Sunday, January 28, 2007

Course Papers, Community Dinners, Consuming Beverages

For all of our good friends and devoted readers who spent part of their life reading that last, long post--a break! In typical Yvana fashion, I'll be right to the point with very little flowery language, and focus on the update. With pictures! (To the left is a picture of the last part of our walk to church on Sunday mornings--the week after the snow one we posted about. Of course, straight ahead is our church--in the Byzantine style. On the left side of the picture is Saint Anne's Place, a retirement community, and on the right is an enormous building with a theatre, a fellowship hall, and other rooms that we rent out to drama groups etc.)

As many of you know, our grad school (ICS) gives students 6 weeks after the completion of courses to complete their course papers. 6 weeks after courses was two days ago. This means, the last few weeks have been pretty intense. Not only are we reading for current courses (and, for Mike, still working on Latin) we are also trying to finish thinking about classes that ended over a month ago. In addition, since one of our courses this last fall was a guided reading which results in our thesis proposal, we also had to be thinking a whole lot about what we were writing for our theses. Anyway, with how orderly Mike is, he works well at a desk, to have all of his books/papers/coffee laid out nicely. I think it is a picture of how his mind works. If this is true, though, what does this picture of my workspace on our bed (right) say about how my mind works? This was taken after 30 hours of nearly un-interuppted time writing and thinking about my thesis. (yes, I did sleep, but I moved the books for that!)

[Because points are fun, and Sara started this trend, I'll give a point for every unique book you can name from the chaotic mass--I know there's a couple obvious ones--those are just freebies for the first viewers... Maybe I should give more points for anyone who can see the connections between these books... Of course then points would just turn into thesis help for me--not a bad idea!]

Of course, coarse course papers aren't the only things we have been up to since we have been back in Canada. We are continuing many traditions, one of which is continuing to attend St. Anne's Anglican Church. It is a short walk from our apartment, and we have been attending there regularly since last October. It is on the list of historical sites in Toronto, which--though you can't see inside, in these shots, is plain enough to see why. If we had a picture of inside, you could see some of the paintings of the group of seven--before they were famous.


We also help out with their community dinner. The people from the church offer a free, hot meal to needy people in the community once a month. So, last Sunday we were chopping potatoes and cauliflower, making coffee, serving desserts (see Mike at left) and fellowshiping with our fellow parishoners and the people that came in from the cold. We had quite a group this past Sunday!


We have also been savouring tea (Thanks again, Paul!) in our favorite mugs--a short and stubby one for Mike (we bought this at a thrift store around the corner for 75 cents, and then we saw it at the University of Toronto for $13CDN!), and a tall and skinny one for me :) (unfortunately this belongs to the apartment, so it won't be ours for too much longer...)

So, that's what we have been up to, in brief... On the docket for this week: Gilbert and Sullivan's *The Grand Duke*--I doubt we'll get pictures, but it should make the next post a little more interesting!

5 comments:

sara without an 'h' said...

Before I enter the contest...what can your awarded points redeemed for? Snap bracelets (like mine)? (See Chris's last comment on my blog if you're confused...)

Thanks for the update!

M&Y said...

Snap bracelets have I none
(though deeply wish I had),
but journal articles from Robarts...
enough to make one glad.

To help course-paper-writing friends,
Lend we all a hand:
All the access you could want;
all the journals you can stand.

How's that, Sarah? Not to mention the intangible benefit of my undying respect and my pestering you for help on my thesis.

Chris said...

I don't want points from your blog anyway. Journal articles? Boring!

sara without an 'h' said...

hmm...the poetry is pretty good. However, the misspelling of my name is slightly insulting! (Or are you just getting me back for that one 'Ivana' at the beginning of the year?)
:)
However, I could use some journal articles for my IDS paper...

M&Y said...

S,

I think the name mispelling has to do with the amount of emphasis on the "h". Everytime I see you post, it is recalled to me that it is "without an 'h'" so I just keep thinking about the 'h'.

"Is there an 'h' or not? Well, I remember there being a lot of discussion about it, is it with or without..." To be honest, I probably wouldn't think of adding the 'h'--I think sara by itself, but the tag line always makes me think of it.

Isn't it ironic?
Y