In the kitchen

I baked four things this weekend and burnt not a single item.

That is surely a record for me.

First up was an upside down cake made with blackberries we picked on Saturday from Duncan's Cove (my favoritest of favorite local nature spots).



(Aside: I started baking at 10 pm on Saturday night. Lifelong habit that used to drive my mom bananas. I guess I'm a night hawk?) The cake itself turned out as it was supposed to (so I'm told by my loving and very smart husband) but I wasn't really digging it. Until I put ice cream on it, and then it was gold.



I also picked about 7 cups of huckleberries, which are like blueberries but are a darker colour, less sweet and contain tiny seeds like a raspberry.


When we first moved here and started hiking at Duncan's Cove, I was absolutely floored with the number of huckleberry bushes. Acres and acres - everywhere! More than anyone could ever pick, or any animal could ever eat. Apparently they are not commercially cultivated and not amenable to domestication because they are finicky growers. Since I find berry picking uber-relaxing, I picked enough this past weekend to make two pies (and have some in my cereal too!)





I hope to go back at least one more time, and get enough for a few more fresh berry pies as well as some I could freeze to use later in muffins. My sweet tooth and my thrifty pocket all agree this is a good plan.

Landscaper's Dream

Weekend before last the in-laws came down to help with the house. On the agenda was cleaning the basement and seeding the rest of the back-yard. We decided to seed instead of sod because we ran out of money and seeding is much less labour-intensive, freeing up our time to get other things done. Like finishing the last sets of curtains and cleaning the basement (which has been a huge boost in out attempt at decluttering). I feel like we are no longer living above a seething mess, and thanks to my mother-in-law, we now have a sizeable place to finish other carpentry projects (like the mantel piece for the fireplace, the design for which we have completed this past weekend). So the Saturday I seeded it was beautiful weather. My father-in-law warned me that by the next day, there would probably be dozens of birds at the all-you-can-eat grass seed buffet.

Beg to differ:




Ah, a beautiful August Sunday afternoon in the Maritimes. Awesome.

Cute Suitcase Nukes in black and white

Hilariously geeky thing I read today at Animal Review:

"A typical example of an evolutionary arms race can be seen in the Great War between Kingdom Plantae and Kingdom Animalia. It went down something like this:

Plants arise. Animals arise and eat plants. Plants grow thorns. Animals counter with thick skin and fur. Plants say ‘Yeah? Get a load of these toxins. We hope you like diarrhea.’ Animals declare diarrhea a gratuitous ‘prelude to war’ and introduce simple digestive enzymes to break down the toxins. Plants make vague conciliatory gestures at mediated peace talks while their military secretly draws up plans for deadlier toxins. Animals appeal to the defense sector to begin work on a liver. Propped up by surging nationalism and xenophobia at home, plants begin testing bark. Et cetera."

The Outside (a little bit)

The house no longer matches the ground! Last week one of us took Monday off and the other took Tuesday off and between us we distributed about 10 loads of topsoil using the bobcat we had rented. I now have a new skill set: using a skid steer loader to move dirt around. The weather had been calling for sunshine across the board for the entire week: ideal weather for topsoil distribution because that stuff is a bitch to move around when it gets wet. But on day two, I spent the entire afternoon frantically trying to spread the last of the topsoil before a looming thunderstorm rolled in. Nobody was predicting the showers until Tuesday morning, but all afternoon it was high winds, sudden temperature drops and ominous clouds. We had rented the skid steer loader and I had the day off to wait for water purification people/mortgage inspector so the machine was there to use. When my husband got home, he helped by raking out the uneven bumps I left with the skid steer and we finished the tenth load before the rain. Then we spent the next two hours raking out the soil to an even level - sweating profusely and complaining the whole time. Finally, dark came and we could no longer see anything. I was utterly exhausted. We only got about 90% of it finished, but we are happy with that (for now). A gentle mist arrived just as we were packing up the rakes. The rest of the week was glorious sunshine, but we were too physically spent to attack the last 10% of raking.

