Celtic rap meets Star Academy

I just spent hours working on this week's lessons for my class. We're doing an entire week of songs, and since I didn't want to use the songs provided by our supervisor, I basically had to start from scratch- find themes for each day, find songs, make activities, put together cds, get the class the info and lyrics, etc. I am really excited about teaching it- especially Tuesday, when I'll do "L'avenir est un long passe" by Manau, which Professor Poncelet taught one of my classes when I was an undergrad. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call full circle. But yeah, I put a lot of work into this (and still will do more)- if the class doesn't like it or if it doesn't go over well I'll cry. I'm good at crying, as was proven this weekend. I repeat- this weekend next year, I'm not getting out of bed, taking any calls, or talking to anyone.

Pieces of April has been taken away from me. There are several reasons for this 1- it has to go back to its home at Blockbuster. 2- When it arrives back at its home, other people can enjoy it. 3- It had to be taken away as part of an intervention program to prevent me from becoming even more addicted to it. Even so, this is a sad development. I watched it maaaaany times (exact number not to be disclosed here) over a short period of time and it was decided by people more separated from the issue than me that I should maybe not watch it again for a while, so as to have time to do other things. I miss it already.

My light pink fishnets (not scary-looking, really, quite cute actually) have been missing for some time now. Today I remedied this problem in typical Gina fashion by buying different pink tights and the same fishnets in light purple. Have to be set for spring. I'm really not all that crazy, promise.

April gets to do a project on children's books. This sounds really cool. I'm wondering if she'd like to trade projects with me, and maybe write a paper on some topic relating to collecting in 19th century French lit instead? April?

I'm going to try to get some sleep, but if anyone's interested I can tell you which songs I ended up choosing for class (sorry Lauren and Jenny, the oboist version of "sur le pont" didn't make the final cut). There are the main songs, then all the peripheral songs I'll play a few of each day- all in all, it's 2 cds worth (or more).

a post not in French

Many comments = happy Gina! Sadly, not all of you are from Quebec, so the blog will stay in English. Or Old French. You know, whichever. Speaking of Old French, I got through about 30 lines today in "Bisclavret" a lot faster than I did last weekend. Could it be that it is becoming easier? I can recognize tenses and all of the weird sentence constructions and implied subjects and everything. Wow, I'm a geek. But back to the commenting thing- keep it up people! It makes my life more interesting.

I have discovered that these leg warmers are great for doing exactly what their name says they should do- warming my legs. Yes, this should've been something I knew before making them, but hey- they looked cool. And since they're ginourmous they keep part of my feet warm too! Yay warm feet! And e deserves a lot more credit than she takes for these- her many patient hours with Beginning-knitting-Gina (now with purling action!) is what led to this. E, when are you coming to Oregon? How about tomorrow? I'm free in the late-afternoon/early evening hours.

Today's unsolved mystery- Loup Garou song, real or fake-french-song? I'm going to get to the bottom to this if I have to call everyone I've ever met that speaks French. People to cross of the list already- Mom, Jenny. That's it. Darn. There's still a lot of people left after that. Like, millions. Ok, not millions. But definately more than ten. And that's a lot of calling for me.

Dear friends in Chicago- would any of you like to give me a job? Preferably in the arts, since that's what I actually want to do. My god, I'm random today. It's ok though, I deserve to be random today.

I just made a lot of Belle and Sebastian cds, but now I'm listening to Dubstar. Anyone who has never heard Dubstar should. I have the Euro version of "Disgraceful" in right now, but their others are just as quality. Sarah and I listened to "Goodbye" while driving around Tucson all day when I was back in December. Dubstar makes for good driving music. But not just that. It really is beautiful.

I'm thinking that I may go watch "Pieces of April" once more before it has to go back. It's only a little over an hour, so it's not like I'll be up all night. I don't know why I feel the need to justify my choice to watch a movie tonight, but I did. Soooooo there. Because of said choice, however, I'm not going to write anymore. Ha! Couch, here I come.

Gina's leg warmers on Gina! Note the blue tights. I love H & M.  

Gina's leg warmers!  

Ta-da!

