Parentheses

I'm super excited about the new Blow album that's going to come out in the near future. I've heard two songs from it so far, and have completely fallen in love with "parentheses." Such a cute and catchy song, and I can't wait to hear a better quality version (myspace isn't really known for it's great sound...). Anyways, I've never seen the Blow, and don't yet have any of their releases, but I'm pretty sure that they're my favourite cute band. Best.

Camping recap: fun! Aside from packing in everything but the kitchen sink, it was awesome. We had a beautiful site on Stratton lake, a short hike away from natural water slides! NATURAL WATER SLIDES. I'm hoping to get some pics soon to put up, but to sate your questioning minds, naturatual water slides are big smooth boulders in rapids that you can slide down without too much discomfort or skin scrapeage. These were also very close to small cliffs above deep pools of water perfect for jumping and practising your best corkscrew/jacknife/cannonball. There will hopefully be some videos coming soon to a youtube near you.

Two weeks to thesis defense.

Lemieux and Lewoof

There is a new addition to the love apartment:
 

Mark made me proud last night, and won me this absolutely gigantic penguin (and bebe) from the basketball game at the Ex. I don't know what it was, but I was absolutely elated - I felt like queen of the cavepeople after my man brought home the prize. How unfeminist of me. However, they are fantastic. The little one's name is Lemieux, and the big one is Lewoof.

And now, it's time for a little back country camping (sans penguins). 

Tealicious

I'm consideriing trying to kick the caffeine habit. Now that I've finished all of my pressing committments, I no longer need anything to push my body to work longer than it wants to (granted, it wants to work less because of the caffeine) and thus don't need 3-4 cups/day. However, my cold turkey attempt yesterday failed miserably, which resulted in a zombie-like Jen from 10-12 & 2-6 (the two hour reprieve from zombieness was due to a NAP), and caving to the temptation of tea with dinner. I felt SO good after that tea that it actually made me reconsider my desire to cut caffeine from my life. I know it's part of the addiction process, but the contrast expeienced post-caffeine really makes you appreciate how good you feel. I guess if I didn't have caffeine withdrawal making me feel like sleepy poo in the first place, I wouldn't need my dose to make me feel better, but then, would I really appreciate the goodness when I can't compare it to the badness?

I guess for now, I'll try and limit myself to that one delicious tea per day.

Also, I finally bought me some new shoes, black pumps with a heel that's not too little or too big. It's time to go somewhere fancy enough to wear them! Possibly... a tea party?!

Woo! Summer!

Hooray for me, my summer has finally begun! Things I'm going to do:

Shop! I need a new dress for the upcoming weddings, which probably means that I get to buy shoes as well.

Learn french! I've even signed up for courses; optimistically, I placed myself in the intermediate class. I'm gonna bust my ass, ou, ma derriere (is that French, or do we just pretend it is?).

Alternately bake and do yoga. Hopefully more of the latter, as I would like the balance of the two to shift me to svelteness.

Also: play manhunt, frisbee, go to the ex, go camping, go on the boat, and most importantly, defend la thesis and apply to schools! Hopefully, that will be with decent mcat scores, although that may be askng too much of the multiple choice gods.

Joy of joys, I am done.

I give this day 6 stars.

My thesis is done!!! Done, and wrapped in stupidly expensive covers, and all but one has been delivered to my committee! Also, labmates have made today "baked goods day," so I've been indulging in delicious oatmeal cookies, egg tarts, and at may point might get into some cake. Because MY THESIS IS DONE! And not to jinx myself before I actually have to get up and defend it (Sept. 12), but I think it's pretty darn good. It's a tight little bundle of concisety (don't worry, I didn't use any made-up word IN the thesis). In other goodness news, my supervisor took the lab out for lunch, and remarked about how good mine and Seem's theses were, hooray!

As if the goodness was going to stop there: the news has been good too! Merck was reprimanded for the Vioxx fiasco, the NSA got told to stop eavesdropping on people's phone calls, and snakes on a plane opens tonight. Hooray!

I will return, and start fully celebrating, after saturday.

The days of no fun

On Saturday, Mark did this:



And I stayed in and wrote my thesis. So jealous - the first Fake Prom was amazing, but I haven't been able to go ever since. Blah. I hope next year, I'll at least have a fun reason, like being in France. Thesis will hopefully be done in 4 days.

Compulsions

My revisions are going pretty well right now - my supervisor said some pretty nice things about the state of my thesis and right now, I'm feeling a bit good about it. My problem, however, is that any time I need to connect to the internet to look up an article, I feel compelled to do something - anything - else on the internet. This has led to a whole bunch of new music from music blogs to listen to, an obsessive search for a video made to tease Peter from .moneen. that I had found years ago (I didn't find it today, boo), and various blog reads. I figured this time, I might as well be a little bit productive and blog something myself.

I'm in a writing mood, so stuff is flowing out easily. Unlike yesterday, my use of grammar is not completely incomprehensible. I'm generally in a good mood, and enjoying the constant stream of goodness coming out of iTunes. And hopefully, I should be able to get my intro completely reworked by the end of tonight. WOOWOO!

Tomorrow, I'm heading to Whitby in between thesising to attend a bridal shower for my childhood best friend. I'm really excited for this, since we unfortunately drifted apart due to some stresful life events, and probably mostly because I moved away to London. Tomorrow, we'll get to catch up, and hopefully rekindle a more stable friendship, cause I miss her craziness.

OK - break is over, it's back to the couch far far away from the internet for me now.

Irish Scotch

Apparently, an addled brain from too much thesising plus sleep deprivation = very stupid things being said.

Irish Scotch. Without a hint of a joke. Sometimes, I'm a smart one.

Paula: I <3 you. Please remember that you're never alone, and that you can call me ay time, day or night (but I secretly know you have about infinity times the strength you need to get through this) and this birthday will be the BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!! I volunteer to be DD since me + beer = unpleasantness.

Little Miss Rainstorm

I took a break from thesising tonight to go watch a free screening of Little Miss Sunshine with Mark and Sara. It was such a good movie - Mark summed it up with "It's one of the only movies where you cry tears of sadness and laughter." I'd add awkwardness in there too, but it was a good awkwardness, the kind that works. Basically, it's about a little girl getting to live her dream of being in a big beauty pageant, a cocaine-snorting grandfather, a brother who's taken a vow of silence, a delusional dad, suicidal uncle, and relatively sane mom. And a VW bus. And - everything works. I felt a little bit like I did with Me, You and Everyone We Know - you leave the theatre feeling like you've seen something special.

And then on the way home, it started raining.


Unexpectedly.



It's been a good night... now back to the thesis!