more winter holidays.

last stop before slogging through the dark and cold and wet that is winter.

gifts have been given, food has been eaten. 2 more days of vacation left (class starts again on monday). oh, and *sigh* the koph is in the middle of "hannukah." it starts with a (c)het, which makes the "channukah" transliteration even less appropriate.

i feel like there should be something to say at the end of another year, but i pretty much already said it for this year.

i will say that when 2011 began, i had no idea it would end here.

this year does apparently mark the lowest number of posts on this blog. i'm not sure anyone read is anymore anyway, but i apparently used to have more to say. maybe everything i have to say these days goes into my papers.

well. happy new year.

happy hannukah.

yes, now that i can read hebrew, i know it starts with a koph, but "channukah" just looks weird to me for some reason.

(speaking of semitic languages, i got an a- in syriac. yay!)

anyway. it's not for dinner tonight, because it's too much work, but here's a recipe:

latkes

3-4 potatoes suitable for frying (i like yukon golds, but russets are the classic frying potato)
1 small or 1/2 large yellow onion
1 cup matzo meal
2 eggs
salt, pepper, and parsley to taste
lots of oil for frying

1. peel the potatoes.

2. grate the onion into a bowl.

3. grate the potatoes on top of the onion to keep the fumes from making everyone cry.

4. beat the eggs and add them with the salt and pepper to the onion-potato mixture. mix well.

5. add the matzo meal a little at a time until the mixture is thick and there is not too much liquid in the bottom of the bowl anymore.

6. pour a tablespoon or two of oil into a frying pan and heat over medium to medium-high heat. there should not be a standing pool of oil; latkes just get pan-fried, not deep-fried.

7. scoop big spoonfuls of the potato mixture into the frying pan and flatten to make patties. when the latkes are crispy on one side, flip over and fry until crisp on the other side. remove to a plate lined with paper towels to drain. continue scooping, adding more oil as necessary until all the latkes are made.

eat! applesauce and sour cream are the traditional toppings.

done.

another semester over. now just the pins-and-needles of waiting for grades.

not only but also: i have been given a contact for a ph.d. w00t, i think. we will be meeting some time in the new year.

happy thanksgiving.

i think i may have recovered from the food coma.

no black friday shopping this year; we went to visit mom's family and had a second dose of holiday food.

zzz...

oh. i have a paper to write.

movement.

i don't believe it's the middle of november already. this is crazy.

we moved a few weeks ago. still haven't sold the damn house; it's being rented by people who are paranoid and wanted a place near the hospital for their new baby.

so we're renting a loft apartment. it's a nice location, 3 blocks from his office, 2 blocks from the subway, 2 blocks from a supermarket.

urban supermarkets are weird things. on one hand, they tend to drive small, locally-owned corner stores out of business. on the other hand, those small, locally-owned corner stores tended to be really expensive and not stock much in the way of fresh fruits and vegetables, or raw meat, or anything not already procesed and cooked somewhere industrial. so now food is cheaper and better quality, and there's way more healthy selections. but more the neighbourhood's money is going to some national chain somewhere. it's nice to be living within walking distance of a supermarket, though, instead of having to drive 20 blocks to a shitty one that was built out in the ghetto because that's where land is cheap.

i think the cat still isn't sure about the new place. he spent the first couple days camped out in his litter box. also, the problem with a loft apartment is that there are no doors, except the front door and the bathroom door, so there's nowhere we can put things to keep them out of his reach. he's currently sitting on my desk and sniffing the bills. not chewing on them yet, thankfully, but the bills used to be in the office in the old place which had a door and he could be kept out. he can also, for the first time in the 7 years we've owned him, spend the night on our bed, which he is really happy about. us, not so much. cats don't sleep through the night like people do (or are supposed to). getting stepped on at 3am isn't great when you have an exam the next morning.

speaking of changes, i've also transferred schools. i think i'm done with change for this year, seriously. can i have a boring year next year? new place to live, new school, new job, new furniture (we should seriously buy stock in ikea), new bank... shit. i want a boring, uneventful couple of months. i am feeling a little more confident when i say i want to do a ph.d. in ancient literature nowadays, though, so the transfer seems to have done that much good already (a big part of the reason i'm doing a professional master's instead of a ph.d. now is because i don't know what i want to be when i grow up).

