| books |
[11 Feb 2009|01:55pm] |
All right, friends, I want your help here. My undergrad degree is in math, and although UChicago has a significant "Common Core" in which all undergrads participate, I have not since high school taken a course that would leave me with any kind of broad history textbook. (The Great Books philosophy tends not to emphasize survey textbooks so much as lots and lots of related literature.) So, which books did you use as undergrads when you began studying late antiquity, the middle ages, and the Renaissance or the early modern world? Obviously, given my primary research interests, I'm especially (but definitely not exclusively) interested in sources on England, Ireland, and Scandinavia. They don't all have to be broad surveys, but I'd be curious to hear about those, too.
Thanks, guys! Hopefully, this will be kind of a fun thing to think about for some of you.
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| Dully Awarded |
[07 Feb 2009|12:24pm] |
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My parents had their 30th anniversary recently, and I gave them tickets to a concert that I knew would be right up their alley: violin and piano playing Bach, Debussy, and Franck. This concert took place a week ago Thursday (on 29 January), and when they wrote to tell me that they'd really enjoyed it, my mom also related to me their exchange with a reporter from the University of Arizona student paper. This girl leaned forward during intermission to ask them if they were enjoying the concert, and in the ensuing conversation, she divulged the fact that she was a creative writing student. My mother asked her if she had any musical experience to help her evaluate the performance, and the reporter confidently replied, "Oh, yes, I played the trumpet in middle school." Ummmm.....
Well. It turns out that our skepticism was more than justified. The review is amazing, far exceeding our wildest dreams. Not only does the girl clearly have no idea what was going on in the music, but her skills in creative writing are...remarkable. Keep in mind that she had almost a full week to write this for the 4 February issue of The Wildcat.
I note that she did not include any quotations from my parents. Perhaps she noticed when my dad had to turn away after her trumpet revelation.
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| Brought to you by an astonishing lack of creativity |
[19 Jun 2008|11:45am] |
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music |
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refrigerator hum |
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Pilfered from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) vislius and pigsnicket.
Leave a comment and I will:
a) tell you why I friended you,
b) associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc.,
c) tell you something I like about you,
d) tell you a memory I have of you,
e) ask something I've always wanted to know about you,
f) tell you my favorite user pic of yours,
g) in return, you must post this in your LJ.
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| Yet another reason I like Japanese curry |
[06 Oct 2007|03:46pm] |
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 gleeful |
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music |
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KSL |
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Actually, several more reasons. The fundamental reason is that it means I have to go down to Little Tokyo to buy the curry. To do so, I have to go through Kensington Market, allowing myself to purchase real refried beans and corn tortillas. (FYI, Canada, tortillas are not the chips/crisps Tostitos makes, but the soft things with which you wrap up burritos and tacos and other delicious things.)
I also get to spend a few minutes picking out fruits and vegetables on my way home. The only thing more satisfying than picking out tomatoes in a fruit stall--and it's a LOT more satisfying--is picking through them in a garden, where they smell better than anything else in the world. (One downside of moving from California to Arizona is that tomatoes will no longer thrive in your garden. One upside is missing the Loma Prieta earthquake.)
Inside Little Tokyo, I always have to check out the chocolate-filled candy scene. There are two routes you can go here: ones shaped like our familiar Goldfish and other ones shaped like koalas. Today, I bought the koala ones, which incidentally sell in benefit of the Australian Koala Foundation, which warms my heart for its spirit of Pacific, well, pacificity and cooperation. AND TODAY, my koala-shaped goodies were very special: there are at least 21 different koala characters on them--I know because I tipped them out on a placemate and counted them. And there were one or two other ones I ate before I realized how many different designs there were going to be. My favorites include the baseball player in the top left and the cow (#3 from the left in the bottom row). Maybe also the one in a reindeer costume (second from right in the top row) and the one who looks like he's on his way to a cricket match (same spot in the bottom row).
