the godroach speaks or "up and moved to canada"

melbs is for gumtrees

2010-03-31T12:45:00.008-07:00

gumtrees make me happy!

near tuchfrau and the hardfarmer's place.

on the way to north melbourne train station.

beach near williamstown.

lemon-scented gums at melbourne uni.

'ten says it's not a eucalyptus, but it's in the eucalypt alliance. at melb uni.

merri creek path.

top of the driveway, the 'dale.

the 'dale.

lerderderg gorge.

tiny me, big tree!

lake jubilee, daylesford.

ibis-y things, lake jubilee.

driving out of daylesford.

grant's picnic ground, sherbrooke forest.

one strip of bark from those tall, tall trees.

near tine's place, north fitzroy.

wyndham, WA.

mirima national park, WA.

melbs is for coffee

2010-03-10T21:27:00.004-08:00

1. coffee makes me happy. w/ tine, black cat, brunnie st.

2. next to brunswick st books.

3. short macchiato in a laneway off a laneway, w/ the gauroxen.

4. tres melbourne chic. bar near hardware lane with chairs hanging off the ceiling.

5. university cafe, lygon st, early for meeting jt.

6. latte on the lawn with ten and VNG, belgrave.

7. writing postcards in an art gallery in an alleyway, last flat white before darwin.

8. vegie bra.

merry xmas, y'all

2009-12-24T17:41:00.002-08:00

the baby enjoys the hat i knitted

we're all in the mirror stage around here

2009-12-10T10:28:00.002-08:00

blue huckleberry pie

2009-09-10T19:20:00.003-07:00

we had a statutory holiday the other day (BC day? something along those lines), so friends and i decided to do the very vancouver thing and hike a mountain. in the rain, as it happened, which is even more vancouver. we did this trail:

Mount Seymour: Length, 4 km. Suggested hiking time, 2.5 hours. Elevation change, 450 metres. This busy trail starts near the north end of the top parking lot, traversing Brockton Point and First and Second Pump Peaks. From the summit there is a panoramic view of Vancouver, the lower mainland and, on a clear day, the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island. This hike is rated moderate to difficult.

the fog cleared just as we got to the top, and we got a quick view out over the north shore before the clouds rolled back in.

here's me at the top, wearing gaiters:

we ate delicious homemade hummus and bread at the top, fending off a huge raven. on the way back down we picked blue huckleberries (save some for the bears!),

then when we got home we made huckleberry and peach pie:

delicious!

an atheist bikes alone

2009-09-08T16:25:00.004-07:00

i went on my first self-supported biking tour a month or so ago. loaded up my bike with cassandra's tent, camping mat and stove, stuffed mr fix-it's panniers with clothes and food, strapped my sleeping bag on the top and headed off to the island.

just me and the open road for 90k . . .

actually, just me and a bunch of jesus botherers, who were doing a "bikes for bibles" fundraising ride - we tag teamed up and down highway 19A for six hours. they were very friendly, and i was very proud of keeping pace with them, loaded up as i was.

having biked up the big island i hopped on the little ferry to denman island and biked across to a little ocean-side campground and set up my little camp. i've never camped by myself before. i liked it. i didn't talk to another human for three days.

this was the view over the top of my morning coffee.

and this was my half-arsed anti-bear measure. fortunately the camp ranger told me there's no bears on denman, and there was a cougar, but nobody's heard anything about it since march, so not to worry.

i spent my middle day doing a slow ride round denman, investigating the local craft store, bookshop and cafe, and eating lunch on the beach. it was all very zen.

the next day i up and broke camp, caught the little ferry back to vancouver island and biked all the long way back to nanaimo to catch the big ferry. it's a beautiful ride most of the way. a little too much highway, but a lot of empty forest and gentle rolling hills.

next trip i'm using my lovely new leather saddle instead of that "comfort gel" monstrosity.

farewell to summer

2009-09-04T13:18:00.003-07:00

uni goes back next week. it's a bit of a mindfuck. today is the first day in a long time that i've spent some serious time at the desk, working on the first of four papers i should have written over the last few months and kind of . . . didn't.

it's weird to be turning inwards again, sitting quietly, reading, writing, thinking. my shoulder muscles are engaging in strange ways to fit my hands on the keyboard.

i'm trying to decide if i should stay on at the bike store a couple of days a week over winter, and imagining switching between the self-directed, gradual world of academia and the very physical and social world of the shop.

we're also preparing for fall: filling the freezer with frozen fruit, canning salsa, repairing and buying warm clothes, replacing the full-spectrum light bulbs against SAD.

it's a lot of transitions to think about for a blue sky day.

beautiful delicate florets of tasty

2009-07-19T18:02:00.002-07:00

look what we made! it is a cauliflower. so delicious we ate about half raw before we could get it on the barbie.

i have work and knitting and gardening and not enough sleep. it is excellent except i should do more phd reading. poo to you, foucault!

island hopping

2009-07-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

another flying trip to the island, this time to victoria to check out the treasures exhibition at the musuem. i took my bike and did the 30k from the ferry terminal down to the city of victoria. it was a beautiful ride, very flat and well signposted, through bush, farmland, suburb and seascape. the sun was shining, there were bald eagles circling lazily in the blue sky, and cute deer eating other people's gardens:

the exhibit was pretty good. they'd got a bunch of stuff from the british museum, and it was arranged chronologically and by continent. there was an egyptian mummy and some roman sculptures, and neat cuneiform tablets. the oceania section was very small, and didn't have any papua new guinean artifacts from my childhood. boo!

i enjoyed remembering the history i've learnt, and thinking about my trip to italy. i'd forgotten what bastards the british museum are about returning aboriginal bodies and so forth, though, and the colonial politics of the exhibition were disturbing. all civilisations were gradually working towards western culture?

you can find out more about the exhibition here: http://www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Treasures/

i also checked out more of the permanent exhibits. the indigenous totem poles were unexpectedly confronting. they're so big and intimidating? threatening? something like that. beautiful, as well, but in an uneasy way. i suppose that's what they were intended to do - draw you in, but point out how small you are. welcome to my village!

and with some humans, for scale:

there's also a sweet fossil exhibit. this mastodon tooth was found on vancouver island. can you imagine an animal this big stomping round here? (um, the tooth was about a foot long.)

it was the first time i'd spent canada day in the province's capital. there were a bazillion tourists everywhere, mostly loud americans wearing maple leaf tattoos on their cheeks, complaining about not being able to use US money in cafes.

to celebrate canada day i experienced the parliament buildings (vis. lay under a tree and read):

and got to know some of the locals:

(cougar)

(grizzly bear hiding up the back)

actually, i realised that i'd bought clothes from local designers and books by local authors, and was eating some denman island chocolate, not so much from patriotic reasons, but ecological and ethical. but still!

it was a very pleasant few days pottering around, enjoying the sunshine and not doing much. i visited my favourite gumtree, sat underneath it and read.

i forgot how messy gumtrees are! also that smell. oh, i miss eucalyptus forests.

then i biked back up to the ferry and began the long trip home.

(i am my father's daughter . . . )

a day in the life 2

2009-06-28T23:49:00.001-07:00

alarm clock! oh noes!

i've got into the habit of taking my coffee into the garden in the mornings; pottering round the tomato plants eases the pain of waking up.

sometimes i get too distracted, though. this morning i had to book it to work. here's my "riding fast" face:

here's part of my commute (not that i stopped to take photos when i was running late):

it was a kind of cold and rainy day, strange after a few weeks of lovely vancouver summer sunshine.

i got to work not too too late.

our first job of every day is too hang all the display bikes out front and lock them up. we have to do this while beating off the customers, who don't appreciate that we physically can't fit them in the shop til all the outside bikes are out!

after that it was life as usual.

cos it was a bit cold and wet the shop was pretty quiet. i spent some time in the bat cave, restocking the tubes and rearranging the locks.

brake pads confuse the hell out of me!

i also spent some time hanging out back with the mechanics, because they are cool.

the tools one needs to assemble this bike.

(a mallet isn't one of them)

i spent my lunch break right there, under that tree.

that's leftover pizza from my dinner party the night before. it was the first time i'd tried cornflour in the dough. an excellent choice.

i'm reading a book by jane rule, who was this local lesbian activist type who academics keep mentioning. the novel isn't doing it for me so much, i have to admit, but i'm ploughing on.

i also contemplated buying new boots. do i look unprofessional? or kind of DIY-biker-hard-core?

business stepped up a bit in the afternoon, selling bikes and helmets and so forth. working with customers on these things is an oddly intimate experience. i spend a lot of time staring at people's earlobes, and the sides of their knees.

i also spend a lot of time removing pedals and turning handlebars, so we can file the bikes without mashing them up. i'm a dab hand with a pedal wrench and tri-al.

these run bikes are a real hit with the under-4 set. they're tiny bikes without pedals, the idea being that the kid learns balance on them and then can go straight to pedalling a bigger bike without training wheels.

it was about this time that we heard the news about wacko jacko, and cranked the stereo in sympathy.

i ducked out to get a cup of coffee in the afternoon. it was sweet to get a break from being nice to people. on the whole, our customers are fabulous hippie, punk, DIY, queer, friendly types, and the staff likewise, but a girl needs some alone time sometimes.

there i am, back hard at work.

at the end of the day we pull all the bikes and stack them inside again. it's how i get my biceps, baby.

i spent some time hanging round w a mechanic friend after we closed the shop. we discussed our unicycling experience. i wasn't so good at stilt-walking at circus, but i can ride a mini-bike okay. the mechanic learnt when he was a kid, but has been too scared to try as an adult.

then i biked over to kate reid's album launch. she's another local dyke-y type who writes very entertaining songs. she sung "co-op gurlz", my favourite song of her's, and a bunch of stuff from her new album. (kate, incidentally, tried to buy my shop shirt off my back when i was working last summer. dyke-chic?)

it was a sweet gig, but i was pretty wiped by the end. long day on my feet!

safety first when biking home after dark, especially after beer!

when i got home mr fix-it and i knitted and watched the X-files.

we saw an entertaining episode with mulder and scully running around in lighthouse park (where we biked to last summer) claiming to be hunting weird alien bugs in washington DC.

then a little reading,

then hand-cream and arnica balm (see above re. biceps), then sleep.

aunty beryll says goodnight!

we'll have lots to eat this winter

2009-06-24T18:08:00.008-07:00

grow your own

spring onions in beer bottles and bubble tea cups (the beer is le fin du monde!)

salad greens, to make into salad:

can your own

eleanor and i biked thirty k out to ladner and picked strawberries for a couple of hours, loading them all up in yoghurt containers in our panniers for the trip back.

we froze half of them, and canned the other half. now we have strawberries for winter!

eleanor also cracked it one day and announcing she was quitting all her activist positions and staying home and making all our bread, cheese and yoghurt. so we joined a cow co-op (we're still on the waiting list - i'll tell you more when the milk appears) and ordered a bit of flour and grains:

her bread is delicious:

we also made lemon tart one day:

(and here's some cake from a 60th bday cass and i went to last week, which i neither grew nor made, but am very fond of anyways:

)

not quite straight

2009-06-21T21:34:00.003-07:00

i have curly hair! or bits of curly hair - my random long bits are sort of turning into ringlets.

my hairdresser (of fabulousness) suggested this divergence from my always-dead-straight hair might be due to vancouver's damp climate.

