House 95% complete

So one year from the pouring of the foundation footings, we held our house-warming party. This blog has documented the progression from foundation to frame to insulation, drywall, paint and every bump in between. The house is the result of alot of love and work from our friends and family, and I think it shows through. It is a lovely place to come home to and I'm very proud of it :)

Dining room


Living room (with fireplace I just stained last week)


Stairwell and TV corner, with the berber carpet I love. We choose carpet because it was the less expensive option, but it brings a needed warmth to the area & I would choose it again given the option. I love sitting on the winders.


Accent chairs I re-upholstered myself (I spent $30 for the fabric but only $20 for both chairs. Ha.)


Entry, with pastel prints from Ghana.


Maybe my favorite room in the house: Office with reading corner




Family bathroom


Family bathroom


House-warming party carnage.

NS Report Card - "F"

Lots of people complain about the weather around here. It is November on the East Coast, and as per tradition, I have been saying for a few weeks now what weird and unseasonably warm weather we've been having; several days reaching temperatures in the double digits (November 7, 8 and 9 all had daily highs of 14C here in the city). Last Saturday and Sunday found us battling sheets of rain, whipping around in hurricane-strength winds (120 km/hour in some spots). The high wind + cold rain continued for a few days, but as of yesterday morning, the weather station on the local radio was calling for a stop to precipitation by noon. All this to say that since it was 14C not too long ago, and the weather reports were calling for no precipitation, there was no preparation for the freaking blizzard that tore through here yesterday.

This will be my third winter here in Nova Scotia, and by a mind-boggingly moronic combination of unreliable weather forecasts, unprepared municipal workers (in particular salt trucks and snow plows) and a private-run power company that favors executive bonuses over maintenance, this is the second time the city has come to a complete halt at the sign of five inches of blowing snow. FIVE INCHES! That's fucking nothing. In Hometown, we have had storms that cover our first floor entrances entirely so that upon opening your door, you are met with a wall of packed snow. (I have a picture somewhere, I'll dig it out once I get home). We knew it was coming, we prepared with food and candles, and stayed the fuck off the roads. Oh, and we had a provincially-run power company that keeps their shit together instead of blaming salt spray or raccoons for crumbling infrastructure.

A blizzard out of nowhere means people were leaving work all at the same time (instead of trickling out of downtown cores slowly), clogging (or entirely blocking) highways with cars moving 50 km/hour. (because why get winter tires yet?? It was 14C ten days ago!!) People stranded on the Cobequid Pass all night in cold cars because no one bothered to salt the hills (or plow the snow) in advance and it became an impasse containing over one thousand vehicles. I presume in an attempt to save money. School closures and power outages all over the city, as is the norm since the privately owned Nova Scotia Power Company took control of supplying electricity to the residents of NS in the mid-nineties. They run it so well, dontcha know. The poor in this city must pay for increased service rates (around 10% per year the last few years) as well as over-inflated executive earnings (estimated at 41% above industry standards) while dealing with lost service every time the wind picks up.

So last night was interesting, as it was my first time 1) driving home on our snowy, slippery rural road in the dark. At least it looked peaceful. 2) arriving to an electricity-free home, previously functioning on a well and pump. ie no running water & no flushing toilets. Luckily husband is somewhat used to the procedure, as he grew up in the country, but he started out with "but when we were expecting a storm, mom would always fill water bottles and pots on the stove..." Expecting, eh?? That would be nice, you know, to be warned ahead of time. But apparently in Nova Scotia, storms develop instantly and without warning. So you are shit out of luck when the power goes out. Literally.

Une Bague Come Toi

Months ago I rode the elevator at work with a Francophone family; mother, father, and three boys (guesstimated age: 11, 8, 5). The middle boy was telling a story in astoundingly good french, I followed them all the way out the lobby and down the exterior stairs and he just kept going and going...for the family, barely paying attention, his antics were well-worn. But I was enthralled, because he was so darn cute! Not unlike this miniature story-teller.


Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.

Add your own!

(My sister once told me as a teenager that my music selection made her want to jump out a window. Huzzah!)

As if it grows on Trees

I got those geek-chic red glasses ages ago and I LOVE them so much. For under $40 Canadian, I got an awesome pair of prescription glasses. And then on Monday I got an email from the same company promoting a two-for-one sale. I. cannot. resist.

Palin glasses here I come (goddamit!)



And for the free pair?




Now I will have a plastic pair, a rimless pair and a metal framed pair of prescription glasses to choose from. All for $120 dollars. Oh La!

Oh Mama, give me your sympathy!
Surely you are the only one who would excuse such stupidity...



That angry red welt up there is a burn I acquired when trying to lift a tray of boiling water out of the autoclave yesterday. It weighed about ten kilos so I had to prop it against my hip for support. Stupid me didn't realize the sloshing water was about to go right through my flimsy shirt and burn my skin. War wounds baby! Science is ROUGH.

A Fine Frenzy: Faking it through life since the mid 80s

This past weekend we ran into old landlords of ours from back when we lived in the quaint University town where I did my undergrad. We really adore this couple - she works at the only bookstore in town, he the wildlife service. They have kids around our age, and liked to invite us over to their side of the house for tea (we lived in a separate but attached one bedroom apartment). Turns out they purchased a rambling old farm house in an uber-rural area, and are in the process of fixing it up. I admire them so much for taking on that task because they could have easily lived with the status quo. To take on the enormous project of the restoration of an old farm house without a lottery windfall belies a passion I envy.

Their situation got me thinking about how I choose to do the things that I do, especially the perceived risky decisions in life that bring me out of my comfort zone. It ties in closely to a conversation my husband and I had a few weeks ago about selling the house we built over the past year, and moving to a two-room building off the grid somewhere. The most interesting people I have met in my life have, at one time or another, lived off the grid. One of the couples we met through the Landlords raised two small children for five years in a one-room building they maintained in the woods somewhere. They raised chickens and livestock, gardened their veggies, and went into town only once a week for essentials they could not produce themselves. Like, how cool is that? It pulls me very strongly - the idea of self-sustainability and simplicity. Admittedly, there are levels to this idea of off-the-grid living (I would need to have a day job with appropriate wardrobe and a car, so daily trips to the city). The duelling parts of my personality take turns: I LOVE entertaining people in our home, inviting them over for dinner parties where I set the table in matching napkins and dinner plate chargers. The other part of me wants to give away all my crap (like dinner plate chargers) and live in a hobbit house in the side of a hill somewhere. So do we do it? We could certainly try for awhile, and this is the crux: I make many of my decisions based on what I admire in other people, and what they would do in this situation. And the answer is plain: I have already identified the fact that some of the coolest people I've ever known have lived off the grid, therefore I should also, at some point in my life, live off the grid. Basically shaping my identity as an adult based on becoming what I admire most.

Do normal adults make decisions like this? I was unsure of my tattoo because of its permanency but alas every time I saw someone showing off beautiful art on their bodies, I oohh-ed and aahh-ed. I admire those people, I want to be like those people, so I also got a tattoo. When I write it like that, it seems so disingenuous - but honestly, how does one become the type of person one wants to be without first identifying the things that are meaningful to them? In first year undergrad I modeled for a student artist, who made a cast of my entire upper body (naked). When it finally came out among my close friends that yes, indeed, those were my breasts up on display there at the art gallery they couldn't believe it. "Why?" they asked. Because I've always admired people who were free of inhibitions and didn't buy into the bad body image projected by our culture, so it was my attempt at living it. I was not 100% comfortable with it, but it was my attempt at becoming the type of person that was comfortable enough with it. In so doing, I was.

I think.

Am I a big old fake? I can't decide. I don't know if it matters. Who will judge me? Nobody seems to have it figured out perfectly (or if they have, they have yet to share their secrets with me). And until I (or if I ever) change my method of self-examination and action, perhaps I too will be someone's inspiration to live a life outside their comfort zone. To do the daring, even if it feels wobbly.