the other thing i'm really liking about living in the city is mass transit. i know, isn't that weird? but i don't like driving; it stresses me out. i think i overdosed on driving this summer when i drove my sister to phoenix. now i can take the subway and/or train practically everywhere. and the really nice thing about taking mass transit in the city is that everyone does it. out in the 'burbs, it's seen as a thing for poor people who can't afford a car (that someone might not want to have a car doesn't seem to cross many people's minds). in the city, at least in an east coast city, it's everyone: kids, students, poor people, downtown professionals, tourists, and so on. it's kind of an equalizer. i won't say it builds community, despite the often literal rubbing shoulders; most people tend to be quiet and not make eye contact. but at least there's no hands clenched on the wheel, trying to avoid assholes in trucks, breathing exhaust fumes, trapped in a module of steel and glass, and losing several hours a day of productive time. now i can sit on the train and read and do homework. we're going to sell one of the cars. yay. and i guess there is a kind of community feel to mass transit... you're all riding together. it's ok to ask someone for directions, or which train goes where, or am i on the right platform? i always have to wonder about the panhandlers, though. wouldn't it have been smarter to spend your two bucks on food than on entrance to the subway platform where you ask people for quarters for food?

so yeah. life in the city. too much change. too much new shit. i'm about at capacity for this stuff right now.

facebook = reification.

i probably ought to start off by saying that i am still boycotting facebook, but i have been trying out google+ this summer, so i have acquired some familiarity with the whole social media phenomenon. i have also been observing the facebook habits of others from the outside, as is the proper researcher stance (that was a joke). also, i apologize in advance for the ridiculous language in the following post. i've been at school all day, reading philosophy, and the language is infectious.

i have come to the following conclusion: for many people who use facebook, especially those under the age of 30 (the so-called millenial generation), it is the offline world which is more or less unreal, and things are only real when posted or transcribed online, and especially when they are commented on or noticed by "friends." this is contra the usual usage where things happen "on the internet" and "in real life." real life is now facebook, and things that happen offline are merely feeder material for the self-curated online presence.

the glib internet meme "pics or it didn't happen" is demonstrative of this, i think. it is an extremely ironic statement in an age when we are all so aware of the ease of manipulation of digital images. and yet still, somehow, putting a picture of an event online is testimony to its veracity, to its very existence. a thing is not a thing unless it is online for others to see.

but i think facebook takes this to another level. with the obsession of the number of friends one has, and the posting of all life events, regardless of their possible standing in posterity, the nexus of these two elements becomes the location of reality. i think the very compulsion to post images and status updates that record any and all states and events in life is what makes people feel real and connected to a community somehow.

it is pretty much agreed that humans are social creatures. autism is a disorder precisely because it removes from a human the basic need to be in community with other human beings. this is fairly obvious from the anguish parents feel the need to post online about (again, posting online) even children diagnosed with the mildest forms of the spectrum.

however, as we labour under the desperate gasps of a dying modernity, individualism rules the day (i also happen to believe that this is modernity, not postmodernity and that the postmodern project has failed, but that's the subject for another post when i'm feeling more depressed). we are all our own subjects, distressingly separated and cut off from other autonomous subjects. it is in the online communication that we can merge the need for community and our inherited individualism. moreso, it is in the recognition of the artifacts of lives online that people feel truly real.

i'm still going to boycott facebook.

inconveniences.

i just realized it is september and i cannot undertake my annual reading of LotR (i always start in september, get to Frodo's departure by sept 22, weathertop by oct 6 and then just read to the end) because my copies of the novels are packed away in storage because no one has bought my house.

bah. we need to move so i can get my books back.

out west.

i gotta say, eisenhower had a wonderful idea with those interstates. they may let you "drive across the country without seing anything" but i tell you, there isn't a lot to see. the craziest thing about the west/southwest is how flat everything gets and consequently how far you can see, even if there isn't a lot there. i am used the horizon being bounded by hills and mountains. storms roll sluggishly in from the west, first clouds, and then later rain.

out there it is so flat, you can see the storms miles away. the clouds seem to be dragging curtains of rain across the landscape. and when you have the cruise control set at 90mph, you run into those storms quicker than you would think :)

the rest of the pics from the trip are here.

