I have no idea why I'm calling you to complain about these uncooked fries. I don't like fries at this place anyway. Still it bothered me that your fries were uncooked. Could you please ask the people at the location beside the Canadian Tire to please cook their fries? No. Not the location beside the Home Depot. No not that location. No not the location on brimely Avenue. No. Not that location. Could you please just tell them to give me a receipt next time? No I have no further concerns. Sure I'll give you my e-mail address. Sure I'll give you my street name. No it's not a crescent, it's a boulevard. No it's not an avenue, it's a boulevard. Good night mister customer service representative guy. I wonder if I'll ever hear your voice again. I wonder what city you're in... in the same way I wonder why everything seems to make so much sense one moment and so little the next. What did he sing that one time? Oh yeah, "how time can move both fast and slow, amazes me."

Just like I'll wonder about the teenage roommate at the hospital. The one with a million stab wounds, a punctured heart. How romantic it is for us to say our hearts are broken, until they actually are. Until we have to be cut open from the neck down for open heart surgery. Until our lungs collapse because of some stupid fight at 16.

Just like I'll wonder about A's parents. How is it that they are so strong? Seeing their daughter go through chemo for years only to lose her. How do you deal with a loss so great?

How is it that people can be so resilient, so brave, when they're pushed to the limit, but remain so weak, sad, uninspired, when faced with no dilemmas?

"[Is] heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid? The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become." -- The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera)

Posted by Amélie at 7:17 PM 2 comments

Labels: sick, words, writing

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

I would like to share my excitement with you, the few lovely readers that I have, regarding my electives next year. Next year for the first time in 2 years I get some flexibility in my course selection and I've of course used that opportunity to take as many random, awesome courses as possible. Here are two of the courses I'm taking and their selected readings. I saw the book King and King on the list and thought it sounded very familiar. Then I remembered it being used in a prop 8 advertisement to scare conservatives.

Horror and Terror: Variations on Gothic
Reading List:

Bram Stoker, Dracula (Penguin);

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (trans. Strachey, intro by Peter Gay); Charlotte F. Otten (Ed),

The Literary Werewolf (Syracuse University Press);

Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (Ballantine Books).

20th-century Children's Literature

(Revised July 2, 2009)

Barrie, J. M. Peter Pan (Bantam) (ISBN: 0553211781)
Bellairs, John. The House with a Clock in Its Walls (Puffin) (ISBN: 0142402575)
Blume, Judy. Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. (Yearling) (ISBN: 0440404193)
Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (Puffin) (ISBN: 9780142410318)
Dehaan, Linda, Stern Nijland, King and King (Tricycle) (ISBN: 1582460612)
Katz, Welwyn Wilton. False Face (Groundwood) (ISBN: 0888990820)
Lewis, C. S. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (HarperTrophy) (ISBN: 0064404994)
Pullman, Philip. The Golden Compass (Yearling) (ISBN: 9780440418320)
Richardson, Justin, and Peter Parnell, And Tango Makes Three (Simon & Schuster) (ISBN: 0689878451)
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Raincoast) (ISBN: 1551924781)
Snicket, Lemony. A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the First. The Bad Beginning (HarperCollins) (ISBN: 0064407667)
White, E. B. Charlotte’s Web (HarperTrophy) (ISBN: 0064400557)

All I have to say is, I CAN'T WAIT to enjoy learning again. : )

Posted by Amélie at 8:32 PM 2 comments

Monday, July 20, 2009

So I had my hearing.

It was very intense and they made me wait an hour and a half before they told me their decision. The good news is, I'm back in the program. The bad news is... well I'm back in the program and I have a managerial exam tomorrow.

Posted by Amélie at 5:02 PM 4 comments

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Ahhhh one night to write two essays. One on Irish monasticism and the other on the role of women in medieval Ireland. AHHHH.

Posted by Amélie at 12:35 PM 4 comments

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 My hearing is on Monday. Now you may ask, what the fuck is a hearing? What did you do Amelie? Are you going to jail? Well... no, not quite.

You see, I attend a school that regards itself as highly prestigious. Most of its activities occur in a small, gray building, deceptively surrounded by plant-life. Inside, you can find concrete gray walls in the style of brutalist architecture, large glass windows, plenty of sound-proof study rooms, lecture halls, and of course random art work. The random artwork confuses most people, even its students. It took us two years to realize that the huge ass billboard beside student services that read "DAVE & SONS LAUNDRY, CLOSING BUSINESS, 'DAD WE MISS YOU SO MUCH'" was not about anyone's dad dying but just part of the school's decor.

Anyways, as I was saying, this school is one that regards itself in a very high light. It puts a lot of emphasis on its global ranking. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that the people running the school care more about their global ranking than their students. The school is brutal to its students. The workload is insane, there is no room for slack or flexibility in course selection and a fail grade in any course leads to a process of appealing, which involves something known as a hearing.

The hearing involves you, the student, writing a letter explaining yourself, explaining why you failed a certain course, explaining any extenuating circumstances, and then going in front of a panel of 8 "judges" to explain yourself. After explaining yourself, you're grilled for some time. "Why do you want to be in this school?" "What will a BBA do for you?" "Why should we let you stay?" etc.

