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Jan 31.05 Biology was chock full of fun. I learned a new word: invagination. I also saw videos of immune cells stalking, hunting and ultimately devouring a bacterium to the theme of Peter Gunn. Blood was provided by a graduate student. Finally, I thought up a really dirty joke about phagocytosis, but it's kind of tasteless. Use your imagination. Also had an unexpectedly meaningful talk about life and Buddhism, raising all sorts of questions. Again, use your imagination. --------------- Jan 30.05 Had a family get together at our house today, and finally got to go skating. Out back on Elgin Mills and Leslie at the Richmond Green athletic centre, there's a cool skating trail that winds around. Nifty idea, even if the path gets a bit narrow at times. But it beats the plain old circle (which eventually grates on the ankles in the same spot) For some reason, the music was trapped in the late 90's, playing songs whose lyrics I knew. Then it shifted into American-style Latino music, the type found on MadTV parodies of Spanish remakes of American sitcoms and commercials. Lovely hot food and video games ensued. Am I the only one who gets rightly disgusted when I see food in bulk? I had to pack away Thirty packages of jumbo hot dog weiners into the freezer, and as much as I love a good hot dog, I felt slightly queasy at the sight of so much processed meat. Like the time that I had to move sixteen cases of pop into the cold storage room, it occurs to me that this mass doesn't disappear, this is what goes into our bodies. I get the same feeling these days buying mass-produced clothes and watching mass-produced TV and listening to mass-produced music. And while to a certain extent it is an egotistical, snobby way of thinking, I think it's selling yourself short to consume everything specifically produced to keep you in a cattle-state, at the very least without giving any conscious thought to it. I'll make sure to feel very cynical while drinking my cola, eating my hot dog and watching American Idol. --------------- Jan 29.05 I'd made last minute plans to go with some new friends to the Wintercity Festival downtown (which I hadn't known existed until a few days previously), but somehow I was standing around alone at Nathan Phillips in the cold (but looking smashing) waiting for the fire show to start. Thankfully, an old friend showed up so I wasn't as alone. The show was all very abstract and French, right down to the costumes and the soundtrack and the creepy images of children projected on to the new City Hall. But the fire we so bright and warm that it lit up the square like daylight. I wish my camera was functioning because there were great pictures everywhere: fire, bright faces staring into the light, street performers (carny and artsy alike), skaters, musicians, ice sculptures. But I was frustrated to find that my batteries were fucked. The camera worked right up until the point where I touched the shutter to focus. Then it promptly blacked out. I would later find that the batteries are lacking current, and are therefore suited only for tuner functions and light bulbs. The night was bitter, cold, and unforgiving, but I wasn't, so a mere two hours later when we could no longer feel our toes, we gladly left. No hard feelings - now I know there's another game in town. --------------- Jan 28.05 Apparently my parents have lost 75% of their photos from their trip to Cuba by losing the 256Mb compactflash card. Now that's a real shame that I, as an amateur photographer, can understand. Plus I wanted to see more two foot lizards and such -- live vicariously through my parents. Went to Promenade to shop, and ate at Congee Wong, where we once again encountered the waiter who, a long long time ago, laughed at us when we asked him to "bring the food slow" at the First Markham Place Congee Wong. We were waiting for someone else to show up at the time. A week after that, we ate with someone else at the Congee Wong at Leslie and Finch, and spotted him again. He recognized us. So apparently this guy is some sort of Congee Wong circuit boy. I guess people do that in all jobs to spice things up. But in all fairness you woudln't expect to see the same patrons wherever you go. --------------- Jan 27.05 My parents came from from Cuba late in the night. But not before my aunt called to offer us food but this time I picked up the phone so I told her we'd already eaten and hung up as fast as manners would allow. In actuality, we'd done a pretty good job of cleaning out the fridge. But we'd left the bananas to turn black, and the soy milk to gelatinize. The milk was my fault, since at the beginning of the week I'd had a whole cup of some syrupy, bland soy milk. Somehow the whole process masks the sweetness. After that I hadn't felt like drinking any of the fresh milk. In other news, this whole 'cat in heat' thing is getting on my nerves. I was under the impression that animal mating cycles only lasted for a week or two. But Miko, the ugly one, seems to have no ceiling for hormonal stimulation. So it's raunchy meowing and growling at all times of day and night and in