eeee!

honestly, it's march. this is ridiculous.

and a longer vid with less snow and a slightly incomprehensible story about my reaction to the snow on campus yesterday. i do have an entertaining accent, though.

news

i'm going to pick cassandra up at the airport now! eee! so exciting to see her! there's snow forecast for today and top of 8, so it will be a proper canadian welcome. it has snowed lightly each day for the last three days. in march! very odd.

i hate airports, though. i'm bringing a stack of marking, so i can make the bright lights, low ceilings, horrible music, etc. just blend into the pain of finding nice, encouraging, productive things to say about excitingly mediocre essays. actually, i haven't found the marking that hard this time, as you can tell by my lack of posts whining about it. i'm marking a bunch of essays about children's literature (including "anne of green gables"), which is always fun, and makes me feel like i'm using my expertise a little. i'm also marking a stack of proposals where the students analyse a real-life situation they participate in for what identity it constructs for them. it's fascinating. i've learnt a lot about the customer service industry (worse here than australia, but still giving me waitressing flashbacks) and have become increasingly disturbed by the number of students self identifying as robots. i've also learnt a lot about topics as diverse as being an identical twin, hockey coaching, working a crisis line and receiving condolence cards after someone dies. i'm really looking forward to reading their final essays, actually. the writing has been a bit better, too, cos the students actually care about what they're writing about.

got another rejection (not going to america after all, which is probably a good thing, really), and have a week or so to decide on my offer in vancouver. i met with my potential supervisor last week for schmoozing and had my first starbucks coffee. don't hate me.

the negotiation process is also fascinating and disturbing. ask me over email.

(here's a flashback to my waitressing days. don't i look perky? don't be fooled. it's all for the camera. vta will tell you. . .)

over the weekend

over the weekend miriam and i went to mayne island, just for a flying trip while she had a few days off call. it was totally cool - very relaxing and lots of natcha. i know this makes me a walking cliche, but just looking at an expanse of sea and sky makes me feel like the world is a good place to be.

mayne island is a very small island between vancouver island and the mainland, relatively close to vancouver. actually, here's a photo i took on the island which shows a mountain range on the mainland in the background:


look closely - behind the ferry there, see those looming black shapes? and the white on the top, mixing with the clouds? that's snow on the mountains tops. sweet.

the coast of mayne is mostly rocks, all beautiful, sculpted by the wind:


i saw four seals swim past this point. miriam and i went for a long walk round on the rocks, looking at things in rockpools. there were teeny tiny little hermit crabs, and squidgy little anemone things and stunning purple starfish:


this photo doesn't do justice to their purpleness. they were so beautiful. never seen anything like it. i touched one! did you know starfish are hard? and cold? almost scaly? weird as. i always thought they'd be squishy. the things you learn when you travel. . .

i also learnt about s'mores. you roast a marshmallow:


(roasting from the *outside* of the fire, cos it was so hot). then you smush it between two sweet biscuits, with flakes of chocolate layered on so they melt with the heat of the marshie:


very very sweet, but also tasty. i think i would have enjoyed them more if i was thirteen, but it was nice cultural experience.

that's about it for island stories. oh, i also saw deer resting in a field of daffodils and heard a flicker, which is a canadian woodpecker. and saw more arbutus trees. i do love them:


then we hopped back on the ferry and came back to piles of marking (me) and unwritten assignments (miriam).


i think the lump of land on the right is galliano island, but i'm not sure. any ideas? i think the ferry terminal is on the south west side of mayne. remember you can make image bigger by clicking on it.


we have plans for more island hopping in the future. so looking forward to it.

on the physicality of homesickness

i don't think i've mentioned on here how weirdly specific my moments of homesickness are. i'll just be minding my own business, thinking about whatever, and be struck by the memory of walking into the cold expanse of southern cross station, or what is was like to sit under the gum trees at melbourne uni, or climbing the stairs to work, and the particular smell hitting my nose at the turn in the staircase. the other day i remembered floating round in the paddling pool in the backyard in brunswick, after dark, with a glass of wine beside me.

