So for the past two years I've had problems with my salivary gland. There was some partial blockage and sometimes it would swell, unable to drain properly, but it was mostly just a nuisance, not painful. Last month I decided I was tired of this obnoxiousness and went to an ENT doc. He said I had a stone, I made an appt to have it removed. This appt was to be in late november, because it was non-emergency.
A few days ago the gland started to swell again and this time it was kinda painful. It got to the point where I was unable to eat. It was obviously infected. My doctor friend prescribed antibiotics and I called the ENT to move my appt up. I made my appt for nov 9.
Today I was drinking tea, trying to make the duct flow and drain the gland. I went to some Russian event, then held office hours from 5-6. Near the end of my office hour, Sasha came by to chat, and I mindlessly poked at the duct with my tongue for the 8 millionth time, when suddenly there was this strange, wrong feeling, and there was something hard, and my mouth was full of liquid. I put my hand to my mouth, muttered Oh my god, and ran to the bathroom. I spit out what was in my mouth. Nothing but saliva... and a tiny stone. It had passed by itself! It was tiny in general terms, but considering the size of the salivary duct and opening, it was pretty enormous. It felt like there was a big hole where the duct opening is.
I feel relieved, and definitely glad that I can eat again, but I'm still a little concerned. I'm definitely keeping the appointment to make sure my gland is happy again.
I just realized that I never see any lizards in Toronto. I really miss them. In Florida you'd see a lizard within 5 feet of stepping off the pavement into even the tiniest planted area. I miss them. I love lizards. When I was a kid, Samantha (bff) and I would catch them and make them angry so they'd open their little mouths, then make them bite our earlobes - living earrings!
Then again, those little brown lizards are apparently the Brown Anole (Anolis sagrei). According to the Institute for Biological Invasions, the brown anole "colonized south Florida and Mexico about 50-60 years ago, and more recently, Hawaii.... This species is arguably the most abundant terrestrial vertebrate in peninsular Florida, and often reaches densities of more than one individual per square meter in disturbed habitats!"
Unfortunately, this lizard "is thought to be responsible for a dramatic decline of previously stable urban and rural populations of the green anole, the only anole native to the United States."
The Green Anole (Anolis carolinensis) is the lizard we liked to call a "chameleon" because it changes from green to brown and back to blend with its surroundings. It isn't a true chameleon. They were, because of their comparative rarity (one sighting a day, on average, vs. 100 sightings a day for the brown variety) an exciting find during backyard playtime.
Apparently, there is only one species of lizard in Ontario and it's a skink. Fuck skinks. Where are the little brown lizards doing tiny pushups on the tree branches? Where are their huge red-orange neck-puffs? (look, I'm not a herpetologist, I don't know what it's called when they do that.)
On the same website, there is information about the Short-horned Lizard (Phrynosoma hernandezi) which lives in "arid grasslands and scrub desert of Alberta, Saskatchewan south to Mexico." Is Saskatoon in this part? If so, I'm-a gonna catch me one of these, because "these amazing lizards have a unique defense of squirting blood from their eyes. Thought to result from a rise in blood pressure when threatened, they can rupture a blood vessel in the corner of their eyes, and squirt it as far as two metres." And how awesome is that??
My Structure of Russian textbook has just reminded me of one of my favorite Russian words:
пылесос
It's 'vacuum-cleaner'. Mundane, yes, but I like it's roots - пыль 'dust' and сосать 'suck'
'dust-sucker'
My prof last year said that most Russians are unsure of how to conjugate the derived verb 'пылесосить' and will avoid conjugating it whenever possible and use the infinitive. Multitran claims that it's a regular 2nd conjugation with a consonant mutation in first person singular (пылесошу); imperative пылесось!
Just in case you need to tell a Russian to vacuum.
The Québecois french is still weird for me, with all its English syntax and calques (I will never get over the idea of 'bienvenue' being 'you're welcome'), but I still like the translations of bizarre marketing slogans on eveything. My all natural peanut butter calls itself "the peanuttiest taste" and then below "archi-arachide". I like this one quite a bit. Also, on the front is says "100% arachides" and in the ingrdients list it says "100% cacahuètes". Is there a reason for this? Is this just to make SURE you understand? For fun? Oh, and damn you, Russian, messing with my French - I always want to call them [araxid]!