Revel in the Mediocrity

Gave a talk today. Pretty unprepared. No one seemed to care, and some people patted me on the back. (But some people do that regardless, which actually pisses me off. Praise should be earned, and I don't give it away free. Maybe cheap, but never for free.)

It's interesting stuff, but my graphic-heavy slides (which usually works really well for me because I have a good memory when jogged by visual clues) failed me briskly this morning. I couldn't remember any of the neat stuff and could only remember the redundant, boring stuff. AKA my brains on no sleep and cold medication.

And two boys were snickering and whispering in the back, which threw me off my groove. It used to be the older men sleeping in the front aisle that bothered me (not so much anymore - I have since noticed it is not personal) but apparently the younger men laughing at me/my incorrect knowledge/my shitty pronounciation/etc. gets under my skin. Especially when I know I'm not very prepared. Oy vey.

Phew.

True Story

Scene: Trying in vain to find American election coverage on the three Canadian channels we get. No very successful, watching This Hour has 22 Minutes instead.

Me: "I think...I would sleep with Rick Mercer"
Him: eyebrows raised
Me (justifyingly): "You know, it's the humour..."
Him (deadpan):"I don't think I needed to know that about you"

Wrong Holiday my Little Friend

Hmm..my cat and I were sitting at the computer this morning, alone in the house. I heard a funny scratching sound coming from downstairs. Was someone trying to break into our house? My cat, noticing the sound as well, jumped from my lap to investigate. As I slowly descended the stairs, I realized the sound was coming from the fireplace. It sounded like logs were falling down over themselves while burning low...but there was no fire going. So I opened the door and stared into the black eyes of a trapped bird. Shocked, I failed to close the door in time, as the bird flew out toward the patio door. My cat's instinct kicked in, and he went chasing after the bird, but backed off when I yelled at him at the top of my lungs. Luckily the bird flew toward the patio and not up the stairs, but the poor thing got caught up in the sheers. He was fluttering about, repeatedly smacking into the window, and wouldn't come away from the corner. I was able to open the patio door and screen, and then gently coax the startled Starling out with creative use of the curtains. As far as I could tell, his flying was unaffected and he seemed quite well. My cat, on the other hand, was still shaking with excitement ten minutes later.

I wonder how often I'll have to fish birds out of our fireplace? That's not in the manual.

Pushing Back the Dawn

I ate my weight in candy last night at the departmental function where everyone was dressed up. Two years in row there has been a Super Mario brothers theme...I guess it's a testament to the pop culture viability of the Nintendo franchise that twenty-somethings think it's still hilarious to dress up as Koopa Troopas (both years the costumes brought home the costume prizes).

So I wore the wench dress, minus the gruesome make-up because although I bought some fake wounds, they looked ridiculously cheap and I didn't have time to make up some fake blood. I was busy instead throwing together a matching pirate costume for Hubby in similar fabric (different colour) than my wench dress. He sported a goatee, and I must say that I prefer a nice full beard to the fancy facial stuff :)

Although even a goatee is better than this:


This morning I wasn't planning on wearing a costume to work, but alas I looked over at the purple cat ears I bought ages ago (I think for a high school dress-up day, as royal purple was one of our colours. Not very realistic though) and the matching purple leotards and thought "what the heck". I was the only person dressed up on the bus (next to the toddler dressed up in her stroller), and garnered surprisingly few smiles on my commute. Where has everyone's sense of humour gone? Come on people: bring out your inner child!

And then tomorrow will be Teela costume. I made an Orko doll, and he's got wire arms so that I can wrap him around my leg the entire night . Yeah!!

iT's CoMInG!!!

I recently read somewhere (Wil Weaton’s blog?) that Halloween was like “Geek Christmas”. Because what other time of the year are costume-obsessed cosplay geeks allowed to revel in their awesome costume-making skills? Or the outcasts and goths find themselves reflected in every seasonal aisle in town? Even the drunks and the skanks have reason to celebrate, as the older I get the more I realize handing out candy is just to distract the kids while you drink your face off in the sluttiest costume you could scrounge up.

