It's practically a tradition now

I ate the whole dish of jelly beans despite the blue ones tasting like soap and the pile of work on my desk. Student's qpcr looks good, and so do my multiplex blots. Success with a side of sore stomach.

rusted razor blades on dirty sink counters

Some music for those people who stay late to clean up, despite freakish 25C weather.

Moments in the snow

Blogging took a back seat this week to visiting researchers, student panic, home improvements and family obligations. It was sitting in the final midterm (invigilating again) that I was able to slow down for a minute. Looking about the room, there was one toque for every baseball cap. We are currently experiencing our St.Patrick's Day storm, and it looks like this outside:

Toques not unexpected, really.

The bonus question on the midterm today was: "Today is the Ides of March. Explain the quote [Beware the Ides of March], including as much detail as possible." Despite not having read Julius Caesar in high school, the "Ides of March" has been referenced in our culture enough that I googled it in the past, and am aware of it's significance in the Shakespeare play. Not so the first student to pass in her midterm, who answered the question with a tip-off to St.Patrick himself. She wrote that since it was two days before St.Patrick's Day, one must beware of people rushing around getting liquor before the big day. I'll let you guess how many of the real biochem questions she bothered to answer.

I went looking in my iTunes for an appropriate song, and this is what I found.

His bit at the beginning is a hoot "...whether the dancers needed a break"

Coup

I've been singing Ben Caplan's Conduit in my head all day. He has managed to successfully dislodge David Simard. Check out his fantastic music player on the lower right of his website. When he played Conduit live in the kitchen, we all sang back to him and stomped the floor. I haven't had that much fun at a show in ages. We talked to the violin player later, nice guy who was jealous we were gutting an old farm house :)

Ben Caplan & The Casual Smokers - Forty Days And Forty Nights from HEAVYWEATHER on Vimeo.

Underfoot and overhead

So the plaster board is all up (as much as we can do, anyway) and the plaster people have been notified. We're on their schedule to get the veneer done in the next few weeks, and I'm excited to see the transformation from the dark grey walls to a light bright white. It's been extra cosy - since the plastering is easier when there aren't switches or plates in place, we've had no overhead lighting for weeks. The change from grey to white (and from plugged in lamps) to ceiling mounted lights is going to be bright!

Will this be us in a month?

Next step is flooring. Last time I talked about it, we were tottering between snazzy bamboo and rustic barnboards. In the interim, we acquired a sand-blasting tool able to shoot out walnut shells to refinish the wood, a softer alternative to sand blasting. Despite doing quick calculations confirming we have enough wood in the barn to do the first floor, we've run into some problems - the sand blaster requires an air compressor 6 times more powerful than the one we own and 2 times more powerful than the biggest compressor we could rent from the hardware store. Additionally, the wood might end up that bright orange-y gold colour after stripping, it's hard to say in advance.

Rhuh-rhoh...

Pros: wood is free, rustic planks from on-site (5" by 14' in some cases) add to the whimsy and eco-friendliness of reclaimed barnboard floors, we would have enough to do the whole house if we wanted to

Cons: Don't know what we are doing or how the finished product might look (aka this could turn into a four month project), the cost of renting tools to do the job might negate the "free materials" aspect, the colour might be ugly, the softwood would wear down more than a commercial finish

With this in mind, we did a quick tour of commercially available products that aren't outrageously expensive. The bamboo flooring mentioned upthread is $4/sq ft (our first floor is about 900 sq ft) so it doesn't matter how lovely the look, how long the boards or how hard wearing the finish is - it's outside our budget (sigh...up until last week I was still cyber stalking that product...). We did find a replacement product at a discount lumber store nearby: a maple pre-finished hardwood that has a strikingly similar colour range as our beloved bamboo. The catch (of course) is that the $2/sq ft product is basically made up of factory ends. When A-grade maple hardwood is marred by knots, gashes or other "unsightly" blemishes, the manufacturer just cuts off the offending bits into a pile of tiny interesting pieces. Since I'm daft and forgot to bring my phone with me, I don't have an image of the 4 foot x 3 foot panel the retailer had made up, although husband and I both thought it looked much like the varigated bamboo. Here are three pieces of sample together as a sample (top option):

Is it eco-friendly if you install end-pieces?

What's the problem? Buy the available maple product, have a lovely floor that stays within budget, get a kitchen.

My problem is that I'm a wood snob, and I have a paradigm that nice hardwood floors = expansive lengths of wood with few visible seams. I can't break the stigma in my head that installing a bajillion 1 foot long (or less!) off cut pieces of maple in my first floor is going to look super cheap and awful.

It boils down to having expensive tastes and no money (again...). It will take a few weeks and a few failed attempts at refinishing the softwood barn boards to change my mind, I expect. Til then!

Too Cute

I know, this is old and so cliche but this video puts a smile on my face every time. Makes me wish I was a better performer :)

This one too: