Under the Blacklight

After two weeks of warm winds and melting snow, we're once again buried and chilly. It's -16, too cold for an aimless walk so we haven't been doing much of anything except cooking and eating. In the last 2 weeks, Gord has perfected fried rice, somehow managing to get it crispy and sticky and just right. And he's been fattening me up with his butter & cream chicken penne, oh my good god, can he cook.

It's reading week, so no school, but I have no books! No new books, at least. So I splurged on Linguality - they publish french books with a glossary of english on the left hand page, and the french text on the right, so you don't have to read with a dictionary and your computer open to Babelfish. I must be learning some french, because with the glossary I could make sense of the sample page I downloaded, but I had no such luck with the Italian. I think this will make it easier to learn the language, and if nothing else, I get new books!

I just finished Embracing the Wide Sky by Daniel Tammet. Gord ordered the book after seeing him on The Hour, and it was a really good read. I usually can't plod through nonfiction, but this book makes all the scientific mumbo jumbo easy peasy. If you've ever wondered how your brain works, this is a good book to start with. The author is an autistic savant, and once recited Pi to 20,000 digits or something insane like that. I can remember Pi to 2 digits. The difference is how he sees numbers, not as the dry, meaningless pencil scratchings from math class like I do, but as images, so reciting Pi is like describing a landscape.

Post title is from the song stuck in my head, it was pretty much the soundtrack of last winter and reminds me of driving up and down highway 2 over Christmas. You can listen to the whole album here.