new wall decorations

My roommate had a brilliant idea to paint a mural on a particularly boring wall in our living room during Spring Break. I unfortunately ended up in the hospital halfway through construction of the fence and we lost out momentum. Fortunately, the continuous snow for the past week prompted us to finish this weekend. We haven't put quite all the flowers on the arbor over the door, yet, but otherwise I am quite proud of it. I will try and take another picture during the day so more of the detail is visible. For now, this is as good as it gets:

life with one fallopian tube

Twas was the day before classes, when all across campus, not a student was seen, not even the senseless. I was reading a book peacefully outside, hoping that all this talk of school was a lie. Then, the pain started. The most excruciating pain I have ever experienced had me in tears all afternoon. I tried taking warm baths, drinking ginger tea, and napping before moving onto extra strengh tylenol and 800 mg ibuprofin. Then suddenly, the pain disappeared. I quickly attributed this to the wonders of painkillers and went on about my day. Unfortunately, it returned to haunt me that evening and refused to yield to the cocktail of painkillers I attempted. I grudgingly went to the student health center on Monday morning where they told me they thought I had a bladder infection and sent out a culture even though they found no white blood cells on the dip stick. They also, however, scheduled me for an ultrasound at the hospital on Wednesday. After two nights in tears without sleep, I stumbled into the hospital for my appointment. Although the technician couldn't tell me what I had, I knew the huge sac of fluid I saw wasn't normal. She suggested I return on Friday for an appointment but I refused to leave the hospital and finally found a doctor who would see me in family practice. It turns out I had a huge ovarian cyst 10 cm across that was wrapped around my fallopian tube. Later that evening, I was in surgery. I naively believed I would be up and about the next day and able to attend classes on Friday. I was finally discharged from the hospital on Friday afternoon and started to go back to classes Monday. Fortunately, my surrogate family in Kalamazoo has been making sure I take it easy and made sure I had company in the hospital. Classes on Monday were tough...I completely underestimated the amount of energy it would take me to get around campus. But today I feel many times better.
By far the most frustrating part is realizing I have to take it easy for a couple of weeks. No running, no lifting (i.e. no carrying a backpack or picking up dogs) and no bike-riding. Grr.

ithaca

Please remind me when I spend the next seven-eight years of my life at Cornell NEVER to fly our of the Ithaca airport. All attempts thus have been disasterous. The first time I visited Cornell I couldn't fly in or out of the airport due to weather and then overbooking and ended up missing my spanish comprehensive exam as a result. Most recently, I managed to make it into the airport but barely managed to escape after hours of standing in line and begging with ticket agents.

(s)no(w)

In response to my previous post, spring has not arrived. Not in Michigan and certainly not in Ithaca. In what seems to be a trend in my graduate school interview forrays, The 70 degree weather everyone along the midwest/northeast part of the U.S. enjoyed earlier this week quickly turned to snow upon my arrival in New York. Eleven to 16 inches? In less than 12 hours? No problem! At least I don't have a comprehensive exam to rush back to when my flight out of Ithaca is cancelled on Sunday.

Spring?

It's finally warm here! After weeks of living in a frozen world, today reached a balmy 70 degrees! And the sun shone all day to top it off. The highlight of my day was finding an awesome shield bug while walking in the woods before dinner. You know it's Spring when the insects start emerging.

Too bad there's a cold front coming in tomorrow :(

a relaxed week of finals

I have no *real* final exams this week. That is, I presented my Spanish final (an analysis of the impact of the Bourbon reforms in Spain on the indpendence of all of Spain's Latin American colonies) last week. My genetics final was an open-book take-home exam that I just handed in and I just need to revise my final critique for journalism--a critical look at the effects of subtitling foreign films. Technically, I have to work at the vet clinic and finish grading some things, but mostly, I get to enjoy finals week.

A (belated) review of the Oscars

The Oscars are generally a tedious multi-hour self-congratulation by the established acting industry inexplicably popular with the American public. But touted as the “most international of Oscars”, this year’s show vowed to be different. With a record number of foreign film nominations accompanied by the most ethnically diverse group of nominated actors, the academy seemed to finally recognize the talent in non-Hollywood productions. Alas, at last night’s awards ceremony, they couldn’t manage to fully pass up lesser-quality, traditional Hollywood films.

At first the evening looked promising. Pan’s Labrynth, a Mexican film, was nominated for 16 awards and received three (best art direction, cinematography, and makeup) within the first hour, which were dedicated to “all the filmmakers in my country [Mexico]”. The excited cast received a slap in the face later in the evening when the award for best foreign film went to The Lives of Others. While the Academy was grudgingly willing to give up minor awards to a Hispanic film, it couldn’t neglect its Anglo-European heritage for the big one.

This pattern was repeated throughout the evening with smaller awards conceded to the international population of nominees while saving the larger awards for the tradition of Hollywood. Letters from Iwo Jima picked up an award for best sound editing, while Babel received one for best original score. The Blood of Yingzhou District won best documentary for a short subject, The Danish Poet received an award for best animated short film and West Bank Story won best live action short film.

Yet a series of faux pas starting with some of Ellen’s well-intentioned jokes began the night’s downward spiral back to the safe and tedious celebration of old American cinema, showcasing Hollywood’s lack of consideration for foreign films. Ellen’s first jokes about the degree of diversity at the awards ceremony were well intentioned, “Spain is in the house, Japan is representing, I think I see a few Americans as well…of course I’m talking about the seat fillers.”

Then she mistakenly referred to Penélope Cruz as Mexican instead of Spanish. When The Departed received its award for best adapted screenplay, the work it was based on, Internal Affairs, was cited as Japanese instead of Chinese. There wasn’t even an attempt to translate Ruby Yang’s portion of the acceptance speech for The Blood of Yingzhou District. Although given Clint Eastwood’s botched translation of Ennio Morricone’s acceptance speech for his honorary statuette in Italian, that decision by producer Laura Ziskin was probably less painful for the audience.

As the longest Oscars yet slowly rolled to an end, the international films it heralded were nowhere to be seen. Alan Arkin took the award for best supporting actor for his role in Little Miss Sunshine, Jennifer Hudson took the female version of the award for her character in Dreamgirls, and Forest Whittaker and Helen Mirren won best actor/actress. Although blockbusters were scarce among this year’s nominees (Little Miss Sunshine, an independent film, was the highest grossing nomination) the most blockbuster-esque film of the group, The Departed, picked up the awards for best director and best picture as the Academy finally hit bottom.

The drudging ceremony reaffirmed that the Academy is still too pompous to fully appreciate the diversity of today’s cinema.