Not To Be Trusted With Knives

The one – and I do mean *one* – good thing about living where I do is that I’m close to my office. Like 5 minutes away¹. And it’s awfully nice to finish work at 4 pm and be home at 4:10 pm². The only problem with my commute happens on days when I have meetings in Vancouver, because living in the ‘burbs means that if I have to get to Vancouver for 9 am, I’m going to be stuck with the eleventy billion suburbanites commuting into Vancouver. And I *hate* sitting in traffic, wasting gas as we inch across the Alex Fraser Bridge at a snail’s pace. So, when I do have meetings in the big city, as I do today³, I leave my house at 6 am to avoid the lion’s share of the traffic and then find myself a nice little coffee shop to sit in and do some work⁴ until meeting time. I mean, if I’m going to have to just be sitting there, I’d rather be sitting in a comfy chair in a coffee shop than sitting in my car getting stressed out. This does require me to get up extra early in the morning – not my favourite thing to do – but the trade off of not having to sit in traffic makes it totally worth it.

Image Credit: Posted by Mark Woodbury on Flickr.

1. Although sometimes it can take upwards of 20 minutes when there are idiot drivers in the way. [↩]
2. It takes a few minutes to pack up and such. [↩]
3. And as I did last week [↩]
4. Or, in this case, write a blog posting! [↩]

I watched the start of one game and the end of the other, but both Cup games played in Vancouver this weekend ended with a victory for the good guys!

Truth is, I’m not really much of a football fan and haven’t been since many, many years ago when my Dad and I used to play in a football pool run by my Uncle Harry¹. But since that pool stopped, I don’t think I’ve watched a single football game, which makes me think I was more of a fan of winning money than of the sport. But I digress.

Friday night, as I mentioned previously, my alma mater played in the Vanier Cup – which my friend and fellow McMaster alumna, Therese, got to go to. I watched most of the first half – if having the TV on the background counts as “watching” – and then Devon and I headed to out for dinner and to meet Rachel & Peter for drinks. The score was 20-0 for McMaster when we left and apparently they had a bit of a meltdown in the second half, but managed to win it in the end! Hooray Marauders!

Tonight, of course, was the Grey Cup² that  (which my friend and hockey teammate got to go to!), and I got home from my hockey game in time to watch most of the second half. There were some really nice plays – even a football neophyte such as myself could tell that – and a few points for Winnipeg to keep us from getting to confident, but the BC Lions managed to take it in the end. Hooray Lions!

So, even though I’m not really a football fan, I’m not above jumping on the bandwagon to cheer these two victories!

1. If you’ve ever seen the episode of the Simpsons where Lisa and Homer are in a football pool together – it was like that, except that my Dad and I were both good at choosing teams. [↩]
2. I learned from Gillian’s tweet that the Grey Cup was commissioned by the grandson of the Earl after which Earl Grey tea was named. Clearly, my newfound love of Earl Grey has contributed to this BC victory. [↩]

My alma mater is playing in the Vanier Cup tonight. Which just so happens to be taking place in Vancouver. And while I’m not going to be at the game, I will be in Vancouver. And while I’m not really that interested in football (I mean, seriously, there’s no ice, no skates and no pucks. What kind of sport is that?), I *love* McMaster, so I’m hoping that I’ll be seeing lots of maroon-clad fans celebrating a McMaster win!

I got a text message from my friend JB yesterday. All it said was:

“Beth Snow + David Booth = babies?”

David Booth, I thought? Who the hell is David Booth?  Turns out that I’ve been a negligent Canucks fan and had missed the news that we’d traded away Samuelsson and Strum for Booth and Reinprecht from the Florida Panthers.

This is David Booth:

Hello, hottie!

My friends know me too well!

The rest of the people in this deal are uggoes, so by my calculations we unloaded two not-hotties and picked up one hottie and one not-hottie. Thus, I approve of this trade!

My friend Alicia and I went for a walk around the seawall today – something I haven’t done since Dr. Jen moved away¹ – and afterwards we went to get some sushi with Alicia’s husband and daughter. First of all, a toddler eating sushi is adorable. Also, a toddles insisting on eating with chopsticks even though they don’t know how is also pretty adorable.

