It's spring!

CC and me went on a bike ride all over Toronto. First we fixed our bikes at Bike Pirates. Then we biked way out on this peninsula/island in Lake Ontario.


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We biked to the lighthouse (point B on map). It was kind of cold and far away from the city. I was tired. CC wants me to write: I was tickled pink.



On the peninsula were all these colored bricks and rusty metal scraps (CC: rusty scrap metal). The sun was setting.


(Photo by CC)

We took the subway home, which I was very glad about. (Subway ride between points C and A on map.) It was sort of spring. Spring: no snow, fix bike, bike ride! Sort of not spring: wearing 2 pairs of pants and mittens, freezing cold, riding on subway with bike.

CC sadly only had one pair of pants and was cold. Then I got home and realized I'd had a spare pair (a third pair, just in case) in my backpack the whole time. Woops.

Like Art

I stumbled on this picture a few months ago while looking for illustrations for various pro-OBAMA posts on this blog.

You can see why it didn't work as a simple pro-OBAMA picture, yes? But I can't bear to just delete it. It fascinates and scares me. What do you think?

Congrats to CBAM!

Congrats to CBAM for getting ahold of a baby.

Dangers of undergrad

My friend who is also teaching a senior seminar for undergrads reports that with 4 weeks to go in the semester, in a class of 7, already 3 grandparents have passed away. 2 grandfathers passed away in the same week.

In my senior seminar of 15, only one grandparent has been lost so far. But we have had also had 1 trip to the emergency room for an infected pierced ear lobe, 2 chronic flus, and 1 person who had to ship to the west coast to take part in military exercises.

Ancient rivalry

CC requested that I post this story.

Background: I am here doing this postdoc at big university in the True North. I went to school at the state U. of you-guys-know-where. Down the road from state U. is a super fancy private U--so fancy that the professors are knights. Right now, I'm finishing my postdoc year. They are interviewing postdoc candidates for this position next year. There are 3 of us postdocs. We have to meet with each of the postdoc candidates. Our boss told us to try to sell them on the idea of taking this postdoc, so that's generally what we try to do in the meetings. We are not in any way involved with the selection process. We tell the candidates this at the start of every meeting.

The other day, a postdoc candidate from big fancy U. (hereafter b.f.U.) came through here. We had our meeting. Like I said, there are 3 of us postdocs. Two are chicks and one is a dude. My impression was that the guy from b.f.U. generally only made eye contact with the dude (my fellow postdoc and comrade), and wouldn't look at the two chick postdocs. He also wouldn't let me finish several sentences and contradicted a few things that I said. We also had this exchange:

Me: You are from (town near state U. where I went), right? I used to live there!
B.f.U. dude: Oh, right--?
Me: I went to state U., but I lived in [town where b.f.U. is]--I really liked it.
Me thinking: now I can reminisce about me and CC's lovely house in that town and our garden. Happy feelings.
B.f.U. dude: Oh, right, you went to state U.
Me: Yeah, but I lived in...
B.f.U. dude: Right, state U., they have a really good German languages program. And a really good philosophy program, I heard.

Note: I did not get my degree in either of those departments.

OK, so I have always hated the idea of b.f.U. and those fancy private schools, and loved my public school, and also secretly feared that they were all much better than us. So I am a little biased at the outset. But I found the guy obnoxious.

A few days later...

Boss of all of us post docs: Hey YSA and [other chick post doc], what did you think of the guy from b.f.U.?
Me and other post doc: Oh, we did not go to his job talk.
Boss: I know that you did not go to his job talk because I was there. I am asking you what you thought of him.
Other postdoc: [silence.]
Me: Uh.
Boss: ?
Me: Uh, he seemed nice.
Boss: That's not very enthusiastic!
Me: [trying to do the right thing] Well, you know, I went to state u. and he goes to b.f.U., we have an ancient rivalry.

And, here is what I am like. I am like: Who the fuck would ever have thought that I, I, a grad of state U., would someday be in a position to utter a disparaging word in the context of a big job search about a b.f.U. student??? Who would have fucking thought, eh???

Take that, you arrogant motherfuckers!!!

(OK, and also, I feel bad, sort of. But sort of glad. You know how that is?)

Wanting to make nice food present

CC is coming to visit tomorrow. I am so happy about this! I want to make her a nice food present that she can eat when she arrives. But I cannot think of anything to make. It would have to be a dessert (she is arriving at night).

Problem: CC dessert favorites and YSA dessert favorites are opposite. CC likes what to me are fancy French-esque desserts. Like with fancy cheese in them. I like giant chocolate cake slices and apple pie.

Other problem: I know I should make CC's favorite dessert. But I don't want to eat CC's favorite dessert.

Is that wrong to want?

(Also, I don't know how to make CC's favorite dessert.)

Blog made prettier and maybe to change name

I made this blog look prettier. I am going to change its name to something less ahistorical.

Yeah!

Women mentoring other women. That's what the Weimar Republic (in Germany) was really all about.

Sheesh!:

a) Although law on prostitution of 1927 figures large in muskrat-like dissertation, just getting around to reading parliamentary debate on said law now.

b) These feminist ladies in parliament who were all about rescuing girls from prostitution and bringing them back to morality and order--yes, mentoring them (well, sort of--by "mentoring" here I mean locking them up in Catholic reformatories)--in parliament, these ladies were all like, "We are so psyched about this new prostitution law. And once we get our Protective Custody Law* we can really save lots of girls from prostitution! Yeah!"

*Protective Custody Law (weirdly not passed until Nazis took power despite support from ladies like those mentioned above, who were not Nazis by the way) basically allowed police and welfare workers to lock up whoever they wanted, sans any kind of judicial proceeding, indefinitely.

Woah ladies, now that's some mentoring! Shit, if I'd known about this I totally could have gotten that grant.

New blog?

Dear reader(s), I am thinking about starting a new blog. What do you think? It could be about the usual stuff and also about the first year of being an assist. prof. I think I work pretty good with the year-in-the-life format.