these flashes of memory tend to happen in the morning and, as these examples indicate, are completely 3D, five senses, extremely physical and situational memories. they don't hurt so much anymore. it's just a strange sense of exactly what it was like to be there, so far away from here.

my hood 2

itchy requested more photos of my hood, the east van side. so here's a collection of some of more suburban elements of the drive area, in late winter/early spring weather.

my hood is home to:

a lovely independent nursery, run by two incredibly buff chain smoking gay men. this place is on the way to the house of the college prof i do marking for, so every time i go round there to pick up or drop off essays i come back with a plant. i'm eyeing a monstera right now.



nice community gardens for apartment-bound hippie folk:



trees just coming into bud. spring is coming! spring is coming! i love the way the seasons are so well defined on the west coast. it gives you a good sense of where you and where you're going.



it's also home to monstrous big houses (split up into two or three apartments, usually):


low temperatures and monstrous big cars (i see so many cars that are bigger than my loungeroom):


a fire station (staffed by chirpy clean-living types who are always playing ball out front or practising climbing ladders up the side of the building. they keep a water dish topped up for the local dogs):


some cool graf:


and lots of pretty murals:


great flocks of crows, who fly east to settle here each night, cackling loudly:

crosswords are fun, as is MLA

my nose piercing is, well, EEEEEEEEW.

that's enough about that. i have a massive stench like tea-tree oil.

teaching today was fun. we did MLA and "what's the point of using sources?" i think the students enjoyed it more than last week, which was a little quiet. they seem excited about their next essay too. i'm looking forward to reading these ones (actually! not like when i say in class "i look forward to reading your papers.") cos they're talking about their own experience. there should be some good variety.

i got this fabulous new toy - the little flip book of new york times crosswords. so much fun! there's about 40 monday crosswords, then 40 tuesdays and so forth, with the answers on the back. cos the NY times puzzles get harder as the week progresses, you know. i tried a wednesday once. it was very tricky. the mondays i'm doing now are certainly very challenging, but also very satisfying. i have a disadvantage doing american crosswords, cos i don't know geography, history, sport, politics or slang. but i muddle through. actually, there was the first australian clue i've ever seen today! the clue was "animal in the qantas ads". the answer was "koala".

sigh.

no more news on the phd front. i have a bottle of bubbly waiting for me for when i make a decision, any decision.

mushrooms don't send letters of acceptance either, though.

i'm worried about my mushrooms! they've stopped their growing spurt and are starting to look shrivelled! am adjusting their humidity. no more photos til they look healthier.

in other news - i finally got an acceptance letter! actually it was a letter and a bunch of forms and a shiny brochure, which says things like "choosing X university for graduate study is one of the most important and rewarding decisions you can make!"

it also says:

"If you don't live here, you probably already have a position impression of Canada - a beautiful country with a peaceful, progressive society that welcome all ethnicities, nationalities and creeds into its cultural fabric. Did you know that Canada is also a major world power in academic research and that Canadian-trained researchers and professionals are in top academic industry and public sector positions all over the world?"

and so on. brochure-wank aside, it's an exciting phd program. i'm running around getting a wide range of advice and information on the program, the institution and the people. will keep you up to date. still checking the mailbox obsessively. there's two letters yet to come.

also in the mail was this:


thankyou, itchy! it's very sweet.

i gave my picturebook lecture again today, which was good fun. i was much more confident this time, and gave a better performance. i also spent a lot of time clearly signposting what i was about to say and had just said, and i could see the student taking notes easily and following what was going on, so that's a good thing to remember for my next lecture, whenever that may be. the prof is going to let me mark some of the papers the students will write on picturebooks, using this lecture and a worksheet i put together, which will be very interesting. i want to see which bits they pick up on, and how they interpret my ideas.