the morning, with Pepper getting it on even though he's supposedly neutered. Some of us in the house are trying to get some sleep. --------------- Jan 26.05 Returned to the seedy world of hawking CDs. Cut my hair. Watched The Simple Life. Had to admire how Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie can do anything they want and use people, and still make those people love them. Now that is power. And one must admit they do have brains. The idea of turning a self-defense class into a one-night kinky masochistic 'kissing-booth' to raise money was brilliant. As one satisfied customer put it: "They slapped me, twisted my nipples, spanked my ass and grabbed and stepped on my crotch. It was the hottest thing in my life." --------------- Jan 25.05 Went shopping and bought a bunch of expired 35mm film in the bargain bin at Henry's. That was really exciting and I'm very excited to enter into the flim world of photography. Watched Infernal Affairs 2, which was, like the first movie, surprisingly good. Best character is the Lady Macbeth, who gets the most development even if her undignified death is laughable at best. Once again there is an inkling that the Andy Lau character is a bastard. The question is who hasn't he killed to get to where he is? --------------- Jan 24.05 At my grandmother's house I got a glimpse into the lives of newly landed immigrants in Canada in the 1960's. It struck me again how little we ever know about the people in our families. It's taken for granted that you grow up with these people and you love and care about them, but really, who are they? Aside from being people with whom you share genes and a common culture (and sometimes to a limited extent), what is the relationship between members of a family? I don't buy the whole undying, unconditional love idea, but I also don't buy the evolutionary perspective. It's something more than just the two of those thrown together. I think it could be about the cards you're dealt and making the best out of what you've got. But in the end, I think I just can't remove myself to the extent where I can see how everything works. That comes with age I suppose. --------------- Jan 23.05 Apparently the neighbours are aware of the fact that our parents aren't around, too. Wewere out shovelling the snow, or, more accurately, smashing ice on the driveway, when a neighbour with a snowblower offered to help us out. We were fine, so he went to go to work on the house across the street. I can only assume he knew them. Later, our neighbour on the other side of our house didn't waste time asking, he just came over and went to work at the end of the driveway where the city plows leave all of their sludge. But I think that might be because he felt guilty about blowing snow from his machine onto a part of the ground that I had just been shovelling. Either way, the neighbourhood feeling is all warm and fuzzy. I had the realization that I have forgotten the location of certain incriminating materials. Not entering panic mode since I know it's all buried somehwere in my mess of a room, but leaving that nagging feeling that my accounting has failed me. --------------- Jan 22.05 Most of the morning was whited out by an all-Canadian blizzard, so we spent it milling about, getting some of the housekeeping done. My accomplishment was finishing off the pasta. But just when I thought to break out the frozen lasagna, me being the masochistic pasta lover that I am, my aunt dropped by with her own gigantic homemade lasagna. And I've never met a lasgana that I didn't like, but that was very nearly toeing the line. It was filled with parmesan cheese, watery sour tomato sauce, lots of chewy vegetables, no detectable meat of any kind (except bland traces of chicken), and to top it all off it had to be made out of the green lasagna, which complemented the colour of my face when eating it. My reward for taking the uncalled-for food was my cousin's SLR, which I'm borrowing to test-drive before making the decision to go analog (I dream in Nikon). I'm very excited about using the camera with all the cool lenses, to the extent of traipsing around the house with the viewfinder glued to my eye, but the camera itself is disappointingly primitive. It makes me realize how much I miss the sophisticated features of my Finepix S602, seeing the sights with my parents in Cuba. The manual focus and zoom and aperture rings are all so much fun to use, but without manual exposure or even basic exposure compensation, it all seems irrelevant. I have to somehow figure out how to skew the centre-weighted meter in my favour. That, and, figure out how to handle 35mm film. --------------- Jan 21.05 Ran into Lippman on the bus home from school, which was unpleasant, so I plugged myself in and began reading from Kierkegaard. He got off at the same stop as me so I had to walk home with him. I guess I should have been expecting that since we live on the same street, but I knew he was just following me to get useful school advice without even the weak premise of small talk. I wasn't so much of an asshole that I kept my headphones on, but I answered in one-word responses so eventually