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.
Friday, 19 June 2009
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
Monday, 15 June 2009
weekend stuff
Oops, started this Saturday and forgot to post:
"
Wow, looks like a beautiful day, and I am feeling motivated. Going to make a cheesecake for the neighbour's birthday and work on some projects. I love Saturdays.
Projects = making lampshades for two AWESOME kitschy lamps I found at Value Village last week (although as they are clearly from the '60s, I am going to get dad to check that they are actually safe to use!) and making a coffee table out of a board covered in trashy romance novel pages with a fruit box base. You may ask why my house suddenly looks like someone lives in it (rather than as if the occupant were still in the throes of unpacking, as it did for the first six months) and the answer would be that Steph came to visit. Stuff happens when Stephanie is around. She bought me a bookshelf, for one thing. TECHNICALLY my arrangement of fruit boxes was working, more or less, but I have to say having an actual piece of furniture certainly adds something. And since we had a lot of time to play (as I skipped out on most work for her visit) there were crafts galore.
"
And now it is Monday and the cheesecake was delicious (did NY style with a strawberry-mango topping that turned out AMAZING - the neighbour was very pleased) and I got lots done. Went to Costco (and spent too much, but it is all useful stuff), cleaned the house, and spent most of yesterday in the garden with Oliver and Katie. Everything is coming up and now that it is weeded it looks so good. Also went to two bonfire parties and stayed out till 5am again. Pretty awesome weekend, in fact, in a quiet kind of way. This week, like last week, will involve much hard work to get a few projects off the ground before my parents arrive. I'll still have to work during those two weeks, but with a bit of effort now I should be able to escape for a while here and there as well. And I fully plan to do nothing at all useful (well, very little) while I am in the UK in July!
And with that note, back to work. Am trying to learn how to program in Python... getting there, but we have skipped straight to Classes in three lessons, and I have had to get a book out of the library to try and catch up! My last official programming experience was intro Comp Sci in second year undergrad...
"
Wow, looks like a beautiful day, and I am feeling motivated. Going to make a cheesecake for the neighbour's birthday and work on some projects. I love Saturdays.
Projects = making lampshades for two AWESOME kitschy lamps I found at Value Village last week (although as they are clearly from the '60s, I am going to get dad to check that they are actually safe to use!) and making a coffee table out of a board covered in trashy romance novel pages with a fruit box base. You may ask why my house suddenly looks like someone lives in it (rather than as if the occupant were still in the throes of unpacking, as it did for the first six months) and the answer would be that Steph came to visit. Stuff happens when Stephanie is around. She bought me a bookshelf, for one thing. TECHNICALLY my arrangement of fruit boxes was working, more or less, but I have to say having an actual piece of furniture certainly adds something. And since we had a lot of time to play (as I skipped out on most work for her visit) there were crafts galore.
"
And now it is Monday and the cheesecake was delicious (did NY style with a strawberry-mango topping that turned out AMAZING - the neighbour was very pleased) and I got lots done. Went to Costco (and spent too much, but it is all useful stuff), cleaned the house, and spent most of yesterday in the garden with Oliver and Katie. Everything is coming up and now that it is weeded it looks so good. Also went to two bonfire parties and stayed out till 5am again. Pretty awesome weekend, in fact, in a quiet kind of way. This week, like last week, will involve much hard work to get a few projects off the ground before my parents arrive. I'll still have to work during those two weeks, but with a bit of effort now I should be able to escape for a while here and there as well. And I fully plan to do nothing at all useful (well, very little) while I am in the UK in July!
And with that note, back to work. Am trying to learn how to program in Python... getting there, but we have skipped straight to Classes in three lessons, and I have had to get a book out of the library to try and catch up! My last official programming experience was intro Comp Sci in second year undergrad...
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
I didn't think I looked addicted...
Did my first day of testing at the addictions treatment facility yesterday. It went remarkably well, in that I had one person booked and three actually agreed to be tested. They are super disorganised there, but also super friendly and helpful (which I think I prefer). Anyway, it is a pretty boring experiment involving pressing buttons on a computer, but at least it is short. I set up the laptop for them and gave them chocolate afterwards - that seemed to go over well. And nobody was phased by being asked pointed questions about their drugs of choice. They were all lovely about sitting through the experiment and happy to help, and also curious about what the point was. Much better than bored/hungover undergrads any day!
The best part, though, was when I showed up to the Admissions building to try and get someone to show me the room where I could test, and some woman asked if I was checking in.
In other news, Oliver gave me a giant box of asparagus from a yield trial (where they just need to weigh the produce and then get rid of it). It has taken over my fridge. I have made asparagus quiche, asparagus soup, asparagus fried rice, and asparagus tacos (not really recommended, though), plus have barbequed them a couple of times with butter, PLUS have had a lot of normal steamed asparagus. Am running out of ways to use it before it all goes bad! I used to hate asparagus as a kid - good thing that changed before now.
