cool runnings

1. Today was another day of muddling through classes. Muddling isn't the best word, as I did do pretty well with everything, but I feel as though I get everything about half right. It makes for pretty paranoid times.

2. Some nifty things around the nets today:

• a prosthetic beard, for a friend who shaved his beard in a fit of spontaneity and immediately regretted it
• a designer lawn chair made of pop tabs and plastic ties
• I have no idea why this guy has so many Macs, but it's neat in a creepy basement-dweller sort of way
• Paris Hilton is banned from AP barring the unlikely event of her doing something newsworthy:

  NEW YORK The Associated Press decided to give up a major vice last week: its addiction to stories about Paris Hilton. In the past year, Hilton has appeared on the wire an average of twice a week.
  
  The wire service's entertainment editor Jesse Washington sent a memo to staffers on Feb. 13 that said, barring any major events, the AP would not run any mention of Paris Hilton on the wire, according to the memo, which was obtained by the New York Observer.
  
  In the Observer article Washington was quoted as saying, "There was a surprising amount of hand-wringing. A lot of people in the newsroom were saying this was tampering with the news." Washington added that one editor's response was: "This is a great idea -- can we add North Korea?"
  
  The AP was largely successful in the experiment, but Washington said that, unfortunately, her name did pop up in a couple of stories.

• SomethingAwful mines its forums for stories of weird things people say in their sleep:
  

"The only time I've been caught talking in my sleep, I said this:

Me: ...I'm sorry.
Ex: Sorry for what?
Me: I've never seen the ending of Cool Runnings...
Ex: Oh.
Me: Did they win?
Ex: Yes.
Me: ...That's good.

She said I then smiled and rolled over, seeming very content."

3. Tonight: sitting around knitting and being boring and headachey. Tomorrow: lab lab lab lab craft council.

when is a grocery store like a penguin?

1. I'm tired on a few levels. Basically it boils down to a couple kinds of bad timing, a lurking cold that refuses to get better or worse, and being burnt out from attempting my schedule during all those things. March Break could not have fallen at a better time except for perhaps this week, which would have been great, because I'm very, very tired now, and because Michelle and Scott are home for the week; I ought to be around for about 24 hours while they're still home. At least we're planning for them to come up later this month for a visit.
Luckily, my classes are more reasonable this week, though honestly I could do without oodles of Latin homework. I seem to remember a time in university when hours of homework every day was unheard of... still, I suppose there's no shortage of ways it could be worse.

2. On a more pleasant note, some things make me smile:

• I have been noticing a rather neat phenomenon more and more this winter: mitten rescue. On the walk from the grocery store to my house (which is mainly through little one way streets and side roads) there are a few fenceposts with mittens on them, from people rescuing lost mittens and propping them up somewhere visible nearby so they can be reclaimed. It is a nice reminder that sometimes people are considerate, and sometimes people value objects enough to try to avoid wrecking them, even when they aren't theirs.
• On Sunday, Sean and I stopped in the Victory Meat Market for a couple of things. It's a locally run grocery store that Sean likes to compare to a penguin - awkwardly designed, but charming. As we were standing in line at a checkout an older man got in line behind us and stood there for a moment before addressing me. He looked at Sean and then at me, and said, "Do you like his whiskers?" I blinked, and realized that Sean was maybe looking a little whiskery, though usually strangers notice the tattoo on his head first. I said, "I don't mind them." He laughed and said, "I've been married for forty-four years and my wife wouldn't stand for it!"
• I've started a new pair of lace socks from this pattern and this yarn: They're my first real toe-up socks and I'm enjoying them. Yes, they're 45% bamboo fibre - stronger and more breathable than cotton, and a sustainable resource that doesn't require clearcutting. And soft. :)
  

3. Michelle has sent me here, which is an awesome webcomic sort of thing.
4. Crazy SL pictures time! Sometimes when I'm minding my own business building stuff on my land, people actually show up and talk to me. Ick. Actually, I know my Second Life neighbours marginally better than I know my real neighbours, which is kind of weird. Once or twice, though, the people who show up are utterly random, like this weird Rasta guy:

Or this dancing monkey, who simply danced at me for a while before informing me he was German and flying away:

Once in a while, I try to teleport to a store or tutorial and accidentally end up places I don't mean to be, like randomly popping in a fairly busy club:

(Yes, clubbing seems to be a huge deal in SL. It probably drives a lot of the ventures that actually pay money, like fashion design.)
The adventures have been kept to a minimum, really - most of my time is spent building and designing. I've been making plans as to the easiest way to market things - it's shockingly easy. SL is reaching the point as an MMO where it will either explode into popularity or suddenly burst and vanish. Obviously I hope for the former, but I haven't invested much money in it (just $10) and it's been ridiculously quantities of hours of fun already.

