6.29.2005

i feel compelled to participate in academic surveys

Take the MIT Weblog Survey

i read fiction, i follow up with non-fiction



dear friends,

it has been nearly two years since i read anything approximating non-fiction. basically since starting grad school i have not read anything not related to my academic work. this is not to say that i have not read for fun. i have read lots of books in my area that were not directly related to my work.

i have realized that there was this dearth of fiction for quite some time and in fact purchased the book to the left over a year ago with the intention of remedying the situation. also, it was a hurt penguin and needed a home. well, in an effort to clean out my book collection before the move, i finally read it.

it is a mere 150 pages, easy to follow etc, basically a beach read for those more interested in the day to day realities of war than shopaholic, her friends, or her sister. i can't say it was great. i much prefered the rights revolution which i read in the horrible horribe correspondance class i took on the un with the one of just two sessional lecturers i had at queen's. [note to self- google her]

coincidentally, there was a piece in the globe this morning about the possibility of ignatieff running in the next election. regardless of partisan affiliation i really like the idea of academics in office, even if they are off the celebrity intellectual variety. he certainly does seem qualified.

my heavens, i have only been at work for 1 hour and 21 minutes.
cam

6.26.2005

long weekend adventures



it has been a most pleasant long weekend, with two working days off, ms. julie visiting the icrm, and the return of ms. carla to canadia from the wilds of wales. i may have fallen asleep early on thursday but we didn't return friday night until the sun was coming up, so i feel a little less hip replacement.

last night i went to see batman begins with ms. p, and i think that the graphic above sums up how i feel about it.

this blog post has been brought to you by quebec nationalism and the librarian's union.
cam

6.22.2005

stalking zach braff, episode six

dear friends,

someone who came across this blog was nice enough to send the following honest to goodness tip:

"zach braff filming last kiss in pointe claire village, pointe claire, quebec until june 23, if you are interested"

you can get to point claire from downtown via amt, and such a journey into the wilds of subuurbia sounds like the perfect way to spend a summer day. man, being a data librarian is totally getting in the way of my stalking.

and on top of having to work, i feel like there is something crazy happening with me getting this message. i rarely check my truthfullytruthfully email, but i did today for the first time in a month.... and voila... the tipster had sent it only 2 hours before...

is it a sign that i should be sick tommorow?
cam

6.21.2005

power tuesday

dear friends,

today is a busy day at trudeau international for friends of ms.cam, three arrivals will change my day to day life:

* my boss returns from her vacation in kenya, theoretically giving me 50% less to do at the library. this hardly seems possible given what i do now, but we shall see.

* roomate tanya returns from her pretty woman trip to italy. it's actually not much like pretty woman at all, but i am looking forward to hearing all about it and to having the icrm be a little more homey again.

* masters amigo and ph-diva david comes in from seattle to spend a month in m-city, increasing the number of people i still know here to a veritable handful.

back to the dot do-ing,
cam

6.17.2005

lightening bolts indicating newsworthiness!

dear friends,

in honour of father's day i have made the trek to ol' trenton, or as most of us who have escaped know it "the smelly armpit of the universe". i would like to state that i am not actually from trenton, as i live closer to the hamlets of stockdale and wooler. but alas, i digress. anyway, 51 songs on the ipod later i'm here.

my dad's great. i love him. but he is not exactly a man of words, indeed the gig-ster (for reasons i have not figured out all of my dad's childhood friends call him gig, which is not a known abbreviation of glenn. even my cousins call him uncle gig) is much more of a do-er. example one: while in england i mention that i might like for him to make me a tv cabinet, but we can talk about it when i get back. i get back to discover he has made it and a coffee table. however, the most hilarious example is what i will label example two: our phone conversations.

diligent daughter that i am, i call home every sunday. these calls generally last ten minutes. pressing business is addressed. he inquires about the weather. then i always ask if there is anything new there. he always answers not much. sometimes i prompt with questions, sometimes i let the fun end there. i had this conversation with him last sunday... so it was much to my suprise that when driving home from the train station my dad informed me that my grannie's house had been struck by lightening last saturday!

