Bec's Happybox

Irony

Last year I spent January to August fretting over dozens of co-op job applications, pouring my heart out for every cover letter, hoping and hoping, and I got two lousy interviews and one job, which you all know about already, and about which the less said the better.

So far this semester, I've only applied to one job, and I really only did that because I had to write a cover letter for my technical writing class, and I figured I might as well apply to something while I was at it. One reason I'm not putting forth much effort on job apps is that I'm really hoping to get that NSERC grant I talked about, and be able to do research under Dr. Livingston this summer. But more than that, I really just care a lot less about whether I get a job or not. I'm only applying for ones I really want, and I'm not killing myself over every turn of phrase in the cover letters.

The job I applied to is one they post every semester, and which I've applied to before. It's in the biochem department, but it's a programming job. I didn't think I had a chance, since 1) 46 people applied and 2) I failed Virology, the course taught by the person who posted the job.

I got an interview, of course.

Maybe this is like when George decided to do everything the opposite of what he would normally do, and ended up getting a date, and a job, or something. Maybe if I don't care, and don't put forth effort, great jobs will just fall in my lap. Maybe I'll wear jeans to the interview.

It's on Tuesday. Wish me (bad) luck.

---

Jessie thinks it's funny that the class in which I'm the only woman is my technical writing class. Only it's not funny once you know that nobody in the class wants to take technical writing (thank heavens since I think the world would break if people had to follow manuals written by this bunch), it's just a required course for everyone in the faculty of engineering. In fact, you can't take it if you're not in the faculty of engineering.

But if you still want something unfunny, how about this: I'm now also the only woman in my assembly programming lab. The other one dropped it.

---

Reading: still Power of Three. It's getting embarrassing.

Listening to: Chemical Brothers

Eating: There's still haggis in the fridge, but I decided to be kind to myself and made some spaghetti with black truffles for lunch instead.

Splash page: Toby, on a recent hike at Mt. Doug park

Two years ago: I refer to the student life as "turbulent, exasperating, and unpredictable", then describe a typical Waterloo Saturday

Sahsez is on her first ever field trip right now. A group from her daycare took the bus down to Chinatown this morning; they're buying stuff for their Chinese new year celebration on Friday. Sahsez was really excited about it, which was a relief to me because she still isn't 100% keen on the new daycare yet, and it's been almost a month now. The field trip served as a clear indication that New Centre is better than Old Centre, because Old Centre never went anywhere fun.

To add to the excitement, I let her wear her "China outfit" given to her by Bear, who lives, now and then, in Dalian. And then I put her hair into two braids, and she was cute as a button, I don't mind telling you.

What's that you say? Cultural appropri-what? Oh, nonononono! No, that doesn't apply to three-year olds, you see. Sahsez doesn't know what culture is, much less how to appropriate someone else's. As for the woman who dressed her this morning (i.e. me), well, I guess I'll have to plead no contest.

I hope the jury will be gentle when determining my sentence, and consider the fact that I was raised on a steady diet of appropriated culture. What with my mother making us papier mache Westcoast Indian masks and baklava, dressing us up in "China outfit"s for Dim Sum and painting pysanky eggs, all while never teaching us a word of her first language, a child tends to get a little confused!

In my mother's day, however, they didn't call it theft, they called it multiculturalism, or (some neighbours) "broad-mindedness", or (the other neighbours) "being a kook". I guess there's a fine line. I'm still trying to work out where it is.

In the meantime, my rendition of To a Louse is getting better every year, I must say. Too bad the amount of leftover haggis from our annual Robbie Burns' Day celebrations isn't getting smaller. There's only so many days in a row that one can eat haggis for lunch and not start feeling a bit sickly.

(My paternal grandfather has Scottish roots, I'm told, so I'm safe to shout out "HA! Where ya gaun ya crowlin ferlie?" any time I please.)

---

Anyway, I didn't mean to write an entry about cultural appropriation.

