I have no written anything since the last post. This is upsetting. I have been attending events (Talent Night and a Speaker on Odysseus’ Scar in Auerbach’s Mimesis). Been flirting like crazy…nothing new about that.

I also made the best cheesecake ever! The recipe was care of Lina and i share it with you…

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake

Crust

1 ¾ cup chocolate chip cookies (crumble them up)

¼ cup sugar

1/3 cup butter, melted

Filling

3 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 cup sour cream

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Cookie Dough

¼ cup butter softened

¼ cup sugar

¼ cup packed brown sugar

1 Tablespoon water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup flour

1 ½ cup chocolate chips

For crust–combine cookie crumbs, sugar, stir in butter. Press mixture onto bottom of spring-form pan that has been floured and greased.

For Filling–in mixing bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add eggs beat until well blended. Add sour cream and vanilla. Mix well. Pour over crust. Set aside.

Cookie Dough–In other mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars on medium speed for 3 minutes. Add water and vanilla. Gradually add flour. Stir in l cup chocolate chips. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls over filling, gently pushing cookie dough below surface.Cream cheese mixture should cover cookie dough.

Bake at 350 degrees F. for 45-55 minutes or until center is almost set. Cool on wire rack for l0 minutes. Carefully run a knife around edge of pan to loosen. Cool one hour longer. Refrigerate overnight, remove sides of pan. Sprinkle with remaining chips that have been melted.

12-14 servings.

I just ended up refusing a friend’s request to complete a survey for a project she is doing in class. I feel like a shit, but her plan is to depict birth control as a negative/oppressive force on women and i cannot provide any data towards such an end. The alternative to birth control is unequal status for women. I may not be a feminist, but i do believe in equal rights and equal opportunities…even if i do love the male body. LOL. Am i a bad person for making it harder for her to complete an assignment? I feel like she choose this topic on her own…if she didn’t then maybe i would comply anyways…i will let you know how she responds to my refusal.

It was one of those mornings when none of my clean clothes would fit.

You know you are taking full advantage of your student status when if you wear a skirt and make-up, everyone asks what class you are presenting in. I love being able to wear jogging pants to school.

I am way behind in my actual schoolwork as opposed to paper-writing. Haven’t done the Foucault readings for class this evening, nor have i edited the four essays i must for 12pm tomorrow. Grrr…

Countdown: 79 pages (re-calculated the total; completed Name of the Rose)

I had intended solely to go out for a piece of celebratory cheesecake; time with Zach is too much fun to pass up. After sushi (which was excellent and cheap) we spent almost three hours chatting about both the philosophical and the libidinal at Pekarna over “brownie cake” which was exactly as advertised. i should know better than to expect to get work done when i go out with someone who likes to talk almost as much as i do. I got in at 11pm.

Zach has read some of Xenophon and Plato’s Laws. We put his reading of the Spartans against their depiction in Frank Miller’s 300 (which he hadn’t seen, but had read the graphic novel) and concluded that all things considered it was remarkably accurate for a Hollywood movie. I will definitely be purchasing it when it comes out on DVD. I love blood and gore almost as much as i love ancient history (and men). I spent every scene with Xerxes thinking of Boccaccio’s telling of his “fate” in the De casibus virorum illustrium - i am officially lost in this thesis.

I post an update on the countdown solely because i promised myself i would do so. However, i woke up at 4am to work instead of staying up late yesterday. I still have another three hours of work to do before getting in the shower and heading to school, and spent a good 40 minutes preparing a “guide for the easily-confused (a category which includes your friendly T.A.)” hand-out for students in my class on Kant. I figured this would be less time-consuming than doing the readings. Please cut me some slack.

Countdown at 4:30am: 90 pages (Updated at 8:30am: 84 pages)

I have a group project in History and Public Policy. It involves creating a website that will demonstrate our work to the rest of the class. Our presentation is tomorrow at 1:15pm. I, because of my experience as such, am the web editor for the project. None of my group members have deigned to send me any work yet. Clearly, i am supposed to stay up all night uploading their last minute work even though my own writing contribution was completed by Saturday.

I started by writing a snarky, stressing email. One of my groupmates responded asking me why i am stressing as the project doesn’t need to be complete but only partial…well, i have retaliated by setting up a firm deadline of 6pm after which i will not be accepting work to upload and sent instructions as to how they can do it themselves. A girl only gets into grad school once. I refuse to cancel celebratory plans. I refuse to fall even further behind in my writing than i already am because of others. I hereby declare myself responsible for my own work only. Like it or lump it.

Countdown: 91 pages.

Though i have bombarded many of my readers with notices to this effect already:

I will be attending the university of toronto next semester as a graduate student in their history department. Now i need a summer plan. I am hereby asking all readers to help culture me: i would like a list of films i should watch and books i should read to enter the brave new world of non-LAC land without looking like a numbskull - but i want them to be good!

Countdown: 92 pages (Restitution Project Completed)

Get ready…this is one of those pessimistic posts which drives everyone crazy and which i have no excuse for as i don’t even believe in catharsis.