And then, just for good measure, as I was walking home, I got caught in a storm that would almost qualify as an honest-to-goodness desert monsoon. Lightning very close all around, completely soaked in spite of an umbrella, torrents of water pouring down the streets, and over in five minutes. My clothes are still wet, not to mention my shoes and socks! But the sun is out again, and I don't think I've ever felt more at home in Toronto than I did as I ran home, grinning madly, through that rainstorm.
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| Learn our language, and you too could have an abusive family life! |
[26 Sep 2007|06:21pm] |
Inspired by eleanoreight and her Danish class, I am posting a page from one of my Hungarian books. It is one of the strangest things I have ever seen in a language textbook.
[Apologies for the slightly cumbersome formatting here, but it wouldn't let me post this as an image through flickr. So, will do it like any normal URL.]
Hungarian primer
Basically, the story is that the whole neighborhood talks about this girl's husband and says that he doesn't work and is really mean and beats her and stuff. (Picture #1) But the true story is that he's a very nice guy. He drinks a little "in his sorrows," but he's not a bad guy. His wife, on the other hand, now she's dirty, lazy, and, well, she likes the men. (Picture #2) Her parents and all the neighbors defend the wife. They're very rude to the man, and there's one big quarrel in the house all day long. (Picture #3)
Aside from the fact that you can totally see the girl's breasts, the whole story seems a bit out of place in an introductory primer.
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| A bookshelf! |
[13 Sep 2007|10:34am] |
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music |
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Battlefield Band, Bad Moon Rising |
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Two of them in fact. I have claimed my bookshelves and brought them home! Just in time for another trip to Ikea...but the point is that I finally clean out that corner of my room because I will have somewhere to put everything I sort through and decide to keep! Many thanks to the HofC for lovingly housing my bookcases until I could retrieve them!
I have lots of things I should be doing today but nowhere that I need to be until after 3PM. Guess what I'm doing with my morning?
E the Inordinately Exultant
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| Moving crew! |
[31 Aug 2007|09:38pm] |
So, anybody who's looking for a fun and socially useful activity tomorrow (and some baked goods of some sort, I'm told) should consider congregating to move morfudd and one of her new apartment-mates in. The items need to move between pittenweem's generously loaned basement and an apartment near College and Beverley. Anyone with an automotive vehicle is especially invited to participate!
Join the happy new tenants at 11:45 on Yarmouth Rd.
We haven't had the same kinds of opportunities to move boxes of books as we had last summer, so you'd better snatch your chance while you can!
E the Greatly Grateful
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| Sometimes there are reasons.... |
[20 Aug 2007|10:39am] |
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 scarred |
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In this case, reasons why wild animals should not be your pets. It's like that guy, Timothy Treadwell, who cleverly managed to record his girlfriend and himself getting mauled and eaten by bears.
Yuck.
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| ***Toronto roommate request*** |
[16 Aug 2007|12:34pm] |
Does anyone need another roommate or know of someone who might? I have a friend arriving for her MA at the Centre, and she's still looking for somewhere to live. Feel free to pass along any information to me.
Many thanks!
E the Patiently Palaeographizing
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| On a roll |
[15 Aug 2007|12:10pm] |
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mood |
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 accomplished |
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music |
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Brahms |
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I am *so* going to finish my hundreds of pages of reading before class!
E the Excellently Reading-and-Noting
(Basically, just E the Excellent. Let's face it.)
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| Lord, I can't go a-home this a-way |
[30 Jun 2007|10:55pm] |
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mood |
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 empty |
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music |
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echoes of the desert |
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It's back under 95 degrees, and the moon is bright enough to see colours and all the ridges on the mountains. It means that I can only see maybe a hundred stars. There's a bug buzzing at the wall because the paint is pale enough that it's practically glowing in the moonlight, and that whole side of the sky looks almost like morning. I used to run by moonlight in 9th grade because I had a class before school and couldn't be at the morning cross country workouts, where we did the worst of our mileage, saving the short, easy runs for the afternoons. In the city, with all the streetlamps making it always dark out, I forget how hard it is to sleep when the moon is full.