reckon i should grow my hair out over winter and see what it looks like?

outdoor plants

2009-06-15T21:12:00.000-07:00

the outside garden is still a source of joy.

the east bed has strawberries along the edge, massive amounts of salad greens up the back there, spring onions and garlic off to the left, various herbs, and root veggies in the middle-ish. it also has the poor sad tomato plants, which have repaid all my careful nurturing with lack-lustre growth:

(the wire is to stop the neighbourhood cats from pooing in the garden - they dig up plants when they scratch.)

the western bed has upstairs-neighbour-S's flowers, and the cauliflowers.

there's also broccoli, nasturtiums, the peas climbing up the bed-frame against the fence, corn that a random woman across the alley gave us, capsicums (grown from dinner!), cucumbers, potatoes, swiss chard and about a million zombie-squash plants which came out of the compost.

the five of us (three in my household, two upstairs) started out planning the beds so carefully, with tall plants up the back, and some companion planting rules in play (tomatoes and basil! broccoli and thyme!). then we got into it, and now there's random stuff everywhere. we also discovered that you can dig random holes in the gravel and just shove stuff in. look! artichokes!

there's also a rhubarb plant up the back, near the compost bin.

here's roomie-M's raspberry patch. we found out that garlic and raspberries grow well together, so we put some garlic cloves in there too, and they're doing fine. (also a zombie-squash.)

we also planted some lemon seeds one time when we were making lemon and poppyseed cake. it took them about three months to germinate, but here they are!

i found out that lemon trees are considered exotic here, like something that you saw one time when you were a kid on holiday in california.

indoor plants

2009-06-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

i think i've mentioned before how i love the greening of this household of mine. actually, i'm pretty in love with my household in general. we spend a lot of time eating together, and knitting, and watching telly (or webstreamed things, cos we don't have a teev). we just started on the Xfiles from the very beginning. scary as fuck.

anyways. greening. here's the living-room window, with the shelf of plants up top, the monstera glowing green in the middle, the "mother of thousands" hanging plant, and a huge rubber tree on the left that our neighbours rescued from an alleyway:

the african violets have done that spontaneous-beautiful thing they do every summer (the closest flowers are white and purple):

i've also learnt how to make african babies. you shove a leaf in the ground, cut it down a bit, and water it for a couple of months.

my desktop now carries a jade plant, an australian mint bush, two tiny gumtrees, a big pot of basil, a tiny sprawling ivy plant and a huge seeding tray with squash and brussell sprouts in. i haven't been doing much studying.

more knitting. . . oh, and a cute baby!

2009-06-09T21:41:00.002-07:00

see that hat? isn't the tomato hat adorable? i made it!

haha! well, i did make the hat, but our friend 'ten made the baby, and that is way more impressive. isn't she cute? with big blue eyes? and a big grin? oh, so cute!

she makes my knitting look excellent.

love to 'ten and baby and baby's daddy.

bicycles!

2009-05-27T16:59:00.003-07:00

i have my old job at the bike store back.
my plan for the summer is to get ripped.
(and have many bike toys.)

off to a good start with both the biceps and the knog frogs (as seen above). i think they look like octopuses having sex.

cass is also biking this summer - pictured here setting up her spiffy bike computer among a few of my household's many sets of wheels (six bikes in one corridor!)

island hopping

2009-05-24T18:14:00.009-07:00

cass and i had an ace camping trip to hornby island last weekend. hornby is one of the little islands between vancouver island and the mainland, north a bit of vancouver. it took us about seven hours to get there, involving three buses, three ferries and a half hour walk through forest, but it was a beautiful journey.

the island is very small and mostly forest. it has a beautiful rocky coastline and lots of garry oaks, arbutus trees and red cedars. there's also masses and masses of bald eagles (which we had planned to see - one must always set a wildlife goal for these sorts of trips). we met a local who was all "pfft, eagles!" but we couldn't be that cool.

cass spotted this one, squawking and flapping. we watched it for ages, til it flew off the edge of the cliff and over the sea:

and here's one in its huge messy nest:

and here, if you go to this website, you can watch an eaglet and its parents in real time. eagle cam! on hornby island!

the eagles are so beautiful. we saw two sitting on rocks on the shore line, just watching for fish. it's funny, when they catch your eyes you automatically feel kind of guilty, like they're going to tell you off, or fly down and carry you away. they have presence, that's what.

here's two pairs, circling quietly over the trees:

on one day we explored the urban parts of hornby. here's the main drag:

that's a sweet little bookshop on the left, and some nice hippy clothes on the right. there was also decent coffee and nice pottery, and a co-op.

many of the gulf islands are also famous for their recycling depots and attached free stores. hornby island's is very well organised, and, on the day we were there, very well attended.

the islands tend to be populated by hippies, and the small community combined with a pack-it-in, pack-it-out policy means that they're very aware of consumption and waste. thus, recycling! water is also an issue, and it was difficult to find clean drinking water to fill our bottles. some places you could pay at a coin-operated tap.

the toilet at the depot was really cool:

we walked the long way back along the beach (cass says she's not that much shorter than me, but was leaning against the rock):

we camped good. cass is a gearhead nowadays, so we had lots of interesting equipment, including this temperamental but tasty coffee maker:

and we had a fire and marshmallows:

on another day we did a day trip to denman island, the next island along. we had lunch next to a stand of old growth forest, and cass did revolting things to a banana and some nice dark chocolate.

it was very quiet and still, and there was a blue heron fishing:

(this is looking east, you can see the mainland in the distance.)

on the way back from denman island we climbed a mountain to check out a lookout on hornby island. see, here, if you look beyond my bad bad hair, we're looking west. the dark green lump behind is denman island, and the misty mountainous lumps behind that are part of the mainland of vancouver island.

this is looking south. there's the tip of denman island and the little island south of it, with the lighthouse on. (if you look very closely among the trees on the left you can see a little cass!)

it was super windy up there:

we did a lot of walking (downside of a very small island is no public transit!) and a lot of eating, and, oh, how could i forget?? we saw these luridly coloured starfish everywhere! and banana slugs! the starfish are carnivorous! crunch!

then we caught the ferry home again. this is pulling into horseshoe bay, on the mainland again. here we're looking north, up the sunshine coast.

as always, it was a bit of a hassle being back in the city, but i have my lovely map to look at now, and new trips to plan.

and, um, a new font. huh.

what i'm reading

2009-05-21T21:41:00.004-07:00

i've thoughtfully grouped the books into comfort reading, research and personal projects, with the images+words texts behind.

comfort reading is that book that everyone knows, plus tamora pierce's new novel bloodhound, which i bought yesterday and finished today. it was very good comfort reading. one knows that the goodies will win, magic has its price and women can take anyone out in a physical fight if they train hard enough.

the right hand stack includes a book about the haida gwaii (islands in north BC, on the way to alaska), the good ol' lonely planet guide to canada, a book about cycling around the maritime provinces (far east canada, PEI and nova scotia and so forth), anne mustoe's rather annoying books about cycling around the world (picked it up at a garage sale for a dollar) and cycling around british columbia. i leave you to draw your own conclusions.

my research stack is 50/50 foucault and children's literature criticism. i'm doing a directed reading with my new supervisor this semester, rather than taking a course. i get to read stacks and stacks of kidlitcrit! the foucault is a personal summer project. i've decided that i've spent enough time name-dropping the man and not enough time reading his actual texts. postmodern me up one time!

mattland is an unusual picturebook in that it is drawn in the first person: we see what matt does from his perspective, and never see his face, only his hands and feet from above, and one time a muddled reflection in a puddle. it's an interesting counterpoint to perry nodelman's discussion about how in picturebooks one often reads the words in the first person ("i jumped so high!) and looks at the pictures in third person (illustration of a girl jumping) and how weird that is.

islands in the salish sea: a community atlas is a beautiful book i picked up on our weekend trip to the island. it's a collection of the most lovely hand drawn community maps of different little islands between the mainland of BC and vancouver island. the maps have an emphasis on indigenous heritage and ecological issues, and make me both want to explore all of the islands and never visit any of them again because of my environmental footprint. those urges are also about 50/50.

what are you reading?

get your vote on

2009-05-14T09:52:00.002-07:00

BC had a provincial election the other night. it was interesting in a depressing kind of way.

we had a "get your vote on" critical mass, which i attended as the voting fairy:

despite all our efforts, there was only a 41% voter turnout, which is shockingly low, i think.

chicory's human, my roommate (who i am going to christian Mr. Fix-It), and i went to a pub on the drive to watch the election results come in. we bullied the bartender into switching one of the tellies over from the hockey (luckily the canucks just got booted out of the finals, or there would have been a riot) and steadily sank lower and lower on our barstools as the right wing Liberal party got more and more seats.

there was also a vote on the table about bringing in a preferential voting system instead of keeping the "first past the post" system BC currently has, and that was soundly defeated as well. the greens got 8% of the votes this time and not one seat.

i like the fact that none of this was my fault, though. it's relaxing. we were the only three people in the bar interested in the election. chicory's human tried to engage the waitress in discussion on the topic. "i'm an american!" she says. "so am i! *she's* australian! he's the only one here who can actually vote!" chicory's human says, pointing at mr. fix-it. "i tried," he replies.

more bloody knitting

2009-05-11T12:56:00.003-07:00

look! i made socks!

and see how well my garden is growing! strawberry flowers!

hahahaha!

it was cass' bday on the weekend (happy birthday, cassandra!). my household had drinkies and a big cooked breakfast and yesterday we all went on a big ride to steveston. it was about 40k there and back, beautiful sunny day. here we all are spread out along the richmond dyke:

now i'm still pottering on with job hunting, reading and departmental politics. it's quite fun in a gentle way.

it's raining again.

fan-squeeing is not okay

2009-05-07T10:44:00.005-07:00

ah, nanaimo, land of nanaimo bars. nanaimo bars are. . . no, actually. i'm not going to tell you. there's a recipe here. you must discover the artery-clogging goodness for yourself.

i had another conference last weekend. this was a children's literature conference, and i was talking about a local book banning incident, which took six years of court cases to end up with Asha's Mums still not allowed in the kindergarten. you can find some information about it on wiki. wait for my article to be published to read the rest!

the conference was pretty sweet. my talk went well, and i learnt some interesting things from other people's presentations. but, BUT, i got to hang out with one of kidlitcrit idols! and i went to dinner with both guest speakers! and *didn't* say "i've read all your books! eeeee!" which was very restrained compared to other people at the conference who brought their books to sign. anyways. yes. exciting.

nanaimo itself is pretty dull. the locals call it "land of the box store". it's kind of like bacchus marsh or something, except situated on a stunning BC coastline, with little islands dotted all around, and a distant view of the snow-capped mountains on the mainland.

it's also cherry-blossom-time again:

i took an extra day after the conference and went for a bike ride round gabriola, island of nature and back to the land style hippies.

it was a really nice bike ride. gentle rolling hills, huge trees, fresh salty air. it only took two hours, and i took it slow. everytime i stopped i saw something beautiful. i saw deers and fawns, sheep and lambs, great fluffy alpacas, bald eagles, lots of northern goshawks (beautiful big birds of prey with speckled wings), several great blue herons flapping up from dams, their long legs dangling behind them, a northern flicker (a kind of woodpecker) and american robins everywhere.

everyone's all friendly on the islands (even nanimo, which is on vancouver island). cars shared the road with me, and i had lots of rather intimate chats with people on the ferries and in coffee shops and on street corners.

on the ferry back from gabriola i saw three white sided dolphins leaping out of the water, very close. it was stunning.

wholesome pursuits

2009-04-30T20:12:00.004-07:00

my new household has a communal garden out back, with our friends who live in the apartment upstairs (who need names. hmm. . .) we had two work parties with lots of friends to dig up two big beds, and dig in compost we trucked out from the city dump in ladner (buzzards circling above the rubbish). lots of worms!

now the beds have teeny tiny seedlings sprouting all over, from the seeds eleanor and i put in weeks ago. it's been lovely and warm, so we're tag teaming daily watering. expect more photos as things get bigger and greener.

the garden is one of my main pleasures at the moment. it's so simple and rewarding.

i also have the usual things in pots, including 18 tiny tomato plants on my desk and this bag of strawberries in the planter grot and ddd sent me for christmas:

they've got much bigger since i took this photo, as has the rhubarb:

also in the wholesome activity vein is the dog agility trails i've been attending with pantimalion, and her dog, lyra. here's lyra whizzing through one of the tunnels:

lyra has speed but no focus, but the two of them have a grand time running round the agility track. i enjoy watching them and meeting all the other lovely dogs that attend these things, including a huge beardie with a topknot.

lyra in slow-mo, being loved on by cassandra:

now i'm off to the island for the weekend. i'm going to take my bike and work on getting my calf muscles back.

and eat salad and go to bed early and knit socks for my grandmother and read _pilgrim's progress_ and wash behind my ears and

pamplemouse oui oui?

