you know that old silly joke where you start to sit down but someone pulls the chair out from behind you and then you fall down??? i never thought it was funny, but in one brilliant moment, i pulled this little trick on derek, and, really, i have to say it was the highlight of my day. now that i think about it, i was a little bit too hesitant - for a moment, i didn't know if i should do it at all; i mean, there are possible repercussions - he could fall and ding his head on the chair, thus inciting some inflammation and possibly some intra-cerebral edema and hemorrhage blah blah blah, he would cry, he would yell and scream and throw a regular tantrum...and so i didn't pull it out all the way and not too quickly - so he actually had a good chance to recover - but ah! it was so inviting! after a whole year of little derek tricks (i'd have to show them to you, and most of them involve banging doors or library barricades into my face or abdomen and now i'm pretty good at returning the favor)...a cool, syrupy revenge. sweet! porage is such an endless source of dork and funny and dork (oh, okay, and friend, i guess). ;p

my best-ever friend from like kindergarten is travelling across china and everywhere and she has this neat little (detailed) blog... www.jello-jlo.blogspot.com...she is forever travelling and for as long as i can remember, has always been the first to want to fly the coop or try something really exotic. in february she was in hawaii (she goes places, i get the postcards) and now she's there...i haven't been in touch with her in the last few months...so i take it that you didn't renew with conoco, JAI!!!!!!! she worked for this huge oil company for a while and i think she's already decided to take early retirement....(good choice, my friend)

ah!!! what to rant and rave about! well, to rave about fresh apple pie, piping hot from the oven, covered with a good, generous (excessive!) dollop of belgian chocolate ice cream....and fresh, hot, pizza, piping hot from the oven...

and i've been getting these unsolicited issues of recipe magazines from martha stewart, and trying these new recipes...a cherry-tomato-olive-garlic concoction in penne pasta....SO YUMMY!!! you sizzle LOTS of garlic (martha uses 2 cloves, i use two heads) in good olive oil to create a garlic-infused hot oil, then you sizzle your sliced cherry tomatoes and sprinkle in some spices and toss in some kalamata olives, pitted and halved, and you let all the flavors simmer and interdigitate...and you toss on top of some pasta, and sprinkle like a tonne of parmesan cheese on it...it's just so wonderful. i have such an appreciation for (food in general) simple ingredients, few ingredients, lots of flavor. let me just interject here, that i am not a house wife. and there is nothing wrong with being a housewife. They have quite a hefty responsibility. martha's favorite fettuccine recipe is in this magazine too, and it only requires butter, pasta, and parmesan, i believe. amazing. well, i guess it's not such a far stretch to think that a pound of butter could make anything taste good...the next two things i want to make is caramelized pineapple. my mom called me friday night and told me to go to loblaws and buy pineapple because it was so sweet, and to buy broccoli because it was on sale...her end of the conversation was so descriptive and urgent, my end of the conversation was "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, yeah"...i also want to make this brown-sugarized salmon with sour cream drizzle topping pasta thing. YUMMY! it's because a long time ago, when i was working for the hutcheons on their death-desire-disease opera book, they had this opera party, and while all the oepra-related events of the day were really cool (a Wagner panel-multi-media-COC-face-to-face talk), i was struck (as ever) by this single salmon dish which was salmon, but it was sweet, not caramelized, but maple-y, and i think this might be it. i've always wondered how salmon got to taste so good on that night. on a different note, i ate salmon all the time in september, but then suddenly got so sick of it that i haven't even been able to fathom eating it until now...salmon-saturated, suppose.

i am writing to procrastinate studying!!!!

i'm officially sick of weldon library again. i can't stand it! i'd much rather go home these days and cook and be comfortable and study incidentally, between boiling noodles or baking pies or muffins - at the risk of sleeping most of the day and not getting any studying done at all. it's studying time for most dents students, exams in a few weeks. sick of brown-nosing it! i wish i could just let go and be an underachiever and gluttonize and fraternize and slothenize, but i can't. it's sicko! geekdom forever. yay. it's strange, i've come a full circle...i started off this whole blogging thing with the infratemporal fossa beckoning me, and right now, it's the microcirculation that beckons me.

come! come ellen! i am capillary microcirculation! we must go and agglutinize red blood cells with our tantalizing fibrils!!!!