On to less complicated issues!

Weather:

I don't want to be cruel, but spring has sprung on Vancouver Island, my friends. I've already mentioned the cherry blossoms and the hummingbirds. Now I must just quickly note the sun, the warmth, the variety of other types of birds, and the Sunday spent walking around downtown enjoying it all. Check, check, check, and....

Sunday spent walking around downtown enjoying it all:

Nothing makes me feel more virtuous than taking Sahsez on an outing on the bus (except perhaps attaching tiny labels to tiny little Tupperware containers full of salad dressing for her lunch). Toby had to work on Sunday so we went downtown to the library. It was closed, bugger it, so we had pizza and then went to see Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees at the IMAX.

IMAX movies are generally crap, but I loved this one. I think I loved it more than Sahsez, even if I didn't cry when it was over. I want to be Jane Goodall. I remember how exciting it was to spend ten minutes with a group of howler monkies in the wild when we were in Costa Rica, and she gets to spend her whole life with those chimps. Siiiiigh.

Alright, enough mooning. Homework time.

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Reading: I just finished Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford. It was dumb, but that won't stop me from reading more by her. Also finished French Lessons by Peter Mayle. I liked it but sometimes wish he wouldn't try so hard for jokes. The material is interesting enough that I don't need to be laughing while I read.

And I'm still toiling away at Power of Three which I took a break from while I gobbled up 600 pages of Mitford last week.

Listening to: the loudest computer in the whole world, buzzing to beat the band

Eating: Haggis. Again.

Homework (buzzed)

So, today is the due date for my first databases assignment, and I'm just about to start working on it. It's 4pm, so I have eight hours to do it. And since it's Friday, I'm allowing myself a little cocktail to help things get rolling. Actually, I need a cocktail whenever I have to work in Windows, like now, for this assignment, since the whole setup makes me uncomfortable. I'm writing this in Notepad right now and it's very irritating! It doesn't scroll around nicely at the end of the window; it just keeps on going until I hit enter.

I don't know how people cope with this OS on a daily basis. The mere thought of it sends me rushing to the liquor cabinet for Kahlua.

I'm supposed to be writing a requirements specification based on an IEEE format, but I don't even know what IEEE stands for. If I don't know who they are, how can I trust their document format? They could be Inverted Eels Eating Eggs. Or Interesting Esoteric Esophagal Emissions. Or anything at all, and I'm expected to just ACCEPT that their format is the right way to do things? I find this all rather appalling.

Hey, that reminds me of when I worked for Irish Industrial Explosives. I was a receiptionist, only I wasn't allowed to say the name of the company when I answered the phone. Something to do with the Troubles. I had to say "555-1212 Good morning!" instead. Isn't that weird? I've never heard of that anywhere else, and I think if I called someone and they immediately recited back to me the numbers I had just dialed, I would be kind of disconcerted for a minute.

That's certainly neither here nor there when it comes to this databases assignment! I should get to work on it.

I just came from seeing my databases, prof, incidentally, and we're going to co-apply for an NSERC research grant for me to do some work in his research group. I'm very excited about it, but I don't want to get my hopes up yet, because there are only six undergraduate grants being given out for 2003/04 and I bet a lot of kids in my program would like to get their hands on them. NSERC has been "strongly encouraged" to give half the grants to female applicants, however, and since there are only, oh, TWO women in my program, this should help my chances considerably.

You know I'm joking about the two. There are more than two. But not many more!

The coolest thing about the meeting we just had is that he gave me a non-disclosure agreement to sing. My first NDA! So of course I called Toby right away and told him that I was going to have to look at some documents, but that under NO CIRCUMSTANCES would he be allowed to view them.

If I do get to work in ...hmmm...what's a good pseudonym for my prof? I'll call him Dr. Livingston. For no reason, except that I want to put "Dr." at the beginning of it. If I do get to work in Dr. Livingston's lab, I will be able to semi-truthfully tell my friends and family that I'm doing top-secret research, and that I can't discuss it. So. Cool.

