Here Rests Brain Diva...

Who Turned to Stone at Her Desk

May Her Soul Rest in Peace

For Death By Graduate School

Is A Very Cruel Fate Indeed

May She Sleep Forever and Ever

In A Land

Where The Snooze Button Is King

Where Computers Shall Be Instruments of Pleasure

Not Carriers of PowerPoint

Which is The Tool of The Devil

Amen

;)

Yes, I've officially gone crazy. ;)

Day 2 of Shower Watch

I didn't post about day 1 in hopes water would come back but we officially have no hot water in our shower for the second day in a row. Fortunately, there is hot water in the bathroom sink so we can wash ourselves 18th-century style. (Not that they had faucets with running hot water back then but you get my drift! LOL) Still, I don't feel quite as clean as I do with a sweet hot shower. The landlord better fix this pronto.

Matthew Perry Returns To TV!

He was always my favourite Friends, and it appears he is now returning as the lead in Aaron Sorkin's new drama about the behind-the-scenes workings of a SNL type of show. The pilot was pitched as Studio 7 On The Sunset Strip but it appears untitled at this point. This should be really good. :)

What You Put in An Ad Matters...

As I mentioned previously, I read Freakonomics, which was quite interesting. There was a chapter in the book about real estate. They looked at the price at which a house sold and how that house was described in the newspaper ad.

Five Terms Correlated to a Higher Sales Price:
- Granite
- State-of-the-Art
- Corian
- Maple
- Gourmet

Five Terms Correlated to a Lower Sales Price:
- Fantastic
- Spacious
- !
- Charming
- Great Neighbourhood.

Basically, the conclusion the authors had was that the terms correlated with a higher sales price were actually descriptive of the physical qualities of a home, whereas the words correlated with a lower sales price were more vague and ambiguous. They appear to be real-estate code words saying: "We don't have a lot to sell you on. The attributes of the house are not worth describing or maybe the house around it are nicer than this one (i.e., great neighbourhood) which make up for it."

I thought this was enlightening. It will help me when I want to buy a house.

All The Other Kids Are Doing It!

Hee. I've seen this on Jamie's & Gina's blogs so I had to do it too! I love taking quizzes and filling out questionnaires. LOL

You are Bettie Page

Girl next door with a wild streak. You're a famous beauty - with unique look. And the people like you are cultish about it

What Famous Pinup Are You?

My Day Sucked but Not As Much as Other People's...

As I was coming in the hospital a bit earlier, a ton of sirens started blaring and a flurry of ambulances and fire trucks started gathering around a nearby building. This is FREAKY: Elevator Plunges Five Floors in Toronto Building. Poor people. That must have been so scary. It's a 15-storey building so I guess it is lucky they weren't higher up.

Today Sucks...

And I'm not saying that lightly. I had one of the crappiest days in recent memory. I was crying earlier (I'm PMSing...not helping) but now, I'm just sad and blue.

First, I got a call from the university finance office. For some reason, instead of depositing my scholarship directly in my account like they always do, they made a check, which explained why the money wasn't in my account! And somehow, the check got returned to them because it said I didn't live at the address I lived at. WTF. So this is the second time in 2 weeks that mail has bounced back at my house. Then, actually, the second person who was trying to send another important letter called, and said the mailing got returned to them...AGAIN. The address is right; nothing has changed in 18 months. So I called Canada Post, asking what's up with that. It is not like I've just moved! Now, I have to wait a week while they inquire. I'm waiting for another check, which has better get to me.

Then, I travelled all the way to the far away campus (Travel time to get there: 1 hour 15 minutes) because I have a meeting with a prof...or so I thought. Somehow, he cancelled, left, and didn't bother to send me an email saying he couldn't make it. Are you f*^$%*^@ kidding me? I had plenty of other urgent things to do, like picking up my check from the finance office, as opposed to go to nowhere land... So I get back on the subway (another wasted 1 hour 15 minutes) to go back downtown.

I go pick up my mail on campus. In my mail are last summer's course evaluations. Okay, so I didn't get the worst course evaluations but they were not outstanding either. I am so disappointed by that. I had put so much work into it, and students don't seem to have enjoyed it. Plus, the fact that I was co-teaching with someone who had taught that course twice before didn't make me look as good. Anyway, that's what made me cry. I feel like a fool for thinking I did a good job. I resent that some students seem to think I was enthusiatic or interesting enough. What came to my mind was Bridget Jones's words: "I mean, you seem to go out of your way to try to make me feel like a complete idiot every time I see you, and you really needn't bother. I already feel like an idiot most of the time anyway." It was just the cherry on the cake. Then, I started feeling like I didn't belong in grad school, why was I doing all this to myself when I clearly sucked. I'm so tired, and I work my butt off for a job at which I won't even be good. I'm all stressed out, and my life is a big mess. It became very messy in my head.