5. What can I say... it's Tuesday, so I'm trying to do homework while Sean is in class; he has class today from 5:30 to 10, so he ought to be home soon. We're having salmon tails and asparagus and mushroom and potatoes when he gets in, which I am looking forward to greatly.

saturday night

1. It's weird having much, much less to worry about.

2. I've been building a storefront, a fairly lame waterfall, an awesome skirt, and a few other minor things in Second Life. I've also made a new shirt - just a simple tank top, tintable in any shade one could want:
(it reads "enjoy Piracy" in Coca Cola font; I stole the image from the Pirate Bay merchandise, which is only fair, I think!)

It's been going well. I'm still upbeat about the whole thing.

3. I think I'm going to break down and watch a movie by my lonesome soon. I've gotten spoiled, being able to sucker Sean into watching things with me whenever I want; he's watching anime with Matt at the moment and I can't seem to tear him away to watch silly old movies (ie Ghostbusters, or possibly Boondock Saints). Not that I blame him; we only get to see old friends so often.
To Ghostbusters, then! And knitting, I expect. That diagonal scarf ain't going to finish itself.

the other side

1. It's all, all over.

2. The critique went well, I think; the only real problem Professor Kerr seemed to have was that I didn't have anything unkind to say about Kristine's presentation, just filling in holes in her research. I didn't faint.

3. Wednesday - yesterday? - was a filler day more than anything. I got up early, did my Latin at the cafe, went to class, and learned that the tests weren't marked yet and that there is no class on Friday because Professor Geyssen has to go to a doctoral defense. He remarked briefly and somewhat randomly on Britney Spears' hair (or lack thereof) and then we translated for a bit - and then got an extra assignment and another pop vocabulary quiz. The day after a test. I have no words.
It was a giddy sort of day; Geyssen had a giggle over a silly line of Latin (Sit Igitur! Sit! I need a dog to name Igitur) and in Honours Seminar, we had another horizon-broadening discussion with Christiane, this time trying to clarify to her about goth, punk, and rockabilly subculture (she is unfamiliar with them).
I spent the night trying not to think about the presentation, but I still didn't really sleep.

4. Today I rolled out of bed and read through my notes for two hours before class, trying not to fret and failing spectacularly. When I got to class, Alexandra, who is probably the most senior Classics student around these days, and who was doing the critique for my presentation, looked at me with tired eyes and told me that my outline was very thorough. To the point where she wasn't sure how much she would have to say. I started to feel better.
The actual presentation? As usual I seem to be shutting it out of my memory, but I said everything I wanted to say, at about the right speed, and didn't fall over or cry. I think I may even have done well.
Alexandra seemed very nervous to present her critique. I think I might be the calmest one yet speaking in front of the class, but maybe I looked more nervous from the floor.
DONE.

5. Last night while trying not to think about my presentation, I finally uploaded the Second Life files I've been meaning to try out. Without further ado: my first shirt! (and skirt, but all I did was adjust the waist):

I'm also fond of my hair being green at the moment. I'm playing with a few more skins; maybe soon I can open a store...

6. Tomorrow, as I have no Latin, it's the lab and then NBCC for a bit to catch up on some web things. Tonight - tonight, I sleep.

all I can do is all I can do

1. This weekend went too fast, and I just didn't get enough done. Some of it is the sheer amount, and some of it is the difficulty of preparing a response to a presentation of which I only have the barest idea, and some of it is the crippling fear of public speaking. People will say it gets easier; every time I do a big presentation I hear "well, next time it will be easier!". Though I know they feel they have to say something, it's just not true. It's just as bad as it ever was. Oddly I still want to be a professor, and I still think I could lecture to undergrads without much difficulty - it's just lecturing in front of peers, most of them - in this case - overachievers who are themselves stressing over this class.
But reading Gaijin as a study break is oddly calming. Clavell has a philosophy he puts in the mouth of all his heroes - when bad things happen, karma is karma and that's all there is to it.