Me, practicing before I add to my CV:




(A really violent summer storm two weeks ago tore off a piece of our siding near the eave of the bathroom. Ah, to be a home-owner:)

On Friday, four skids of sod (about 400 pieces) were delivered as well as an additional load of topsoil. I was hoping to have some help with the time-sensitive landscaping, but everyone was (understandably) busy enjoying the last few summer days, so we attacked it as a duo. When I talked to the sod dude on the phone, he suggested we wet down the soil, and then wet down the back of the sod pieces (about 2' x 4 ') while laying them down. We thought four skids would be enough to do the front yard, side yards and maybe a tiny bit of the back yard near the deck. Turns out we can't do math, because we just had enough to do the side yard near the tree-line and front yard. While my husband started tearing apart that last load of topsoil by hand (an enormous and tiring job), I started prepping the side yard and getting a system going where I would lay out the sod pieces upside down, spray them, and then haul them two-at-a-time to the side of the house. To wit:


The last hour or so he helped me, and we got about 1/3 through the skids and about 1/2 through the topsoil pile when the sunlight disappeared. Mind you, we bailed on our work during the hottest part of the day -from noon until 5 pm. So all in all, it was a good day. We watched a movie and I fell asleep five minutes from the end I was so tired. On Sunday, he spread about half of what was left, and then helped me with the sod and we finished off all four pallets.

Getting dark, only a tiny bit left:


We've left some areas sod-free for planting beds. Most notably right up by the house, where I want to put several tall bushes to try and squishify the house. It's too tall-looking and maybe some greenery hiding the basement will help. And obviously under the stairway window, which is just screaming for a big tree or lilac bush.:


As you can tell, my half-wall was replaced by a gentle slope. No money in the budget for a $2500 retaining wall, and no time left to scrounge a cheaper alternative. Now that it is there though, I kinda like it.

Sunday night: clean the inside of the house ("ants-be-gone mutthafuckas!"), have the best shower of my life, and eat the most satisfying fast food from King of Donair ever. Mmmm...

The Inside (a little bit)

I took a few pictures of the inside of the house last week before company arrived. We had five guests + one dog staying with us for several days, including my two nieces (twins) aged two years old. I fault them entirely for the cold I am currently battling. The weather more or less co-operated while they were here, so we went for day trips to Frog Pond, the Natural History Museum and Duncan's Cove (where the millions of huckleberries are about to ripen any day- yum yum).

Some of the dining room (with dining room set purchased through kijiji - looks nice eh?), and the kitchen, messy with small appliances that haven't quite found a home yet.




Here is a picture of the downstairs bathroom with mirror and towel ring that doesn't yet have a job, technically, since we haven't picked up hand towels for that room.


The office room has a gigantic messy desk in one corner (overlooking the water in the backyard) and on the other side of the room, a "reading corner" with a comfy chair I ordered online via Home Depot, and a new painting we got at Homesense for 30% off.



Oh, and one crazy writhing cat.

The spare room is fairly sparse yet. My big accomplishment in this room was the linens. I couldn't find the right combo of dark chocolate brown and light blue in pre-packaged sets, so I just bought multiple stripped damask sheets sets in the right colours and made curtains and pillow shams from the flat sheets. Can you imagine that pilllow shams, similar in design to the brown ones on the bed, cost upwards of $40 each? Is that not ridiculous? Who would ever pay that much per pillow sham?? And try as I might, I couldn't even find them for less than $10 each on super-clearance sale (and even then, they weren't the right colour). So out came the trusty sewing machine :)




Notice the crazy cat in the above picture? Starved for attention since we haven't been spending much time at home lately. He followed me around while I was taking each picture, rudely ruining them. He usually isn't so demonic looking, I swear.

Identity theft Schmidentity Fweft

My entire purse was stolen on the weekend. We were out hiking in the middle of the country, and admittedly, there have been thefts in the area before...but on a rainy Sunday afternoon I thought "no chance, thieves are lazy and they will not be working in the rain".

Wrong. Thieves get bored on rainy days, and unlike other sane people who flock to shopping malls, they roam about the country side stealing things from beat-up cars.


Honestly! I buried my purse under the pile of trash in the back-seat. Why would anyone even bother to move aside the disgusting bags of fast food to search underneath? In a car that, until six months ago, had no working front door handles? That is dinged and scraped and paint chipped to all ghetto'ed out hell?? I cannot explain it. But my beat-to-shit purse was under there, for the enterprising thief to find.

And lordy do I carry around alot of crap with me; debit cards/credit card/ well water test results/ birth certificate/ hair clips/ bus tickets/ perfume/ my entire make-up bag/ jewelry/ coins left-over from Europe/ etc/ etc. When I realized it was gone, I had hoped to find the thing tossed to the side of the dirt road we were parked at, but no luck.

