sneaky addictions

I now understand why people get addicted to buying crap on ebay: The act of getting mail.

These days it is a rare thing, and really harkens to feelings I didn't know I had. Like that regular old snail mail makes me feel important and loved. Even if the tag says ebay. So odd. Combine that with the thrill of thrifty shopping, and it is a done deal. Over the last three weeks, I've ordered a food dehydrator, a scooter helmet, some organic cosmetics, organic spices I can't find around here, and a special boardgame for a gift. Sigh.

Post Office Love.

cc'd your boss

Hi,
I'm assuming the tree trimming going on right now in front of the art gallery on campus is a university contract. If so, just thought somebody might like to know they cat-called me while I crossed the street to get into the student union centre. If in your power, I think you should let the dirtbags know I don't appreciate being harassed on campus.
Sincerely,
me

I do NOT want to be inside right now

The entire weekend was glorious. Sun shining, no rain, light breeze and most importantly NO mosquitos. Today is the same. On Saturday we drove 45 minutes away to "Bancroft Farms"-basically an adorable dude-and-dog duo on a couple of acres making veggies for a roadside stand in cottage country. The fantastic potluck showcased some fresh scallops surrounded in bacon BBQ'd to perfection, sunchoke salad and other home-grown goodies. We drank beer around a campfire as the sun went down. Or tea around the table gabbing about CBC and drunken escapades. Then yesterday was a surprise birthday BBQ for my dear hubby, who is turning 30 this week. I invited some old friends he hadn't seen in a long time as well as family members to my mom's house for a surprise party. It was great!

So not much done on the house this weekend. I really want to tape down the kitchen cabinet design to verify the proportions actually work. And I had to fire the landscaping crew who were supposed to till my garden. Not only were they horrible communicators, they just failed to follow through on multiple occasions. I don't have to deal with that crap anymore. I just borrowed a tiller to do myself, with a garden plot plan I spent a few hours organizing. Companion gardening in wide plots....that's the gist of it. We'll see how it goes.

I also took a few pictures of the property today, which I'll post shortly. Sunshine!

Update: Here they are!

Inside the barn:



Outside the barn:

Riighhhtt

The advertisement along the right hand column of my youtube playlist:


I'm not sure "glam" would be the word that comes to mind, really.

Junos

From wikipedia: Juno (Latin pronunciation: /juːnoː/) was an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state.

The yearly Canadian musical awards are also called Junos, and they are taking place in St.John's. I was listening to CBC last night on the radio, and came across the live performance of some of the artists showcased at this year's Junos. If you need something in the background today, check it out as a podcast via iTunes. (screen capture below to help you navigate since I can't put a link up)

little news big news

While earthquakes abound and I worry about all westcoasters, closer to home we found a neighbour in our barn. He looked like this:

And smelled like this:
The local exterminator company wants $200-400 for removal. At that price, I think it may be worth sending the dog in and dealing with the consequences after.

re-iterate

under a tahini moon

I would like to know what is in sesame seeds that my body is apparently lacking. For two weeks, I have been craving sesame seeds something fierce. I put them in my home-made granola bars (where normally I stick to almonds, currants and coconut). I learned how to cook a spinach-sesame Japanese dish called gomae. I stealthily go down to the health food store mid-afternoon to get some of their sesame crisps.

Tryptophan? I don't know but yumm....sesame seeds. My new best friend.

flakey

Last week I ordered some wee chickens (straight run, buff orpington*, half a dozen day old chicks). They should arrive mid May, so we need to get a coop reading by then. I also scheduled when our garden to be tilled (we decided to move it from the location I originally liked in the fall because of copious tree stumps buried underground), being pleasantly surprised at the $20 cost (I was never going to get around to it at this rate anyway). Bought paint for the exterior of the house. A nice creamy yellow called "bee pollen".

I bought a big five gallon pail at a big box store (they gave me a fifty dollar discount on the upgraded paint because they didn't have the right base for my colour), got home super excited to start the long process of covering up the asbestos shingles in paint when realized I bought latex to put over oil.


Now I have to go back, spend double the money (and time!) to get an appropriate primer. Crap!

* I only realized yesterday that I said buff orpHington, not the proper buff orpington (no H). Newbie!

good things

When I saw these, I literally gasped (open-mouthed and all) in the shoe store. Beautiful glee. Unfortunately, my doctor told me this morning my fucked up left foot (in particular, my fifth metatarsal) is due to poor arch support and will likely get worse as I get older. I'm going to have gnarly old lady feet shod in gross shoes. *Sob*


Regina Spektor will make it better because hello! ...look at those collarbones.

