Les Bonnes Choses

Today I stayed home because I had my laptop with me, and the task for the day was to finish making the filler items for what is hopefully the final experiment of my dissertation (God, I hope it works out!)

Well, I finished creating the filler items with time to spare in the afternoon, but I was feeling pretty spry, so I decided to tackle some projects. Project 1: put some holes in the ground for 2x2 posts that will be used to support the walls of a 2-tiered raised garden bed in the back yard. Excavating a hole for a 2x2 without making it far too large is one challenge; digging in our rocky soil is another. My solution: I bought a 1" diameter masonry bit just over a foot long for my hammer drill, and basically used my drill as an auger (that's auger pronounced ogg-er, not Auger, pronounced Oh-zhay, though it might be kind of funny to imagine how to use a drill as one of those...). It wasn't quite as smooth sailing as I hoped it might be because the rocks still posed a problem, but I prevailed and suffered only a blister on my palm (I was afraid of blowing out my drill on a couple occasions). After that was done, I dug out around the boulder in the front yard to put in the edging, completing project 2, and when that was done, I attached the baby carrier seat we purchased last summer to Rebecca's bike (project 3). For my encore, I made dinner: bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin medallions (yes, that's pork-wrapped pork), BBQ roasted potato slices and steamed brussels sprouts.

Sorry, ladies, I'm taken. But feel free to try out my dinner menu, because it was tasty.


Now I take this post on a 90-degree turn and talk about the CBC Radio One programs that I like and dislike. In the like column, we have Ideas, Age of Persuasion, Quirks and Quarks, And Sometimes Y (no longer running), Spark, and Search Engine. In the dislike column, we have DNTO, Q (can't stand the hosts) and Out Front (tonight's episode was literally 20 minutes of random, unrelated sound-effects, demonstrating that the general public is not qualified to produce radio programming). I like listening to the voices of Paul Kennedy, Michael Enright, Stuart McLean, and Kate MacNamara who does the business news every odd day with an accent that I just can't place and impeccable diction. The nameless woman who reads the weather forecast after 7pm, however, speaks with the most bizarre inflection, as though she's maybe an alien infiltrator.

[begin part that probably only John, Ryan and Miranda will understand]
I finally did it: I took the plunge and ordered the bits and pieces for a replacement desktop computer from TigerDirect.ca. The computer on which I am presently typing has components that are 10 years old (I'll probably reuse the floppy drive, so I guess even the new computer will have some really old parts). I think I will go dual-boot with Linux and Windows XP.
[end part that probably only John, Ryan and Miranda will understand]

So after the computer bits arrive and I assemble my new super death machine®, I think I will be adding a new document scanner so I can continue the digitization of the bills and statements and all that other crap that various companies send me each month. Previous month's bills have been stored on Macho Me, but I read today about a free service called shoebox.com that will store pdf copies of your receipts, with no storage limit (I suppose that if one came to rely on it for a few years and they changed that policy, you could find yourself in a bit of a pickle). Anyways, that is what I learned today, and I just wanted to share it. You may now go about your normal business.

It's springtime, which means the coats are packed away until the fall, and the sun dresses, which I think are the sexiest thing in the world, can come out. And for guys, we have the golf shirt. Golf shirts are pretty useful, sort of sitting on the fence on whether or not it's casual or dress casual clothing (if it was won at a tournament sponsored by a beer company, it is definitely casual, and possibly even grub-wear). Unfortunately, I see that the flipped up collar on the golf shirt look has persisted from last year (and maybe the year before that). Guys: stop it. You look f-ing retarded. You are not the Fonz. I'm afraid that's what the '00s are going to be remembered for: flipped up collars, and god-awful 1-shoulder dresses. Mark my words: you kids are going to regret this.

Holy crap, I sound so gay right now that you'd never know I'm married. I swear this was supposed to be a things that piss me off post. Trust me - I'm more irritable than gay.