Three hours after arriving home in a pissy mood, I got a call from the regional police. Someone found my purse in a trash bin near the soccer field, 20 km closer to town. Upon inspection, I found the thieves took my drivers licence and student ID (WTF?? So they could get library books from the university library?), my cash, my bus tickets, my (one) credit card (which I had already, at that point, cancelled), and my cheap perfume. Oh, and about 5$ in gift certificates to the pretzel place in the mall (to use on sunny days??).

They LEFT my set of keys, my social insurance card (an essential, as far as identity theft goes), my provincial health card, my birth certificate, my debit cards, my important papers (well water tests results), my make-up bag. They could have copied my SIN number for future use, but judging by the contents the thieves were interested in picture ID only, and cash. My SIN card and birth certificate (difficult to replace) still had my maiden name, so no good to them.

I was very very lucky. The important stuff was left behind, and my purse did not have my digital camera or mp3 player in it at the time (I often carry those around with me too). So all in all, lesson learned. Third time the car has been broken into in six months. I'd like to believe that if I were a thief, I would target nice cars with nice stuff in them, but I guess each time they got something. The first was an incomplete air compressor about to blow a gasket, the second time our CD player but since the incompetent nicompoops cut the wires on the wrong side of the connection we are certain that thing won't work anymore without some re-wiring....and finally my drivers license/student card and about $80 worth of cash/etc.

And I still hate the idea of locking my doors. Quick, get me to a small town, stat. Ugh.

Oh shut up already

The departmental talk I spent forever preparing went over well. I had many positive comments afterwards, even though the talk itself was poorly attended. I had a ridiculously rough time leading up to the talk. My supervisor had to order me to stop analyzing data...I just always felt that I hadn't done enough yet...the perpetual inferiority complex. As a result of my lack of attention to the actual presentation itself, my practice talks were excrutiatingly bad. I had to hold back tears during round two- honestly, that NEVER happens. I don't cry over stupid shit like that. But then, with the help of my fantastic lab mates, the actual day-of presentation was smooth. I kept thinking to myself "I would not repeat these past two weeks if someone PAID me". Which, incidentally, is the exact same thing I told myself for the two weeks of extremely late nights leading up to my poster presentation in Spain. I see a pattern.

I had two amazing days to recover, and then the start of the week+ long international protistology conference/tree of life conference. I gave my first "real" talk at that conference - in front of colleagues more experienced than I. In fact, there were startlingly few Masters students. So I was surprised I got a presentation prize. A $200 cheque, membership for free, and a gigantic book worth alot of $$. Combined with the copious amounts of free alcohol and food I ate during that week, well, I think I came out ahead.

Yay for Science.

The Hard-Ass

I had an interesting conversation with a lab mate this morning. She was complaining about the service of a telecommunications company (surprise surprise). And she said that when she and her boyfriend were discussing calling and complaining, she got elected to do it. And I wondered...is that something most couples do? Because we do it too. Pre-arrange who will call based on their ability to be extra bitchy. I win, of course - so what does that say about me? What does that say about the service industry?
We went on to exchange horror stories for too long. It reminded me of this article I read in the Globe and Mail

I've been neglecting the blog too long, there are a hundred things to post. I will try to update in small manageable chunks over the next few days.

Lab House Lab House Lab House

I finally called my mom the other night. She was wondering what the hell happened to me. No emails, no blog updates, not a single update on facebook even. She was not alone, I assured her...the radio silence has affected nearly everyone in my life save for my husband and my labmates. In ten days I give my departmental seminar (1 hour) and the following week I give a shorter but more important talk at a conference being held here in town. And since I have no real data, I've been trying to spend lots of time here in the lab. Today (a sunny beautiful Sunday): all afternoon in the lab visualizing a Southern without results-my probe was too old I suspect so tomorrow I'll be repeating the entire procedure (save for having my fingers crossed this time around). And NCBI database is frustratingly slow right now, so sequence analysis is painstaking.

