Today is the first day of reading week. I had planned on waking up ten minutes earlier in order to get an elliptical runner at the gym, but my sleep-addled brain reminded me as the alarm went off for the second time that today is the first day of reading week. No one will be at the gym. No one was at the gym. No one was in the library. No one was roaming campus. I wish that I could wax poetic about the deserted campus, but the university has no gates or fields or large spaces where students hang out. The university feels like another city block with the same traffic, cramped sidewalks, and huddled smokers as the rest of Toronto. This is decidely the most unromantic institution of higher learning in the world. I wonder how Robertson Davies turned the U of T into such an Oxbridgey place... Maybe if you're in medieval studies everything feels cloistered.

You're gazing at the fruits of my time on campus (the actual blog, not the post). Not much book-learning went on. I suppose that I should remedy that tomorrow.

Another fruit of my labor that is non-academic is dinner. We had chickpea stew with tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant. Since I have learnt well to ignore the amount of liquid Madhur Jaffrey calls for in her recipes (always half it), the stew was actually stew and not soup. Luckily K. had brought home some Ethiopian bread so the stew was filling, although K. is complaining of hunger pangs already and my stomach is about to start growling as well. Perhaps we'll finish off the brownies she made last night. -Zh.

P.S. Lest I take credit for the entire re-formatting of the blog, K. found the color for out headlines and played with the margins in the sidebar. It looks as though all tinkering in the future will be done jointly. The family that blogs together...