A skittery, erratic attempt at a weblog. Rambles will be indulged and depths will be plumbed. Who knows what I'll come up with?
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| Fragments A skittery, erratic attempt at a weblog. Rambles will be indulged and depths will be plumbed. Who knows what I'll come up with? |
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Tuesday, August 24, 2004 Just so everyone knows before I leave... ...what just happened in the Olympics, I hope, is NOT my fault. I can't help it if my parents want to watch things live. I went up to my room before the women's 100m hurdles started, screwed up my eyes and stopped my ears and " LA LA LA LA LA" ed as loudly as I possibly could, so I didn't see or hear anything until it was all over. But that doesn't change the fact that I was home and the TV was on in my near vicinity at the time, so if I am sending out potent bad-luck vibes, I suppose I could have been a factor. If I'd just been at work or if the TV had just been off...well...no point in dwelling on that now. Ah well. No worries, Perdita -- it's not your fault this country is dumb about how much pressure and expectation it puts on people. Gail Devers went down at the first hurdle, too, an entire stage before you did. One of those random flukey occurrences. Is it just me, or is this country much better in events it's NOT expecting to win?? ~SQ posted by susan | 3:39 PM Weather: chilly Listening to: nothing Taking a break from: packing last-minute Trip Here's a map of the countries I've visited: create your own visited countries map or check out these Google Hacks. Sadly, that map will not change at all after I get back from this holiday, even though I've never been to London before.... I HAVE been to Scotland, which already counts as UK, so as far as this map is concerned they're the same place. This, of course, riles the Scot in me to no end. :) Not that you'll even notice I'm gone, given how bad I am at updating.... What a crazy summer -- by the time I get back it'll be move-back-to-Mac time. Enjoy the last couple of weeks off and I hope I get to talk to you all soon -- this hasn't been a good summer for staying in touch, but I'll get back on track. If I ever was on track. Take care of yourselves! ~SQ posted by susan | 12:29 PM Saturday, August 21, 2004 Weather: I think it rained today. Listening to: Tori Amos, "Cooling" Taking a break from: packing An apology To the Canadian Olympic team, coaches, commentators, and fellow Canadian citizens: I'm so sorry. It's all my fault that we're demoralized about our medal count in these Olypmics; all the bad fortune we've had all competition have been due to me and my incredible lack of luck. I've always known that I'm unlucky. It's not as if I've had a lot of hard breaks in life, I don't mean that, but if chance or good fortune is an element in a particular equation at ALL, I will not be able to rely on that element to come through for me. But as it turns out, it's worse -- I'm like a black hole for luck. Not only do I not have any of my own, I have negative luck: I suck in yours, too. The Olympic games are almost always in a different time zone from me, and in general I'm so busy during the day in the summer that I don't get a chance to hear or watch any live coverage of the games, so I catch up on it all in the primetime 'highlights' packages put together by the faithful CBC. (And poor Brian Williams...he tries so hard to put such a great face on disappointing results. You can tell that he's really trying to keep the morale up.) Watching stuff that's already happened is fine, I can't possibly jinx the results of an event that's already occured -- barring me being an ACTUAL black hole for luck, able to cause quantum time travel so that my cataclysmic ineptitude could affect the past. But THIS year, good old CBC Radio One, a favourite standby station in the viral load lab, has been doing 'Olympic updates' twice or so an hour throughout the day -- AS EVENTS ACTUALLY HAPPEN. This has been calamitous for all of you. For a week I listened eagerly to the reports, so I was there when the swimmers were all disappointed and the rowers were heartbroken. Today, I couldn't take the feeling of responsibility, so I turned off the radio -- and what do you know, Karen Cockburn took the silver medal for women's trampoline. Again, my heartfelt apologies. I will never again, in any way, link my brainwaves to live Olympic coverage of any sort, because it's obviously, clearly and scientifically proven to be detrimental. ~SQ P.S. I hope no one takes this the wrong way -- I get mad at anyone (i.e. the National Post...grrr....) who complains about Canada's results as if they could do better. I'm not upset about where we stand so much, but it breaks my heart to see so many athletes so disheartened and disappointed. I KNOW it's stupid to feel responsible, but I SWEAR it's bad luck that I've been paying attention live this year.... I'm SO not generally superstitious, but this one's getting me.... posted by susan | 12:01 AM Friday, August 13, 2004 Weather: Ugh. Listening to: opening ceremonies on TV Taking a break from: last-minute MCAT prep Welcome to the games of the bajillion-and-first administration of the MCAT! Yyyyyeah. I'm glad you're cool, calm and collected, Tiffany, because I am pretty much exactly the opposite. I woke up nervous THIS morning. Do you believe it? I said to my stomach, "like, dude, you've got the wrong day..." I need to get this damn exam over with. I am not used to nervousness and I dislike it strongly. I've been trying to think of more nerve-wracking things and... -piano and dance recitals didn't matter -piano EXAMS came close, but they didn't really mean much in the long run either -I've never fretted for school exams -AP exams were hectic and stressful, but there wasn't so much riding on them -backstage jitters were serious, but rooted in fun and anticipation -I guess my first Fulford debating tournament, or the first time I had to compete in the exhibition round, made me pretty nervous. But I keep coming back to the that-didn't-matter clause. -I don't think I'll ever look back on this nervousness with as much fondness as I look back on first date/first kiss nervousness. So basically, yeah. When did I eat the large wriggly thing? Because I don't remember doing that. *sigh* Oh well. In less than 24 hours, it'll alllll beeeee oooveerrr. Come and go quickly, and relatively