Point of Reference

Happy birthday to Netwoman! Anyone interested in the intersection of technology and gender should check out her blog.

Taken from Netwoman (and a few LJers), my results from Twenty Questions to a Better Personality:

( Click here to gain unpredictably and only sometimes accurate info about me. )

I was up at 7:30 this morning to say good-bye to semiotic_trader before he left for work. It's a little bit earlier than I'd normally choose to get up, and quite a bit earlier than I'd normally get up after staying up until 2am editing a survey, but hey, I've got four or five hours on the train to catch up on sleep. Work? What's that?

The weekend was relatively uneventful. Mostly we wandered the city and saw lots of pretty buildings and I once again chickened out on using what's left of my high school French and let semiotic_trader and a_just_society handle all public dealings. Not that I would have gotten to use much French anyway--at the first sound of my distinctly Anglophone accent, all good Francophone Montréalers would have immediately switched to English to avoid hearing the damage I was about to inflict on their language.

Last night we ventured out for the Queer Comics Show. Scott Thompson as host was disappointing, but the acts were mostly entertaining. Sociologist that I am, I couldn't help but notice the "Queer" crowd consistently almost entirely of gay men, with only a light sprinkling of lesbians. This seems to be a reoccuring theme anytime I go to any public gay space or event. I wonder if this social invisibility coincides with a certain amount of political invisibility?

I received this from an American-in-Canada friend and sent it off to my parents in the States, only to discover that it's made the rounds (and the news) a few times there. Interestingly, I hadn't heard anything about it here. I'm not sure if it didn't make it across the border, or if I simply don't watch the right news channels. Anyway, for anyone as disconnected as me, here's the "This Land" video.

Having read Dune and assorted survivalist handbooks growing up, this shouldn't come as a complete shock to me, but still...I think I'd have to be awfully hungry.

Rehydrating food with urine.

Another 5am fire alarm.

One thing I won't miss here.

We finally had our much-anticipated Prisoner party last night. Measured in terms of actual viewing time, it wasn't terribly successful--we only managed to get through one episode in the five hours we were there--but the lack of viewing was mostly due to our reluctance to interrupt our conversation to watch television, so on the whole I'd say the night went pretty well. And the remaining episodes give us an excuse to hold Prisoner Party II (and III and IV and V).

I've begun to realize just how freaky Toronto can be at 3am. As I was walking home last night, I had not one, but two men attempt to pick me up. The first followed me for several blocks, yelling to attract my attention (and failing miserably because I had no idea he was talking to me since I didn't know him) before he finally caught me. He at least went away quietly when I said I wasn't interested. The second one was much more persistent, and spent a good ten minutes walking along Bloor with me, trying to convince me that he was a really good guy and that I ought to give him a chance. This sort of thing is getting to be a recurring theme when I'm out late at night alone. Not scary--usually--but rather irritating when they won't take no for an answer. And something that never happened before this year.

Tonight's tutorial was about sex and gender, so I raised the issue of the textbook cover, seen here on the far left. Personally, I think of Trinity from The Matrix when I see it, but I've been told that there are female academics who find it overtly sexual and inappropriate for a textbook. Interestingly, when I asked my students what they thought of it, none of them described it as sexual (although The Matrix did come up). The prevailing attitude seemed to be that the woman was strong, muscular, and had absolutely nothing to do with sociology. I wonder if this reflects a generation gap in the perception of portrayals of women and/or sex, or if it's a question of false consciousness. It's possible that older female academics, who had to fight harder for what they have, are more sensitive to images that they think might undermine women professionally. It's also possible that there are so many highly sexualized images out there that the bar has been raised for younger people as to what constitutes a sexual image.

Three more apartments viewed and none that meet our criteria. The one we saw yesterday was close to the department and newly renovated, but it was dark, and the space allocation was poorly done--little, tiny living room/dining room/kitchen (all in one), and a giant bedroom. I think it was the tile floor that really turned me off--the whole common area felt like a combination front hall/kitchen, and that's not really a space I want to live in.

The first one we saw today was absolutely gorgeous--two floors, three bathrooms, beautiful hardwood floors, big deck--but it was about $400 more than I'm paying now, which is already too much for R. We were trying to figure out if we could bring in a third roommate somehow--perhaps by turning the dining room into a third bedroom through strategic use of curtains--but we regretfully concluded that we'd have trouble finding someone willing to live in that space, even if we cut their rent. It would be a lovely space for two young professionals with a child.

The second one we saw today had a nice feel, but there were a multitude of details we didn't care for: too dark, a little compact, some loose wires, and the balcony was only accessible through one of the bedrooms. I'm not quite sure whose brilliant idea that last was. I have visions of knocking on R's door at 8:00 in the morning, newspaper and tea in hand, asking if she'd mind if I just slipped outside and oh, yes, your husband's in town, I'd forgotten about that, well, don't mind me, you two go back to what you were doing.

We've got time yet, so we can afford to be picky. But I'd really like it to be settled before I have to give notice at my current place.

R and I went to look at an apartment today. The place sounded great in the ad--ten minutes from the department on a tree-lined street with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, six appliances including washer, dryer, and dishwasher, and a gas fireplace, all within budget. And it was nice. But it was small. Very small. As in, I'd have to sell all my furniture and buy two itsy-bitsy chairs to perch on to watch television. Plus, we'd have to pay our own hydro, which is fine except the windows are so small that the lights would have to be on all the time. Between the cut in rent and selling off my furniture, my disposable income would increase fairly dramatically, but I wouldn't be able to buy anything because I'd have nowhere to put it. So I think we're going to keep looking.

It looks like I might get a chance to go apartment hunting in Boston, too, which ought to make for an interesting comparison. A friend of mine is going to Harvard for a year to write his dissertation and needs a place to live, so we thought it might be fun to traipse about city for a weekend and play tourist while he looks.

Hmm, I'm falling behind on updating again. Although I'm still doing better than I ever did with a paper journal, where I averaged about one entry per month. When I remembered at all.

semiotic_trader and a_just_society were in town last weekend for a friend's wedding, and stayed over at my place. It was nice seeing them. We went out for brunch on Saturday, which also happened to be MacGuy's birthday. The original plan was to do a birthday brunch (and in fact, Saturday was chosen as the day at MacGuy's request), but he then decided at the last minute that he was going running, so we ended up with three for brunch. The place we went to was okay, but not great (scrambled eggs should not be brown). The only reason I'd ever consider going back is that it's a two minute walk from my place, and since I'm moving at the end of the summer, that probably means that I'll never be back there for brunch.

The four of us snuck out to see Harry Potter in between the wedding and reception. That was quite enjoyable, although it felt a bit short and a couple of things were left out that I would have liked to see included. Later in the day, MacGuy and I wandered down to the Distillery District with a couple of friends, and then back to the Four Seasons for supper. Decent food, excellent service, and reasonably affordable as long as you're not drinking. Well, sort of. Did I mention the excellent service?

I was watching a show last night on Canadian speech patterns. There was the usual hoose/aboot stuff, of course, and the role of "eh" in Canadian speech. More interesting were the differences between Canadian and American intonation, and the great vowel shift (box to bax) that's been taking place in virtually all major northern American cities over the past fifty years without touching a single Canadian border city. Who knew that speech patterns respected political borders? It was also interesting learning of certain common words and phrases that are strictly Canadian. Toque and serviette I already knew, but bird course, eavestrough, and "had the biscuit" were all surprises.

( Mandatory commentary on upcoming Canadian federal election. )

( Fangirl commentary. )