So I like it a alot. And this year my husband wanted to go as Adam Prince of Eternia (alter ego: He-Man) from the beloved 80s North American animated show He-Man (part of a larger, corporate-endorsed/cross-over-friendly line of toys/games/movies featuring the “Masters of the Universe “).

At first I was going to make a companion costume as She-ra, the most recognizable female characters from Masters of the Universe.


But her costume was more difficult and, for continuity’s sake (geek alert): She-Ra was Adam’s sister. His twin sister. So….eww. A few weeks ago I changed my mind, and opted to create a far less demanding costume of Teela, the love interest in the show. She’s a rocking warrior and whatnot, so I’ve been spending ridiculous amounts of time making a costume from scratch.

Really, I’ve just got the components of the vest created: the body piece + a collar + swirly boob thingies. Tonight I need to put it all together, and make a little felt companion “Orko”. Last night I got my sword (which needs to be repainted) and FINALLY found a body suit that was under $70 (can’t see in the picture, but she wears the crazy gold vest over a white body suit. It turned out to be the most difficult thing to find around town, I’m sure I checked six or eight places…dancewear places/lingerie shops/ American Apparel/Zellers.). I revisted a large department store and found new stock in just what I need for an affordable price. It needs some modification, but not too bad.

On top of all this, I’m seriously considering making a second costume, just to mix it up a bit at the various events I want to attend this weekend. A departmental thing tomorrow night, a Life Science student party downtown at a club on Friday, and finally a house party on Saturday night. My second costume? A beer wench: made with an existing shirt I own, and the ginormous underskirt from my wedding gown, overlayed with a tie-up vest and petticoat I have yet to make. But I found the perfect grey fabric! And it’s only $2 a yard! So it would be cheap to make…and then I got to thinking that the dark grey would be somber and would fit PERFECTLY for a “beer wench from hell”…literally. Accessorize with gothic spider rings and fishnets, paint my face a pale white with open wounds on my exposed shoulders and maybe a bloody wound along my neck. Black plaited wig, and a few beer mugs and voila! “the most popular wench at Lucifer’s Lair”!

Again: I love it. Love it love it love it.

faaaackk....my other earbud from my quasi-working headphones just died too. They are not even six months old! I bought them at Radioshack (or, what was once called Radioshack. I don't know the name of it now...AMERICAN ELECTRONICS or something) and they were expensive.

If I didn't have alot of goddamn work to do right at this moment, I would launch into a bitchy tirade against our disposible culture. Stupid gaddamn Walmart stupid cheap electronics and goddamn DVD players that cost $40 and why can't a washer/dryer combo last more than ten years and holy goddamn I don't wanna kill babies from toxic chemicals leeching from electronics in China because we ship them over when they break and just buy new ones and AGHHH!!

solo scenester

I am a dumbass: I missed Basia Balut in concert because I didn't get tickets in time. It was sold out by noon on Saturday, and so when I sashayed into the hotel lobby to get some tickets for her show (as well as the Woodhands show) at 6 pm, the pretty girl on the other side of the table broke the bad news. She said that they do keep back some tickets at the door, so I paid her for my $8 late show ticket and jumped on the bus to the North End by myself because - dude - what else did I have to do? It was an adventure, getting to the venue via public transportation in an area of town I'm not very familiar with. My timing was good, I arrived at the show at 7:35 (for an advertised start time of 7:30) but still no go...big ass sign on the door that told me I was too late. Again.

So back on the bus I jump, make a pit-stop at the liquor store, and end up at a friends' place in the West End an hour later. I spend an hour and a half there eating some of their left-overs (yay for grad student mooching!) which consisted of an amazing glazed ham with potatoes, carrots and salad (with wine). My mouth is salivating just writing that. We watched most of a James Bond film but the combination of incredibly comfortable couch, glazed ham and red wine soon meant I was slack jawed and napping. This despite consuming a red bull less than three hours before. I had to be prodded awake to catch my bus downtown to the late show at Coconut Grove. By myself.

