Ballet?

So, I turn on the TV this morning and encounter something called 'Out TV', which is apparently a station designed for the gay folk among us. Who knew?  And guess what's on? A spectacular ice skating version of Swan Lake! Apparently made in 2009, but I don't know where - seems like it could be Russian because I really can't imagine the Americans going there.

If you knew me you would know that ballet is dear to my heart although I've never really examined why. From experience I know that it's excruciatingly painful and ridiculously exacting.  And of course it's notorious for anorexia and injury - can't imagine why anyone in their right mind would want to do it. But for some reason it's aesthetically pleasing and the romantic ballets are just so, well..... romantic. Sigh.

I had a long chat with my friend P about this just recently. He had just seen 'Black Swan' and was going on about the meaning of it all etc. And then I realized that he probably didn't know about the origins of the ballet or anything about the romantic era, being only in his thirties and an engineer and all. But he understood the underlying themes and it's the themes that make the romantic ballets so appealing..... life, death, love, good, evil, and of course mental stability. There's a lot of psychological dysfunction in those ballets. I realize now that I had the luxury of seeing all that madness and beauty when I was only a teenager and somehow it allowed me to learn about the extremes of human behaviour in a way that I could absorb it. So, long live the ballet....

First time out

So, I've been inspired by my brilliant daughter to begin a blog. She's fabulous at blogging (more on this later) and seems to have a real gift of the gab. Going on the notion that genes are at least partly responsible, we'll see how I do in comparison.
By way of introduction, I'm a graduate student in the nth year of my PhD (we don't discuss the length of this process) and my main interest is brain/behaviour relationships. You could argue that everything about us is a brain/behaviour relationship but that idea is not too popular in this age of cognitive psychology, neuroscience and social networking (more on this later too).


I'm also a mother to three great adult kids (AC, HL and IM). They are the light of my life and they've begun to provide me with grandchildren, a baby girl and a baby boy affectionately referred to as Beanie and Budsie. And I'm step-mum to three more great kids MM, TO and EM. And wife to their great Dad FJR, known affectionately by me as 'Mr. Man'.  Mr. Man is French Canadian and gorgeous in a blue-eyed, silver haired, physically fit around 50 kind of way (more on this later too). I can sense all of those kids covering their ears from here!

Following will be the trials, tribulations and little triumphs of the dissertation process from the perspective of a granny who loves brains. We'll see where it takes me!