Meme

1. What time did you get up this morning?
9:30. That's right, I slept in, but darn it, I deserve to.

2. Diamonds or Pearls?
If I have to choose between these two, diamonds, but really I'd rather have, say, saphires. They're just gorgeous.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
The Last Kiss. Interesting film, but dissatisfying ending.

4. What is your favorite T. V. show?
Grey's Anatomy, closely followed by Gilmore Girls - the only two shows I watch.

5. What did you have for breakfast?
Breakfast? Who has time for breakfast?

6. What is your middle name?
Elizabeth

7. Favorite cuisine?
Thai, just like Mum.

8. What foods do you dislike?
Lima beans, carrots.

9. What is your favorite chip flavor?
oooh. Salt and Vinegar. Or maybe All Dressed.

10. What is your favorite CD at the moment?
I really don't listen to CDs now that I have an ipod...but maybe it would be the Great Big Sea live album.

11. What kind of car do you drive?
The kind that seats 40, has double opening back doors, stops at prearranged locations, and comes with it's own chauffeur. I believe they call it a bus.

12. Favorite sandwich?
Clubhouse. Stacks of meat, stacks of veggies, toasted bread, cut in funny ways...where's the bad?

13. What characteristics do you despise?
willful ignorance, dishonesty, deliberate deception

13a. What characteristics do you like about someone?
honesty, curiosity, humour, passion

14. Favorite item of clothing?
Right now it's my high school hoodie that's all warn in all the right places, but it's fairly variable.

15. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go?
Peru. Without a doubt.

16. What color is your bathroom?
Green. With sheep. I wish I was kidding.

17. Favorite brand of clothing?
Suzy Sheir? Bluenotes? American Eagle?

18. Where would you retire to?
I haven't even started working, how am I supposed to think about retiring?

19. What was your most memorable birthday?
Oh! That one, whichever it was, where Mum made this awesome cake shaped like a castle and all my girl friends got to wear pointy princess hats with gauze trailers. Which birthday was that...6?

20. Favorite sport to watch?
Why watch them when you can play them? Actually, I don't play sports either...so...

21. Goals you have for yourself?
Get into grad school, meet Philippe Bourgois (my personal hero/favourite anthropologist), teach university, do fieldwork, get married, have kids, take kickboxing, and oh so many more.

SAI what?

Part of doing grad school applications involves writing up a Statement of Academic Interest (SAI). This basically tells the admissions committee what it is that you want to study, why you want to study it, and why you want to study it at their school. Simple enough, right?

Except that I only have a very vague idea of what I want to study. I know exactly where I want to study it, and who I have to talk to in order to get permission to study there, but what exactly I'd be looking for while there? I have only generalized phrases like "culture of opposition", "resistance to cultural exploitation", "crimes of desperation", and "situations of poverty" floating through my brain. How am I supposed to nail down a definition of the thing I want to study? ARGH!

And this is why I will be once again sitting down with the undergraduate advisor next week.

It's all in a day's plans

The plan for today...

Class, class, anthro meeting, vast amounts of reading, hanging with a guy friend I've been promising to hang out with for ages, watching Grey's Anatomy, sleep.

I have to admit that at this very moment the thing I am looking forward to most is the sleep.

An Unforgettable Morning

It's amazing how good it feels to have someone in a position of authority, whom you respect and admire, completely back you in something. This morning I went in to a meeting with two other executives of the anthropology exec team and the dean of students to discuss two large events we're planning, one for the student body, and the other open to the entire city. I was absolutely overwhelmed with not only his reception of the ideas, but with his endless enthusiasm and dedication to helping us bring them to fruition.

The man spent a half hour talking out the details with us, giving us more and bigger ideas, and connecting us with people and departments within the university that can help us. He gave us permission to use his name in all of our correspondence to guarantee us timely responses and give us a higher degree of credibility. He told us that he's privileged to be working with us on these projects and that he respects us very much for having the initiative to begin them.

I promise I'll give you all details, but I want to have some dates, places, and names nailed down before I share.

I'm positively quivering with the knowledge that these dreams are going to happen, and that the dean of students knows who I am, what I'm doing, and wants to help. It's just such an honour, and so incredibly exciting. It's going to happen. It's really going to happen!