The house is coming along, I will try to post some pictures eventually. On Friday we had twelve loads of fill dumped and spread in the backyard, and the side driveway & frontyard shaped in preparation for topsoil and sod. I had plans (oh big plans dammit) for a half wall in the front yard and instructed the excavator man to create two grades in the front yard. Only AFTER this did I actually go and check how much paving stones (and the like) were at Kent. Would you believe they're bloody 24$ a linear foot! Yes, indeed, my one hundred foot long half wall would cost me nearly $2500. Pfft. Like hell. I now need to find a way to build a half wall for about 300-500$. Ideas so far: stack slate-like material (stolen from some quarry), mortar wall with medium sized rounded stones (likewise acquired for little/no money), a wooden half-wall backed with 1" gravel for drainage, two dozen or so gigantic stones rolled into place and gathered from god knows where, etc. I'm still working on it.

Also in the "deals" department: late last week we picked up a desk for the office from kijiji.ca ($25), and a two-year old double mattress with boxspring and metal frame for ($50). I'm especially psyched about the desk since I had decided I wanted an L-shaped desk in a dark wood finish without a hutch to eventually write my thesis on. But I could NOT find one to save my life. And I'm not talking "I couldn't find a cheap one"...no...I mean I checked every online site (canadian tire, costco, staples, leons, ebay, overstock, everywhere!) and could not find one save for a $1500 real cherry desk available only in the States. But then I checked kijiji and lo and behold, a 25-year old sturdy mf'er for under 30$. And the purchase of these used items started the downward spiral of furniture shopping to fill the new house. We've bought curtains and curtain rods for all the windows, and I needed to get a bedspread and co-ordinating items for the guest bedroom. Next on the list: a headboard for the spare room (purchased for under 100$ or possibly created by me by tufting a square upholstered piece of plywood) and a new (bigger and darker stained) dining set. Husband would like to seat six and we spent this weekend at Pier 1, Leons and online looking over possible designs. I originally wanted rattan parson chairs like this one to go with our current (but refinished, in my pipe dream) hefty wooden table :

But then hubby pointed out that 1) this material is likely to get real ugly after a few years wear 2) for the price of six chairs (about 90$/chair on clearance sale) we could buy a whole set including table at a "regular" furniture store. They would look great, but they ARE somewhat "trendy" and I would probably want to replace them in three years. Oh and plus, there are only four left this side of Quebec (in Newfoundland so I'd have to pay to ship them here, which the sales lady tried to convince me was actually quite reasonable. Right.)
So then we went to a few "regular" furniture stores to pick out something boring like this:

Which was actually alot more reddish in the store. And although the price is better (700$ for six chairs and the table) it's just so damn boring.
Third vision was to keep the current table, refinish dark as originally planned and buy six parson chairs, which may hold up better and would not be replaced for at least five years like these ones:

Only problem with this plan is that my husband LOATHES microsuede and every single parson chair I can find is either microsuede or really dark brown bicast leather (>>monochrome boring blech).

So back to kijiji. We might go check this set out tomorrow night. It is cheaper than a new store bought set by far, and is so traditional that it will stand the test of time, design wise. My only concern is that it is too formal. i can convince myself either way.



And also, I'm getting dangerously close to doing something crazy to my hair again. And since I covet this hair, I may try purple or blue streaks with big bouncy artificial curls soon:

And I need to book my appointment for my first tattoo too (something like this):


being stuck in the lab all day makes me want to do silly things.

Welcome... Summer?

Walked to the movie theatre last night, and upon exit the entire city was covered in a cool, grey mist. Cold, actually. So cold I could see my breath. Welcome summer indeed.

Flown Home

Well. Prague was beautiful, so beautiful I didn't spend any time on the computer updating the blog:) I liked it there because it reminded me of home but with more parks, roses, concerts, history and interesting architecture. The people were nice but not too nice (ie pick-pockets), the shopkeepers were friendly not jaded, the tourists were plenty but not swarming all over everything. The food was great and reasonably priced (gravy swamped venison with bread dumplings and cranberries plus beer for under ten bucks). Prague mercifully didn't smell like human waste, which Barcelona unfortunately did (on occasion). There were bugs there. When I sat on the grass in Prague Castle to take a nap in the botanical gardens, a welcome ant came crawling up on my shirt. Sigh of relief. That was the one thing that bothered me more than I really thought it would- a week in Barcelona and I did not see an ant, fly, mosquito, bumble bee or spider the entire time.

Even when we kept our hostal room window wide open all day & night for three nights (no screen).

Even at Park Guell (near the flowers for Chrissakes!).

Nothing. It was too weird. (And I don't even like bugs). So all in all, I could live in Prague but not Barcelona.

