Not To Be Trusted With Knives

So it feels weird to be writing a regular old blog posting after the last few weeks, but I feel like I need to get back on the blogging horse and sooner is better than later, because I feel like the longer I wait, the weirder it is going to feel. My dad loved reading my blog because it let him keep up with what I’m doing, so it only seems right to get back to writing about the minutiae of my day that my legions of fans have come to expect here at NTBTWK. Of course, it’s late (as I had a study group meeting after work today) and I’m tired and my thoughts are all over the place, so I think that means it’s time for a bulleted list.

• I got some marks back on some of the assignments I handed in and I did surprisingly well, especially given that I submitted them from the hospital when I was in a state where I said, “I have no idea if I’ve even finished these assignments, but I should at least hand in whatever I’ve finished, as there’s no point not getting marks for whatever I’ve done up to this point. I’m just going to submit whatever is in these Word documents and hope for the best.”¹
• When I got to the office today, there was a card from my officemates including a note that they had taken up a collection and made a donation to the Brain Tumour Foundation in my Dad’s honour. I thought that was a lovely gesture. I also got a card and flowers from the management team I work with, which was really sweet. They are on my kitchen table next to the one’s Devon gave me when he picked me up at the airport. I’m spoiled.
• Also waiting in my office were a certificate announcing the two shiny new letters I have after my name² and the peacock feather earrings I’d ordered from the “Feather Fashionista” through one of the Groupon-type sites³:

• Whenever I see peacock feathers, it reminds me that my Dad taught me when I was really little that these are not actually peacock tail feathers, but rather “tail covert feathers.” The peacock’s actual tail is quite short.
• I have an unholy amount of reading to do in the next 10 days (i.e., when my next weekend of classes starts). I need to get caught up on what I missed in classes⁴, do the readings I should have done for those classes but just couldn’t do⁵, and the readings due for my next weekend of classes (March 2-4). Classes that weekend go until 5 pm on March 4 and then I have to be in Ottawa for a meeting starting at 9 am the next day. I am so not looking forward to that! As a reward for making it through that though, I’m taking three vacation days and spending the rest of the week visiting my family⁶.
• I’ve started to get various tax forms in the mail – T4s from employment, charitable donation receipts, pension adjustments and the like. And I’m ridiculously excited about doing my taxes⁷. I think there is something wrong with me.
• I have a massage appointment booked for tomorrow. And thank goodness – I really need a massage!

1. I guess I had finished them, but just not proofread them. I beat the class average on all four assignments for which we’ve received marks so far, so I’m relieved at that. [↩]
2. I’ll post a photo once I get a frame for it and hang it in my office! [↩]
3. I can’t even remember which one [↩]
4. Thankfully, I have wonderful classmates who are willing to get me up to speed. [↩]
5. My brain wasn’t able to retain anything! [↩]
6. I just can’t pass up taking advantage of a free trip to Ontario. Dr. Dan is going to visit me in T.O. and we are going to look for doors that say “Do not enter. Authorized personel only” which we will then enter, in honour of my Dad and his love of disobeying any such sign. [↩]
7. By which I mean taking all these documents to my accountant and having her do my taxes [↩]

Ever so tired, brain too fried to put together coherent paragraphs, so instead you get bulleted lists. Because really, who doesn’t love a good bulleted list? Also, incoherence.

My Dad

• My dad’s operation, which will be at least 10 hours long (!), is scheduled for Feb 8. I will be flying out to Ontario to be with my family at that time.
• I’m so thankful that I have a very understanding boss and that my school is understanding as well.
• My friends and colleagues have also been so supportive and it’s meant the world to me. Kind words, offers of drives to and from airports, stories of similar surgeries that have been wonderfully successful and all the other support offered are all helping me and my family a lot.

School

• When I said that I’d likely be posting a lot fewer blog postings once school started, I wasn’t kidding – it feels like forever since I last blogged! In preparation for the first weekend of real classes¹, I’ve spent the last three nights reading pretty much from the time I’ve gotten home from work until the time I’ve fallen into bed exhausted. This is in addition to the fact that I’d started reading prior to this week AND I had to do a bunch of administrative-y things – like buying textbooks, downloading a course binder of materials, signing up for various websites, etc. etc., that I’ve been chipping away at over this month.
• One of our profs told us we aren’t allowed to whine about our workloads because if we have time and energy to whine, we should use that time and energy to get our work done instead of whining. So, for the record, I am not whining – I am merely stating facts
• Because I am a nerd, I’m tracking the hours I’m spending on homework using a program called Time Edition ((For the record, I have no affiliation with the Time Edition people. It just seemed like a handy time tracking program and I’m going to test it out. I’ll probably blog a review, should I ever have time to blog ever again)). I’m not sure if seeing this  will make me feel validated that I’m working hard enough or make me want to throw up when I see how much time I’ve spent on homework. Either way, I’m sure there will be graphs of this data in future blog postings.
• Tomorrow night is the welcome dinner for the program and we have to wear business attire. I’m very excited to have an excuse to wear my designer suit!

Work

• I really freaking love my work. I do such cool things and work with such great people. Things are ramping up for the AWESOME Project and I am SO EXCITED about that. Also, another work trip to Ottawa is coming up, which makes me squeee!
• In less awesome news, I got my first ever rejection from an academic journal for a paper that I submitted. Boo-urns! We are going to adapt it to submit to a different journal, so fingers crossed!

Health

• Given my January schedule of 8 hours of work or school 6 days a week, with the 7th day of the week being a 14.5 hour day of work plus driving plus school, I’ve done virtually no physical activity this month, save for a couple of hockey games that mercifully fell on Sunday nights after I finished school. I think I need to force myself to make some time for at least some short distance jogs and the occasional yoga class because I feel like crap when I don’t get exercise.
• These long hours are really not doing well for me nutrition-wise. I haven’t had time to go to a grocery store in ages and my game plan for this week turned out to be to order lots of pizza last night, so I’d have enough for not only last night’s dinner, but today’s lunch, today’s dinner, tomorrow’s lunch and probably Saturday’s lunch as well². Clearly, I need a better system!

I really thought I had something else to say, but now I can’t remember for the life of me what it was. Anyhoo, headed to bed now. So. Freaking. Tired!

Update: OK, I remembered what I wanted to say, which was: If this week is any indication, I think I need to buy stocks in Pepsi. Because at the rate I’ve be downing diet Pepsis, they are going to be one hellava profitable company in the next 28 months of my schooling!

1. As opposed to the pre-core classes I’ve had the past three weekends [↩]
2. School is providing tomorrow’s dinner & Friday’s lunch [↩]

After two long days of workshopping, my brain is now in vacation mode and thus, incapable of any real coherent thoughts. Thus, I give you a list of random thoughts.

• I’m back at my hotel room, waiting for for my mom, sister, and nephew to arrive. My sister texted me with an update when they got to Kingston. And her text included those three special words we all love to hear: “We have wine!”
• I’m too cheap to pay for the hotel wifi (and, really, what hotel *charges* you for wifi in this day and age?) so I’ve been tethering my laptop to my iPhone when I want to use the ‘net. And tethering had been pig slow.
• “Pig” is a kind of slow, right?
• And that reminds me, I was in a discussion the other day about why the Angry Birds are so angry at the pigs. Given that I’ve played Angry Birds all of about four times, I mostly just felt bad for the pigs. I mean, what did they ever do to the birds? Turns out – and I’m sure everyone under the sun except me and the person I was having this discussion with already knew this – the pigs stole the birds eggs! I’m not sure how the birds figure that launching themselves into pig-built structures is a good plan – how are they supposed to raise those eggs if they’ve killed themselves in the process? – but then I realized I was thinking far too much about Angry Birds.
• Also, this sale is now over.

I’m too tired to blog anything of substance today (and I have Bootcamp tonight, so I don’t anticipate getting any less tired!), so here’s a picture of the adorable sticker that I put on my iPhone case:

I know this is the kind of hard hitting news that you’ve come to expect here. You’re welcome.

So, after being a complete delinquent with respect to things normal day-to-day living (things like packing my lunch/making dinner at home/going to bed at a reasonable hour) over the past couple of months, which – did I mention? – I completely blame on the Vancouver Canucks for being so awesome as to make it to the Stanley Cup and making me spend all my time watching them, followed by a whirlwind trip to visit the fam & friends in Ontario, I’ve decided it’s high time that I get back to my routine.

To that end, my lunch is packed and waiting for me in the fridge, as is my breakfast; my coffee maker is set up to make me coffee upon my waking; my dishwasher is loaded and ready to turn on in the middle of the night¹; and I’m going to bed at 10:30 p.m., meaning I will actually get a full EIGHT HOURS OF SLEEP and still have plenty of time to get to the office bright and early.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go floss!