I was walking down the street and it was cold and windy. Crazy windy. Dark clouds. Then wet. "Ah, fuck, it's raining," I thought. Then I noticed that the wet drops were more solid than they were supposed to be. And white. They were, in fact, snow. SNOW??? Sweet baby jesus, what on earth?!?
It snowed for ten minutes, all the way until I got inside the department. I picked up some stuff in my mailbox and went back outside, no more than 5 minutes later. It was no longer snowing. In fact, there were no more dark clouds, either. The skies were perfectly blue and the sun was shining. There was no sign of the clouds at all! What in the hell?? WHAT?!?!? I though I was going crazy! Then I saw a cloud far off in the distance, moving east. That was the weirdest 20 minutes ever.
The Serbian kid in my Structure of Russian class was fascinated by the example of non-assimilation of voicing: "birch beer". In Slavic languages, those two words said together would be pronounced "birdzh beer". He's like "How do you do that? How do you keep the ch???" An hour later in the class, I heard him mumbling it again to himself: "birch beer".
But English sometimes DOES have voicing assimilation! Here are the only 2 examples Dr. Kramer has come up with in 20 years of teaching this course.
raspberry (razberry)
Pabst (papst)
Sneaky English!
P.S. I'd write all this shit in real phonetic transcription but I am lazy right now and don't feel like playing with character map.
By the way, I've been in Serbia since Aug 4. Belgrade's not so cool, Sarajevo is fucking beautiful, and my small town, Valjevo, is lovely and the people are so nice. It does, however, lack a discotheque. Who cares? The bars are fun. Anyway...
Perhaps you are wondering, "What did Amanda do last night?" Well, I'll tell you.
Michael and his host-dad decided to have a lamb feast. So they bought a lamb. "A whole lamb?" you ask. Yes. A whole, LIVE lamb. Rafael, Michael's german roommate, named it Schnitzel and he and Cameron (third, American, roommate) sat with it in the back pf the car and petted it on the way home. The next morning, when they awoke, Schnitzel's head was sitting in a bowl on the table, draining. The rest of Schnitzel was hanging in the garage, also draining. (Cameron showed me pictures of all of this.) About 10 of us came to feast on the lamb last night. It had been roasting on a spit. prepared by the domaćin. We were greeted with rakija and after we had drank a few shots, the main beast was brought out, accompanied by a wooden block and a hatchet/knife. The domaćin began to hack away. (The innards had been consumed for lunch - Rafael and Michael told me about the brain soup and innards stew.)
As we dug into the delicious lamb pieces, the specialty was presented - testicles. Michael decided to share the good fortune and cut some for everyone. We toasted forks and, with varying levels of fright and disgust, ate the ball bites. It was, in fact, rather neutral and tasteless on the whole. Not something particularly interesting, save for the empowerment of partaking in the emasculation of the lamb. After we'd been eating and drinking for a while, the domaćin came around to talk. He hadn't bothered to learn the names of all the foreigners, but decided to give me a nickname. "Bar-ba-ra Streisand!" he suddenly boomed across the table at me. "You look like her - it's the face." Everyone of course looked at me to judge the validity of this proclamation, and all agreed. Bitches.
For the rest of the night, he continually addressed me as Barbra. I ate so so much delicious lamb and we eventually wandered home around 3. Ah, Balkan life.
Things have been going well here. I love Lupco and class is usually fun. I've got some friends, there's a cheap bar 2 minutes from my place (wed. is $1 drinks and thurs. is karaoke). Last weekend Lupco had a party at his place which was populated by the students from the Macedonian classes and all the profs at the institute, almost all of whom are rather young and definitely fun. Mirzana invited me to come visit her in Sarajevo this August. Hell yeah. She's fun and is only 26. In addition to teaching and studying comparative lit at university of sarajevo, she writes short stories and plays. Hot. Last weekend I went to the grand canyon with 11 others from the CLI. The beginning of the trip was a disaster when one of the vans got a flat tire. The driver of that van (one of the administrators at the CLI) was all uptight and called people (who? why?) and waited around half an hour before letting someone change the fucking tire, then was nervous about driving on the donut to Flagstaff, 60 miles away. So he went 30 fucking mph on a 75 mph highway and we thought we were going to get rear-ended by a semi and die (I was in the second van). He also stopped at any town that looked like it had more than 300 people to see if there was a mechanic, which ended up just wasting time. But after the initial idiocy of the driver, which caused a 3 hour drive to become 7 hours long, things went better. At least I was in the other car, the party van, where we just made jokes the entire time. It was fun. Oh, except our van overheated often because the airconditioning plus the outside heat plus the uphill driving were too much for the engine, so from time to time we had to turn off the airconditioning, turn on the heat to let some heat out from the engine and open the windows. It was, at the very least, hilarious. We saw the canyon at sunset then went to the motel for the night, got some beer and watched comedy central and SNL (I haven't seen much TV for the last year). The next day we went back and walked around and took many many pictures. The canyon was enormous and it was not as boiling-hot as in Phoenix. Joanna and I sat on the edges of rocks and let our feet dangle over the drops of 3000 ft. But the good news is that no one fell in. Marin had wanted to go to Sedona on the way back but since we did the canyon on Sunday instead of Saturday, there wasn't time. Besides, half of Sedona is still on fire.