painlessly, please. ~SQ posted by susan | 7:32 PM Sunday, August 08, 2004 Weather: WAS gorgeous, but some clouds rolled in and now it's kind of chilly Listening to: my hips jingle! Taking a break from: physics studying Finally I'd just like to announce that, after coveting them on and off for a year now, I am the proud owner of a coin hip scarf for bellydancing. It's baby blue, with silver coins. And it jangles. Yay Danforth! What could be more Torontonian than purchasing a costume piece for Arabic/Egyptian dancing at a Greek cultural festival? ~SQ posted by susan | 2:24 PM Friday, August 06, 2004 Addendum Well, she can't have distanced herself THAT far from Y Kant Tori Read -- I found live versions of both Cool on your Island and Etienne. Very cool. ...I need to study. ~SQ posted by susan | 7:35 PM Tuesday, August 03, 2004 Weather: kind of all over the place today Listening to: Y Kant Tori Read, "Floating City" Taking a break from: verbal passages Premature Tori Few people, even moderate fans, would connect the scarlet-haired songstress and piano virtuoso with a mediocre 80's chick-rock band. The fact remains, however, that Tori Amos' first commerical release was as the lead singer for Y Kant Tori Read, a band that went steadily nowhere and sold about 7,000 copies of their self-titled debut album. On the cover you can barely recognize Tori under the metal-chick hairspray and leather bustier, and she's carrying a SAMURAI sword to boot.... It's like all the worst 80's prom pictures everyone's older sister has hidden from sight in the basement, mixed with bad 80's movie icons and general bad 80-ness. There's something intrinsically embarrassing about the 80's -- this just proves to me that it doesn't matter how beautiful you are, NO ONE looked good in that decade, NO ONE. Now that she has a huge and slightly-maniacally-devoted fanbase, of course, every Toriphile worth their salt is itching to get their hands on a copy (even if just for collection-completion's sake); Tori, though, has publically distanced herself from the record, and Atlantic Records is hardly likely to re-release it under that kind of circumstance. A mint condition original recording will sell for over $150, and even bootlegs can only be had for $30 or so. But somehow, Diagnosed Sounds has all the tracks available. And I figure that even if I COULD find a real copy, I'd be buying it through fairly illicit channels anyway, soo it's not like I'm depriving the goddess of the ivories of any due by downloading them. I'm pleasantly surprised, actually; it's not as bad as everyone makes out. What shocks me more than anything is how little her voice has changed; it's the same angsty-breathy-banshee-warbly-wail as always. It is rather disconcerting, however, to hear it paired with normal, insipid, bland pop lyrics like "you went away, why did you leave me, you know I believed you" and "baby I don't know what drives you to play these silly games". It's also strange to hear so much synthesizer and electronica in her music, and so LITTLE piano...where the heck is the bösendorfer.... But the voice is still gold, and once in awhile the musical talent shines through: bits throughout Fire on the Side, the first couple of bars of Heart Attack at 23, and Etienne -- which, for my money, is as pretty as anything she's done since (kind of a cross between China and Mary), if not as well-developed and a little heavy on the synth drumbeats. And a lot of the rest of it is pretty enjoyable, even if it doesn't sound much like Little Earthquakes and beyond. So it's Tori, in the 80's. All in all, I can imagine worse discoveries for me to make while stressing. ~SQ posted by susan | 10:52 PM Monday, August 02, 2004 Weather: very warm and sunny, clear blue sky Listening to: denada Taking a break from: MCAT practice test A Concerned and nervous 50% of me wishes the MCAT were tomorrow. I feel like I'm running out of steam. My desire to work is just going to go downhill in the next couple of weeks, and in all likelihood it will drag my marks with it. What would suck more than anything would be to do worse on the real MCAT than on my best mock. I'd be happy enough with my best mock mark in each section if I got them on the real thing -- unfortunately, they haven't come together for me yet, and this practice test isn't really boosting my self-confidence much. The other 50% of me knows that I don't know nearly enough to do justice to the test yet. If I did, I'd be getting my 'good marks' consistently and I'd be getting them together, on the same mocks. Unfortunately that 50% isn't communicating very well with the part of my brain that says "Study like you've never studied before". I'm also stunningly bad at taking these practice MCATs seriously. I feel self-conscious and silly being all "wow, let's haul out a timer and make sure I spend exactly 100 minutes on this section...no one disturb me...yes, I'm going to write two essays no one's going to mark...." I shouldn't, because it's important, but I kind of feel like I'm getting enough practice with pacing and time limits through the mocks. I'm no good at structuring my environment like a real test environment, it seems. No matter what, I'm just never going to get that test epinephrine-and-focus rush if I'm doing this all by myself in my basement -- and THAT'S what I need to take a test seriously. So I'm thinking that writing this practice today was a bad idea, and that I should have just studied normally. I suppose sometime I should also go check out the building I'm writing in, scope out where the washrooms are, plan my outfit (that's more important than you might think -- climate control issues), decide how much food to take, and figure out the best way to keep from getting distracted by the general stress all around me. Is taking a discman a good idea? The LAST thing I need is to have a song stuck in my head while I'm trying to maneuver my way through a fluid dynamics passage or craft a synthesis criterion.... Damn this test. A little nervousness before an exam is a good thing for me, but I can't sustain almost two weeks of it, and certainly not two weeks at this pitch. So somehow I just need to chill and study, instead of fret and waste time. Chill, study, and not consider the worst case scenario, which is that I spend all of NEXT summer doing this as well. Bloody hell. God preserve me. ~SQ posted by susan | 5:49 PM |
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