Start bailing

My apartment is leaking:



















It's been raining since about noon, and got home at 4:30 today to a damp couch and damp floor. It's not clear how the water is getting into my building, but it's coming out through my window frame:



















I called my managers and they gave me a bucket and some rags, and one of them set up a tin-foil eaves-system to catch the water and redirect it to a bucket. It's mostly the left window frame, but my center one has just started leaking as well.



















My couch and my desk used to be up against that wall, but I've moved my couch back and my desk to another wall, just in case. There have been issues with the roof all summer; the manager told me today that three roofing companies have come in to check it out, but can't find where the water is coming in. I'm starting to consider moving, except that my exams are coming up.

In the meantime, it's supposed to rain the rest of today, plus probably Monday and Wednesday. This is not good.

Well it's about time NASA got involved

Article in the Globe Style section today about a shoe company in California using NASA technology to make stilettos and heels more comfortable:

I was comfortable and confident, and I had technology to thank. Indeed, my debt of gratitude was to none other than NASA. Lining my Anyi Lu shoes was a two-millimetre layer of Poron, which is used for seat cushions in space shuttles. A polymer made up of tiny air bubbles that act as a shock-absorption system, Poron doesn't bottom out under pressure.

While I don't own a pair of stilettos, I do own several pairs of kicky heels, mostly in sandal form. For the most part, I would say that my shoes are comfortable, but that I also welcome any developments to make them more comfortable, especially for prolonged, all-day wear.

Maybe I should have been a shoe engineer instead. I would, of course, make all prototypes size 5, so I could take them for myself once their scientific lives were over. Waste not, want not, right?

Reading Report

Edmonton Fringe Festival Programs went on sale today so I made my way through the spitting rain to the Wee Book Inn where I not only bought two programs (one for me, one to mail to Jeff) but also (shocker) books. Ironically, the book that I'm excited about the most I won't be able to read because I promptly mailed it as a birthday present, and as the receiver has the URL for this blog, I'm not disclosing the title (surprise spoiled here). After the hot summer we've had in Alberta, today was cool and refreshing; it was a lovely walk home along Whyte Ave. and I felt immensely happy to live where I live, close to coffee shops and good restaurants and book shops and theatres (dramatic and film). Sure it's stressful and sure sometimes I wish I had a 9–5 job where I could leave work at work, but being a grad student has its advantages, such as being able to go out to run errands (and shop) in the middle of the afternoon.

Before you wonder whether I ever do any work, let me assure you that I just finished Charlotte Smith's novel The Old Manor House, reading from pg. 273–533 (or from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.). I've read so many long, three- or four-volume eighteenth century novels this summer that I'm not sure how I'd feel when I finally pick up something contemporary, something only 200 pages long with larger margins and more space between the lines. Ha! "Only" 200 pages. The mind boggles.

No cable

Quick final post tonight to note that I have regressed back to a cable-less universe after enjoying Shaw's $10 per month for basic cable deal since February. Oddly, while I was also cable-less at my old apartment, the channels that I now get here are different: none of the local stuff, except very fuzzy CBC, but clear YTV, clear Newsworld (yay!), clear HGTV (which was what I watched the most when I had cable), and clear CH (but not Global). I also get clear signals of the random French channels, CPAC, and RoBTV. This means that I will have to get my Daily Show fix by downloading the episodes the following day, if I can even be bothered.

Nonetheless, it's nice to still have Newsworld. And hopefully, this means that I will get more work done, which was why I cancelled my cable to begin with.

Calgary wrap-up

Just got back from a week in Calgary, a visit timed to coincide with my cousin Lisa’s visit from Toronto. Between my sister and I, we showed her many relevant parts of Calgary, from all the shopping (Kensington, 17th Ave, malls) to the Hop to Prince’s Island Park to the Blackfoot Diner (pie!). No point in detailing all of it, but some random interesting bits from the week:

• Lisa cannot drink. A quarter of a pint of beer is enough for her.
• There is Louis Vuitton store in the mall in Banff. There is no Louis Vuitton store in Calgary. The Banff store is staffed entirely by Japanese-speaking salespeople, all the better to target the Japanese tourists.
• Elk tastes... gamey. It’s denser than beef.
• Parking in downtown Banff is all free. The only time we paid to park in Banff was at the Banff Springs Hotel.
• Said parking fee, though, was more than justified by the sweet, swanky washrooms in the hotel, where three tired, sweaty tourists were happy to refresh themselves.
• The ugliest car in the world (seen in the parking lot beside Sakana Grill) is FOR SALE:


• The only JOSEF (upscale Jacob) store in Alberta is at Market Mall in Calgary. They are currently holding a major sale (Natalie), but good luck finding sizes.
• The University of Calgary objective to “improve” 40 student spaces for its 40th anniversary might be politic, but it's not attractive. The entrance to Science B is painted bright green (doors, walls, trim, everything) and the hallway outside Math Sciences looks like someone vomitted IKEA:


• And, finally, Higher Ground in Kensington makes an awesome Cafe Americano.

