life's work: my resume

I went to Australia! Wanna see my pictures?

books

Everyone should read Microserfs and Bridget Jones's Diary. V g. Other books that I like: Behind the Scenes at the Museum (and it's not even about museums!), The Age of Innocence, Alias Grace, Me Talk Pretty One Day, The Liar, Mr. Wroe's Virgins, The Professor and the Madman, Slammerkin.

My ideal Jeopardy! categories are:

Historic Architecture

the Beatles

Things Not to Do in a Museum

Who's Canadian?

What Would Martha Stewart Do?

Sometimes I wish I were:

Emma Peel. What I wouldn't give to roll my eyes dismissively, dispense with idiots with a quick judo chop, then speed off in my Lotus to my fab flat to finish my treatise on nuclear fusion before Steed shows up with a bottle of bubbly. Also she says things like "Do you actually know what you're doing, or am I just lucky?"

old buildings

Protection and considered re-use of our built heritage is one of the few topics I'm willing to get noisy about. See what the National Trust for Historic Preservation is doing.

the Simpsons

My favorite character is Groundskeeper Willie - "If I don't save the wee turtles, who will?" Milhouse is a close second.

NPR

My favorite show is This American Life.

websites

When I should be working: Found Magazine, the Museum of Bad Art, National Geographic Photo of the Day, and the Brunching Shuttlecocks (a sample favorite is David Neilsen's "Thoughts from the Grocery Store").

The homepage on my browser at work and at home is Google

O Canada!

I love Canada - after all, it's one of my duties as an Honourary Canadian. To learn all about our neighbour, look at An American's Guide to Canada, a remarkably funny, insightful, and useful resource. As the slogan goes, "The world needs more Canada."

In the name of cultural exchange (oh, alright, in the name of having someone cook for me for two years), I lived as a Junior Fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto. We wore academic gowns to dinner, said prayers in Latin, had High Tables and Gaudys, and drank sherry by the fireplace in the Common Room - it's all very Oxbridge. Because Massey has a very literary community, important writers and journalists were often milling about (or so they tell me - I couldn't identify an important Canadian journalist if you sat me down in a room with the entire staff of the Globe and Mail). I got to meet Margaret Atwood AND Douglas Coupland. And I once had Cheerios with former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Jolly good Commonwealth. Pip pip.

guilty pleasures:

The Powerpuff Girls. Especially Bubbles.

The Lone Gunmen X-files spin- off. Those guys are all about information issues. And have you noticed that the actors are all Canadian? There's your conspiracy right there. Maybe that's why it was cancelled.

Martha Stewart Living: she may be evil, but life in her world is so pretty.

Any of the recent Jane Austen adaptations. I like the movies much more than the books, except for Pride and Prejudice,in which case both forms are utterly satisfying.

Collecting those tacky touristy pens that have stuff floating around in the end. My favorites are pilgrims en route to Cantebury, Elvis (Vegas era) gliding towards screaming fans, and a yellow submarine floating in the Mersey.

These are the best potato chips ever and you can only get them if you live within a 70-mile radius of Burlington, Iowa. Fortunately for me my small west-central Illinois hometown falls within this happy circle.

When I'm stuck on the couch with a bad cold, I keep the following within reach of the VCR:

Office Space, Grosse Pointe Blank, Heathers, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, An Ideal Husband, and episodes of Northern Exposure and the Avengers.

The tapes that always stay in my car:

Elvis Costello, the Beatles, Crowded House and Neil Finn, Aimee Mann, Replacements, Wilco, Liz Phair, the Who's greatest hits, the Guys and Dolls sountrack, the Rushmore sountrack, Ella Fitzgerlad, and Frank Sinatra.

I love coffee. I hate cilantro.

"To augment our memories, we accumulate." - Gary Marchionini