A break in the theme....

"Dear Neal:

It is my sincere pleasure to inform you that the Graduate Program Committee is recommending to the Simon Fraser University Senate Graduate Studies Committee your admission to the Master's program for the Fall 2011 term... ... Professor Mark Leier [head of the History Department] has expressed an interest in acting as your supervisor."

- Mary-Ellen Kelm
Graduate Program Chair, Department of History, Simon Fraser University

I really, really did not want to break the theme. I like this series. And it is going somewhere important (in due time, like all of my series...). But when you've got something to celebrate, like getting into the graduate school and program that you so desperately wanted to get into, any series should be disturbed...

Things I love. (7)

I love discovery - finding things that have been found before but by different minds and hands and eyes and feet. That moment of first encounter, when your mind is racing to understand the implications of newness. I find it happens most when researching for history papers. Discovering that somebody had an addiction to alcohol, or that France in the 1790s was actually a collection of small states rather than an organized, functioning nation of one people. But it happens all the time.

Things I love. (6)

I love the village of Hoddevik, in Norway. It is the birthplace of my great-grandfather, and it is a place that I have had the honour of visiting. Beautiful is a word too small to explain that tiny town of 30 inhabitants. I can remember that moment when you just turn the corner, go over the ridge, and then descend the mountainside in your car, on the road built by Nazi slaves, and you see the unending ocean in the background. In the foreground you are bombarded by green, grasses and mosses and lichens that grow year round in the warm, salt-infused, moist air. You see yellow houses surrounded by trees imported from British Columbia because of their resilience to wind. And I also saw a Canadian flag on a flag-pole, waving to me and welcoming me to a land that felt like home even though it was nothing like home.

Things I love. (5)

I love to play my piano. To sing and play my piano. To sit and watch somebody else sing, or play their piano, or sing and play their piano. It is the most humbling thing I have ever encountered, the piano. Nothing has caused me more heartache and excitement in the past 5 years than discovering a piece, playing it for months to the point of perfection, then hearing a recording and realizing there is so much more to learn. And then doing what I can to learn it. I love the piano.

Things I love. (4)

I love mountains.

Things I love. (3)

I love watching parents in public in that moment when their children are having too much fun, making too much noise - and just on the brink of drawing more attention to the family than the parent wants. Because I love seeing the happiness in children, I love imagining the love of that mother or father for their child, I love seeing joy. I smile - and wish I could tell the parent to let their child continue because their joy is brightening my day.

Things I love. (2)

I love the feeling when you are just leaving the gym after doing an hour of cardio. Muscle work-outs make the body cry. Cardio makes the body surge with an energy that makes you feel like you are six inches taller just for that 5 minute walk to the car. It is so refreshing.