Potential Christmas present?

If anybody wants to make my day this Christmas:



















The Jane Austen action figure can be found here or here. And while Barbie has shoes and handbags, Ms. Austen comes with a miniature Pride and Prejudice and a small writing desk with removable quill pen. How can you resist that?

Thing that made me cry; things that make me smile

The first part of today's post is heavy on the finer details of women's haircuts. If you'd prefer to skip said details, proceed to the paragraph that begins "And I dealt with it..."

So.

Last week was very stressful, with Mary approaching burnout, feeling like I hadn't read enough (particularly theory) and being tired from pushing myself all summer. As a result I'd been teary all week, and in this fragile, coffee-less state I got a haircut. I had considered cancelling the appointment, but I didn't want to bother with the hassle of rescheduling.

I went down to the Aveda Academy Salon on Whyte, where I've been getting my haircut for a few years. This time, for the first time, I got an educator instead of a student. The first question she asked me was, "What do you like about your hair?" I'm not exactly into hair therapy, so I answered something vague like, "I like the cut, I like the length..." Warning sign #1: She then pressed down on my collar bone and told me that she thought the ideal length for my hair was there. I thought, okay, she's an educator, she knows these things. She added that she would touch up the layers around my face. I added that I still wanted to be able to pull my hair back in a ponytail, and she said that I could do that, but [Warning sign #2] would need to use pins. In my mind, I thought that the front layers would go to my shoulders and that the rest of the hair would fall accordingly. She added that my hair would "fall to my shoulders."

I then got my hair washed and began to think about exactly what "falling to the shoulders" meant. I get back to the chair and rather than say something to clarify, let her proceed with the cut. My glasses were off but I could vaguely make out 4-inch pieces of hair falling to my lap. When the cut was dried and I put on my glasses again, the hair was indeed short. MUCH shorter than what I wanted when I walked into the salon 45 minutes earlier.

And I dealt with it the only way I knew how at that moment. I started to cry. In the salon chair.

Now, I know that hair grows back. But trust me: it wasn't really about the hair.

Nonetheless, crying in a salon chair does have its upside: My next haircut is free, and I get VIP treatment. Granted, that won't be for a few months because I have to grow it out again. The worse part of it is that anyone I saw for the rest of that week didn't even notice that my hair was considerably shorter. I attribute this to the fact that I haven't seen many people all summer and that I was hiding it in a very short ponytail (that I indeed had to use hairpins for).

And now, on the plus side, some things that have been making me smile and/or laugh lately:

Weezer's music video with the Muppets! (Thanks to Ross for reminding me about this)
R-rated animated video that's cute and vulgar at the same time. (Thanks, I think, to Jeff for this)
The science-project-gone-mad Diet Coke and Mentos fountain.

It wasn't a bad haircut; it just wasn't the hair cut that I wanted.

Times I wish I'd had my camera with me.

Tonight, walking home from campus, I saw a couple walking their kitten on the sidewalk. Yes, kitten. In a harness and leash, kind of like this one:

But, instead of a fat white cat with black markings, substitute a tiny orange, tabby kitten. From a distance, I thought it was a little chihuahua (think Taco Bell dog).

The kitten was quite adorable and the couple was rather normal, yuppy-ish looking. Too bad they weren't goths; that would have been a great photo.

Fun with grammar! (kind of)

Hee!

How grammatically correct are you? (Revised with answer key)

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

Congratulations! If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be. You can smell a grammatical inaccuracy from fifty yards. Your speech is revered by the underlings, though some may blaspheme and call you a snob. They're just jealous. Go out there and change the world.
Take this quiz!








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Fun with IMDb: Austen edition (what else?)

The Jane Austen biopic Becoming Jane (due out next year) starring Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen (don't get me started) fictionalizes the true thwarted courtship of a young Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy, played by James McAvoy, the actor who plays Mr. Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia. Just picture it. The princess from the The Princess Diaries and the Narnian half-man/half-goat. Great.