he gave up and didn't follow when I walked in the middle of the street. The little prick. At home I found a gigantic pot of pasta sauce that needed to be eaten before anything else. The rest of the food in the house for our week without parents was mostly of the frozen pasta persuasion, which I didn't have a problem with. There's lots of other stuff lying around the house with which to prepare our meals but it's all the same to me. At night I printed out a picture of my number #1, Shawn Ashmore, with which to make a pencil sketch. And as I looked at the lifeless piece of paper, I suddenly felt the strongest urge to kiss it and then sleep with it under my pillow. It then occurred to me just how truly emotionally stunted gay men can be sometimes after years of sexual repression. Better judgement prevented me from following through with the act. I've seen the real thing after all. Nothing else in life compares. --------------- Jan 20.05 The parents have left for Cuba, leaving the rest of us in the middle of the thirty below zero coldsnap of recent days. How will the children and the cats cope with seven days unsupervised? Don't ask me, I'm not coming home tonight. I audited Dr. Andy Dicks' organic chemistry class again, bringing the number of different semesters I've attended to three. This time I was only there to copy a friend's notes in her class, honest. Bio labs have started again. Our new TA, Nicola, is tres cool with her half-Chineseness and her Australian accent (meanwhile, trying to purge memories of Scholes). As part of the lab, we used fluorescene microscopy on plant cells and fed the image to a TV. The images that we saw were breathtaking. One looked like a view of the city from the sky, through the green filter of night-vision goggles. You could see glowing streetlights and illuminated highways and buildings. Another image looked like a view of deep space, with green and red galaxies and star clusters and gaseous nebula. Like any good astronomer/photographer, I know that the colour of such astronomical objects is false: a result of overlaid images filtered differently to capture more detail in different wavelengths. But just like CCD astrophotography, it was stunning. The universe is fractal. --------------- Jan 19.05 Today was Prof. Cheung's first day as our physio prof, and I don't like him already. He's like a hobbit, but without the lovable accent. My parents are constantly giving us the prep talk about being 'home alone' for the next week. Tomorrow they're going on their first vacation together probably since I was born. Not that it's a big deal, really. We've been unsupervised for extended periods of time, when they went to the cottage, and as kids when they both worked nine to five. Reminds me of the time over the summer when I was completely alone for about seven days, without a living soul in the house. I was working most of the time, and I'd actually gone out secretly and stayed with friends a few nights, but basically it was the same. Now, sisters and cats will be home, so someone will be around to do shit for me. Especially if I have a brain lapseand forget to turn the oven off two hours after baking a pizza, like I did last week. That kind of scared me since I don't usually do dangerously stupid things like that. To my knowledge anyway. --------------- Jan 18.05 Finished Douglas Coupland's Generation X. I don't get it. But then, I don't really get much of his other books either. Because I found I could relate to some of it. But I just didn't like the way his novels are structured. I also don't like having to dig so hard to find the meaning in writing. Like with J.D. Salinger. I know he wasn't writing to represent a generation, but he does talk a lot about demographic groups, but without much depth or justification. So it seemed very hit and miss to me, and I wasn't sure if it was just because I'm not a part of the generation or whatever factors have you (my parents are Generation X, but there are foreign influences there). The book did have it's lovely parts just like his other novels. But they just don't gel for me. I am now 1000% positive Douglas Coupland is gay, though. --------------- Jan 17.05 New semester, new physiology TA. Holly seems less knowledgeable and less down to earth than Beth, but the point is we get an extra 4.5% for going to these tutorials so it's all good. In physio class, we had a special guest lecturer to end Duffin's section. He was French, specializing in exercise and respiration, and kind of reminded me of Hank Azaria. So along those lines I found myself wondering what his body looked like. But then I do that for most of my professors anyway. Went to the Michener open house. Got some juice from the refreshments table because I didn't feel like touching the sandwiches or fruit (which was weird, since I thought I'd only come for the food). the juice tasted like the stuff they give you after donating blood, so it was goooood. I stuck my nifty nametag on. Nothing special, just one of those "Hello, my name is:" deals. There was a long wait for the tours so I sat down and read disjointed passages from the bible of Douglas Coupland. When it