We were originally going to go to a sushi joint near Alicia & Paul’s place in Yaletown, but it turned out to be closed between lunch and dinner, so instead we headed over The Eatery. The Eatery is a funky sushi place in Kits that is known for its Astroboy-laden decor and weird combinations in their sushi rolls. Being that I’m new to eating fishy sushi², I asked Paul to recommend the best things to try (as Alicia is a vegetarian). And we ended up having a whole bunch of deliciousness. There were some basic things -salmon nigiri, tuna nigiri, ebi nigiri, and chopped scallop roll – and then some of the crazy Eatery specials – Erotica roll (avocado, salmon, tuna, roe, mayo, crab & cucumber), Malibu roll (smoked salmon, crab, cucumber, papaya), and Miss Piggy roll (bacon, scallop, asparagus, roe, unagi sauce).

The verdict: other than the ebi (prawn) nigiri being pretty tastless and the Miss Piggy roll being odd³, everything else was delicious!

At the end of the meal, Alicia suggested that I should write a blog posting about the Eatery’s crazy rolls and, over time, try to eat every single roll on the “Funky Creations” section of the menu. Well – challenge accepted!  I’m going to consider this my unofficial 102nd “to do” item!

Here’s what I’ve accomplished so far:

Note: As per usual, I’m not getting anything from the Eatery for blogging about them. Sadly. I just like eating there.

1. Dr. Jen and I used to walk the seawall almost every Saturday [↩]
2. I had never tried sushi before I became a vegetarian, and since becoming an unvegetarian, I have only had a basic tuna roll and salmon roll and it was at a run-of-the-mill sushi joint, not a really good one. [↩]
3. I always thought that bacon makes everything better, but it turns out that this is not true when it comes to sushi [↩]

And while I’m phoning in blog postings, I decided to tackle item #86 on my 101 list, which was to write a blog posting about the Car Co-op. Which, you know, made sense as something to do 995 days ago when I didn’t own a car and the Car Co-op was my ticket to ride. And if I hadn’t been so lazy, I could have written this posting back then, or shortly after I bought my car while my Car Co-op’ing experience was still fresh. But I didn’t. However, in the interest of knocking one more item off my list, and since Krista Lee’s recent comment reminded my that I can totally half-ass this blog posting, I’m writing it now.

For the uninitiated, the Car Co-op, officially known as Modo, is a car sharing organization. Basically, everyone who is a member is technically a part-owner of a few thousand cars, trucks, and vans that are parked all around Vancouver. When you want to use one of the vehicles, you book it, you use it and you return it to the place from whence you picked it up. You pay a usage fee – some combination of hours used and kilometres driven. The amounts have changed since I used it regularly, but you can go look at the rates on their website if you are interested¹. It’s super convenient because someone else deals with insurance, maintenance, and all the other annoying things that go along with having a car. All you have to do is drive it and leave it in the condition you found it in.

Back when I lived just a quick bus ride from work (and didn’t have to drive all over hell’s half acre for my job), the Car Co-op was perfect for me. I really only need a car to get to hockey game and for the occasional hiking trip, so it was soooo much cheaper and more convenient to use a co-op car than to own a car. And even since I bought my car, which I needed for my job, I’ve kept my Car Co-op membership because it’s handy to have such ready access to a truck or a van if I need to move something big. Or even just to have access to a car with more than two seats in it! It only costs me $1 per year for my membership, which is totally worth it.

So there you have it – #86 on my 101 list, consider yourself checked off!

Image Credit: Posted by Christian Paul on Flickr.

1. Also, since I last used it, they seem to have added a casual membership, where you don’t hold shares in the Co-op but you can use the cars under a different rate structure. [↩]

I arrived home from work today to find this waiting for me:

So first of all, it’s a piece of mail – and I love mail! And it’s from my niece – and I love my niece! And it references my world record holding status – and you know that I love my world record holding status!

What could be in this package???

As it turned out, it was a card congratulating me on my 10-day long hockey game. With pictures of Queen Amidala on the front, naturally¹.

Inside the card:

And not only was there a card, but my niece also made me a ring!

Luckiest. Aunt. Ever!

1. My niece just happens to be on a Star Wars kick at the moment [↩]

When I first started fundraising for the Longest Game, the online system used for donations wasn’t equipped to provide us with the names of the people who were donating. Once we got an updated system, names of donors were published immediately on the fundraising page ((If the donor gave permission, that is!)) So while I know the majority of the people who donated – and I love you all more than you can know! – there are some people who donated who I just have no idea who they are!

My fundraising page lists “Anonymous Pledges prior to July 15, 2011″ of “$587.60″ – these are the donations received on the older system that didn’t give us names of donors. I know some of that money was from Sarah and some was from Dan, and some was from another friend (who wants to be anonymous), because I talked to all of them about it, and that some of it was from the, um, Electronic Device Buying Party for Charity that I held at my friend Lianna’s place. But I don’t know where the rest of it came from! Also, on the newer fundraising page, there is an “Anonymous,” a “DG,” and a “Vera Hossack” – I don’t know who these are either!