The best part, though, was when I showed up to the Admissions building to try and get someone to show me the room where I could test, and some woman asked if I was checking in.
In other news, Oliver gave me a giant box of asparagus from a yield trial (where they just need to weigh the produce and then get rid of it). It has taken over my fridge. I have made asparagus quiche, asparagus soup, asparagus fried rice, and asparagus tacos (not really recommended, though), plus have barbequed them a couple of times with butter, PLUS have had a lot of normal steamed asparagus. Am running out of ways to use it before it all goes bad! I used to hate asparagus as a kid - good thing that changed before now.
Friday, 22 May 2009
Garden!
Don't worry, my leg didn't fall off. Only the skin on my ankle did (after two weeks of two kinds of antibiotics). Now I have nice pink new skin there and all is good.
Had a pretty busy couple of weeks getting a studentship application in. They are a LOT of work and I don't feel it's very likely I'll get this one, so a crappy return on investment. However, when your supervisor says "apply for this", you can't really say "No, it's probably a bad ROI." I suppose it's good experience, blah blah blah, writing up research proposals and all that. No fun, though.
So I killed myself working on that all last week, handed it in*, and promptly got completely ill and stayed that way for the whole long weekend.
Unfortunately, we also put a good bit of our giant garden in that weekend, and I felt compelled to get out there and do some work despite being diseased. Don't think that helped me heal too quickly. Garden looks great, though. It is actually in two bits - our grand plan for MY garden fell by the wayside when the landlady's husband's daughter and her boyfriend moved into the bottom of my house. They seemed very nice, so the first thing I asked them was, "You guys don't like gardening, do you?" The answer, sadly, was an enthusiastic "YEAH! We can't wait to get out there and get a garden in! We can share the space, right?" Sigh.
So, it was time to rethink. We didn't want to halve our grand garden plans (considering there are five of us in on this, and a tiny garden = not much yield per person). So I cut a deal with the Boys Next Door, who have a massive yard and had just let it all go to weeds. Oliver and I dug a 1050sq ft garden on their side of the fence in return for cutting them in on the food produced. So then the garden looked great but the yard was a mess. This guilted the Boys N. D. into mowing the weeds, getting rid of the garbage, and making a gorgeous fire pit plus two benches. Now their yard looks amazing, we have our garden (half in their yard and half in mine), and the unemployed downstairs neighbour is spending all his time landscaping our yard, so now it looks great too. Moral of the story: always make nice with the neighbours.
So far we have planted potatoes, rocket (arugula), lettuce, cilantro, tomatoes, tomatillos (which Del thought would be a cross between a tomato and an armadillo), and huckleberries, which are mysterious to all of us but someone gave to Oliver. This weekend we will do the big plant, although I'm not sure when we will fit it in. I have a conference on fMRI all weekend (organised by my supervisor, so no skipping), a party tonight, and the Boys N. D. are hosting the Beer Olympics tomorrow afternoon at their place. Probably a bit difficult to plant a garden in the midst of people performing the Keg Put and the 100 Litre Dash.
*not without drama - my supervisor did not give me his letter of reference until 2.30 due to printer issues, and the post office closed at 3.00. Although I was only sending it across campus, the instructions declared that the envelope had to be postmarked by 5pm on the deadline. So I ended up sprinting across campus clutching an envelope in one hand and all my attachments in the other, bursting into the post office two minutes before it shut, and frantically scribbling the envelope while the post office lady (who was keen to get started on her long weekend) stood over me ranting about how the mail guy would be there AT 3PM and I better hurry. I only hope it was somewhat legible...
Had a pretty busy couple of weeks getting a studentship application in. They are a LOT of work and I don't feel it's very likely I'll get this one, so a crappy return on investment. However, when your supervisor says "apply for this", you can't really say "No, it's probably a bad ROI." I suppose it's good experience, blah blah blah, writing up research proposals and all that. No fun, though.
So I killed myself working on that all last week, handed it in*, and promptly got completely ill and stayed that way for the whole long weekend.
Unfortunately, we also put a good bit of our giant garden in that weekend, and I felt compelled to get out there and do some work despite being diseased. Don't think that helped me heal too quickly. Garden looks great, though. It is actually in two bits - our grand plan for MY garden fell by the wayside when the landlady's husband's daughter and her boyfriend moved into the bottom of my house. They seemed very nice, so the first thing I asked them was, "You guys don't like gardening, do you?" The answer, sadly, was an enthusiastic "YEAH! We can't wait to get out there and get a garden in! We can share the space, right?" Sigh.
