My annual (sort of) pilgrimmage to the Old Country ...

... or "I <heart> Ikea, but I <heart heart heart> Trader Joe's"

So I'm back. I took the weekend off and drove down to Minneapolis. Picked a bad weekend for that, owing to the bridge collapse on Wednesday. <aside>I think it's cute that they call it the "35 double-u" and not the "35 west".</aside> More sober observations aside, the major effect on me was that all the NPR news and shows that I was waiting to hear got pre-empted by news conferences. But anyway...

I went to Ikea and spent $111 US in about an hour. Sauce pans, pasta bowls, side bowls, a match to my bedside lamp, and several sets of cutting mats. I also spent about an hour in Albertville (outlet mall) and bought a beautiful hollow-ground santoku knife that I can't wait to rip into some real food with.

I hit Trader Joe's, the SoCal chain that all of us up here who lived in SoCal miss, and are ardently jealous of our friends who live in shopping distance of one of (?), on the way back. In Maple Grove, which is the burb of the Twin Cities where the I-94 and the I-494 cross west of Minneapolis. I'm very mad at my Minneapolis friends who knew all this time that Trader Joe's was in the Twin Cities and didn't tell me. Which is one of the reasons why I didn't call any of them while I was there. That and I figured getting around would be a hassle, what with the bridge collapse and ensuing, and I didn't have any numbers, having migrated recently to a new Contacts program and, well, not having any of them.

In Grand Forks on the way back, I nearly maxed out my customs exemption (thankfully now up to $400) on Jiffy cornbread mix, Mentadent toothpaste, and assorted other necessities to get me through till next summer.

So now I'm all relaxed and refreshed and ready to get back to work.

Another Fringe first

Last year, it was my first irate performer. This year, it was my first performer to cancel a performance while performing.

I won't malign the performer in question (the story will filter through the Fringeverse quickly enough), but here's the rundown. The performer, hereafter to be referred simply as Performer, was late. Performer is supposed to be in the house 30 minutes before show time. This way Performer can costume, warm up, put up set, or whatever before doors open to the audience. Doors open to the audience 15 minutes before show time. (The Winnipeg Fringe runs a particularly tight ship when it comes to scheduling.)

Thirty minutes before show time ... no Performer. Fifteen minutes before show time, doors open; ticket holders are filtering into the venue ... no Performer. Performer finally arrives, much to everyone's great relief. Doors close right on schedule at show time. I have a moment of Venue Team Leading, Crisis Averted, Pride.

Not five minutes later, my usher appears saying something along the the lines of "Performer's thrown in the towel." That wasn't quite the idiom the usher used, but I don't remember exactly what it was. Something colo(u)rful and befitting the across-the-pond (some pond or other) accent of the usher. But the upshot was that Performer got on stage, started the show, and then apologized and exited the stage.

Boggle.

Now, I can see Performer may not have been in the best shape, and I decline to speculate as to why. And I can see that Peformer, not being in the best shape, and playing to a small house (I think we had a total of five cash sales, plus a few advanced sales, at least one Frequent Fringer pass sale, and, unfortunately for Performer, a media--a 'media' is Fringe lingo for someone from the media who arranges to see the show in order, one presumes, to review it. One doesn't go far in the Fringe game by making trouble for one's media(s).) As I was saying, Performer, perhaps not being in the best shape and playing to a small house, apparently decides that It Just Ain't Worth It. Well, 'the show must go on' be damned apparently.

I don't know what is happening with these young people these days.

So I don't know who's going to demand a refund, and considering there were two price levels, how They (whoever They are) are going to deal with that. I'm just glad it's not my job. Nor my regular venue, so I personally don't have to deal with Performer again. Not that I'd actually mind, but I'm not sure I could stop myself from saying something (intended to be) scathing.

Pre-Fringe musings

This year's Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival ("20 years to life") is coming up, and as part of my participation as a volunteer venue team leader, I've been asked to provide a list of major and minor offences. Which doesn't make sense because as a VTL I'm a 'warden', not an infractor. Nonetheless, I'll play the game. The problem is that, as clever as I think I am, I'm definitely low man on the clever pole among Fringers. So I'm trying to dream up offences I'm willing to cop to (as it were) and I'm sure I'm the last one to come up with these:

• First degree Fringe
  
• Aggravated Fringe
  
• Fringing with a deadly weapon (?)
  