2009-04-27T11:40:00.004-07:00

ah, montreal, land of bagels. i had a grad conference a month or so ago, and took a five hour flight out east.

it's a very european city, kind of like paris or amsterdam (being the last european cities i've visited), except chockers with canadians, which is kind of weird. most everybody speaks french, and usually english as well. i think i could live there, but i think i'd have to learn french first.

i stayed with some friends of friends, who turned out to be funky academic queers, so we drank a lot of wine, played with the dog and talked shop. they were great!

all the staircases are outside, all twisty and slippery and beautiful. you can still see snow on the ground, but it wasn't too too cold when i was there.

i spent two days wandering the city, drinking very good coffee and buying nice clothes, and two days at the conference, listening to lots of english nerds talk about dracula and 18th century novels and victorian prostitution laws and film adaptions and science fiction novels. i'd forgotten how historical english lit is, and also how much of it i'm familiar with. it was very relaxing to be in that environment.

bike lane separated from traffic! so simple! so safe! there was also very sweet public sculpture, which made me happy.

knitting is kool

2009-01-31T14:46:00.002-08:00

why won't the paparazzi leave me alone???

look - fishy tail!

i think the red mitts were a success. . .

ah, so cold and damp

2009-01-29T10:00:00.003-08:00

so, i gather it's been a wee bit warm in australia, a bit toasty, a bit sweaty. it's five degrees and raining here. . . *stretches*

it even snowed earlier in the week:

i am toasty and stylish in my hat, mitts and scarf by jt!

i'm into week four of "spring" semester. my classes are okay. one is a hard core theory class where we talk about hermeneutics, mostly. i'm enjoying that a lot. the other is about visual culture studies, which is kind of driving me batty, but still has potential. last week i was so frustrated i nearly knitted a whole mitten!

(one pair for cass, one pair for me.)

i finally got off my bum and started doing PD stuff. i got two papers accepted for conferences! i'm giving two presentations at uni next week! i got a comic published! i'm knitting a hat shaped like a fish!

that's really it for my news. i spend a lot of time making To Do lists and muttering "knit three, knit two together." oh, and six feet under. did i tell you i discovered six feet under? droooool . . .

lots of v.g. maillove recently, including these snazzy valve-caps from DDD, which totally match the colour scheme of my bike:

soon the streets will be ice-free enough to ride, soon, my pretties. . .

australian christmas

2009-01-22T00:01:00.002-08:00

nanny and nyx

campsite

visitor to campsite! (i have shown this photo to some canadian friends - they think it is fascinating and exotic)

cousin and puppy

photos from grot (or jt via grot?). thankyou!

[if anyone is uncomfortable with an image being on the net let me know and i will take it down.]

solstice, christmas, snow

2009-01-20T10:09:00.000-08:00

finally got round to putting up some of my many speccy christmas photos - we had a white christmas! it was very beautiful and very cold and very difficult to get around (iced up sidewalks + cars bogged + buses cancelled/delayed).

oh, just before christmas was winter solstice. i went to a lantern festival at the local community centre. they had a flaming torch in the snow, and we stood around it singing winter songs, with the falling snow making our song sheets all soggy.

there was also a labyrinth made from candle-lamps, which one walked through very slowly, all the way in and all the way out. it was incredibly beautiful, and the whole night made me feel good about the world and the winter.

cass and i went to an orphan christmas at winifred's place, which was fun. lots of food, lots of bubbly, lots of presents. cass got a harmonica in the chris cringle. sweeeet.

the best kind of christmas present. . .

also there was a cute gus dog!

the view from the bus stop the next morning, mountains in the distance.

and cass with her stash!

we spent christmas day hanging out with some of cass' mates. some of the pretty things we saw on the walk there:

we spent boxing day doing *nothing*, which was perfect! it was snowing heavily and i was forced to valiantly snowshoe down to the shops:

the end!

hiking is nice

2009-01-18T17:15:00.002-08:00

pantalaimon and i went hiking near deep cove today. the mainland has been deep in fog for the last three days, but up high on the mountains it was sunny, with glorious views:

if you look closely you can see hunks of frozen water in the bay.

not much else news. i have some new picturebooks and i knitted a pair of mittens. they are RED.

this is what i do with my time now

2009-01-14T11:01:00.002-08:00

the pink ones are for nanny (ssssssh!) and the stripey ones are for me, as they are my first effort and a little lumpy as a consequence. knitting socks is very satisfying. i enjoy turning the heel.

so uni started again. i'm tired! i'm also sick again (booooooooring), which isn't helping the tired. my classes seem okay so far, and it's very nice to see my uni friends again. my little posse went out for brunch on the weekend, and bitched. it was sweet. i have a gilbert and sullivan play and a jug band concert to attend now (we're a talented bunch).

merry (white) christmas, y'all!

2008-12-27T10:25:00.000-08:00

how to

2008-12-22T12:16:00.003-08:00

what does one wear when the temperature is 10 below?

stockings
wool socks
wool pants
waterproof boots with good tread
wool singlet
cotton singlet
bamboo longsleeve
big down jacket
thermal-lined hat with earflaps
scarf
mitts

it is also vital to keep one's spirits up!

cold! cold! oh my ears and nose!

2008-12-20T10:08:00.003-08:00

a shot in my new neighbourhood, when the snow was still fresh everywhere.

there's still little birds in the trees - i wonder what they eat?

and a view down an alley in my 'hood. this is looking west, you can see downtown in the distance.

today is a forecast top of minus 6, and there's a big snow storm coming. i'm rugging up good and loving on my big down jacket!

growing things is fun

2008-12-18T14:32:00.000-08:00

nature just likes to keep us on our toes, you know?

eleanor and i are on a mission to green up the new house. it's kind of challenge cos we don't get a huge amount of natural light, so we're being very inventive.

this is my attempt to grow things from cuttings - ivy bits stolen from front fences, and african violet leaves planted in coffee cups and humidifying in a bread bag. apparently you can make a whole african violet from a leaf!

i'm particularly proud of this window shelf arrangment. eleanor conceived it, other roommate M built it, and i arranged and cared for the plants. i've had to bring in all the vegies growing in pots on the back veranda, because the soil literally freezes solid overnight. so that's rainbow chard on the coffee table (silverbeet is the closest australian equivalent), carrots to the left of the table and tiny baby corianders in the blue pot on the far left of the shelf. we also bought a beautiful chain of hearts (or rosary plant?) to hang. v.g.

2008-12-17T11:58:00.003-08:00

there's seagulls flying around in the falling snow out there.

this is a strange place to live.

snow!

2008-12-16T14:52:00.003-08:00

it's cold! it's puffy coat cold! it is, actually, freezing cold - the temperature is not expected to go above zero for another week or more. it snowed lots a few days ago, and there's 5cm predicted for tonight. here's hoping for a white christmas!

went for a nice walk in the suburbia north of here with eleanor and winifred yesterday, and checked out the stunning views of the snow-covered mountains on the north shore.

there's shipping yards and a rail-line between the 'burbs and the water, so you can't get down to the shore except in a few places.

and this would be a very pretty photo if my long distance focus was better - see the white mountain framed in the far distance?

i'd forgotten, since february, how cold it is when it's cold. oh my nose and fingers! there's also the hazards of walking on slippery pavements - the snow melts in the sun then refreezes as ice. but it is pretty, and there's nothing like coming inside and making a nice cup of coffee after a walk in the cold. i'm knitting my first beanie and watching dvds from the library. bliss!

scarf! (hair!)

2008-12-15T13:38:00.003-08:00

thankyou for my lovely scarf, JT! it is beautiful! i love the 3Dness of that stitch!

scarves v. necessary, as winter has suddenly happened, wham! today will be a top of minus 3.

also, new hair. have i mentioned how much i adore my hairdresser? he was all "how 'bout we put a random short bit up near yr ear? and then a random long bit over here?"

when will it end??? oh. it has.

2008-12-11T17:21:00.000-08:00

sorry about another long silence on this blog. i got distracted by writing all my end of semester assignments in two weeks. i just handed in the last one, thus marking the end of a craptastic semester, to borrow the phrase of a friend.

bring on next year! it has to be better!

achievements of this semester are making two good friends (my hiking friend, who nimmersatt and i have christened pantalaimon, and a jewish interpretative dancer, who i'm calling athena, unless anyone has a better greek myth name to suggest), meeting a bunch of children's librarians (they are fun! they taught me puppet hand!) and holding back from smiting Really Annoying Dude with a big shiny sword even though everyone would be happier for it.

oh, and while we're talking pseudonyms and internet safety - crackbook totally cut me off for having a fake name! the fascist overlords have spoken! the really creepy thing about this situation is that all my information (photos, messages, invitations, hatching eggs, shite gifts for academics, etc. etc.) still exists and the company will keep it *forever* but i am forbidden to access it, cos having a false name is "against the facebook spirit". fascists.

and while we're talking children's librarians: the latest in my "grad student for hire" adventures is crashing parent and infant groups and making new mothers fill in surveys about how often they read to their babies and use the libraries. i'm pushing infant literacy! today i spent two and a half hours in a breast feeding drop-in group, during the slow times chatting with the 70-something year old volunteers about their immigrant experience (one was a kiwi!). being marginally employed definitely has its perks.

it is supposed to snow this weekend! so far it has been cold and wet, but not in a puffy-coat kind of way, more in a "where's my toque?" kind of way. now - snow! top of -2!

okay, and waaaay too many exclamation marks in this post.

what else?

the government in ottawa has been, well, it's very complicated. the government has become very complicated, is the short version. i'll tell the long version soon, cos it's fascinating. i went to a pro-coalition rally and heard people sing "oh canada" for the first time. it was kinda weird.

i went to a bazillion craft fairs and got this cool "i dig gardens" t-shirt, and some elbow length wool gloves, which i will no doubt show you at some point.

we had our end-of-semester non-denominational department party last night, which was actually pretty cool. i giggled a lot and stuck christmas ornaments in my hair. as you do.

cass took me to her work christmas party, which was pretty spesh - held in a big ballroom downtown, with lots of incredibly buff people in suits and formal gowns. there was a band and free grub and late late dancing. So Much Fun.

we also went to a late night movie downtown a different night and had a hilarious but awful but really hilarious adventure getting home. it involves vomit and old ladies beating people with umbrellas. remind me to tell you some time . . .

happy birthday to grotapuppy!

