Monday, July 31, 2006

A Brief Update

After a great weekend, I've finally kicked in to full thesis/study mode, which means that you'll probably hear very little from me in the weeks to come. However, rest assured that I am alive, just in a slightly altered state of consciousness and if I hide from human interaction, it's because I'm shifting into a state of being that is not compatable with thinking/speaking like a normal person. I am become the scientist.

Says Megan:

To Study for MCATS:
1. Drill hole in top of head
2. Insert MCAT book in hole
3. Dr. Island!!!!


Except I'm not really even studying - just writing, like a fiend. And looking forward to October.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

a not-so-coherent post

Sorry about the lack of updates - the last few days have been quite busy, and there has been a lot of home/family stuff. On Saturday, Mark and I made our way over to Brampton to see Sharon play some softball, and I get to add the skill of shoulder-rehabilitator to my resume. Shar's brother's family was also there, resulting in me holding 6 week old baby Olivia. It was determined that baby-holding automatically results in hip-swaying... it's like human arms have baby receptors, that, when activated, turn on the sway mechanism. Afterwards, I went out for Maggie's birthday which contained good times with Mel and Fadi and drunk Maggie.

Sunday was the anniversary of my grandfather's death. The whole family got together for dinner, and my nana had a mass said for him. It should have been sad, but my family has a special talent for bringing lightness and humour. Anyways, I think he would have liked that we celebrated him with a fancy dinner at one of his favourite places :)

The plan for now is to stay in Whitby for the week and look after the dog, which has meant really shitty commutes for yesterday and today. I think I'll work from home for the next couple of days, and hopefully that means I'll actually work. And sleep, I need sleep. What I don't need is another 2.5 hour commute - yuck!

Friday, July 21, 2006

Brave New Frontiers

Last night, I ate one of these:



Except in biological form. And it was actually six of them. I still can't get over the thought-barrier that lets me thing that I'm eating a slimy graden-crawler, but if I separate the thought from the experience then it's all good.

It was a pretty great day/night - I got a lot of work done on my thesis (data analysis = almost done!), and spent the night with my parents and maggie doing fun stuff in the city. Mom and dad took Mark and I out for dinner - we did the summerlicious special at L'Escargot (hence me eating snails) and we had a really lovely time. The restaurant was quite nice, with an inviting atmosphere and excellent food quality. Afterwards, we dropped off some buckets and a mom at Maggies, and then walked to College and Spadina to see Basia play her best show yet. Good times; and hopefully people will stop tempting me with good things to do for a while.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Frisbee-licious

Phil came in yesterday and asked if I felt like playing some frisbee - his Ultimate team was apparently missing a girl or two, and I had previously mentioned to him that I used to play, and used to like playing. Figuring Mark would be jealous if I got to play some wicked-cool Ultimate and he didn't, I okayed his play too. It turned out that it was a good thing we both went - the addition of Mark meant that our team (the skin-tights) had two full guy lines; with the addtion of me, we had just enough girls to play.

Wow.

I cannot remember the last time I worked so hard physically. Since there were no girl subs, Emily and I had to be on the entire game - all 105 minutes of it. I'm not a runner, but there I was, running up and down the field (and having nice little walk breaks when I got to cover the slow girl). I didn't score any points, but I came close a couple of times, and I think I did a pretty decent job of covering. I almost got my first awake shin cramp. Our team lost, but not by much. I got to recover some honour for us by winning the frisbee-joust round after the game (against the girl who owned me at every other aspect of frisbee). As I said to her, I may not be fast, but I am very good at knocking stuff over.

Mark gave me a pretty awesome back/shin rub, and today I am moving aroung gingerly, but proudly. I can't wait to play again!


Highlights: Making some sweet passes, giving a great first toss, winning the frisbee-joust, and learning how delicious lychee gels are.