2. On a stage that makes my whining about schoolwork completely insignificant, a friend from high school, Jason Lamont, was presented the Medal of Military Valour
(that's him on the left) for medic service in Afghanistan, where according to CBC he ran through enemy fire to care for a wounded colleague when their unit was ambushed last summer. There's an interview with him on CBC.ca, and also he's quoted as saying "The shorter you are, the more bullets go over your head", which is pretty typically him.

3. Sean's friend Matt is visiting, and so our little home is full of gaming strategies and character design. It's rather nice to have company; it's good with just the two of us, but sometimes I do miss having people around like we had at Brunswick Street last year.

4. Today I had a massive Latin test, which went reasonably well; I feel much better about the rest of the week in consequence. Though I wasn't as sure as I would have liked to be about some of the translation, I feel good about all of it, and even the grammar/syntax questions, which usually utterly destroy me (as I keep telling my classmates, I know how to translate the passive periphrastic and the ablative absolute, so I don't feel the need to be on a first-name basis with it).

5. This afternoon my Maritime Archaeology seminar went to the Archaeological Services Unit downtown to be introduced to the staff and the resources there. It's not a museum so much as a bunch of offices, labs, and collections rooms; they run all of the administrative and archival business to do with archaeology in the province. It was interesting, but the real focus of the afternoon was the introduction of the meat of the course: our hypothetical proposal from our imaginary archaeological consulting firms. I really can't deal with the work at this point, mentally - it just has to wait until Thursday afternoon, after my other big dumb seminar is taken care of (and it will be; after Thursday, all I have to do for it is pull together a paper on my presentation topic, and write the takehome exam in April).

6. To work! Karma is karma, and all I can do is all I can do, and tonight's all the time I have to do it in, now, so I'd better make the best of it.

7. Super Special Bonus Content!! or bits of my reading that amuse me.

Counting people, one may note, is not the same as inventorying goods; the former keep moving around, and are fully capable of being refractory for various reasons and unreasons.

Cassius Dio, I hate you

1. Things I would rather be doing than working on various things for Kerr's Augustus seminar:

• reading Clavell's Gai-Jin
• finally finishing my first custom skin for Second Life, or working on my house there
• having coffee with someone rather than sitting around in my house alone
• working on my crazy red scarf
• sewing a new skirt
• constructing a new schoolbag, as my much-loved bazura bag is finally beginning to come apart in a few directions, after three years of hard use
• doing something major to my computer, like reinstalling Windows, because it's getting less and less functional as time goes by
• finding enough wool roving to make one of those really cool squishy rugs in the last post
• studying Japanese or Spanish
  
• pretty much anything, really.

I've already finished my take home midterm, and I'm plowing through the readings for Kristine's presentation presently, but dear god it's hard to bring anything substantial away. Her outline isn't really organized enough for me to find any holes easily. I still have to pull mine together, too. It's a busy day. I'm also pounding through Cicero again, because I have a test tomorrow on the parts we've already done. I'm a little afraid.

2. This weekend has been pretty busy overall, really. Sean's mother has been visiting, and left this morning to participate in the last day of her pottery workshop; Sean's father stopped in last night and scooped him up, and they're at home visiting with Sean's sister Aine, who is up to look at land. Sean ought to be back tonight or tomorrow morning (probably tomorrow morning, no matter how much I want to believe the former) with his friend Matt, who is coming to visit for a bit.
Yesterday, while we had access to a car, Sean and I did a little shopping; groceries and thrifting and the dollar store, where I bought two thousand little bags to fill with flakes in the next few weeks. We also stopped in at Winners and found a set of white wine glasses to match our red wine glasses at $2/each; my glassware collection now fills three quarters of one of our boxes. I have no regrets.

3. What can I say to prolong this update and not read more Cassius Dio?

4. ROSES

home renovations

1. Finally, already, Friday. The weeks go fast but in some ways not fast enough... today was a day of cataloging flakes, for the most part. I've sped up the process so I'm going at a fantastic rate compared to a week ago - today I catalogued 187 flakes, of the total 1635 that have been dealt with thus far (not just what I've done, but last year's work as well). The only real limiting factor is the problem of bags; I'm tempted to look after it myself, but I think Sue probably gets less harassment and suspicion buying that many bags (there are few legitimate uses for little ziploc bags in bulk). I also got another few tomes out the library.

