THAT'S gonna bruise.

Hi, McGill? It's called gravel. Please use it.

ah, CBC, how unintentionally amusing you are

Exhibit A:



I love the urgency the all-caps of "HAIL" conveys. Also it makes me think of "FAIL." Also why is the hail graphic the only one that gets text? Even if it may be difficult to graphically represent hail differently from snow, rain, sleet, etc., none of them really need text, especially if they are described on the right anyway. And it's a good thing they elaborate, since you might not know what "HAIL" is, but, phew, okay, just "ice pellets."

If talking about the weather were an olympic sport

Soooooo, it's zero degrees Fahrenheit, and probably colder with the wind chill, though CBC ever so metrically says it's -18 degrees, which scared me for about 3/5ths of a second as -18 is an entirely different ballgame of cold in Fahrenheit. Although Canadians are generally better-acquainted with cold than the residents of 49 out of 50 states, when a Canadian says something like "It's so cold out! It's going to be minus fifteen today!" I find myself wanting to reply, "Oh yeah? You think that's cold? You should try minus fifteen in America!"

And yet somehow it is a rather tropical 74 degrees in my apartment, though I have yet to turn on the heat this year. There is nothing coming out of my radiator. But even if I were to crack a window, the temperature would go down temporarily but spike right back up in an hour or two. WHERE IS THIS MYSTERY HEAT SOURCE? I barely needed blankets last night which is really not what I migrated north for.

I just printed out a Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion chart, so BRING IT, WINTER.

Merry Christmas, here's a new government

To be perfectly honest, I'm more concerned about CBC Special Reports interrupting Coronation Street than the overthrow of the Canadian government. But it's still pretty interesting to watch, especially since I am not invested in the outcome whatsoever. Except to say that, democracy or no democracy, it would totally make a better movie in ten or twenty years if the coalition takes over. Though I think Justin Trudeau would be much better for box office sales than Stephane Dion.

---

Things That Annoy Me

- Use of the word "dialog(ue)" as a verb

- When students grunt earnestly in class. Hi, I can learn without making noise; can you? I don't mind understand the odd nod of interest, feigned or not, if the professor is looking straight at you. But so help me, if you actually say "huh!" out loud, I may have to draw blood.

--

Here is library school in a nutshell:

Week 1: Assure students that their training will not become obsolete by graduation
Week 2: Stereotypes of librarians
Week 3: Wikipedia is not a valid source
Week 4: Wikipedia is a valid source
Week 5: Presentation of three- to seven-year-old technology as cutting-edge (Wow! Online encyclopedias! Second Life! The butter churn! Amazing!)
Week 6: Wikipedia is usually a valid source but nobody will admit it
Week 7: "Indigenous knowledge" aka "People Who Don't Live in the Western Hemisphere Sometimes Know Stuff Too But They Need Help Writing It Down"
Week 8: s s1 AND slow(w)painful(w)death
Week 9: Sixteen references to the printing press in one lecture
Week 10: Exam: Please recite all Dewey numbers 001-999 from memory.

the not so secret world of librarianship

In Cataloguing, we are learning about Dewey Decimal Classification. Now, there was an initial novelty of wondering what my phone number, in Dewey, classifies. (Nothing, sadly, though I was envisioning coy ways to give out my phone number involving attractive male librarians and the Dewey tables -- "It's Christina, and my phone number is 'Oriental antiquities' -- look it up.") I will admit, however, that I'm a little resistant to studying it. Not because it is unnecessarily complicated and breathtakingly dull, no. Just because it's the punchline of every joke made to me about my degree. Choose one term, punchline or joke, to put air quotes around.

"So, what are you studying?"
"Library Science."
(Cue blank stare. Cut to me explaining that, yes, to be a librarian, you need a master's degree.)
"So, what, heh, you just memorize the Dewey Decimal System?"

How clever! You must be related to the two hundred middle aged men who asked me if Tufts was tough. At least they managed to make up a pun.

Sometimes people ask that question seriously, and my faith in the world, already bottomed out, finds new lows.