La musica

I have come across three non-local bands that have tickled my fancy this week. Apparently I was in the mood for lush beats and tic noises.

Microbunny from Toronto (in particular, the Magnatech remix)

Little Dragon from Sweden (Twice)

Trespassers William from Seattle (What of me)

(my oh-so-smart husband told me the origin of the name without even having to check. Cute!)

I'm also getting a one month membership to a gym. A bunch of my girlfriends go multiple times a week to a dance/aerobic class that they adore in the town next door. It's basically this, but with a wider range of ages and fitness ability. Free rides and free accountability!

magical science supply faerie

Two weeks until undergrad honours thesis are due, so students are rushing like mad to finish up the last few experiments. One arrives at my door this morning to ask that I order supplies on his behalf, holding the empty containers in his hand. When I tell him I will do it asap but that the supplies will likely arrive early next week, he does that quick-inhale-between-the-teeth-reverse-whistle thing. Like "ohh...only next week??" but in non-verbal form.

There's a life lesson here, unfortunately for him. It goes something like this:

I am not one of these.
Figure 1: Science supply fairie. Space and time bend to her almighty will. Ta-da!

Sorry kiddo. Now I have to willfully compel myself NOT to chase allover campus getting signatures right quick. Because there is still a tiny teeny part of me that feels bad for him, and would do it. If my inner bitch let her. Which she won't.

dank

With spring temperatures, there is water everywhere. Puddles in the front yard, backyard, basement. When the new septic field was put in place less than five years ago, we suspect the people may have royally screwed up the drainage plane around the house. Copious amounts of dirt were presumably rearranged in the process, and it requires a smart thinker to keep the water flowing away from the house. There is no way the house would be in such great structural shape if the amount of standing water around the house right now is historically accurate.

So guess what we found under the floor of our exisiting kitchen? If you guessed a 7 foot-by-7 foot concrete box (six feet tall) with about 3 feet of clear, standing water you would be correct. And it is fucking creepy.

Our running hypothesis all winter was that the kitchen was a later addition to the house, since it "sticks out" of the original square footprint, attached to a 6-inch wall rather then an interior 4-inch one. We figured that it had no proper foundation, just a dug dirt crawlspace. It is always much colder in that space, which would make sense if it was sitting on dirt. We hoped the floor joists were structurally intact and didn't meet the same fate as the barn boards, which are crumbling from the middle of the floor outwards. (Tangent: our barn looks almost identical to this one, but with a better roof.)

Then my husband pulled up a curious spot in the hardwood floor that looked like a hardwood patch (like those around old flue holes in the floor) that was in a funny location. It was a hatch access door to the pit.

Turns out the reason our kitchen is so cold is because it is sitting on a pool of near-freezing water. We can't figure out the purpose. Root cellar? Extra well water? Flooded bomb shelter? And more importantly, what do we do with it? Drain it, obviously. But then...cap it? Leave it & insulate the floor? Use it as a root cellar and hope it doesn't floor next spring? Pack it with vodka for the end times?

shitty timing

We found a wee treasure behind the baseboard of the old house. It is a tea company advertisement for "Beacon Tea Company" based out of Boston. I wish I could date the thing, but with the political uproar in the States right now, a quick search for "Beacon Tea" just brings up all sorts of racist, right-wing garbage (or articles mocking it, like this.)

So this is the cute placard showcasing nifty period clothing. When was tea 20 cents a pound? Now, that may be something to work with.

Wrangling

I would very much like to choke the everlivingshit out of whoever sold my email address to the ScienceSpammers. Dammit, this is what my inbox looks like:

Eight more days

Being a new grad last summer, I qualified for a government salary supplementation for my first year (-ish) of work at a "small-to-medium size company" in my field of study. At the end of the last pay cycle, my boss informed my that there was a much larger balance in the grant account then we previously believed. Basically, this funding was going to run out at the end of the month whether I claimed it or not, so if I wanted to work my ass off for 17 days in a row, I could drain the account (doubling my normal pay cheque $$), bank the hours, plow through an ever- accumulating "to-do list", apply the money to our new woodstove AND take some time off after April 1st.

So that's what I decided to do, calculating 17 successive, 9-hour days would be enough time logged to empty the left-over grant money. I am now over half way finished, and have managed to stay in relatively good spirits and health. Nine hours days, in reality, are nothing compared to the strenuous hours in other jobs. As my husband reminded me yesterday, upon delivery of some delicious potato pancakes and beer for my suppertime meal taken in the lab..."you're not an undergrad, you're not a masters student anymore. You're getting paid for your time. Chin up."

