y is for yes, indeed.

i think i understand a little. and i want to help.

x is for xylophilous

i like calling my apartment "my treehouse," for a couple of reasons: it's the third floor of a house, accessible by a skinny metal outdoor staircase, and when i stand on the top landing, i really am among the tree tops. likewise, when i look out my bedroom windows or crawl out onto the fire escape, i'm chillin' with trees. also, all of my furniture is wooden, i have those wickery baskets all over the place, and the floors are old and tired parquet. i feel cozy in my little nest :)

it's been seven months since i moved in and in another five i'll be probably be heading out. staying here through the summer isn't ideal - rent isn't free and i'd love to spend more time with cori and james before they leave for the uk. but i signed a rental contract, and l'arche will need me to cover vacations, so here i'll be at least some of the time.

while i'm trying very hard not to do too much planning until i have all my papers and my thesis proposal done, thoughts of summertime still dance in my head. research trips, breathing deeply in the ravine near my parents' house, a summer course, going to the park with nancy and pat, holidays in collingwood, shakespeare in high park, and this treehouse: wood aglow with sunshine, breezes blowing from the bedroom through the kitchen and out the front door, tanning on the back stoop with a book on my face, evenings of sipping smirnoff ice on the fire escape. i really want to make the most of having my own space - and this space, in particular - while i can.

you're welcome to join me :)

w is for wedding!

corina and james are married! and dov knows how to look like a very creepy passer-by:)

but, seriously: though there were some delays and surprises - broken furnace, broken necklace, iron barfed rusty water on dov's shirt, spa morning took an hour longer than anticipated and involved a minor scolding from the hairdresser - the bride's side eventually made it to the u of t campus to take photos on the west side of university college.

the groom's family were patiently waiting with smiles and corina's bouquet, having already completed the requisite combinatorics exercise and taken all of their photos.



james' dad held coats while we tried out all the possible combos:

- cori & james
- cori & james & cori's parents, cori & james & james' parents
- cori & james & cori's family, cori & james & james' family
- cori & parents, corina & siblings, corina & siblings & dov
- cori's family, cori's family & dov
- all the siblings, siblings & significant others
- both families, both families & significant others, both families & significant others & james' friends

despite the sunshine, it was pretty cold out there and whenever we weren't on-camera we huddled for warmth!

right, so off to city hall!

there was a bit of a wait there, but soon it was our turn to fill up the little wedding chamber. cori and james glowed, the tissues ran out, the justice of the peace spoke beautifully, we got ink on our fingers, and ioana and dov passed around truffles once the pronouncement of husband and wife was made.

i really appreciated that there was no hint that this was simply one of a thousand weddings the justice had performed in his career. he made their moment significant, and it really felt like he valued the role he played.

but enough reflection... dinner time! off to the courtyard restaurant in yorkville!

the food was yummy, but i have no pictures of it! gulash, spinach crespelle, and apple strudel were my choices, while others enjoyed combinations of spinach salad, salmon, chicken snitzel, and some chocolate crepe dessert. not all on one plate.

soon after the moldovian musicians showed up, my mom and ana grabbed the mic and sang. while unplanned (by the rest of us), this definitely broke the ice! in fact, it wasn't long before the wait staff pulled the carpets away to make room for dancing! (pictured here) romanian, italian, cuban, and other sweet tunes led the feet of bride, groom, family, and friends. oh, and yes: i did request "hava nagila."



there had been sufficient wine served to ensure touching speechs (i cried through the end of mine), and we topped it all of with champagne, chocolate-hazelnut cake, and a little more dancing.

one of the things i mentioned in my speech was that, standing beside cori as she recited her vows, it occured to me how many of those promises she and james have already been keeping for three and a half years. the wedding shouldn't really be a beginning... it should be a celebration of what already is, and what is to come.

v e pentru viaţă, care este şi grea şi frumoasă!*

* v is for life, which is both hard and beautiful!

u is for unpredictable

as hug-an-engineer day ends and pi day threatens to dawn, i reflect on the messiness of life. (the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter may be a constant, but it is after all an irrational one.)

their flights were delayed, but ioana and dov finally arrived and we sat down to the lovely late supper mom had prepared. cori put on her dress and we helped her choose jewellery. we decided which dress i should wear, too. then the heater broke. also, cori's necklace. so we drank champagne and i mended the string.

there were wee arguments along the way and cori's skin began reacting to the stress, but by now we've all pretty much settled in to bed/couch for the night, supported by the diligent work of some strategically placed space heaters.

"life is messy," i said to cori as i hugged her "good night."

i hope that getting so tangible a reminder of that on the eve of her wedding was as instructive as it was ironic. the truth is that promises like the one corina and james are making tomorrow aren't about an immaculate ideal, but about reality. cori says that, very early on, she told james just that: "i want something real," she said.

fifteen hours from now they will commit to walking through the messiness of that reality together. it occurs to me that you can never know what you're going to face, but you can know who you'll face it with. maybe when you're walking hand-in-hand even a mess can be a beautiful adventure.

t is for taking risks

some times you just have to do the crazy thing because it's the right thing - critics be damned! that sort of creative courage is hard to come by, i think. i mean, many people do insane things just to shock or otherwise provoke those around them, but that isn't particularly cool to me. neither is breaking rules for the hell of it. nor selfishly and recklessly disregarding how your behaviour affects others. those are super-childish things.

but doing something you need to do, despite how others might react, is in fact a deeply mature thing.

that's why this news story has impressed me so very much: a few guys got together and took stuffed crust pizza to very next logical level - buffalo-chicken-stuffed-crust pizza!!!

