a wolf angel is not a good angel

What were people *thinking*?

I glanced through this year’s BoM (best of Mtl) food places, in case there are places I don’t know about. (No.)

Cheap eats — McDonald’s? It’s cheap, yes, but . . . and whoever put their fries above Frites Alors! and Mondo was insane.

I still don’t understand the enduring popularity of Buffet Maharaja (best buffet, 2nd Indian). For buffet Indian it’s not bad, but for not buffet? Cheap is different than good. St-Hubert? Also not particularly good barbecue chicken. (Cote-St-Luc BBQ is our choice.) You can’t get good burgers anywhere: message to the Quebec government: please allow me to order burgers medium. I will risk the slight danger if it means I can have edible burgers. Thank you.

I tend to prefer St-Viateur to Fairmount bagels, so I approve of that ranking. Santropol sandwiches rock (Dagwoods is better than Subway), and the Commensal is, as always, tasty. You can’t really find a bad patisserie, and Moisson has great multigrain bread. Au Pain Dore has great croissants with chocolate and nuts and mmm. Duc de Lorraine is a patisserie, too.

Tim Horton’s? Actually. Yeah. Their coffee is surprisingly good. Also, not on the list, Brulerie St-Denis. Bilboquet has ordinary ice cream but phenomenal fruit sorbets. Wandering around Mont Royal E finds you lovelier homemade ice cream places. When’s the next heat wave due again?

I vouch for every single one of the dessert places (in a different order), with the caveat that the cheese pies (like cheesecakes, but in pie crust) at Rockaberry aren’t particularly good, and you should always go for the strawberry peach, unless there’s only one slice left, which you should let me have.

It’s election season in Canada, too. It was called just recently for June 28 and I’m already sick of the campaign. Anyone with a brain knows that a vote for the Bloc Quebecois isn’t necessarily a vote for separation, despite the BQ being a separatist party. The leader of this separatist party is, in fact, a separatist, whatever Paul Martin thinks. If you write separatist too many times in a row, it looks like it’s spelled wrong. Separatist. Separatist.

Me? I’m voting NDP. Stephen Harper is, well, Stephen Harper, and they’re way too conservative for me, I can’t in good conscience vote for the Bloc (though I tend to agree with their non-separatist politics), and I refuse to vote for the Liberals. Plus, Jack Layton promises to make two more national holidays, one in February and one in August (June outside of Quebec, which already has a holiday in June). February really needs a holiday.

Also the new funding gives about 40 cents for each vote a party receives.

Here’s hoping for a fast and quiet campaign and a Liberal minority government that makes a coalition with the NDP.

I found out that two people from my undergraduate program are heading towards PhDs in linguistics next year — one graduated this year, one last year. It’s hard to hear; I feel somewhat stupid, or — no, stupid works here. As does failure, or worthless, or any of the worse terms I use against myself, on bad days.

Yes, sure, it was the right decision for me. But part of me whispers that I did it because I was scared of failing because I’m just no good. Failing because you quit is different, after all. Part of me says that.

Part of me goes on to say that after all the admissions department made a big-ass mistake, that I was never any good at this, that I’m not good at anything.

In a brief conversation with a friend, we were discussing grad school as a general thing, mostly her telling me about what professors have suggested to her. I’ll be complaining to her at length (I claim it’s “warning” her), later.

Grad school yay! Academia yay! Of course you expect to hear that from tenured professors who like their jobs. I recall that one prof, who was supportive of my leaving, also kept it as sort of a given that I could — and in a few years would — go back, elsewhere. (I admit that sometimes I think I should, or go and do some stuff in computer science, or . . . but this is just my inferiority complex, I think. Hope. Something.)

But it was the same as people complain about at length here. You can teach there. You can get intellectual stimulation there. And, well, yes, you can, and I can’t get so much of discussion of linguistics from my friends or family — but I have better political discussions with my family, and sociocultural and religious ones with them, too. I care about those things, too.

I wish I could see ahead the next little while and see that it all works out. That I find something I love doing (most of the time, anyhow) in a place I love living. That I can buy a place to live in. That I can find someone to share my life with. That I’m happy and feel I made the right choice, think “oh had I stayed there I wouldn’t've . . . ” but then there’s always the good things that would have happened had I stayed. Time has helped with worse than this, and it will help with this — but this was all my choices which seemed so reasonable and well-thought at the time.

