Livin' in the land of the cold and the flat: January 2006

I'd like to thank the following...

Today is the last day of the wreck that is the summer project. Last summer I started working on a project involving sand, rats, kangaroos, and land use. Believe me, they really do go together. The majority of the research was completed via interviews, which were finished in October/November. However, this is the project that wouldn't end!

My research partner had to do her comprehensive exams (scary!), so that delayed the report, and she's been working on it ever since. It's due tomorrow and she just called to discuss the "Acknowledgements" section. We are dutifully thanking everyone who contributed the project, but my real acknowledgements section would be something like this:

Thanks to:
-My dad for making fun of the kangaroo rats (so it's not just me), and my mom for talking to me after I was sick of transcribing interviews for 14 hours a day.

-Saskatoon for having a variety of restaurants, unlike the towns where we stayed.

-The cute guy in the library for giving me a reason beyond this project to go there. Sorry I stalked you a little bit.

-The wonderful staff at the hotel for the Macadamia, white-chocolate cookies that they helpfully put on the desk every day. Sorry we ate so many.

-All the grad students that listened to me complain about this project.

-The pen I almost stabbed in my eye 14 different times.

-The creepy guy in the hot tub that eyed us up when we were trying to relax. Thanks, you're a freak.

And finally...
-My research partner, who kept me sane during the boring stuff, and is actually easy to share a room with. Thanks for wearing PJ's.

Quick update

Ok, there really isn't enough time (as I'm supposed to be writing about analysis instead of blogging) but the quick highlights are:

-Shannon is back from Mexico and ridiculously tanned (with extensive freckles). She's currently in rehab/detox and mourning the loss of the 10 am daiquiri followed by the 10:10 Miami Vice and the 10:25 "Ha Ha I'm sitting at a pool in 35 degree weather" drink...etc.

-We (Shannon and I) have decided to move to Italy, so the fact that Stephen Harper is Prime Minister is no problem for us. Good luck everyone else..

-The thesis is progressing in a typical fashion, with lots of screen glaring, page flipping, and internet reference searching. I actually just wrote "Given the sets of A (alternatives) and G (evaluation criteria) and assuming the existence of n alternatives and m criteria, it is possible to build an n x m matrix P called evaluation or impact matrix whose typical element Pij (I = 1, 2…., m; j = 1, 2, …, n) represents the evaluation of the jth alternative by means of the ith criterion".

Now, this really isn't very complicated (in fact, it's quite simple), but writing it out this way makes it LOOK complicated. I think I've just mastered an academic trick.

-another friend of mine is taking off to Central America for a fun trip. Enjoy the warm weather Courtney, and get some sun/vitamin D production for me!

That's it for today, have a great Tuesday!

A Week in Exile and A Starbucks Question

Wow, so it's been almost a week since my last post. I've been busy reading, trying to find books and articles that will contribute something at least quasi-interesting to my thesis material. And then some of the articles weren't available online (the nerve of them!) and I had to go to the ACTUAL library to photocopy them.

Anyway, another week, and this one I was in self imposed exile so I could work. Things seemed on track last weekend, since Shannon was gone on vacation (lucky chick- she has a swim up bar, sand, and potential cabana boys) and Selena was much too busy to socialize. But my work plans were shot because I spent two and a half days shopping for glasses (of all things). Genetics have kicked in, and it seems that I need glasses. No problem, I found some cute frames, befitting my fashion sense, but it took forever and what a boring way to drop hard earned money. Although, it is nice to actually see the stuff that's far away now.

By today I was managing to walk with the glasses, without running into walls/falling over chairs (as much), and with no dizziness or headaches. I still have very little depth perception, but that doesn't matter. It'll come in time, or so the proverbial "they" say. I was working this morning, but by the afternoon, too many people on MSN and too little work later I was grumpy (read: irritated and potentially bitchy). Kynthia braved my barely veiled sarcastic bitterness about, oh, everything, and we went out for coffee. That was a good call on my part; I'm not sure if it was the whip cream, the caffeine, or just being out of my apartment, but I felt better!