2. Links:

• I definitely intend to make one of these rugs (the designer's page is here); there's a few craftster tutorials that will help that I can think of.
• An interesting tale of a prodigious savant.
• Viral marketing is trendy enough that even NIN is doing it.
• A fairly awesome (awful) article about grad school.

3. In between school and work and work, I took some time to play on Second Life. This is the portico of my first house:which ended up being far too many prims and just less cool than I intended. Construction in Second Life is accomplished by make three dimensional shapes (prims) and then giving them textures so they look vaguely realistic; my plot of land is only allowed to have 117, so as you might imagine there is virtue in being efficient with prims.
This is my new house: which is rather nice and has a pond in the middle with a pair of koi swimming around. It needs some more landscaping, I think.

4. Tonight, and this weekend: homework, homework, homework. I have another fifteen chapters of Cicero to review for Monday, and lots of presentation prep to do (huge, sickening amounts of reading).
Also, Sean's parents are coming up for a couple of days, so we will have company, which is a nice change.

5. And now for something completely different:

inclement weather

1. I was up at six this morning to read and be nervous about my critique, and it seemed unusually snowy and gross out, so I checked, hoping against hope, on the UNB website:
....?.....!


Back to bed! The cats held a gladiator show in celebration.

2. There is some unfortunate fallout to all of this. My presentation has been bumped to Tuesday, meaning next week I have a critique and a presentation, which is enough to break my little brain. I also can't go to Hali with Sue if I have a presentation on Tuesday, which is pretty disappointing. Maybe she'll move it to some completely other day, or the next week, but I doubt it.
Also, we're supposed to go to Archaeological Services downtown to look at some artifacts, but Sue doesn't particularly want to come down this morning because of the weather, and the tricked-out weather bar at the bottom of my Firefox screen
seems to suggest that it's going to fiddlehead this afternoon, which doesn't bode well for getting things done then either.

3. For now I think I will put on some clothes and go to get some coffee. It may be too terrifying to drive, but I bet you I've walked through much worse.

an illustrated history of today

1. Today was about as thrilling (scholastically) as expected. I didn't take a bunch of the books I am technically supposed to be reading, but Kristine seems to have a good handle on coinage and about five of the biggest books are just catalogues of coins and discussion of their imagery, which does just about nothing for me. The other seven that I did take are quite enough, thank you.



2. Today I saw James on the bus on the way to invigilate Grant's class' midterm, and Erica on the way back. They are, for anyone joining us via Mom's blog, two of my old roommates who were dating for three or four years and broke up quite recently.
James has been working at a rather nice restaurant in town called the Back Nine since it opened last year, and has taken his Block One (the chef equivalent of the first year of university, roughly). He took his first couple years of university with Nick (as they were high school friends) but had to drop out for complicated reasons; he's been talking ever since about going back, but eventually decided to start his blocks instead. Today he told me very definitely that he is going back in the fall, being thoroughly fed up with kitchens. I tend to applaud any decision to go to university, because I like it bunches myself, but in James' case it's particularly appropriate because he just has a very academic mindset. Those of you who are in the know about tabletop gaming - he memorized AD&D. All of it.
Erica has an education as an aesthetician and works at Yves Rocher in the mall, but last time I'd spoken to her she'd only been getting about 20 hours a week at the front desk, not really client hours. Since then one of the others has left and she's gotten hours doing "real" aesthetics, waxing and massages and such, and clients, which are key. She moved out of the apartment with James (Neil moved in with James, which has, no doubt, been good for them both) and has been trying to settle herself since. She's moving out of her current place tonight (it is, long story short, incredibly sketchy) and moving in with some friends, Kyle and Ashley. She misses Sid (her lovely orange cat, who was Tonks' parent for her early years) but seems to be holding together remarkably well for this wretched time of year.

^ Sid

3. Linkage:

• Forget the Year of the Pig, it's the Year of Iran!
• "An alcoholic, liar and gambler with an addictive personality."
• Best CPU case ever.
• Weirdest Valentine's Day ever.

4. Sean and Nick are in the getting-permission-and-commitments stage for a theatre festival this summer! I know, I'm surprised too. It's called the Fredericton Original Fringe Festival, or F-OFF, and they're planning all sorts of things. It's rumoured that Nick will even write and put on a play he's been threatening to do for years: I Hate Step Taylor (Step Taylor being a rival, of sorts, in the STU theatre scene). I will no doubt be dragged in in some capacity, but it sounds like good clean fun.

