Dream trippin'

When we bought our house (four years ago today!), one of the best things that Mr E Man and I did was to invest in a really good bed. We'd been sleeping on a queen-size futon, and although it was a good fit for our small rented apartment, we decided that our larger space and newly-acquired grown-up status were worthy of a better place to lay our heads. So we found a beautiful cherry-wood bedroom furniture set on Craigslist, including a king-size sleigh bed frame, and bought the best mattress we could afford to go with it. Memory foam pillows and a lovely heavy duvet complete the set, and we both now (usually) sleep better than we ever have before in our adult lives. We like to cuddle up when we first go to bed, and again when we wake up, but we separate to sleep - and in our lovely lovely bed, there's plenty of space for us both to move around and get comfy without ever touching each other!

The problem comes when we go on vacation. We've spoiled ourselves rotten at home, and have a terrible time sleeping in inferior beds. Anything smaller than a king-sized bed has us tossing and turning and fighting for space in an extreeeeeemely mature way ("stop touching me!!!" "I'm not! YOU'RE touching ME!!!"), and back in November The Most Uncomfortable Bed In The World forced us to abandon our otherwise wonderful accommodation in Cienfuegos, and upset our gracious hostess in the process.

Hotel beds are usually fine, but our budget is better suited to B&Bs and friends'/relatives' spare rooms. And so it was on last week's trip. With my parents in tow, we didn't even get the best spare room in each case. We slept on a pull-out sofa bed at my sister-in-law's, an old and not terribly comfortable queen-size bed in the condo we rented in Whistler, and then foam pads on the floor of the computer room at my mother-in-law's. (The latter was actually the most comfortable bed of the three - or at least the one that offered the most space). These inferior beds meant that I got little sleep on our "vacation", typically waking two or three times during the night and waking up for good by 6:30 am at the latest. We always relish sleeping in our own bed for the first time after a trip, but last night's return to home base was particularly welcome.

There was an upside to last week's inferior sleeping arrangements, though: I got to experience two new categories of dreams!

I love dreams. I find them fascinating. Where do they come from?  What are they for? (And do my cats' dreams serve the same purpose as my own?) So whole new dream categories are extremely welcome, even if the dreams themselves suck.

Category I: The Boring Dream. 

I had Boring Dreams twice on the trip. I can't remember what they were about - because they were really, really boring - but I woke up with a huge sense of relief - "thank God that's over with". This made waking up at 6 am on a vacation day feel much more welcome than it would have done otherwise.

Category II: The PMS Dream.

I woke up (early, of course) one morning to find myself really, really mad at Mr E Man. The reason? Well, you see, he'd been put in prison for something or other, but I knew that he was innocent, and I worked my ass off for six months to prove it. When I finally got him out of jail - having lost my job and several friends in the process - he wanted to see his friends instead of just spending time with me all the time, and I turned into Super Bitch. In my dream, I knew I was hormonal and wasn't being entirely rational or reasonable in my anger, but I couldn't stop myself from escalating the situation, until I ended up screaming at him in front of all his friends - at his prison release celebration party, no less! - and storming off down the street in a dodgy neighbourhood in the middle of the night.

I'm not quite that bad in real life when I have PMS*, but the sense of "oh this is because I'm hormonal but oops I don't seem to be able to stop myself even though I've now realised that I'm overreacting" was uncannily familiar. First time in a dream, though - but not the first time I've stayed mad at someone in the morning after "they" pissed me off in a dream!

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*although I did once storm out of a restaurant in a huff because Mr E Man kept tickling my knee after I'd asked him to stop it - TWICE. I already felt silly by the time I got home, about two minutes later...

