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There go by days and weeks when I mean to write but never do, finding after a while that what I would have posted for posterity doesn't seem quite so important anymore. Let it suffice to say that last weekend, spent in Montreal, was plenty of clean, geeky fun; I didn't much like Warcraft the computer game but Warcraft the boardgame was much more interesting, despite that idiotic rule about only being able to do one type of build every turn.

This week marked the arrival of a new group of four students, of whom I've been appointed guardian. :D They're very nice and hardworking, which is always appreciated. And when I asked them how their first week had gone, they told me, comparing my teaching style with that of their other teacher, that I'm "the intuitive one." It's hard to explain how heartwarming that was to me. There are adjectives to which I wouldn't be averse should they be used to describe me, such as classy or refined, but that I must in all honesty admit to not being (at least not in a broad sense), deep down in the core of my soul. And while I may not seem to have inhereted many of the witching genes from my mother's side of the family, I like to think that they slumber somewhere in the back of my mind. I'm quick to grasp new concepts and I understand my inner logic quite well, but sometimes I watch myself think and realise that oftentimes, when I arrive at a solution and work my way back through a logical path to explain it, I'm not entirely sure how I got there in the first place and I don't think it was the same way.

Some more food for thought, on sports. For the past few weeks, I've been playing soccer Friday afternoons, after work. Last week I happened to be the only one of the female persuasion there, as opposed to the other weeks, when there was at least another girl present. I know that many women would either feel intimidated or glory in the potential for admiration, but for me there was no particular feeling but total comfort with the situation: I'm not here to impress anyone, nobody's going easy on me, I'm just here to play. It felt so natural -- not that I'm ill at ease when other women are on the field, it just felt like being back in secondary school when I spent a lot of time hanging out with mostly guys. Back then, those guys were my friends and were rather afraid to accidentally hurt me, unsure as they were sometimes of their own strength, so I got away with more than I otherwise should have. Now, I'm playing with adults who don't act any differently when I'm around. Well, all right, I'm sure the jokes would be cruder in nature, but they wouldn't play any differently.

Perhaps my memory's been coloured by my last real first-hand experience with women in sports, namely my cégep badminton classes, in which only one girl (and there were over a dozen of us) was able to hold a candle to me, and I was only an average player. It's usually not very interesting to play against someone who's not as good at the game as you are, but to play against people who aren't really even trying -- that makes for boring sport indeed. I could have just stood there racking up points, but thought I ought to at least give them a chance. Yawn. Can I go play with the boys, now? I used to take delight in winning no matter the circumstances, but I've come to find that when the odds are uneven and in my favour, I loose interest, like playing Cranium with someone who isn't sure who Gandhi is. And when it comes to knowledge -- I feel like an elitist snob just writing this -- I feel even more disconnected because in my world, peopled by persons (so as not to repeat the word people) such as my parents and (most of) my students, who've travelled much and read more, it's even worse. I mean, come on, everyone knows who Gandhi is, right?

Ah, enough about that. How about some of my thoughts on what I hope will become a monthly occurrence, here in Yaourt Girl's lj land, ( the books I read in January. )