1. I use the “delay” feature so that I comes on after I’m asleep. Otherwise the noise drives me crazy when I’m trying to sleep! [↩]

At work, my coworkers all have their doors decorated. Some people bought these fancy stick-on decorations, while the more crafty of my colleagues created their own works of art. And for a long time, I kept thinking to myself, “One of these days, I really should put something on my door. It’s so boring!” Eventually, I got off my butt, went to the dollar store and bought some stick-on letters and some stick-on birds and decorated my door thusly:

My office used to be a clinic room, hence the sign that says
“Clinic” and the “In Use/Not In Use” indicator. 

Prior to decorating my door, I would sometimes sticky notes on my door indicating where I am/what I’m up to – usually this is just when I’m on teleconferences, so people won’t come in while I’m doing my office yoga.

I pretty soon realized that having my name on the door…

…meant that putting on the sticky note made my door look somewhat like a Facebook status update:

Which then prompted me to make a few other sticky note statuses:

It’s Friday, so seems like a good day to paste in some video embed codes for your viewing pleasure!

First up, the UBC Lip Dub video¹. It is epic in its awesomeness².

Second up, “How To Get A Guy To Notice You While You’re Having Sex With Him” from the Onion. It’s NSFW, which you should be able to tell from the title, really. And by the still shot which, of course, is already on your screen, so you may as well just watch it even though you are at work.

How To Get A Guy To Notice You While You’re Having Sex With Him

1. which was brought to my attention by Kalev! [↩]
2. and I even spotted someone I know in the video! [↩]

Is it just me, or does the “you are here” map become a lot less effective when *nothing* else on the map is labeled?

I have a whole bunch of things to say, but nothing that’s worth an entire blog posting. Hence, I give you this bulleted list¹:

• I went out for a run after work for the first time in about a gajillion years. Seeing as I’m claiming that I’m going to run a half marathon in May, actually running is a pretty good idea.
• Related: I bought a new pair of Sugoi running pants, courtesy of a Groupon for Forerunners:

• The factory where my friend Kim works making freaking delicious fake meat products was on City TV. Check out the “tenders” (i.e., fake chicken fingers) that they are making in that video. So. Freaking. Delish.
• I went for my consultation with the dating headhunter on Monday evening and they called yesterday afternoon with info on my two matches. They told me some info about each of them and took info on my availability – the next step is for them to find a time that I can go out for drinks after work with each of them and then they’ll send me the date/time/place and a photo so I know who I’m looking for. Oh yeah, and my prize includes a session with their dating coach, so that will get set up soon too. I’ll keep you posted.
• I was Facetiming with Dr. Dan last night and, at the exact same time, my friend Patrice called on my cell and my sister & Jeff called me from Vegas on Google Voice. I hardly ever get phone calls² and somehow I got three at the *exact same time.*
• I totally want to make a Baked Alaska.
• I’m contemplating playing hockey for 10 days straight in late August/early September.

1. who doesn’t love a bulleted list? Hitler, that’s who [↩]
2. in part because my cell phone doesn’t get much reception at home and in part because people never talk on the phone anymore [↩]

So I’ve got a few photos that I’ve taken recently thinking, “I need to blog that.” And then I haven’t. Backlog of photos to blog + not much time to blog = this blog posting.

First up, a Christmas tree ornament I got from my Secret Santa.

And I’d been wanting more ornaments for my tree!

The other day on the way to a meeting I noticed that Zaphod’s¹ odometer was approaching 33,333 km. And I totally meant to get a photo. And then I totally forgot about it after I got out of my meeting and missed getting the photo. I got this less cool photo instead:

I mean, 33344 is neat and all, but it’s cold comfort when I know how close I was to 33333.

Yesterday was our holiday luncheon at work. We got food from Green Lettuce, a Chinese-Indian fusion restaurant², which came with fortune cookies.  My fortune was pretty lame:

Until I remembered to apply the fortune cookie “in bed”  rule.  Then it’s kind of awesome.

And finally, I made a chocolate amaretto cheesecake for another work holiday party that I’m going to tomorrow night. I’m planning to blog about said cheesecake at some point and took a bunch of photos for that purpose.  Here’s the best of the photos:

I bake so that I can lick the spoon. In bed.  See! It does make every sentence better!

1. Zaphod = my car [↩]
2. plus some Greek and some samosas. Mmm, samosas [↩]