Live from Gina's apartment, it's Thursday night. Thursday means that I only had class from 4-7, but sat through a 3-hour 19th century class (you all know how I feel about the 19th century) that included 5, count them 5, presentations. Wow.

NEWSFLASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!- I have finished les leg-warmers. For those of you who have been anxiously awaiting the end-point of this project, the day has come. I've been knitting them foooooorever (at least a few months, on and off between other things, like Mike's scarf) and for a while I thought they'd never get done. But, that was not so, as this morning I cast off the second one. This is a big deal for me, since I knit them on double-pointed needles and they came out looking almost like the pattern picture. This is the pattern I had with a picture of what they're supposed to look like- http://knitting.about.com/library/bllegwarmers.htm I'm going to post a picture of mine (which will, of course, appear above this post- because that makes sense). I never thought I'd actually wear them out of the house, but I was so darn proud that I planned an entire outfit around them. Including blue tights (note- Ha! to everyone who said I'd never wear bright blue tights) Boy, I'm sad. But proud!

I also finally got around to hanging my calenders. Both downstairs, within 12 feet of each other. Way to go Gina. The best part is that I decided to do this at 11pm today, and the task involved hammering. Neighbors must love me. Wacked-out music, random talking-to-self, and now late-night hammering.

I tried once before to make this a reader-participation blog, but that didn't work out so well. I'll give you one more chance, people (April calls everyone croutons, why can't I be clever enough to come up with something like that?). I have no clue who reads this thing. So, if you do, leave a comment? That way I can tailor the blog to better suit the reading audience. For example, if I found out that everyone who read the blog was from Quebec, I would start writing in French. Or if you all had a pronounced interest in geology, I would write about rocks. Or just tell you that since it's my blog, it's my interests that count. Ha. Ok, that wasn't so nice. And that won't make people comment. Sigh. And one more requirement- when you leave your comment, suggest a song I can use to teach my class next week. Note- said song must be in French as I teach French and not English or math or something. I'm leaning towards Manau, Francoise Hardy, Charles Aznavour, etc. If you don't know any French artists you could make one up. That would make me laugh.

Now I must go to sleep, or I will be tired tomorrow and not able to set the ninjas upon my students who have not done their homework.

Ceci n'est pas la cuisine de Gina. 

Emile and I both love coffee. 

Qui a peur du loup garou?

Aaaaaaand, 3 weeks later, she's back. Happy Winter Quarter, everyone. But you know, it's already week 4. Whoops.

Sooooo, 2005. Already much better than 2004. Stress level? Waaaaay down. Down down down. Happy! And this quarter? 2 classes = less than 3 classes = less stress. And learning Old French = geeky Gina-esque (me, not big Gina, who's teaching me) = so cool! Today I sat with my Old French dictionary and grammar books and the Lai I'm reading- "Bisclavret" and worked at the parsing and translating. Which takes a while, since I'm just starting and have to look things up in many books. It's too gramatically geeky and wonderful for words, and this coming from someone who doesn't like grammar! I'm dissolving into happiness. Other parts of the day were spent baking (there's coffee in my gingerbread! How caffeinated and lovely!), laundry, laundry, and realizing that throwing the Flaubert book out the window won't accomplish anything except necessitating me going outside to get it. Stupid Romanticism. But professor for said-dreaded-19th century class? Incredible. It makes that horrible glop bearable for me. And that's saying a lot. But still, Balzac? Shut uuuuuuuuup! Oh, and I sent my class an email entirely in French, and no one wrote back saying that they didn't know what I was saying. Because they rock, this class. No more stare-downs. And that's a good thing.

I wonder if I could just play "La Belle et le Bad Boy" every day in class next week. Hmmm. Would the class notice? Would it be fun? Would my supervisor get mad at me? Tricky, tricky.

Mike's coming to visit next month. I'm going to take him to class with me, which should be fun. Hopefully he won't make fun of me and take pictures. Maybe I can even get him to make my lesson plan. Last year he helped and came up with such memorable translation exercises as "If I find my banana, I'll call you." It was quite a popular exercise with that class. Put him to work, that's what I should do.