So you see my concern, that my education may be starting to resemble its own parody. The other 50% of MLIS-related wisecracks remain only wisecracks unless one of my classes next semester involves the mechanics of shelving books (the best material for the shelf? how many books to carry at once? how to slide around the room on a ladder like Belle?). I've already got the glasses, the introversion, and the cat-lady tendencies. I don't need any more help with the stereotype.

---

The nice thing about library school? Nobody in my class thinks leggings are pants.

---

Overheard recently:

Thirtysomething man on McGill campus: "My mom smoked like a chimney. We, like, ate out of ashtrays."

At the American Museum of Natural History:

Twelve year old, pointing to a model of a Malayan tribeswoman: "Is that what Indians look like?"
Mom (looks up): "Some."
(Both leave.)

Mom in leather jacket, to daughter in leather jacket: "That's a sloth bear. That means he's lazy. Like your father."

bits and anglophone bobs

Every time I hear a Canadian pronounce the name of this city, I hear "Mun-treal." Maybe it's just my broad-voweled Boston accent, but my pronunciation is a bit more drawn out and sounds more like "Mawn-treal," which would rhyme with "John-treal."

Overheard in the McGill Student Ghetto:

Girl: "I really liked Ernie and Bert as a kid."
Guy: "What was with them? Two grown men sharing a bed!"
Girl: "They didn't share a bed! They had their own beds! I remember because there was a bit where Bert tells Ernie not to eat cookies in bed, so he eats them in Bert's bed instead."
Guy: "Oh."
Girl: "I always got so upset for Bert. The poor guy; he just wants to get some sleep!"

Imitation carnivory

Montreal is apparently famous for smoked meat sandwiches, specifically from a certain charcuterie on St. Laurent, Schwartz's.



As a vegetarian, I've mostly ignored this phenomenon, aside from being annoyed at the dozens of tourists blocking the sidewalk. But today, while on a mission at Metro (stocking up on their 5-lb bags of root vegetables for 99 cents each [you're welcome]), I spotted this:



I hold no expectations for the quality of the "Smoked Wheat"/"meatless smoked meat," and naturally I have nothing to compare it to, but since it was cheaper than all the other vegetarian products, if it's remotely tasty I'll call it a win. (Also, what idiot at Veggie Gourmet thought that "Smoked Wheat" would be an enticing name for this product? Given that it's a specialty product based on a specific type of meat, I don't think people buy this product because the name sounds tasty, but poorly-named meat substitutes make it quite difficult to be taken seriously when I attempt to share my soy-inspired joy with omnivores.)

Now, pardon me while I spend the next 24 hours in an election-induced tizzy. I got out the vote some two weeks ago, so it's out of my hands. It's looking good for my man Obama, but tomorrow night you'll still probably be able to find me dangerously hyped up on election nerves and caffeine, frantically hitting F5 on CNN.com.

In which I pretend to be worldly

The powers that be gave the library students a study week. Everything was due before the study week, instead rendering it a party week, so naturally I followed the party back home to "the 603" as the kids somewhat irritatingly call it. I drove back all by me onesie, which meant three things:

1. Listening to the same Paul McCartney CD for five hours, due to poor planning on my part, which, even for diehard fans such as myself, can only end badly and with undue disrespect for the man.

2. The farms on the road from Montreal to the Vermont border emit the rankest stench I have ever passed on the highway. Usually when I've passed farms with livestock, it's a little stinky, enough to make a quasi-inane comment in singsong like "oh, must be a farm nearby!" but nothing unbearable for the average country gal. I couldn't even see any cows from the road, and yet it smelled like I had just stuck my head in the toilet. Naturally, the smell filled up my car again a few miles from the border, and would not leave until after I had passed through customs, which may have factored into how fast I was processed.

3. On that same road, there are many cute little French-Canadian farmstands that sell cute French-Canadian farmstand stuff like mais sucre and bonbons à l'érable. Most of the surrounding area is similarly cute and farmy, but across from one particularly wholesome-looking farmstand is a strip club. No explanation, no other strip joints in the vicinity from what I could tell, just the one lonely building with a neon sign and pictures of naked women on it. It's too easy to just chalk it up to it being Quebec, but so far that's the best I've got.

