This has been a good weekend. I crocheted a mouse for Metro, and got some good pictures of him, which should be up on Chris's website... sometime soon. (Patience, Meredith!) :) Metro's a nut, he REALLY likes to be under the covers. Sometimes we forget that and keep looking around the apartment for him, only to finally notice a suspicious-looking lump in the covers... and there's the kitty! And yes, he slept in the bed, sometimes curled right up by my legs and purring like a madman.

The other night, Chris and I were yelled at by random people on the street for kissing. "Get a room!" "Go to Church and Wellesley!" That last remark was a little confusing, since that would be the heart of gay Toronto, and we're not a gay couple. Ah, well. We also went to the Mediathèque to watch two short films that they're promoting right now -- Ryan and Hardwood. Both of them were good, but I think I failed to understand a lot of the visual significance in Ryan. They're both under half an hour and the Mediathèque is free, so check it out if you're around.

This has been a weekend of getting things done. Those things would include a trip to IKEA, buying me a digital camera, finally putting together my new bookcase and putting all my books in the living room for all to enjoy, putting up various things in Chris's apartment (photos, towel bars, curtains*, lid racks, etc.), starting crocheting a version of this rug, and doing some more exploring of Chinatown's markets and random food. The thing about shopping for food in Chinatown is that I don't know what half of it is. I also don't know how to find out most of the time, because half of the shopkeepers don't speak English very well at all (why bother? it's Chinatown!), and the signs are in Chinese. So... I'm lost. But, they have every kind of fruit all year round and mango juice to boot, so we're happy.

We also watched K-19: The Widowmaker this weekend, and I have to say... I never EVER want to get radiation poisoning. Gross. I'd like to do some research on the backstory of the movie though, because if it's true, then we just about had a nuclear explosion much larger than Hiroshima.

I'm currently reading Michael Shermer's How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, and I found this passage interesting:

"In fact, science is a type of myth, if we think of myths as stories about ourselves and our origins (and not in the pejorative sense of myths as things "untrue"). Many gain considerable emotional, even "spiritual," satisfaction from reading scientific articles and books by geologists about the creation of the Earth, by paleontologists about human origins, by archeologists about the genesis of civilization, by historians about the development of culture, and especially by consmologists about the origins of the universe. Tens of millions of people watched Carl Sagan's 1980 Cosmos series with rapt attention. In 1997 the PBS series Stephen Hawking's Universe gripped viewers every Monday night. Books on evolution by Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Donald Johanason, and Edward O. Wilson are eagerly sought by readers and often find themselves on bestseller lists. Why? Because at these boundaries of scientific knowledge the lines between science, myth, and religion begin to blur as we ask ultimate questions about ourselves, our origins, and our place in the cosmos." (p.29)

I think a lot of that is true. I know a lot of people who are either studying science formally or informally and who find it beautiful in a certain sense. The same could probably be said for linguistics, especially when we try to find the connections between language and consciousness and intelligence. Regardless of the field, there is probably always a certain ability to use it to find meaning in one's life, which is generally the point of religion. Something to think about, at least.

Dear Anonymous, you who were so startled by the linked diagrams of the female menstrual cycle in the last post, perhaps you would like to peruse Vanessa Tiegs's art made with menstrual blood. Enjoy!

*The thing about buying a curtain rod with your boyfriend is that you suddenly learn that he watched WAY too much Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when he was young and because he has a curtain rod in his hands, he suddenly thinks that he is Donatello (right, honey?) and has wicked martial arts skills.