2008-11-30T22:45:00.001-08:00

she followed a string from her bedside and there was nyx! what a surprise!

cass n me being adorable

2008-11-30T22:43:00.001-08:00

she drinks from a scientific beaker, i drink from a jar with a handle, it's all good.

in november it rains

2008-11-27T09:15:00.000-08:00

"It November it rains. Not that it doesn't rain at other times of the year, but there is something relentless, unforgiving and chilling about the rain in November."

- The Twelve Month Gardener: A West Coast Guide

the calender page from nikki mcclure is also appropriate for vancouver in november. the message "survive" helps me remember that winter will turn into spring eventually, if we just keep plugging through it.

actually it hasn't been pouring down in that relentless way i remember from past years - we've had quite a few sunny days recently, and cold crisp air in the top of 7 and 8 degrees style, which is easier to dress for and exist in than the soggy mid-teen temperatures.

regardless, i've had a series of exciting winterish respiratory illnesses, packing the Cold of Death, asthma and strep throat into the last month and a half. i'm pretty much better now, and only occasionally cough like someone who's been chain smoking for ten years. hoping to get back on my bike again - i haven't done a critical mass in my birthday tutu yet, and that's a problem!

end of semester is fast approaching, with final assignments and non-denominational holiday parties piling up. i've picked up some tutoring work, which is good for the budget and also good for the brain, and nicely distracting from my own work. maybe i will be able to afford a haircut. . . i saw my hairdresser at a coffeeshop the other day and showed him the collected volume of fray i was reading, and told him how inspired i always was by mel's hair and how i couldn't afford to go see him even though i really wanted to, and it was all just a bit embarrassing and would be better handled by going there and making serious friends with the scissors. . .

snow is what makes winter okay

2008-11-24T09:26:00.003-08:00

sunday was another unexpectedly sunny day, so new friend who doesn't have a nickname yet (so much responsibility! naming another human!) and her dog and i high-tailed it to the mountains again to play in the SNOW. snow!

we went walking here a month or more ago and the water in this little lake was just frozen in sheets by the edges, but this time it was frozen almost solid, and the dog, after much testing and barking, got all four paws on it.

the woods were very beautiful, the air crisp and cold; the hike made me feel a bit better about the world.

it was 4.30 or so by the time we left, so it was almost dark, and we got a beautiful view of the sunset over vancouver, and vancouver island in the distance. i took this photo from the top of a humungous pile of snow in the carpark - i'm in the king of the castle!

me new house

2008-11-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

the vid! the vid i promised sixteen squillion years ago!

i was thinking about refilming it, cos the sound is a bit crap, but then i thought it would take another begillion years to get that online, so let's stick with this one, eh?

lots of vid is taken up with me complaining about the rain, and how there's no heat in my bedroom, and that that cold was killing my baby gumtree. since i recorded this, well, it's still raining all the time, but i got the heat working, and the gum is looking more perky. huzzah!

the other comment that is obscure, i think, is in the beginning when i suggest that you can use the vid to make fun of my accent. other than that i think most of the commentary is discernible if you crank the speakers. it ends kind of sudden like cos i ran out of memory in my camera, so bye! nice talking to you! love you!

here's some photos too, to give you a 2D and 3D experience of my living arrangements. who says i'm not a conscientious blogger!

the state of the spare bedroom atm. the third roomie is moving in at the start of dec. in the meantime, his room is a grand place to store my lovely bike!

plants on the veranda - the empty looking pots have garlic cloves in them, and that green pot up the back has tiny baby lettuces!

the loungeroom, with our strange collection of furniture - our "give us your shit" house warming was a very successful furniture drive!

view into the kitchen, with the "why bike?" poster.

adorable little gumtree, looking a bit the worse for wear (from the cold), but still struggling on. (matchbox for scale).

my room, in all its disorganised splendor. how good is my new desk???

everyone loves puppies

2008-11-21T10:41:00.001-08:00

meet gus, winifred's new baby!

everyone loves puppies! OR more photos from home

2008-11-19T09:20:00.000-08:00

the adorable bundles of wriggle grot and bbb have been visiting - they will end up with one of the two pups below:

bbb looking suspiciously like a confirmed dog person!

grot with an amazing garlic harvest.

another photo from the glenelg trip.

and jt all frocked up for her school reunion! i love the scarf.

random photos

2008-11-15T16:49:00.005-08:00

i figure if i wait til i can construct a coherent narrative for these photos i'll never ever post them, so i'll just give you a little blurb for each and you can make your own narrative. it's interactive, 'kay?

cass got a bike! it is a sweet norco mountain bike with front disc brakes and suspension.

here's me at halloween, before my armour got all soggy at critical mass.

i am a widow's son outlawed and must be obeyed!

my final harvest at my old house. the tomatoes were starting to rot on the vines so i picked most of the green ones and have been slowly windowsill ripening them over the last few weeks. the tiny carrots were delicious!

i've started doing a bit of drawing again. isn't this long notebook fabulous? i'm very pleased with this drawing of autumn leaves.

and a great example of an autumn leaf! this is a big leaf maple - hand for scale.

i've gone on a couple of nice hikes on the north shore recently. here's the river running through lynn canyon - near where we all went swimming in august. there's no way i'd hop in the water now!

bye!

plus bonus photos of cassandra and i at my housewarming

2008-11-07T11:06:00.002-08:00

cass has four hoods to protect her from the rain

i try to adopt a strange canadian object for my own headgear

photos from home II

2008-11-06T10:37:00.001-08:00

canoeing down the glenelg

grot surveys her domain

photos from home I

2008-11-06T10:34:00.001-08:00

father with rhubarb harvest (and dog)

grandmother with peacock feathers

knitting

2008-10-31T14:35:00.003-07:00

have embraced the hippie/yuppie reclaiming canning, gardening and craft movement. the wool is hand spun by a feminist collective in uruguay, and my needles are bamboo.

knitting is so soothing, though, and embodies a number of nice metaphors; knitting through mistakes, joining separate things into a coherent whole. i've taken to knitting through tutorials, and counting the stitches is meditative, allowing me to participate in discussion calmly instead of snapping at the um . . . difficult people in my theory class . . . yes. i also enjoy the feeling that i'm participating in a tradition of the women in my extended family. that would include you, grot and jt.

the green bit is wool from eleanor, and is what i knitted first. you can see where i ran out of wool and started knitting back in the other direction, unpulling the original as i went. it was about process, not product! the orange, blue, brown, purple one if the scarf i'm working on now. see the pattern i made up! i'm so in love with the wool. it feels beautiful.

i'm going to a stitch and bitch tomorrow with eleanor and winifred. winifred hates doing crafts, but says she is good at bitching. *snorts*

i hate moving

2008-10-27T00:39:00.001-07:00

things

2008-10-16T13:52:00.001-07:00

it's raining.

i'm learning to knit.

jt sent me a postcard.

nimmersatt brings joy to my dark mornings.

ooo, election day!

2008-10-14T11:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/

check it out, guys, v. exciting!

things fall in fall

2008-10-08T21:35:00.004-07:00

less gardening updates, also, as less exciting things are happening as the weather cools down. the speckled roman tomatoes, however, have ripened over the last couple of weeks, slowly, slowly, which is fun.

these ones have a habit of dropping off the vine while still green, or splitting, so i have a fine collection of fruits ripening on the windowsill:

from left to right is speckled romans, yellow pears, paul robeson (the only one i got!) and a punnet of chiapas wild.

the plants are dying, even as the last fruit ripens.

the cucumber plant is also dying, while still fattening one last cuke, but it doesn't look picturesque.

i have begun some winter planting. from left to right is onions, swiss chard, and carrots, with a backdrop of the old lettuce crop, now completely gone wild.

i have three different kinds of garlic cloves, ready to pop in pots. luckily i am a container gardener, as all my plants are ready and easy to move to my NEW APARTMENT. which move will happen, uh, late next week. . .

my phd is . . . boring???

2008-10-06T13:55:00.006-07:00

realised i haven't posted much about my phd since having that whinge about chomsky several weeks ago (how's it going, nimmersatt?). this is possibly because, since i handed in that stupid scholarship application, my phd isn't taking up much time, or much brain space. but, where i am:

i'm taking the one hard core theory class, which is a requirement of my degree. this class is frustrating. one of the reasons is that everyone in it comes from very different backgrounds, so we have little shared vocabulary or assumed knowledge. we spend a lot of time wavering from topic to topic and talking at cross purposes. the other problem is that the prof, though a very nice man and very well intentioned, isn't a strong leader, and we really need someone to pull us back on topic and make us define our terms.

last week i was presenting, so i executed a bloodless coup and took over for half an hour. it was very satisfactory. i made people brainstorm on the blackboard and kept making them talk about the article at hand, not whatever sidetrack they thought was interesting. i realised i much prefer being in front of a class than in it. i miss teaching. afterwards i was worried i was too bossy, but the people i asked said it was assertive, not bossy. a lot of my classmates find the class frustrating as well.

i have some reading for that, but the nature of the discussion means it's not necessary to read thoroughly. we also have to do lots of little reflections and presentations which take up prep time but don't achieve much (busy work!). the prof has given us a very generously defined final assessment, though, and i have an exciting idea for it, so things will look up.

my other class is a children's literature one through the library school. it's fun cos it's kidlit, and, oh, the fabulous books we see!, and it's interesting to see the world through the eyes of a librarian, but it's not theoretical at all. i mentioned doing a postcolonial reading of the secret garden and got confused looks. the class is just approaching the topic of children's literature a very different way than i do, and i don't find it intellectually engaging. there's almost no reading for this one. but, again, the final assessment should be challenging and fun, and i have an interesting presentation coming up with a lovely classmate.

and that's it. i wish i had taken on a third course. i'm trying to get more involved at uni, cos i seem to have lots of spare time. i have contacted the queer and women's departments in the student union - will keep you up to date with how it goes.

biking is fun

2008-10-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

yesterday i rode out to deer lake park. it was very beautiful.

a mediation on leadership in two parts, followed by a question

2008-10-02T22:33:00.004-07:00

1.
tonight i went to a friend's place and watched first the american vice-president debate, then the tail end of the canadian president debate. it was fascinating. i mean first, it was fascinating that eight 20 and 30-somethings would voluntarily hang out and watch such a thing, especially for a country that only two of us come from (one american-canadian dual citizen, one american applying frantically for canadian PR), but it was mostly fascinating looking at the rhetoric the americans were using. the massive emphasis on being middle class, and their intended audience and voting public being middle class, the ability of the opponents to agree - *phew* - on the fact that marriage should only be for one man and one woman (and palin's amazing comment that "some of my best friends are homophobic"), the complaints about foreigners not having america's best interests at heart and the mind-boggling arrogance and insularity of their patriotism. anyways. distracted.

the canadian debate had all five (six?) candidates sitting round a table talking to each other, mostly, mediated by a reporter, answering questions the viewing public had pre-recorded for them. they talked about how good medicare is and what a wise decision it was to stay out of iraq (i think). apparently they had a similar debate a few nights ago, but all in french, and harper's french is not too bad now.

i don't know, it doesn't do to glorify canadian politics, and lord knows there's bad stuff going on here, but compared to america it's such a haven.