Good old-fashioned American retail, and other border-crossing matters

Were you aware of the fact that SmartWool, the makers of most of my socks, also make clothing? I wasn't until I paid a long-awaited visit to the North Conway NH L. L. Bean, where I purchased perhaps the coziest sweater of my clothes-wearing career. I swear I am not paid by SmartWool. Though I would not turn payment down if they were to offer it to me. Tragically it is 100% wool and thus 100% dry-clean only, though dry-clean only labels have not stopped me from wet-cleaning before. I've decided, however, that it's a jacket, not a sweater, and thus can be cleaned as often as I would a jacket. So there.

Hypothesis #1: Quebec Customs only employs attractive, blue-eyed, 26-year-old males as customs agents. Scientific trials: 2. So far, the hypothesis stands. Will report later as evidence is gathered.

Also, can I suggest to the world's customs departments that the length of time you wait in line at the border should be proportional to the length of time it takes the agent to assess that you are not going to go on a mass killing spree or sell drugs in their country? I waited in customs traffic for an hour and a half and spent about thirty seconds at the window. "Where do you live? Where do you go to school? Any alcohol or tobacco in the car? Okay, you can go." Anytime I go through any country's customs, you can see the point where they decide I look too harmless to bother with more questions. It's pretty obvious that my oats mostly lie on the domestic side of the oat continuum, but I still harbor a fear that if I don't sit up straight and look them in the eye with a specially formulated combination of respect and earnestness, I'll be escorted to "the back room" where bad things will happen to me and I'll never be heard from again. If everyone made as concerted an effort as I do to look innocent, I would not have to spend ninety minutes inching along a quarter mile of highway, eyeing my empty coffee cup as a possible player in my mounting urge to pee.

tweed heals all wounds over 40 degrees

Excuse me, Post-Graduate Students' Society of McGill University, but you advertised veggie sausages at your Oktoberfest-themed evening, and there were no veggie sausages to be found! Soft pretzels, while tasty, are not an appropriate alternative. You are on notice, Thomson House.

While I'm whining, why does the elevator in my building sometimes miss its mark by, like, a foot and a half? This creates a situation where one has to exaggeratedly step either up or down into the elevator, which is a lovely combination of amusing, embarrassing and slightly unnerving. Nobody in their right minds would call this a "nice" apartment building but I would like to be able to convincingly assert that I live in a "functioning" apartment building.

Okay, spoiled chick rant over. It was 50 degrees and damp today, the kind of Londony weather I've been dying for all summer. I'll take it, even if I have to take the stairs (since I won't get sweaty doing it).


Fire escape, Rue Milton. 10/2/2008.

j'aime les marrons grillés

My question today is:

Is Montreal a roasted-chestnuts-in-the-winter kind of city?

I wouldn't be a librarian if I couldn't find that out for myself.

Then again, I'm housewifey, I bet I could make them.

At the McGill farmer's market yesterday, I bought tomatoes, squash, and some tasty but mysterious fried ball of dough. I was told it was vegetarian; that's all I know about it. I don't know if this is just me, but in my experience, farmer's market stalls come in two varieties: hippie and yuppie. Hippie stalls sell things for so little that you're not sure the commune's going to earn enough money to make supper for everyone. Yuppie stalls accept both legal tender and limbs as currency. There were only two stalls at the time that I went, one run by student types and the other by less studenty types. Now, I am glad to patronize local business, but Madame et Monsieur were charging $12 for a cluster of seemingly ordinary garlic bulbs maybe the size of my forearm. As far as I could tell, they weren't special in any way, smoked or roasted or tipped with gold, so I'm guessing I could get what would be, to my tomato sauce, essentially the same thing, down at Marché Lobo for maybe two or three bucks. And that's $1.89 to $2.83 USD. Yeah, I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I understand that sometimes local and/or organic things might cost a bit more (though those tomatoes were only a dollar a pound, can I just say). But I'm a grad student. We're talking a few steps above ramen, here. I need produce, and I need it cheap. I can't save the planet if I get scurvy first.

Plus, your stall did not have anything fried, so points off for that, too.

paul sat at our dinner table just like any other member of the family. just in a bottle instead of a chair.

