Moving Day--Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

Or, alternate title: Hey, I Found My Camera!

I don't think I've said so, but I'm moving out of my apartment into a house with two other gentlemen from the English program. The final move is set for May 29th. So for those keeping track of my schedule, that means I write my written comprehensive exam on the 28th, move the next day, and leave for a conference in Montreal on the 31st. Then I get back on the 5th, just in time to take my oral defense. Why did I schedule so many stress-inducing events in one period? Simple: I'm thinking ahead. Looong term ahead. Whatever life's future hurdles--dissertation, marriage, birth of children--I can look back, and think, well, at least this isn't that bad as that last week of May in 2010.

Yep. Totally planned.

Anyway, for me, the most stressful part of moving has been getting Rid of My Stuff. The place I'm moving is fully furnished, which means that a large portion of my furniture needs to be disposed of. This step would probably have to occur sooner or later; wherever I go post-degree, I probably won't be in a financial state to bring it all with me. So I guess I'm just going with "sooner." I sold the coach and loveseat a few days ago--which means that I've been watching TV from the oh-so-comfy position of a mattress I grabbed and pulled into the living room. And I'm getting getting rid of the spare bed on Saturday. The kitchen table and chairs are hopefully going later today. The only piece of furniture I'm having trouble getting rid of, in fact, is this one:

Not the TV, mind you. Goodness no; I need something to play video games on. I mean, conduct research with. No, I mean the thing the TV sits on. The... shelving unit? Leveled coffee table? Horizontal bookcase? Maybe my difficulty in naming the piece reflects the potential buyers' problem: it's not an easy piece to classify. On the other hand, if there's any piece of furniture that I need to take with me, I'd rather it was this one; it's fairly collapsible(compared to a couch, anyway)and out of all my furniture, it's pretty much the only thing that's got some family value to it. My grandparents kept it in their basement for years, and looking at it now, I can still remember playing alongside my cousins and siblings with little barnyard animals, while the "grown-ups" conducted themselves upstairs. I've used it as a bookshelf/TV stand for the past half decade now--there's some sentimental value there.

And that sentimental value can be yours for $15. Or best offer. Between you and me, I'm kind of desperate here.

Anyway, the other big thing I'm getting rid of is the old bike, the one I've been posting about/complaining about for the last year. Here's a photo:


Oh, how the mighty have fallen/been dismantled. Again, my sentimentality--or perhaps Protestant thriftiness--has prevented me from merely throwing away the object in question. Rather, I've arranged for it be donated to a local program that teaches kids about bike repair. (And if I had only taken the course myself, the bike might have lasted a bit longer...) The catch is that I need to bring it in, which means finding someone with a van. I've arranged for that to happen tomorrow, but for today, that meant preparing the bike for transport. In particular, I had to saw off the bike lock that I'd lost the key for. That was a fun 20 minutes. For the record, here's what the inside of a bike lock looks like:


Six photos, and that was the best one. Anyway, if for some reason you can't make out fine details in fuzzy-view, there's an outer plastic shell that's kind of gray, an inner silver metal layer, and, at the center, a set of yellow, rope-like strands. I was expecting the metal, but not the strands. I don't know if this is standard for bike lock cables, or whether I've been suckered by the cyclist equivalent of painting bars of lead gold. At any rate, it's certainly secure enough; given the amount of noise and energy it took to hack through the damn thing, I don't know how today's modern bike thief does it.

Final note before I return to studying. A few months ago, I had the following conversation with my father:
"So I was looking through my things, and I see you guys left me a hacksaw. A HACKSAW. What on earth would I ever need a hacksaw for?"
"Oh, you never know. Might come in handy."

Touche, father. Touche.

Later Days.

