My birthday is officially over (at 5 days it's pretty well stretched to the limit). I had dinner with the family tonight, opened some cards and presents, ate some cake and ice cream. My family always gets me gifts even when all I'm good for the rest of the year is a phonecall or email. I should change that. The gift that was going to make me "friggen crap" turned out to be a camera, and I unfortunately purchased a camera recently, so I'm returning it to Future Shop and going on a bit of a spree. Sarah and Mike gave me a copy of Douglas Coupland's The Gum Thief (I'll be reading that on the plane to Berlin). Holly gave me a copy of The Sound of Music, and Adam gave me the sixth season of Scrubs. Aunt Nancy picked me up a Starbucks card - THAT I'll use on campus, for sure.

I put on Touch of Evil after dinner and tried to explain to my folks a bit of what I'm doing at university. My mom really digs Orson Welles and said that she's had Citizen Kane in her head ever since she watched it last night. Watching old movies has become sort of a new thing for my parents and I. It's nice to be able to share a pastime with them.

I picked up a Eurail pass online with a little help from Brenda Thorne. We'll be detouring through Brussels and Amsterdam while I'm overseas. It's been a lazy weekend overall and I haven't done any readings. I'm heading back to Toronto tomorrow after I get my cough checked out by a doctor in town. After I'm back my semester is really going to shift into its last phase. The end is in sight. I have work to do.

As I briefly mentioned rather drunkenly in last night's post, I went to C'est What with Adam, Ren and Matt, ate the shepherd's pie, had four pints and shot some pool. A fine night out with some fine folks. Matt and Ren are probably the two people in my life that I can most naturally and freely converse with, and hanging out with them together is always twice the good time. I called my mother when I got home, as she'd left a message on my machine, and an email that said:

"I hope you had a great birthday. My thoughts and all my love are yours. WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE YOUR PRESENT!!!!!!! YOU WILL FRIGGEN CRAP!!"

Must be some gift. I hope it's a new pair of pants.

I'm heading home for the weekend tomorrow after class. I finished my annotation work and gave it to Tristan, who put himself in charge of getting everything assembled, but he sent out an email late in the evening sounding very stressed out over losing internet access, having to travel to campus and work on a seminar at the same time. He sounded pissed because Eileen didn't hand over her annotations until pretty late in the day. We'll see what shit goes down tomorrow.

I watched a movie I'd been curious about for awhile entitled Picnic at Hanging Rock, which was apparently a huge hit for Australia in the 1970's. Spoiler Alert: It's about these students of an all-girl school who go on a field trip of sorts to the forests around a formerly active volcano called Hanging Rock. Four of the girls explore the mountain. Only one of them comes back, and one of the supervising teachers goes missing. A week later, one of the girls is found but has no memory of what happened. The movie is famous for two things: it's incredibly atmospheric and surrealistically creepy, and there is no resolution to the narrative's events. I quite enjoyed the first 3/4 of the film, and I was willing to accept that I wouldn't find out what happened to the girls. But what is a narrative supposed to do if it can't close itself? It's left to simply hang there, passing time until an end is finally imposed upon it. And that's a feeling not incredibly akin to quality. Still, I think I'd like to watch it again, because I get the impression there's a level to the film that I don't think one can grasp in a single sitting.

I also watched Fellini's 8 1/2, which was enormously enjoyable even though I couldn't get through it in one piece. Some amazing visual work, really some of the more inventive concepts I've seen, and very self-referential without being arrogant. It's a great movie about directors, and relationships for that matter.

I read Oni's Ghettostocracy and sent off some questions for her perusal. I really have to get started on my final papers and presentations as soon as I get back to Toronto. I applied for a job as a TA for a course in Canadian Short Stories, which would be up my alley and pay well if they find me qualified. I also signed up for a seminar on publishing Canadian journals online; it's taking place at Robarts next Wednesday.

I talked to Andrea yesterday. She's coming home in January. It was a hard decision for her to make. She put together a swell package for me that I received in the mail today, and it contained some great words about simple things she misses about being with me. I miss them, too.

I'm a little drunk thanks to Adam, Ren and Matt, who were gracious enough to cover my dinner and drinks at C'est What. Good guys.

I'm 28. Goodnight!

I'm old. Well, older.

The less said about adventures in film semiotics, the better. I finished Notes from the Hyena's Belly, and interestingly enough, it was largely criticized in class. Professor Clarke was trying to think of the name of a Mexican magic realist prose writer whom Mezlekia resembled (it was Laura Esquivel), and a few folks shouted out names. I hazarded a guess with Octavio Paz, who was really the first magic realist writer I ever encountered, and got kind of a weird reaction - laughs, and the assertion that Paz was a poet. I felt kind of silly, until just now, after doing a little research. Paz was definitely Mexican, definitely a magic realist, and definitely a short story writer (I've read "My Life with the Wave") in addition to being a poet. My guess was completely acceptable. And I was feeling disappointed in myself for making it.

Yannick Marshall was a special guest in class today, and he read from the book he just co-authored with Yemi Aganga entitled "Old Friend, We Made This for You." His stuff really blew me away. One of his favorite images seems to be the celestial body, and I asked him why that struck him in particular. He explained that the Toronto skies are grey and imprisoning with pollution in comparison to the night skies of Africa and what he calls in one of his poems "the Diaspora of stars." That's such an amazing way of looking at the night sky, and admitting the power we put in the hands of whatever lingers above our heads. I picked up a copy of his book, which he autographed for me. Very cool.

I walked home from Keele station, made some dinner and watched the Ghostbusters commentary track and the deleted footage on the special edition of Mallrats. Tomorrow I'm meeting with my Bibliography group and going to dinner with some chums for the ol' b-day celebration.