I've been watching some World Cup games when I can. I haven't seen any of the ones that are on at 8 am Phoenix time, of course, but the ones that start at noon I've seen. The Spain-France game was very exciting. I'm happy that Germany beat Argentina, but I am afraid they won't beat Italy. I am definitely against Italy and England, and for France and Germany (the latter because it's in my best interest that Max be happy. That makes my job easier ;)). To hell with Brazil, they always win and that's boring.
Even after last night's karaoke fun at the bar by my house, Nathan isn't sated and we're going to a Korean restaurant where they also have karaoke tonight. Ashley (who I know from my time in Moscow) is also meeting up with us and I'm excited about catching up! I should go get ready.
1. How many foreign countries have you visited? France, Russia, Italy, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, Canada. 7.
2. What do you always take with you on vacation? Clothes, toiletries, camera, cell phone. nothing really unusual.
3. Name something you've lost recently: I can't think of anything. A sock in the dryer, maybe?
4. Do you prefer action packed vacations or relaxing ones? I agree with Adrian: I like action packed, but only for a short time. Otherwise I get too burned out and need to relax.
5. Other people's vacation photographs: Are fun if you know the people, or the scenery is really great, but a bunch of pictures of people you don't know partying isn't all that great.
EDIT: Look. I copied this from a NYTimes.com article as a little reminder list for myself and forgot to make the entry private then people started commenting on it. I didn't make this list or even read through it thoroughly before I put it here! But thanks for your additions. Kitchen blow-torch is an absolute essential. ;)
One of my roommates has stolen my graham crackers. Not just eaten them, but stolen the box.
I bought a box of graham crackers last week. It contained two wrappers of crackers. I used one wrapper-full to make a graham cracker crust for some cheesecake cupcakes.* The other wrapper remained in the box, in the cabinet, on the bottom shelf, next to the flour and sugar and other baking ingredients. Everyone knows, after seeing me make the cheesecake beasties, that these are my graham crackers.
I wanted a cracker today and opened the cabinet. The box was gone. I checked all other cabinets, including the dish cabinets and the other roommates' food cabinets. Nothing. I was confused. I had not seen a graham cracker box in the trash this sunday (I was on trash duty that week). I looked again at the mostly empty trash cans and even shuffled briefly through the recycling, but no box. If someone had simply eaten the crackers, they would have disposed of the box. But no, they have secretly disposed of all graham-related evidence.
I asked Lisa, had she seen the graham crackers? She played dumb. Giulia isn't surreptitious; if she had eaten them, she would have proudly put the empty box in the recycling and apologised later. She doesn't have much of a sweet tooth, either. Derry isn't home, but she will be questioned later.
I called Tim to discuss the situation and he asked if I was going insane. No, I am not. I just want to know why anyone would steal this. If you wanted a fucking cracker, take a cracker! You know I don't mind. Even if you wanted 5 whole crackers, take them! Just tell me "Yo, I ate your crackers, hope it's cool." But to secretly dispose of the box is another thing entirely and I do not like it.
*The cupcakes were delicious, by the way. In the center of each was placed a peanut-butter-chocolate square. I kept about 8 for the roommates and myself and gave about 15 to Max to take home and share with his roommates. (Max loved them, of course). I make cookies and cakes often and give them to him, and his roommates partake in them. One of his roommates, who had never commented previously on my baked goods, pronounced "Those cheesecake things you made were AWESOME!" when I saw him next.
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