If there's anything that I've become good at in the last year, it's pushing myself beyond any reasonable physical limits. Yesterday, I got intensely sick while at school (I am guessing I ate something bad, but who knows). Still, I refused to go home, and made it through the whole day's schedule. After resting a bit (more on that below), I ended up staying up until 1 a.m. to bake cookies (dark chocolate oatmeal) for the 'Well Physician' class today. In the morning, I got up at 6:30 to bake another batch of cookies (this time my speciality, cranberry and white chocolate), and then went off to class. The presentation went well, and the cookies went over even better... starting with the random people in the elevator, who enquired after the contents of my pot, and who I rewarded with a few, the people I ran into in the hallways, in the coffee queue... lucky I had baked up so many. Anyways, I ended up not getting to eat lunch, developed some intense stomach pain, and finally got home just before 6. What did I do? I went running, of course. When I finally got home from that, I ate. Two cans of chili. Great.
Anyways, enough of that. So, I mentioned 'resting a bit' up there. Okay, what I really did, was watch the last DVD of Friends season 10, with the final episode. I was never the biggest Friends fan, but I am a sucker for that kind of stuff. I was relieved to finally know the end of the whole Ross-Rachel thing, although frankly, I have to say that the writing on the last episode was lacking in imagination. I mean, Rachel has to give up all her dreams of Paris, career, etc, for a wishy-washy guy whose big gesture is going to the airport. Sheesh. Absolutely, he should have had to quit NYC, abandon everything, and head to Paris, or something like that, to show some emotional desperation and commitment. Nope, let Rachel do the sacrificing, so that they can have a final shot with all of them leaving the old apartment together. Better would have been to have the whole crowd self-destruct and fade away one-by-one, or two-by-two: Rachel gone, Ross dropping everything and taking off, Phoebe not bothering to help move because she's all married and stuff, and the other two taking off to some distant suburb, leaving Joey all depressed and alone with that penguin of his. Now that would have been a nice, gut-wrenching finale.
By the way, the hospital that Rachel's dad is in, after his MI a few episodes before the end, is actually Robarts, the humanities library at the University of Toronto, the largest library in Canada (according to wikipedia, it's currently the largest book repository in the world). 'The Turkey' is its obvious nickname. Somewhere in that building lies a copy of my thesis. I spent so many hours sitting in front of that building, waiting for the chinese truck to cook me lunch: either beef rice noodle (best in Toronto), or beef eggplant, oh so special.
Oh great, now I'm depressed. The truck people sold their business a few years back, I'm told, and the quality of the new people just wasn't the same. The rice noodle went downhill. The truck lady, with her incredible memory for the favourite dishes of hundreds of devoted students, will never be forgotten.
Just before 11 p.m. tonight, I finished reading my resp textbook, under two weeks into the course. Yes, I started a textbook-reading competition against a few classmates last week, and tonight was the end of it. Only one other student was serious competion: 'Magic Pants'. It appeared that he would also finish tonight. Who won? To be continued...
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4 comments:
"... he should have had to quit NYC, abandon everything, and head to Paris, or something like that, to show some emotional desperation and commitment."
Is that why you left Boston?? Was it desperation or commitment? (Your fighting pain and sickness only reaffirm my huntch)
Heh, I was tired of doing work that a monkey could do (actually, a monkey would refuse such dull work). I suppose that was desperation, to do something useful with my life, instead of just acting out a supposed life.
I like to push myself mentally and physically, to 'live your life as if it's real', to quote Cohen. Running nickel columns over and over, I was just a cost-effective robot.
I think British Library (over 150 million items and adding some 3 million every year) and US Library of Congress (more than 130 million items) are probably the largest book repositories in the world.
Robarts may be the largest academic library in the world.
Well, certainly in the world is suspicious. :) Back in Toronto, I'd never heard it referred to as anything but the biggest in Canada. I am guessing that the wiki is wrong. You're probably right about it referring to just academic libraries.
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