Cheap like borscht

I just made some seriously rockin' borscht. This recipe is pretty confusing to follow, but the end result is YUM (and a lovely shade of red). The beets, carrot, potatoes and dill are all out of the garden!

Unfortunately, I am home making borscht on a Saturday night instead of at Nuit Blanche in TO like I should be because I am ill. I'm not as ill as yesterday, so was tempted to go, but it struck me as possibly a bad idea to stay up till 6am in the rain (first Greyhound back is at that time - I have no crash space in TO) while still recovering. I find it odd that no matter what I catch, the main symptom is a massive fever. It's usually one to two days of no ability to thermoregulate whatsoever, and then another day or two of feeling really burnt out and exhausted. I guess it must kill the germs, though - or something.

So, as expected, it's an incredibly busy semester. I am taking a Neuroscience course that is pretty full-on - lots to learn and lots of work. I am TAing two courses, one of which requires the kids to update Wikipedia on a cognitive neuroscience topic as one of their assignments (so I am responsible for first learning to do this, then teaching them to do it!) I managed to end up joining both the TA Administrative Council and the executive of the WiSE (Women in Science and Engineering) club, both of which have millions of meetings. And of course I'm writing a review paper and attempting to get some research done. And maybe exercise once in a while (joined an intramural soccer team!)

I think it could be quite a fun semester, as long as I can figure out some way to get everything done. There's always extra stuff too - scholarship applications, helping out the honours students, going to lectures and seminars. It's mostly all stuff I like, but when the pressure is on nothing is fun. Need to figure out how to fit everything in such that the pressure is hardly ever on.

Not being sick would be a good start. Oh well.

Had an excellent trip out to Killarney Park right before the semester started. I went with Mark the neighbour and Reggie, who is German (and therefore did all hiking and portaging in a bikini - and wore less than that the rest of the time). The lakes were amazing. I forget sometimes that Ontario is not all cities... There are only a few campsites per lake, so most of the time there was no one else around at all.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some pictures.















So beautiful. The portaging was hard-core but enjoyable, and it was so nice to be outside for four days straight. Well worth missing the first week of class, I would say! I am definitely going back.