How to Change a Bike Tire

I'm going to try and get back to a regular posting schedule. Here's a little gem that, temporally, occurred about a week ago.
Ahem.
So your front tire is leaking air? No problem! Here's an easy, step-by-step guide to changing that tire and getting YOU back on the road.
Step 1. Deflate the tire.
Step 2. Since you don't have the proper tool for opening the tire valve, use a thumb tack.
Step 3. After your hand slips several times, and you prick yourself, you will now be bleeding. Find some kleenex to clean up the blood.
Step 4. Tug and pull at the tire earnestly for a few minutes, and curse at it because you can't seem to remove it.
Step 5. Use the quick-release system to detach the tire.
Step 6. Tug and pull at the tire earnestly for a few minutes, and curse at it because you can't seem to remove it.
Step 7. Detach the front brakes.
*NOTE: Steps 4 and 6 can be skipped if you're in a hurry.
Step 8. Pry the tire off so you can get at the inner tube.
Step 9. Since you don't have any tire levers, use butterknives to pry to tire off. This will also involve much cursing.
Step 10. Remove the inner tube.
Step 11. Stand back and look at the tire, the tube, and the wheel, and feel a sense of satisfaction.
Step 12. Feel sense of satisfaction fade when you realize you're missing something.
Step 13. Go to the bike shop the next day and buy a new inner tube.
Step 14. Buy the inner tube two sizes too big, because you can't read your own hand writing and that 2 really looks like a 4.
Step 15. Put the tube back around the wheel rim, and the tire around the tube. Re-inflate. (Note: Did I mention you need an air pump for this step? Well, you need an air pump for this step.)
Step 16. Experience extreme difficulties because your tube is too big. And because your tire was stretched out severely in Step 9 and now resembles Silly Putty.
Step 17. Get extremely agitated and wonder why you were never taught these things properly and blame a poor upbringing (Hi folks!) and ruminate on how this is everyone's fault but yours.
Step 18. Think dark thoughts and add up all this bike has cost you, in terms of finance and in terms of good mental health.
Step 19. Throw the whole damn thing away and buy a new bike.

Optional: Drink a shot of rum between each step. It can't make things any worse, and it might make them better.

Later Days.

Toronto Part II: Libraries are the New Raves

My bike fell over yesterday, which means the chain got caught in the rear axle, which means I'm currently back to being without transportation. Further, since it's Labour Day today, the bike shop is not open, so I've got to wait till Tuesday at least to take it in. And since I don't feel up to the eight kilometer hike back and forth to the university, that means I'm working from home today. And as yet another direct consequence, that means I'm stuck using my keyboard with the broken spacebar, since my bike isn't my only possession with a tendency to crap out when I need it. And for added fun, my internet connection is randomly going out every few seconds.(In case you're wondering, I created the spaces for this post by copying a single space, then pasting it every single time necessary. YES IT IS TEDIOUS.)

And all this cause-and-effect is to make this point: if this post comes across slightly peevish, the above events are the reason why.

Anyway, today's vacation topic is libraries. When I went to Toronto, I went with the goal to maintain my minimum hundred-pages of lit theory a day, a goal that had already been recently tarnished, thanks to all the time I spent on that Batman game. (Still worth it.) I managed to fulfill that goal for two of the three days I was in Toronto, which was about as good as I could realistically hope to have done. And most of this reading was done in the environment I still find most conducive for it: libraries.

All right, I realize that "The Libraries of Toronto" isn't going to become a popular walking tour anytime soon. But even if I hadn't set the comp goal, there was about even odds that I would have wound up in a library or two anyway. See, the truth is, I like libraries. Especially public libraries. I like seeing how the assortment of books differs from branch to branch. I like seeing how the interior architecture complements the building's function. I like the wide swathe of humanity that comes through the door. It's almost like a franchise store chain, where you can travel the world over and still feel like you never left home--only the libraries are allowed to express a sort of individuality that your average heartless conglomerate lacks.

(Incidentally, here's too things I don't like about libraries, and I'll admit both have a certain amount of snobbery on my part: the large swarm of people in public libraries always buzzing around the DVD section, because Heaven forfend you actually read something; and the fact that any given time, a university library seems more a place for undergraduates to sit and study on laptops than a place for people actually reading or looking for books.)

So anyway, I went to three different libraries during my stay in Toronto. The first was the big kahuna: since I was on campus, I went to the U of T main arts library, the Robarts. This is the Robarts:
The Robarts Library, I'm told, was built in a style of architecture called brutalism. Why someone thought that it would be a good idea to construct a building where the end result being considered brutal is the best case scenario is left to other minds than mine. Here's what wikipedia says about brutalism:

Brutalism as an architectural philosophy, rather than a style, was often also associated with a socialist utopian ideology, which tended to be supported by its designers, especially Alison and Peter Smithson, near the height of the style. Critics argue that this abstract nature of Brutalism makes the style unfriendly and uncommunicative, instead of being integrating and protective, as its proponents intended. Brutalism also is criticised as disregarding the social, historic, and architectural environment of its surroundings, making the introduction of such structures in existing developed areas appear starkly out of place and alien. The failure of positive communities to form early on in some Brutalist structures, possibly due to the larger processes of urban decay that set in after World War II (especially in the United Kingdom), led to the combined unpopularity of both the ideology and the architectural style.