My flight home from Prague was via Dublin, so I got to see the tiniest part of that city as well. A colleague generously offered to show me around for the few hours I was there, and I was able to see the French Embassy building, currently on the market for 58 million Euros. (Gasp! I'm sure you could buy Cape Breton for that price. Or at least Newfoundland). The transatlantic flight on Zoom airlines was during the day rather than overnight, and I was pleasantly surprised they fed a us a meal (which I enjoyed but I was starving/had subsisted on stolen hotel food for at least two days so probably not the most objective participant) and a snack (ice cream + half a twix bar! Heavenly).

Arriving to the house and there is still stuff to be done. The drywall for the basement arrived yesterday, so I'll be helping to hang that over the next few days if my body ever recovers from the jet lag. My husband is also playing monkey, climbing onto the roof and hanging cladding around the shingles. There is talk of renting heavy equipment this weekend to spread fill for the front and back yards and potentially start the back deck, but we'll see how that goes...my luggage is, as of yet, unpacked.

GeekFest 2008

The conference venue is amazing/daunting/really fancy (especially compared to our host venue last year). At first, I got quite conscious of how much nicer everything is here compared to our venue at home but two things changed my mind. 1. The registration fee to attend this conference was astronomical compared to last year. It is obvious why, but I disagree with the trade-off. How many students couldn't come because they couldn't convince their supervisors to spring the $$? More importantly, 2. The atmosphere is restrictive and generally unfriendly. The people running the show here make me feel like cattle. During the mixer the first evening, we were about 800 people drinking our free drinks, chatting. The mixer was scheduled to end at 7:30 but oftentimes these sorts of informal events run much longer as people meet for the first time, catch-up with colleagues and otherwise network. But at 7:30 on the dot the lights start to go out. But 8, the last few stragglers are nursing their drinks in a dark room because all the lights had been turned off. Most people were spilling out onto the sidewalk (it was wet and raining. Yeah, I know. Still raining.) and otherwise scattering to their hotels all over town, totally ruining the atmosphere of camraderie in my opinion. This would never had happened on the East Coast-kicking people out of the party prematurely (even if the drinks had run out) is completely unacceptable and no fun at all. Boo Fira Palace.

Further, I arrived to the first lecture of the day and was told where in the room I was to sit. Excuse me?!? Who the hell cares where in the room I sit (left, right, back, front)?? What if I'm tired and the usher pushes me to the front row where it is very apparent when I rudely nod off?? In the same room, a colleague was denied entry carrying his empty coffee cup, which he wanted to reuse later in the day, saving the energy and water required to clean it. It was empty, no chance to spill anything at all. Maybe I'm a hippie, but I thought his actions were admirable...especially given the city is currently experiencing a drought.

So yeah, we may have had handwritten signs, but we were way nicer.

Day Three

On Wednesday, we got up early, packed up & checked out of the hostal. We headed over to the much nicer hotel we are staying at during the conference (we are sharing the room here with third girl CF). It was quite far, so we used the excellent metro system to get to the conference area. We weren't able to check in, but we were able to leave out bags & head to park Guell. We arrived shortly after 11 am -perfect timing-they only open at 11 am but of course in the middle of the day it was hot.

TF & I have found that we are very different types of tourists. I hate looking like a tourist: camera out, taking pictures every few blocks, totting around an open guidebook and cramming the schedule to catch all the "sights". I never take pictures...always surprised when I get home from a trip to find maybe three or four pictures on my digital camera. The exceptions are for natural parks and my hotel room, which I find particularly helpful when jogging my memory. The rest of my favorite travelling activities I remember without photos; people-watching, eating the food, figuring out the transit system. TF, on the other hand, got somewhat impatient with me because I put off going through the guidebook to make my "must see" list as she had already done. She also needs to take lots of pictures to document every part of the trip, and she likes "playing tourist" in general.

Related to all this is the fact that I'm bad photographer. (Hey, postcards do it better than I ever could with my shitty digital camera, and probably with a dozen fewer foreigners.) But I'm not bad at figuring out where we are, and where we are going (like I did on the bus from Girona). She 1) does not inherently need to find herself on a city map and 2) takes much nicer pictures than I. Complementary talents but we are going to get home with 300 pictures of me posing in front of the opera house/cheese stand/Gaudi monument which will be filed away never to see the light of day again, whereas she will have only 5 "good" pictures and many, many crappy shots of unfocused/uncentered/underlit objects or people because I had to take them. Since I'm at the conference now while she's off sight-seeing, she'll have to rely on strangers to take her picture so she'll probably be better off.