Hence, I'm now hiding in my hospital office with my patient files. LOL I needed a quiet place to think, and I might as well do work in a place where there is no cello and stuff.

I just feel sad and lonely today. I know it will pass but for now, it sucks.

This Is For Gina...

Who will love this article. ;) LOL I'm surprised I haven't spontaneously burst into flames with all the public speaking I do... ;)

Sex Calms Nerves Before Public Speaking.

I Just Have To Say It...

Okay, so I come home late, had a long day... The roommate decides to handwash some clothes in the tub and the sink, using bleach. In the mean time, I went outside to take out the trash, and upon coming back in the apartment, I'm assaulted by the scent. I'm really tired today so it made me feel a bit queasy. I ask: "Did you open the window in the bathroom? The scent is making me feel terrible." She had left the door of the bathroom open, and the window in the bathroom closed! She left her clothes to dry overnight like that. She's like: "It's not that bad. Close your bedroom door." The apartment reeks of bleach in the vacinity of the bathroom, and she does not care! This from the girl who complained about the scent of my laundry detergent for f&?* sake. I felt like punching her.

She is not helping her case today. This morning, I was up working really early in my bedroom. She saw me but instead of talking to me, she left a note in the kitchen saying she felt she had been doing too much of the cleaning lately, could I help. Now, I am all for doing my share but I have been home exactly 10 days in the last month, and most of those days, I have been barely here. Plus, I vacuumed at least once or twice in those days. I agree I need to mop the floors and help clean the bathroom but I was waiting for the weekend to do that. When I come home at 10 pm and she is in bed (she goes to bed every night around 10:00-10:30 but has music playing till midnight. Whatever.), I'm not sure cleaning is what she wants. I totally agree she has cleaned more than I recently but it's not exactly like I've had lots of opportunity to scrub since she has done it while I haven't been around. Anyway, I shouldn't be grumpy since I prefer she tells me than have a fit at some point, but still, I think she is a little high-maintenance.

January 24: Most Depressing Day of The Year

I was watching the Colbert Report tonight, and they mentioned that a British psychologist calculated that January 24 is the most depressing day of the year. I am feeling so low-energy and blue these days that I have to say it makes sense intuitively. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who is feeling like they would sleep all day and not move.

On the upside, I finished reading a very interesting book, Freakonomics. I'm certainly still skeptical of some of the arguments put forth in the book. He approaches problems as a economist and I approach mine with my psychology training. Hence, we don't necessarily conceptualize things the same way. I found he often tried to simplify answers that are multifactorial by the complexity of the problems. Furthermore, this book was made to be simple, and did not get into all the nuances that would have been interesting to debate. Nevertheless, it was a very interesting book that made me reflect about new problems and ideas, and I always love that. I highly recommend it.

Maurice Richard, Anne of the Green Gables & Larry David

Hee. Three people with nothing in common except me.

On Saturday night, I went out with my friend Eve for Vietnamese food and a movie. We went to see Maurice Richard, an excellent movie about one of the greatest hockey players ever. Oddly enough, he played a catalyst role in the empowerment of French-speaking Canadians in the 50s. For a long time, French speakers were treated as second-class citizens in Quebec. They were other factors besides language, of course, but still, people couldn't speak French in a place of work where most employees were French speakers, management jobs were pretty much unthinkable if you were not English-speaking, and you couldn't even get service in French in stores and restaurants in the heart of Montreal. Maurice Richard was a taciturn hockey player, who didn't like to make waves. Despite being one of the superstars in the leagues, he was being treated poorly by the NHL (he was always being called slurs and being hit unfairly while the refs turned a blind eye, he was being ridiculed for his poor English despite the fact that he was the only one actually trying to speak their language,...). He got fed up, and fought back through publication of a newspaper column, and showed others they could fight back. Somehow, he got a whole nation, who cared so much about hockey, behind him, and got them to stand up for themselves. It's a pretty cool story. :)

After the movie (hee...back to my initial story), we ended up back at Eve's place for a cup of coffee, and we popped in Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel. I got Anne of the Green Gables as a Christmas present so I felt like watching the second part, which I didn't have. I just love this series so much, as much as I did when I read the novels as an 8-year-old. Nowadays though, I really appreciate what a wonderful role model she is for young girls. She is celebrated by her family, friends, and her eventual husband (Mmmm...Gilbert!) for being educated, well-read, smart, and witty. Gilbert even says how he likes her because she is so smart, and gives him a run for his money in class. She has a limitless imagination, and wants to be a great writer. It was pretty revolutionary for the time but is still a good model for girls today. :)

On a totally different topic, I had the oddest dream last night. I was sitting in a park, and Larry David came up to me. I know, odd. He wanted me an opinion from a commoner (hahaha) about some jokes for a special he was doing. It may have been a special episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, but I'm not sure. Anyway, there were jokes about different TV shows (Lost, Grey's Anatomy) that I don't watch so I didn't know what to tell him. I was laughing at his jokes but I was embarassed because I wasn't sure if the jokes were really good. That's all I can remember. Weird. LOL

Anyway, I'm off to watch results of the elections to see what our next government will look like.

