We had some people over and watched the last three episodes in a row. That was pretty harsh.
I can honestly say that no show has ever had a longer funeral scene, and no show has ever made me more aware of my own mortality. Maybe that’s because several of the characters are within a year or two of my own age. . . .
Still, it had a better ending than most series do.
EDIT: There is now a spoiler in the comments. Read at your own peril.
Just when you thought blogging wasn’t simply a form of nacissistic self-indulgence comes further proof that it is. My friend Masoo — who I mostly know through online interaction over the last what, 10 years? — posted the following meme on his blog and after seeing the results for a few others, I bit.
1. Reply with your name and I’ll respond with something random about you.
2. I’ll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I’ll pick a flavor/color of jello to wrestle with you in. (Maybe.)
4. I’ll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I’ll tell you my first memory of you.
6. I’ll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I’ll ask you something that I’ve always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your journal. You MUST. It is written.
His reply is below and you can read the whole thread here if you are really so inclined. Since he did it for me, I’ll make the offer to any readers of my blog that are feeling similarly nacissistic. Just reply to this post and I’ll answer the questions about you. Note that whatever faint and residual shred of professional dignity I have left after posting this (so soon after my hot chocolate confessions and French lesson) will prevent me from answering the jello question with respect to most colleagues or graduate students.
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Masoo on JS:
1) Reply with your name and I’ll respond with something random about you. Reliably helpful, which is to say, a good person to know.
2) I’ll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you. Maybe something by Dos :-).
3) I’ll pick a flavor/color of jello to wrestle with you in. (Maybe.) I’m just gonna start saying “lime” because it’s my favorite flavor.
4) I’ll say something that only makes sense to you and me. This is another time where I think whatever I say will make sense to more people than just us two. But you are the only person I know who gets to call McChesney “Bob.” (If you don’t call him that, my bad.)
5) I’ll tell you my first memory of you. I feel like you guys were on a couch, but I don’t remember who the couch belonged to.
6) I’ll tell you what animal you remind me of. This should be something Canadian, but being an American, I don’t know what animals are Canadian. How about Yukon King, Sgt. Preston’s trusty companion?
7) I’ll ask you something that I’ve always wondered about you. How do you do it? Guess that’s not specific enough … you seem to cover a lot of ground, in terms of travels, in terms of academic disciplines, in terms of the kinds of people you relate to. In that context, I feel narrow. How do you do it?
I actually think I might be a little wired after consuming what is undoubtedly the best hot chocolate of my life (thank you Babette’s). Also my back is still cold from the rain falling on it while hailing a taxi.
Anyway, tonight’s topic is how I am a supreme geek. Specifically, I am always struck with a certain sense of excitement, anticipation and optimism at the beginning of a new school year. And let’s face it, a person’s second year at an institution is the first real year since all the ritual and repetitive elements of institutional life only become apparent after living in a place for a year. Only now can I begin to tell the difference between the ecological and the geological in the life of the university around me, only now can I begin to differentiate between the truly urgent and the truly silly (though I’ll probably get a couple of those wrong this time around).
So, let’s see. School starts in a couple weeks. That means it’s time to finish off the copy packet for the seminar, order the new shoes and new vests for some new looks in the coming year, clean up my workspaces to install a temporary sense of order in my life, take stock of my various projects so that I’ve got a plan of action for the fall and can delegate to my small fleet of new RAs (thank you SSHRC and FQRSC), make sure plane tickets and hotel rooms are booked for conferences, visiting lecturer gigs and my last defenses in Pittsburgh as advisor, and, oh yes, there’s this director of the grad program thing to figure out too(1).
For all that, I’ve still got that childlike nervous anticipation that comes with the leadup to the first day of school. What will I learn this year? Will my classmates be cool? What new friends will I make? Just as the summer seemed like the time to finish the unrealized dreams of winter term, the fall seems like the time to abandon the unrealized dreams of summer and make some new ones. One of the things I like about this job is the ecological sense of the year, and I guess the fact that I am sentimentally optimistic about everybody coming back and “getting back to it” is a sign I’m in the right line of work.
Okay, time to chill out. Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll force myself to make those final choices for the syllabus.
Or not. There’s still two weeks of summer left.
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1. Right now, it’s the little things about that job are confusing me. Like how to manage the onslaught of email that comes with it. For instance, is it more efficient to reply to all emails as I find them, or is it more efficient to set aside one or two times a week to reply to GPD email? And how do I keep track of it since it comes to the same account as all my other email?
I’m learning how to put things in the past tense. Didn’t do too bad on this exercise, though my verbal translation was running at about 50%. Still, I can’t complain.
Sorry it’s been so quiet here, I’ve been moving office this week and otherwise getting started up, especially with GPD responsibilities. Also shepherding people through various hoops. I will have been in to school 5 days this week as of tomorrow. I keep meaning to write something blistering about the loyalty tests for the governor general, but it’s just going to have to wait. My basic point was that yesterday’s statement sounded a bit like a McCarthyite “I am not now, nor have ever been. . .”
A helpful person directed me to a McGill page that answered my questions with some words, but it looks like I’ll be purchasing a copy of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. I had a stroke of inspiration this morning and went to MS word to see if there was a “Canadian” setting for the dictionary, and at least in Word X, which is installed on this computer (will check 2004 at work later), there’s only British, American and Australian. You’d think they’d have a “Canadian” setting for their dictionary. I mean, if the Aussies get one. . . . Anyway, after some web research I see that Office for PC has a Canadian dictionary but it looks like as a Mac person I’m going to have to go to 3rd party software.
In the meantime, I suppose the best thing is to have an RA who “writes Canadian” read over my official documents before they appear in public.
I am up early (mostly because I have to be in at 9 for the Big Office Move but also because of the sun) working on a revised document that explains dissertation proposals in Communication Studies. The old document has Canadian spellings. Now here’s the question: do I change them to American spellings? If not, how do I know I’m spelling correctly? Am I Director of the “Graduate Program in Communication Studies” or the “Graduate Programme in Communication Studies”? Will the student have a “defense” or a “defence”? Are these ethicopolitical questions or merely practical ones?
Language is so much part of the political culture here, but I’ve learned all my Canadian language politics through the interface between French and English. What happens when it’s about the relationship American vs. Canadian English (acknowledging that there is more than one “English” practiced in each country but also acknowledging that there are some national differences as well)? Do people notice? Do they care?
So we got back Friday evening and after the post-trip decompression, I can definitely say we’ll be back to Ottawa. It was a lovely vacation spot, and there was tons of touristy stuff we didn’t even get to (museums, for instance). By and large, the food was great, though apparently they are used to tourists with bland tastes. Twice we were warned that our food would actually be spicy. Like “you do realize there are jalopenos in this, right?” which of course is why we ordered the thing in the first place. Then again, the “medium” at the Carribbean place was actually knock your socks off hot.
Octopus Books is a real treasure as well. We both loaded up on text. We also managed to buy shoes. Books and shoes seem like the kinds of things you should shop for on vacation. Work was great too, but less interesting for the purposes of blogging.
This post will feature a brief discussion of wildlife we encountered in Ottawa, which seems only appropriate, presented in the format of a vacation slide show.
I’d seen grey and albino squirrels before, but these we saw all over the city. I’d never seen a black squirrel before.
It was really cool to go up on Parliament Hill and see all the stately old buildings. I’m used to massive gothic buildings from my time in Pittsburgh, but these are somehow more ornate. The statue here is, I believe, Alexander MacKenzie, though it may also be some guy named Brown — I don’t remember. The important thing is that someone really needs to clean off his head.
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