Anyway, I show up in time to watch the second act set up. Coconut Grove = hipster mecca. Not the same hipsters as the Marquee though - these guys are visibly trying much harder to be cool, and are also significantly younger. They hang around in packs of five or six (like I did in grade nine!) instead of two or three, although it's possible I was just being hyper-sensitive to the clique atmosphere. The Bicycles played, and it was blah and quirky all at the same time. I think I was still recovering from food coma. Peter Project (scrathy scratch scratch - cute guy. I picked him out of the crowd earlier - zing!) with MoreorLes played next. Same thing: reception was lukewarm. And while I have no pretenses about accurately judging a hip hop artists ability to rap, the girl in front of me seemed to, and she exclaimed loudly half-way through the set "this is lame". To wit: he rapped about food.

Twice.

Another set change, and Young Rival came on. The did a great set (although I was sitting by this time). A intense style of jumping bass lines & repetitive riffs, they really got the crowd going. Like White Stripes, but bigger sound. Eventually I got up from my seat (but not before I was approached by a Dutch boy, asking whether I was interested in moving locations to the bar we locals nicknamed the "dirty dome". Apparently him and his buddies were going to make the most of their night as they were unexpectedly laid over due to engine problems on their trip from California to Amsterdam).

Last set change of the night, and Woodhands comes on. One half of the duo sets the mood by yelling obscenities into the mic. The other is wearing a charming vintage Star Trek T-shirt. It doesn't take long for the entire crowd to start dancing like crazies (me included) as they open with some of the tracks from the newer album (like here: warning, will open sound bite). Knowing virtually no one at the club meant I was free to really give 'er :) The drummer was amazing, and everyone was sweating profusely by song four. Very adept headlining act too - they were sure to give each opening band credit during their inter-song banter. The set was only supposed to last 45 minutes, but they played until 2:30 (club was supposed to close at 2 am) and then only reluctantly leaving the stage amid cries of "one more! one more!". But the tech guy had to get home to his girlfriend (or something), so we all streamed out of the club onto pizza corner. I tried to graciously finagle my way out of a dinner date with a charming Montreal photographer named Xavier who had failed to pick up on my non-verbal communication signs all night long, and met up with someone outside the club whom I recognized from work. We chatted a bit about the show, and research, and the East Coast before parting ways. The last act of the night did not disappoint, and was completely worth the $8 ticket price.

Seaweed sisters

One East-Coast July day we brought our (twin) nieces to Duncan's Cove.

Hilarity and (probably illness) ensued.

From the book I read yesterday:

"Sacrifice is a part of life. It is supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices...Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."

Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Good news: Can't stop listening to O My Heart from Mother Mother.
Bad news: The right earbud on my still-sorta-new headphones busted.

HPE Lowdown

Picture of the tambourine guy, stolen from www.thecoast.ca HPE blog:

We arrived for "Golden Hands Before God...", having missed "The Love Machine". They struck me as a mix of The Divorcees hard country rock and a 70s hairband. Not my style, but they were rocking it hard - all five or six of them had long beard and most had long shaggy hair. The tambourine player in particular was posing and jumping around like a true rockstar, always centre stage and always straight faced. I got a kick out of him.

Next up was "Rebekah Higgs", a local gal who I've never heard play live before. She was wearing this astoundingly constructed purple dress that made her butt look great...a suspect she may have made it (she confessed to a "love of crafts" before her set started). Anyway, she was adorable but her voice was consistently high-pitched and child-like, which sort of got on my nerves. Great stage presence though.

Then "Amos the Transparent", whom we had come to see. They were alot more hard-rock than I was expecting, based on their music available online. But the lead singer's voice is great; he hits and holds notes clearly, great tone. They kept my favorite song for last, and it was awesome. They seemed excited to be on the East Coast, and swore in delight at the people by the stage singing along to their songs.