The verdict.

It is nearly impossible to spend only 10 Euros in Barcelona in one day for food. How I went through 25 Euro and ate only bread, cheese, fresh fruit and water is beyond me. That works out to nearly 50 CDN dollars given the crappy exchange rate I got at the counter this morning. That's not even counting the stuff I purchased while shopping (all modest items, but still) that I charged to my CC. It almost makes me ill. Almost. I wouldn't want to upchuck all that expensive food for nothing and waste all that money. bah! I hope this conference starting tomorrow will have lots of free food that I can steal for TF and I to use later.

Day Two

Just got back to the hostal in Barcelona after an evening meal (nine pm start time but not because we’re trendy or properly immersed in the culture, but rather because we’re jet-lagged and late from travelling). Eveything so far has been fantastic…too fantastic and the pessimist in me is somewhat waiting for the other shoe to drop Well anyway, this is how we spent the last 36 hours:

Arrived at the airport with 20 minutes to spare for my international flight, despite leaving the house late and stupidly skipping supper to make up for it. At the counter I somehow flirted my way into the extra-leg room seat for free, and a carry-on bag about 15 lbs too heavy. Said my goodbyes and then through a door and into a queue. A huge queue. There was only a single safety check point open, and the line-up was at least 60 people deep. My wait in line culminated in a successful go-through but upon arriving in the departure lounge, realized every food outlet was closed (they were counting cashes, so I had just missed them). So I cobbled together some nutrients from the terrible assortment offered by the Hudson group: Apple ($2.50, but she offered to wash it at least), 295 mL tomato juice ($3.00), bag of mixed nuts which I later found out were covered in spicy crap and too much msg ($5.50), 595 mL flavoured water ($3.89 + deposit) and finally a pack of gum ($2.00). Fifteen dollars and I had enough snacks to last me eight hours, but enough sodium to last me eight days.
Plane ride was quiet and lengthy, I was able to sleep maybe 2-3 hours during the five hour trip. Got all sortsa kinked up, and realized afterward that the “extra leg room” seat had immovable arm rests so I couldn’t put them up and sprawl over the empty seats like everyone else behind me could. Of course, this sprawl-out and sleep method only works for empty flights with no turbulence, but that is exactly the type of flight we had. A quick glance around proved no more empty three-seaters, otherwise I would have moved over. So I did the best I could, rewarded with a cramped neck and cold hands.
Arriving in Glasgow main airport at 8 am local time, I took my only luggage (carry-on bag on wheels plus my poster tube) and strutted out to the domestic arrivals like I knew what I was doing. My travelling friend (TF) was scheduled to arrive in three/four hours from London. We were to meet at the car rental area. I planned on catching a few more hours of sleep in the interim, and found a single three-seat bench next to the meeting spot. It was also next to the employee exit/entrance, so sleeping had to be facilitated with earplugs - Scottish airport workers are a rowdy crowd, all carrying cackling walkie-talkies. The airport was also extremely warm, so sleeping was a tad uncomfortable. I was also acutely aware of being the only sleeping person in the whole place, a situation made worse by my less-than-glamorous sleeping position (alternately cramped up in a ball or splayed out with gaping open mouth). Anyway, I was able to get a few more disjointed hours in before she arrived.
We ended up staying at the airport a long time as a mutual friend of ours happened to be on his way from Budapest back to Canada via Scotland. So we spent two hours chatting over an overpriced airport lunch (I ordered a chicken bacon salad, which sounded healthy but had one pound of fried ham for every six leaves of lettuce). He went to his gate to sleep, and we tried to scam a free shuttle bus to our hotel. When that didn’t work, we paid a few pounds to get the city centre bus, which dropped us off two blocks from the hotel we stayed in. Best Western Glasgow City Centre was a beautiful old building with so much character. Think 12 foot ceilings with thick crown molding and modern, clean décor. We went out for supper at four in the afternoon (Veggie burgers at Buddha Bar), then took a walk around town. We went through Kelingrove Park, and ended up in the West End of Glasgow, but around 6 pm the shops were closing for the day so we headed back. The evening was spent in the room, alternately sleeping/watching TV as TF and I battled jet lag (oddly, we were on different schedules…I would fall asleep for two hours & she would be up watching David Attenborough….she would go to sleep and I would wake up and watch a program on refurbishing an abandoned castle…). At 7:30 am, our wake-up call woke her up after she had just gone to sleep (but I, of course, had