5. Obligatory cat pictures:

^ "I disapprove of flashes."

^ "I like rolling on muddy floors!"

days go by

1. Another weekend gone far too fast. It included finally seeing Faustus, after hearing about it for six months, and also seeing Sean's parents who came up for the show, and then the inevitable insane cast party. It feels sort of like a blur; it's nice to have to show done with, from my perspective, as it was stressing so many people out (or at least, 100% of the three people who come to my house who aren't me).
The play was, of course, fantastic. I can take or leave Marlowe; he's just not the playwright old Shakes was. Nick and crew did an amazing job with it, though, including a lot of subtle things that probably a lot of people didn't notice outright but that added a great deal to the production, like background music and the use of the projection screen for suggesting backgrounds and announcing locales. Sean was terrifying on stage as Lucifer; you could feel the whole room sit up straighter, and flinch when he exploded at Faust. There were a few other notable performances - the Evil Angel who had more bootheel than skirt was quite good, and Shakti is, as always, awesome and popular with the audience.

2. Aside from that? School marches on and my workload increases. I have to read huge piles of legalese for archaeology, methodology for honours seminar, commentary on Augustan financial policy for classics, and also reread chapters 1-18 of the Pro Archia for a Latin test in a week. Boo.
I really hate leaving the house in the winter. It's not really laziness so much as fear of going to class, and it's not really all that bad this year, but some days it's worse than others. I was so glad to be home this afternoon, it's rather sad.

3. Also sad: I've started playing around more on Second Life and even begun designing textures on clothing templates. It's a pleasant change from reading large piles of different shades of slightly boring.

4. Tomorrow: I take possession of fifteen books of Roman financial stuff from Kristine, catalogue more flakes, invigilate another exam, write a take home midterm and study Latin.
February is almost half over.

the battle for supremacy

1. The kitties have been fighting for the right to lay on the futon since I laid it out flat. Despite being perfectly happy to share it when it was folded up as a couch, they have decided that twice the surface area can only accommodate half the cats. Tonks has won for the moment, but I'm sure it's only temporary.

2. Some links:

• building green: hobbit houses and earthen floors
• a DIY/food/craft challenge my grandmother would have loved
• does our culture really require a Bacon of the Month Club? Discuss.
• Best. Roommate. Wanted. Ad. Evar.
• graph humour = economist webcomics? (via Angus)
  

3. The play - Nick's play, which Sean is in - is a smashing success. Ilkay Silk, the drama guru of St. Thomas, has said it's the best play the company has ever done. The audience gave them full and thundering applause after every scene (yes, bad manners, but hey). It's Nick's last year at the helm, so it's good that he's gone out with a bang. I'm not going until Saturday; I hate going the first few nights because the actors are so nervous, and make me nervous just watching them.

4. My day was another day of running around in circles. I will say this about this semester: it's going by fast. Sue found some bags in David's lab and sent me over to my lab, where I ran through them in three hours. Now what will I do tomorrow?
The Craft Council, as usual, was quiet and pretty fun. I finished up - I think - the promotional material for the fundraiser at the end of March, so I'm back to the website and trying to get the members bit together.

5. Something about Second Life has really captured my imagination. I've only spent maybe three hours on it, and hear about it occasionally through the grapevine, but I keep thinking of excuses to get involved. My latest and greatest involve either rewriting my thesis proposal to study communities in it, or caving and buying some land to build a house. The excuse for the house? Sean's friend from home wants to DM a campaign for us, but he's there and we're here, so we've been trying out a few different interfaces for doing tabletop gaming over the internet. My solution? Build a house and meet there to play Dungeons & Dragons. In virtual reality.

I love it.

6. Tomorrow: Latin, lab, and an evening meeting with John to talk about his site. Tonight: homework? I'm out of Clavell books again, having finished Noble House, Taipan, and King Rat in the past month, and Shogun not long before that. I suppose I could give Gaijin another try, though I didn't think much of it the first time. Maybe stomp through my Christie collection again...?

links, vids, and pics

1. Links:

• you've heard of the Red Hatters? How about the Blue Thongers?
• I knew you'd come crawling back, Ford.
  

2. Vids:


(via Zentastic)


(via Apartment Therapy; designer here)

3. Pics:

The cat station, moved deeper into their alcove, now with added windowsill action.