This afternoon, I went with Rebecca to pick out her mother's day gift: a new digital camera. The reason for the new camera was two-fold: first, she wanted something a little smaller to fit in her purse (her pricey digital SLR camera currently lives in there, and frankly, I have no idea how it still works given the beating it must endure). The second reason is that I read about how there are aftermarket software upgrades you can install on your Canon camera to supe it up (note: I decided on that spelling of 'supe' after realizing that I could figure out no etymology that would make 'soup it up' make any sense at any time in the history of the English language). Rebecca had settled on one of 2 Canon models, but eventually settled on the more expensive one with the better optical zoom. The catch: it's discontinued, and the display camera was the last one they had. I've only ever had good experiences the few times I've purchased open box items, and the thing had been tethered to a cabinet for the last 4 months, so how much abuse could it have gotten? Plus, it's still covered by the same warranty. So with our reservations slipping away, the sales guy used some tool to disconnect the camera from the tether, at which point a really loud alarm went off. It seemed that some other guy had to come over to turn off the alarm, so about 45 seconds passed with this obnoxious alarm going off in the small electronics section of Future Shop. It occurred to me that that would have been the perfect time to swipe some electronics.

If you follow the news at all, you may have heard about a strain of drug-resistant bacteria called C. difficile. What has gone on here is our slap-happy administration of antibiotics for any and all reasons has guaranteed that, through the magic of natural selection, subsequent generations of nasty microbes are able to shrug off the most commonly-used antibiotics. Gone are the days of the advice to 'suck it up' when you have a head cold. And don't forget the nervous nelly parents who try in vain to disinfect any surface with which their kids may come in contact. Antibacterial chemicals are added to hand soap despite the fact that any soap is a natural disinfectant (the hydrophobic ends of the soap molecules bond with and effectively dissolve the cell membrane of the bacteria which is about as bad for bacteria as evisceration is for people). So as a result, natural selection (or, in fairness to the less sophisticated reader, intelligent design) leaves us with an infectious agent that we have a bugger of a time trying to treat. Hence the name C. difficile. Perhaps we may one day see the emergence of a superbug with a 100% kill rate. Whenever someone contracts it, all you can do is shrug your shoulders and give a sympathetic pat on the back. I propose calling it C'est dommage.

This evening, Jude is staying over at Lolo and Lola's house. This freed Rebecca and I to go out for dinner, which we seldom do without any special occasion. We tried out a restaurant in old north London that Rebecca often passes by called, appropriately enough, North. The service was really good, so Chrissy L got a good tip (and I share Mr. Orange's attitude towards tipping). So if you haven't been, and are in the mood to try out a new restaurant, I'd give that one a try. Dinner for 2, including drinks, a shared dessert and coffee/tea came to just under $90.

The other thing that was good about tonight is that, for the first time in 3 weeks, we caught ANTM. Unfortunately in the past few weeks, favourites Katarzyna and awkward Lauren got booted. However this week, ugly old Dominique got the boot. I have no idea why they humoured her this long. Part of the prize is a cover of Seventeen magazine, and this chick is 23 but looks about 43. In the above picture, she doesn't look too bad (for a tranny), but that's only because a team of Photoshop artists must have spent hours airbrushing out the crags and valleys that line her skin. I'm sure she smokes - there's no other explanation. Furthermore, many viewers may not have noticed the fact that she's missing a freaking tooth (top right premolar). This would be fine if she was a hockey player, but when you're trying out to be the top of the world's shallowest profession, c'mon. Why do I admit to watching ANTM? Mostly because it's funny. And also, I'll point out that chicks dig it.

Warning: the following entry may be boring for those who have no interest in what I'm doing with my life, or who think that academics are weird (they are). I will also be mentioning some names that will likely mean nothing to you as though it's a big deal.


So I've been back from Italy for almost a week. 6 days ago I was walking aimlessly all over Venice. Neat place. Now that both Rebecca and I have been there individually, I suppose we should try to go back together sometime. The conference went well. I was rubbing elbows with some neuroscience bigwigs (no, literally -- at dinner, I was sitting between Sharon Thompson-Schill and Alex Martin, both of whom were egging me on to steal Ken's pizza because somehow I was skipped when they took orders, leaving me without a meal.) Unfortunately, neither Sharon nor Alex (first name basis?) had any immediate plans for postdocs. I also made friends with Sukhvinder Singh Obhi, a former UWO neuroscience postdoc, now Laurier University faculty member. He's a fine chap. I say that because he's from Britain. The best thing about talking with British people is that you can dust off and use words like "hooligan". Unfortunately, in talking with Suhk over the course of the conference, I came to realize that, no matter how much crap I already know how to do, nobody at a research-oriented school is going to look twice at my resume if it doesn't include a stint as a postdoc. For my non-academic readers, what this all means is that it is no longer sufficient to have a PhD. They had to invent something that you have to do after that!