was our turn for the tour, we all twenty or so packed into an elevator and went up to see different departments in medical radiation science. At one point, a bitchy father basically attacked an imaging specialist and made her defend her job. She smiled, but clearly wasn't handling it well. Knowing all to well these bitter Asian "if you're not a doctor than you're not important" types that stem from not having had the opportunityfor significant educations and careers, I felt for her. He was asking questions that we all had, but he didn't have to be such a prick about it. I couldn't finish the whole tour since I had jazz band to go to, but I saw enough fancy stuff in all three departments to satisfy my Michener mystique at the moment. Having some doubts about nuclear medicine, but the rational voice in my head that says "just do something damnit" also says "don't worry too much. You probably won't get in anyway". And why am I doing this to myself, really? As I looked out the window from the upper floors, I could see a beautiful view of the city, and it struck me that it was almost too perfect. Too laid out on a silver platter for me. Things just don't work out this way. It's all another big set up. --------------- Jan 16.05 Someone lent us a whole stack of Chinese movies, so I've finally gotten around to watching Infernal Affairs. I was impressed, actually -- it was quite good. The direction and acting, as well as theme, are all there. The story is complex, and not just because I couldn't figure out what was going on for the first half hour. Deals with the question of how far you're willing to manipulate and use everyone to achieve your own goals. Especially when it's doing the wrong thing to do the right thing. For the record, I don't side with Andy Lau. They didn't make him one-dimensional, 'good' or 'bad', but I didn't want him to get out of it the way he did. Tony Leung is tres cool, and not just because of the facial hair. He's really good at suffering, at least. So much so that when he seems happy you feel happy too (but you know it's never gonna last). Two tragic heroes in conflict make for a very effective story (see Peter Pan). --------------- Jan 15.05 The only productive thing I've done this week is work out like a maniac, so I got to enjoy one of those lovely mornings when you wake up and feel good, and healthy, and, more importantly, you're starting to look the part. Is it just me or is the gay community such a very small world? Everyone knows everyone, and then later you find out that everyone you know also knows each other too. You even know people that you've never met. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great. But sometimes it's almost unreal. A constant state of suspended disbelief as if this can't actually be what it's like. That somehow, things dont really work like this. That, whoever is out there creating the fantastical illusion of reality is just running out of ideas and is rehashing old stuff and linking lives through space and time to make everything seem bigger than it really is. Or maybe I just need to meet more people. --------------- Jan 14.05 I was sitting in class, taking notes, minding my own business, when I heard a faint, tinny sound. It didn't sound like a ring tone, so I assumed it was someone's CD player going off. I wasn't the only one who noticed but we tried to ignore it for a while. Plus I didn't want to act all offended since that had happened to me once during a test in high school, and it had been really embarassing. You're sitting there wondering what that sound is until you hear those chords or that line and then realize its a song you sing along to in the shower. So I knew how that person was going to feel when they realized it was their damn malfunction. What I wasn't expecting was that the music would turn slowly louder and louder as if by some demonic force until I heard, clear as glass, a tinny voice wail "Blue Eyes ..." a cheezy line from a cheezy chorus on the soundtrack I'd been listening to all week. I think, though I can't be sure of this, that I turned red, broke a sweat, and shrivelled up and died right there in my chair. --------------- Jan 13.05 Weather's been balmy recently, and today it spiked up to 10 degrees. It was practically shirt and shorts weather. On the way home I helped a lady carry some heavy luggage down the stairs to get to the subway and felt momentarily good. Someone cue the Superman theme. Finished Soren Kierkegaard's The Present Age. This is a short little work that made me laugh and cry and think about life. Some of it was dense but you could relate to a lot of it.Why, that might just be the philosopher's goal. Finally, the last highlight of the day would be another official induction into the wonderful world of dandydom. "You know you're gay if" ... you've ever trimmed (not shaved -- trimmed) your body hair. --------------- Jan 12.05 NAUS, the neuroscience association of undergraduate students, held their first general meeting of the year. I was going to go, as a spy, so as to get info on how to score a neuroscience t-shirt for myself and another dishonourary neuroscience student (we're