they tried three different variants of buffalo chicken, topped the pizzas with tomato sauce, lots of cheese, veggies, and even some meat, and offered a blue cheese sauce for dipping. the results of their ground-breaking, earth-shaking, and courageous experiment are recorded on their blog. do give it a read... i'm definitely tempted to try it myself!

inspired by the gentlemen at mealticket, i thought eating supper would be a good idea. for the second time in recent weeks, ashwyn and i tried to go to "bar on locke." no dice! so we ducked in at nearby il fiasco. so super!

we started off with the baked brie and fruit salsa. it was really a dry fruit salad but, all the same, the saltiness of the phyllo-wrapped cheese was cut by the sweet/tart combo of green and red apples, strawberries, and some other yummies. the brie and phyllo were in brilliant proportion! often one overwhelms the other, but not so here! i must add that it was very well constructed from an aesthetic point of view, as well :)

since ashwyn claims to be a vegetarian, he ordered the mediterranean pie - spinach, goat and feta cheese, roasted red peppers and phyllo. there was tomato sauce and pesto around the edges, and he seemed pretty happy. in case you're actually looking at the online menu, do note that the price has increased since the website was last updated.

i have few qualms of my omnivority, so i ordered the cashew crusted chicken stuffed with a goat-cheese-and-sundried-tomato paste and served with a small serving of a potato dish, green beans, carrots, broccoli, and zucchini. for starters, the crispy cashews and creamy stuffing were a beautiful contrast. the potato was surprising - technically it wasn't unlike a scalloped potato bake... but it wasn't creamy at all, and held together very well. it actually defies description!

some women who had been sitting near us had ordered maple creme brulee, and ashwyn followed suit. again, no complaints. meanwhile, i ordered passion fruit ice cream, in light of my recent discovery that this mysterious crop is as visually off-putting (inside) as it is tangy and delectable. (at corina's shower i brushed passion fruit guts on the asparagus to add notes of citrus-esque yum. mission accomplished!) the the dessert felt more like a sorbet than a dairy product. i was struck by the intense taste, which was essentially fresh and tart... not unlike myself!

in retrospect, there was a lot of dairy on our little table. il fiasco features cheese and seafood quite prominently, and also offers an impressive wine menu for such a teeny place. there are about ten seats up front, with a handful more at the bar, and more tables as one wanders toward the back. incidentally, the light fixture in the bathroom was beautiful! there are twinkly lights decorating the front space, and the decor is generally simple but somehow both warm and modern... not unlike myself!

il fiasco is definitely worth a return trip, in part because its menu offers many opportunities for exploration.

and i'm all about taking crazy risks.

s is for saucy

the last while has been a whirlwind!

between all the busyness of papers and presentations, weird nightmares, mini-conferences that involved travel (cambridge and ottawa), awkward dates, the death of a family friend, corina's bridal shower, commuting to do laundry, going into toronto to shop for the wedding, day and night shifts at work, looong (but often wonderful) meetings, living out of suitcase for a bit, and the typical barriers to real grocery runs, circumstances have not been ideal for cooking from scratch. in fact, apart from the snacks at that shower, i don't think i've prepared anything in about a month!

little did i know what i was missing out on...



i could have been feeding saucy onion rings to cute boys by now?! i seriously need to re-evaluate my priorities!

p.s. no preservatives? soooo hot!

r is for reconciliation

i'm doing some research on donatism for my bib theo's interdisciplinary volume on forgiveness and reconciliation. these christian schismatics from north africa were survivors of the diocletian persecution... and they didn't want to re-admit lapsed christians into their churches. having endured imprisonment and torture, it was especially hard to summon up respect for clerics who had folded out of fear of the same. the christianity of north africa was distinct from both that of the eastern roman empire and that of the european world... and many of those distinctives cemented their resolve. for one hundred years donatism persisted as a schism, before being declared a heresy. it never actually disappeared until three hundred years later, when islam swept through the region.

i've been thinking about how difficult it is do combat the effects of inherited pain and institutionalized resentment. and how for sure you can't combat those without offering consolation. without coming alongside. like so many things that matter, reconciliation demands imagination. and in the midst of anger and hurt - even when they're inherited rather than immediate - it's hard to imagine anything else. but it helps to know that others hope for you. maybe, like anger and hurt, that hope can be contagious.

p.s. regarding my last post: no, i haven't gone off the rails permanently. i blog and journal and talk to people to prevent *just* that :)

q is for quitting time...

... i.e. right now.

one time my mom, sister, and i were "talking about boys." when my dad came into the room and wanted to watch a movie, my mom stopped him: "we're talking about boys. do you have anything to contribute?"

"all they want is sex. turn the tv back on."

some people think that because i can sniff a typo a mile away and i'm a(n incompetent) perfectionist that i must be pretty negative. but the truth is, i'm an eternal optimist. i really want to believe the best about people... and i hope hope hope until it hurts.

newsflash: it hurts. and i kinda think i'm done hoping that my dad was wrong.

i once told someone i loved that when i looked at him, i didn't see an acorn - i saw an oak tree. he told me that he didn't know anything about how to grow into an oak tree. i told him the acorn doesn't know, either. but a few months later, after we had misunderstood and hurt each other countless more times, i realized i was tired of getting pummelled with acorns.

all relationships are based on imagination: imagining that i can be more generous, imagining that you can be more thoughtful, imagining that sharing a life with someone is even possible.

but what happens when your heart runs out of creativity? what happens when it's too tired to dream anymore? what happens when "love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres; love never fails." (1 cor. 13:7) sounds like a big lie?

i give up.