Oh, and I just thought of something else! I probably will have to write a confidential co-op work term report that nobody but Dr. Livingston will read.

Okay, I think this qualifies as "getting my hopes up" so I'd best stop.

One more thing: Dr. Livingston is very easy on the eyes.

That is all.

Now I am going to work on my assignment for one solid hour. Then I will be back to talk about my new yoga class.

Hello, I am now 26. This sounds dangerously close to "late twenties" doesn't it? I'm trying not to think about it too much.

I had a great birthday weekend, starting with an impromptu party at Marg's when I dropped Sahsez off for her sleepover Friday night. Marg had bought me a cake and this book.

After having a piece of cake, and being sung to, and poring over my new cookbook a bit, I rushed off to my biweekly get together with my knitting group at which I polished off nearly a whole bottle of Bordeaux myself. Then I had to feign sobriety at Frida's, where there was a spa night happening. Great fun, but more relaxing once I had sobered up and didn't have to fake it.

On my birthday morning, my mom made brunch for Randal, Sahsez, Toby, and I. Then we headed downtown to the peace march, which I managed to drag myself through, despite a slight hangover and a broken body, caused by the first session of a new yoga class the day before.

Frida and Diego hosted my birthday dinner that evening, and two aspirins and three glasses of wine spruced me up enough to win at Boggle.

The final event was, strangely enough, the most thrilling. It was the 90 minutes I spent alone on Sunday morning, flat on my back, reading a Nancy Mitford novel.

A good weekend. Took the edge off getting older.

---

Yesterday as I was sitting down in my assembly language class, my classmate said "Isn't that that guy from TV?" I looked, and lo and behold, there was David Suzuki. It appeared that he had just given a lecture. I knew that he was speaking last night at the university centre, but who knew he was also guest-lecturing a biology class? I immediately rushed down to the front of the lecture hall to listen to his responses to the questions the biology students were asking him.

He's soooo dreamy! I think I am unwittingly following in my mother's footsteps; she has the biggest crush on him. I asked him to stay and teach our computer science class. He said "I'm a nrrrrrd." I don't know what this means.

Anyway, after that I didn't need to go to his talk last night, because I'd gotten my fix. Saved myself ten bucks.

---

Sahsez is getting very close to being able to write her name. This is very exciting, not only because she is learning and growing, but because as soon as she is able to read, I expect to have just oodles of free time myself. Imagine how wonderful it will be to have a nice quiet evening in the living room with all three of us reading our own books! These days, Toby or I will read to her, but the other parent can never stay in the room because it is too distracting to listen to someone reading aloud. So we're always spread around the house when we're reading.

Anyway, she can type her name in a word processor just fine, and if she uses this little stencil my mom bought her, she can write three of the letters herself and get help from the stencil with the other three. Pretty close! Maybe by this weekend she'll be able to do the whole thing, freehand, herself.

What else can she do? I'm so glad you asked! She can point and click the mouse, but she can't drag and drop yet. She can recognize the numbers 1-8, about 50% of the time. She can throw and catch a small basketball. She can hike for 90 minutes, on fairly flat ground, at a fairly slow pace. She can sing dozens of songs, including the rather tricky "Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye...". She can ride behind her dad on her trail-a-bike, though she has yet to do much actual pedalling. And, as always, she continues to perform her most important task, which is amusing her parents no end.

Last night, for example, Toby left the house ahead of us, seeming to leave us behind. So Sahsez ran to the open door and yelled out "You forgot your family!"

Funny, no?

No?

Well, it is to us. Maybe you had to be there.

