Bearshorty's musings

I only got to campus by 2pm. I did stop by my favorite pizza pace near there and got a falafel. And then I was passing DunkinDonuts and I got a Boston scream donut (which is just like Boston Crème but with orange frosting lines on top for Halloween). I don’t eat donuts often but I just needed something sweet.

Today was a bad day for concentrating on anything. My mind kept drifting. For some reason I kept thinking of “The Little Drummer Girl” by John le Carre. I read this book five years ago when I was in Norwich. Papa gave me a different book for my birthday, a historical fiction, that I took with me when I went to England. But this particular historical fiction was irritating me with its version of history (I really enjoy reading fairly accurate and definitely well researched historical fiction or my historical brain would protest). So I asked him to recommend another book that I could substitute for the birthday present. He suggested “The Little Drummer Girl.” I’m usually not into spy novels but I couldn’t put this book down. And parts of it stayed in my mind. There is also one of the best love scenes I’ve ever read in literature in this book. So when for some reason this book kept coming up in my head today (I don’t even know why), and I was in the library after all, I found it in the uni library and read my favorite passages for a while. Then I read a bit of the “Constant Gardener” which I want to read eventually since I did love the movie.

I met with a student then graded a bit. I got sushi and tea for dinner and then it was time for Michael Pollan lecture.

He was very funny. I was not expecting him to be that funny. He brought lots of ‘food like substances’ like soup in a can that can fit in your car and other processed food. I read “In Defense of Food” in June, so I knew his basic premise but it was still a lot of fun to listen to and think about the way our culture redefined food to focus simply on nutrition and how it ignored other functions of food and how we eat. I had to leave during Q & A because Papa also had to pick up Mama at her seminar in Brooklyn but I’m really glad I got to see him lecture live.

When someone decides to close the upper level of the bridge for repairs at 10:30 at night, it might be a good idea NOT to create a bottleneck on the lower level so that only one car at a time can get on the bridge out of three lanes. Being stuck in traffic cause by human stupidity late at night for a while – not that fun.

Today was a nice relaxing snuggling day. We stayed inside most of the day, going for a walk before dinner and then to the theater after dinner. But it was a nice cozy day.

Bear read “Three Bears” in Russian from the children’s book I got him in Minsk. He is doing really well with it too. He needs to build his vocabulary some but his grammar is really good.

I read today. I finished Pollan’s book and I read more of the May National Geographic issue – this time an article on Mt. St Helens and the renewing ecosystem. I’m really glad I got a subscription, I really like the articles and I don’t really have the patience to read it online. There is something to be said for holding a solid copy too.

I also showed Bear all my Minsk pictures while having England vs US game in the background.

After dinner with Bear’s parents and his sister, we got dressed up to go to “Fiddler on the Roof.” This was my birthday present from him. This time we went to a local theater near his house and the quality of the production was really good too. I wore pretty much the outfit I wore to my birthday party, since I wanted Bear to actually see it, except with black stockings this time. I also borrowed a red shawl from his Mom, since I forgot my black one at home (and I know how they always freeze theaters). Bear wore nice light pants and black shirt and looked all handsome. The guy who played Tevya was really good and in general I just adore this musical. It was an awesome musical. Since I know it so well from the movie, it was fun to see it live, especially “Sunrise, Sunset” (my favorite song) and the bottle wedding dance. I just loved the whole thing and it was a wonderful outing.

I got my official last extension today from graduate school – January 2011. I have a schedule now to graduate on that date.

Today I started learning how to upload images for my blog. I read the FAQs to discover I need to post the images somewhere on the internet. I decided on Picasa. Medusa sent me a HTML code for posting images, so it should be easy.

Pollan’s book is awesome in just the information it gives me, lesson of the day - refined flour is fairly useless in any nutritional content. Still, I can’t bring myself to like brown rice. I also learned to my chagrin that traditional diets don’t really need dentists – sugar is evil. That is just not fair!

SYTYCD. I completely forgot it was Wednesday and that for summer TV it means my favorite dance show. I only remembered around 9pm and at least it was only half over. I pretty much missed all the auditions. I’m watching Top 10 being notified in their homes by the judges that they made it, or people getting rejected in their homes. I still don’t know what I feel about the change in format. I do want to see past dancers but ten still seems a small field. And I will miss Mary as a judge. I hope the show will do the exhibition of dancers before the competition starts like they did in the fall. At least the show is back in its proper summer spot. Now I just have to remember that it’s on. Well, Top 11. Nice fake out about Billy Bell, show. I was shocked for a bit until you said there will be Top 11. Not exactly fair to girls, since now there are six boys and five girls, but I will take it.

“Special Relationship” I caught this on HBO onDemand. In the beginning of this movie there were so playing Blair as having a crush on Clinton and going on dates. It was cute to see. And Blair’s wife called him on it too. Hee. Politically, it was very much dating game. And Blair’s mistake in the end was breaking up with Clinton and taking up with Bush. Ah, Tony Blair. I quite liked this trilogy of movies (“Deal” “The Queen” and this one) and Martin Sheen was awesome as prime minister. I thought that the movie portrayed Hilary pretty strongly (not all reviewers agree with this) and showed good partnership in her relationship with Bill. Both Cherie Blair and Hilary came through as not just wives but strong women with their own interests.

I started reading Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food” again. It is late, and I can’t renew it since it is also on hold for someone, so I will just have to pay a fine whenever I finish it. But I really want to read the whole thing. Holy crap about low-fat diet! We get so inundated with messages on how low-fat is good for you that we don’t even think what low-fat means for content of the food. And it is hard to accept that studies actually show that all that low-fat diet doesn’t really work. I hope the new writing program textbook has newer Pollan stuff.

I was also looking over Jamie Oliver “Food Revolution” cookbook, now that I’m home, and it has lots of curry dishes and is very friendly and approachable. I had an idea to cook in New Hampshire on our group vacation and that just got into a higher gear. Bear and I will pick the recipe we’ll use but I definitely want to try something out of this book.

Some links:

Trailer for “Harry Potter 7” from MTV awards; I can’t wait for the movie.

A fun campaign to overturn prop 8 .

Hee. Same newspaper in all fictional worlds, fun number of images. Why would they have a fake newspaper that they keep recycling?