people, and you know where veganism started... Britain! ;-) Then again, given a different environment, C.A.A. gene could also make you turn into a hunter.

I didn't have any baby dollies as a child, it had to be Barbies or stuffed animals. I still own my first stuffies: Tiger and Bunbun. Movies like The Fox and the Hounds TORE me up--I don't think I've ever seen it since (though I did have the sheets.) As an adult I absolutely refuse to watch animal movies (I don't care that they're "just actors!" I don't approve of animal acting anyway.) People often ask if I feel healthier since becoming vegetarian/vegan. No--I never noticed a difference. I didn't do it for health reasons, and I don't believe it's "the natural way" for humans to eat, whatever that means. I just felt that, if I'm going to be such an animal sap that I can't even watch The Bear, then it's hypocritical to partake in their suffering.

Our cat Ernie slept in my bed since I was little. We shared the same favourite blanket--Greenie, the blanket my mother and I picked out for daycare. Ernie used to suck on it. (I still have Greenie around here somewhere, since I couldn't keep Ernie forever.) The last summer Ernie was alive I was painting our house, and he would find the closest bit of shade in the yard, to where I was working; and when I moved up onto the verandah roof, he went indoors, went upstairs to a bedroom, and sat in the window nearest where I was working. Did Ernie make me a vegan?

Maybe there are other factors that have to be present to get us from Animal Loving Child to Vegan. I have very moral parents. My mother taught me to make the connection between my morals and my purchasing power. I think I internalized the idea of integrity from my father--that you have to decide what your core values are, and then attempt to bring the rest of your life into line with it.

So...
1. Animalness in the genes. I also have a rock solid constitution--I can digest anything.
2. there always being a cat or two in the house (probably my mother's influence)
3. one of those cats turning out to be The Great Ernie (chance or Divine Providence--you pick ;-) )
4. the Parental Moral Lessons
5. Church (father's influence) where for 7 years I kept the Jewish food laws (more mental connections between morality and how you live your practical life)
6. a presentation on cattle auctions in a university ethics course
--> here we've reached vegetarianism, with vegan as the long term goal
(About 10-12 years now.)
7. working with Vegan Boy the Tom Cruise Lookalike at work, who was the personal touch I needed to push me over the line
--> veganism
(About 6 years now.)

Hmm. Interesting. Join us next time for "My Attraction to the 1920s." Did it start with Once Upon a Time in America? Or Johnny Dangerously? Find out in the next exciting episode!