not in the program but we're taking the course). It'd go so nicely with my McGill hoodie for failed goals. Alas, I had class at the time, so I'll try infiltrating another time. Apparently Douglas Coupland was doing a reading of his new book on campus today, as part of a promotional tour. Couldn't figure out how to get tickets though. Plus, the only reason why I really wanted to go is to get a live-in-person gaydar conformation anyway. --------------- Jan 11.05 Got a tax return in the mail today, and I don't understand it. But I guess that's the mystique of taxes anyway right? Just shut your mouth, take your cheque and cash it. It almost feels like those chance cards in Monopoly where there's a bank error in your favour; collect fifty dollars. I know you're supposed to get the money but who remembers anyway? It's the candy you've left in your bag and forgot about. Sometimes when I'm feeling bored and wistful I'll write something down and put it away somehwere, with the implication that I'm going to forget about it and, some long time later, find it and have a good think. That's what records are all about aren't they? Sending information from the past, or into the future, or however you want to think about it. That's why hard copies are important now. It's been said before, but with the digitization of everything, all this stuff doesn't actually exist. It can't physically occupy a space and travel through time to be removed later. It's abstract. That and the fact that you know how to access what you're looking for if need be. No true surprises. In a fire, you'll save computer. Barring viruses and dubious loss of data, it's all there. (what's more fragile, really?) There's something to be said for the beauty of something vulnerable, something that can be lost, forgetten, ruined. Or is that just morbid? I figured I was being romantic. Maybe immortalization isn't so great after all. We'll never know; such is the beautiful tragedy of existence. Verily, the only certainties in life are death and taxes. --------------- Jan 10.05 Went to the night lecture section for biology to escape Goring for one day, and there I found all the usual suspects. Apparently we'd all had the same idea. Too bad jazz band during the second half of the lecture means I still have to attend Gorings other class. At rehearsal today, Jules was absent, and in his place was none other than the great Alastair Kay. I don't know if he recognized me. Maybe. How many nervous, shifty looking Asian trombone players are there out there? (a lot, I guess.) But I'll always remember how at the end of our workshop at band camp I shook his hand and he seemed sort of unprepared for it. And also how he made a passing comment that I could've got in to Humber music. But that's history: of questionable integrity, and for all purposes irrelevant. It had to be the day when there was only me and Jonathan from pharmacy in the trombone section too. But this was the first time I actually really enjoyed the music we were given. Hopefully we keep 'em. Maybe they were all fun for trombones, maybe there was more variety, or maybe I'm just a sucker for the Latin pieces. When Alastair Kay played, some things were so crisp and polished I realized I need to get some recordings with him on it. (True North brass is probably a good bet.) It also reminded me how to play with attitude (scream!) - again, one of the reasons I can play like a brassy bastard. Cheers to that. --------------- Jan 09.05 My two chemistry marks were posted up, and they were not pretty. Both in the sixties. This is really killing my chances of getting into Michener (whatever they were to begin with). I can hear that voice in my head saying that it's too late. Where is this all leading me? Why am I not leading myself? That's the tougher question. In the spirit of Ryan Reynolds' hot body in Blade: Trinity, at least, I have decided to do a little bit more muscle work instead of trying to force the treadmill to fat loss. When all else fails, changing how you look is always a healthy way to delude yourself into thinking you're doing something in life. --------------- Jan 08.05 Went to the dentist for my first checkup and cleaning since my wisdom teeth removal. Apparently there was a doctor's note written for me asking Wonderland to excuse me from work for seven days after surgery. Seven days. I could have had one week off, but since I just received the note now, it's not that useful. Nope, I was operating heavy machinery three days after surgery, without painkillers. Masochistic, that is. I recognized my hygenist this time as the guy who used to tighten my braces from the orthodontist's office (which was sort of cool) -- he'd recognized me too. Or, my retainer, at least. I resisted the urge to ask the active ingredient and mechanism of fluoride action (turned out to be just sodium fluoride. I wonder if that's safe.) I also asked about the stress-induced teeth clenching. The dentist merely replied "64901", which I was told is a character's prison number in Les Miserables. Apparently he did his undergrad at UT as well. --------------- Jan 07.05 We have a new bathroom scale now -- a functional