• Fringe with malice aforethought
  
• Possession with intent to Fringe
  
• Providing Fringe to a minor
  
• Fringing with a minor
  
• Transporting a minor across a state line for Fringe purposes (which doesn't work so well in Canada)
  
• Indecent Fringing
  
• Public Fringing
  
• Fringe and Run
  
• Hit and Fringe
  
• Grand Fringe Auto (ehh)
  
• Driving while Fringed/Fringing under the influence (depending on local laws)
  
• Fringing without a license
  
• Fringing with a suspended license
  
• Impersonating an officer of the Fringe
  
• Interfering with a Fringe scene
  
• Obstructing Fringe
  
• Jayfringing
  

But I'm leaving heavily toward:

• Maintaining an attractive Fringe
  
• Conspiracy to commit Fringe
  
• Solicitation with intent to Fringe
  
• Operating a common Fringe house

Independence Day ... or the best laid plans

Back when I was a newcomer to the lustrous shores of Canadia, I used to make a point of taking holidays from the Old Country off. Real Thanksgiving. Fourth of July. Presidents' Day. Of course I also took off the Canadian holidays--fake thanksgiving, Victoria Day, first Monday in August, but that was a matter of statute and assimilation.

But here I am, at work. I had a meeting with the outgoing chair of the graduate committee (and acting (and presumptive) head) about stuff. Which involved a little work talk and a lot of nice random conversation over lunch at the Faculty Club. But here I am, trying to catch up with work.

And wrapping my brain around the two curve balls I've been thrown: 1) my yoga class has been cancelled for the rest of the summer, 2) I've been asked to trade General Phonetics (which I was not looking forward to teaching) at a great hour to teach it, for Language and Gender (which I wouldn't mind teaching) at the precise hour I would have selected *not* to teach it.

I don't know what I'm going to do about yoga, but this teaching change has me loopy. I've taught L&G before, and I want to again. But I don't want to teach it and my seminar in adjacent hours three days a week. MWF 12:30-1:20 for L&G and MWF 1:30-2:20 for the seminar.

I tend to over-talk, especially in larger classes (which L&G is), which means by the end of the seminar, I won't have a voice anymore. Unless I clean up my vocal hygiene a lot.

But when is a body supposed to have lunch?

Aww, cute!

Too cute not to share: The San Diego Zoo's Panda Cam.

Okay, so here's what's up

My anticipated office move has been postponed indefinitely. Yay. Except now I have no excuse not to clean my office. And I'm now the farthest away from the department office and the stairway convenient to the new lab. But at least I'm closest to the copy machine.

The new lab is almost 'complete'. The recording booth has been delivered and Tang Chow from ElectroMedical is here (with a crew, I assume) to assemble it.

Keys to the new lab are here. But the paperwork telling us which key is whose (around here, keys get assigned as a personal responsibility) has not arrived, so they have not been dispensed.

Next step, get all the stuff out of storage and into the new lab, once we have keys. Who do we call to get professional movers, which is how we got stuff into storage in the first place?

And then, a big chunk of my professional life is going to be devoted to getting the lab into shape to receive actual students (not to mention study participants) before school starts in the fall.

Long weekend this weekend (Canada Day), the highlight of which for many is the World's Saddest Little Street Fair. Which is not what its organizers call it, but that's what it is. As for me, I'm going to try to make it south of the border (i.e. into the US) for some decent Mexican food.

Next week starts a 9-week yoga session with Craig (I think) rather than Colleen. Except Colleen is going to be filling in at least once, maybe twice. But whatever. Yoga goes on. Yay.

Starting Tuesday next week I have a string of appointments.

• One of my former students (now a practicing speech-language pathologist) is planning to go back for a Ph.D., and I'm having lunch with him to talk 'statement of research interests' and that sort of thing.
  
• Training on the system the University bought to make their web lives easier, which seems to mean making it impossible for us to do anything useful, or easily.
  
• Nerve conduction test at the hospital to check to see if my ulnar nerves are on the verge of collapse or it's just the vitamin B12 deficiency my doctor has me working on.
  
• Follow up with my doctor on the B12 deficiency. Apparently a normal daily intake of B12 is 5-7 micrograms, or something like that. I'm on 500. One of my regular drugs apparently can cause a problem with B12 absorption. And apparently B12 is important for nerve function. Who knew? But apparently in ruling out diabetic neuropathy, especially when one is on one of the drugs I'm on, you check the B12, and it turns out I'm B12 deficient. Haven't actually made this appointment yet, and I may wait until after the Fringe, just cuz.
  
• Regular endocrinologist appointment to talk about the blood sugar, the weight, the blood pressure, and I presume the B12 and the ulnar nerve issues.
  

And most importantly, July 18-29 is the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. This is the 20th Fringe ("20 years to life"), and I'll be acting as a Warden (venue team leader) at Venues 8 and 9 (north side of the Conservatory building, otherwise known as the Crocus building, but we don't talk about Crocus anymore). It's going to be 12 days of hot hot hot theater, outdoor entertainment, food-from-carts, and so on.

