one degree of Kevin Spacey

Am in Hamilton at a conference. (Yes, I know - I get to go to all the most exotic ones!) The conference is pretty informal, but it's all people from the universities in the area who study attention and performance. So pretty interesting. It's only a two-dayer, but my supervisor put us up in the dorms on campus. It is kind of fun, as I never actually lived in a dorm room in undergrad. It smells exactly like camp rooms did. I have to say, living in a one-bedroom basement suite with Stephie was cozy, but I never would have survived sharing a three-meter-wide room with some random roommate for an entire school year.

Anyway, the most interesting part of the whole experience (sorry, attention researchers) was watching the filming of the movie Casino Jack. We first realised something was going on when some guy brandishing an umbrella started yelling at all the passing academics, rolling his hands above his head and yelling, "Quiet! Rolling! QUIET! ROLLING!!!" You could practically see the question marks above the heads of the venerable academics. ("Rolling? What?") But they had a big crane with a camera on it pointing at a balcony just above our heads.

Turned out the balcony in question was attached to the grad lounge, so there was nothing for it but to go have lunch there. Alex, the post-doc, Asma, my labmate, and I managed to end up seated right in front of the window to the balcony. We were gazing right over the directors' chairs (who knew they actually use chairs like that?!) and into the monitor showing what was being filmed. We watched Kevin Spacey on the monitor screw something up and burst out laughing, and just as I said, "I wonder if we'll actually see him?" he came wandering over to our section of the window. Neat! We walked past the equipment trucks on the way back - so many cables and bits of equipment, and like 50 shades of what I assume were filters for the lights. To anyone in the film industry: I will happily give you a tour of my lab if you show me what all that interesting equipment actually does!

Oooh, speaking of our lab, my supervisor has managed to secure the funds to build a brand new one. And in the meantime, they are moving us out of our basement dungeon (accessed by walking THROUGH the janitor's closet) and into a new space with WINDOWS! I am very, very pleased with this turn of events.

I Heart Reading Week

Once again I am getting in trouble for not blogging. February was pretty crazy, though - Del came to visit and we went to Montreal for a couple of days, and then I had a conference in Niagara Falls for a couple of days. Montreal was awesome, although the 9ish-hour bus journey was not so great. (Oh, to some day not be a starving student and be able to afford the train!) I had been there once with Grandma, en route to Halifax - we just had a quick change-over, but she was kind enough to watch the bags for a few minutes so I could pop up to street level and have a look at Montreal. And I loved it! I vowed to go back, and poor Del got dragged along for the ride. (He wasn't complaining too much, though - although I did discover roughly 8 bus-hours in that he gets bus-sick).

We stayed in the Latin Quarter, which was funky and interesting. It was walkable to all over the interesting part of the city, so we explored Old Montreal and the Chinese Quarter and McGill area on foot. The weather was cold but clear, but Del was very excited about the Underground City, so we stayed indoors a lot. We just missed a winter festival (boooo!) but did get to see pot-smoking workman building a giant ice slide that extended down a few city blocks, and an ice restaurant outside! Very cool (har har har).

Back from Montreal on Wednesday night at 11, clothes into the wash, fell into bed, up at 8 am and off to Niagara with my entire lab! My supervisor hired a car that fit all of us (including Del, who I couldn't exactly ditch in Guelph by himself) and booked us hotel rooms. The conference was small but enjoyable, and as my labmate Asma isn't from around here either (she's Indian, in fact) we were both excited to go take the obligatory tourist photos of the falls. We went out for dinner that night and GOOD LORD! They said it was tacky, but I was expecting sort of English seaside tacky. But this was a whole other level of incredible tack. The flashing lights, the screaming Pharoahs and Frankensteins, the six or eight 4D RIDES!!!!!... man, it was something else. I was fascinated. Sadly, I was there to be all thoughtful and academic and didn't get to explore much. Lucky Del got to wander around all he wanted, though. (And what did he do? Bought $20 worth of fudge!)

So that was Reading Week, and it was fun. But sadly it's over, I'm much poorer (though very pleased with how it went down) and way behind with work. So this week (month, in fact) it is nose the grindstone and spending down to the bone!