Advantages to living in Alberta

The chance to take photos like this one:


More photos here.

Anna's Champagne Birthday

Anna's champagne birthday (the birthday where your age matches your birthdate) was yesterday and we spent it taking our cousin and his wife, who are currently visiting from China, on a whirlwind tour of the Rockies, which included going to B.C. and seeing Emerald Lake and the Natural Bridge, a quick stop at Lake Louise and Moraine Lake and then a drive through Banff to the gondolas where there was no line up (no one!) to go up Sulphur Mountain. And then home by 6:30 for dinner, after which I was put on the Greyhound back to Edmonton. Whew!

In between all that, we managed to squeeze in non-Champagne-region sparkling white wine (my instructions were to get "one step up from Baby Duck"):


I think she liked it.

Big book

This came in the mail today:

It's a 1000-page reference book that I ordered from an American used book seller over abebooks.com last Thursday, back when the US/Canadian exchange rate was near but not quite at parity.

It is a former public library book that is in pristine condition. Seriously. The binding is a little wonky, but there is not one mark in it. (Thank you, Wolfeboro Public Library!)

I didn't expect it to arrive so quickly, so when I saw it in front of my door (the mailman had kindly left it there, underneath my newspaper), yes, I squealed.

Because not only is it an excellent reference book edited by one of the giants in the field (Richetti), but it cost me only $22 USD. That includes shipping.

So on the one hand, it's sad that this lovely though perhaps too-academic reference book was underused in a public library. On the other hand, it's great that it remained in excellent condition until I was able to give it the appreciative home it deserves. Used books, yay!

Recommend this, Amazon!

Tonight, in a weird pique, I got pissed off at Amazon's stupid "Recommended for You" feature and tried to circumvent it not by signing off my account like any sane person, but by going through the list of "Items You Own" and deleting all of them. The same list showed me items I had bought from Amazon, which could not be deleted but whose "Use to make recommendations" setting could be deselected.

My act of defiance (ha!) did not stem from any concerns about privacy or the company's attempt to make me buy more things using my personal purchasing patterns. No. For while it was kind of interesting to see how Amazon reconciled my Austen purchases with my purchases of Simpsons DVDs and a Christmas-related purchase of the children's classic The Hungry Caterpillar, I usually ended up getting insulted by the recommendations. Just because I like The Simpsons doesn't mean that I like The Family Guy, okay? In fact, I hate The Family Guy. And just because I bought some Austen-related books, it doesn't mean that I'm interested in a poorly written sequel to one of her clearly superior novels. And being inundated by recommendations for a plethora of children's books based on one (one!) purchase seems a little excessive as well. As it is, Amazon didn't really seem to know what to do with my ownership of Habermas' The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere or purchase of Foucault's The Order of Things—except to recommend The Birth of the Clinic.

But I shouldn't be too angry with Amazon, really. It's not like they've taken one look at my purchasing history, categorized me as a "hipster intellectual" and offered me a reading list based on said categorization. Or asked me to take a quiz to determine which reading list my lifestyle would be the best match for.

(Found while searching for a recently married friend's wedding registry.)

Most delicious sign of global warming?

Blueberries.

To be more specific, blueberries in September. Until this year, I have never been able to buy blueberries at my local Safeway after August. Imagine my surprise when today, at almost the halfway mark of the month, they were still on sale. They are smaller, but also sweeter.

If this is the end of the world, I will take it in pancake form.

Cavities and stomache aches

This post is co-sponsored by Karine, who shared most of these links with me.

Only in America would they think to repurpose a dessert food as another dessert. I present to you: Krispy Kreme bread pudding.


Don't be deceived by the yummy-looking food porn photo. This dessert is made from twenty four Krispy Kreme doughnuts and is drizzled with a sauce that calls for an entire pound of confectioners sugar. Moreover, though bread pudding traditionally includes fruit, this recipe ups the preservative quotient by using fruit cocktail—syrup included. Ugh. Someone's asking for a collective coronary aneurysm.

And if that doesn't make you sick thinking about it, then try pickles soaked in Kool-Aid, of which "children are the primary consumers".


I do like the Kool-Aid spokesperson's reaction, though:

Upon learning of the pickles, Bridget MacConnell, a senior manager of corporate affairs at Kraft, recovered, and then pronounced, “We endorse our consumers’ finding innovative ways to use our products.”

In related beverages-of-questionable-nutritional-value news, I've finally learned how one can deep fry Coke. Where, though, would one find Coke syrup? I doubt my local Safeway carries it. Alas, I guess my first taste of fried Coke batter will have to wait.

And finally, a Nigella Lawson repurposed recipe that would offend Jews and Mormons: Ham cooked in Coke.

I think I'm going to eat some fruit, now. And not from a can, either.

The first birth metaphor of the process

According to my friend Karine, female grad students have baby dreams whenever they experience dissertation anxiety. I have already taken note of the phenomenon here and here. Karine has thought about posting a photo of her finished dissertation on her Facebook account as a counterpoint to all her friend's baby photos (I wonder what the grad student equivalent of cat/kitten photos would be?). And lest you think that the use of birth language is limited to neurotic female grad students, at my meeting with my supervisor about chapter one yesterday, in response to my description of the difficulty I'd experienced with the writing, she compared the first chapter to a "breech birth".

Which makes me wonder: what metaphor for the dissertation writing process do men use? The birth metaphor might seem a little clichéd but it has its uses. Being able to compare the writing process to something momentous and life-changing validates the dissertation, accords it the importance that it already has but that others might not understand. It speaks to the long gestation, the difficulty, the highs and lows of the process, and (presumably) the relief once it's over but also the fear of "now, what?" that follows. The more I think about it, the more I think the metaphor is appropriate.

And it's not that it's a new comparison. In her letters, Jane Austen herself twice compared her novels to children, noting of Sense and Sensibility that she could no more forget it "than a mother can forget her suckling child" and calling Pride and Prejudice her "own darling child". Interestingly, in both cases she was referring specifically to the finished, published novel. Clearly for Austen, the process ended not with the last sentence, but with the last binding.