And we're in.

When it rains, it pours, non? This week has been crazy.

The fam, including my elderly-ish (see below) grandmother, two aunts, mom, and in-laws were up last weekend to help us move into the house. Hilariously ambitious because 1) many many things were not (and are still not) finished. List includes: trimwork, grouting of the entry, installation of interior closet doors 2) no clean water yet 3) it rained almost all weekend.

We moved our stuff anyway. It was our two year anniversary on Tuesday which had always been our "unofficial" move-in date. Sappy and completely impractical but dammit, I wanted it to happen. Since the clean water will only materialize tomorrow, we have been sleeping on an air mattress at the apartment, showering at the apartment but spending our time at the house (or, as it worked out, the lab). Romantic, I know. But. But. But. We moved nearly everything into the house over the last week (last night the cat came, which was interesting since he HATES his cat carrier) and cleaned up the apartment for the viewings. We ate dinner at the house (that we had cooked using bottled water) and slept in our own bed in our new bedroom. The living room is a disaster zone, littered with construction supplies and items from the apartment we did not pack properly (and are therefore strewn about haphazardly), and although the list dimishes, there are still many things to be done, including (importantly) the occupancy permit from the city. But we're in.





By far the most amusing part of the moving weekend was when my grandmother and crew checked into the hotel. We had worked all day and were grimy, so we were taking turns in the shower before going out for dinner. I don't think we were there five minutes before my grandmother opens her bag (a small carry-on style piece of luggage), hauls out a bottle of red wine AND A CORKSCREW, and then proceeds to unravel the four wine glasses she had carefully wrapped in her pajamas. Another five minutes, and the six of us were sipping wine, sitting on the hotel beds like a bunch of teenagers, rolling with laughing because my seventy year old grandmother still knows how to get the party started.

This is her, on hands and knees cleaning our floor, bless her heart.


Tonight, we have a meeting with the landscape design woman to discuss ideas for the yard, and the water purification people will be in to test the water, with the intent of supplying the water softener and UV system tomorrow. I've got more pictures of course:







The house has taken a back seat to work, as my data arrived and I've been scrambling to get the analysis done in time for my trip (I leave in five days). So far, so good but there have been many twelve hour days crammed into the last week. My back is starting to get sore from sitting in my cheap-o computer chair. And of course the sun decided this weekend would be nice to come out and play - while I've been locked away in the Tupper dungeon. Our windows don't open. Who thought THAT would be a nice touch??

The two days I volunteered last week went wonderfully. We had to pare down the grade six activity on Tuesday because the expensive kit I bought from WARD'S Science (A luminol detection kit for simulated blood splatter) was a total let-down. Fortunately, we tested it the day before we went to the school. Unfortunately, it didn't work, no matter what we tried (cotton, plastic, glass). We even followed the directions for substrate materials by spraying that shit all over the tile floor in the cafeteria downstairs and STILL it was a no-go. The grade eleven class on Wednesday was great, they really knew their stuff. I stayed longer than I had originally planned because the activities were fun, the students were fun to talk to, and the teacher was way more attractive than I had anticipated. Hence the necessary catch-up with the twelve hour days later in the week.

Grade six crime scene activity:



Grade eleven class learning about SDS PAGE gels, milling about the gel rigs, and then visualizing their agarose gels:






I may or may not post while I'm away in Europe, but I definitely will after I come back (with pictures).

Whirlwinds and Butterflies. Wee!

New Music Canada

I love CBC. They have the best website, with thousands of songs from Canadian artists that you can compile into personalized playlists. I just spent an hour creating my "Venutian" playlist with local and Canada-wide favorites. Happy Friday!!