Lowlights: Other team's captain twisting her ankle, me thinking it was halftime and going off the field - ok, it's not really a lowlight but it was slightly embarrassing.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Stormwatching

Last night ended up being an unexpectedly late one for me. I didn't get home until close to 10, and a lack of Mark and heavy eyelids almost drew me in to sleep. But then, I called Megan, and was infused with the usual lifey-giddyness that occurs during our brief plan-filled calls. I was sorta hoping she wouldn't be able to go to Montreal anytime soon, because I really should be studying, but she has promised to make me study, so.... road trip! Next weekend. And I'm not driving, so much fun with Orgo will be had in the car; enough fun that when we drive past the big apple I will be able to describe its comonents in intimate detail.

Than, Mark and Kurt came in, with Slurpees. And we watched the storm. We headed briefly towards the parkette across the street from the apartment, but thought better of it and sat on the stoop after seeing fantastic lightning. At one point, the winds picked up enough to bend the trees right down, and I was sure some of them would just break. The wind made its way over to us, but managed to sand-blast us rather than bend us down. Good times - I've missed seeing storms like that. I used to love watching them from the guest bedroom windows back in Whitby, but its hard now, with me living by windows that only look at the apartment across the alley.

Also, check out bloglines. It's kinda like a friends page for blogs - saves having to check out each site individually! Also, it lets you know when there are updates.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

You waited for Saturday

It's ten past nine on Saturday morning. I'm sitting at my desk at York, and have been here for about a half hour now. I've felt a change in myself these past few days - if it's not exactly 'motivation,' it's at least a 'get stuff done' drive. I've turned down some super fun stuff this weekend in order to focus on studying and my thesis, and I'm hoping that I can carry through. Studying is going pretty well - I'm almost through biology, and then I get to have some fun with orgo chem. I think I'm actually looking forward to reviewing physics (although after orgo, anthing will be a welcome break).

I've also been having some serious trouble sleeping - I've had to resort to taking mild sleeping pills for the past two nights. Mostly, this is because I've had no option to sleep in in the morning, which I'm hoping to do a teeny bit of tomorrow. I think that starting Monday, I'm going to try to shift into healthy mode and see if that fixes it.

(ps - in case you wondered why I'm at York so early, it's because there's a migraine workshop going on. I'm hoping it will give me good thesis ideas)

Thursday, July 13, 2006

AMV Comedians 4 (Mitch Hedberg)

Today has been busy, and there has been a lot of herd thinking going on. My awesome break has been spent watching Mitch Hedberg on youtube. I have no idea where it comes from, but this video is fantastic.

Just for Sharon!

I officially tested my last subject yesterday for my thesis, which means fun time with stats and discussioning starts now! I've already made some ghetto graphs, but there are more important things to take care of - like talking about Canada for Sharon, who has ended herself up in Washington, DC. Now, I'm not sure *exactly* what she's doing there, but I'm pretty sure it has something to doing with saving the world from cancer, or becoming president (not having citizenship is surely no roadblock for Sharon).

In other news, I had an x-Men dream last night. I was Storm, and was with all the other x-men, and we had to go save the professor from Kevin Spacey (who had a super-cool mansion himself, I might add). On the way to said mansion, I had a tracking missile shot at me, and had to fly around dodging it until I finally shot it down with lightning.Normally, my dream flying powers are somewhat lacking, and I tend to fall pretty quickly, but I was super-awesome last night. Anyways, I ended up saving the day by pointing out how cool fireworks are, and how it's fun to bounce them off water. Apparently, this makes nice guys out of super-villains. Also, I got to see pretty blue fireballs bouncing off water.

OK - now it's time for some statisticalizing.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

This is getting to be a problem...

My weekends are seriously becoming an issue, because they're just too much fun. I really need to get more than a minimal amount of studying done, but right now, that's all I've been able to accomplish. Aside from the events included in my last post, a gazillion other great things have happened in the past 48 hours. Yesterday was 'Love Day,' a term coined by Kurt to describe the bi-annually occuring event where Mark and I plan extra-special date days (as opposed to normal date days). Mark had planned a full day full of stuff for us to do, and all of it was top-secret, so I've spent the last week or so in anticipation and sneaky/wily mode to try and find out what was the deal. We left the apartment around 1 pm, me in my new dress (SHARON: apparently Paris Hilton bought the same thing), and headed off to parts unknown. Turned out that Mark had lied to me to protect the secrecy of the date: we ended up in the Distillery District to see a play, and I'd guessed at both of those somewhat seriously. The play ended up being standing room only, and Mark didn'r want to have his special lady have to stand around in the dark for ours on love day, so we went to the Toronto Outdoor Art exhibition instead, where we:

a) Bought a fortune cookie that won us an arty prize.
b) Found out that I know the sister of his artist friend that he met in Saskatoon.
c) Didn't buy any art.
d) Got kicked out of the reflection pool.
e) All of the above.

