good grammar can improve airport security!

while waiting in a long, long airport security line at lester b. pearson international airport today, i saw a sign warning unruly passengers that they may "be denied boarding and/or prosecuted."

oh, and/or. apparently, you're not as straightforward as i imagined you to be.

i'm pretty sure this particular sign used "and/or" wrong, because it implies that there are two possible punishments for being unruly: (being prosecuted) OR (being prosecuted and being denied boarding.) thaaaat's fairly silly. if they're going to prosecute you, i really doubt they'll let you board! but that's just my gut talkin'.

the sign should probably read: "unruly passengers may be prosecuted and/or denied boarding." subtext: being a jackass won't help you get on the plane faster. not even if you're a cabinet minister.

don't you dare let yourself believe that this issue doesn't apply to you! pondering such grammatical nuances has effectively diverted and distracted me as i've stood in long, long airport security lines. were it not for those distractions i may have become unruly!

and we all know what happens when you become unruly in an airport. or we would, if the sign was clearer.

une petite blague

what do you call a surprise kiss?
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an am-bouche!

hitting the road

the terry fox run is in just five months, and this year i'm really training for it! (are you running? you should! it's fun!)

last year i completed the 10k in 100 minutes. this wasn't super, but i was very happy with the fact that 10 min/km wasn't just my *average* speed but also my *consistent* pace throughout the course.

so, training: the ravine near my house is a wonderful place to get ready for september. it's only 2km from end to end, but that's a decent start. here's the plan i'm following, brought to me (and now you!) by sparkpeople.com! it's your basic "walk a little, jog a little" routine, where the proportion of walking to jogging decreases over a twelve-week period. i've been out there twice this week, and here are my observations, so far:

- midday isn't the best time for jogging
even though i walk/jog in a ravine, there are lots of clear patches, and it gets really, really hot. that climb out of the ravine nearly killed me today! drinking more will definitely help, but so will getting out of the house before noon.

- good shoes are super; laces that like to undo themselves aren't
i need to find a solution to the latter problem!

- having to check the time constantly is annoying
i've created a week 1 playlist for my ipod shuffle. it alternates between four-minute and one-minute songs, that way i know to switch gears when a new song starts!

- 4k ain't so bad!
because the twelve-week plan slowly increases the amount of jogging, it starts at about 4k per outing and peaks at just under 8. that leaves me about a month to go from 8 to 10 k... i hope that's feasible!

even if i end up walking the last bit at 10 min/km, i'll finish in 83 minutes - 17 minutes better than last year! and if i stay on pace with the first 8k, i'll finish in 78, an improvement of 22 minutes! (these numbers aren't perfect because, if i really keep this up, even my walking might be faster!)

this project comes at a good time for me: not only do i have lots of openings in my schedules, but it feels wonderful to be moving again... and with purpose. when i used to work out on an elliptical machine, i knew how much time to aim for, how many calories i typically burned, and what the difficulty level was. it wasn't aimless jogging because i had information and knew more or less what i was accomplishing. although the gauges are a bit different here, it feels similarly intentional.

and intentional feels good.

plus, there were dogs and blue-purple flowers today. and beauty is very good.

:)

from way across the ocean, my little sissy asked me why i was smiling. in response, i offer this partial list of my reasons for glee:

- haircuts
- sushi
- defenses and convocations
- job postings and auditions
- pub trivia successes
- a mom who takes care of me when i sacrifice part of my finger to the mandolin* gods
- a boyfriend who listens and is teaching me when to stop talking
- friends who have big! changes! going on in their lives
- the impending return of little sissy and her husband!
- seeing nyc for the first time soon
- big sissy's wedding in june!
- cats
- diet coke
- phone calls with michelle
- apples and peanut butter
- a pink sweater
- dibs

oooh... dibs! see ya!

* the vegetable slicer, not the musical instrument

how to succeed at pub trivia - an introduction

i need feedback on this lesson, please!
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before you can hope to succeed at pub trivia, you must first understand what success means in a pub trivia context. now, there may be some people who show up to a bar on a weeknight with no intention of answering any questions correctly. and there may well be others who will refuse to accept "gangster's paradise" as the title of coolio's song from "dangerous minds" because, actually, it's "gangsta's paradise." but the vast majority of attendees strive for an evening that is filled with lots of check marks in their answer booklets and plenty of fun with friends.

in short, success at pub trivia means having fun and getting questions right.

1) your team: you will be spending about two hours huddled over an answer booklet with two or three teammates. remember: the more well-rounded your team is, the more likely it is that you'll be able to handle questions on such diverse subjects as history, sports, pop culture, language, geography, and religion. on the other hand, you will be spending two hours with these people! recruit a team that is defined by camaraderie, diversity, and an ability to resolve conflict quickly.

speaking of teams, which north american cities have more that one major league baseball team?