So, if you happened to donate some money to me and don’t see your name listed on my fundraising page (or you aren’t my “Fuck Yeah” donor – I know who *you* are!), please let me know (you can email me or use my contact page, if you aren’t comfortable with talking about your donation in the comments section)! I want to send a special thank you to all my fabulous donors and I can’t do that if I don’t know who you are. Also – you rock!

Image Credit: Posted by Matthew Burpee on Flickr.

My friend Dr. Erika is giving a public lecture as part of the Café Scientifique series of public lectures:

Our next café will happen on Tuesday September 27 at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir Street) at 7:30pm. Our speaker that evening will be Erika Eliason, an expert on Pacific salmon migration who has been featured on the UBC Public Affairs webpage. Her talk that evening will be:

Pacific Salmon and Climate Change 

Every year, millions of Pacific salmon return from the ocean to the Fraser River to perform their upriver, adult spawning migration. Pacific salmon typically return to spawn in the same stream where they were born. This has resulted in many geographically and genetically distinct populations. In recent years, warm river temperatures have been associated with high mortality during the upriver spawning migration, raising clear conservation concerns. My research is focused on understanding why salmon die when the water gets too warm and how different populations vary in their susceptibility to warm temperatures.

We hope to see you there!

-Your Café Sci Vancouver Organizers (http://blogs.ubc.ca/cafesci/)

It will be everything you ever wanted to know about Pacific Salmon and Climate Change. Be there are be square.

Apparently my ability to blog about anything but the game lasted all of one day.

It’s been four days since the game ended and I’m feeling both like I may never fully recover and like it was all just a dream! My physical injuries are all very surface – blisters and abrasions  - and I’m a fast healer when it comes to stuff like that and my sausage fingers only lasted for about a day after the game. I had dinner with about 25 of the players last night¹ and many people have much more serious issues – groin pulls, toes that are still numb, etc.! But I also am still having trouble temperature regulating – I’m hot, then I’m cold – and I can’t seem to get hydrated. Despite the fact that I am drinking crazy amounts of water all day long, none of it seems to want to stay in my body²! I feel like I’m ever so slightly more hydrated than yesterday, but my mouth and my eyes still feel super dry! If we do this again, I feel like we should have physiologists follow us around to study the effects of insane amounts of physical activity³. On the plus side, I have regained the ability to sweat, which I lost around Day 5 of the game. So that’s got to be a good thing, right?

My main problem now is that I’m still suffering from the sleep deprivation – hence why I’m at home writing a blog posting on a Friday night instead of partying it up like a respectable 30-something should be. Now, I’m no stranger to sleep-deprivation. I usually only sleep about 5 hours a night during the week, so getting only 5 hours sleep per day during the hockey game wasn’t as much a problem for me as it was for some others… for a few days. But in the real world, I typically make up for my insufficient sleep during the week by sleeping 10 or 12 hours per night on the weekends, something I certainly didn’t do during the game! I’m also not usually physically active for 9 hours per day while getting only 5 hours of sleep per night, so the sleep deprivation *definitely* caught up with me. And since I went back to work the day after the game ended, I haven’t gotten nearly enough sleep to start catching up. In fact, I was in a meeting today and the chair asked us to talk about our goals for the meeting – her example was “By the end of the meeting, I want a consensus on this document so that we can submit it to the Director – and I said, “My goal is to stay awake for the next two hours”⁴.

My plan for the weekend is to take it easy – early to bed tonight, a day on the beach tomorrow and definitely sleeping in big time on Sunday. Hopefully by Sunday I’ll have enough energy to actually get groceries – something I just haven’t had the strength to do as of yet. Maybe next week I’ll even unpack all my stuff from the game, which is currently sitting in a giant pile in my living room!

1. Big time props to Richport Ford Lincoln who kicked in a bunch of money for dinner! [↩]
2. I’ve also tried beer, but that doesn’t seem to work either [↩]
3. Yeah, I just suggested that we might do this again. Near the end of the game, when people would ask me if I’d ever do this again, I would say, “No way. I’ll volunteer, but playing in a 10 day long hockey game is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” Now that we are a few days out, I feel like I might do it again if they were to plan another game like this! [↩]
4. Fortunately, my coworkers have a sense of humour and are sympathetic to my plight! [↩]