We spent hours there gawking at really cool art of all shapes and forms, while wishing we had the money to buy it, and then headed off to SECRET DINNER LOCATION. Which ended up being Bloom, in Bloor West Village. Mark had picked it solely on its Summerlicious menu selection, and it was PRETTY GOOD. I think he had pork something, and I had Swordfish. We also had wine, and damn our consciouses, because we told the waiter when he forgot to add the bottle to the bill. I'm feeling pretty giddy around Mark lately - I think we've settled into a really nice stage of our relationship :) Anyway, thank you Mark, for yesterday, and everything.

I'm getting tired now, but today was also cool. I'll write in point form.

-Slept in (after a night at the Madison with John and his friends)
-Walked across St. Clair after deciding walking past World Cup Action was as much fun as watching the game on tv
-Found a random street celebration closing off the street in honour of Italy (before they won)
-Had Gelato at La Paloma
-Walked down to Flash & Crash, today is it's last day ever. Mark bought many CD's and I bought one (Ida)
-Had Sushi on Bloor with John-Gave John the Love Apartment tour
-Finished my Stillepost mix - only a week late, hooray!

Goodnight :)

Friday, July 07, 2006

Trashbag update!

Sharon and I have secured our BFF status, as we now have matching tank tops, hair bands, and dresses. According to our logic though, if our friendship disintegrates, we'll both owe American Apparel about $20, so we'd better not have any fights. Although, if it's her fault, I'm totally making her pay my $20 too. Also, Megan called me last night at almost midnight just to tell me that she'd be my trashbag bikini BFF! Hooray. Also, for anybody who has not expressed a desire to be my bff, you should still consider buying the dress, because it is super flattering (adjectives! Just for Sharon!).

Today, aside from spending money that I shouldn't have, has been all kinds of awesome. I met up with Sharon around 3, found out that her interview went really well. Upon arrival at her car, we found that not only had it not been towed, there was no ticket even though she hadn't paid for parking. We went to York, and had about as much fun as can be had while doing psychophysics. Then, shopping and dinner with Mark at Jalapenos, where we had delicious food and a brief feeling of being back in Cuba. I wish every night was like this!

Tomorrow: hopefully get to see John at some point, and super-secret-exciting date day with Mark. I'm going to wear my new dress.

Let us welcome to the stage....

I forgot to mention that I saw this guy last night, perusing the hoodies and golf shirts at AA (that's American Apparel by the way, I'm years away from being an alcoholic):



While google searching for Chris Murphy, I also found this, which is highly appropriate considering that I saw him shopping. For do it yourself fun, carefully cut these images from your screen and you can dress chris for hours!


SLOOOOAAAAANNNNN!

Thursday, July 06, 2006

An Open Call

As three of you may recall, I sent out a call for submissions in my "rename the iPod which hath doth cometh back to life" contest. Well, I'm pretty sure the iPod is dead, but you tried, so here are your coconuts. I was too lazy to tranfer the photo of MY coconuts (this isn't any sort of euphemism - I have three coconuts in my kitchen right now), so here is one I found on google. Apparently they were used in a wedding:



My new open call is for people to be my bff. Specifically, my trashbag bff. You see, American Apparel is having a BFF sale, so if you and your bff (I'm typing it so many times because its such an amusing/annoying acronym... bff!) buy the same thing, then you each get 25% off. Originally, I thought I'd go for this, if I had a bff with me:



But then, I saw the trashiest of trashy:



Awesome. WHO'S WITH ME?!

(Ps- I'm actually pretty serious about wanting both of these)