one -- though, for some reason, it's currently sitting in the middle of the hallway. What I like about this new scale is that it doesn't make clunking noises when you step on it, so everyone knows you're weighing yourself. Plus, the dial doesn't grind to a stop when you press down on it too hard, making you feel like you've broken it. Now begins the compulsive weighing of various objects (and myself) all day long. Got bored and sketched a self portrait from a photo. (look ma, no tracing!) It actually turned out well, proving once and for all that my weapon of choice should always be a pencil. --------------- Jan 06.05 Hopped on the highway 7 bus (YRT route numero uno), all by myself, not knowing where it would take me, to get to Commerce Gate after class. Dinner was at the Galleria, a Western style Chinese restaurant, and none of my friends (all drivers, I might add) were there yet. It was a cold night but I'd borrowed a cell phone for explicit purpose of calling in case I was early. The little bugger had publicly humiliated me with its annoying ring tone in the library, and everyone knows how much I hate ring tones. And this is where I realize that this story has absolutely no point and is digressing beautifully to illustrate that fact. Dinner was excellent, and cheap, and generous, so that place is on the "to eat" list. That's all I can think to say. Afterward, we watched Garden State. I wasn't that impressed -- it must have been the high expectations. But the soundtrack was good (music geek). It was too grounded, too down-to-earth, for the off-beat plot arc. The atmosphere just wasn't right. Natalie Portman plays Zach Braff with 50% added cuteness, but as annoying as she was, it was the monsters in her closet that I felt. It's when she's upset that you actually get a glimpse of the sort of detached and jaded attitudes that the characters have. But let's just say it was all thanks to Zach Braff's direction, not her acting ability. --------------- Jan 05.05 Still feeling sick and bitter and pessimistic from yesterday. And I lost my red toque on the bus. So this is one of those stormy grumpy get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way days. --------------- Jan 04.05 The second half of biology has commenced, and it feels like business as usual. Everything's all organized into a neat little package. Our prof Goring has one of those dreaded nasal voices like she's constantly sick. And she looks like a Keebler elf. Genetics looks like it's going to be boring and painful, and Prof. Sauer, who would like us to call her Monica (how about Mon?) doesn't seem to be bringing much to the table either. This course looks like a lot of definitions and unnecessary math. Today was the first day of Neuroscience 201, which was very exciting and nerve-racking. The class is filled with really smart kids and upper year students, and I was so relieved to find my other neuro-reject to sit with. This is my first small class (about fifty students), so I feel exposed and vulnerable. But Prof. Yeomans is cool and I'm optimistic about the course material. Less so about two evaluations of the course. A 1/3 one-hour essay midterm and a 2/3 three hour essay final. Some people have three weeks of holidays so I hung out with some visiting North York friends and tried in vain to make University of Toronto seem interesting. After school, I did a little shopping, and on my way back I had an encounter with a panhandler that went something like this. I reached an intersection and the light turned red. I didn't want to cross the street just to get away from the panhandler so I stood there and waited. He asked if I would spare a dollar and I said "sorry". I guess since he didn't want to move and I didn't want to move he went on. What, I had a problem with him? I wanted to start something? Just for a dollar? A fucking dollar? At this point some people started to cross the street towards me so I said "why don't you ask them?" Probably a stupid idea. He started to get all fired up, saying I was too fucking stupid to understand or respect him, and that I was this ungrateful bastard that didn't deserve any of what I had. I looked at a lady who walked up to the intersection for help, but she avoided eye contact and hurried across the street when the light changed. Resigned, I didn't try to stick close to her as I crossed as well. But the guy followed me, yelling now about how I owe him something because we fucking immigrants come to his country and fuck things up for him. This was just ridiculous, but for some reason I found that it hurt more than anything. Right around the time he said that what happened in Hiroshima could happen here, we could all get bombed, I didn't really know what he was trying to say anymore, and he gave up. Why was I affected by what was false and groundless and irrelevant, about my being an immigrant and having no respect for Canada, the place I love and call home and the only place I know? My being an ignorant, fortunate ingrate was the true claim and yet it bothered me less. This deeply troubles me. I think it's true that the reason why we get uncomfortable around people who are different