Tests and Gym-goings

Tomorrow I have a test. I have a test in my course on the Mediterranean. I have a test on the readings for the course. I have a test on the readings from the course package that I haven't bought yet. I have a test on the readings from the course package that I haven't bought yet because it's out of stock at the bookstore. I have a test on the readings from the course package that's out of stock at the bookstore and out on loan from the library reserves and has been for the past 2 hours.

I am so screwed. How much about the Mediterranean do we think I can fudge?

On the plus side, I went to the gym today and biked for 20 minutes, regardless of the fact that for some reason our athletic complex has decided to discontinue towel rentals and I was dripping sweat in the most disgusting and unladylike way. More to the point, I didn't care that I was dripping sweat and in a state of appearance that wouldn't have landed me a date with a gnat. Unlike some of the premadonna Kimmies running around here ("look at me; I'm an underweight blonde cheerleader; let's get drunk and screw!), I really don't give a flying F what I look like at the gym. You should see the amount of primping that goes on in the locker room. It's disgusting. What's the point? You're just going to sweat off that makeup, sugar bum, and if you're not working hard enough to sweat, what the heck is the point of going to the gym? Hello!

But seriously, what sort of gym discontinues towel rentals?

Yay Job!

I love my job! I knew that serving tables would be fun, but I never thought it'd be this much fun. It's always busy, which I love. I hate those jobs where you stand around for hours doing nothing and earning $7 an hour for it. It always struck me as such a waste of time. Or those jobs where you do the same thing time after time after time. Like Tims or Second Cup...brew coffee, pour coffee, take money, brew more coffee! At least with Second Cup there was some variability, and the added bonus of foaming milk with the espresso machine, which is actually kind of fun.

But this job! Talking to all kinds of people and taking different orders, and specializing some of them, and putting them into the POS (point of service computer dealy), and picking them up from the expo line and running around to different tables and filling drinks and laughing and joking and smiling, smiling, smiling!
I LOVE IT.

Productivity!

A strangely productive day. Perhaps strangely is the wrong word. Perhaps abnormally is a better one. After all, just because it's not the norm that I am this productive in any one given day, that doesn't make it strange, which somehow implies that it is beyond my capabilities.

Today I read:

1) "Making Use of Culture", by Elisa Sobo - 12 pages
2) "Initiation and Meaning in the take of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", by N. J. Girardot - 23 pages
3) "The Potential of Liberating Fairy Tales for Children", by Jack Zipes - 16 pages
4) "Wimpy Boys and Macho Girls: Gender equity at the crossroads", by Lisa J. McClure - 4 pages
5) "Models for Female Loyalty: the Biblical Ruth in Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit", by Laurel Bollinger - 17 pages
6) "Tale Spinners: submerged voices in Grimms' fairy tales", by Ruth B. Bottingheimer - 9 pages
7) "The pervasiveness and persistence of the feminine beauty ideal in children's fairy tales", by Lory Baker-Sperry and Liz Grauerholz - 15 pages
8) "Dragons and dinosaurs: the child's capacity to differentiate fantasy from reality", by Patricia Morison and Howard Gardner - 6 pages
9) "Towards a theory of the fairy-tale film: the case of Pinocchio", by Jack Zipes - 24 pages
10) "Bargains with modernity in Paupa New Guinea and elsewhere", by Robert J. Foster - 19 pages

Total: 145 pages. Given that there are, on average, 400 words on a page, that sums up to a whopping 58,000 words read today, and some of them were pretty darn big words.

Plus, I spent an hour in the computer lab/library putting calls on books and articles in other libraries across Canada and the world to have them delivered here to read.

Plus, I sketched out half an essay outline for my Folklore course.

Plus, I came up with ideas for essay topics for my Symbols course and my Modernity course, and actually wrote them down along with mini explanations so I won't forget them or get confused by what I thought of tomorrow when I actually start formulating what they'll look like in essay format.

Plus, I went to 3 hours of lecture today and hotly debated with my classmates and got a few "that's an excellent point, Haley" from my profs.

Plus, I came home and cooked an actual meal AND cleaned my room AND did some chores around the apartment AND did some crucial emailing for the anthro exec and my random volunteering.

Plus, I started applications to grad school, by which I mean I filled in forms asking permission to have a user name and password to access the application sites, but, boy, was that ever stressful and exhilarating.

And now it is 11:21 at night!

Grad School? Oh yes!