Times like this I wish I had a hot tub

This is how stupid I am. All day I've been achy. All over. And it's just occurred to me why. I worked really hard yesterday in yoga. The good news, I suppose, is that I survived my first yoga class with an instructor other than my regular instructor, who I'll be losing anyway at the end of this session. So I guess my enjoyment/success/whatever of yoga isn't completely going to fall apart if I have to find a new instructor, which I do. Not that I was really expecting a huge catastrophe, but now I have some impetus to actually find a new yoga instructor.

Okay, so last night's guy was Craig, who normally teaches the Ashtanga 'power yoga' class at my gym. As opposed to 'slow flow yoga', which is what I do. Differences: 'power yoga' is a little more 'athletic'. With bouncing around and constant movement between poses. For 90 minutes at a time, which I just couldn't do. 'Slow flow' involves more holding of poses, using movement just to transition. Also it's only 60 minutes, which is plenty for me.

Colleen (my usual instructor) likes to do slow flow in the dark, with candles, and surf-n-tweeting-birds music in the background. Craig doesn't. Which makes balance poses easier, but doesn't do much for my practice otherwise. With the lights on, it became obvious that I like to do yoga with my eyes closed. Also Craig is more 'hands on' than Colleen, in that he was constantly (in the sense of doing it twice) adjusting my pose so I was going a little further into it than I was totally comfortable with. Which is not a bad thing, I guess, since the whole point is to stretch.

I suppose every instructor has their quirks, which having only had Colleen's I'm a little sensitive to. Craig does his Surya Namaskar (sun salutation, which he kept calling a 'sun salute', which to my ear is just not the same thing, but I'm not sure why) differently than Colleen does. Several vocal things that Craig did really took me out of the moment the first few times I heard them. Craig was always talking about noticing the breath. "Notice the inhale.... and the exhale ...." which is a good thing to do in yoga (it's all about the breathing). He also has a thing about maintaining and open and noble attitude, or something like that. They just caught my ear a lot, in the way that coming to Canada I have to stop and refocus everytime someone says 'shedule' instead of 'scedule', or "reZOURCE" instead of "REsource". Or uses it as a verb.

So anyway, I spent all day wondering feeling like I could really use a good jacuze (which is what you do in a jacuzzi, not something you say when you're going to accuse someone of something) (beat) and not really remembering why. And now it's almost midnight and wa-a-ay to late to do anything about it.

Note to self: make friends with someone with a hot tub.

Hagiwara's Review of Books

Every once in a while, I try to fill in a lacuna in my literary perspective, and go back to read some 'classics'. This is 'classics' in the sense of 'stuff we all know from watching cartoons', not anything that's necessarily any good. Stuff by dead white men. You know. "Things I should have read by now."

In the past, this has included a number of real stinkers. Two Towers, Last of the Mohicans, and Moby Dick come screamingly to mind.

This time, I went for 'less literary and more popular', I suppose. Inspired by the graphic novel version(s) of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I decided to explore that speculative/pre-science-fiction/proto-pulp-adventure genre from the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Haggard, Verne, Wells. That sort of thing. I know there's a name for this genre but I'm not sure what it is.

I haven't actually tackled Haggard yet. But I managed to get through some classics anyway: Verne's Around the World in 80 Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth; Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde; Well's Island of Dr Moreau; and of course Dracula by Stoker and Frankenstein by Shelley.

Here's how stupid I am. I didn't know Verne was French. I mean, I knew he was French. I didn't realize he wrote in French. I mean, except for Passepartout (the comical sidekick in 80 Days), his characters aren't French, and so for his stories don't take place in France. Harry (the narrator of Journey) is English, raised by his German uncle (the 'hero') and most of the story takes place in or under Iceland (except for the parts that seem to take place under Scotland). Fogg in 80 Days, of course, is English and most of the story takes place in English controlled (or speaking) parts of the world--Egypt (at the time), India, SE Asia (which isn't so much English speaking, but there's plenty of English influence around, what with Formosa and Singapore and so on, and most of this is on a boat) and the US. I haven't read any of the Nemo books yet (although I may, one day, although I understand they're darker and just not as much fun as the others), but he's a Sikh from India, and of course the stories take place underwater.

Okay, so Jekyll and Hyde is a pretty good story. And everything you've heard about it is true--except that Hyde is actually not a huge monster. He's actually fairly slight but very vicious. But the semi-Freudian, unchecked desire/suppression/sublimation themes are all there. Jekyll is actually not a particularly sympathetic character either.