The futon is folded down for enhanced lounging-around-with-laptops capability. I'm going to make some throw pillows from fabric we have kicking around.

The boxes, being awesome. Before, we had three as a smallish partition; now it's a curved wall. Parallax approves of the height, being dissatisfied with life if she can't sharpen her claws on the ceiling.

A quiet nook for reading, eating, and tea. And more laptops.

Sooo tired. Time to sleep.

ow, my brain

1. This week is flowing past so fast... I can't believe it's Wednesday.

2. The remainder of Monday was kind of tiring. My archaeology seminar was intense, with five powerpoint presentations in three hours. Sue tends to be intense anyway, but trying to hurry through makes it a bit of a headache. The comic relief was supplied by her cell phone, as all three children called several times (stuck downtown, missed the bus, and no house key respectively).
I slammed my hand in a door at the library, which was a shock, literally. It didn't actually hurt that much in the moment, but had to sit down and gather my marbles about thirty seconds later when I reacted. It's a bit bruised and swollen now but it doesn't hurt to type, so as far as I'm concerned there's no harm done.
And to round out the wearying day, I invigilated another exam. Between a gaggle of cheaters, a kid trying to argue with me, and then the prof, in a stage whisper over the heads of three other students about his issues with the circular reasoning in a multiple choice question, and the inability of frosh to understand simple instructions like "write your name on both the question sheet and the computer sheet"... I was truly worn out.

3. Tuesday went better. Class in the morning was pleasantly lecture-like again, and Professor Kerr is always great fun to listen to. In the afternoon, Sue had forgotten to buy bags again so I went home and had coffee with Sean before he went to class, which is a luxury we don't have time for much anymore. After he left, I went home and rearranged the house; I'll post pictures later.

4. Today has been a flat-out sprint again. Up at 8 to translate, finish just in time to run up and catch the bus, and get to Latin reasonably prepared. Slight setback when heaps of homework (more than usual!) are assigned for Friday; dash to the lab to type up my assignment for the honours seminar, and then dash to that. An incredibly frustrating and exasperating three hours while we struggle to squash ethnography into variables and hypotheses, and then a quick (and not very appetizing) supper and here I am in the computer lab. After this I get to spend a couple hours just vegging on campus before - yay - invigilating for Professor Hutton's class this evening. I really wish I could just go home and sleep for a while, but there's no rest for the wicked.

5. Sean's (well, Nick's, but Sean is in it) play goes up tonight, so good luck to them; I hope there's a good audience. It makes life so much easier for them.

6. Links and pictures tonight! As for now, vegging and assignments and applications and research... alright, maybe no vegging.

*sigh*

sounds good to me, boss

I've taken to doing my Latin homework in the morning, right before class. This is only about half out of procrastination; we have a lot of on-the-spot questions and pop vocabulary quizzes, and it's far easier with the work still fresh in the mind.
So I was up at 8:00 this morning, working on my Latin, and things are, as usual, frustrating, when up pops a Gmail alert with an email from Geyssen:

How does no class today sound to you guys? Sounds good to me. We're still a month from a holiday, so take today as a freebie.

Normal routine on Wed. Should I remind you, we do have a test on 19 Feb?

jg

It's like a snow day out of blue skies. He tends to do this once a semester, more or less randomly, but it's still a treat.
So my day has been reduced to my seminar with Sue this afternoon, and then invigilating for Anth 1002 midterms this evening. I'm pretty cool with that.

sock knitting: the easy way?

The socking knitting machine is turning into an interesting journey.

I discovered that while cotton is nice, it's awfully splitty, and the recycled sweater cotton is mainly only good for making weird, colourful spiderwebs:
So I switched to some nice self-striping wool I have laying around in sufficient quantity to make a pair of knee socks, and things went much smoother. I'm getting really good at casting on (really!) and the wool flew along at a pretty impressive pace for about five minutes before... it threw a bunch of stitches, randomly.

So that was the afternoon. I'm going to rest my brain a little and then go back to it tonight or tomorrow and see if I can't coax it into behaving.

saturday afternoon projects

1. Last night, as predicted, was a good night. We watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is always a good time.

2. Today: playing with the sock knitting machine, and designing apparel logos for the anth society:
Based, of course, on the logo of fashion label anthropologie, which I adore (both the label and the clothes, for the most part). This one is for the girlier apparel, of course. I'm going to make something more masculine for the guys, and probably something for archaeology, because no one knows what an anthropologist is. I'm toying with the idea of having a shirt that is formatted like a multiple choice test:

Anthropology is the study of:

a. insects
b. building bridges
c. orchids
d. all of the above
e. none of the above

Much like one of Grant's exams, actually.