You know what else is unfriendly and nonintegrative? The fact that in order to go beyond the first floor of the Robarts library, you need a U of T library card. Admittedly, any grad student in Ontario can apply for one, but that didn't do much good right then and there. I could have sat on the first floor and worked, but it would have been like working in an afterlife waiting room; you don't know if what you're missing is heaven or hell, but you do know you're missing it. And since the interior isn't much less brutal than the exterior, I went elsewhere.

Specifically I went here:

Here in this case being the Lillian H. Smith Branch. It's not brutal, but, well, we can't have everything. It was, however, quiet, and that was all I needed to get my work done for the day. If I had more time, I would have loved to peruse their Merrill Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation & Fantasy,but there was some sort of sign in policy, and after being turned away at U of T, I couldn't bring myself to face rejection again so soon.

I never made it to a library on Thursday, but I did go to see lots of second hand bookstores, which I'll talk more about later. But on Friday, I spent multiple hours at this library:
This is the S. Walter Stewart District library. I wasn't actually intending to spend quite so long here, but the theory book I was reading was a little harder to read than I anticipated. Ah, hubris. The SWS library was a lot like the area itself. Again, I'll be talking about it in more detail later, but I think I can give you a good idea what it was like just by saying that its most frequent customer is mid-twenty to early thirty year old new mommies with baby strollers. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it bears an interesting constrast with the student atmosphere of the Robarts library, or the more cosmopolitan mix of social classes at the Smith branch (in that the Smith branch got a mix of students, the elderly, what looked pretty much like hobos, young women, and children. The SWS was missing the students and hobos. That might be to its credit.). It also had the best graphic novel variety. Take that to mean whatever you'd like.

And that was the library portion of my trip to Toronto. According to the Toronto Library website, there are 99 branches in the city; I have now seen two. It's nice to know there's something left to do on the next visit.

Okay, that wasn't nearly snarky enough, given the conditions I'm writing under. If you really want to get my mood at the moment, just insert a random curse word every five words. Yeah, that does it.

Laterdays.

Tiny Dancers

In preparation for a return to scholastic living, I went to the university today to do a bit more than the running back and forth. I picked up some books for my American Lit course that I ordered online. It's the first time I've used online services to order books, but since it saved me some money ($10-$15), I'll probably be using it again--got to start putting money away for the next bicycle disaster. (I just got it back from the shop--$90 for a new chain, new brake chords, and other sadly necessary repairs. Anything goes wrong with it now, it's going to the "farm.") The books had all arrived and were waiting in my mailbox, which is nice. I'm a little nervous about the course--I looked back over my past academia, and I haven't looked at any 20th century American Lit in a course since 2002. How did that happen? How has it not come up?

At any rate, I ran into the ongoing dancers on my way out. (Is it a dancing camp? Do they have those?) And, it seems I owe someone an apology. In an earlier post, way back in the halcyon times of two days ago, I mocked a sign warning people not dance in university hallways. As it turned out, I should be the one who is mocked. In flagrant disrespect for black and red signs put on bulletin boards, there was a little girl pirouetting in the halls as I left the building. Another asked me if I was dancer too. (No, dear. Not in any way, shape, or form. Never, never, never. No.) And a third had the absolute audacity to run ahead of me, hold the door open, and wish me a nice day! They must be stopped!

Oooh, I wish I had a lawn, so I could tell them to get off it.

Later Days.