RBO Parents

• Nothing says "generation gap" to me quite like ironing. I haven't ironed anything for years - not since I worked in industry and had to dress like a grownup, and even then it was only occasionally. My philosophy is that if you pull things out of the dryer quickly enough, or hang them correctly during air drying, they don't need to be ironed. My Mum, on the other hand, irons pretty much everything except underwear. Casual t-shirts, pajamas, pillow cases - she'll iron 'em. I do have an ironing board and iron, but couldn't find the latter when asked for it. I emptied all the cupboards and couldn't find it anywhere. My parents were leaving for their Alaskan cruise the next day, and actually made me call a couple of friends to see if they could borrow an iron before they left. No-one had one, so... they went out and bought a new one. Then made a point of keeping it in their room while they're here "in case anything happens to it".
• My parents have more conversations with strangers in a couple of weeks in Vancouver than I manage in a year. They come back every day with stories of meeting a couple from Australia, a woman who works for the Canucks, a lovely old lady from Germany etc etc etc. I guess it's due to spending most of their time in touristy places with other people who are more relaxed and ready to talk than your average Vancouverite. 
• They also have a habit of bumping into people they know - they went on a snowshoeing excursion in Alaska and met the parents of a girl who used to play netball with my sister. Every trip, I swear.
• They found out about my tattoo. I was planning on bringing it up in the next couple of days, because we're renting a place in Whistler with a hot tub next week, but a friend forced the issue at a party last night. He asked me - quietly, but right in front of my Dad - what my parents thought of my tattoo. I threw said "friend" a filthy look, and hoped that my Dad hadn't heard. A little while later, my Mum commented (coincidentally. Or maybe not.) that there were a lot of people with tattoos in the room - "much more than in England" - and I decided to bite the bullet. I didn't show it off until this morning, and the reaction was "Oh, that's not too bad! It's very big, though" (Mum) and "I suppose it could be worse" (Dad). Considering that they don't like a) tattoos and b) me being Canadian, the reaction could also have been worse (and possibly will be, in private!)
• I have confirmed that my complete inability to dance is genetic - on both sides of the family

Mr E Man tries to show my Mum how it's done. He can't dance either, though.

We're leaving tomorrow for a circuit of South-Western BC, encompassing visits with my sister-in-law, a golf / spa stay in Whistler, and a visit with my mother-in-law. I'll be offline for the whole week... wish me luck!

More fun with logos

In searching for a better version of the London 2012 logo to use in my last post, I came across some real gems in Google Images.

I think we all looked at the original logo and thought "hell, I could do better than that". These people set out to prove it:

Very, very nice - I like the top one best, but the bottom one is also excellent. The middle one's a bit meh, but it's still better than the official logo.

This person went in another direction:

Says it all, really.

2012 LOLympics

I have had an incredibly hard time not laughing out loud at my desk today.

If you thought the London 2010 Olympic logo was bad (and it really, really is),

you should see the mascots!

ROFLMFAO!!!!!!! What the fuck were they smoking thinking??!! As if the actual design isn't bad enough, the execution is awful too - the one on the left is all lumpy, FFS!

More hilarious photos here

I know a lot of people didn't like the Vancouver 2010 mascots, especially when they first saw them, but I thought they were pretty good. Except for Quatchi, of course - Quatchi is AWESOME. I bet he could kickWenlock or Mandeville's ass any day of the week.

Although Quatchi loves all winter sports, he’s especially fond of hockey. He dreams of becoming a world-famous goalie. Because of his large size, he can be a little clumsy. But no one can question his passion. He knows that if he works hard and always does his best, he might one day achieve his dream. Quatchi is always encouraging his friends to join him on journeys across Canada. He is also often recruiting others to play hockey – or at least to take shots at him!

The sasquatch is a popular figure in local native legends of the Pacific West Coast. The sasquatch reminds us of the mystery and wonder that exist in the natural world, igniting our imagination about the possibility of undiscovered creatures in the great Canadian wilderness.

A hockey-playing sasquatch? Now THAT is a mascot.

Suck it, London!

(But thanks for the giggles)

Safety first!

Our various sets of friends who had babies last year have done very well for themselves - all babies are healthy and cute, and thanks to gifts from friends and family with older kids, they've barely had to buy anything themselves. Case in point: Morgan's parents have been given several car seats for kids of various sizes. So when my friends brought their 18 month old to visit earlier this year, we knew who to turn to for a loaner seat.

The problem came when we wanted to give the seat back. Our friends had just been given a new and better seat, and said that we could keep the other one.

Oh goody, just what I've always wanted.

Lilah's parents don't need it either, so it's just sitting in our house until we find time to take it to a charity of some sort.

But at least someone's getting some use out of it:

Science Idol

The BBC's "Science and Environment" RSS feed included a real gem today*: news of a competition in which members of the public were asked to submit ideas for research projects. The four winners will be mentored by experts in their chosen field as they design and conduct the appropriate experiments, and then (hopefully) write them up for publication.

This is an absolutely brilliant idea, and I hope the BBC will continue to support (and report on) this initiative.

The article also reminded me of recurring conversations I've had with various scientist friends about our own fantasy research projects. The ones we would undertake if we had the time, resources, and specialist knowledge. The first is (more or less) within my field of expertise, the other is way, way outside it, but here goes - please feel free to submit reviewers' comments on each proposal!

Project I: a comparison of human and equine malignant melanomas.

My flatmate and all-round best friend during my PhD days was a physiologist who specialized in equine gastrology. She's been around horses her whole life, in roles from stable girl to veterinary assistant to physiologist to punter at the races, and loves to talk about her work whenever possible.

She mentioned just in passing one day that she'd just assisted at the necropsy of a white horse, and said "much less melanoma than usual".

"Um, what?", asked the person who worked at the cancer research centre just up the road from the vet school.

It turns out that a majority of white horses have extensive metastatic melanoma throughout their entire body, a condition that may be genetically related to their pigmentation.

My friend described the art of necropsy of white horses as "pulling out big black nodules like bunches of grapes to try and get to the organs to find the cause of death".

"The melanoma's not the cause of death?"

"No! They can live like that for years!"

Apparently this is something that every vet just knows. Y'know, like every cancer researcher just knows that malignant melanoma in humans is an extremely aggressive disease that's often fatal in just a few months.

But apparently, vets don't often talk to cancer researchers. Unless a university graduate student office happens to assign one person of each type to a shared university flat in their first year, and they end up becoming lifelong friends who enjoy talking about science in pubs.

There are a few clinical reports of "pigmented epithelioid melanocytoma", aka "equine" or "animal-type" melanoma, in humans. But not one basic cancer researcher I've ever talked to had heard of this phenomenon before I mentioned it.

As soon as I heard about melanoma in white horses, I wanted to perform a genetic comparison to human melanomas to try and uncover the reason for the differences in pathology. This was in the late nineties / early noughties, so I was thinking in terms of microarray studies and comparative hybridizations, but none of those approaches were really suitable. Of course now that we have next current generation sequencing technology, the problem is eminently soluble. "All" you need is the human and horse genome sequences (a high-quality draft of the latter is now available), and then normal DNA plus tumour DNA and RNA from each of:

• a malignant melanoma from a white horse;
• a pigmented epithelioid melanocytoma from a human;
• a regular human melanoma;

and Robert's your father's brother.

I would love to see this study done, and sincerely hope that someone decides to tackle it in the next few years.

Project II: a comparison of visual response and decision making processes in (ice) hockey goalies and mere mortals.

Have you ever watched a game of (ice) hockey? It's fast. Scary fast. So fast that it took me months to learn how to follow the puck properly (it's all about inferring its position, speed and direction from the players' body language as well as from the brief glimpses of speeding frozen black rubber that you occasionally manage to catch). And the goalies are simply amazing. Here's a particularly impressive example of the art of the glove save, from the Vancouver Canucks' Roberto Luongo in last night's** playoff game that eliminated the LA Kings from Stanley Cup contention. Man, I loves me some regicide.



As soon as I started to get into hockey, I wanted to know how these guys get so good. How on earth do they manage to see the puck in time to stop it? (And why don't they run away gibbering and crying like normal people instead of trying to make the save?) Again, this discussion came up on a regular basis while watching games in the pub with my geeky friends. Are the parts of the brain that process visual information and turn it into quick decisions simply more developed in these players? If so, is this something that develops over time as they train, or is it innate?

There's only one even slightly relevant paper in the literature, a 1979 study titled "Visual cues in ice hockey goaltending" (no-one should be surprised that it was published in the Canadian Journal of Applied Sport Science). The study assessed the visual cues that young goalies can pick up from an attacker's approach on goal, but there was no control group and no real insight into my specific question.

As stated earlier, this study would be far outside my area of expertise. I know that some people find fMRI results, ahem, fishy, but maybe there's some kind of brain scan that could be done on junior and elite hockey goalies, compared to hockey players who specialise in other positions, elite players of other sports, and average Joes, to see if there are any structural or functional differences there.

Anyway, those are my picks. Does anyone else have a fantasy research project they'd like to see done?

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*Not actually today. I originally posted this on t'other blog, where it didn't get many comments. So I thought you guys might actually like to see some science blogging over here for a change :)

**Again, not actually last night, as much as I'd like to turn the clock back and have another chance at Round Two against those Chicago bastards

Employ Yoda, Microsoft must

More fun with Word:

Amused I am, yes.

What will happen if you take your parents to a gig

In chronological order:

• Your parents will finally announce the start and end dates of their much-discussed five week trip to Vancouver
• You will dutifully add the dates to your calendar
• A few weeks later, you will find out that Delhi 2 Dublin are playing the Commodore on May 7th, and you finally have a chance to see them after missing out twice in the last couple of years
• You will check your calendar and realise that the gig will take place while your parents are in town
• You will swear
• You will ask your parents via Skype if they would like to go to see a Celtic-bhangra fusion band
• They will say "we're up for anything!"
• You will buy four tickets to said concert
• Your sister will say "erm... seriously? HAHAHAHA!"
• When your parents arrive, you will remind them that you have tickets for a gig on May 7th
• They will have forgotten, and will look slightly dubious about the concept of Celtic-bhangra fusion music
• The Canucks will end up playing Game 4 of their second round playoff series on the same night
• Your husband will threaten not to come to the concert
• You will call the Commodore, and they will tell you that they do not show hockey games on night when there's a band on
• You will swear
• You will decide to watch the game at home and then jump in a cab and head downtown as soon as it ends
• You will hope there is no overtime
• The Canucks will suck
• You will drink faster than normal during the game because of the tension and frustration of it all 
• You will realise that overtime is a laughably over-optimistic objective for this game
• Everyone will swear
• And again
• And then some more
• Your husband will call a cab just as the game ends
• No-one will be ready to leave as he makes the call, but your husband will confidently say "plenty of time, it's going to take bloody ages to get a cab tonight"
• The cab will arrive immediately
• Everyone will swear and run around the house in a mad panic
• You will pop to the loo before leaving
• When you come out, everyone will be outside chasing your cat, who escaped through the front door during the chaos
• You will swear
• Everyone will swear
• The taxi driver will laugh at you all
• You will be mad at everybody for letting the cat out
• The cat will evade all attempts at recapture and disappear down the back alley
• You will swear some more
• You will get into the cab and go to the gig anyway, although you will be really worried about the cat, who has never been outside at night before and there are raccoons and coyotes and she doesn't even have her sister with her for backup
• Everyone will be grumpy in the cab, because of the stoopid cat and the even stoopider Canucks
• You will tip the driver well for not driving away in disgust during the chaos 
• You will cheer up a bit when you get IDed at the venue
• Your Dad will be astonished (and delighted) that beer is available for purchase
• He will say "do they sell beer at gigs in England?"
• You will ask him when he last went to a gig*
• He will admit that he doesn't remember, but it was probably in the 60s and might have been the Hollies
• You will drink faster than normal because you're worried about your cat and mad that no-one was paying attention while she escaped, but don't want to get into an argument about it at this precise moment
• There will be several techno DJs as support acts
• They will mostly suck
• Your parents will look a bit lost and confused and uncomfortable
• They will enjoy the break dancers though
• Your husband will ease the tension by asking your Mum what her favourite song was so far
• You will gradually lighten up and start to enjoy yourself 
• You will get into a debate with your Dad about which is worse: to have never seen your team (Newcastle United) win anything in your whole lifetime (me), or to have seen them win something when you were seven and then suffer through a much longer lifetime of disappointment and failure after that (him)
• You will approach a guy in a Newcastle shirt to ask him to settle the dispute
• When you get close, you will realise that it's actually a Juventus shirt
• You will realise that you are drunk
• Delhi 2 Dublin will finally come on at about 11:30pm
• They will rock
• Everyone will get up and dance
• Your Dad will astonish you by shouting "I know this song!"
• You will drag him onto the dance floor
• You will realise that you are really drunk, but that's OK because so is your Dad
• And your husband
• Everyone will have an awesome time and buy CDs as souvenirs
• You will get home to find one freaked-out cat with a big bloody scratch on her nose cowering by the back door
• She will be completely fine after a big cuddle
• You will declare the evening a huge success
• You will be very hungover the next day

Next up: what will happen if you take your parents to a Canucks game! Yay Canucks for winning Game 5 after Mr E Man had secured tickets for Game 6! WOOOOOOOOOO!

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*as opposed to a sit-down concert. They go to lots of those

Democracy in the UK

Me: "So what are you going to do today?"

Dad: "Stay here and watch the election coverage on the internet"

Yup, it's election time in the UK!

I'm not voting, because I don't think it's fair for people to influence the results if they don't have to live with the consequences¹. For the record, if I had decided to vote, I would have picked the Liberal Democrats - their coalition with Labour did some good things in the Scottish parliament, and I think that would be my favoured outcome for this election. Although if there's a hung parliament and Labour end up in third place, as is being predicted, a Lib Dem - Conservative coalition might better reflect the way the country voted and therefore be a fairer outcome, if a less natural relationship.

Speaking of which, the chance that the Lib Dems might manage to push through some kind of electoral reform is one of my reasons for hoping they form part of the next government. The current first-past-the-post system is blatantly unfair; the Lib Dems in the UK (and the NDP in Canada) get far fewer seats than they should, given the share of the popular vote they attract. Given that the UK and Canadian systems are essentially identical, my wish is the same for both systems: a mixed constituency MP / proportional representation system like the Scottish one. In Scotland, everyone gets two votes - the first for a candidate in your constituency, and the second for a political party. A certain percentage of seats in the house are given to the candidates who win in each constituency with the first vote, and the rest are divided up among the parties according to what percentage of the second vote they won. This system let me vote for Donald Dewar, the Labour candidate in my constituency, who was a bloody good bloke and also guaranteed to win regardless of how I voted, but also for the Lib Dems, who, as I mentioned, used their PR share of the seats to form a governing coalition with Labour and get some of their pet issues (abolition of university tuition fees, universal free care for the elderly) into the books.

Anyway, I seem to have got sidetracked from the original purpose of this post, which was to lament that I miss the British election fever. It's just not the same in Canada; people don't talk about politics as much, and we're missing a certain British sense of silliness and fun. Every Brit I know in real life and on the internet is positively obsessed with this election, and I've had a fantastic time reading their posts, debating with them,and listening to the hilarious Vote Now Show podcasts from the BBC². The last Canadian election campaign was deathly dull in comparison. My friends did talk about it, but not with the passion and obsession that you see in the UK. I think we actually discussed the US election more than the Canadian one. There were no election night parties with drinking games (featuring red, blue, and yellow drinks, obviously) based on the number of seats each party wins, and no-one stayed up all night to watch the results come in like everyone I know always does in the UK.

Part of the reason is that I'm in the West of Canada, where we're under-represented in parliament and where people are still voting when the results in the East are already known. Yeah, there's a complete ban on reporting those results until the Western polls close, but it doesn't exactly help to ease the existing sense that our voices don't matter and that people in other provinces have already chosen the government before we've even voted. I've watched election night CBC news shows where the outcome was announced within ten minutes of our polls closing, before a single BC vote had even been counted.

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From Wikipedia:
 
Electoral Quotient (Average population per MP):

Prince Edward Island: 33,824
Saskatchewan: 69,924
New Brunswick: 72,950
Newfoundland and Labrador: 73,276
Manitoba: 79,970
Nova Scotia: 82,546
Quebec: 96,500
Alberta: 106,243
Ontario: 107,642

British Columbia: 108,548

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Combining this situation with a first-past-the-post system is a recipe for voter disengagement and dangerously low turnouts, especially in the West³. We should have a mixed constituency MP / proportional representation system. You know, like the Scottish one (see how I managed to link what I originally planned to write about back into what I waffled on about at the beginning? Blogging WIN!)

Can any of my Canadian readers from over-represented and/or Eastern time zone provinces please let me know if there's any more election fever there than there is in BC? I might have to come for a visit during the next election campaign...

Anyway, if you're in the UK, enjoy all the swingometer action tonight! Have some red, blue, and/or yellow drinks for me.

And, if you haven't voted yet, GET OUT AND VOTE! You have a right that's been given to only a tiny minority of the people who have ever lived, and which is still denied to far too many: please don't take it for granted.

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1) Although I might vote next time just to make sure that I keep my rights in case I want to use them in the future - see Tideliar's recent post about trying to register as an overseas voter. I'd probably vote for the Green party though, or someone else who hasn't got a chance of winning.


2) I taught my parents how to play these podcasts from iTunes before I left this morning. They're both feeling homesick today. 

3) Oh well, at least we've got the oil sands Rocky Mountains and all the best ski resorts.

Wren and Stumped-y

Damnit, Microsoft!

Why?

Just... why?

I mistype "were" all the freaking time. 

The title of this blog post is the first time I've deliberately typed "wren" in... years? decades? ever?

So why is it the first option on the suggestions list?! It's the least common (and alphabetically the last) word on there!

Booooooooo

/grumpy & crampy & keen to get outta here

Farewell, giant marshmallow

Before:

(photo credit)

During:

(photo by me)

After:

(photo by me)

The Vancouver skyline will never be the same again. But at least we won't have to queue for up to an hour to get out of the stadium at the end of an event any more... air-supported roof = only a few revolving doors (with airlocks) can be used.

Scottish tree hybridisers

My parents are here!

They arrived on Saturday, on the same flight as my boss's inlaws¹ and the woman who Gordon Brown called a bigot². And now I have five weeks of chatting to my Dad about football  before work! Oh, and endless comments of the "do you always have that kind of thing for breakfast?" variety. At least my Mum has finally given up trying to stop me (and my sister, when they visit her) from leaving the house with wet hair.

Yesterday morning was spent in the VanDusen Botanical Garden, which is in full and splendid bloom at the moment.

A non-blooming part of the garden. Oops!

My Dad's sense of humour has been documented here previously, but one thing I didn't mention was that every trip has to have a theme. He'll find something that amuses him, then create a whole set of jokes, stories, and banter around it. For example, after meeting someone on his flight once who had an annoying voice and rather unusual opinions on several issues, everything that happened on that trip had to be commented on and re-told as if by that person. It's always very funny for the first week, less so the second, and gets gradually more annoying through constant repetition. By the end of five weeks we'll be begging him to stop, but my poor Mum will have to live with it for at least another month after they get home.

Mr E Man's Scottish heritage is a recurring theme of my Dad's banter, and he happened to be wearing his Scotland rugby shirt yesterday. So when my Dad spotted a mention of a "famous Scottish tree hybridiser" on one of the Garden's plaques, it quickly became apparent that the theme for this trip was set.

"You Scotsmen will shag anything!" was the opening salvo. (Mr E Man did point out that this is not a very nice thing to say to the man who married your daughter).

There was much more banter along these lines as we made our way around the garden, and the puns and jokes continued over lunch. I know I shouldn't encourage my Dad in his efforts, but "Robert the Spruce" popped into my head and was too good not to share. My Dad then inquired whether Mr E Man's ancestors came from the Outer or Inner Hybridise³, and it's all been downhill since then.

Sigh.

Ah well, it's lovely to see them, and we have lots planned for the next few weeks. Luckily, both my parents seem happy to watch lots of hockey (Go Canucks Go! WOOOOOOO!). We're also taking them to see Delhi 2 Dublin (we've told my Dad that the venue will be serving curried Guiness), and to visit Mr E Man's mum and then one of his sisters. Oh, and we're going to Whistler so the boys can play golf and the girls can go to the spa. So if you don't see me round the blogosphere as much as usual, this is why... so much to do! Although we will have a temporary return to normality next week when my parents leave for their week-long Alaskan cruise, and they might also go down to Seattle for a couple of days at some point.

Oh, and the cats are being excellent ambassadors for their species; if this continues, my Mum should be able to persuade my Dad to get another cat (the last one died seven years ago), if/when she decides that she would like one. She's always been a pet person, but my Dad most definitely isn't, and he agreed to get the last cat only after much begging and crying by my sister and me. The cat turned out to be a vicious little bugger who'd rather scratch you than snuggle with you; Google and Saba are the opposite, and have already slept on his lap several times. Nice work, kitties!

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1) I ran into him and his family in the arrivals area. We had a long wait as there was a problem with the baggage carousel; my parents got one suitcase immediately, but had to wait an hour before the second one showed up.


2) Apparently she was very embarrassed to be recognised! I wonder if it was a pre-planned trip or if she suddenly felt the need to flee the country...


3) Link for those of you not au fait with Scottish geography