The headlining act were "The Inbreds", indie old-timers and by the way the crowd thickened, a local favorite. Unfortunately, we were both pretty much asleep at this point and we only stayed for a few songs.

Next on the list: Basia Balut playing surprisingly early at the Molson Room, so that means two things: 1. I might just go alone since the companion who offered may be busy, and I don't have to walk in the sketchy area of town in the middle of the night by myself 2. I can catch Woodhands later in the night, and get my groove on. By myself.

Off-topic: So I'm always surprised by how many good looking guys go to the Marquee as opposed to every other establishment in the city, which is usually dominated by the fairer sex. By far, this is the place to be to pick up if you are a girl. Of course I look. And twice now (last month at the pre-pop show, and then again last night), I've eyed the cutest boy in the room (in my opinion) and twice now they've ended up on the stage later in the evening as part of a band. Apparently, if I wasn't attached, I would make an excellent groupie. Shameful.

Build it and they will come

This is why Flash was invented.

Thanks Pajiba!

Halifax Pop Explosion! + trees

Great bands lined up this year. The perpetual dilemma is always finding enough cash to attend them all : tomorrow night is Amos the Transparent with Rebekah Higgs and Basia Balut on Saturday are both must-go's. My husband is away this weekend so I'll be all by myself and will need to recruit someone to attend the Saturday show with.

And in response to my failed experiments lately, I turned to my supervisor for some advice. He came swooping down to my desk this morning about 25 minutes before I was planning on leaving for my tattoo appointment, and we went through my work to date, double checking all my sequencing primers, their orientation, etc. Anyway, it made me sort of nervous. I was sweating harder sitting at my desk than I did later in the tattoo parlour. Thankfully, he found all my work so far to be satisfactory, and it was possible my sequencing efforts were failing due to nothing I could control or know about in advance (my insight into the genome has since improved, so I'll rerun some of the tests tonight to see whether I can get a different outcome). I semi-jokingly asked him whether I "passed the test", and he said that I had indeed passed the test. So I ran outta here as fast as I could to keep him from changing his mind.

And here are some pictures of our tiny pathetic shrubs and landscaping in front of the house. They'll look good in ten years, probably :)





(I just pulled my PCR reagents from the fridge while those pics were uploading. There is a whole fridge, and we are all crammed into one corner of one side of one shelf. Sigh.)

date with Andy

tomorrow at noon tomorrow at noon tomorrow at noon tomorrow at noon tomorrow at noontomorrow at noon tomorrow at noon tomorrow at noon...

Update: Awesome experience, I can definitely see why people would become addicted to tattoos. I am so giddy right now! The design is stunning and he complimented me for "sitting" very well for my first time, especially since the tattoo was centered on my upper spine. I would do it again in a heartbeat and would recommend it as well - I am in no discomfort whatsoever and the only thing I feel right now is the bandage tape pulling awkwardly at my skin. The varying amounts of pain (from nearly unnoticeable to quite pronounced) meant that even when I was feeling like a needle WAS actually going through my skin (very rare during the 1.5 hours I might add) it subsided in less than a minute as he moved on to another spot. The only thing I would change if I could: to go with the lighter/redder brown ink he had instead of the greener/darker one.

And get this: apparently the design was so fine he used an "outline needle" to fill the whole thing in, which as he explained to me increased the pain because the needles are fewer and closer spaced than a "filling in" gun. Ha! How about THAT for bragging rights?

I found that the best music was Volcano by the now defunct band Hot Springs (Montreal), although the opening act featured Hayloft by Mother Mother (Vancouver) on repeat. Yeeeeaaaaaa!

When he went out to smoke a cigarette, I snuck in one badly aimed and unfocused picture before he bandaged it up. Voila!