oof, and i had a traumatic loss-of-nose-piercing yesterday. i didn't notice til it'd been out for good knows how many hours and the hole had partially closed up, so i had to spend the afternoon running round to different tattooists finding another stud (i met a very ordinary looking young woman with a large python concealed under her jumper) then about half an hour essentially re-piercing my nose, which was painful as hell. i was very tempted to just let it close up, but i've had the piercing for nine years, and am attached. now i have a dyke-a-tron spike in instead of that neat silver ball. i'll post a photo when my nostril is not so red.

that's about all my news. spring is coming, spring is coming! (shh about that snow a few weeks ago). the cherry blossoms said so:


(blossoms c/o miriam. ditto the radish card in the background there - it has radish seeds sewn in the front there, which i'm going to plant soon.)

on the inability of mushrooms to send letters of rejection

urg. i got not one but two rejection letters in one day, so i spent a couple of days wallowing in self-pity. now i'm back on the well-adjusted band wagon. at least narrowing my options helps the decision making process.

that's canadian money hiding my identifying marks, btw. the two-tone one like a euro is a toonie (two dollars), the gold one like an australian dollar is a loonie (one dollar). they have a polar bear and a loon (type of bird) on them, respectively. the next biggest is a quarter, with a moose on (25 cents). then there's a ten cent piece (small and silver) and a five cent piece with a beaver on (bigger and silver). sometimes they're called nickels and dimes. then there's the copper penny, with maple leaves.

my mushrooms allow me to feel successful and competent. see how they've grown!


so happy! i have set up a mushroom environment under my desk, which i monitor with a themometre and humidity-measurey-thingy. there's also a wet sock tucked in there, to keep the humidity up.


okay, it's weird and obsessive. but soon i'll be eating delicious homegrown shiitake mushrooms!

i have to go dress like a grown up now, and teach freshers how to make essay plans. ooo, maybe it's time for my patented "how to use the OED" lesson! what do you think?

what i'm reading

this pile is kind of cheating, cos it's mostly made up of things i just read and things i'm about to read, but it's still a snapshot of where my brain is at right now.

from the bottom, then.

the big red one is a MA history thesis about the history of X university (where i just finished). winifred and i are using the thesis to put together a radical history tour of campus. it's very exciting. the campus used to be a hotbed of politcal activism and excitement. lots of photos of mounties lined up, waiting to arrest people.

the next five books are ones i've just read.

first is night watch, by sarah waters. i disliked this book the first time i read it, but really enjoyed it this time round. i love waters' other work, particularly tipping the velvet and other classics.

then the nice stripey one: the slightly true story of cedar b. hartley, which i got randomly from the library. i enjoyed this a lot, and it made me all nostalgic for brunswick and circus. recommended.

then luna, one of the only young adult books about a transgender character. the writing is not so good, but the politics are very good. often a flaw of issue novels. i expect julie anne peters' work will improve as she goes, and i'll keep an eye out for her stuff. recommended for the queer teen in your life.

whales on stilts is silly and fun. middlemarch is *not* silly and fun, but it does have a gripping story, and it makes your brain work in different directions. i read this for a class when i was 18 and hated it thoroughly, but it makes much more sense as a 25 year old. now i'm old enough for george eliot, i wonder if i'm old enough for virginia woolf?

then is the longman anthology, which i'm going to try and finish reading paradise lost in. i love the writing of PL, but you do have to concentrate very hard to follow it.

i'm part way through the worst witch, comfort reading, very good, and ex libris, also comfort reading. it's a book about liking reading. well written and entertaining. i read it all in one night last week, and now i'm going again more slowly, to pick up any details i may have missed. (i am my mother's daughter.)

haven't started the long walk yet. it's next on the list. i want to read it cos it's by the author of the phryne fisher books - let's see what her young adult lit is like.

and then on top of the pile there's we are everywhere, a collection of stories about anti-capitalist actions around the world. australia gets a story about busting refugees out of woomera. the book is kind of inspiring, cos it's all about communities working together for positive change, but also kind of depressing, cos it's about people being tear gassed and arrested and assassinated, and how big corporations and the WTO are fucking people over. so i'm reading that in chunks, and trying to be inspired to do some sort of activisty stuff instead of spending my time playing online scrabble.