7 states so far...

they get bigger out here.

drove through pennsylvania, the northern tip of west virginia, and half of ohio mostly in the dark. nothing to report there, other than that john digweed's bedrock 11 disc 1 is good for staying awake while driving.

southern illinois is the most boring so far. there is seriously nothing there. indiana at least had curves in the highway. and indianapolis. skyscrapers! civilization!

on the other hand, then you get to st. louis. i was actually kind of disappointed in the mississippi river up here, but the arch is pretty cool up close, and there's a nice park around it. the dog had fun.

so far only driven through oklahoma in the dark. first impression: flat.

we'll see what happens the rest of the trip.

go west, young... person.

in a few hours, i am leaving to drive my sister to phoenix, az to start her new job.

there's a reason they're called "flyover states" i'm pretty sure, being that i've only ever flown over them before. now i will be driving through them.

4 days with my sister and her 75lb labrador retriever.

it's going to be an experience, at least.

earthquake.

i find it deeply ironic that i never felt one in any of my visits to the west coast, but now one hits while i'm at home.

on the other hand, given the amount of time i spend here, i suppose statistics are in favour of it. still very weird. i wasn't sure what was happening, and then afterwards, i thought, was that an earthquake?

yes. yes, it was.

it even woke up the cat.

slippery slope.

i used to have a phone that was just a phone.

then we discovered texting is better than calling in many circumstances.

and i started syncing my calendar to my phone.

then i went back to school and discovered mobile email is useful when you're not at home for 11 hours a day.

and so is web, because you can check weather and train schedules. and read things when you're waiting for the train.

now i have an android smartphone >_<

unintended consequences.

saturday i was bagging my own groceries at the store, and finally an employee walked over to help. she promptly picked up the bag with the pie in it that i had carefully laid on its side to keep the pie flat and turned it vertical in the cart. i was like, "um, there's a pie in there, it's supposed to be on its side."

she said, "oh, you clearly know what you're doing," and walked away.

i was thinking to myself, yeah, and i can do this better than 90% of the people here because it was almost my first job. i did work in a grocery store in high school, starting as a bagger an chekcker like everyone, and eventually ending up in the bakery.

it wasn't my first job, though. that dubious honour goes to a job my mom got me when i was 14, working at a dry cleaner's for $5/hour cash under the table.

see, mom wanted me to go to work early. i guess to instill some kind of work ethic in me and help me learn the value of a dollar and a day's work.

i have spent most of my adult life trying to avoid working and figuring out how to get paid to go to school for the rest of my life.

welcome to summer.

i have 9 mosquito bites.

new jersey is a dangerous place.

"so now i am off to the doctor to get my turbuculosis test checked and start the hepatitis b vaccine series."

"are you going somewhere?"

"princeton."

still angry.

this has been going on for several months, and i have not yet made a post about it because it is making me angry and i was hoping it would go away.

several republican governors and members of various legislative bodies have decided that cutting funding to education would be a good way to balance budgets in this not-quite-post-recession era.

i'm going to say this as simply as possible: cutting public education is anti-democracy.

i wish i could engage in wild conspiracy speculation, but part of me is cynical enough to think it really is just short-sightedness.

however. a democracy needs an educated public to function. that's all there is to it. if your unwashed masses can't think critically, read at more than a third grade level, and understand statistics, you don't have a functioning democracy. you might have an oligarchy, or a plutocracy, but you don't have a democracy.

while i'm ranting, education isn't job training either, so mr. president, you can shut the fuck up about needing to graduate more engineers. no one needs to do multinational corporations' job training for them. their job is to train workers. the job of education - primary, secondary, and tertiary - is to educate citizenry who are able to use the limits of their natural intelligence.

admittedly, the united states as a country is anti-intellectual, so everything that's going on fits right in and no one really cares. except me, apparently. and this is my soapbox, and what else is the internet for?

besides cats, of course. i have no objection to cats.

new car feature.

forget all those fancy things like remote start. what i want is a car that, while turned off, detects rain and closes its own windows.

news.

yesterday, my "application status" for transferring to princeton theological seminary changed from "your application is being reviewed by the committee" to "you have been accepted!"

i thought the inclusion of the exclamation point was cute.

i've had mostly good experiences at palmer, but i was an outlier in their student body to begin with, and starting in the fall, they are changing their curriculum to make me even less of a fit. since i have two years left to go, i figured applying for a transfer to another school wasn't a bad idea.