In honor of Paul Newman, I'm going to go see if Provigo carries Newman's Own salad dressing.

My grandmother LOVED Paul and used to say fantastic sassy-grandma things like "he can leave his shoes under my bed anyday." (One of many B-Kal quotables.)

Speaking of that side of the family, I finally did go to the Atwater Library on the correct day for the McGill library school tour (the oldest lending library in Canada and basically I want to live there), and there we were shown these old books of census records and whatnot for the city of Montreal. All I know about my French-Canadian roots is that my great-great-great grandparents were from, according to the Cambridge Massachusetts census of 1910, "Canada (Fr)" (as opposed to "Canada [Eng]"). Thanks to such detailed record-keeping, I have no idea what city in Canada (Fr), but it would add a nice cinematic touch if it were in fact the city I chose to do my Master's in. I really want to get my paws on those books now. Though letting me loose in an old building with old books is perhaps a little dangerous, as then I am likely to succumb to the uniquely librarian trait of getting high on the smell of musty, century-old books. Trust me, it's not something you want your children to see. And I'm not sure the library staff would appreciate me passing out on the floor or ordering five pizzas to the Nonfiction section.

Also, while I usually try to avoid it, today I used my French because French-Canadian Staples (called Bureau En Gros) is hidden in a maze of connected buildings (as are many shops here; the underground network is not demonstrated very well on Google Maps so it often takes some digging to find the shop you're after) and the security guard I spoke to did not speak much English. My leagues of French teachers would probably not be very proud as most of my French left me at that point and all I could manage was, "Bureau En Gros.... ici?" and showing him the map I printed out. Brilliant.

Brilliance in action

I used the Metro today, ultimately successfully. Despite some anxiety due to a couple of horror stories about friends being yelled at in French while attempting to catch a subway train (and call me a dumb American but it's far worse to be yelled at in French than in English), I told myself, c'mon, it's public transportation. Masses of stupid people use it every day. I should be fine. And, anticlimactically, I was fine, though the attendant watched me attempt to put the ticket in the wrong turnstile for about three full minutes before he told me (without yelling) to "utilisez" the correct turnstile.

The entire reason I was using the Metro, however, was to go on a tour of the Atwater Library with the other McGillicuddians. The Atwater Library is historically significant for some reason or another, but I don't know the reason(s) because the tour is actually tomorrow at 2:30, not today at 2:30, something I realized after paying a dollar to check my email at said library.

It was not a completely wasted trip, as I did follow this up with a dollar store visit and my first experience with the confusingly named Canadian Tire, which does not just sell tires or even just car-related things but in fact all sorts of home/life stuff. Also, I know it's a maple leaf but their logo kinda looks like a pot leaf if you look at it quickly. Just sayin'.

1%, please.

This weekend, sick of paying $6 a gallon for cartons of milk, I succumbed to the Canadian milk bag.

What's this you say? Milk in bags? It's the Canadian truth, folks. Yes, there are plastic jugs and paper cartons too, but the least expensive form of milk container by a fair chunk of dough is the bag. And I'm not going to lie; I've resisted for this long because the concept of milk in a bag was a wee bit too reminiscent of the actual origins of milk for my personal comfort. But the pull of the cheap is too strong. And my milk-drinking habits border on addiction. So now there are bags of milk in my fridge.

The bags come in packs of three, for a total of 4 liters per pack.



Then you buy a special pitcher (Conveniently they placed some directly above the milk in the grocery store) and plop in a bag.



As you can see I'm still working on my last carton, but when I'm ready to use it, I have heard that I just cut the corner off the bag and pour. I'm a little concerned that when the bag is mostly used up that it may just fall out while I'm pouring out the last dregs. But these Canadians seem like trustworthy people. I'll take the risk.

Canada is a wonderful country, a judgment I am making based entirely on today's weather. 50s and sunny! I'd be okay if it stayed like this forever.

If I were basing my judgment of Canada entirely on its Cheez Whiz commercials, however, I think I might have come to a harsher conclusion. If I come across a video of it, well, it'll be cruel of me to expose your delicate ears to the agony that is the "Cheez Whiz Has Personality" commercial, but I'm going to have to post it.