Buck up

None of my experiments really worked today, although I still have one to finish so maybe the week will end in a bang (doubt it). The crappy car we drive had to be "inspected" today - a joke since we both knew dropping it off that the thing is going to fail. I imagine we'll end up paying $750 dollars in repairs this time around which is a total kick in the nerdy pants when I have much better ideas on what I could spend that money on.

And on the agenda this weekend is a massive, soul-cleansing, exterminate-every-dust-bunny cleaning marathon. Wood needs to be split and stacked, every fixture that our water comes into contact with needs to be scrubbed hard (the water purification system we paid 3 grand for is doing a shit-tastic job so our water cycles through the disgusting colour rainbow of grey, red, or yellow. We have someone coming next week to give us yet another opinion) and those chairs still haven't been entirely recovered.

My poor neighbour - she is giving me free plants for the garden (more hostas than I know what to do with) and she set out some stuff for me to plant weekend before last. I didn't get around to it, and of course that meant they stayed in the wheelbarrow for the whole week. Apparently she commented about it to the husband (who she hilariously calls Andrew even though we have corrected her multiple times) but we were never home during daylight hours the entire week. Friday we left for Hometown for Thanksgiving weekend and I felt so guilty upon returning after the long weekend that I took one look at the wheelbarrow and decided to plant those motherfuckers right then.

It was 11 pm on a Monday night.

I didn't even bother to get changed, I just threw on my sneakers with the skirt and tights I was wearing (oh, and my houndstooth jacket) and got to digging. I was mixing peat and manure by the light of the front porch, and if my neighbours didn't think I was crazy before, suspiciously digging in the yard at midnight in near formal attire will have convinced them otherwise.

PA Notes

Plethora of passive aggressive notes on the 15th floor, where I had to go yesterday to pick up some supplies for the lab. If I only had a camera with me, and someone/something to distract the lab workers from my snickering and snapping....

Ha.

Link to the explanation of DRM - digital rights management. Basically, the reason why the songs I bought two years ago on iTunes for my iPod that broke down within 12 months won't work on my new Creative Zen mp3 player.

Blocqué

God this is hard.

You know when you know you have to do something, but no matter how much you tell yourself "this is important"... you still can't quite get your fingers to play along or your mind to just sit still for long enough to obey?

I am having one of those days.

I got an email from a colleague about a job opening at the one and only spot I want to work when I graduate. And do you think I can sit still long enough to throw together a bilingual cover letter, one that I have been planning on getting done for weeks now in preparation for just such an opportunity?? My mind is buzzing with lots of things that have nothing to do with jobs or realistic futures or responsibilities. I have checked facebook a dozen separate times today, just out of habit. Today, I AM one of those GenerationADD kids.

Current Soundtrack: Rose Cousins

web weary

I suspect the coverage of the election(s) may have pushed me over the edge. That, plus all the news of our doomed economy... lately my usually fervent internet-info consumption has waned. I haven't been on facebook in ages, my celebrity gossip knowledge is superficial, and this blog has gone dormant for several weeks.

The weather is changing; the sun comes up after we have left for work and comes down shortly after arriving in the evenings. The past two weekends we have spent improving the exterior facade of the house with a paving stone walkway and additional landscaping (adding more sod to the side yard and shrubs/plants/trees to the front yard). I hope I can find a job now after graduating and are able to sell the house in a market where no one can get a mortgage...

I have finished reading Catch-22 (for me, not one of my favorites but I recognize why it would be for others) and started the more frivolous Harry Potter series. Currently on book four.

The appointment is booked for my tattoo on October 21st. The design, sketched by my husband, is something like this:

The artist needs to tweak some of the lines as they are too close together for a tattoo. We had a discussion about white ink. He convinced me to go for a natural brown colour instead, something like a henna tattoo or a birthmark, which would be subtle but not marred by the cons of white ink; mostly that everyone reacts differently to the ink, that it is prone to extra inflammation because the titanium oxide white colour breaks down the fine metal instruments (placing shards of metal into the skin along with the white ink) thus creating heavier scar tissue that often has to be retattooed several times, and that it is prone to extreme fading in sunlight. He told me the first few white tattoos he did were fantastic, and buoyed by the success, he went on to do a few more. They turned out terrible. He has beautiful white markings on his face, but he also has a circular leaf design on his chest done in a subtle brown and that looks great too. I'll post a picture when it is healed.