Well, coffee turned into dinner at my favourite place, McNally Robinson. Anywhere you can get good food, good service, jazz, and books is fabulous! Then we browsed the bookstore for a while, got a couple of bargain ($4.99!) books, and called it an early night. See, now that would have been a good date, if she were a guy (I know, I know - issues). Now I'm rejuvenated and still have a couple of hours to work. So naturally, I'll blog instead.

P.S. Does anyone else know a person who hasn't *ever* been to Starbucks? I'm not a coffee drinker, but I still go there for the snacks, non-coffee beverages and such. But this was Kynthia's first time ever! Now she's very nice, so I won't hold it against her, but is this...I want to say normal, but my definitions for normality are fuzzy/questionable right now, so I'll go with...common?

And the insanity continues...

I'm in too deep, and I can't stop with the stats jokes. But these are actually funny...honestly!

How many statisticians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
We really don't know yet. Our entire sample was skewed to the left!

Why are the mean, median, and mode like a valuable piece of real estate?
LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!

Come on...that's funny right? If not, could someone please come over to my place immediately and forcibly remove me from this computer? That would be great, thanks.

"I'm not an outlier; I just haven't found my distribution yet!" - Ronan Conroy

Do stats and jokes go together?

As a measure of how far I've gone, I'll post this joke I read. I actually thought it was almost funny, but that could be the stats textbooks I've been reading...

Two statistics are in a bar, talking and drinking. One statistic turns to the other and says "So how are you finding married life?" The other statistic responds, "It's okay, but you lose a degree of freedom."

Blogging, Procrastination, and Resolutions

I can't say that blogging has lost its charm. I'd like to have time to write every day, but instead, school has taken over my life. That sounds somewhat dramatic, but sadly it's true. I have a huge amount of work to do in two months (mostly thanks to my stellar procrastination last semester and the Great Sand Hills project), and I'm now immersed in data analysis and the early stages of writing my thesis.

Spurred on by the fear of my looming defense (for the unwritten thesis no less) and the fact that I'll be defending "whether I'm ready or not", there has been genuine progress. I'm so glad my mom called me on Friday night, as it was 8:30 and I hadn't eaten dinner, having been sitting in front of my computer for 6 hours straight. After a chat, I got back to work, finally shutting down the computer about 1:30 am, after almost 11 hours straight.

Kids, if I have any advice for you it would be "Don't procrastinate!" Because then you won't have to stare at a screen for 11 hours a day, every day, even on weekends. Yes, Saturday and Sunday were more of the same, and today was marginally better because I had to get a new passport (and the lines are amazingly long this time of year!). Thankfully, I took breaks from the data analysis to do "oh so thrilling" interview transcription. And I'm grateful that Shannon is getting older, because we went out for dinner to celebrate her birthday, which once again got me out of my apartment. This helped me regain a sense of normalcy.

So my life officially sucks right now. But the strange thing is that I'm actually relieved. I really wanted to work on my own data and get this project done, and now that I'm putting in the time, I feel better about it. It's going to be a ridiculous couple of months, but it feels good to work this hard again. Of course, it's only been, what? a week? Give me a few more and I'll be running around with my toaster and making idle threats about baths and jumping off the arts tower.

And as far as resolutions, I didn't make any this year. Thankfully I've already mastered chopstick eating, and I can look a guy in the eye (even if he's cute!), so I don't have to make a resolution to try and learn something new. I could resolve to write my thesis, but I'm going to do it anyway. And since that is the extent of my curricular and extracurricular activities right now, I won't have time to worry about resolutions. Maybe struggling with SPSS will be enough learning for 2006.

The New Year

New Year's Eve was lot of fun, with various people visiting Michael and Selena's place to ring in the new year. Angus loved all the company, though I doubt he understood the significance of the evening. We ate, drank, played games, and watched different variations of the countdown. I got Taboo for Christmas, and we played that for quite some time. Michael accused Shannon and I of sharing a "hive mind", but really, we hang out constantly, so what can you expect?

