Sound as a pound

Right, we've got charts, a compass, tide tables, two Swiss Army knives, bear spray, and an air horn*, and we're off on an adventure! (Well, we're actually off to my mother-in-law's today, which isn't all that adventurous, even when our nephews are there, which they are. The adventure starts tomorrow morning).

If anyone needs me I'll be on a horse in a kayak, somewhere in Desolation Sound (so called because Captain Vancouver saw it on a bad day. Apparently it's beautiful and not at all desolate - at least not in summer).

Oh, and our tenant's still going to be around, so don't even think about breaking into our house while we're away! He's a seriously big dude (6 foot 7 and built like a brick shithouse) who's bodyguarded for Jean Claude van Damme and Vin Diesel, among others. He's loaned us his bear spray; he often comes across bears in the course of his (non bodyguarding) work duties, but they run away from him. Seriously. He has an example of this kind of interaction caught on a tape from a work security camera, but I'm not allowed to post it.

He's the big one in this photo - and bear (hah!) in mind that none of the other three guys is exactly petite.

Left to right: Mr E Man, my Dad, our massive tenant, baby Lilah's Dad

He's also a fantastic cat sitter, and the kitties love him.

BTW, expect (slightly) more science blogging than you've been used to when I get back! (Don't worry, you can skip the science posts if you're not interested. Same goes for any other kind of post, obviously, although I assume that every single reader is riveted by the ongoing dental floss conversation).

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*Conversation while reserving kayaks:

Me: "is there much bear activity up there at the moment?"
Woman in kayak shop: "there's one on the lawn right now! It's looking at me through the window!"
Me: "..."

Hence the bear spray and air horn.

This is my dental floss

That is all.

(See last post if confused!)

Catho the Sane visits Canadian Tire

In So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish, the fourth of five books in the Hitchhiker trilogy by Douglas Adams, our hero Arthur Dent travels to California to meet a man called Wonko the Sane. Wonko's house is inside-out, with brickwork and a nice garden inside (or "outside the Asylum", as he calls it), and nice wallpaper, carpeting, and outward-facing furniture against all the outside walls. Wonko explains the purpose of his inside-out house as follows:

"I finally realized that the world had gone totally mad and built the Asylum to put it in, the poor thing, and hoped it would get better."

The words that inspired this final realization are displayed "inside" the house, above the door that leads into the Asylum, to discourage Wonko from entering. They read:

"Hold stick near centre of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion".

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"It seemed to me," said Wonko the Sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane."

Now, I think old Wonko might be slightly off-base here. I mean, I once had to teach my Dad, an intelligent and educated man, how to use dental floss because he professed not to know how it worked. So maybe we do need instructions in our packets of toothpicks.

However, I do agree that the world has gone insane and needs to be put in an asylum of some kind.

I had my own final realization yesterday, in the camping equipment aisles of Canadian Tire. While Mr E Man perused collapsible coolers and gazed longingly at hunting knives and fishing gear, I entertained myself by looking at all the little plasticky gadgetty things.

Now, I'm a sucker for gadgets. I've bought the Scoop'N'Strain and the Grip'N'Flip off the TV - but those are actually useful things that serve a unique purpose. So I did have to restrain myself slightly in the camping equipment aisles, with my usual refrain of "that's cool, oh but I don't need it, but it might come in handy, oh right but PLASTIC IS TEH EVULS!!!".

Until I spotted my Wonko the Sane item.

At that point I abandoned all restraint and whipped out my iPhone to take a photo for your amusement:

That's right, folks - someone has seen fit to design, patent, manufacture, and market a piece of plastic that has the sole purpose of propping open your cooler lid while the inside dries. No longer must you improvise with wads of newspaper, sticks, stones, pencils, or any of that other primitive nonsense - what are you, a savage??!! Nope, you must buy this item that will outlast you, your species, and probably your planet in a landfill somewhere....

...because the world has gone stark raving bonkers.

If anyone needs me I'll be moving all my furniture outside and planting trees in my living room.

That Round-Headed Kid-ding

The movie industry is a harsh mistress, all boom and bust. When a big production comes to town, there's plenty of work (and overtime) to go around - but the lean times can be very lean indeed for Mr E Man and his fellow spaceship builders, and there's always the fear that shiny new tax breaks in Toronto or Australia or elsewhere will lure the big money away.

This uncertain environment is a fertile breeding ground for speculation and rumours of The Next Big One. Mr E Man often reports back from the studio with tales of the film he might be working on next, some of the tales plausible, but others more on the "what on Earth will Hollywood think of next?! Who watches this shit?" spectrum.

So, yesterday, Mr E Man decided to start his own rumour. He made it as preposterous as he could, but apparently he has several people believing that after the current show, the whole crew will be moving on to a big budget, live-action remake of...

A Charlie Brown Christmas.

With George Clooney as Charlie Brown.

And Angelina Jolie as Lucy.

Image source. All the other Peanuts images were copyrighted.

Mr E Man has given me permission to blog this story, in the hopes that my readers can come up with even more preposterous rumours for him to spread once this one dies down.

SIR YES SIR!

Would it be wrong to interpret the first two words of this list as a direct order?