Regret.

It’s hard — or maybe just hypocritical — because I know lots of very smart people who did not get PhDs and do not think any less of them. But of me — well. That’s different. So I huddle in a corner of my elbow and think I’m terrible, I’m terrible . . .

Before I post a long misery-filled post:

Matilda has forgiven me. She is sleeping on my bed at night. Sam is less of a one-person-only cat, so he’s forgiven me, though I suspect he just forgot I left.

Breakfast plans at the Scary Chicken Restaurant. And then, perhaps, pear sorbet. Mmmm. And dinner plans at some restaurant a friend wants to try — I think a Portuguese one. And eventual fries at Frites Alors!, my favourite fries here. Ah, plans. I’ve got nice things coming this summer. I will need to figure out what’s coming *after* that eventually, but time enough later.

I keep feeling I should have thoughts. I’m not sure what they should be about, but really, they should exist.

I’m floating in some sort of ill-defined haze of “wonder what I’m doing now”. Not the really desperately needing to be done work. Tomorrow. Tonight I saw Shrek 2, which was clever. Wasn’t Farquaad supposed to be in it, though? I know I saw him in some previews. Why didn’t John Cleese speak in his own voice?

Today I got a spoof email purporting to be from PayPal, which I reported, but the site is still up — though it seems to be actually on PayPal’s site itself, so I have no idea.

I read a book (I forget the title), which was marginally interesting, though mostly not, which had as its main character a “linguist” (I respect that the author wanted the character to be a linguist, but could s/he not have found a topic that linguists actually study? The poetry of someone or other? Not so much) who couldn’t find an academic career (in the 80s) and ended up a tester for some software product. There were interesting comments about academia, but what I most liked is that she ended up vastly wealthy and doing work she found interesting.

I can dream, no?

There are going to need to be some major adjustments soon. First I need to unpack, though. How long will that take? Longer than it should, I’m sure. I’m just so unmotivated.

My sister has the Sims for the GameCube, and there’s one set of games that just involves meeting specific goals. There goes my time . . .

Intelligent thoughts to return later.

I’m home. Finally. For good.

Leaving was — surprisingly — harder than I had anticipated. It was easy once I’d left, at least. Now I need to unpack the boxes of random crap, the prospect of which, frankly, scares me. And to get the network functioning properly.

My cats seem to have forgotten me, though. Faithless little things.

Well, last-minute packing has given way entirely to last-minute tossing stuff into boxes willy-nilly.

I have until, probably, 3. Which should be enough, I hope. It better be enough, anyways. I have random crap in my room left, lots of random crap in the living room, glasses, dishes and food. And there’s one book on tape I’d like to copy. It’s 11 CDs, which means it should take me about 2-3 hours to rip, depending on how quickly I switch CDs. I’ll burn them tonight, but I need to return the originals to the library. Books on tape are th eonly way I can deal with long drives without (human) passengers. And tomorrow I get to see my cats again!

It’s good no one seems to be blogging today (yet); I really need not to procrastinate. Any more than I already am.

Calgary beat San Jose 3-1 — it was the first time a home team won in the Western Conference finals, which Calgary won 4-2. They’re going to the Stanley Cup!

Update:
Calgary’s even more excited than I imagined.

More than an estimated 35,000 Calgarians poured onto 17th Avenue just as thousands have with each Flames victory during these playoffs. Red-clad supporters gave each other high-fives and danced . . .

The city of Calgary has been turned into a virtual shrine for the hometown heroes with Flames banners adorning the outside of buildings, team flags on thousands of cars and any clothing item with the flaming C logo becoming the uniform of choice in both upscale and downscale stores.

Even churches have got in on the action with ministers wearing Flames jerseys during their sermons. The Centre for Positive Living along 17th Avenue had a sign advertising the next guest speaker and followed up with the slogan ‘Goals Flames Goals!’

A Calgary high school scheduled final exams around the Flames playoff games ensuring no tests were given the morning after the hometown favourites took to the ice. (emphasis mine)

I vacuumed my couches. Now my roommate is sitting on one, picking off her dandruff. Argh. Ugh. Eww.

Incidentally, she figures that Walmart’s abuses of their employees don’t matter because, hey, it’s better than not having a job.