2) your prep: read the newspaper, browse wikipedia, play sporcle, and watch "the simpsons," if you enjoy doing those things already, but remember that the point of pub trivia is to make use of the seemingly useless - hence trivial - facts your brain has clung onto. ideally, playing the game makes you more curious and more present to the mundane details of everyday life. it does not require you to pursue an additional degree.

speaking of research, the library in alexandria is the oldest in the world, but it is no longer active. in which country would you find the oldest active library in the world?

3) your answers: talk it out with your team, but err on the side of going with your gut instinct. if you get it wrong, you get it wrong. but if you ignore your instinct and it turns out that instinct was right, it may ruin your evening.

speaking of your gut, crohn's disease was first documented not by the american gastroenterologist from whom it takes its name but in 1904 by a surgeon from which european country?

4) your guesses: there will often come a time when neither your collective knowledge bank nor deductive reasoning produces an answer in which your team is confident. usually, there's no penalty for guessing, so here are my tips for that. mara-approved guesses come in two species: a) wild and b) tame.

a) the wild guess is so crazy that whoever is marking your booklet might think you were joking. on the other hand, if it turns out you are randomly right, your grader will be very impressed
b) the tame guess, while possibly wrong, will never inspire anyone to judge you or assume you are an ill-informed twit. if it's about a female american poet, and you have no idea, you might as well guess emily dickinson.

speaking of questions requiring a guess, what is halle berry's middle name?

my third and fourth points demonstrate that there's a close relationship between the two prongs of the pub trivia fork: it's hard to have fun when you keep kicking yourself for not going with your gut or when your ego is bruised. follow my tips and you'll prevent those catastrophes.

what you must remember, however, is that it is possible to have fun even when you don't win. in the final analysis, there are no tricks to getting every answer right. as my mentor in pub trivia once said, "there's no such thing as easy questions or hard questions - there are only answers you know and answers you don't." succeeding at pub trivia means allowing yourself to celebrate the answers you knew and the answers you pulled out of the air... and being surrounded by people who won't dwell on the answers you missed.

highlight the following to find out the answers to the trivia questions!

1) there are three such cities: the los angeles angels of anaheim and dodgers, the new york mets and yankees, and the chicago cubs and white sox.

2) egypt - st. catherine’s monastery in the sinai is home to the oldest active library in the world!

3) poland - his name was antoni lesniowski

4) halle - her first name is maria.

the great cola challenge of 2010: yes, we can or bottle!

what do you get when you combine eight types of cola with two nerds? a homemade cola taste test, patterned after the pepsi challenge!

idris and i are both loyal fans of coca-cola products: he's committed to the classic variety, while i have a mild addiction to diet coke. but would these preferences hold true in a double-blind taste test?!

we acquired a bottle or can of each of the following: pepsi, diet pepsi, diet caffeine-free pepsi, cocacola, diet coke, coke zero, compliments cola, and life brand diet cola.

using eight identical glasses and twice as many post-its, we achieved this:

i numbered the glasses and then, in private, wrote down which type of cola each number represented. i then left the area while idris rearranged the glasses and labeled them with letters. he also kept his code-key to himself.

in order to ensure that the test results were untainted, we did the taste-testing separately.

as we sipped from each of the glasses we tried to answer the following questionnaire:

a) which was your favourite?
b) which was your least favourite?
c) which was sweetest?
d) which tasted most like chemicals?
e) which ones were diet/zero? (5)
f) which one was caffeine-free?
g) which ones were coca-cola products? (3)
h) which ones were pepsi products? (3)
i) which ones were store brand? (2)

our answers were all over the map. we both correctly identified three of the five diet drinks, and i picked out the diet caffeine-free pepsi. diet pepsi fooled idris, while coke zero fooled me!

(i also knew which one was the store-brand cola, but that was a cheat: it was purchased last and was noticeably warmer than the others. by the time idris drank, the difference in temperature was probably negligible.)

while neither of us did a bang-up job of figuring out which drink was which, we did eventually each choose a favourite. the results, after this drumroll....



idris chose coke and i chose diet coke!

tada! sweet vindication!

word to the wise: if you want to recreate this, i'd suggest sticking with fewer options. the tastes are actually quite similar from cola to cola, so eight is, well, more than enough.

also, if you can swing this, buy cans and keep them all in the fridge for 24 hours before embarking on this adventure. that way, you can't cheat and when you're done you won't be swimming in quite so much pop you never intend to drink.

plans for the future: this might be worth repeating with other combinations. for instance, i arranged a quick follow-up test with just the colas, and idris was then able to distinguish between the coca-cola, the pepsi, and the store brand cola. you could also do one with kosher coke and regular, the former of which uses cane sugar while the latter uses high fructose corn syrup. or coke, diet coke, and coke zero. but, i repeat: the fewer samples, the better read you'll get on the differences between them.