solidarity forever

1. MARCH BREAK. I've decided (with Michelle's help) that March Break starts tonight; tomorrow is bus bus bus bus bus HOME.

2. Today, as predicted, was a lot of lab time. I've been zipping through the flakes; when I started work, the count was roughly 850. I worked all fall and January and got about to 1400. Today, when I finished up, I was at about 2240. This pace is a lot more fun.
To break up the day, I had lunch at Doreen's new little cafe in Tilley, and also participated in Brian Campbell's masters thesis project, which involves two volunteers, one looking at imagery depicting Native Americans on one side of a screen, describing the images to the other, who has to decide what kind of archetype it represents. It was interesting, and I'll be interested to see what sort of conclusions he draws from it.

3. There's trouble abrewing on campus. This was sent out last night:

re: Aitken Status
Aitken House, a 95-bed men's residence on the UNB Fredericton campus, may close at the end of this academic year.

This proposal has not been made lightly. UNB Fredericton has a 20 per cent vacancy rate in its traditional undergraduate residences. This reflects a decline in enrolment and a trend among students to opt for non-traditional residence accommodation.

The proposal is part of the UNB Fredericton budgeting process and a final decision is expected by the end of the term.

Keeping one more residence open than is necessary to meet demand would require an estimated expenditure of $90,000 over the next academic year.

If the house does not reopen as a residence, possibilities for using the building for other purposes will be explored.

A decision to close Jones House, another men's residence, was made last spring in response to the same trends.

This morning when I walked down through campus from the SUB to the lab, I noticed that someone had spraypainted the snowbanks with big, red SAVE AITKEN graffiti. By lunchtime when I walked back, most residence rooms windows had a big red A painted in the window, and the doors had For Sale signs in the windows. There are flyers, there are posters. I'm sure there will be protests and angry op-eds in the student newspaper.
I wonder if it will matter?

4. I love our wacky politicians.

5. It is a long running joke around here that Battlestar Galactica likes to alternate between fuzzy-kitten episodes and bag-of-nails episodes. The last two were so fuzzy-kitten (this week's culminated in a childhood dream getting fulfilled despite class barriers, all thanks to a union that has learned to believe in itself), it's got to be almost time to build up to a season finale or something. Goodness knows they built up to the last season finale for two episodes before the two part, million hour actual finale. I'm looking forward to it. Not that I really disapprove of the fuzzy kittens, of course, but it's hard to get into feel-good when you know there's a bag of nail lurking around the corner.

6. Pictures!
Why yes, that's most of the foot of a sock. Yes, the colours are pretty riotous for that pattern, what of it?I swear you can almost make out the lace if you squint really, really hard.

Of course, sometimes squinting just makes you look really sinister. Kind of like a murderous seal.

7. The comic with the scurvy orange (previous entry? one before that) is by a woman who also authors this comic with her husband: 8. Someone else has also decided it's March Break. I distinctly hear the call of the nocturnal Woo birds, who flock to downtown in the night, calling out to potential mates and frightening off rivals with their trademark calls of "WOOOOOOO!!"