though scrabble *is* kickarse fun.

this blog encourages other readers to send me a photo and/or description of their current book/s for posting.

extra! extra! read all about it!

bbb (right), with Our Julia!

you are, like, totally famous, bbb.

we must grow slowly like the mushrooms

the mushies are at a crucial stage where i must cut the bag and give them room to grow.
i have also constructed a "loose poly tent" (ie. a large clear placcy bag propped over the top) to preserve moisture. it's hard work being a mushie-mama.

i have decided that sardines is the best game ever. bethan had her 31st party last night - we played kids' games all day. sardines was best after dark, everyone running round quietly peering under beds and behind trees. my favourite hiding story:

J hid in a cupboard in the dark and waited. miriam opened the cupboard, looked, looked again, reached out and prodded him in the belly. H found them both hiding and crept in too. i opened the cupboard, looked and saw white faces in the gloom and jumped in fright, then crept in with them. C opened the door, squealed in terror and leapt a foot in the air. we all squeezed in together and giggled and giggled, waiting for the others to follow the noise.


still plodding through the marking and waiting for offers. i'm finding it very difficult to concentrate on anything in this waiting period. grot has instructed me on the importance of coping with change and returning emails. i've been sending postcards and letters again. if you don't receive anything in a couple of weeks let me know you're in need of a little maillove. paper and pen is more reliable than the damn connection through the ceiling.

i've been reading lots of nice things lately. maybe i'll post about that next. any other requests? (itchy, "my hood 2" is in progress, just collecting material.)

lecturing

i *like* public speaking. i do enjoy having an audience.

i think the lecture went well. the other TAs and the prof enjoyed it, anyway. don't know about the students. a few of them asked good questions at the end, which was neat. i still think i pitch these things too high. first years need so much direction in their lectures. i was watching them trying to take notes and getting all confused. i'm giving the picturebook lecture again in a couple of weeks, so i can try refining that according to what i learnt this time and see how that goes.

one of the best things about these big lecture theatres, though, is that you get to wear one of those mikes that clips onto the front of your shirt, with a battery pack on the waist. it's totally cool. and when i played the vid of the speech i got to do that fiddling round with knobs and switches and the remote control thing. and then it played on the big screen all loud! the prof said he even got a bit teary watching it, cos i'd explained all the context. i shared australian politics!

love
epponnea-rae's inner show off

ps. thankyou again for your input, stalwart commentors. it was very helpful in informing what i had to say about the speech.

food

last weekend was a big food weekend. miriam and i went to the local farmers' market and got some organic locally grown fruit and veg, and we also went to a seed sale at the van dusen gardens. my favourite favourite thing i got at the farmers' market was a brown paper bag of mixed exotic mushrooms. i luuuurve mushrooms, and these were all weird looking and delicious.


i made mushroom risotto, dealing with the slow process the usual way:


it was a world of delicious, but i won't show you a photo, because mushroom risotto always *looks* like grey rice even when it tastes like fabulousness.

at the seed fair i bought some basil seeds (my basil plant died in the cold, but i'm going to try again - this time i'll wait til it's warm) and some lemon-scented gum seeds, which apparently you can grow in a pot - very exciting! i miss gumtrees so much. will keep you up to date with that as i go.

the more immediately exciting thing i got was this:


it's a mushroom bag! if i look after it carefully and follow the insanely complicated instructions on the handout it will sprout shiitaki mushrooms all over, and can harvest them often and eat like a king! the first pic is what it looked like on sunday. here's what it looks like now:


the white blobby things are mushroom buttons! i can't wait!

i also realised that my famous blue lettuces (torn at the shoulder), haven't made an appearance for a while. they're still good! they survived the hard weather fine. they haven't got much bigger, though, which i think is due to overcrowding (and hard weather). see how squished?


so today i did a radical thinning, which i'm also calling a harvesting. hopefully this'll let the strongest plants grow nice and big. if they don't i'll pull them all out and start a new crop with the leftover seed. cos i'm cold and practical like that.


here's is all the lettuces i harvested:


i'm going to make a nice salad to go with my left over risotto. mmm-mmm.

thankyou for your help!

i am fabulous

the end

photo by miriam's housemate

lecture going okay, need to keep plugging on. i keep getting distracted by the _bringing them home_ report and vids of ppl turning their back on nelson.

less research, more writing.