so i will be spending the next two years at princeton and receive my master of divinity there.

this was a pretty tough decision, made partly more difficult by having been in this exact same place about 10 years ago. mcgill decided to get rid of their classics department because it didn't have enough students to make it financially viable. unfortunately for me, i was majoring in classics at the time. i remember doing the research about transferring to other schools with the tension building in my shoulders. it was literally painful to think about transferring. in the end i didn't, partly because i had 1 year left at mcgill and would have had 2 at any other school. in retrospect, that might not have been the best decision i made - my last year at mcgill was my worst academically, emotionally, physically...

on the other hand, i did learn something from it. i learned when to run away. so about a month ago, i applied to princeton. i have, naturally, been ridiculously stressed out since then, but now at least some of that stress is relieved. the other difference about this situation is that i would have 2 years left, whatever school i went to. and there were some people who thought i should have gone to princeton from the beginning.

so. princeton. huh.

now we just need to get the house sold, and life will be completely overhauled. eek.

alternative uses for hebrew textbooks.

killing yellowjackets that built a nest outside your window and get in the office.

kicking and screaming.

so this post (and several more) is way overdue. life has kind of sucked for a while.

anyway.

about 2 months ago, my phone started getting stupid. it was kind of a halfway smartphone, a nokia e71x running symbian 60. it had all of about 2 apps, which didn't bother me. it surfed the web fine with a real browser, which was something of a novelty when i got it. the only real main issue i had with it was google refused to make a gmail app for it, and i couldn't sync my calendars live over the air. instead i had to remember to do it manually from my mac via bluetooth.

then, suddenly, it lost the ability to cross-reference incoming text messages with the address book. all text messages were coming in labelled with just the sending phone number. which was fine when it was his and i had memorized it, but i was sending a lot of "my phone has gone stupid, who is this?" text messages back to people because i had no idea who they were or what they were talking about. grr, etc.

so i log into my account and discover, hey, i'm eligible for a new phone upgrade. w00t.

i was thinking maybe a blackberry. he said he thought it would be the best option for me. i am just not a fan of the iphone. not that i'm an anti-apple person, i like my macbookpro and ipod nano just fine. but i don't like the iphone. the touchscreen feels weird under my fingers and i like to keep my email accounts separated, which apple disapproves of.

so i'm wandering around the store, playing with some of the demos, and i see this motorola phone running android. it looks interesting. one of my co-workers loves his droid. and it's all googly, so i know i can get my email on it. and not only my regular email, but school went google too a while back, so i could use it to check both, which i thought might be helpful, since i'm a TA this semester and i am not giving out my phone number. and it's smaller than the blackberry torch.

also, much to my surprise, the sales guy seems to know what he's talking about when it comes to technology, and while he's an iphone fan, he says that people have been having problems with the blackberry torch and complaining about it.

so i buy the motorola atrix. somehow, when it rings up, it's $50 less than he quoted me, but i'm not arguing.

then i go home and set it up and start googling it.

turns out, it's a brand new phone and i got it - again, somehow - before the quoted launch date on the internet. wtf? i'm an early adopter??

i can say, having used it for a bit now, it's pretty cool. it uses different glass than the iphone and doesn't feel so weird under my fingertips. and i'm getting email and calendar updates on the fly, which is pretty cool. it flashes a little green LED at me when i have email or a text message. i like it. and you can remove the battery, unlike the iphone, which was really nice when the fingerprint scanner/unlock button decided working. i started freaking out, all "oh shit, my brand new phone has a hardware issue," but always the first thing to try is a hard reboot. which you can't do on an iphone. pulled the battery out of my atrix, popped it back in, turned the phone on, and hey, it's working again.

i'm not into apps, so i've only downloaded like, 3. got the sony reader app, so all of my purchased ebooks are on the phone, but the screen is tiny and bright, so reading them kind of sucks. the southwest airline app is pretty cool, though. we took a vacation to boston last month and i checked into our flight home while laying in bed in the hotel. got in the 'A' boarding group too (if you've ever flown southwest, you know what that means. if you haven't, just know it's a Good Thing).

also, the browser crashes occasionally, but as android is based on linux, i just have to go into the applications menu and force quit. yay.

so yeah. apparently, i'm an accidental early adopter. huh. i have joined the twenty first century. or something.