This rut is NOT the middle ground I'm looking for!

I'm in a real exercise slump at the moment. After the exertion of the ride down to Seattle, and all the training I was doing before that, I thought "I've worked hard for a long time and I deserve a rest as a reward. I won't do any exercise for a few days". Suddenly weeks have passed, I'm stuck in a pattern, and I feel like a slob*.

Unfortunately, this is a recurring pattern for me - and not just with exercise. For example, I went on a very strict diet for a few months before my wedding. When it was all over, I thought "I've deprived myself for a long time and I deserve to indulge myself as a reward. I'll eat whatever I like for a few days". Suddenly weeks had passed, I was stuck in a pattern, and I felt fat.

This is bad and self-destructive and needs to stop.

But what to do? I don't want to never allow myself any rewards, ever - but once I start to indulge myself, I find it very, very difficult to stop. Any excuse becomes a good excuse, even though I know I'll feel a hundred times better if I tell myself "no it's not too hot / too windy / too much hassle, just go for a run already!" or "you'll regret the chips, ask for the salad instead!"

Why must my bad habits be so much harder to break than the good ones?!

Why can't I find some middle ground between "training all the time" and "being a slob"??!!

Ah well, at least there's no chance of me falling into the same trap at work. Rewards, rest, and self-indulgence? HA!!! The Sentient Grant of DOOM may be submitted, but all that means is that it's time to catch up on all the other work that got put on the back burner during the frenzy!

*I'm still cycling to work and back, which is better than nothing but not nearly enough.

GRRRRR-ant

Or should that be g-RANT?

Today, at 4:15, I finally submitted the Grant With No Deadline.

Or, more accurately, the grant that had no deadline...

no deadline...

no deadline...

no deadline...

for months, and then suddenly HAD to be submitted WITHIN A WEEK or else the world would END!!!

Regular readers will know that I go a little... eccentric when grant time comes around, and this time was no exception*. I also got rather paranoid when I realised that the process of assembling all the component parts of the grant (various forms and letters with original signatures, scanned documents, Word files, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint figures, published manuscripts, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, ethics certificates, the Magna Carta, CVs, and the PIs' world cup picks) into the final version** was going to spill over from Saturday's epic day in the office into Monday, and felt the need to protect my work so far:

and here's my colour-coded list of all the individual components that had to be assembled. Note the staple; this baby ran to three pages.

(names hidden to protect the innocent my job).

Well, it's done now, and I can finally relax dive into the hugely backlogged pile of other work that I've been ignoring "until after the grant's done".

Although I do like to whine when I have weeks like this last one, the coolness of the science in the grants I work on does help to mitigate the stress and the craziness. When I took this job I knew there would be times like this - but I had times like that in my old job, too, and I prefer it now that I get stressed over interesting and important things that I actually care about.

As I like to remind myself, my job (and maybe any job in academia) aint perfect on the micro level, but the macro level is pretty sweet.

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*Twitter is perfect for this kind of silliness.

**a CD and two hard copies. Seriously.

Silly moi!

I have a talent for making born-and-bred Canadians laugh at me, especially when it comes to my accent and pronunciation. I mean, it's obviously just ridiculous to assume that French-looking names would be pronounced according to French pronunciation norms in a country where French is an official language!

This all started on my first visit to Vancouver Island, when I pronounced Esquimault, home of the Canadian Navy's Pacific fleet, as Eskimo. WRONG! It's Esk-WHY-molt.

Obviously.

There have been other examples over the years, with the most recent being new Vancouver Canucks defenceman Dan Hamhuis.

Which is apparently pronounced HAM-hoys*, not am-HWEE.

Now, in the Geordie dialect of the northeast of England, where I'm originally from, hoy means throw**. So when I hear "Ham-hoys", I imagine a Geordie sport that entails throwing pork joints as far as you can - similar to the Scottish caber toss.

But with ham.

This is gonna make next season's match commentary much more interesting.

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*So I'm guessing his family isn't of French origin after all, then. It was the -uis that threw me!

**Apparently it's the same in Chinese! My Dad used to play on a football team in Manchester (which is not in Geordieland) that once tried out a goalie who'd recently immigrated from China. The goalie's kicks forward to his teammates were rather erratic, so they asked him to throw the ball to them instead - but he didn't understand. Everyone got really frustrated until my Dad shouted "just hoy it, man!" None of the other English players understood what he meant, but the goalie said "hoy? Oh, hoy!" and threw the ball straight to my Dad's feet.

Little things that make me happy

The sun is finally shining in Vancouver!

I'm not a sun worshipper by any stretch of the imagination; I burn really quickly, and find temperatures over 30C quite unpleasant (in the city, at least). But June-uary was too much even for me - I think we got more sunshine during the Olympics - and really, I shouldn't have to wear jeans, boots, and a sweater on Canada Day. But this week has been all capris, sandals, and t-shirts, and people are in a noticeably better mood!

So here are some other little things that make me happy!