...of course, it's molecular biology. I protocol started is a protocol to be completed until an appropriate storage stage is reached. So I was here last night at 1 am transferring a Western Blot :)

The nine hour days alone are not really a problem. It is the quick spring that overtook us, highlighting the need for attention outside (ex: incomplete chicken coop, soppy garden and crumbling exterior finish) that is difficult to neglect on beautifully sunny weekend days.
Coincidentally, there were lots of planned appointments (doctor and hair) and installations or estimates for these two weeks (like the stove, planned for a Thursday installation, or the spray-foam insulation guy who is coming tomorrow afternoon). So I have been working more like four ten-hour days, and then five hours a day on the weekend.

I've also been tutoring someone while she studies mid-wifery via correspondance. Her current course is anatomy & physiology. (Thankfully, there is quite the overlap in content from my undergrad cell bio/metabolism/animal biology classes...says the girl who studied fungus, algae and plants for her scientific career). Originally a 14-week course with ~4 hours of tutoring a week, she was just informed late last week that in order to qualify for government student loans, she needs to complete the course in under seven weeks. All of a sudden, four hours a week has turned into 8. We have standing dates on Tuesday & Friday and Sunday evenings to go over the remaining material. She must complete the course by the end of April, so hopefully my banked hours this month can be used for day-long study/cram sessions before her last few exams. She also received a grant to pay for my tutoring services at a great per hour rate.

So just to re-iterate: I have job(s) I love, I'm keeping busy and I love potato pancakes with spinach and cheddar. Yum!

fun-tasking

I dyed my brown hair with a semi-permanent purple dye on the weekend while checking out the price of a honey bee starter kit ($190.00 plus tax + $10.00 registration fee).



I spent five hours updating my lab book this weekend while sitting in the sun, three hours tutoring someone in anatomy/physiology while drinking tea, seven hours cleaning the yard/stacking wood while the laundry dried on the line.




I centrifuged my midi-prep plasmid DNA in preparation of an protein over-expression protocol this morning while talking on the phone to the local Feed&Grain store about heritage/cold-hardy chicken breeds I could order.

Sunlit Swooning

I dislike aviator style sunglasses. It is my belief that they flatter nobody's face shape. To wit:



(and she has reason to where them...she actually flies planes when she isn't saving the world or "stealing" husbands.)

But...I've made one exception in my entire life. And his name is Jon Hamm.

I just...can't....handle...his untucked shirt while he stretches. Gurgle gurle gurgle. Lainey said he touched her hair and YOU KNOW WHAT? That made me seriously consider for one millisecond not cutting my long hair next week as I had planned to. On the bizilion-to-one chance Jon Hamm wants to touch MY long hair sometime when we could possibly be in the same location. Crazy Loco. Long hours in the lab may have skewed my take on reality, folks. Or it could just be Jon Hamm. He has strange powers, that man.

Don't even get me started about when he was sporting that beard last month for Oscars.

translations from a tech

What they say versus What they mean:

"Is there any more DDT?" = "The powder is right here next to the tube of empty solution, but I don't want to make it up."

"Are there any more LB plates?" = "Someone used the last plate and didn't tell anyone. Please make more so I don't have to."

"Do these tubes of media have Ampicillin?" = "I cannot read, since these tubes are clearly marked on the side AND the tops that they lack Ampicillin. It's written on the white board and in an email I received earlier. But I didn't look there."

"Do you know where to pick up the intro reports/midterms/marks?" = "It is second semester but I still haven't figured out how university works, or that I'm responsible for knowing these things before arriving to the building. You don't work for the university but are stationed at a convenient location, so I'll ask you."

ying yang yadda yadda

FTW: My science is kicking ass over and over. My lab is clean and organized, including the freezer I just thawed out. My lab book is a mess, but will be tackled in short order. I feel like a queen bee.

pwned: The Spring thaw came whipping out of Winter's ass so fast I believe we may have missed our opportunity to tap birch trees this year. While we are scrambling to find equipment that costs less than our first born child's soul, the day-time temperatures have been 5-10 C for four days straight. Maple syrup producers have gathered TONS of sap already. Usually the maple season is the end of March, but every day this week has been gloriously sunny. Literally, one week ago we battled two mighty snow storms in a row. This picture was swiped from a friend's facebook account without credit:



This would be a snow drift, waist-high, at her front door... ie normal March weather. So although I complain, I can't REALLY complain because sun lifts my spirits. Birch syrup will have to wait until next year.