i hate march.

yes, there's been a lot going on and no, i haven't blogged about anything.

i fucking hate march. suicide watch month almost over.

for the time being: my parents and my brother are safe in tokyo. he lives on the southwest tip of honshu and has been mostly unaffected by the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power station repercussions. will be picking mom and dad up friday night.

when is it going back to 70F? seriously.

march. bah.

deception.

so earlier this week, it was sunny, with temperatures in the 60s F. i was driving around with my sunroof open.

now they are forecasting 1-3 inches of snow tonight.

i know, i know, it's still winter. that doesn't make me any happier about it. what the hell is going on, getting a taste of spring in the middle of february?

damn you, weather!

i suppose on the plus side, we've been cleaning out our house in order to get it ready to sell. i found all my warm, thick winter sweaters yesterday.

i have been remiss.

so, it's already wednesday. and apparently, i forgot to tell people that i got a new laptop last saturday. whoops.

my sister lost her job in the fall, but just started a new one at the beginning of the year. her new job gave her a mac. and the only computer she has at home is an ancient dell that dad bought her when she was in college (i don't know why i got laptops and she got a clunky desktop. i assume it's what she asked for). so we agreed that she would buy my old macbook and we would set it up for her and teach her how to use it.

so i now have a brand new, shiny macbook pro. the smallest, cheapest one, admittedly, made cheaper by apple's edumacation pricing. there are some weirdnesses to it, like why did apple change the functions of the F-keys? and the tap-to-click functionality of the giant mouse pad/button comes turned off by default, another wtf? and oh, there's a difference between mini-dvi and mini-display-port? well, shit. that's two more adapters i had to buy and i couldn't use my nice 19" lcd monitor until yesterday.

but in general, it's a nice upgrade over a macbook. the backlit keyboard alone is almost enough to justify the price. and the 4gb of ram ought to make running windows on it a lot easier, so maybe i'll finally get rid of my giant gaming box that i keep for playing the odd windows game and writing papers in wordperfect (i hate word. hate, hate, hate).

if a cheap white macbook lasted me 3 1/2 years with only a ram upgrade, i'm hoping this one will last me at least as long. so, through the end of this degree (2 1/2 years left, including the semester that starts saturday), and then some. i guess my next computer will be bought just before i start my ph.d.?

and i'm an addict.

i've been saying it facetiously for years, but i really am addicted to caffeine. when i get up in the morning, "is there coffee?" is usually the first thing i say. if there isn't, anxiety levels shoot up. when i go somewhere else that isn't home, i have to plan how to get coffee in the morning before i can go to sleep, or i'll be thinking about it all night.

admittedly, there are much worse things to be addicted to, and as addictions go, caffeine is pretty mild. plus i like coffee, tea, chocolate, and coke zero. i'm not about to try to cure myself.

but it's an interesting insight into the mental state of addiction. the amount of preoccupation and anxiety i have that revolves around getting that morning cup of coffee is a little bit alarming. i remember being late to class back when i was an undergrad and forgetting which class i would be on the way to because i had run out the door without coffee. these days, i refuse to drive in the morning if i haven't had it because i don't trust myself to a) remember where i'm going and how to get there and b) remember to do things like stop at intersections or start turning soon enough. but these, combined with my aforementioned obsession of the first "hit of the day," are indicators of a pretty thorough-going dependency.

i suppose since i've given up smoking i need to have something to replace it. there's a certain kind of ennui and world-weary nonchalance that goes with the acceptance of an addiction. while some people obsess over control and find the idea of an addiction abhorrent, i don't mind it. what i minded about cigarettes, mostly, was that lung cancer is a very painful and messy way to die. anyone who tells you smoking is not pleasurable is either lying through their teeth or has never done it. the addiction bit never bothered me. i don't mind being pushed around by chemicals in my brain. that's what they're there for anyway.

happy new year.

yes, a bit late. but still.

they have inaugurated curbside recycling this year! i am way too excited about this. i have already gone out and bought the bin, and i tugged it out to the curb this morning. it was still there when i got back from work, but decorously emptied and placed upside down.

the township hasn't had any recycling, and it makes me almost sick to think about all the metal and glass and plastic that i've seen thrown out in my neighbourhood the past several years.

so. happy new year. to the earth as well.