This evening, I photographed a baby rabbit, which is bad because I had to chase one of its parents away from the plants in our garden, but the baby and I spent almost ten minutes nose to nose while I kept telling him it wasn't a good idea to let people get so close. He didn't seem to mind but just kept wrinkling his nose like he couldn't figure out why I didn't smell like cottontail.
I was even more worried when the deer I met on the road wouldn't run away, even when I honked at her. I don't know that she was a female except that I'm so used to seeing them with young that I tend to think of deer in the abstract as being more female than male. There's nothing like meeting them out on a trail and finding yourselves mutually charmed. You just stare at each other from across the way until one of the young ones twitches or you remember your dentist appointment, and everyone scatters.
I still take a flashlight outside with me to soak in the moon because I wouldn't like to pass through the shadows at the same time as the snake who left its skin in the bushes next to the patio, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
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| What do Edith Piaf and the desert have in common? |
[20 Jun 2007|10:04pm] |
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mood |
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 Dry heat is the way to go. |
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music |
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I'm not the person loading the dishwasher :) |
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Admittedly, the "photos" page of the meatsafety.org website is still under construction, but I take great delight from knowing that the American Meat Institute has planned a photos page on their website telling you when it is and isn't safe to eat your old, brown ground beef. I guess it makes sense if it's going to be like those creepy posters in dentists' offices that compare healthy gums to unhealthy ones, but it doesn't have quite the same charm as the idea of a photos page on the website for, say, a favorite band or a new tourist attraction. I also take, well, perhaps astonishment rather than delight at the knowledge that my dad comes to me when he isn't sure if the meat is still okay. I mean, I know they used to call me "Baby Carnivore," and yes, I can help him navigate a computer, but I've not exactly been known for my hamburger cooking over the last few years.
Oh, and the answer is my dad. I am enjoying stealing his French music to accompany me as I clean out my room--when I'm not staring out the window at my mountains and wondering when the monsoons will come.
E the Warblingly Warmed
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| Gah! |
[03 May 2007|06:29pm] |
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mood |
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creeped out |
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Thank you, BBC News, for blowing my mind in a totally disturbing way.
[EDIT] It gets better! As if it could.
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| Attention Medievalists and PIMS Users: |
[17 Apr 2007|10:15am] |
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jubilant |
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librarian shop talk |
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Remember all of those boxes stacked up as you went into PIMS a few weeks ago? Those were books waiting to be digitized, and I've just found out that they're now up on the web (and back on their library shelves).
So, if you see a bright pink slip of paper in your book, you can search for it
here.
You can download pdf's of much of the stuff, which is really nice. They're even spotlighting _Flatland_, which makes the mathematics major in me deeply happy. AND they have the Irish annals I need for my paper on bardic poetry!
E the Assiduously Annal-ing (I actually found my guy, killing his little tax collector nemesis!)
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[08 Apr 2007|07:16pm] |
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cheerful |
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KUAT--something wicked cool with a cello soloist |
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What is cooler than the Easter Bunny? Biker Bunnies!
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| On the wings of gentle zephyrs.... |
[27 Nov 2006|02:49pm] |
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mood |
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cheerful |
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music |
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Alice in Wonderland, The Unbirthday Song |
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Okay, I had to post this because when I was little, I sang in a children's choir that was the chorus for a performance of the Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor. (I still have the little paper flowers I had to wave at the end.) Also because we had a book at home with new and wondrous lyrics to famous pieces of music, and the one for the Polovtsian Dances went like this:
"Borodin was a chemist with winning ways;
He wrote with the aid of gin
On Sundays and Saturdays."
And now, stolen shamelessly but gratefully from vislius:
 | If I were a Dead Russian Composer, I would be Aleksandr Borodin. Son of a 19th Century Russian prince and a...non-royal...mother, I went to medical school and became a biochemist. Most people, however, (and probably my twenty cats as well) agree that they'd trade all of my scientific discoveries for another set of "Polovetsian Dances." Who would you be? Dead Russian Composer Personality Test |
E the Tunefully Trained
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