Sorry, sorry....: Update Part 1

Once again, I've fallen behind in blogging duties. This changes now. Things have been very hectic of late, so I'll try to summarize. First:
HORRIBLE BIKE NEWS. I think it's about time this got its own tag, don't you? Anyway, the latest disaster came when the bike--fell over. That's it, that's all that happened. It fell over in exactly the wrong manner, and the chain got tangled in the little space between the wheel and the shifter. An hour of effort, and tangling the chain up even further in the attempt, convinced me that, no, this falls quite squarely under the category of things I can't fix myself. It's not like I could have ridden my bike anyway, since Blank is under a heavy-snow fall today (that's right, snow at the beginning of April, I brought Saskatchewan weather patterns with me), but it's still annoying.
I complained about my frequent bike malfunctions to a friend, and he commented that I should just buy a car already. I gaped at him in horror. Personally, I am convinced that I project a human entropy field that destroys mechanical objects. (Before you dismiss this out of hand, ask my parents how much they paid in repairs to the Dodge Stratus while I was living with them.) I can only imagine the horrible things that would happen to a car I owned solely.
School Work Frustration.
But it's basically gotten to the point now where the bicycle problems are so routine that they can't even hope to take the title of "worst disaster of the week." That title came last Monday. I had spent approximately 20 hours over the past two days working on my 35-slide presentation for my English class. (I know that seems like a lot, but since it was a hypertext, I was assuming we'd never get to about half the slides to begin with.) I left in a hurry that day, but I distinctly remember thinking "you know, if I lost this memory stick, I would be horribly, horribly screwed."
Guess what happened on the way home?
So I wound up back at the school a few hours later, starting the 35 slides again, from scratch. Fun. More fun came with coping with the loss of the other files I had on the stick: my novel, my MA thesis, and my students' grades for the term. Problems resulted. (Long story short: all solved now.)
Then, last Wednesday, the morning of my presentation, the aforementioned bike disaster ensued. For reasons that were not entirely clear, it seemed God aws deadset against me giving this presentation. So, I walk to school, get chased about four blocks by a really large canine (although given the size and breed, it may have been an errant wolf), and finally make it to my office in time to change into my suit. (That was my one act of foresight: assuming that something would go horribly wrong over the next few days, I had been bringing pieces of my suit into my office for the past week. As it turned out: wise decision.)
Then I gave my presentation, and did fine, because despite all the setbacks placed in my way by canines, my own stupidity, and the Almighty, I am really good at what I do.

Further updates in the second post.

Later Days.

This one's a little flat

It seems like just yesterday I was complaining about bike troubles. Oh wait, it was eight days ago, right here. This time around, I was about a third of the way home when my back tire went flat, so there was a long, tedious walk from there, which wasn't really good for the bike or myself.
This is the second time I got a flat since moving to Blank, and it's interesting to compare the two incidents. The first time I got a flat, it was a week or two into my first term. I was feeling kind of floundering, and the flat came at just the right time to symbolize all that emotional angst in one single event.
It was so early in my tenure here that my internet wasn't even hooked up yet, so I had to drag out the yellow pages to find the local bike shop, then find it on my map, which managed to combine my frustration in:
a) my poor map-reading abilities,
b) my inability to find my way around Blank, and
c) the delay in getting my internet hooked up (which wasn't my own fault, but still very annoying)
Then there was walking the bike to the bike shop, and feeling guilty that I didn't know anyone around here well enough to ask them for a ride. (Yes, I felt guilty about that. Take it from an expert: with proper cultivation, you feel guilty about ANYTHING.) A fairly miserable experience, all around.
Now... it doesn't seem like a big deal. I know where two different bike repair shops are now, and I can go over tomorrow--unless the forecasted flurries finally hit, in which case I'll be equally willing to wait a day or two. Unlike last time, thanks to the last bicycle emergency, I know I can get by without one for a few days, so there's no hurry. I think I'll still walk it over though--I don't feel really comfortable imposing on most of my current friends to that degree, and the one I might feel comfortable with is out of town (so she dodged a bullet there).
So there you go. Even out of a fairly bad event, there's some good to be found, even if it's just realizing that you could have reacted much worse. A lesson for us all.
Now, if I was really on the ball, I would have either walked it to the bike shop that was actually nearby when the flat occurred, or I'd be walking it to the bike shop right now while the weather's great, but I didn't think of the first, and as for the second... eh. It's a Friday afternoon at the end of a long week. I feel entitled to slack it a bit, you know?
I suppose that's the other side with not being overly worried: the problem of being overly complacent. But hey, I found a problem, so that's a good start.
Anyway, I can afford to wait; it's not like the bike's going anywhere on me. Not on that flat, it ain't.

Later Days.