Cats in Sinks

My friend Donna sent me a link to the funniest site: Cats in Sinks. This is just so cute! I may have to submit an entry with my kitty. ;) The same blogger also has Kitten War. Awe. Looking at the sites made me start singing:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown-paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favourite things.

Besides that, I'm in Montreal right now. I had an interview in town this afternoon but I'm currently lounging in my old bedroom. I watched The Constant Gardener with my mom and bro a bit earlier. Nothing too exciting planned for the weekend. Work, and hopefully popping in on some friends.

I read On Bullshit last weekend. A enlightening essay by a philosopher on the difference between bullshitting and lying, and why bullshitting might be more harmful to society than lying. Hint? Bullshitting is when people can't even be bothered to actually find out the real facts; they're just making it along as they go. I recommend it.

Much love to you all, my friends, whom I seem to be missing these days. I seem to be trapped in my little work bubble.

I Love The Internet!

Why? Because you can find pretty much anything. Someone, somewhere often likes the same thing, and decides to post it for the world to see. I think I've mentioned in a previous post (which I can seem to find at the moment...) that I used to love one of the most juvenile cartoons on SNL: The Ambiguously Gay Duo. It was just utterly stupid but always quite funny. It was a cartoon based on the fact that people like to speculate on the sexual orientation of superhero duos like Batman and Robin. A few years ago, I discovered that two of my favourite comedians, Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell, voiced the duo. So that only wanted me to rewatch those cartoons even more. Well, I found them on the web! Still juvenile, and still makes me laugh.

Speaking of Stephen Colbert, Monday's episode of The Colbert Report was so amazing! He had a bit with Conan where he parodied the O'Reilly interview on Letterman (I can only link to the general video page), talked about the Abramoff scandal in "There's No Word", had a Elmo death threat report as well as mention of his documentary "Stephen Colbert's Hiphopketball: A Jazzerbration". Finally, he decided to start a feud with the Associated Press (in the grand tradition of O'Reilly going ape on any issue) over the fact that an article failed to mention his name when "truthiness", a word Colbert coined, was chosen word of the year by the American Dialect Society.

Sad Movies...I Need Happy Thoughts

I'm not usually too big on watching very sad and/or disturbing movies. I just watched two in as many days, and I think I overdid it! I finally went to see Brokeback Mountain. Plenty of people were crying in the movie theatre. I wasn't crying but let me say that a movie has rarely made my insides feel all twisted like that. Just so sad and unfair. All the actors were good. Heath Ledger was my particular favourite, maybe because he had the meatier part, drama-wise, although Jake Gyllenhaal was also really good at conveying the love he felt just by his facial expressions. Michelle Williams always conveyed so much emotion on Dawson's Creek in spite of the often craptacular scripts that I'm not surprised she was outstanding here too. (As an aside, how good does she look 2 months after having a baby? Wow.)

Then, tonight, I rented Aurore, which is a very good Quebecois movie, but sooooo disturbing. It is about a little girl who is dispised by her stepmother and gets physically abused and tormented. It takes place in the late 1910s and it would be hard to do justice to the story since it is also rooted in the very religious atmosphere of the time. The priest turns a blind eye to what happens for a long time and prevents other parishioners from acting. What is most disturbing is that it is a true story. It is one of those creepy stories part of our collective consciousness. Anyway, this movie made me cry a lot, and I'm all creeped out. People like those parents shouldn't exist.

To distract myself, I was browsing online, and found this hilarious essay by Tim Carvell, one of TDS writers. It mocks the whole James Frey's fake memoir debacle. Thank you, Tim, for lifting my spirits.

Arrested Development's Last Four Episodes To Air February 10!