2.

last weekend i played a game called "werewolves and villagers", which was sweet fun. kind of complicated to explain - there's an explanation here. i got lynched a couple of times, once at miriam's direction (rude!). anyway, part of the game involved choosing a mayor, and they never lived more than a round or two after rising to power. lynched or slaughtered by werewolf. it was very interesting.

so i was wondering how old k-rudd is doing. has he lived up to expectations? any slip-ups? not living up to election promises? tell aunty kant all, she can't get The Age here.

there's no way to go but upwards / thru murk into crystalline glow

2008-09-26T13:34:00.005-07:00

it's that time of year again. here i am wearing woolen hoodie (hand-me-down from eleanor), scarf (present from chicory's human from turkey), woolen arm warmers (crocheted by miriam) and rain jacket (hand-me-down from nimmersatt - it is perfect!). i've broken out the long socks and my woolen singlets. the leaves are all turning, which is beautiful, even though they signal coming darkness and coldness and dampness.

life is a bit rough at the moment. i am house hunting (boo-earns!), putting in a major scholarship application (drafting and re-drafting my proposal), keeping up with my usual coursework and still trying to make new friends and negotiate a new campus. still, the stupid application goes in on monday, eleanor and i are checking out an apartment tomorrow afternoon, and on sunday i'm going to a party called "dead werewolves play pingpong and swap trousers".

here's some pictures i've been meaning to post for ages. i found out that most garlic available commercially in vancouver is shipped from china. i think that's absurd and disturbing, so next farmers' market i invested in a beautiful garlic plait made from locally grown, hand-plaited garlic:

(one is mine, the other is miriam's.) i have mine hung up in the storage room and hope it will see me through at least a chunk of winter. plus, pretty!

also for itchy

2008-09-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

for itchy

2008-09-21T14:16:00.001-07:00

here is my new desk - as it was last week, and as it is still. i'll get round to assembling it some time. . .

bike riding and tomatoes

2008-09-15T19:44:00.003-07:00

i went on a lovely long bikeride with eleanor and our friend M, yesterday, all the way out to lighthouse park. here's where we went:

see, we started on the drive, went downtown, through stanley park, over lion's gate bridge (scary!) then along marine drive for about an hour (lots of traffic but really great views, with huge trees on our right and the sea on our left), then hit the park. then we sat on a rock looking out over the sea and ate lunch. there was a view along the north shore, of stanley park and the city, and out to UBC on the right. the combination of sea, city, mountains and sky in vancouver really does it for me.

there was also mount baker, hovering in a cloud of smog behind vancouver. mt baker is a volcano in washington state, btw. i'm still wigged out by just how close the good old US of A is.

according to douglas coupland:

Mount Baker is important to the Vancouver psyche in that it stand there, huge, record-breaking and serene, shooting off just enough steam every few years to let us know that if it really wanted to, it could bury us. It's a metaphor for the United States: seductive but distant, powerful and a least temporarily benign.

while we were sitting there, watching america float behind vancouver, we ate a delicious lunch of bread and brie and things i grew:

i have been harvesting like this every couple of days. see how mutant that cucumber is? love it!

one of the spiders that live in my plants:

the end.

on the difficulty of rejoining academic discourse

2008-09-08T17:23:00.005-07:00

i just finished wading through a debate between chomsky and foucault, two philosopher theorists. for a while there i was sustained by the photos of them looking thoughtful, and chomsky's entertaining glasses:

but i quickly realised that i'm completely rusty on academic language, and have no clue what they're talking about. for example:

"In the history of knowledge, the notion of human nature seems to me mainly to have played the role of an epistemological indicator to designate certain types of discourse in relation to or in opposition to theology or biology or history."

i kept reading to the end, partly cos i'm expected to have something intelligent to say about it by wednesday, and partly in the hope that exposure to academic language will help me regain my ability to understand it. i got bits and pieces of the 20 or so pages. it's all a bit off-putting, really. i used to be able to follow this stuff, though i never wrote such convoluted wank myself, and now i haven't the foggiest what they're banging on about.

on the other hand, being back at my desk is instantly familiar: productive and reassuring and challenging. i just have to keep working through this transition.

in other news

2008-09-07T16:43:00.004-07:00

i have found the perfect desk.

it is very long, relatively low and wide, and has bookshelves at each end. my plan is to have a computer setup at on end and a reading/notebook setup at the other end, and pile lots of books and paper all over the rest of it. i've never had what i would consider the perfect desk before, and i've just signed up for another five years sitting at my desk, so finding this beautiful piece online has made me unreasonably happy. it will be mine!

miriam says she will drive me out to the 'burbs next week, when i hopefully will have got some of my money out of the university, and will help me stuff the dissembled pieces into the back of her little car.

true love is voluntarily going to ikea with your partner.

island hopping

2008-09-06T16:15:00.005-07:00

miriam and i went on one last trip away before september school/work craziness kicked in. it was very relaxing. we saw nice trees, like garry oaks:

and this beautiful arbutus, reflected in the sea:

i bought these funky pants from a farmer's market outside victoria and they have a maple key on them:

we stayed one night on a very small island you can only get to by ferry. it was very peaceful and quiet, and very beautiful. there were birds of prey circling above us:

we sat by the sea and read and drank tea and watched a tern diving into the water for fish. (tern not featured in this photo.)

the shore line was partly made up of bricks, cos the island used to be owned by a brick company who had a big factory on it. you can see where the different tide lines sit by the colours of the bricks:

also in the history of the island was some dropkicks introducing deer so they could hunt them. now there's over a thousand deer on the tiny island, eating everything. they woke us up in the night ripping branches from trees and stampeding around. who knew deer were so damn noisy? all the trees on the island only have foliage to deer head height, and grow up from the bottom in weird pyramid shapes. like so:

and here is the obligatory shot of the US. that's it, all blurry and mountainous in the distance. if you click on the photo and make it big you can see the wading bird in the front left as well.

on the ferry back to vancouver we saw orcas. it was cool.

the end.

what i was reading last friday, before i became a student again

2008-09-03T22:35:00.002-07:00

from the bottom:

the twelve month gardener was a present from winifred. it is west coast specific and encouraging in a jolly kind of way. i like it.

jokes and the unconscious is a confronting graphic novel about the author's father dying. it is written by Daphne Gottlieb, and illustrated by Diane Dimassa, of hothead fame.

buffy the vampire slayer season eight, part two, is not as good as part one, and not as good as the telly series. hmm.

continuing my peter carey phase is oscar and lucinda, which i'm actually not enjoying very much.

i got the bill bryson on special and i'm not enjoying that much either. i think i'm over his sense of humour.

tove janson's fair play, on the other hand, is thoughtful and quiet and thought-provoking and so carefully written, lovingly translated and beautifully presented. she is the author of moomintroll fame, and this is one of her few adult novels translated into english. i got it in paris.

code of the woosters is comfort reading. i'm told my grandpa liked p.g.wodehouse, which is kind of cool. the cow creamer, jeeves, the cow creamer!

i went walking is one of my favourite board books, with lovely illustrations by julia vivas. perfect for the little person in your life.

to the right is (sing-a-long now!) baaaaaaby beluuuuuuuga!

then the lonely planet guide to canada, well thumbed, and my new guide to cycling in british columbia, both for planning my weekend away.

two years in canada, yesterday

2008-08-29T12:50:00.002-07:00

honestly, it seems like about two months since the last anniversary. it has been pelting rain in a depressingly ardent way for the last week, so i rugged up good before taking myself out for bubbly.

the photo was mean to look more pensive and less depressed, but i really like the framing, so i'm keeping it. the necklace was a surprise present in the mail from bbb and grot - noice!

this was the cake i ate. it was delicious:

i have been keeping myself busy with attending orientation events in the rain. i have a student card, which makes me very happy, a u-pass (as seen below), which allows me on all public transit for free (actually an $80 fee per semester), and a bunch of pamphlets about the library and the swimming pool and my health insurance.

miriam and i are ducking off this weekend for a last minute last holiday before i'm in school full time and she's on call full time. stay tuned for photos of rainy beaches and rainy ferries and me in the rain.

harvest time is delicious

2008-08-25T18:43:00.005-07:00

i know you've all been wondering, "how is little gumtreefid farmer's garden going? what has she been farming lately?" well, wonder no more!

first i have to say "WHEE! summer is fun!" harvest time, baby. harvesting is delicious and easy.

the coriander has done what everyone said it would do; exploded and gone to seed. i have planted a bunch of new seeds around the edges, so i have two generations of plants in the window box. not that they'll survive winter, i suppose, so was that a silly move? hmm.

the lettuce, likewise, boom. there's also spring onions hiding in there, though i've eaten most of them. home-grown sandwich material, yum!

look! look what the cucumber plant made! i am so proud of it! there's another three on the way. woot!

and the tomatoes, oh lord, the tomatoes. there's easily 20 or 30 little tomatoes out there, all slowly ripening. here's a selection of the different shapes and sizes on the plants:

so that's where my garden is at. oh, and me showing itchy the brussell sprouts at the allotment last week, photo by itchy. if you look closely at the stems you can see the beginnings of tiny little sprouts. the plants have a bit of a tough run. first they were attacked by cabbage moth caterpillars, then they got aphids. i have been vigilant with removing the caterpillars by hand, and squirting the aphids with this weird soapy stuff. we'll see how the fruit turns out.

now, if i may indulge in a bit of food porn, here's what proper grownup farmers in the area have been harvesting:

delicious heirloom tomatoes, local raspberries, peaches from the okanagan and the first apples of the season. below is five pounds of blueberries (2.2 kilos), most of which i've frozen for winter, basil, a funny purple and yellow capsicum, which i bought purely because it's beautiful and i've never seen such a thing before, and squishy local brie.

this is what happens when i go to the farmer's market myself instead of sending miriam. stuffing all this lot into my bike panniers was a bit of a challenge . . .

love
gumtreefid farmer

ps. here's where the adorable gumtree is at, with a back-drop of my newest addition - a monstera:

adventures with the posse on high bridges part 3

2008-08-23T08:57:00.001-07:00

our last group excursion was to lynn canyon park on the north shore. this is a beautiful park with lots of hiking trails, a nice river and a (high!) suspension bridge.

we went for a bit of a walk in the lush temperate rainforest. it's second growth, but it's hard to tell from the height of the trees.

it smelt good and green, and the river rushed by the side of the path. i enjoyed being in a canadian forest with other australians, and having my interpretation validated of the forests here as oddly symmetrical or parallel or something. beautiful, of course, but odd.

winifred had suggested we bring our togs, cos there's fabulous little water pools along the length of the river, thus:

(photo by itchy). it was the most amazing crystal clear green water. nimmersatt, miriam and i all went in. cold! SO COLD! this is what comes of swimming in glacier fed water.

we spent about half an hour gradually edging in deeper and deeper, and eventually both nimmersatt and miriam ducked under completely, which was very brave of them. i stopped at the armpits because i am a big wossbag.

itchy was being nature photographer. she took this shot of one of the foolhardy teenage boys diving off high rocks into the deep pool:

on the way home we had blueberries and spelt-crust pizza. a most agreeable excursion.

(oh, and in between cassandra and nimmersatt went to salt spring island, and nimmersatt and itchy went on a whale watching tour, which is all kickarse cool, but not for me to blog about. i stayed at home and minded the puppy and marked 40 first year essays on euthanasia.)

for itchy's last night she and i went out to the sushi place with bad service. it was delicious! (photo of me by itchy)

we went via one of the many organic-specialist-100-mile supermarkets on the drive and stocked up on two types of maple syrup and many kinds of local chocolate:

the next morning we had lazy coffee at prados then went to the airport, where itchy filled in squillions of forms about not being a terrorist or a drug mule.

it made me sad when she left.

adventures with the posse and the puppy part 2

2008-08-20T10:32:00.009-07:00

meet lucy. aren't we cute and wholesome? she was adorable, though very high maintenance. see, she had the "i'm so adorable!" side, thus:

but if you relaxed your guard she'd chew on you:

she drew blood a couple of times, and several books in the house are missing corners (a habit she'd better drop, cos both her humans are academics). i spent a lot of time working on "sit, drop, stay" and "how 'bout you chew on your stuffed raccoon instead of that chair leg?"

having the lucy-puppy made my time-schedule more constricted, but the gang still managed to go on some nice excursions. we explored the drive (and me, itchy, miram and cass all got hair cuts from the same hairdresser) and spent a lot of time eating nice food.

we went to the aquarium, which was very cool. the highlight was the baby beluga, seen here with her mama:

(photo by itchy - more on her flickr). the beluga was so fat and cute! miriam brought the twins for the excursion, and they, also fat and cute, sang the baby beluga song for us. there was also otters and seals and sharks and dolphins and butterflies and tortoises. there was also squillions of people, and it was all a bit overwhelming. i'm going to go again some time not in the school holidays. check out the aquarium website for more great photos of large aquatic mammals, and even a webcam of the belugas!

here is a random photo of cassandra to mark the separation between topics:

we also made the obligatory trip out to MEC, so nimmersatt could kit herself out for her and cass' big kayaking tour this week.

mountain equipment co-op, for those not in the vancouver-know-how, is a ginormous outdoor shop, kinda like kathmandu but the size of myers. oh, okay, not quite, but it has *everything* camping, kayaking, climbing, biking (kinda - not as good as my shop!), skiing, etc. i send BBB catalogues periodically, so he can drool over them long distance. it is all environmentally and socially responsible, etc. etc. itchy found the clothing labels particularly entertaining. here she is demonstrating a bandha top with an "artful centre twist":

and here's me demonstrating the fabulous icebreaker singlets i bought down the road:

itchy and i also ducked up main street and looked at beautiful stationary and random craft stuff. youse should all hold your breath for itchy-made-magnets. . .

adventures with the posse part 1

2008-08-20T10:30:00.003-07:00

on our first day we went cycling in stanley park. this was the only day missymojay had with the whole gang. vancouver splashed out its best sunny weather for the public holiday, and the forest was beautifulbeautifulbeautiful!

we had a picnic lunch, with potato salad and a lump of squishy brie as big as my head.

my chronology is getting all messed up here, but we also went out to the naam for dinner for missymojay's last night. but it wasn't the same night as went to stanley park. oh well. we went to the naam and it was *tasty*. just before i moved to vancouver missymojay drew me a little map of vancouver, with things on it like "commercial drive" and "stanley park". the naam was one of the things on the map, so it was fitting to go there all together.

missymojay contemplating the menu:

nimmersatt and itchy bonding:

cassandra and nimmersatt bonding:

the blurry photos are mine, and the nice ones at the naam are by itchy. she tried to take a self-portrait at the naam but we all kept wobbling the table so she ordered us to "find an elbow position and hold it!" silliness ensued:

we are hilarious.

missy headed off the next morning (bye, missy! hope you are having fun in europe! love to SB!), and cass went to her second day at NEW JOB, and the remainder of us headed off to the beach with winifred.

it was another hot day, and the sea was very cold, and the mountains very pretty behind the water. we paddled and splashed, and lay around talking, and ate all the naam leftovers and some cinnamen scrolls miriam had made for lunch. here's me being sunsmart:

and itchy being pretty:

and nimmersatt with the beach and mountains behind her:

i am so in love with her yellow sunnies.

i'm baaaaaack!

2008-08-10T19:22:00.002-07:00

well, kind of. i don't have my own little laptop with me, so i can't give you any photos of us frolicking on the beach, or tiny adorable puppy chewing on my arm, and you'll just have to imagine them, 'kay?

many guests! many many guests, bearing chocolate and news of old friends! i have had a lovely time with missymojay and SB (now both gallivanting round dublin, i believe), nimmersatt and itchy (gallivanting round victoria), and cassandra, (hopefully sleeping in preparation for her second week at NEW JOB!). we have been to the beach and to the aquarium, and cycled round stanley park and gone promenading on the drive. exciting action packed tourist adventures ahoy!

now i am puppy sitting for a prof-friend, so i have charge of a huge house, two cats, a tank of fish and a puppy for ten days. lucy is a 15 week old golden retriever, and so so cute. she's like a fluffy white lamb which gambols in the grass then suddenly develops fangs and tries to knee cap you. it's the mixture of adorable and vicious that really keeps the relationship lively.

last night miriam's family came over and played raucous card games til midnight. itchy was very good at demon even though it was her first time and we had drunk quite a lot of wine. she has some photos up on her flickr account, so go there and admire the mountains.

i hear chewing from upstairs. must dash!

from grotty

2008-07-30T19:28:00.000-07:00

two views of the new camper trailer at the Wee Jasper campsite -
note the little collapsible heater sparkling in the early morning sun

in which i am a good capitalist

2008-07-30T12:07:00.004-07:00

second last day at work. in time-honoured teaching tradition i spent this morning playing hangman with my students. it's surprisingly difficult for ESL students. and me.

last time i was at the bike shop it rained heavily all day, so we had very few customers. i spent about three hours reorganising the storeroom - pulling down boxes of inner tubes and arranging them on the right shelves, sizing the loose kickstands lying on the floor and filing them away, putting the plastic over-pants all the same place and hanging the different locks on display in the front of the shop. the whole process was kind of calming.

then i cleaned up the wall displays in the body of the shop. i discovered that i have a talent for arranging merchandise, which is creepy and wrong. i am very proud of the kids' display, though, which looked like a dog's breakfast before i reorganised it. colleague j and i made a sign that says "cool kids cycle" and put stickers of children on bikes on it. it was incredibly nerdy and made us both very happy.

speaking of dog's breakfasts, i have a dog for the next month or so. chicorydawg is a lot slower than he was this time last year, and more inclined to yelp if small children pat him wrong. i wish i hadn't fallen for another elderly dog, but it is so nice to have him around.

i had best start working on my proposal. i'm very impressed with myself for a) procrastinating, b) being annoyed with my supervisor, when i don't even start studying til september!

critical mass still rox

2008-07-25T19:54:00.002-07:00

i got out of work today and noticed that there were thousands of cyclists buzzing down the street - i had forgotten critical mass, but it hadn't forgotten me! so i hopped on my bike and quietly joined the throng. we went all the way up hastings st (it was neat being in the middle of three lanes of bike traffic) then hung a right at commercial drive. so we did my commute, essentially, except on a much faster route and without stopping at traffic lights. it was great to ride home with an escort of people in tutus and helmets.

bike! bike and tomatoes!

2008-07-24T19:09:00.004-07:00

first things first. check out these beautiful babies!

they're growing very slowly, and ripening very slowly, but i have about a dozen little tomatoes sprouting all over. only the yellow pear variety has fruit at the moment.

and look what my cucumber plant made!

it's very exciting being in harvest time. i dug up three little potatoes from the front garden last week, and ate three thumbalina carrots from the allotment today. yum! ziggy and i also have a farm share, so we get a bunch of random vegetables every fortnight, grown by a guy in coquitlam or somewhere. miriam is drying garlic at her house right now, and we're going blueberrying soon. every morning when i make my sandwich to take to work i pick some lettuce and spring onion, and coriander or basil for extra flavour. deeeelicious!

anyway. i do think about things other than my belly. like bikes! remember i said i fell in love with a commuter bike? well, i decided it was a super investment, never had a really nice new bike before, useful staff discount, couldn't live without it, etc. etc.

here's my baby:

oh, and i love it so much! it is a 2007 devinci oslo. the parts were made off shore, but it was assembled in quebec, which is about as local made as a bike gets. it's a hybrid commuter built on an aluminum touring frame, which means it's light but stable. it's got 700c wheels, skinny tyres and flat handbars. here's the specs, if you're interested. it rides like a dream - so fast and responsive, and coasts beautifully. i shaved five minutes off my commute.

you'll notice that the bars are all taped up - that's hockey tape, which covers up the logos and stops the bike from screaming "I'M NEW AND SHINY! STEAL ME!" i've never had such a nice bike before - it's a real responsibility (actually, it's the most expensive thing i own, apart from my laptop. i am really still a poor student).

i have pinheads on the wheels, which is new technology from a company in toronto. you replace the quick release skewers in the wheels with the pinhead skewers, and that means you can't get the wheels off without a special key. my bike will not be one of those sad wheel-less frames you see locked up around the city! i have a big u-lock to look after the frame, and i'm thinking of investing in a bike locker at uni, to keep it dry as well as secure.

this is me lifting the bike one-handed, to show off its Xtreme lightness. it's definitely not as smooth a ride as my old clunker, as the aluminium doesn't absorb any road noise, but the speed makes up for it.

that's about it for my news. i'm still working six days, so between work and sleep i don't do much else. oh, except that missymojay and handy are here! wheee! i luuuuuurve them. we have hung out twice and may be having some sort of extended sleep over in early august, which will be fun and chaotic all at once. it's exciting having visitors! handy talks almost exclusively in australian slang, which makes me love her extra-much. she asked me if i "had to get up at sparrow's" to get to work. :)

in which i am a quitter

2008-07-23T08:44:00.002-07:00

i quit my ESL job yesterday! well, i gave two week's notice in writing, as dictated in the office manual. you'd be surprised what useful things you get when you google "polite letter of resignation template." i've never quit a job before, but it went surprisingly well, with the bossman saying he'd keep my resume on file and see me next summer. reasons for quitting include: having no spare time/life, being in a basement all day, wanting to stab people after a shift.

here is me in my cubicle, only for another two weeks:

happy bday sky!

2008-07-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

she turned two on the 2oth - another only daughter, as grotahaci says.