Michael thought it would be fun to call random people in our cell phones and wish them Happy New Year. It was really quite entertaining to watch him call people that don't know him, especially when they greeted him enthusiastically.

And now we're well into 2006, and I'm back into my schoolwork. This has been a busy week for my work, and my data analysis is well underway. It's not exactly thrilling work (it's actually quite tedious), but it's necessary. However, after having spent almost 10 hours straight working on this data, I think I'm going to call it a night.

Enjoy your weekend!

Selena, Michael, Kynthia, and Shannon greeting the New Year

An average night with the girls!

Christmas 2005

What do I say about Christmas this year? Well, I arrived in Victoria on December 21st, so I missed the tree decorating, but it was so nice to get there and see it all done. My parents had clearly missed me (which was nice, I have to say), and the dogs remembered me and were quick to show some doggie affection.

My parents look forward to me coming home for many reasons, one of which is that I will cook and bake (and actually enjoy doing so). Dad picked out four (count 'em, four) types of cookies he wanted to try, and we set out to get the ingredients and bake them. It became a whole family baking party, with Dad measuring and rolling (and yes Dad, you were a VERY good help), mom mixing (and noticing the lack of eggs where necessary!), and me chopping, coordinating and keeping a watchful eye.

There was some pre-Christmas shopping, a trip to the inner harbour to see the Christmas trees at the Empress, and lots of time to hang out or go for walks with the dogs. The weather was rainy and overcast for most of the time I was there. I must be used to living in the dry weather now because I was cold the whole time I was in Victoria - it must be the humidity.

Everyone was home for Christmas day, and mom cooked up a great feast. Dan's friend joined us for Christmas dinner, but other than that it was a fairly quiet affair. Courtney and I got together on Boxing Day for lunch at Milestones (yay Bellini's and Beer!) and shopping downtown. We did some damage, but nothing too gratuitous. We had some adventures with the blue giraffe and managed to visit quite a few stores in a short amount of time.

I met up with my friend Sarah before I left, who was trying to move apartments, pack for New Zealand, and house-sit at the same time. We had lunch, moved boxes back and forth, and struggled to fit her bed down the stairs into her new apartment. She's happily touring beaches in NZ now, so I have little sympathy for her hard work.

I wrapped the week up, spending the last day with my parents. I managed to fit all my various shopping and christmas presents in my bags back (which was both good planning and a small miracle). The only stressful part about getting back was the heavy fog that threatened to keep the flight from landing in Saskatoon. Thankfully it had cleared and we didn't have to spend New Year's in Calgary!

Anyway, that's a quick and dirty overview of my week. Many thanks to all who made it such an enjoyable trip!

Courtney and I spent Boxing day shopping downtown. She says hi to everyone in Saskatoon!

Courtney had a beer, I had a bellini, and my bellini came with a blue giraffe. The giraffe went all over the place and was photographed in front of the Empress, in Lululemon, in Lush, and cruising the streets. It's not exactly native to Victoria, but provided a quality afternoon of entertainment.

Mom and I at the Empress. They had an amazing display of trees inside. We didn't do the Tea Service (it was $40 for some tea and a tiny scone...), but we did go out for dinner and got actual food for about the same amount!

The Parliament Buildings in Victoria

No visit to Victoria would be complete without a trip to the inner harbour and at least one meal downtown.

That would be the bow, quiver, and bass. A very nice set. He actually has a skill or two too!

Dad with his new Quiver (thanks to Dan) that holds his bass bow. Did anyone know you could play the bass with a bow?

Daniel leading the charge on the Christmas dinner spread. It was delicious and for those of you who remember the Digital Thermometer fun of thanksgiving, you'll be thrilled to know it was employed again! Many thanks to mom for making a fabulous dinner!