The rest of the movie has an odd pedigree. The director, Julian Jarrold, last brought us Kinky Boots, a film from the twee-British-movie-about-a-quirky-small-town-overcoming-obstacles factory. However, further down his list of credits is the excellent TV adaptation of Zadie Smith's White Teeth (which is a definite must-read), among a plethora of other TV jobs. In fact, the screenwriter, Kevin Hood, also has mostly TV credits to his name.

And, to give McAvoy full credit, he's seems to be balancing his Narnia role with meatier fare in high-brow literary adaptations like Atonement, based on Ian McEwan's Booker-nominated, critically-acclaimed novel. Oddly, the film adaptation of Atonement is being directed by Joe Wright, the man who botched up the Keira Knightley Pride & Prejudice.

This only supports my long-held opinion that the pool of working actors in Britain is quite small, which means that the same actors/actresses pop up in lots of movies. The most extreme case might be that of Victoria Hamilton, who manages to appear in not one, not two, but three Austen screen adaptations in the 1990s. True, blink and you'll miss her as Mrs. Forster in the Pride and Prejudice mini-series, but still. She gets a line.

At any rate, I'm dreading but planning to see Becoming Jane next year and hoping that I don't have an aneurysm in the middle of the movie. Best case scenario is that I leave the theatre ranting rather lying on a stretcher. Who wants to come with me?

Update: computer not dead, dead metaphors, ill-fated date

First and foremost, my beloved laptop is back. Turns out the A/C adapter needed replacing, but the laptop proper was fine. *content sigh of relief*

Met with my supervisor on Friday and we discussed possible dates for my oral defense of my exams. I write the last of three exams on Fri., Sept. 1, and we were thinking either the Friday after that or the Monday following for the defense. Friday would bring us to Sept. 8, and Monday would be... Sept. 11. It's not that I'm superstitious on any account, but scheduling my oral defense for the five year anniversary of Sept. 11 is just too weird. We're now thinking Tues., Sept. 12 instead. (Incidentally, I defended my MA thesis on Sept. 10, 2002. Hm.)

And finally, a last little bit of trivia from my house/architecture readings. When King Charles II of England returned from his exile in France to a restored monarchy in 1660, he brought with him the French mode of arranging sets of their private rooms into a straight, sequential line called the Formal Plan, which usually consisted of an antechambre, chambre and a cabinet, a small room leading off from the bedroom. People wanting to meet with the king would do so either in the antechamber or the bedroom, and consequently the cabinet became most private place where people could actually be alone. However, the King would also hold meetings of his innermost circle of advisers in his cabinet, giving rise to our current term, "cabinet meeting". Isn't it fun when dead metaphors come back to life?

Sushi?

Taken from an online chat with my friend James, who's currently teaching in Japan:

"One of the creepier experiences you can have in Japan is to walk through a public aquarium and listen to all the people say 'Mmmmmm... looks delicious.' Poor dolphins."

!

Woe.

My laptop is currently in the shop for a diagnostic test because there's something wrong with the power source (not charging). In the meantime I'm posting from the computer room in the English department, where I've been doing a lot of work for the last few days. At home I've unpacked my old, first-generation Blueberry iMac (which seems HUGE in comparison to the 12" Powerbook G4) but its internet access is slow (the browser on there is Netscape Communicator--remember Netscape?), and it keeps crashing if I ask it to do too much too fast (which, come to think of it, is also why I crashed the computers so much at the Gauntlet). I do work at home a lot because I tend to work late so I'm glad that the old iMac is still working, but I'm apprehensive that I might lose my files on it. I still have to figure out how to connect it to my new laser printer so that I at least have hard copies, and need to dig out my old A-drive because it doesn't recognize my flash memory stick. Ah, obselete technology. It also doesn't run MSN Messenger b/c Microsoft doesn't let you run older versions of its apps.

Working at school is better right now anyway because Edmonton is experiencing an incredibly hot summer and I don't have air conditioning at home (who does, in Alberta?). Nonetheless, there is a certain comfort level at home that I don't have here.

And frankly, I miss my laptop. I kind of feel like I'm missing a limb, and until I get it back, I have to deal with a slow, jerky replacement arm that lacks opposable thumbs.

More shoes!

Four words: Gravity Pope warehouse sale.

For that, I will get up early on a Saturday morning of a long weekend.