I also ordered some glasses online a few weeks ago, they should be arriving shortly. (Actually, I just checked my email to grab a picture of them and found an update saying they had shipped on October 2nd- they might even be here by the end of the week!). I tried to balance the look I wanted (crazy reddish plastic frames with thick heavy arms) with the cost factor (these were one of the cheapest frames among the half dozen sites I checked) and came up with these for $37.00 Cdn INCLUDING UV-coating, anti-reflective coating, tax and shipping. For prescription.



These were my second choice because they are different then what I normally wear and are more flexible for at-home adjustments:

Unfortunately they are about $30 more expensive AND they look like stupid freakin' Palin glasses so it doesn't matter that I had my eye on them before she was even vetted, there is no way I'm ordering the goddamn glasses now.

And of course, with Halloween coming up shortly, I've started to think about costumes. I am going as She-ra, the epitome of sexy 80s superhero (big category, I know) and have been trolling around for do-it yourself ideas. Next weekend we're off to Hometown for Thanksgiving - I might be able to get something done on it then. My new-ish coworker has decided she will be hosting a Halloween party this year at her place, so there is no backing out now.

Bebop

Ah, just got caught in the stairwell awkwardly pseudo-raving by some undergrads while I was in my lab coat and listening to Daft Punk way too loudly on my headphones.

iPod oblivion:1, Natalie:0

Hello Autumn

Yesterday morning we woke up to a barely risen sun. The sky above the tree line on the other side of the lake behind our house was just the most amazing colour: An aqua blue sky with a stripe of orange/red. The blue was being reflected on the dark waters, so the picture outside our window was blue- black- orange- aqua. Astounding, I tried to get a photo with my crappy digital camera but of course the washed out colours don't really impress so much on (digital) film.

This is my rough photoshop representation, based entirely on memory (and created entirely without skill):


Nature knows how to balance the colour wheel so well, non?

Frivolous Things

Current novel: Catch-22 (ten pages from being done)

Thing that I do when I'm supposed to be working on the house: We are into week 2 (Season 2) of Battlestar Gallactica mania

Current soundtrack: Ane Brun. Unable to get rid of her and her hauntingly catchy songs. It's been a month+ of constant rotation in my CD player/mp3 player/iTunes list.

Thing that I would buy if I had $1500 in disposable cash: an impossibly trendy Herve Leger bandage dress in grey. Like this one, 'cept I would rock it harder because I have actual curves:



(I had to cut off her sad, emaciated head because her cheekbones were disturbing me, not because I like to objectify woman by chopping their bodies into chunks without heads or brains). Sigh.

Geek Chic

I came across this website while browsing Slate. It was mentioned in an article about buying prescription glasses online, and I was intrigued being the poor, near-sighted student that I am. The essence of the article is that buying online prescription glasses is just the next step in online consumerism, and that astronomically high mark-ups in the brick-and-mortar stores can be side-stepped in favor of deeply discounted but essentially identical glasses bought online. This means people like me, who have been putting off a very important thing (proper sight) because of the cost ($300-ish), now have options.

This article is particularly timely because the last few months I have been bugging my husband that it's time for new specs (these ones I currently wear - my only pair- are about five years old) but the truth is new glasses are on the bottom of our priority list at the moment. But I love me some bargains, and I love going online shopping. Some of the more sophisticated sites listed on the GlassyEyes blog allow you to virtually "try on" a pair of glasses using an uploaded close-up headshot. So guess what I've been doing for the past week? I've got it narrowed to my favorite half-dozen frames, but my next priority is getting a current prescription. So I'm going to call up my optician and see if I can't get that done asap, and then scrounge around for $50 for a brand new pair of glasses.

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.