been up 30 minutes). Best Western provided a lovely continental breakfast, which we plundered for our meal AND for future snacks. We came back to the room and I had a relaxing bath in the spotless bathroom, then took my time getting ready . At 9:30 we headed back out to explore more of the West End, and revisited Kelingrove Park. The weather, as on the day before, was perfect walking weather; the rain clouds were alternatively threatening and nearly extinct on a 15-minute rotation. We were torn on vising the cultural museum near the park, as they had a photography exhibit with free admission but decided against it for lack of time. Glad we did- by the time we ambled back to the hotel to recover our bags, and headed to Central Station to catch a train to Prestwick airport, it was 11:30. We did not have a working cell phone (or laptop, or hairdryer) because TF’s Spain-specific adaptor didn’t work in Scotland, and were relying on strangers plus our wit to keep on schedule. As such, we were amazed that the ticket agent at the train station sold us Prestwick tickets for noon, as our check-in counter at the airport closed at 1:15 sharp and the train ride is around 45 minutes. But as we walked towards the platform, we eyed the gigantic clock: 11:55. As if on cue, the overhead speaker announces our train is on its last boarding call. If we don’t make it on this train, we will need to find a faster and more expensive way to the airport because the trains run every half hour and we were already cutting it close. So we ran. And we caught it. And everything was fine. The train was a fantastic way to get to the airport, very easy to navigate the stops and since the train station and airport are connected, we just had to take a ramp to the check-in counter.
Flying Ryanair: I was worried because I was about 4 lbs overlimit for carry-on, and was toting my poster tube too (which I suppose could count as a prohibited second piece of carry-on). Luckily, no one weighed the damn thing at all nor pointed out the second piece, and the only close-call was the grey-haired guard at the Ryanair safety counter who insisted I verify my luggage dimensions by squeezing it into the metal cages they have everywhere. My first attempt failed (ahhh.heart racing), but with a little reorganizing (less than 30 seconds of rooting around and rearranging, mercifully) the thing slid in like a breeze. Past security, and onto the flight. I had heard terrible things about Ryanair because it is a discount airline that doesn’t even pretend to care about customer service, but the flight was on time and I was pleasantly surprised. The hard part is over: if I’m required to check in my poster on the way home (with the accompanying risk of lost luggage) then it won’t matter as much-the conference will be over.
Arriving in Girona airport, about an hour away from Barcelona, we purchased bus shuttle tickets to the city centre. Neither the booth selling the tickets, nor the tickets themselves gave any indication in which bus terminal we were headed. We had to inquire at the information booth not once but twice in order to get out of the bus station (and then again two strangers on the street) and into the metro station. One transfer and two short metro rides later, we were on La Ramba street, the busiest and most crowded street in Barcelona, two Canadian gals lugging huge suitcases and one travel book. Our hostal is right off the main drag of Las Rambla, very near the metro station. It was a fifty-fifty chance coming out of the underground station, but of course we initially headed in the wrong direction and had to double back after about ten minutes. Did I mention it was raining? Yeah, explain that to me. How the fuck did we spend two days in Scotland and not get rained on, but arrive in Barcelona and boom : we are in need of an umbrella?!? I had one with me but I wasn’t about to unpack my friggin suitcase on La Rambla. Anyway, we finally found the lovely 1star Hostal Opera finally, and checked into our sparse but very clean (and relatively quiet) twinned room. Our priorities: getting a meal, and writing our families to say we had arrived safely. The blackberry was dead, but we were able to charge it enough to take it with us, emailing la familia while we were waiting for our food. And now she’s asleep and I’m writing. Tomorrow, we sleep in, explore the city on foot, hope it doesn’t rain, and see if we can eat on 5 Euros a day (I’ve been here one day, and already I’ve blown my budget on a nice meal out). One day and a half until the conference starts.

I’m in Europe. Hawesome.

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.

Al...most....There

This past weekend the floors and light fixtures went in. We are scrambling to get the hardwood and tile laid before next week, when the cabinets are supposed to arrive. We've picked out the trim and the entry tile this week, and talked to someone regarding water purity systems. Some of the pictures from this weekend:

Master bedroom


Downstairs entry


Office/small spare room


Big spare room



Dining room :)