Dracula and Frankenstein were completely unexpected. I actually enjoyed them both. Dracula is definitely the better read, from the thriller point of view. It's also more skillful, in that it's epistolary (told in letters and diary entries), which is much harder to pull off, especially if you're writing a thriller and you have to generate a sense of urgency. Frankenstein is also epistolary, but the novel is is narrated (via diary entries) by a narrator telling Victor's story as Victor tells it to him. It's a little too self-conscious in its exploration of humanity and loneliness and beauty and evil and so on. Also it resembles not at all any of the popular cartoon versions of the story. The 'monster' is, as I expected, sympathetic. But in the novel he's actually very articulate. Calculating, and amoral, I suppose, but that's rather the point. I mean, I knew that the title Frankenstein refered to Victor (the creator of the 'monster') and not the monster, but I didn't realize that the whole point of the book is Victor's dilemma (having created the creature he hates and fears, and vowing to destroy it, and his self-justification of all his horrible choices in the matter) and not the calculated revenge the creature takes on Victor. The monster is amoral but honorable, in a weird way. Just wants to get along. Victor is just reprehensible. Cowardly. Selfish. Egotistical. But there are no villagers or torches or anything. It's just one moral quandary after another.

This is all bedtime reading. During the day I have work stuff to read. Not that I do, but I found in college if I read work before bed I end up falling asleep if I try to read work during the day. So before bed, I read junk. By which I mean 'for pleasure'. Now I'm in the middle of Canterbury Tales. Which I'm reading just so I can say I have, since I use the first lines of the prologue in my biennial "History of English in 45 minutes" lecture. That and there's a series of novels based on the characters of the pilgrims in Tales by an author I like that I may tackle one day. But not for a while. I'm getting tired of all this 'literature'. The next read is definitely going to be from the 'trashy mystery novel' category. I'm behind a couple of Janet Evanoviches and Tim Cockeys. Not to mention a couple of Martha Grimeses. Although I'm getting a little tired of those.

Progress on all fronts

Well, not quite all fronts, but things are going okay this week.

In spite of a sore back (for which I blame Bridge Pose in yoga last week), I've been out for a couple of walks, enjoying the sunshine and the rain. I've cooked a couple of serious meals, and am gearing up for a good Sauce session, probably on Friday. The Blood Pressure is 'under control', as is the diet and the sugars and most all else. The new Drug is having its desired anti-anxiety effect, and sleep is occurring acceptably.

The outer structure (i.e. walls and ceiling) of the new lab are done, carpet is on the way, booth is on the way, so probably by end-June I'll be setting up a lab. Woo hoo. Sometime between now and then I'll be moving offices. To which office I'm not sure. I had a choice, I made a choice, my Head said he'd work on it, and all I know is that at some point I'll have to move. I plan to spend most of my time in the lab anyway.

And today, my long awaited paper has come out. Bless CJL. "(in press)" now becomes "51.2/3, pp: 127-141, 2007." Yee haw.

So I have three weeks or so to decide whether I'm moving this year. Don't wanna bother, but if I tried, I could probably save myself a couple hundred a month in rent. Which could go toward eventually getting me into the townhouse of my dreams. Or I could just be more careful and not have to move. Indolence works, a lot of the time.

Plan today is to finish up, swing by Canadian Tire and find something that will hold up a parachute hammock I bought two years ago (I'm thinking strappy thingies for the railing of my balcony) and I'll spend part of the evening reading and catching up on stuff at home, perhaps a-hammock. If my back can take it. We'll see. But I'm not going to spend another summer not using my balcony, and the only thing my balcony is really useful for is my hammock.

So anyway, things are going pretty well.

Change sux

Well, it's been a year. First, my massage guy lost his space, and disappeared without forwarding, so I've been without a massage guy for a year. I suppose I could go do something about that, but whatever. Then last summer my GP decided to take a new job (in Nanaimo), so I'm still breaking in a new GP. And now it turns out I'm losing my yoga teacher. She's taking a new job and can't fit my gym's yoga classes into her new schedule, so there goes that. They're looking for a new instructor, but I'm not sanguine. So I guess I'll spend part of the summer looking at 'alternatives'. I mean, I'm all for people getting on with their lives and careers and so on, but this is about me. Change sux, and that's all there is to it.

If I were good at change, I'd have moved out of my apartment and into someplace new a long time ago. I'd have found a way to recycle the old TV and computer that are still sitting in my closet waiting for me to do something with them. I'd have invested in new pots and pans, like I really, really need to do. And I'd've long ago found a new massage guy.

Goals for the summer: Find an 'alternative' for yoga. Get the apartment clean enough that I could move out easily if I had to, including getting rid of the old computer and TV. And maybe find a new massage guy.