two windows

wow. it's been a while.

life since i last wrote is pretty much equivalent. still in grad school, though now a year closer to getting that Ph.D. and very much more looking forward to it. still in the same apartment.

here is the view from my dining room table, where i sit and check my email before going into the lab. the email checking has been somewhat prolonged today, mainly because it is so nice and quiet and serene looking out at the rusty golden leaves. the coffee here doesn't hurt either.

miss you all and think of you often.

service of magnets

i'm sitting working on my laptop in the kitchen, and i realized that when 3 grad students share an apartment, there is a shift in priorities of what to display on the refrigerator door. to wit:

- print out from farmer's market with recipes using sweet potatoes
- clipped column from the Globe with a response letter from roommate's boyfriend
- discount card from Canadian Tire
- business card from neighbourhood coffee place
- list of cooking times for grains and legumes
- postcard from Guinness brewery
- handwoven doll magnet from Guatemala
- poem written during recent game of Cranium
- publicity magnets from 2 scientific societies
- whiteboard with list of communal groceries needed
- pictures of 1 roommate's brain scanned by other roommate for pilot study

studs

discovered a generous online archive of studs terkel today:

Conversations with America

i think i now understand what it means to be interviewed.

history ?

for just this one day, i wish i could be american.

please, america, don't be stupid.

endurance babysitting

this weekend i got an email from my supervisor asking me if i could spend tonight at her house, hanging out with her two daughters while she and her husband went to a show. i'm all about babysitting. i can tell stories about princesses and oversized vegetables. i can feed 1-year old twins lunch while keeping a 4-year old entertained with a pipe cleaner. since i am not yet a mom, and don't plan on being one for some time yet, babysitting reminds me of the lengths that any person or creature would go to in order to make their offspring smile, giggle, be warm, be safe, and fall asleep soundly.

that is: the lengths which include standing, holding, and rocking a 16-month old for about two hours. my arms are so tired that i can hardly type, and i can't begin to imagine how tired they would be if i was doing this every single day, but the fact is that in the moment, swaying that little curly-haired girl back and forth while lightly bouncing around the house on my tiptoes was keeping her happy and magically enabling her to fall asleep against my shoulder. and in the moment, that was all that really mattered.

unfortunately, 5-year old sister thought this was pretty boring. but that's a lesson of parenting i'm not prepared to tackle this evening.

écoute ceux-çi

in addition to david rakoff audiobooks, i've got some new tunes spinning. am totally pumped by these three albums at the moment.

1. the ting tings - we started nothing
2. yelle - pop up de luxe
3. amy winehouse - back to black

i admit that i was skeptical about amy winehouse until last night, since i'd only heard 'rehab' 5 bagillion times and was entirely sick of her, but have you listened to the whole album? freakin' amazin'! my labmate was blasting it in the car on the way home from the lab at a very early hour of the morning, and it changed my world.

my rakoff connection

when i find myself in the middle of a phase of much menial lab work, such as right now, i tend to also find myself in the middle of a phase of searching for new, brain-stimulating things to listen to while slicing brains, doing histology, tracing neurons, etc. so, last night i was poking around on iTunes looking for new podcasts, and came out with a very yummy david rakoff audiobook. suddenly brain slicing becomes not a torment, but hours of much-anticipated fun!

i should disclose that i feel a particular affinity for mr. rakoff because of his origins. it happens that his father, dr. vivian rakoff, is professor emeritus of psychiatry at u of t and was head of the clarke institute (former incarnation of the centre for addiction and mental health - camh) in toronto, which happens to be where i did my master's. because vivian rakoff was important around the camh, the lab where i worked for those years was NAMED after him. as in, The Vivian Rakoff Mood Disorders Laboratory. and, this one time, he happened to wander into our lab meeting, and i was like "you're THE vivian rakoff??" and did the celebrity jaw-drop thing.

needless to say, i think david rakoff is pretty cool by association. if you don't already listen to this american life, this is one of my favourites of his.