---

Reading: Power of Three by DWJ and The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Listening to: the TV downstairs playing a video of Upstairs, Downstairs. I like to have it on while I do my linear algebra homework. I don't know why.
Eating: My butcher reopened after a long holiday on Friday, and I stocked up on meat. Then I went to Frida and Diego's for dinner on Saturday night, and, as always happens, I was so impressed with what they fed us (veggie moussaka, in this case) that I considered becoming a vegetarian. Unfortunately, the next day my mom brought over the leftover sausages from my birthday brunch and last night I made lentils and sausages for dinner and it was so damn good that all ideas of vegetarianism have been shelved.
Splash page: A shot of the Golden Gulliver, Collan of Ham, and Toby, from our snowshoeing expedition on Dec. 30

Ten Percent

A group of eight healthy-looking women walked into my databases class on the first day. They looked at us. We looked at them. They clearly did not belong. For one thing, they all looked like they exercised way too much to be geeks. More importantly, the class already had it's requisite 10% female students...eight more would have doubled that.

I let myself get a little bit excited. What if things had changed in the semester that I was away? What if there were a bunch more women in the department that I didn't know about? And the fact that they all walked in together suggested some sort of alliance. Maybe I could join them!

I was dreaming. A second later, one of them leaned down to ask one of the already-seated students, "Is this anthropology?"

Ah.

Everyone returned to their conversations as the group of eight left the room, taking with them four other women and one guy who had also come for an anthropology lecture. My moment of revolution was over.

---

So my semester is under way. Four courses this time, because Sahsez is in daycare so I should be able to Handle It. Three look like they'll be reasonable (technical writing, linear algebra, databases) and only my assembly language class looks like a real ass-kicker. The first half of the first lecture blew my mind. I do not retain computer architecture information very well, it seems. It's funny: I'm not afraid of learning and using assembly language, but I am afraid that I'll forget what a "bus" does.

I guess my colleagues would say "She's not a hardware guy, she's a software guy." And then I would be obliged to say "Strangely enough, I'm not a 'guy' at all!" And then they would say "oh yeah. Sorry."

Did I mention I'm the ONLY female in my technical writing class? The professor said "don't give up" when he realized this. He calls the other students by their first name but calls me Ms. D_. I don't know why, but it's fine by me. I like it. Maybe I should ask him to call me Mrs. D_. That would be funny.

I've never been the ONLY one before. One of two, yes, and even the only one who actually showed up to class, but never the ONLY one even registered in the section! It boggles the mind.

A plea to the good people of the world: will you please, for heavens sake, encourage your daughters to study computer science? I'm so lonely out here!

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In other news, the cherry trees in our "cohtyahd" (Sahsez' pronunciation of "courtyard") are blossoming. Hi, yes, it is January, but it was so summery last week, sunny and dry every day.

On Wednesday, I met some new neighbours at the playground. They just moved here from Colombia. I said to the mum "I'm so glad the weather is warm to welcome you to Canada"

"What? Warm? This is warm?"

"Ummm, yes! This is quite summery considering it's the dead of winter!"

"Oh no! Eet ees soooo cold! We are all sick!"

"Oh, I guess it's a big change! But for us, this is really warm."

"Well I've lived in cold places, like Venezuela, Ecuador, but never like this! Never so cold!"

"Ha! And this is the warmest place in Canada!"

"I know. That's why we're here."

Meanwhile I'm thinking, "ah, if she's cold, maybe she'll like to join my knitting club! A new recruit!" Don't ask me what being cold and knitting club have to do with one another. It's not like we have a fireplace or anything. I'm just always trying to lure unsuspecting women into my knitting circle.

---

Reading: French Lessons by Peter Mayle, and Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones
Listening to: my noisy, noisy, computer
Eating: this salad that my sister made for me consisting of the cheapest caesar dressing you can buy, the cheapest tuna you can buy, and a bunch of spinach. I love it.

Au revoir, mes vacances

Yesterday was the day that I had agreed to let Toby tear down the Christmas tree and the lights. So he did. I felt bad about it because it was sort of behind Sahsez' back in that she was at her grandma's and didn't know about it. But we had balloons from new year's to make up for it. It worked, and she didn't cry or anything.