Then you're sent out of the room, and after some time and deliberation by the judges are told whether or not you are allowed to stay in the program.

I wasn't worried about this. I believed my appeal was strong, but in the past two days, 6 people I know got kicked out of the program, so now really I don't know what's going to happen.

So yes, that is what I have to look forward to this coming Monday. I can't wait!

Posted by Amélie at 5:20 PM 9 comments

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Dinner time. I made dinner tonight. I don't know many complicated dishes, but I made this relatively simple Iranian rice dish. It's rice, tomato paste, spices, string beans, and ground beef cooked/fried together and then added to rice to further simmer in a rice-cooker. If anyone wants to know how to actually make it, let me know. For desert I made this yogurt dish. It's pretty much plain yogurt with grated cucumbers, dried mint, and some salt for taste. Also, I found something funny while eating dinner. There was a menu for a take-out place on the table, and an item on the list stood out for me. I don't know... maybe I just have a dirty mind. I'll finish off with a pretty picture of the backyard. It's green and pretty this time of year. Now I'm going to attempt some managerial accounting for a little while... er.. hopefully (That is if certain people don't distract me too much). Posted by Amélie at 5:44 PM 4 comments

Thursday, July 9, 2009

I love you dad.
Everything will be fine...

Posted by Amélie at 9:14 PM 4 comments

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Chipped paint.

Here we are, it's July and I'm still in school. I only have 2 classes but I feel like I'm going insane. With a paper for tuesday, and an exam in 2 weeks for managerial I don't know how I'm going to do this. Friday and Saturday will be spent at the hospital, which really leaves me a lot less time for everthing that needs to get done. I can't focus. This week was probably the worst for me attention span wise. I sat in class for 3 hours and heard nothing, understood nothing. I sat through the lab and didn't absorb anything.

The appeal process for school is taking so long. Every time I think I'm finished appealing, they tell me I need to do something new. Now they want proof of my dad's brain surgery, and I don't know how to get that without asking them. They have enough on their plates as it is and I don't want to bring up school right before a surgery.

Getting out of the car today I opened the door without thinking and slammed it into our other car parked in the garage. I chipped some of the paint off and came home to glares. Mom's face forms into a permanent frown when she looks at me.

He tries to be understanding, but I don't think he understands how this feels. I feel like a burden on everything and everybody and I don't want to be comforted either.

I leave the house in the morning and come back at 11 p.m to everyone either asleep or away in their private worlds. I haven't really seen dad in days and on friday he goes to the hospital. I havent' even gotten to have dinner with him before we all scatter around hospital rooms. He got so angry at the chipped paint, but all I could think about was how insignificant it was compared to everything we've been through in the past year. All I could think about was how insignificant it was to the pain and hardships of surgery, chemotherapy, death.

Posted by Amélie at 7:49 PM 7 comments

Tuesday, July 7, 2009 I had very weird dreams all night. I think it was one long ass dream, parts of it were sad, parts of it were scary as hell. I remember someone lecturing us about the effects of rape, I remember someone blaming me for the death of their little brother, I remember hanging out with a bunch of vampires. I remember having sex with Eric from True Blood. My brain feels weird.

Posted by Amélie at 7:15 AM 4 comments

Friday, July 3, 2009

Maybe this blog is doomed to be a boring food blog.

I have made up my mind.

No more junk food. EVER.

Ok maybe once in a blue moon, but I'm cutting that shit out cold turkey. I used to be fine eating nearly all healthy, I don't know what happend. The food I'm eating is leaving me feeling gross and unattractive. It's probably not doing my organs much good either.

Today I ate no junk. I had my home-made pancakes, and the home-made soup, and the home-made rice dish, and my fruits and veggies, with some random walnuts thrown in for randomness' sake. I went for a run, which was sadly interrupted by the wind and intense pain in my ears... but all that was still way better than I've been treating my body as of late...

We'll see how this goes.

Posted by Amélie at 9:43 PM 2 comments

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Irish History & a Vaccum Cleaner. I have taken note that the majority of my entries in this blog have had to do with food. This was all very unplanned. In fact, I have no idea how it all happend at all. I will attempt to write some entries that are about something other than food. Especially since I don't really plan on this blog being a full out food blog...

Right now, I'm just trying to delay the shitload of work I have to get done. From reading hundreds of pages on Irish history (St. Columba, St. Augustine, St. Patrick, St. etc) to getting my shit together when it comes to Managerial Accounting, to vaccuming the entire house, to taking a shower, to cleaning up the mess that has accumulated in my room for the past few weeks.

My school, as usual, has decided to fuck me over come enrollment time, and I'm waiting for their douche-baggery to run its course.

I pulled some kind of hip muscle during fun times yesterday. I cannot walk without limping, and it's hard to explain to people how I acquired such an injury.

I think that's about all I have in my head for now. I'll return for some more purging of disconnected thoughts soon.
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