a little drop of poison

i. as i type this, i am cooking a dish known around my apartment as Beef Meghanoff. i am pleased because this will inevitably lead to days and days' worth of leftovers. as the conference comes to an end, it has proved surprisingly difficult for me to remember to cook for myself. i keep expecting trays of food to appear from somewhere. but where? my storage room?

ii. james and I went to IKEA last night. i framed my poster as evidenced below. James bought a mini palm plant known as Palmela (pronounced paum-ela). if this does not seem funny to you, then you have not said it out loud enough times. i wonder if i will ever outgrow my dependence on ikea.

iii. i think library school has taught me to respect books as objects, not just texts. i was at chapters yesterday, with plans to buy my very own copies of philip pullman's his dark materials trilogy. but there were no editions i liked, just bulky paperbacks (i told James: and i don't think they were printed on acid-free paper). so i just walked away. i have learned that the reader deserves to choose the weight, the cover, the paper, of the object in her hands.

iv. yesterday i finished The Golden Compass, which was almost as good as i had been led to expect. Lyra is enchanting. today i finished Neil Gaiman's Mirrormask, which was terrible--beautiful, empty, glib, and confusing. i'm sure it did not benefit from the contrast.

v. i feel strange and sad. this is why i should never (a) sleep in the afternoon (b) finish university (c) sit on my kitchen counter in my pyjamas, eating ice cream straight out of the carton