Today was Toby's first day back at work and Sahsez' first day back at daycare. I didn't have school, but I worked on my workterm report while Sahs was at the New Exciting Daycare. It was an uneventful first day for her. Since school doesn't start till Monday, only ten of the 25 kids who are normally in her centre attended today, and it should be nice and quiet tomorrow as well. This is a good way for her to start at the new place.

Do you ever start feeling, during a vacation, that the vacation should be your normal life, and that all those other annoying things like school and work are just standing in the way of your true calling, which is sitting around? No? Me neither, I was just checking. Cuz I don't want any slackers reading my journal.

Not that I sat around during my break. Nosirree! I ate dinner at many different people's houses, which was grueling, and I often stood around. It was great, but don't think for a minute that I wasn't working hard.

I'm definitely baffled by the list of things I thought I would get done during the break, though. I mean, work on the Marigold redesign? the Happybox redesign? my workterm report? send out Christmas cards? clean my fridge? Actually I managed to get that last one done yesterday, but seriously, was I stoned? The holidays are for HOLIDAYING. I know that now. I'll never plan to get anything done during my holidays again.

I didn't even send out my Christmas cards.

I lose.

Reading: The Big Rumpus...makes me miss being a SAHM
Listening to: nothing
Eating: deboned my first rabbit today! I overcooked it a bit, because I was concerned that it be thoroughly done because it has been defrosting in the fridge for like five days. It was pretty good with mushrooms and onions, but next time I'm going to try to make it a bit tastier.

Happy New Year!

I'm supposed to be working on my co-op work term report, but, as I found yesterday, the only thing more boring than designing a website is writing about designing a website.  I wrote a rough draft of the thing yesterday, but I wrote it real conversation-like, like a journal entry, so I've got to redo it today in technical report style.  HOW. FUCKING. BORING. Serves me right for leaving it so long, though.  This is something that I could have started months ago, which is now due in five days, and still I procrastinate.  Now that I'm in holiday mode, it seems like a real hardship to do anything other than exactly what I feel like doing. 

Had a great night last night.  I went to dinner at my favourite restaurant, Cafe Brio, rang in the new year there, and then put in an appearance at my sister's party, smoked a joint, and went home.

Reading: Peter Mayle's French Lessons, Bust, the gospel of Luke, and also rereading The Big Rumpus

Eating: 

Last night we had five courses at CB:  To start, a nice creamy soup made with potatoes, leeks, Jerusalem artichokes and truffle oil, and a glass of champagne.  Then Toby and I split a bottle of De Toren Fusion V 2000 (red Bordeauxesque wine)  to accompany the next three courses which were 1) Pickled Sooke trout with potato blinis, caviar, horseradish creme fraiche, and a little salad of fennel, apple, and greens 2) Venision loin en croute with Bordeaux wine jelly, and roast shallot and sauteed spinach and 3) a lovely Camembert with peppergrass, french toast, and honey sauce.  To finish, an Okanagan ice wine and lemon creme brulee with cookies, and a latte.  Oh-lahley. 

Still, truth be told, it was the worst meal I've had at CB.  Sort of a cafeteria version of a normal dinner there, since it was made en masse.  This is not to say that Cafe Brio isn't still the best place in Victoria to eat, or that their worst meal isn't better than everyone else's best.  No.  It's just that my other culinary experiences there have all been better.  This one was the most fun, though.  Our table of eight really stood out from the rest of the guests in that our average age was 26, compared to around fifty at almost every other table.  So I dubbed ours "The Kids' Table," a concept verified when the owner said "Here you go kids" at a few minutes to midnight and dumped a large supply of streamers on our table, while stingily distributing the meagre rest to "the adults."

Sahsez: she's starting the new daycare tomorrow!  My baby!