Les Bonnes Choses

So as you may have noticed, Scrabulous has been pulled, when I was but seven tiles from finishing a tied game. Now I'll never have closure.

In other news, I'm back from Washington, where I got basically no sleep in the $2000/night (that's not a typo) room I shared with Ken. Ken snores. He also requests 7:45 am wakeup calls that don't actually wake him up, which is understandable because people were in our room until 1, then 2 then 3 am on successive nights. The wakeup calls, however, were effective at waking me up, as I would lay there thinking, "Is he going to get up? He said he really needed to make the 8:15 talks...Damn! Now I can't sleep!". Remarkably, I didn't feel really crappy during my stay, and I seem to have reset my internal clock so that I am tired by 10 pm because I'm not yet caught up. So to recap: free stay at an expensive hotel, a chance to do some sightseeing, and a recalibration of my sleep cycle. I'll call that a big win, all-around. Now I just have to wait and find out whether the whole reason for my traveling down to D.C. paid off.

Oh, and when you're traveling in a Robert Q shuttlebus, please have the good sense to turn off (or at least turn down) your bloody Blackberry. I couldn't have been the only one in that small van who was irritated with 20 minutes of near constant custom alert tones at 80 dB.

Final story for the day: yesterday I made my way to White Oaks Mall where Rebecca would pick me up on the way to sushi with Amy, Aneta, Jeff, Daniel, Deanna, Miranda, Graeme, K-Max, and someone else whose name escapes me because I've only met her once before. En route, the bus, driven by a really abrasive female driver who sometimes drives the Windermere bus I take most days, stopped to let on a woman with a stroller. A bumblebee also got on at that stop. This was apparently worrisome to enough people that the bus driver wouldn't proceed until the bee was off the bus. So we sat there at the stop for a few minutes. As they can't comprehend the concept of windows, flying insects are notoriously bad at navigating out of interior spaces, and I saw the thing fly out of the side door twice only to immediately fly back in and bump along the windows while the rest of the bus cringed as it swooped around them. Fortunately, I have never been stung by a bee, so I'm not particularly afraid of them and instead think of them as industrious little guys, which was helpful in this situation. Seeing it fumble around the side door again, I got up and sort of pushed it out of the door, letting it bounce off my hand as it flew around. I was listening to my mp3 player at the time, so I was not able to hear the applause and exclamations of "my hero!" that certainly followed. I think the main point of this story isn't that I'm awesome (though I clearly am), but rather, that bumblebees make good terrorists, and can effectively take a city bus hostage.

So I'm here in Washington, DC as a result of a last-minute decision to go to this year's CogSci conference (I link to the conference website both because it's relevant, and also because I was the person who actually created it -- I take full responsibility for its limited aesthetics and early 2000's design sensibilities). I'm here to meet with Jeff Elman to discuss the possibility of doing a postdoc with him at UCSD. A few minutes ago, I found myself in a conversation in the lobby with: Ken McRae, Jeff Elman, Larry Barsalou, Larry's new grad student Jon, and Alex Martin. If this is any indication, Jeff and Larry have Wikipedia pages, and Alex probably should. That was really cool, in a science geek kind of way.

I now take this opportunity to say hi Smu!

I just got in from the big Ottawa trip this afternoon. I picked up a TomTom One 130 GPS unit on the morning of the 11th when we left because I knew there would be quite a bit of driving in unfamiliar territory. For one, we were staying with Dave, Kathy and the girls, who live about 45 minutes outside of Ottawa in Oxford Mills. Where's Oxford Mills? Exactly. But Jane (the British voice I selected for the TomTom unit) knew. It generally did a very good job during the whole trip, though I discovered on our way into Ottawa to pick up Magda and visit with Heather that the GPS unit has problems picking up the satellite signal in bad (rainy) weather. It's also a little bull-headed about some routes, as was evidenced when it kept on routing us through a blocked on-ramp, despite my best efforts to force it to reckon a new path.

During the visit, we went to an alpaca farm and picked up some really expensive wool. I asked many questions of the farmer, who I believe had concluded from my inquisition that I was interested in starting up my own farm down here in SW Ontario. I also had a few run-ins with some nasty mosquitos, which left me with more than a few bites--one of which left a small red welt or rash so I hope I don't get lyme disease or something.

Tim and Wendy's "cottage" was also really, really nice. Normally, when I think of cottages, I imagine walking through a sheet of spider webs on the way to the outhouse, and sharing a bunk with vermin. Because the building and surrounding sleeper cabins are constantly used year-round, they were all well kept and were more like a secluded home than a cottage. Location-wise, one couldn't ask for anything more either, as they are located at the Davis Lock, on the Rideau canal system. I've got a lot of saving up to do to get us a cottage like that for our retirement.

It's the fourth of July. For all my devoted readers in the US, I hope you're enjoying your day at home. I know I am. Today I stayed home to work on my dissertation. I'm presently taking a lunch break (at 3pm). Holy crap, did I just make myself a good sammich. We have a George Foreman grill, which I like to use to make grilled panini sandwiches, which Rebecca and I fell in love with in Montreal. My sandwich, however, does not use panini buns, but is instead a black forest ham sandwich with smoked cheddar slices and tomato on sourdough bread. I brush the outside with olive oil and dried rosemary and fresh ground pepper before putting it on the 'George. It's just - wow. How wow? Well, I'm blogging about it, that's how wow.

As for the dissertation, I've planned to write it in 5 sections. I'm at the end of section 4, and I have a good idea about what I will be writing for section 5. Then I will give it to Ken, and in usual Ken style, he will hand it back to me with revisions that amount to deleting every third word, and then replacing half of the remaining words with different words. Or maybe, just maybe, after 6 years, I have gotten so used to his editing style that he'll have relatively few changes. I can only dare to hope.

Gah! Effing fruit flies! I hate them!!!!

I've blogged about my dreams a couple of times before, usually because they are funny. The other night, however, I had a decidedly unfunny dream in which I was on an airplane that hit turbulence and went into a nosedive. I mention this because it's kind of interesting how dreams can give you insight into your behaviour because one often takes the dream to be real at the time (I say often because I usually disbelieve my nightmares and take over them, turning them into movies, for example, where I can redo the scene until I get it right). Anyways, the interesting thing about this particular nightmare was the chance, however unpleasant it was, to find out what would go through my mind in the event of a plane crash. One generally only gets that chance once, and by that point, they don't get a chance to share any insight gained.

Speaking of nightmares...

Okay, not really, but I couldn't easily segue from nightmares to routers. But I was just reviewing the comments people left behind for some of my earlier posts. It turns out that Pat was able to identify the problem I was having with google going AWOL, when he suggested that the router might be to blame and likely just needed a reboot. Evidence supporting his theory was provided just before I started today's entry.

Pleasant dreams! (ooh! thunder and lightning! I love thunderstorms)