So, it was time to rethink. We didn't want to halve our grand garden plans (considering there are five of us in on this, and a tiny garden = not much yield per person). So I cut a deal with the Boys Next Door, who have a massive yard and had just let it all go to weeds. Oliver and I dug a 1050sq ft garden on their side of the fence in return for cutting them in on the food produced. So then the garden looked great but the yard was a mess. This guilted the Boys N. D. into mowing the weeds, getting rid of the garbage, and making a gorgeous fire pit plus two benches. Now their yard looks amazing, we have our garden (half in their yard and half in mine), and the unemployed downstairs neighbour is spending all his time landscaping our yard, so now it looks great too. Moral of the story: always make nice with the neighbours.
So far we have planted potatoes, rocket (arugula), lettuce, cilantro, tomatoes, tomatillos (which Del thought would be a cross between a tomato and an armadillo), and huckleberries, which are mysterious to all of us but someone gave to Oliver. This weekend we will do the big plant, although I'm not sure when we will fit it in. I have a conference on fMRI all weekend (organised by my supervisor, so no skipping), a party tonight, and the Boys N. D. are hosting the Beer Olympics tomorrow afternoon at their place. Probably a bit difficult to plant a garden in the midst of people performing the Keg Put and the 100 Litre Dash.
*not without drama - my supervisor did not give me his letter of reference until 2.30 due to printer issues, and the post office closed at 3.00. Although I was only sending it across campus, the instructions declared that the envelope had to be postmarked by 5pm on the deadline. So I ended up sprinting across campus clutching an envelope in one hand and all my attachments in the other, bursting into the post office two minutes before it shut, and frantically scribbling the envelope while the post office lady (who was keen to get started on her long weekend) stood over me ranting about how the mail guy would be there AT 3PM and I better hurry. I only hope it was somewhat legible...
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Infection!
Woke up on Monday with an extremely itchy ankle. By Tuesday it was hugely swollen and bright red and sore, with a little white scab on top. Del badgered me until I went to the doctor today, even though they are always dismissive and only ever tell me nothing's really wrong. Or if it is, they can't fix it. Anyway, the lady at the front desk wanted to give me a Friday appointment, but agreed to let me hang out in the waiting room, be seen by a nurse and maybe sent to a doctor if it was urgent.
So the nurse came along, took one look and went "WHOA! It's a good thing you came in when you did - that thing would be halfway up your leg by Friday!" eek! Anyway, so she sent me straight in to the doctor, who was lovely, and now I have an oral antibiotic and an antibiotic cream, so hopefully my leg won't fall off. Oh, and a talking-to from the nurse about going in to check if I'm still allergic to penicillin, and getting a medic alert bracelet if I am.
In other news, I learned to make quiche from scratch this week! Very exciting. I need to stop making them soon because it is probably sending my cholesterol levels through the roof, but SO GOOD!
So the nurse came along, took one look and went "WHOA! It's a good thing you came in when you did - that thing would be halfway up your leg by Friday!" eek! Anyway, so she sent me straight in to the doctor, who was lovely, and now I have an oral antibiotic and an antibiotic cream, so hopefully my leg won't fall off. Oh, and a talking-to from the nurse about going in to check if I'm still allergic to penicillin, and getting a medic alert bracelet if I am.
In other news, I learned to make quiche from scratch this week! Very exciting. I need to stop making them soon because it is probably sending my cholesterol levels through the roof, but SO GOOD!
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Neighbours
I pruned my vineyard today.
Okay, let's be honest, ERIK pruned my two lines of grapevines. But it was still pretty cool.
Met the neighbour on the other side. Her name is Frankie. Hers is the small yappy dog I keep hearing. Her husband is bedbound and when they tried to take him to the hospital for his lungs, his heart stopped. Now his leg is falling off and one toe is entirely black and they are trying to decide where to amputate. He lost 150 pounds and now he weighs 120, but he can shuffle around the house.
Frankie also told me about the old Italian guy who used to own the house, which explains a LOT. Apparently the downstairs windows are covered with home-made booby tracks to electrocute burglars. Have to keep an eye out for that one...
The other neighbours are having a bonfire tonight, though, so must be off.
Okay, let's be honest, ERIK pruned my two lines of grapevines. But it was still pretty cool.
Met the neighbour on the other side. Her name is Frankie. Hers is the small yappy dog I keep hearing. Her husband is bedbound and when they tried to take him to the hospital for his lungs, his heart stopped. Now his leg is falling off and one toe is entirely black and they are trying to decide where to amputate. He lost 150 pounds and now he weighs 120, but he can shuffle around the house.
Frankie also told me about the old Italian guy who used to own the house, which explains a LOT. Apparently the downstairs windows are covered with home-made booby tracks to electrocute burglars. Have to keep an eye out for that one...
The other neighbours are having a bonfire tonight, though, so must be off.
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