the borderlands

Someone removed my semi-dry clothes from the dryer and put theirs in, damn it, so now my clothes have a foul smell and i'm all out of detergent. Soo, because i don't know who did it and i'm PMSing, I HATE YOU ALL!!! Equally. That is fair. And on that note, on our way back from the UBC museum of anthropology (which was cool btw), we stopped to get a candybar (that i never bought, then we got lost) and crossing the parking lot, we were loudly joking about bringing stuff across the border and i very loudly said, "yeah, I'm on my period, can i cross the border??" (or must i be quarantined???) and a woman's head snapped in my direction with a deadly glare- my eyes bugged and i spouted out- "uuh, sorry ma'am!" I think she hates me already. Damn, we are insulting the local population. I think we lived up to our good ol' loud obnoxious American reputation. (sorry, rest-of-you). But we had fun, right? After the museum, we went for chinese in an area that only chinese people go and the other costumers were staring us down like crazy (this time we were behaving). But the waitress was really cool, the credit card machine wasn't working right and only people with VISA could give her a tip (we didn't keep Canadian cash) but she laughed at the people worried that they couldn't give a tip, trying to figure out how to do it (-silly girls, i don't care!-), (happily, i did have VISA debit card). When I got home, my poor little puppy was soo happy to see me, i was gone so long. She showed cute signs of missing me- dragging little bits of lacey-paraphernalia from the clothes basket into her doggy bed--- my pajama pants, a camisole, and a sock. She is so cute!
Okay, my day of being an insulting American is over. going to bed now.

A little of my academic day.

soooo, my professor handed back papers today, telling us that a very few got A's, most lower, and a couple received no grade, they needed to revise. I was almost sure I was in the last category because i had not been in the mood to write and finished last minute, and don't get me started about how terrible my grammar and punctuation can be sometimes (must revisit grade school)... My embarrassment always shows too easily, i could feel my face flush with the uncomfortable feeling of having done bad and knowing i was in the disgraced group mentioned. buuut, to my utmost surprise, it was an A, and she even said i was an accomplished writer... well I'm not sure i would agree with her so far, but it certainly got me over my fear of finding professors willing to give me a letter of recommendation for grad-school at some point. Also made me start to believe that maybe the Professor who gave me an A on my Indiana Jones project wasn't just being lazy... maybe the paper was okay. I had been thinking about posting it, but I didn't think it was very good. Maybe I will re-read it and have someone check over it, consider posting it. I actually had fun with that project, but it was a bit incomplete. I though, maybe if i post it, people will comment and give me ideas of other connections in Archaeology that i could make. For a split second i thought about posting this last paper i just did because it is a film review. but I'm afraid that i'm far too embarrassed by the fact that it is an anime film. Some people can wear their love of anime like a freaking glory patch (... I don't think this 'glory patch' is a real thing...), but not me! If someone walks in while i'm watching anime, i snap my computer monitor shut so fast, i'm sure they think i'm watching porn.
I had a moment today when i really felt good about my education. I have reached a level of understanding and a large enough body of information that i can dip into with confidence. This makes me really happy. I'm sadly very uncomfortable when i feel ignorant. I just can't stand it. I want to understand how the world works, and in the last 3 years, i have learned enough to claim a stable foundation. So what was my warm fuzzy moment? In my human rights class, we were talking about different modes of justice available during a transitioning government. this girl loudly announced that she didn't think a government should have to pay their tax dollars in repatriation to victims. I guess her point was that it wasn't the government or its tax payers faults that these people commited human rights atrocities (even though it was state sponsored...???!!). There was an uproar and a debate and many loud points before she finally clarified her point, being that she was concerned that the victims were tax payers and having to pay their own repatriation. I tossed in that-- you have to keep in mind that we are talking about Latin America, so most of the victims have been forced into the informal economies, so they are, in fact, not paying taxes to begin with. There really is no reason for me to give a public play-by-play of my class, but sometimes a class discussion can be so satisfying. This girl just always makes these unfounded arguments and it just stresses me out for some reason. I think the professor was trying to brush past this side topic, but this lovely loud girl cut right in and asked, is that true? :-(  I'm not sure if she didn't believe me or if she was getting annoyed with me always apposing her wild arguments, but she felt it important to confirm my observations with our prof. This is pretty extreme, because this professor will always disagree with us, it seems. The very first day we were talking about accountability and how to hold everyone accountable and i made the argument that (we were talking about Rwanda in specific) it was impossible to hold everyone accountable and have the country function. if a majority of the population were to commit crimes, who was left if they imprisoned them all? He swiftly said no, everyone must and can be held accountable. I felt like SUCH and ass. ("sure, these guys hacked people up, why put them in jail?") buut, after that, almost everything we read and discussed in class backed up what i said. So, you can now share in my mini-victory, because the professor had no choice but to say directly and openly that yes, in the case of Latin America, i was correct. It seemed it took one student having to corner him into admitting that another student (me!^_^) was correct, by making wildly unfounded assumptions about government repatriations.
okay, so this was all really stupid, but it was my entertainment today. though i wasted a lot of precious sleep time on this crap. hah.

I just had to do this!

oh personality

my puppy is such a weirdo! she doesn't like to eat from the bowl or where she is fed, so she picks up as many pieces as she can fit into her mouth, finds a cozy place (ie, crawls up me onto my bed) and drops all the pieces and eats 1-at-a-time, very slowly. then back to the bowl and repeat.

Trying my hand at cooking fish

aaah man, i made theee best fish today. I just hacked through a recipe with only most of the ingredients. so i must share it with the world- slather a fish with a ton of Dijon mustard, then roll it in a mix of corn meal, Parmesan, thyme and pepper. if you give a quick spray of cooking oil, it stays on better (i didn't have eggs.) and cook over medium heat, blah blah blah. I'm not very good at this kind of cooking, (and i can't seem to follow a recipe... I see them more as a guide line...) so at first i did the heat to high and the outside was all crispy, but raw inside. the extra crispy outside only made it better i think, so all was good. It was the best fish i've ever had! it only took me bout 10 minutes, so i'm going to make some tomorrow to! :D yay