in social class, colour, physical or mental health, wealth, culture, sexual orientation is that it does force us to reexamine ourselves. And question what we take for granted. Those of us who are privleged choose not to think about the unpleasant insurmountable differences between us and them. I'm saddened and angered, thinking about everything that's wrong with the kind of attitudes that we hide in our society. And I'm also thinking of all the things I should have done and said in response to my encounter with the panhandler. Some ideal things, some not-so-ideal things. Just fantasizing about the kind of me who can make use of these ideas. Later at night, I forced myself to find the humour in the superficial and underlying repulsiveness of music videos. I also forced myself to enjoy watching the Canadian Junior Men's hockey team take home gold even though it wasn't much of a competition. My three stars are: Patrice Bergeron, Ryan Smith, and that boy with mono. --------------- Jan 03.05 It's back to school today, and I thought, it would be good to start off with a little back to school shopping. After all, I'd only managed one day post-Christmas and that was boxing day. Surprisingly, there was still some OK stuff left over. But I wasn't planning on picking up anything much, though I walked away with a cool tie from Planet Aid (of course they're always five bucks there anyway). At the time I was carrying my trombone around, and that naturally gets a bit of attention from people. I was returning a pair of pants (and receiving my *fourth* store credit card from Gap) and the cashier essentially started flirting with me based on the fact that we were apparently both musicians. Disregarding the fact that I was doing such a crap job at flirting back and the fact that I wasn't that interested in the first place, it was a good reminder that it is a new year and time to get started on those resolutions. Certain ones being more pressing than others. Had my first class of pharmacokinetics, which is supposed to be all about drugs and dosage and stuff. Our prof, Burnham, seems all right so far. But then so did a lot last year's. This is probably the first 'specialist-type' course that I'm taking. Though really it's not specific to toxicology, and there are lots more pharmacology and human biology and other students in the class. Jazz band rehearsals also started today, and I was left in the dust. I don't think I've ever felt so underskilled in an ensemble setting in my life. Have to get on top of that now. So, as of now, this next semester is looking fresher and cleaner, but it doesn't seem like it's going to be any easier. That and my schedule sucks. Someone told me it was raining just as was leaving the library at night to go home. Which put me in a snarly mood. But when I went outside, it was snowing, big soft flakes. So I walked home with my chin in the air, enjoying the night, and once again marvelling at the three-dimensional world we live in. Because I never really notice it until it snows. I was going to take this moment to state for the record how much I fucking hate this year's winter weather, because it's warm and wet and not much else. But that cheered me up temporarily. --------------- Jan 02.05 The nerd that I am, I was reading a book about photography and processing, and there was a section about the chemistry of photographic processes. Somehow I found myself understanding all the scientific jargon and recalling what I'd just learned last semester in physical and organic chemistry. What have I become? The next term begins tomorrow. It seems like just another day. --------------- Jan 01.05 (new year's day) Woke up with my hair all a glorious mess from the last previous night. (No, nothing special happened) Went off to the cottage, to discover that apparently winter was also over in Alban too. What a shame. That didn't stop my sister and her friends from tobogganing down our hilly plot though. I was more interested in the partially frozen river and our raised dock. We lounged on the ice in the day's eternal sunshine. The house was in a right state, since the humidity and condensation buildup in the house from wrongly done window protection had caused the walls to warp and fungus to grow like in those old horror movies. Now it was starting to look like a real cottage. Meanwhile, a pipe had burst in basement so that had to be emergency fixed by my dad with help from the neighbour. The rest of the day I ate a lot of chocolate and enjoyed watching Alien Vs. Predator. The movie wasn't as laughable as it could have been, but still worth a watch. Especially if only to see Raoul Bova, and the story's field-expert-turned-glamazon-huntress bonding with the robotic alien warrior. Seeing as how the new year begins today, it's probably appropriate to lay down this year's resolutions. Officially, since I more or less do this around my birthday anyway. <1> Get boyfriend/laid. <2> Get in shape. <3> Get a job. <4> Get G2. <5> Get that damn "to buy" list down. Those are my main realistically attainable goals for 2005 at least. I wonder how many I'll have got by the end of the year. --------------- |