I was told by a couple of my profs today that I have to apply for grad school. I was always thinking about grad school, but was planning on taking some time off (a year) after completing my undergraduate studies first. I was encouraged to apply this year, even if just for the experience of applying. This encouragement included a 15 minute discussion of my possible thesis topic, and endless enthusiasm from our undergraduate councilor - such a nice guy, and knows his stuff! By the end of that meeting I was bubbling over with excitement so much that I had to call Mum and share the thrill.

So here I sit, getting increasingly excited about the prospects of doing a masters thesis back home at Carleton, or at Western, where my favouritest prof ever went to teach. Realistically it'd be better to do it at Carleton, but a girl can dream.

I'm now facing the daunting task of looking up thesis information and grant applications, and getting letters of recommendation from profs and working my little (and shrinking - 8 pounds from my goal!) butt off to get high grades this year.

Step one: library tomorrow for some hard core essay researching. So what if they're not due until November...get 'er done!

Short Scare

Our screen door doesn't close properly, but I've been leaving the glass door open for ventilation in hopes to speed the dissipation of the paint fumes. The apartment looks great, but it stinks to high heaven.

Unfortunately, I underestimated the intelligence of my cat. He managed to open the screen door and when I came down to investigate the source of the scraping noise, both cats were missing and the door was open a whole 2 inches.

Sh*t.

I threw on my shoes and ran out the door after them. Malika was sitting in the grass 2mm from the door looking at me. Thank heavens she's afraid of the outdoors. I tossed her back in the house, firmly closing the glass door, and proceeded to hunt for Rumble. I walked around the building, scaling fences to do so, calling him and purring (to which he normally comes), all to no avail. I searched in and among the garbage bins and the trees at the front of the lot.

"Here buddy...here Rumble...here you freaking stupid cat..."

I searched up and down the block, calling and purring, not caring if I looked like an idiot to the people sitting on their decks - I was on a mission.

Finally I gave up, came home, and made a frantic phone call home. It went something like this:
"Rumble got out and I can't find him and I live on a busy street and I don't know what to dooooooooooo, sob."

I hung up. There was a noise outside. I look up. He's sitting on the other side of the glass door, looking in. For Pete's sake.

Stupid Advertisements

While on the bus yesterday I saw a health and safety advertisement put out by the city. It was encouraging parents to hold, follow, and watch their children with greater diligence, stating that "90% of falls last year were preventable". This irritated me to no end.

Now, I know that I'm not a parent, but I certainly was a child. I cannot help but think we are doing both parents and children a great disservice by putting so much emphasis on "diligent care". It seems like the onus is being put on parents to be responsible for their children to such an extreme as it all but eliminates self-reliance. My mum was by no means a slacker of a parent, but there were times when she wasn't there to catch me before I fell. I fell, I tripped, I stumbled, but more importantly, I got back up, and she encouraged me to get up. My question is this: if you never let your child fall, how can we expect that they will ever learn to get back up on their own? How will they ever learn that slips and trips are unavoidable, but that they have the ability to pick themselves back up, dust themselves off, and carry on?

Unfortunately Awake

It's just after six in the morning, and I've been awake already for about an hour, despite the fact that I didn't fall asleep until around one. My stomach is doing flips, and my head aches with fatigue, and yet I cannot sleep. I thought I had bested the insomnia, but apparently not. Of course, I'm sure this has an awful lot to do with my stupid decision to have caffeine so late last night.

I have given up on sleeping for the time being and will attempt to be productive instead. Perhaps I'll finish some of my reading, or begin research on one of my essays and look for a more defined topic (read: any topic at all).

Excitement

Tonight was amazing. So much fun. Moral of the story: I like new things and awkwardness. Also, I should never have caffeine at 11pm. I'm still awake and dancing around/singing to Girls and Boys by Good Charlotte.

Girls don't like boys, girls like cars and money.

Seriously, what is it about boys that drive? So hawt.

In other news, we're having our walls redone! At long last the ugly peeling wallpaper will be taken down and clean, fresh paint will cover our home. Well, at least the bottom floor of our home. The bedrooms still look like they fell out of the 70s, but hey, at least they have character. I mean, I have a fake chair rail made out of some sort of silky paper people, how old school is that? It's growing on me, in all its hideousness.

We Line Up

As an OSAP funded postsecondary student, I have the honour and privilege to join hundreds of students in the longest lines possible for seemingly endless hours. After wandering the halls of the financial aid office following signs pointing in circles, I finally found the end of the line, which was, of course, practically back at the beginning of the building's hallway.