(what if someone sends me an offer today?)

seeking help with guest lecture

Uh, so I'm giving a lecture on the Sorry Speech on Tuesday. I put this fabulous idea to the prof about a week ago, and he said yesterday that this Tuesday seemed to be the way to go. Short notice, but Very Exciting! I mean, what's the point of TAing for a class on rhetoric if you don't get to explore its practical uses, no?

I mainly want to talk about why the speech was so effective, how Rudd became a rhetorician all of a sudden (what happened to "Just Don't Fuck it Up"?) and why the speech evoked such a response. I plan to play a clip of the speech and also explain the context, you know, what the Stolen Generations are, the debarcle with Howard, etc. I also hope to draw some parallels with Canada (Residential Schools and so forth) , to point out that this is not just an issue of Far Away.

If anybody has any thoughts on the topic please please comment. I"m particularly interested in public response stuff, cos I only know about that second hand, and anybody's ideas on why the speech was so effective (or not effective- does anybody think it wasn't very good?)

brunnie st.

also, check this out. it is brunswick st and it makes me happy.

skunk!

look what i saw running round a local street late the other night! no, no, look closer. see to the left of the middle? that white stripe? that's the back of the skunk. near the base of the lamppost. yes, that's it! (it's hard to take a photo of something that's running away from you on a dark street. you can click on the photo and make it bigger if you want, but i don't know if it'd help.)

the skunk was very big and broad like a plank, and rocked from side to side when it walked. it looked something like this, except bigger and flatter:


(image stolen from the interwebs)

i have no other news. i'm not feeling crash hot, so plan to spend today vaguing around, maybe going for a swim to stretch out some muscles, and maybe heading to a cafe to do some marking. or i might go back to bed and read _night watch_.

it is sunny here again - FABULOUS - and top of 11.
spring is on the way!
there are tiny little pink and green buds on the trees.

skiing and tea parties

all right! good connection! now i can explain the mysterious self-portraits.

so, the weekend was my girlfriend's b'day - woot! we dragged out celebrations over three days - my kind of birthday. saturday miriam and i went skiing, up at cypress bowl, which is on the north shore, about an hour's drive from vancouver proper (on the way to whistler). here's a view of the downhill slopes across the way:


it was really foggy when we got up there, but then it magically cleared up and was sunny and beautiful all afternoon. the snow was nice, not too icy, and there were lots of gentle slopes to practise my snow-ploughs on. my skiing ability wasn't too bad, even though i haven't been in years. i only had one fall - a really spectacular face plant. here's me holding ice to my mouth so i didn't get a fat lip:


it was a little more builtup than australian cross-country mountains, but not as much as i had expected. some of the paths had big light poles, and there was a nice red lodge in the middle:


there was a whiskey jack and a stellar jay hopping round the trees near the lodge where we sat and had lunch. you can just see (bum of) the bright blue bird in the top right hand of this shot:


all in all, a very satisfactory day.

then on sunday miriam held a tea party in the park. this was the spread (note welsh tea cakes, goat's cheese brie and chocolate with cornflakes):


and here's my little old lady outfit:

it was very exciting. i love dress ups!

then we went for dinner at the naam with winifred and others, and then we had breakfast at theresas on the drive. ah . . .


and that was my big weekend. now i am answering lots of student emails (pending handing in their revised essays), going to lots of union meetings and FREAKING OUT about phd offers. why has nobody emailed me? why don't they want me at their uni?

alternatively, what if they do give me an offer? where will i go? what should i do?

checking the mailbox is a thing of stress now, so i make sure to do it several times a day.