3. Lee Valley is, as always, up to coolness:
Though it was cooler when I thought it was made of pottery, not plastic, I still approve.

4. Off to knit socks (hopefully); I'll post pictures if I'm successful.

storebought perogies are better than none

1. Uh, so. I must be have pretty tired this morning. My numbering is not so good.

2. Third 2 of the day!

3. So, on the way to class this morning I was having a good laugh with a classmate at the expense of Cicero, when the bus pulled up to the stop just outside a small arena. No fewer than thirty, and probably far more, seven- or eight-year-old French schoolchildren piled on, each fumbling with fare and falling on passengers. This had two effects: I was late for Latin, and trying to get off the bus was a trial, involving the driver shutting the door on the person in front of me (also trying to get off the bus) and then a kid tripping me so that I rolled my ankle stepping off the bus.
I do wonder about the logic of bringing that many small children on public transit, let alone on a busy campus bus that will be full, and trying to stick to a schedule. I hope they learned a lesson - the teachers, not the children. The children are still working on that inertia thing that means you have to hold onto things on buses so you don't fall on other passengers.
Ugh.

4. There were no bags for me at the lab, so aside from fumbling unsuccessfully with an ancient printer, I had no work today. Sue was busy with QAR people again, so I just went home and slept for a bit.

5. When Sean came home from practice, we started getting ready to go over to Nick's - he invited us over for perogies and socializing - but he called and cancelled before we left, so we went and got perogies of our own. It will be a nice evening, I think.

6. Check out this beautiful mug that Aine, Sean's sister, gave him for Christmas:
It's by a Nova Scotian potter named Alison Cude, who was a guest exhibitor at the NBCC Festival last year. Her work is gorgeous; I love the way she makes handles for lids, like teapots and sugar dishes.

happy friday

1. I haven't written since Tuesday? Man. I'm not very good at this.

2. Most of my news is pretty wintery and bleak, like the weather. I'm fighting off the ubiquitous student cold that goes around this time every year, starting in the dorms and then spreading via class. My house is freezing because the furnace is out of oil again and the oil people are coming later today. The Metepenagiag lab where I catalogue rocks is also freezing, for no real reason that I can see. Mexico is starting to look really, really good.

2. My week picked up a little since Tuesday, but not much. Wednesday was Latin (in which I did surprisingly well for a change) and my honours seminar (where I did less well for a change, owing mostly to my frustration with the assignments). I was so tired by the evening that instead of doing something exciting with my "night off", I went to bed by 10.
Yesterday was busy-busy; the classics seminar was pleasantly lecture-like (O for the days of simple lecture classes and term papers!) and then I had work in the icebox-lab. I've gone back to the most tedious type of work, the cataloguing and weighing of individual flakes instead of lots of flakes. I'm doing my best to streamline the process with technology, but I've run out of little flake bags, which is a serious issue. If there are no more today, I may have a real problem on my hands. Anyway, after that I had an interview with the QAR people who are conducting a routine external review of the anth department, so they could get a sense of what Student Everyman thinks (haha, not much).
Work at NBCC has been centering more and more on this fundraiser they're planning, and so I redid the poster I made last week and updated the website and so on. My nights at the NBCC have been punctuated lately by visits from the janitor, an older woman who seems to have a bitter feud with the man who throws salt on the sidewalks outside, and has the misfortune of cleaning one of the local clubs, Nicky Z's, as well. She had to clean during the afterparty of the recent Snoop Dogg/Ice Cube show here. I feel her pain.

3. Speaking of the NBCC, Shasta hinted yesterday that there will be "changes, good ones" this summer. I'm mystified. And a little worried. I'm sure she wouldn't be holding out on me if it were something that would mean no job for me, but I still worry.

4. Last night was another exhausted night of reading and then going to bed early, trying to fight off this cold. I'm up early to translate a chapter of Latin, but seem to be wasting lots of time instead... I still have tons of time to get my chapter done.

5. The only good thing about so many seminars is that I only have one exam per se this semester. The tentative schedule is out; my Latin exam appears to be scheduled for... April 20th. The second last day of exams, classes having ended April 6th or some such. Ah, tradition.