I managed to balloon what should have been maximum five pages of paper into ten pages. I am incapable of not doing the utmost legwork possible on history papers and have had to adjust my countdown accordingly. It went up by three pages and i managed to write nine yesterday. I am a moron.

Hanging out with Eric on a Saturday night in Laval is both a good and bad thing. Good because it gets me out of the house…bad because not only does it remind me that i USED to spend all my week-ends goofing off with Steve (and yes, i have been thinking about him on a daily basis lately) but also emphasizes my lack of anything non-scholastic going on.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being a humanities student. I’m passionate about the work. I love being able to satisfy my curiousity. I just wish there was time to do more…that i had something else to talk about other than papers, classes, people from school and my family.

Speaking of family, my father decided to try and pre-guilt me out of accepting any job offers outside of Montreal during the summer. I love the logic…NOT (so Grade Five). Living at home i have no car and, thus, am pretty much stuck to working in the Chabanel district, at CIJR downtown (for a pittance), or in Blainville for minimum-wage. I am not going to spend the summer working in telemarketing again. I just get fat and can’t do anything working until 10pm five days a week. My father, however, is aware that he cannot afford to pay for my rent and food, let alone my tuition fees, if (and i’m still hoping) i get accepted to U of T. I am unclear why i should condemn myself to working 20 hours/week to live while completing a masters’. They won’t even tell me how much they feel they will be able to help, but want me to let them know how much i would need from them. Of course, that puts all the responsibility for their financial planning on my shoulders and, frankly, i can’t do it. I NEVER ask my parents for money. I haven’t since i was…well, never. There was no point in seeing that look of utter failure in their eyes when i would ask for money and they couldn’t give it to me. There was a reason i wandered around town on days off school collecting beer bottles and aluminium cans left in parks. Furthermore, any help they do give me would be in one lump sum, which, anyone who has lived off a lump sum will know (hello my situation right now) is a huge stress. EVERY penny makes you feel guilty. EVERY week is another budget that you can’t adhere to.

Yes, he doesn’t want me to fly the coop earlier than need be - but he isn’t putting anything else on the table other than a huge wad of guilt and it makes me fucking mad. Grrr…

Countdown: 93 pages

It’s fun to discover that a friend you really like but are fearful will not be able to stay in contact with because of lack of things in common outside school has another interest in common with you that you didn’t know about - alternate history! Yeah for reading Derek’s blog.

My father is taking me to 300 tomorrow night and i am VERY excited. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is divine!

Countdown: 102 pages (2 days behind…will be caught up by end of week-end, i promise!)

I take a moment to reflect on the silver lining…

Yesterday i met with my thesis supervisor about the first ten pages of my draft and he was overwhelmingly positive about my argument and its articulation. More importantly, for the first time ever during this project, i felt like i was discussing the topic from the same playing field as him. I could respond to his points and wasn’t just nodding and taking notes. Furthermore, i submitted my nineteen page draft (with ten page appendix) for the class to review. A student i respect very much showed some appreciation for my introduction writing skills - i love writing introductions, so knowing you are relatively good at something you enjoy is always nice.

The bad news is that i have slept eight hours over the past two days and have eaten an orange and a handful of blanched almonds in the past eighteen hours. I am planning on going to Mother Hubbard’s (a by-donation, vegan dinner every Thursday at the Multi-Faith Chaplaincy) this evening before class in order to get some nutritious food.

Countdown Update: 104 pages

Until the end of semester, all posts will include a tally of the number of pages i have yet to write. I hereby provide the breakdown:

Thesis (April 12): 10/40 completed (20/40 required for March 22); Research 80%

The Max Stern Art Restitution Project Case Study (March 28/April 16): 3/5; Research 100%

The Name of the Rose and Apostolic Poverty (March 27): 0/15; Research 90%

Levi-Strauss and Rousseau: An exegesis of “A Little Glass of Rum” in Tristes Tropiques (April 16): 0/25; Research 20%

History and Public Policy Take-Home Final (April 19): 0/12; Research n/a

Is Sleep Productive? Proust and Nabokov on slumber (April 2?): 0/30; Research 50%

Total: 114 pages

Pretty please, for the love of God and all things holy, OUTLINE YOUR ESSAYS PEOPLE! If you can’t follow a strict plan when writing your draft, that does not mean that you shouldn’t outline it afterwards to put all relevant points together. I am tired of reading papers that are more like my blog entries. In fact, my blog entries may be better structured.

Things i never thought would happen: i turned down a piece of cheesecake this evening. It would have been my second, but i wasn’t so full i would have been sick if i ate more. This is a step in the right direction. If only i had managed to stir up this kind of willpower yesterday in the face of all those bagels with cream cheese and lox. Yummm……smoked fish…

Our fat blonde cat is snoring.

I should be working on a paper or my thesis. Instead i have taken a nap, watched a movie, marked three essays (but not graded them) and done a preliminary run-through of one of my classmate’s thesis drafts. Lordie.

And could someone tell me why Boisclair was talking about immigrant enrollment in undergraduate programs? How is even broaching the subject not a sign of something awry? I’m going to vote tomorrow…