RIP max

2008-07-19T00:19:00.001-07:00

i heart tutus

2008-07-17T18:12:00.009-07:00

ooof. birthdays are exhuasting. but i love birthdays! huzzah for parties and random (e)mail surprises!

my fairy party was v. fun. i made trifle from an australian women's weekly recipe i got off the interwebs. it worked really well, considering the cultural translation that went into it. ingredients unrecognisable or severely rare in canada: cream, swiss roll, jelly (but "jello" is fine), custard powder. miriam also cooked with australian women's weekly, making me a fabulous train cake. it had a sparkler for the smoke and fresh berries for the cargo.

it was a fun low-key kind of party, with several small children running round being cute in tutus and, of course, chicory dog:

i found a fabulous cheap tutu and silly hat downtown, and enjoyed my outfit very much. other people had tiaras and false moustaches, which i no way supplied. this is the playground we played on, and this marks the end of photos without other humans in them:

i have been busy working six days a week + doing some marking on the side + helping miriam move house + having asthma. actually, life is pretty good, through all those things. it's been beautiful and sunny for weeks on end (i am wearing a skirt and singlet and no shoes) and i've been eating lots of yummy things and reading good books. also BIKE!

and happy bday me!

2008-07-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

happy bday bbb!

2008-07-08T22:28:00.001-07:00

randoms

2008-07-08T22:12:00.005-07:00

i am too tired to string a narrative together tonight, but here's some nice images i've been wanting to share with you folks for a while:

ziggy's b'day pres (from me to her). looks like a cheap and nasty paper cup, huh? well, it's actually a "not a paper cup"! it's made from ceramic, with a silocine lid, completely washable and reusable. huzzah! i am v. pleased with this (rather last minute) present, as ziggy has a huge reusable cup collection and i think this is a clever addition.

miriam and i have taken up backgammon, using the cute little travel set i got in amsterdam for bbb and i to play. i only just taught miriam the rules but she's already evenly matched with me, so we take it in turns to thrash each other. nice gentle entertainment, especially in the park on a warm summer evening.

kangaroo paw! kangaroo paw with funky camera settings. even though it is environmentally reprehensible, i really like having fresh australian flowers when i can get them.

these are garlic scapes from miriam's plot. they grow out the top of the garlic plant and would turn into flowers if you let them. but you shouldn't let them, cos then the plants put their energy into making flowers rather than making garlic bulbs. so you cut them off and put them in stirfry, where they add a nice garlicky flavour. i like how they grow all curly.

my half of the strawberries miriam and i picked early one morning before work. yum yum! we spent an hour and a half picking in a field way out in delta. i picked 12 pounds (5.5kg?) and then spent the next few days freezing them. now i will have delicious strawberries through the long dark winter. huzzah!

me and the tomatoes. see how big they've grown! one of them is taller than me. i am so proud! the white flowers in the front of the frame are from the radishes - they're almost in seed. in this photo i have "i just rode 30k" face. notice the bunch of cherries in my hand. did i mention how much i enjoy summer fruit?

in other news, i have begun working on proposals and scholarship applications for my phd, which has been surprisingly rewarding and fun. doing intellectual work again feels like a release.

car free festival

2008-07-03T09:12:00.004-07:00

a few images from car free festival, which was a few weeks ago. i've been sitting on these pics for ages, but just found a very funky vid to go with them, so here ya go!

the video is about the philosophy of the car free fest, and has good footage from this year (also nice tourist footage of vancouver generally and critical mass). apparently there were 60,000+ people at the commerical drive festival. i stole the vid from "streetfilms". i know one of the ppl featured in this vid. if you're interested email me. it's a bit cool.

and the photos i took:

massive crowd, heading south

communal double dutch. lots of people tried and failed while i was watching, and then a middle aged woman ran in, jumped neatly a dozen times and ran out again, to great applause.

and street hockey, near stellas and joes.

i only got to enjoy the festival for a short period, cos i just ran over on my lunchbreak from work, but it was still really cool.

happy canada day!

2008-07-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

i've nearly been here two years now, and see what i've learnt:

in other news

2008-06-30T21:11:00.003-07:00

i went and saw the long road north, a film about some people who decided to cycle from patagonia (tip of southern america) to the arctic circle (canada). it took them 18 months.

now i've decided i want to cycle around scandinavia.

mail love

2008-06-30T20:45:00.002-07:00

ooo, so many good things in the post the last few weeks! i've been too tired/busy/lazy to update as they came through, so here's some images in a bunch.

first was itchy's fabulon, long-awaited, beautifully crafted "short but interesting photographic journey through the city of melbourne." i love it to bits!

that's the cover. when you open it it unfolds accordion style, and the story continues on both sides, leading us through some of my favourite bits of melbourne. nostalgia and "i've been there!" moments abound.

it also came with a very clever moo card with a photo by itchy:

then was fabulon b'day pres from g+b, the more exciting for being several weeks early and thus completely unexpected. huzzah for forward planning!

b'day pres had many many tiny and big parcels all wrapped up with ribbons. two of my favourites are the incense wombat and shaun tan's new book, which i never even knew existed til it turned up in my mailbox!

there are many other goodies, including snowgum seeds which i have to go pop in the fridge right now. . .

gardening update

2008-06-27T13:26:00.004-07:00

lookit my radish! it's huge! unfortunately it's only the plant bit that's huge - see the little stubby red thing at the end? that's the radish. le sigh. possibly the phd of the soil is wrong - the balance that encourages leaf growth rather than root growth. anyways, i'm going to let the other plants grow out and harvest their seeds to try again with different potting mix.

there's lots of lovely fresh food around. see my haul from the farmer's market! yep, that's fresh strawberries! and brie! yum yum yum! up the back are cucumber and basil plants, so i can try again, my attempts to grow them from seed having failed miserably. i've put the basil in the window box and the cucumber in a 10L fetta bin on the back verandah. you should see the tomatoes i've got growing on the back veranda too! i spent half an hour out there last night staking them and pinching off the new plants they keep trying to put out. concentrate on fruit, now, kids!

the african violets are still blooming wildly, which makes me feel better about the gum tree and so forth keeling over.

life is good. lots and lots of working, but i've got into a pattern now. i hate the esl less and find the bike shop less tiring. i have, predictably, fallen in love with a bike. don't you think a girl *needs* a nice commuter bike once in her life? especially one obtained with a staff discount?

bad news

2008-06-23T20:49:00.002-07:00

one of my tiny gumtrees suddenly upped and died for no reason. you see it in a half-alive state - i just threw out the shrivelled corpse this afternoon when replanting its healthy sister.

i still have two lovely healthy plants, each in their own little terracotta pot. they bring me great joy, but i can't help worring about them now. i figured i've gone through about twenty seeds to get to this point, which makes it a 10% survival rate. i hope i never have to start again!

all else is well. summer has sprung, i'm eating snowpeas and strawberries warm off the plant and cycling everywhere. ah. . .

treasures found downtown

2008-06-14T09:16:00.003-07:00

i had a two hour break in between teaching the other day and was able to spend a little time exploring downtown, something i don't do very often. i went down to the shore and found the most beautiful view. that's canada place on the left, where the cruise ships come in, that's the north shore in the distance (you can watch the little ferries crossing over), and that's the docks on the right:

the weather was lovely for this one day, with beautiful clouds roiling over the sails on canada place:

i also ducked into macleod's, a fabulous second hand bookshop. there's a main floor and a basement just crammed full of books, piled on the floor, stacked two-deep on the shelves and balanced up to the ceiling. i tend not to go there too often cos i always come out with a pile of books, but i just got my tax return, so i figured it was okay. and look what i found!

it's the most fabulous book all about the life and art of maurice sendak, with lots of great reproductions of his work and some interesting commentary and biographical detail. there's a photo of him as an infant, and he looks just like a cranky goblin.

i do love reading.

k-rudd and me teach esl together

2008-06-12T10:08:00.003-07:00

me and my new teaching tool:

seriously! i have k-rudd stuck in my little cubicle, and after we've laboured our way through a narrative in english i say "now i'd like you to tell my friend kevin about what happened in that story." it turns out that asking "what is the basic idea of that story?" or "what's that story about?" is a very difficult question, so having a third person to refer to is invaluable. thanks, vta!

one of my students recognised k-rudd, chatted knowledgeably on recent events in australian politics and spent an hour yesterday grilling me on the stolen generation and canadian indigenous relations. in contrast, a man i taught earlier in the week went on a long rant about how hard australian accents are to understand and what odd vocabulary australians used (he'd visited there) , so i talked to him for an hour in a canadian accent. it was v. good practise.

teaching is getting better now i'm getting to know my students. i'm also getting better at teaching ESL and explaining stuff like which words need an article. i'm not getting better at coping physically with all this work, so i'm off to buy iron supplements and green leafy things. there comes a time when pale and interesting goes too far. . .

reading is sexy!

2008-06-08T09:39:00.002-07:00

it's been ages since we've played this game! here's what i'm reading right now (just read/am about to read):

from the top!

that's once upon a time in the north, philip pullman's new one. i actually bought this for miram (she's a fan), but then she lent it to me to read on the train. it's about how lee scoresby and iorek meet, back in the day. it's very short but very cool and has a board game in the back cover.

the green mill murder is an early phryne fisher novel, one of my favourites. kerry greenwood rocks my world! it's a detective novel set in 1920's melbourne. in this one phryne flies a plane into the snowy mountains. v.g.

the little stripey book is eloise a paris, which i picked up last time i was at the musee d'orsay. . . i'm trying to read it, but it's slow going, and i have to keep ringing miriam for help. (she speaks french real good.) it has a high "i've been there!" quotient.

then there's nick and norah's infinite playlist by rachel cohn and david levithan. everybody on my elist is gaga about this book, but i only read it for the first time last week (i'm reading it again now). it is totally cool. go, read! be gaga! if nothing else, there's great kissing scenes!

then some jasper fforde novels. i read the first one last week (the eyre affair), and am waiting for the library to deliver the second and third before i can read something rotten, the hardback sitting in the stack there. they're odd novels about literary detective types, with lots of bronte in-jokes. try them, but be warned: the writing starts bad and gets better. hang in there.

funny story: i actually own an uncorrected proof of the eyre affair which tine bought from a second hand bookshop in newcastle. every single "it's/its" is wrong.

also good story: those two books are in pristine condition - they come pre-aged. see the tattered edges? printed onto the cover.

the stripey book near the bottom is peter carey's my life as a fake, which i've never read before. (oh the shame!) i just started it yesterday, and it's promising, though icky, like all carey's stuff. i don't like the cover of this nrth american edition. i remember buying the hardback for bbb's birthday when it first came out. i got it at the sun bookshop in yarraville, and it was beautiful, all textured. i'm reading it now to get more ausn culture. i have oscar and lucinda on order from the library.

then is gardening for the faint of heart, which is one of my favourite books atm. it's written by robin wheeler, who lives in bc, up the coast a bit, so the information is very local, and useful for someone from, say, a different hemisphere. it's very practical and irreverent info, and also very funny. this one of my favourite bits:

"It may surprise you to find "bears" listed after "slugs" in the pest section, but heck, bears aren't such a constant hazard for the garden. They're more seasonal, more regional, and can't hide in the pansies as well. You will never find a bear stuck to the bottom of your shoe."

she also has chapters called "why the heck should i garden?" and "read me when you're down", both of which i've had recourse to recently; my cucumber seedlings keeled over for no reason and my bean shoots got mauled by slugs.

the fat book on the bottom is also about gardening, but it's not funny at all. it's more of an encyclopedia, so i do things like look up "c" for "cucumber" and see if they wanted less water or more light or what.

the last book is the picturebook on the right hand side. it's a promise is a promise, by robert munsch and michael kusugak. munsch is hugely popular in canada (he lives in ontario). you'd know him as one of the authors of the paperbag princess. the book is a story based on inuit myth. the beautiful illustrations are by vladyana kryorka.

that's the lot, though i still have lots of stuff in my "to read" pile. okay, piles. actually piled on my floor. it's called `scholarly squalor'.

you'll notice a distinct lack of theory there (or perhaps you won't. is it only me who's always reading theory? do we have any academics in the audience?). it's kind of a nice break, though i'm worried my vocabulary will atrophy. bring on september, people!

huzzah!