apparently, lightening strikes are no longer newsworthy. it happened around lunch time, my dad was visitng my gran (thank goodness) and it struck her tv arial, went down the arial, through the window, into the tv, and onto some metal in the china cabinet before exiting an outlet. there was also a small fire, which my dad stompted out. they did call the fire department (the three volunteers who live in the same town of 25 people as my grannie), but the "basement savers" as my dad calls them forgot to fill their truck with water, so they had to go back after they arrived on the scene.

so, not like an emergency worthy of an automatic update... but still it's not like lightening has ever struck a family member's house before.

geez,
cam

6.16.2005

i'm not a doctor but i still give better advice than doctor phil

dear friends,

absolutely vomitrocious news in the metro newspaper this morning. dr. phil is coming to montreal. for a couple of hundred dollars you can discover the power within. no thanks. consuming a bottle of white wine a little too quickly is a much more pleasant way to barf.

i am not sure exactly what i find most offensive about doctor phil, i guess i am more disturbed by doctor phil's son, who is not a doctor but is apparently qualified to dispense advice to young people just because he is young and doctor phil's son. anyway the man just irritates me, and this is my blog and i can rant about any damn fool thing i want.

i really wanted to scan the ad and add some effects in microsoft paint, but alas i cannot do that from the data library. i promise to add some picture content again soon. perhaps i will take some pictures of the hope-ster this weekend when i am home.

only 57 minutes until sociology lunch club,
cam

6.12.2005

worse than footloose

dear friends,

was supposed to have spent this weekend working on a-f-p (article for publication). unfortunately there is a data problem and in spite of thinking i was going to get clean data saturday night, i did not. which means that i totally bailed on ms. sofi for no reason at all. which means i almost have to go to the wolf island music festival just to see her. but it also means that after probably 10 attempts we never successfully managed to go to rock and roll high school. there was no dancing. there was no drinking. no cute boys. no gross poutine. my life is not better than an abba song, it is worse than footloose. this is a sad and pathetic fact that i just felt needed to be documented on the internerd.

unrelated: another great piece in the nytimes today about a senior-ladies organization. my fascination with such groups is borderline scary. perhaps it is because my mother never let me join brownies. perhaps it is because never making it to rock and roll high school is a sign that i am nearing 80.

less hip. more hip replacement. and i am a librarian!

rescue me.
cam

6.10.2005

palindromes

dear friends,

went to see pseudo-follow up to welcome to the doll house, palindromes, last night with ms. p. it most certainly has the creepiest final scene i have seen in a movie in a while. sadly, last night was its last night at cinemaduparc but i do recommend catching it if you can. the scenes with christian fundamentalist mama sunshine and her rainbow of children are particularly priceless.

i almost died laughing at the line:

mama sunshine: please don't run away henrietta. our special daughter from india ran away last year. poor thing didn't even have any legs.

i suppose that is todd solondz' gift, making people laugh in such a way that afterwards they feel they are going to hell in a handbasket.

back to the 10-5,
camac

ps- here is a giant list of palindromes

6.08.2005

ladies of the red hat society

dear friends,

terrific piece in the new york times today about the ladies of the red hat society. i first encountered them at a parade in port rowan, ontario canada. they were in full regalia shouting "we are women over fifty, all we do is really nifty". now, at the time i was with three of my best girls, and the fourth had just gotten married. i could see each of us as members of the red hat society. mandy would have to have the largest hat. hez would make her own hat. self's kids would make her a hat at school. l-dot would have a fancy-pants lawyer's salary hat. i am not sure what kind of hat i would have, but you can't study social capital without really believing it. at the time i suggested we start our own club, with the slogan "we are women under thirty, all we do is really dirty". but we're nice girls and it didn't fit.