Every year my university finds new and spectacular ways to get us underfunded students completely lost and disoriented. I do not know why they feel the need to change the system every year, but we are always at a loss as to which line to stand in first and which wicket to aim for. It always reminds me of those old game shows..."And behind door number two...another line! If only you had picked door number 27, you would have won your loan!!!"

The nice thing about line up day, er, OSAP release day, is that after standing in line for two and a half bloody hours, you can make some interesting friends with the people in front of and behind you. I had a very interesting conversation with two girls. One was a pretty, slim, fourth year business student with no specific career goals and a boyfriend of five years, and whose mother is in remission from cancer. The other was a heavy-set, sweet girl in second year languages who has extensive education plans (double degrees followed by graduate school) who lives with a foster family and is frighteningly serious about pursuing her career goals before she considers any romantic entanglements whatsoever.

As we stood there in line, discussing everything from politics to frosh week to public education vs homeschooling to health services to environmental concerns, I began to feel at ease. I felt like I had known them all my life, and yet I knew that once the line ended and we were sent on our way with promises of direct deposit funds, that I wouldn't probably see them again. More than that, I knew that if I had met them anywhere other than the OSAP release line, I probably wouldn't have conversed with them, and even if I had, I realized that there were such character differences that we would probably not be friends. I don't say this to be cruel, just as a likely fact. I think it's one of the great fascinations about humanity that we are able to converse so freely with people that we barely know. In fact, I know from my personal experience that I find it much easier to drop my guard around people that I know I'll likely never see again, than those that I know I'll see again and again. I suppose it's that their judgment and opinion of me doesn't matter nearly as much as that of my friends, family, or closer acquaintances.

On a lighter topic, how amazing is it that it's the third day of classes and I'm already sick? Lots of fluids and an early night for sleep. I was going to take a bath, but have discovered that we have no plugs for anything except the kitchen sink. Can you say "trip to the dollar store"?

In Summation

Well, the week is over, and I survived. It was an absolutely amazing time. From getting up at 5am, to line control, to undercooked chicken, to cheering until on the verge of voice-loss, to getting hit by flying change on shine day, to staying up until 3am, it was all phenomenal. And I really mean that, 100%.

Some highlights...

1) Parking day, where we direct traffic, welcome first years, and repeatedly say, "No, I'm very sorry but you can not park here" and, "You're going to have to turn around, this is one way for campus move in." Also when people stare at you like you're some kind of freak just because you're dressed head to toe in blue and yellow and dancing around and singing. I was stationed with some pretty fantastic people, and got to watch from afar while Jackie and her partner stood cheering on the corner with a parking sign.

P is for park! A is for Arrrrr! R is for Arrrrr! K is for king! Ride the sign!

Also the day that another member of the team remembered that I'm lactose intolerant and wandered all over campus to bring me a vegan sub after the students in charge of food delivery drove right past me with their golf cart full of pizza, which, yes, would have made me ill, but at least would have been food! That totally rocked, and I loved her for it. Subs are yum.

2) Regatta game day where we got to meet all kinds of first years and get them to cross dress and run around in circles.

3) Bling bling (CF ain't no thang!), but that's just a given. That game totally kicks butt. There's nothing better than watching eight people run around throwing vast amounts of money into opposing team buckets, all the while screaming at your team representatives and egging them on.

4) Shinerama presentation where a 10 year old girl got up in front of thousands of people and talked eloquently about her struggles with cystic fibrosis and made me almost cry. When everybody got up and was cheering her name, I couldn't even speak, I was so choked up. She was better in front of a crowd than I'll ever be.

5) Cheering on medians in the middle of six lane streets while cars go whipping past at 80km/h and trying to get them to throw coins into pizza box targets.

Chuck your change! Change for change! Change for a cure! Chuck your change!

6) Being so delirious with lack of sleep, hunger, and adrenaline that I made up the following cheer while doing line control and actually thought it was good...

Welcome to University! Exits are that away! Something else cheerable! Doors are inedible!

I'm telling you folks, it was a pretty sad sight, but it got laughs, and that's what counts. Go ahead, laugh at me. I don't mind. It was fun.

7) My roommate and her hysterical way of encouraging me to "get in there and get funky" (yes, Jackie, you did say that. It made my day.) as well as her ability to make absolutely everything sexual, which has me in stitches because I'm actually still four years old. I'll never look at a beer bottle the same way. Also for her awesome photo editing skills.

