Friday, September 28, 2007

overheard/read on the wall in the stall at the goat



"it must have been so hard, growing up in the 80s"

* * * * * * *

"fighting for peace is like f*cking for virginity"

* * * * * * *

"i was hoping someone would give me an epidural during my defense"

* * * * * * *

"you're SO gay ... and not in that good, homosexual kinda way"

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

two things i need to remember right now

1. "shred a" by le tigre:

You, by my side get no reply
To clarify you
You just know, you're wasting my time
You're wasting my time
There goes a good gone bye,
Right on time
I'm ready
Come and try
And clip this fire, now
Baby I won't show you nothing
Dont want to
I just know that you are a waste of my time
A waste of my time, a waste of my time
You wastin' my time

It's all so precious and you throw it away
It's all so precious and you throw it all away
throw it away

You're not good enough for me
To even despise
You wasted my
You wasted my
You wasted my time
Said behead
Said say correct
Shred project
Say "A" confine

Lay on pain I laid on your pain
Lay on pain
You got a thing for wastin' my time
Wastin' my time
Wastin' my time

2. katharine hepburn in adam's rib (1949)

Monday, September 24, 2007

repechage ~ a rowing update




in less than a week, my good friend (and hero!) isolda, will be leaving with her family in tow (wonderful husband, and three adorable children) to begin training with the national team in london, ontario, in preparation for the 2008 olympics in beijing. as was inscribed in the card we fellow krc rowers gave her at her going-away barbecue, isolda has only two things on her agenda once she gets to london. she needs to: 1) kick ass, 2) take names.

* * * * * * * * * *

this past weekend, as i was training with the rest of my 4+ crew for our sunday race in ottawa at head of the rideau, i was shot at. yes, you read that correctly. shot. as in SHOT shot. by a duck hunter. by a man i think is probably dick cheney's distant canadian cousin. as our 4+ made its way up the course back to the krc boathouse we were startled by the sound of gun shots overhead and even more surprised when we looked out over the starboard side of the boat to see a duck fall from the sky and land with a splash in the water not 500 ft. from our boat. though we hauled ass back to the boathouse, i'd like to think that we were too fast to really be a suitable moving target.

* * * * * * * * * *



on sunday, my lovely housemate and i competed at the annual head of the rideau regatta in ottawa and brought home our first gold medal in the 2x. we rowed "long and strong", and even in the face of a recurring library injury (stop laughing! a month ago i strained a muscle in my left shoulder lifting a bag of library books in an awkward way -- there are downsides to this scholar-athlete gig!), we managed to hold off the competition on our way down the course. i'm proud to say that i pulled a 3-banana race (read: it took my eating three bananas to fully recover in time for my next race in the 4+) and we're hoping to repeat if not the result then definitely the effort in our next race this coming saturday in peterborough at the head of the trent.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

nerd confessions #254 and #255

#254:

i've always wanted to be able to tap dance like eleanor powell:



#255:

and sing like jeanette macdonald:

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

the office gourmet


the resourcefulness of my colleagues continually astounds me, especially when it comes to solving that pressing problem of where to eat on campus (peanut M&Ms aside). who would have thought that the nearby hospital cafeteria would be the best place to find nourishing, nutritious and wholesome food? who would have thought that the best way to keep a small carton of milk (appropriate for making a cuppa in one's office) chilled would be to stick it in between the closed and locked hinged window and outside screen? i even once had an officemate who was able to make quite a tasty Kraft Dinner feast using only a coffee maker (ah, my MA year).

today, however, G surpassed them all, concocting, from fresh local ingredients, a pine nut and prosciutto mesclun salad with quality parm, garlic and olive oil on her desktop. i'm not talking writing up a recipe on her virtual desktop. oh no. i mean putting together a delicious salad on her actual desktop, cluttered as it is (and as is mine) with a laptop, telephone, file folders, letters and decorative lamps without spilling a drop of gourmet olive oil. it helped, of course, that she picked up the ingredients on her way into the office from a local italian specialty shop, but the moment of true brilliance came when she produced two tupperware containers and a knife and proceeded to serve the salad and grate the parm before my very hungry eyes. seriously, how often does your colleague agree to an on the fly lunch date and proceed to work culinary magic?

the salad was SO yummy that i began teasing her about her future career as the next jamie oliver. think about it: a book of recipes for academics, all of which can be prepared in the comfort of one's office. a stellar review in the new york times book review is, in my mind, inevitable.

as a thank you i crafted my own culinary dish of sorts in the form of a mock press release, akin to the ones that our university press office sends out from time to time (before my stint in grad school, i worked briefly as a PR jockey). the office gourmet, i'm telling you folks ... if it ever gets written it will revolutionize food as we know it.

Media Alert

The Astute Gourmet

September 18, 2007

Dr. Gwynn Dujardin, a professor in the Queen's English department and a chef with dead wicked skills in the kitchen, is available to discuss the upcoming release of her much-anticipated cookbook, The Office Gourmet: Desktop Dining for the Harried Academic (Hyperion, 2007).