So I know that I say "Ohh, you should see this movie" a lot here, and I'm sure that maaaaaybe one person listens to me. So here we go again. Pieces of April. See it. I'll find out if you don't and come and watch it with you (if you buy the plane ticket and popcorn). I thought I would hate Katie Holmes, but she's remarkably good. And all this for a movie that I wanted to see so that I could hear the Stephin Meritt songs (and was reminded afterwards that I could've just put in his cds). But really people (person? April? Are you there? Cause this movie totally has your name in it! And your name written on it! And all those other cliche things), see this movie. Or just buy me a plane ticket to come see you. Or the popcorn, because I do like popcorn.

I finished knitting one of my leg warmers. Yes, one. The other one is maybe an inch long, which makes it an almost-toe-warmer. I would love to just wear one of them out, but that would look silly. And while I do question some of my outfit ideas in the later parts of days, even I am smart enough to not just wear one of them.

Kudos to Claire for the good music. Oh god, I just said "kudos." I would like to strike that from the record and replace it with "word." Get that, everybody? But yes, good music. Combined with my flood of new cd acquisitions as of late, I'm getting up to some speed. Well, at least hearing new music. Even though I have listened to "La Belle et le Bad Boy" approximately a million times in the past week. And by a million I mean between 10 and 15. Yup.

I could lie and say that I'm going to read more Old French or Flaubert right now. But I'm not going to. I'm going to tell the truth and say that I'm going to do the dishes, get into bed, and read some Calvino. Take that Flaubert!

The moral of this story is, remember to turn your phones off at night if you don't want to get woken up in the morning with calls.

Goodbye, 2004

Well, I'm ready to say goodbye to 2004. Yes, it's New Year's Eve and I'm writing. That's because I'm staying in, by choice. I just want to get to 2005 already. This hasn't been the best year ever. Don't get me wrong. Good things happened. But there were lots of not-so-good things. I'll do a photo wrap-up after I write this, so you can all get stuff from that. Whatever happened, I made it through. I got to spend time with every member of my immediate family, and some of the more extended part. I met great new people. I lost some great people. I read a lot of books. I saw old friends. I went to three weddings and one funeral. I got closer to my family.

2005 is coming really fast. I'm happy. It's going to be lots of new chances. I'll finish school, again. Get a real job. Move, again. I'm scared, but excited. Steve asked me today what my resolutions were. I guess I have a few big ones- Have a better year; be happy; and take better control of my life. There must be some smaller ones in there, like eat less macaroni and cheese and stuff like that, but I can't think of them right now. Huzzah 2005!

I am in no way qualified to do a "best of 2004" list, so instead I'll subject you to the Gina-list, aka, stuff I liked this year.
Good movies-
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Garden State
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
The Company
Fans Only, the Belle and Sebastian DVD

Good music (so yeah, I'm out of it musically, so not all of this came out last year)
69 Love Songs, by the Magnetic Fields
Garden State Original Soundtrack
Ok, by Talvin Singh
Wasps Nests, by the 6ths
Smash the System, by Saint Etienne
Live at the Bowlie Weekender, Belle and Sebastian

Good books-
The Hortense books, Jacques Roubaud
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
Les Liasons Dangereuses, Laclos
Les Manifestes du surrealisme, Andre Breton
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino (not done with it yet, but it deserves a place here, since it's incredible)

And since I got an iPod mini for Christmas (and yes, it's pink. Ha), here are my favorite things on the iPod right now-
The Life Aquatic soundtrack
Keep Fishin', Weezer
Das Model, Kraftwerk
Whip it on, the Raveonettes (also That Great Love sound, which is on their other cd)
Lolly Lolly Lolly get your adverbs here, Schoolhouse Rock
Music for 18 Musicians- Steve Reich

So there, loyal readers. Thanks to everyone who was there for me, checked on me, or made me feel like it was ok. Or to everyone who let me come visit, visited me, or ever brought me chocolate. Thanks to people who showed me new places, introduced me to new things (or other new people) and made me try new things. I know I cried a lot this year, but between the crying I did laugh. And have some good times. Merci beaucoup mes amis, and I'll see you next year.