8) Last night because it was last night and while I only remember parts of it, what I remember is fantastic and I keep having these awesome flashbacks that make me blush/smile/laugh/hit myself for.

Keys Please?

Our internet and phone lines were finally installed last night. They were two days late, but at least they're in and working. All we have to do now is run cable from the router to Jackie's computer. It looks like that will have to wait until the weekend.

We don't have a mail key yet, and I'd called the landlord a couple days ago to inquire about it. He had assured me that he would get a key cut and drop it off. When I got home today to discover that there was no key, I called him.

"Hi, it's Haley calling from apartment 1."
I pause, dead air.
"I, um, called a few days ago about getting a mail key?"
I pause, still no response.
"I was wondering what the progress on that had been?"
"Oh yes, I tried my key, but it doesn't work either, so I'll have to replace the locks."
"Ah, do you know when that might happen?"
He hums and haws.
"It's just that I'm waiting for support cheques from my Mum, and if I can't get into the mail I can't eat."
He laughs.

Monday the mail locks get changed, and tomorrow they drill out the old ones so at least I can get at the mail that is taunting me from the tiny open slats. I tried to jimmy the lock with a screwdriver, tweezers, and a hair pin, but to no avail. Giving up on that, Jackie and I decided that we would do a load of laundry and clean our frosh week clothing which is getting pretty rank. We sort out the laundry and Jackie heads down to the laundry room. Moments later she's back. Doesn't it turn out that there's a key for the laundry room and, you guessed it, we don't have that key either.

Jackie called the landlord back, and I borrowed a key from a neighbour. We then hung out in the laundry room for an hour, being unable to leave without locking ourselves out from our clothing.
Hopefully by Monday we'll have all the keys we need. It's just one thing after another this time of the year.

Stolen Internet Updates!

Hey guys! I'm stealing internet from someone near campus. Just to let you know, frosh starts tomorrow morning (6am!) and I'll be going crazy until Sunday, the day of rest. Serving at the restaurant is going super, and I'm loving the frosh week prep. I wrote some stuff earlier and saved it to a word file...so here's the updates!

August 31^st:

The move went fairly spectacularly. Jackie and I were up this morning at 7am and moved a bunch of boxes down to the front lawn to wait for her aunts and uncle with the two trucks. I finally got to meet these relatives of hers that she talks about, and I have to say, they’re pretty awesome.

We got everything into the new place by 11ish, and her aunt scrubbed our kitchen for us (yay them!) while we went back and got the last of the stuff. I’d decided that if I could take a half day off from training that I could take a full day off from training, so I stayed and Jackie and I unpacked until about…oh…6pm before stopping for food, which was interesting, considering that we don’t have a stove. That came as a surprise, but we have leftovers, a microwave, a kettle, and a grill, so we can do without pretty well. Then we unpacked some more!

Now I’m going to crash, since I’m up early tomorrow morning for training.

September 1^st:

We’re still without internet for another four days. I was going to log in at school, but then I realized that I’ve forgotten my password. I haven’t had time to go down to IT and get them to reset it. They have this new system where passwords are only good for a certain number of months (I think it’s four – a term), but it screwed up on me and kept requiring I change it every week, so needless to say I forgot it over the summer, and now it’s expired anyways. Sigh. I don’t know why they can’t just let me keep my password the same.

We had mock mock serving at training today. No, that’s not a typo. That means that we had six servers go up at a time and everyone else sat down as guests. Then we took orders like normal, only brought them water and empty plates instead of real food. It was more just to get a feel for the speed of it, and the computer system. Of course, everyone else had been trained on the computer system yesterday, the day that I missed. I caught on pretty quick. The system is pretty much foolproof, but I did have to ask some questions. Everyone is nice and helpful though.

Then we had a food showcase. While we’d been running around with glasses of water and empty plates, the kitchen had been busy making two of everything on the menu. They laid it all out for us, and we got to see each thing, hear about it from the head chef/kitchen manager, and then sample it.

Tomorrow is the real mock serving, where we have other, non-staff people come in and order real food, and we run it just like a normal business day, except they don’t pay. I’m excited and nervous all at the same time.

Also, it’s only 9:30, and I’m seriously thinking about bedtime. Sigh. These days are running me pretty thin!