FYI

Things that bother me:
1. People pushing level 3 in the elevator. I would publicly humiliate them if I weren't so damn nice. La-zy.
2. Twenty-somethings in short shirts and leggings. As in no pants. As in, "do you think, when they invented stockings, they thought it would one day be fashionable to wear them without anything else??" Well ladies, it's not. You might as well be wearing your underwear over your pajama pants.
3. When, during an hour long presentation, three different people have cell phones that ring. I am mortified beyond belief on behalf of the presenter when it happens the first time...but then I am speechless when it occurs again and again. I could throttle the dumbasses who don't realize their phones are still on even after the horrid reminder of someone else's ringing. Chained to technology?? Fine, but for bloody sakes be aware of your surroundings.


Things that I like:
1. Eating a soft ice cream cone in the middle of the afternoon instead of another coffee or tea.
2. Watching someone run for, and then catch, a city bus. Bonus points if she's wearing high heels.
3. Unapologetically messy desks. They're charming.

Five pounds in four days

...not that anybody is counting. But that, my friends, is how much weight I gained during the fantastic conference in Quebec! The conference was held at beautiful Lac Carling resort, which served overwhelmingly rich food every.single.meal. And then we, the well-fed researchers, would ascend a single flight of stairs to sit on our asses for the day, listening to the (honestly) impressive talks. I did go walking in the woods once, and canoeing, and swimming (kinda) but all in all it was a stuff-your-face-sit-down-all-day-and-then-drink-a-ton-of-beer sort of trip. (And drink we did, us East Coasters had a few Europeans to show up in that department. Those boys sure know how to hold their own) I am not complaining, the setting was grand (and paid for) & the company was even better. A great way to start the summer.




And finally (finally!) the massive amounts of data I've been waiting months for have arrived. So the relaxing week at Lac Carling prepared me well for the numerous hours ahead of staring at sequence data on a computer screen. This is fantastic news because I might actually have something novel and interesting to contribute when I go away to Barcelona for the International Evolutionary Biology conference. I was starting to get a complex about that - being spoiled with a paid trip to Barcelona yet having nothing of worth to contribute. So now I can breath easy, and look forward to that trip even more. It looks like my girlfriend and I will be in Barcelona for a week, and then Prague for another week. We had to skip Budapest since it was incredibly expensive to get out of the city back to Scotland, where we depart over the Atlantic. Hopefully the empty flat we were offered by a mutual friend will not go to waste :(

As for the house... we're moving stuff into it this weekend whether it is ready or not. We may not actually be sleeping in it, or showering in it, but the process will begin. While I was away, the kitchen countertops and vanity were installed, and the limestone was laid on the floor. The tiles have yet to be grouted, which is tricky since they aren't supposed to be walked on for a few days afterwards. Also, the trench for the well line was dug out, and I'm extra happy about that since I was able to get a price half as much as was originally quoted (from the excavator who did our back yard...grrr) by calling up the guys down the road (who don't normally do residential) and sweet talking them into "helping a neighbour". I can use the extra four hundred bucks on my trip now!! :) Sneaky.

And lastly, while BLASTing my sequence data, I was multi-tasking on the telephone with Canada Post. I've never lived somewhere where the mail went to a PO Box rather than the civic address so I wanted to call far enough ahead of the move to ensure a mailbox could be secured. The lady on the phone had no idea what I was talking about. She couldn't tell me where my neighbours pick up their mail, or who I might contact about acquiring a mailbox (not her, apparently). Hell, she couldn't even tell me the postal code for the area. WTF?? Am I the first person ever in this city to inquire about where/how I should set up a PO Box in advance of a move to a new home? I hardly believe it. So her response?? "I'll get someone to call you back with that information". Wow. Just wow. Thanks Canada Post.

PS How fortuitous is it that the NCBI database interface and Facebook website look the same??

SnapShotsSnapShotsSnapShots

I'll be leaving for a conference tomorrow, so here's the quick update:


Window Casing!!


Tile!! (Worked until nearly 3 am Saturday night on them, then again Sunday)




Kitchen Cabinets!! (Cherry. Ohhh Ahhh *Blownbudget coughcough*)




Ciao.