2008-06-05T13:45:00.003-07:00

big congrats to master grotijira, for acing her thesis! now we are a family of masters and will rule the world!

please accept this virtual glass of bubbly, dahling.

ps. have replied to all comments on this page, pls. scroll down for love.

let's practise pronouncing "locking system"

2008-06-04T09:39:00.002-07:00

oof, this working thing is hard work! i'm now working six days a week - three in the bike shop and three at the esl school. the bike shop is uber fun: my colleagues are really cool (we play ani, bob dylan and radiohead), the customers are nice (this is taking some getting used to - why aren't they being rude and sleazy??) and i'm learning a lot about bikes and helmets and locking systems. yesterday i got to try a couple of different bikes, including a cruiser with roller brakes and internal hub, and a folding bike. this job is completely exhausting, though. i've spent most nights in the last week in the bath or in bed, or falling asleep at the table at various social events. i think i'm getting upper body muscles though, which is exciting!

my esl job is, frankly, dodgy. it makes me think a lot about exploitation, of me and of international students. i'm trying to figure out if it's worth kicking up a fuss. i'm going to wait until august at any rate, cos working here beats borrowing money for rent. (doesn't it, bbb???) i'm also learning about teaching ESL, which is a useful skill, and i'm getting to use the teaching skills i already had, and talk about english, which i do enjoy. it's bearable.

speaking of which, i'd best get dressed up and pack food. i have a six hour shift today with no breaks. in a basement. with fluorescent lighting. dooooooooom!

unemployed? not me!

2008-05-29T19:32:00.003-07:00

my lord but i'm tired! i just worked my first shift at my New Job at The Bike Shop. eeeeee! lookit me being all gainfully employed! eight hours on my feet learning new stuff (and screwing up - starting a new job is hard) was exhausting, but i had an ace time. my co-workers are really cool, there's good music, it's all very laid back and good politics and interesting friendly customers. will keep you up to date how it goes.

i also have my first ESL class tomorrow, so wish me luck for that!

(also my african violets suddenly burst into flower.)

trip to edmonton

2008-05-25T20:09:00.007-07:00

edmonton is in alberta, which is the next province along from BC. i have to admit that alberta wasn't on my list of "top ten things to do in canada." it's sometimes known as the 53rd state of america, and is famous for its beef, cowboys and oil rigs. however, to get there you can catch the train right up through the rockies and up through jasper, then down into edmonton, and i've long had a hankering to see those mountains. also, it's where miriam is at the moment, which is a great reason to travel anywhere.

so i caught the via rail train east. the trip took 24 hours each way, through amazing scenery. there was a "bubble car" in the train, where you could sit up near the roof and watch the view through 360 windows:

the train was pretty comfy. everybody got a little pillow and blanket, and the bottom of the seat folded out so you could stretch out at night. there was a restaurant car and a little tuckshop affair which supplied me with coffee first thing in the morning (when the old ppl behind me decided 7am was a good time for a party. grrrrr!)

i like trains!

we started out through the suburbs of vancouver, then through farming land, the mountains behind gradually getting bigger and snowier,

til eventually the train just went past huge towering rockfaces and snowy mountains and raging rivers for hours and hours. it was so stunning.

this is mt robson, the biggest mountain in the rockies:

this is pyramid falls:

we saw not one but *two* black bears. they look so cuddly from a distance! i was hoping to see elk or moose as well, but wasn't lucky this time.

we stopped off in jasper, which has famous natcha. it held up the theory i formulated in whistler about the correlation between fabulous scenery and tacky pseudo-swiss architecture:

after we got through the rockies it got flat. like, *seriously* flat. these pictures can't capture the flatness of the prairies anymore than they can capture the bigness of the mountains:

i've always been very keen to see the prairies of canada, especially since winifred is always telling me stories about winnipeg, and wearing tshirts that say things like "prairie girls are a good catch!" it was very cool to understand a bit what people from central canada are talking about. i like the joke about your dog getting off the leash and watching it run off into the distance for three days.

however, i'm afraid i embodied the vancouver-stereotype and felt just a wee bit exposed and small amongst all that nothing. this stereotype works the other way too, where people from the prairies feel claustrophobic in vancouver cos of being hemmed in by the mountains.

i arrived at 5pm, and we went to check out whyte ave, the funky part of edmonton. unfortunately even the funky part of town featured a man shouting homophobic abuse and lots of people hassling us for money. it was not so cool. in fact, the whole trip featured a lot of being introduced as "miriam's friend" and not holding hands in public. it also featured a lot of scrounging to find food we could eat. did i mention edmonton didn't do it for me? (i'm friends with a couple of albertans who live in vancouver now - they call it deadmonton, hellberta. i'm not allowed to make that joke, though.)

it was hot and dry the first few days i was there, then rained heavily for the last few, which was a nice mixture. i spent a day touristing in edmonton, which was interesting. i found some nice bookshops and gift shops. i think my favourite discovery was a kit to make a plaster cast of your baby's buttocks. they had a sample bum on display.

here's some shots round edmonton. first, some evidence of the great hudson's bay. the company used to own most of canada, and now just owns some department stores. the whole story is fascinating.

apart from oil, edmonton is famous for having the world's largest mall. among other things, it has an ice rink and a water park with trained seals in it. i kid you not.

i decided not to go to that mall, in the interests of self preservation, but i went to a littler one in town, just to be in the spirit of things. i hate malls. here's me with "mall face".

look, the traffic lights are sidewards!

and this is university of alberta. great architecture, huh?

i think that's about all i have to say about my trip. it was a fascinating tourist experience, over all, and i really enjoyed the train journey and catching up with my girl, but i'm glad to be back in vancouver. it feels like home.

i'm baaaaaack!

2008-05-23T13:15:00.001-07:00

today in tomato news

2008-05-18T11:01:00.004-07:00

i spent all yesterday planting out tomatoes. my nails will never be the same.

it was stinking hot (30!) and quite satisfying to be outside sweating for the labour of the land. . . or something. all my freckles came out.

i put two of the plants in the little garden plot i cleared in the front garden. here they are, snuggled between the rhubarb and the spearmint:

i also have carrots, potatoes and garlic in that bed, so we'll see what comes up. when the little cucumber seedlings get a bit bigger i'm going to bung them in as well. (bung is my new favourite word. i'm all ocker, don'tchaknow?)

i've also got five plants in big big pots on the back verandah. i've been dumpster diving and alley-scrounging for weeks collecting the big white buckets. good fun!

i've also got one in miriam's garden plot, and two little plants that will go in her plot in a few weeks. and that's all my babies settled! now i don't have to lug them in and out all the time, and i shouldn't have to water so often, seeing as how it's vancouver and rains all the time.

now we wait for fruit!

here's a shot from miriam's allotment. that's a brussell sprout plant on the left, three glorious radishes i'd just pulled, and the nasturtium, which was looking pretty crook for ages there and has only just perked up:

in other news, a bunch of stuff fell into place with visas and employment, which means i have a few weeks off and then will start teaching ESL in a basement downtown. still applying for other jobs, cos it's not full time, but still, experience! money! sense of purpose!

i'm taking advantage of the time off to duck over to alberta to visit miriam, so rather than the gardening blog i seem to be running, we'll have a short hiatus then resume as a travel blog with photos of mountains and stuff. if you're good i'll take a photo of the giant perogie for you.

now where did i put my cowboy hat?

tulips don't need satellites

2008-05-13T15:52:00.004-07:00

isn't it beautiful? it's the last tulip in miriam's garden.

i've had a productive few days so i actually have stuff to write about. today i made a guest appearance in ziggy's year 9 english classroom. talking to a bunch of fifteen year olds is challenging! they were a perfectly friendly bunch, though, and ziggy has a great repertoire with them, so it all went well. they're doing a novel study of Maus, so i was lecturing on reading images and the relationship between text and image. it was a reprisal of my picture book lecture in a lot of ways, though i didn't cover as much material. i talked through one page of the comic (panelling, frames, background, pov, shading, etc.) then got the students to do their own analysis of another page.

it was funny being in a big high school again. i felt not particularly grownup. but it was very nice to be back in front of a classroom. i do enjoy teaching. (did i mention how glad i am not to be a teenager anymore?)

am still working on getting some sort of paid work in front of a classroom. i've replied to a bunch of ads and have an interview with an ESL school on thursday. wish me luck!

and that's where the tomatoes are at. it's the may long weekend this weekend, which is traditionally when the weather is warm enough for tomato plants to go outside. you have to harden them first, which means bringing them outside each day for gradually longer periods so they adjust to cold and wind before you bung them in the ground and leave them to fend for themselves. lugging all nine in and out each day is quite a process!

it's that time of year again

2008-05-12T10:28:00.002-07:00

mothers' day shennigans

2008-05-10T23:58:00.002-07:00

BBB and Lizardgirl way out on Lake Hume. G used the phone camera for
these photos. She really liked the late afternoon pinkness. B

for cass

2008-05-09T14:57:00.001-07:00

the godroach speaks or "up and moved to canada"

melbs is for gumtrees

melbs is for coffee

merry xmas, y'all

we're all in the mirror stage around here

blue huckleberry pie

an atheist bikes alone

farewell to summer

beautiful delicate florets of tasty

island hopping

a day in the life 2

we'll have lots to eat this winter

not quite straight

outdoor plants

indoor plants

more knitting. . . oh, and a cute baby!

bicycles!

island hopping

what i'm reading

get your vote on

more bloody knitting

fan-squeeing is not okay

wholesome pursuits

pamplemouse oui oui?

knitting is kool

ah, so cold and damp

australian christmas

solstice, christmas, snow

hiking is nice

this is what i do with my time now

merry (white) christmas, y'all!

how to

cold! cold! oh my ears and nose!

growing things is fun

snow!

scarf! (hair!)

when will it end??? oh. it has.

happy birthday to grotapuppy!

cass n me being adorable

in november it rains

snow is what makes winter okay

me new house

*everyone* loves puppies

everyone loves puppies! OR more photos from home

random photos

plus bonus photos of cassandra and i at my housewarming

photos from home II

photos from home I

knitting

i hate moving

things

ooo, election day!

things fall in fall

my phd is . . . boring???

biking is fun

a mediation on leadership in two parts, followed by a question

there's no way to go but upwards / thru murk into crystalline glow

also for itchy

for itchy

bike riding and tomatoes

on the difficulty of rejoining academic discourse

in other news

island hopping

what i was reading last friday, before i became a student again

two years in canada, yesterday

harvest time is delicious

adventures with the posse on high bridges part 3

adventures with the posse and the puppy part 2

adventures with the posse part 1

i'm baaaaaack!

from grotty

in which i am a good capitalist

critical mass still rox

bike! bike and tomatoes!

in which i am a quitter

happy bday sky!

RIP max

i heart tutus

and happy bday me!

happy bday bbb!

everyone loves puppies