• Eating outside
• Coming home on hot days to a pot of ice-cold, uber-strong peppermint tea that's been brewing in the fridge all day
• Watching world cup games live, knowing that my friends and family all over the world are watching the exact same thing at the exact same time
• Calling my Dad during world cup games so we can slag off the players together
• Stripey socks
• Red sandals (not with socks)
  
• Chocolate brown trousers / capris with a white top (presence of socks depends on length of trousers)
• "Let's do X!!!1!1!!" followed by "Let's not, but say we did"
• Finding Saba lying on her back in a doorway with her back legs splayed and front paws tucked neatly under her chin, patiently waiting for the next passing hoomin to give her a belly rub
• Seeing Google's paw poking through the gap under the bedroom door in the morning, patiently waiting for us to pass her just-out-of-reach toys back
• Geeky teens with waaaaay more confidence than I ever had when I was a geeky teen
• Being Auntie Cath (and then coming home to a peaceful house afterwards)
• Finding out that the monkey hand puppet I bought Lilah on the day she was born is her absolute favourite toy
• My nephews chanting "under the bus! under the bus!" when tattled on by a sibling or cousin
• Plucking my eyebrows (hence the "freakishness" tag - I don't think this is normal)
• Re-runs of Friends
• Finding out that my husband is even geekier than I am*

What about you?


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*He's planning to buy me an iPhone 4G when it goes on sale in Canada, as a (very) belated birthday present, and then take my 3G for himself. I heard a squeal of excitement the other day as he was browsing the app store, and found out that he's been coveting a particular, very expensive (many hundreds of dollars) kind of calculator for years, and that there's an iPhone app for "only" $15 that has almost all of the special functions he needs from the calculator.

UPDATED World Cup Pool Update 3!!!

WOO HOO!!!

Yay, Europe!

It's time to make the final three picks! We have to submit our choices for the semi-finals AND the final by the time the first of those games kicks off tomorrow (Tuesday). Semi-final picks are worth 7 points each, and the final is worth 10. I think we'll still see some variety in the final picks... maybe...

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Tuesday July 6th, 11:32 pm PST: Here are everyone's picks!

HA! To be honest, I expected slightly more variety!

I guess it's going to be either me or Thomas - and we'll know by the end of the day tomorrow! Good luck Thomas, and may the best team win!

(I will actually be supporting Holland in the final, if they make it, but I do think the Germans will win. And deservedly so, based on performance to date).

Happy 4th of July to my American buddies!

I hope you have a good one!

I'll be at Morgan's first birthday party. I can't believe it's been a year already!

Morgan and Lilah on their first ever Canada Day!

Springing back

I'm getting my hair cut tomorrow!

Really exciting news, eh?

Well, it is to me! I haven't had a hair cut for months, because I just haven't had the time. Literally every weekend since the beginning of the Olympics has been jammed; I've been double or even triple booked almost every day of every weekend, and plenty of weekday evenings too.

It sounds incredibly whiny to complain (and I do apologise for said complaining), because it's all been really fun stuff and it's been a privilege to experience it. I loved the Olympics, I loved having my friends and then my parents here (for a total of seven weeks in just over two months). I even enjoyed most of my training for the Vancouver-Seattle ride; I just seriously underestimated how much of my time it would take up, especially in combination with hosting visitors. I've had to turn down lots of invitations to fun events this year, and I feel like I've neglected many of my friends.

I've also neglected myself. I find that I need some down-time at least every second weekend; time spent just hanging out, either by myself or with just Mr E Man. Time spent reading, writing, playing my guitar, playing card and board games with Mr E Man, or online Monopoly when I'm feeling really burned out - that kind of thing. But I haven't had any real down-time for such a long time (hosting jet-lagged UK visitors eliminates even my early morning pre-work pseudodown-time), and I've been feeling it, both mentally and physically. In fact I've been feeling much the same way my hair looks - as it gets longer, its own weight starts to pull the curls out of it, and when it's not being limp and flat it gets fuzzy and annoying instead.

Last weekend, I had my first real down-time in months. It was heaven. I didn't do ANYthing (except watch football) on Saturday, then on Sunday I actually had the time to go clothes shopping to replace the literally falling-apart clothes I've been walking around in. I just got some jeans and capris and t-shirts, but it's so nice to have more than three outfits composed of intact items of clothing again!

I've also started to be able to plan things again. Things that are selfishly all about ME ME ME (well, and Mr E Man too. But mostly ME). Last weekend I bought tickets for a music festival on Vancouver Island, and booked a week off work for a kayaking trip (destination TBD). I also signed up for the MS Society 60 km bike ride, a really fun event that I did a couple of years ago - 60km is a piece of cake now, and I could afford to cover the minimum donation amount myself without having to bug any of my friends. I feel like I've got my life back, and the summer can finally begin!

And tomorrow I get to break free from the last of the dead weight! My curls will spring back - and hopefully, so will I!

Genius!

My boss is a very busy man whose trainees sometimes have a hard time getting his attention. I'm constantly having to explain that I don't know where he is, when he'll be back, or if he's read their draft yet.

One of them just came up with a novel solution:

print out your latest, hottest results and pin them to the PI's door with a note saying "come and find me if you think this is interesting".

What are the odds that I'll come in on Monday morning to find 20 pages of various people's results obscuring the entire door?!