Okay, mark your calendars, people! The last four episodes of Arrested Development will air in a 2-hour block on Friday, February 10. Zap2it even has some delicious spoilers! FOX has decided to burn the episodes against the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, which is unfortunate, but I don't really care. I was worried we would never get to see those episodes. I don't watch the Olympics so I'll be waiting for AD with bells on! I gotta say though that four episodes of AD in an evening will create an overload of double-entendre and inappropriateness! ;)

Interview Merry-Go-Round

I've had a busy week. I had a day of interviews yesterday for the Toronto internship I'm hoping to get next week. I think it went fine but who knows? My days have been starting so early that that I fell asleep at 8 pm last night. Unfortunately, my roommate's cello playing woke me up around 9:30 pm. I got up for a while to make my lunch, put on my pyjamas and so on, but I didn't even make it to TDS. I'm becoming a big ninny. ;)

I got called for an interview for an internship in Montreal next Friday, which means I'm heading there next Thursday evening. I'll get to spend the weekend there, which is nice. I have to be back on the Monday to teach though. And to vote.

We are having a federal election Monday January 23rd. I have to decide who to vote for but honestly, I don't know. For the benefit of my American friends, I should explain we vote by ridings, which are basically the same as districts. We don'tdirectly vote for the Prime Minister of Canada, just candidates in ridings. The party that gets the most ridings gets the Prime Minister seat. In my riding, we have 4 candidates:

1) The person who currently holds it is a woman from the Liberal Party. She is a physician who has done a lot of great advocating for public health and health care. She has also tried to push to increase women's representation in positions of importance in the government, which is very laudable. But the Liberal party is also the current party in power that got caught in a major scandal of misuse of governement money. Meh.

2)The Conservative Party put one of their star candidates in our riding (see, part of my riding is the moneyed and influential people of Toronto. The million-dollar mansions, we got them.), who is a former TV anchor. He seems okay but I hate the party philosophy. They're very...Conservative. LOL The party keeps saying they'll try to fight to reverse the same-sex marriage bill. And at some point, they wanted to make abortion illegal. *rolls eyes* I think they backed away from that but I have no interest in seeing them in power, although they are currently leading.

3) We also have a candidate from the NDP, the party with a more socially-responsible approach to politics. I was surprised that the guy in my riding is a banker running for the NDP. These usually don't go hand-in-hand. I was reading his blog (yes, he has a campaign blog!), and he's pretty cool.

4) We also have the Green Party. They have some great ideals (particularly re: the environment) but sadly, they never win any seats.

I'm sorry I'm just rambling like this. I rarely talk politics but it is on my brain. I'm feeling very stream-of-consciousness. LOL

And I'm Back!

Hello everyone! Happy 2006! I wasn't dead or trapped under something heavy. I didn't plan on taking such a long break from blogging but life just happened that way. I was away for 2 weeks at my parents'. I was busy there (seeing friends and family as well as working) but mostly, I've been really tired. I think my body just crashed on me. I had a sore throat for a while but that went away. Slept a lot at the beginning of my holidays although I've been fretting over a paper in the last few days which interfered with my sleep. Oh well, the semester will be insane so I better get used to that.

What else? Well, I hosted a dinner party last Friday with a bunch of my high school friends. I think a great time was had by all. I had made my little grape tomato/bocconcini/basil hors d'oeuvre, veggies with a sour cream/dijon mustard dip, a potage Parmentier (leek and potatoes creamy soup- but my mom actually made that for me! LOL), crusted chicken breasts with a goat cheese & almond filling with a side of honey-glazed carrots & snow peas, cheese & Port, and a chocolate cake for dessert. My dad was so nice that he went grocery shopping for me (I was busy writing a paper), and paid for all the food. I was so thankful since my budget is tight these days. As much as I like my independence, it is nice to have someone take care of you. My dad has always been so devoted and sweet that way.

I had a good time with my family although the topic of the hour really is: "When are you going to graduate?" I think I would almost rather have heard: "Do you have a boyfriend?" LOL This graduation thing has been driving me a bit crazy. My dad had to bring it up at Christmas Eve dinner, which was not cool, but he was a bit tipsy so his judgement was not the best. Men in my family don't drink much, thank God, because as much as they are the loveliest people sober, they tend to be jerky and unpleasant when they drink. Anyway, my uncles jumped at my defense, telling my dad he shouldn't mind his daughter is still in school. I haven't gone bad or whatever, and most parents would never even dream their kids would attempt a Ph.D. I still ended up crying in kitchen, which was due to all my insecurities and my slightly inebriated state at the time (although I don't need wine to cry! LOL). I did feel a bit pathetic doing it though.

What else? Well, I have lots to do so I'll have to continue my talkiness tomorrow. I have thoughts on Arrested Development being shelved (Damn you, FOX! Tell you friends indeed!), the book A Little Million Pieces which might be fiction after all (some people had recommended it to me but I didn't have a chance to get to it- I might skip it now), and a story about never seeing Brokeback Mountain because of a fire alarm...