The idea for a collection of recipes that emphasizes fresh, local ingredients and ease of preparation with minimal equipment -- The "Pine Nut and Prosciutto Salad" requires only a Tupperware container and a knife -- came to Dr. Dujardin one afternoon, while feeding a hapless, starving colleague. "She was hungry, and unbelievably frustrated with the appalling food choices on campus," Dr. Dujardin quips. "The look of complete and utter gastronomical bliss on her face as she savored her prosciutto was both heart-warming and inspiring. I knew in that moment that I could help legions of scholars satiate their hunger and fuel their research and teaching pursuits by revealing the secrets of sustenance that I had gathered on my many fact-finding missions in Tuscany."

Colleagues rave about Dr. Dujardin's culinary prowess, and many are regulars at her chic but unassuming office bistro on the fourth floor of John Watson Hall in the heart of the Queen's campus. Though she is fully booked, at the moment, for the 2007-8 academic year, Dr. Dujardin hopes that with the publication of The Office Gourmet many more scholars will discover that academic eating can be a truly satisfying experience.

To arrange an interview, please contact Communications Assistants at Queen's News & Media Services.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

i think i'm on the right, er, track ...

Friday, September 07, 2007

extreme makeover MY edition

all facets of my life are under renovation at the moment. if it's not the good folks from andre contracting reconfiguring the campus landscape, it's my dear, sweet housemate, who is deep in the throes of house gentrification (the kitchen is going to look fab, luv!). i recently received a *new training schedule from my rowing coach, things are starting to buzz on the romance front (yeah, you read that right ...) and at the library this aft, while munching contentedly on some peanut M&Ms procured from G -- they still haven't done anything about that vending machine! -- i had one of those rare flashes of dissertation insight that, while it leads to some substantial reconstruction and reconfiguring, will ultimately, i hope, lead also to a significantly stronger dissertation.

G recently passed on a four volume mythology playlist (i reciprocated with my own a few days later) and on it i discovered a track, the vid of which is below, that i think i will take as my theme music for the next week or so. certainly, following the Rare Flash of Dissertation Insight (RFDI) i was desperately trying NOT to break out into the mambo in the library stacks, overcome as i was with joy and relief.

hmmm, the only thing that has remained constant is my dire need of a haircut.

i'm dialing as i type.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

yes, giorgio 1935-2007

i have the most amazing recording of luciano pavarotti singing schubert's "ave maria" -- i don't know where it was recorded or how i procured it, but it sits on the bookshelf at my mom's house and is played every holiday season. the acoustics are puzzling. it sounds as though the great tenor is letting loose at someone's holiday house party. the closeness of the space gives his voice a quality that i haven't been able to detect in any other performances that i've heard -- it's intimate and warm and in his careful phrasing you can hear a palpable joy in singing that i don't always hear in the big hall, stadium concert pavarotti.

i was shocked when my browser window opened to its homepage today. in my impatience to check my e-mail i almost stopped it before it loaded (it's not that my computer or my wifi is *that slow; it's more that i'm *that impatient). for some reason i didn't and there was the headline staring me in the face: "luciano pavarotti dies aged 71".

i've never been quiet about stating my preference for the spanish tenor placido domingo, especially in the thick of those heated family debates during the holiday season in which my mother and my grandmother would go head to head and thrash out, once again for the neighbours' listening pleasure, the merits and demerits of "[i]PLAH[/i]-cido", as my mother never tires of saying, and my grandmother's fav, pavarotti. because of this annual holiday tradition (only one in a long line of strange doings that my family considers an essential part of the holidays -- following my grandmother's death in 2000, my aunt has seen fit to uphold custom) the italian tenor is inextricably linked in my mind with some of my fondest memories of my grandmother.

in the popular imagination pavarotti is perhaps most famous for his rendition of puccini's "nessun dorma", a tune that for many is associated with world cup soccer. i'm sure that it's going to get a lot of air time in the next few days on radio stations classical and not. the link below, however, is to a 1990s performance of ave maria, and while it's not the mythic recording i opened this post discussing, it does capture so much of what the song and the singer evoke for me.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

lost and found

i'm in the thick of a week-long visit to my mom's house, during which i made two, er, surprising discoveries: the first, my inaugural dissertation wrinkle; the second, an old love note i had written to a particularly nasty old boyfriend tucked inside the liner notes of a CD i haven't listened to for years. now the boyfriend wasn't revealed to be nasty until well after i'd written this note, and thus reading it in the cold light of day, completely free of all delusions, gave it a certain poignancy. i don't think i've seen my face (really *seen my face) in the cold light of day for awhile either -- mostly due to the ridiculously flattering lighting in my bathroom -- and thus the wrinkle hurt more than i expected it to.

fortified by some strong tea & an evening spent watching preston sturges movies with mom (all while slathered in the best anti-wrinkle treatment my student budget can afford) i'm feeling a little less shaky. i can't help thinking, though, that sometimes, for me, it takes finding something to fully realize how much i've lost.