Point of Reference

Essay marking proceeds apace, with a few good papers, and a lot of papers demonstrating that students don't know how to properly cite material. The maximum length for the papers was 20 pages, double spaced, and I think that's probably too much for an undergraduate course. My guess is that only one-third of the students actually hit 20 pages, and many of those are stuffed with extraneous material. However, since I'm but the lowly TA, I don't get to determine the assignment parameters, and so it doesn't really matter what I think.

Much more exciting for me is the chicken we bought yesterday to roast today. I've been reading through roasting recipes in between essay marking, and now I want at least three or four chickens to roast so that I can experiment with different methods. First, there's the question of whether brining really makes the difference in moistness that some people claim. (Since I haven't started it yet, I won't be doing that this time.) Then there's the heat question--how high do I go? Start really high for really crispy skin, and then lower it down to 350 or so to cook the meat? Cover the breast at the beginning so that the meat stays moist, and then brown the skin at the end? Cook the chicken entirely on low heat for a very long time, as this recipe suggests? (Look at those reviews; there must be something to it!) And of course, there are seasonings to consider. Rosemary, garlic, onion, and lemon is popular. (Possibly with a bit of thyme or sage.) But then there's the spice mix in that other recipe. And probably many more possibilities if I were to look around. Oh, the choices!

Roast chicken! Chicken soup! Chicken fajitas! Chicken enchiladas! Chicken salad sandwiches! Yum, yum, yum.

I was up at my parents' on Saturday for my father's surprise birthday party. Fun times were had by all--especially by me during poker (if only we played for real money!)--but I seem to have managed to pick up my father's cold while I was there. I slept very fitfully last night, and today I'm feeling very lazy. All I really want to do is eat chicken noodle soup. Instead, I'm going to be marking essays and coding blogs and reading de Beauvoir. Oh, and I may go out later to stock up on cold meds and soup.

Creamy centres marred by small bits of plastic: http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/corpaffr/recarapp/2006/20060301e.shtml

After the last couple of weekends of nothing but work, this one is turning into a dizzying whirl of socialization. Last night, B and I drove out to Whitby to visit a couple of friends of mine from undergrad. It was our first visit since their wedding six months earlier, and my first opportunity to hear about their honeymoon and see their house of two years. Yeah, I apparently need to keep in better touch with them.

This afternoon, realizing that we still had time left on the Autoshare car and B still had gift certificates left from Christmas, we went shopping. Among our purchases: a dictionary, so that we can finally stop arguing over what constitutes a word in Scrabble. We could look it up online, of course, but it's dangerous for us to turn on a computer in the middle of a Scrabble game. We might never pry ourselves away.

Tomorrow evening it looks like we'll be joining some friends to watch the Oscars, which ought to be fun. I had wanted to see all of the Best Picture nominees so that I could make an informed guess about which might win, but I think the only one I ended up seeing in time was Brokeback Mountain. Maybe next year.

Inspired by a recent post in cooking, I made some biscotti this afternoon. Four kinds, in total: lemon, vanilla almond, cinnamon, and double chocolate cherry. It turned out better than I expected, flavourwise, considering that I mixed the dough and then added the flavouring agents after separating it. Cookingwise, I toasted it a little too long on the second baking, but otherwise it turned out well. I especially like the double chocolate cherry.

In tangential news, B is going to be organizing a session at a conference in Urbania, Italy in July. Schedule permitting, I may go with him. Yay, Italy!

It's reading week at the university, and so B and I decided to take yesterday off and wander the city. We had originally planned to go out for lunch, and then stroll along Queen St., coffee in hand, and do a bit of window shopping. The sudden rise of a brisk wind as we left the restaurant changed our minds and drove us underground into PATH. As we walked under the heart of Toronto's financial district, we came upon an interesting little set-up: two large televisions, positioned back-to-back, with mini-bleachers on either side. A crowd was gathered around, mostly in suits and ties (and yes, mostly men), watching the Canadian-Russian Olympic men's hockey game, cheering and groaning in unison. Mostly groaning, of course, since Canada lost. (Interestingly, I didn't see any signs advertising who had set up the televisions...they were just there.)

I allowed myself to become a pawn of advertising and bought one of the ePac backpacks that have been advertised everywhere in Toronto for the last month or so. And yes, I must admit, I love it. My love does not arise from the quality of the construction or design (both are decent enough, but not substantially better than my last backpack). It's not the padded straps, or the separate iPod carrying case, or even the clever bottom-zip pouch that lets you pull things out when it's stowed under the seat in front of you on the airplane. No, my love arises solely from the fact that this bag possesses a separate laptop pouch that actually holds my 15.4" widescreen laptop. No muss, no fuss, just a simple slot to slip my laptop into. It's lovely. And it will be even lovelier the next time I go through airport security, and am able to leave the security area with my laptop in my bag, rather than hobbling along (my shoes having also been x-rayed) with laptop in one hand and backpack in the other because I couldn't put the two back together without taking everything else out and you can't use the search tables to repack.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, grapefruit and avocado is a surprisingly tasty combination. (We skipped the lobster...)

What is it about late nights that lets me focus?

I meant to do work today. I wanted to do work today. Now admittedly, I got a late start on the trying-to-do-work because I stayed up until 3:30am (which cut out my morning) and then went to get my hair cut (which cut out my early afternoon), but I was in my seat by 4:00, computer on my lap, ready to work. And I didn't. I couldn't decide what to do. I couldn't focus. I couldn't get stuff done. And so I sat here and surfed around aimlessly, not particularly interested in anything I was reading, but unable to do any real work and unwilling to give up altogether. I swear, I tried. I wouldn't let myself step away from the computer. I refused to get up even to eat, which led to eating my first and only real meal of the day at 8:00pm. (I had a pear and a chocolate bar earlier.) Even so, hours came and hours went and the work remained undone. And then 11:00 hit, and all of a sudden, I was productive. Code a blog? Sure! Write the one-page summary that I've been putting off for two weeks? Sure! Suddenly, I'm calm and relaxed and focused. No more anxiety, no more brain running every which way. Just ready to work. This is a common phenomenon for me. It's one of the reasons I end up staying up all night, even at age 29. But I don't understand it.

I could probably work for another hour or two until fatigue overtook me. Unfortunately, I have a meeting at noon tomorrow, which means that I need to get to bed now. Too bad. There's still so much work to do.

I can no longer get Firefox to work with LiveJournal. Once I try to log in, Firefox refuses to render the page--all I see is HTML. I don't know if it's an issue with LJ or Firefox, but either way, it's annoying. For now I'm using Opera to access Firefox, but I don't really like the interface. Hmm, maybe back to IE?

Now that I've really started paying attention, I'm noticing that most of what I say about my daily experiences in graduate school is negative. I don't think that's a good thing, so I'm going to do two things. First, I'm going to try to spin events more positively. Second, I'm going to start paying attention to whether I'm really unhappy here, and figure out what that may mean.

(It may partly be due to the marking; I don't think many people care for that. I want to see if negative feelings remain even after I try to spin things more positively, and after I start reading for my comp, since in the past reading theory has tended to be very satisfying for me.)