a sociologist friend of mine always says that he thinks sociology and particualarly ethnography is like really in depth journalism. i think that is partially true, and i would certainly love to study these women. but the difference between journalism and sociology is that in journalism you try to appeal to normal people. in sociology you have to appeal to the mixed nuts that are po-mos, quantoid-nerdzos, thick descriptionists, thin discriptionists, rational-choosers etc. not to mention, these people are often socially awkward and have no idea what happens outside of leacock (er, i mean the social sciences building of their university).

it is not that terrible of course, but it is of course a question of framing the problem. something i have been thinking a lot about since my conversation about with the homeschooling scholar, who spoke candidly about people thinking it was cute, but not academically interesting and his subsequent difficulty publishing. the whole thing was very reminiscent of my cwl project. not something i am keen to repeat.

anyway, red hats= awesome even if it is all a little too oprah book club,
cam

6.06.2005

fcc3000

dear friends,

today, i am totally guilty of using the fake cup of coffee 3000 (fcc3000). you see dear friends, i much like a fruit breezer, have two jobs mon. only, my first boss does not exactly know about my new data librarian position. this is because:

(a) i am afraid of her
(b) i want to quit, but the promise of publication looms large (even though i highly suspect it to be a phantom offer, never to appear in reality)
(c) i am afraid she will send stassi goons after me
(d) i am somewhat convinced that i can do this job evenings and weekends at least for a bit, while i phase myself out.

she does know that i am leaving the project, and our original discussion had me staying in montreal for may and june only.

anyway, i came in today extra early laptop in tow and set up as per normal. it is now 11am and i am leaving my stuff all set up (including an formerly steaming cup of tea from tim horton's) basically so that it appears that i am working, should she happen to walk by. i am off to be a data librarian in the afternoon, or rather learn how to be a data librarian... since i am filling in for a vaction leave starting on thursday and it will just be me in the office. scary.

yours in the name of unethical workplace behaviour,
cam

6.04.2005

data librarian goes to a rock show

dear friends,

i am now officially a data librarian. i assure you it is just for the summer. and i also assure you i will continue to take measures to remain youthful. oil of olay twice a day, i was your teacher stuff... but also rock shows... lots and lots of rock shows.

last night, ms. p and i went to see the raveonettes. while we were youthful and eager enough to show up early enough for both openers (a'ight it was because we didn't have tickets and we wanted to make sure it wasn't sold out) we ended the night like old ladies sitting on chairs. granted, the chairs were on a raised platform that was sort of a score and we did have a better view than in our standing positions.

some observations about the show:

* sharin foo had the prettiest dress and prettiest shoes in the whole world
* sharin foo makes me want to have platnum blonde hair
* they did a cover of 60s sleepover classic my boyfriend's back. it was dynamite.
* the guitarist was the most energetic of any guitarist i have seen of late.

anyway, data librarian is also looking forward to some vistors so she must clean the icrm.
cam

6.01.2005

library voices please

dear friends,

today i learned that i am perilously close to becoming what my highschool amigos always thought i would be-- a librarian. for those of you not around way-back-then, i spent a lot of time at the st. paul's library, mostly because it was my home-room and yearbook-headquarters. i was there before school, during spare periods, and after school. the custodians and i used to watch the young and the restless together. people would come into the library and assume i was a librarian and ask questions, or know that i was not the librarian and would still be likely to have the answer. i vowed that i would never ever become a librarian.

don't get me wrong i love libraries (except of course mclennan). i made friends with the trenton library during my first model un, bonding with the resource librarian about how she used to do model uns, the castle had the cutest little library, the university of sussex library meant potential contact with actual british people, and stauffer (aka joe's place) was beautiful--laptop outlets at every desk, a fireplace reading room. but i don't want to be a librarian.

anyway, in spite of this i applied for a maternity-leave fill in job as a data librarian at mcgill. that's right should my interview tommorrow go well, not only will i be a librarian... but i will be a librarian that helps make people's data dreams come true. sounds stable and decent paying. and new jersey is still months away.

and, maybe i can finally pay that library fine...
cam