Dear Sedin Twins
I’m sorry about all those times I called you ugly. Or fugly. Please sign with the Canucks.
Sincerely,
Dr. Beth.
Update July 1, 2009: It worked!!!
Jun
30
Jun
29
zomg, my plant is still alive!
Somehow, I’ve managed to keep this plant alive for more than a month:
I’m pretty sure that’s a record for me. My other plant, which I received about aweek after this one is also still alive, but it’s spent the past week on vacation in one of my coworkers’ offices as she has a window and we figured that since it was looking a little lacklustre, perhaps some sunshine would do it some good.
Also, I got sick of never being able to find my keys in my purse, so got these:
Quatchi & Mukmuk keychains! Of course, I’ve merely replaced the can’t-find-my-keys problem with the can-no-longer-close-my-purse problem.
And finally, Satan drives a minivan:
Jun
28
BC Premier #14 – Mr. Conflict-of-Interest McElection-Rules-Violations
The 14th Premier of the Province of British Columbia, Mr. Conflict-of-Interest McElection-Rules-Violations.
 |
Name | Edward Gawler Prior |
| Born: | Dallowgill, England on May 21, 1853 | |
| Died: | December 12, 1920 in Victoria, BC | |
| Party: | none | |
| Held Office: | November 21, 1902 to June 1, 1903 |
- came to BC after practising as a mining engineer until 1873
- 1886: won a seat in the BC provincial legislature
- 1888-1896: won a seat in the Canadian House of Commons (MP for Victoria)
- December 1895 – July 1896 and 1897: Controller of Inland Revenue (federal)
- 1901: lost his federal seat for “violations of election rules”3
- 1901: apparently his election rule violating at the federal level didn’t prevent his from being elected at the provincial level and he rejoined provincial legislature
- 1902: became the Premier – the last one to lead a government in the non-party system
- 1903: kicked out of the Premiership by the Lieutenant Governor because he gave his own hardware company a really important contract (hello conflict of interest1)
- 1904: lost his seat in the provincial election; also lost an attempt to return to the Canadian House of Commons – apparently the voters finally realized that this guy was a wee bit on the immoral side
- however, it appears that people have a short memory, as despite the fact that he was fired from being the Premier by the Lieutenant Governor, in 1919 he was appointed as… the Lieutenant Governor. Then he died.
- he was a Mason
- he holds the dubious distinctions of being the last Premier to be dismissed by a Lieutenant Governor and the only BC Lieutenant Governor to die in office
In summary, despite being kicked out of positions at both the provincial and federal levels for his shady behaviour, he somehow became the Lieutant Governor. Awesome.
Image credits: Accessed from Wikipedia. In the public domain. w00t!
Footnotes:
1Unless you read the Masons’ website, in which he was dismissed for “non-confidence.”
References:
2Library of Parliament
3Wikipedia, the reference of that has very little to say about Prior
4Lieutant Governor of BC website
5viHistory (University of Victoria)
Jun
27
Hockey Hotties – Fresh Meat
Just in time to provide some relief to my hockey withdrawal, yesterday and today was the NHL draft! In addition to bringing in a new crop of talent to the league, this also marks a new crop of fresh meat for my hockey hotties team. This was brought to my attention when Darren scouted out the hotness that is Victor Hedman, the second overall pick in the draft. The picture isn’t Creative Commons licensed, so I can’t put it on my blog, but click the link. Seriously, you won’t regret it.
Now, I have to say that I’m not overly impressed with his face, but that physique lands him a spot on my hottie list.
Other hotties that I noticed from the draft include:
- Evander Kane from the Vancouver Giants, chosen 4th overall by the the Atlanta Thrashers. No relation to hottie Patrick Kane of the evil, evil Chicago Blackhawks.
- Scott Glennie from the Brandon Wheat Kings, chosen 8th overall by the Dallas Stars. Also, his howntown is Oakville!
- Peter Holland from the Guelph Storm, chosen 15th overall by the Anaheim Ducks.
- John Moore from the Chicago Steel, chosen 21st overall by the Columbus Blue Jacket.
And last but not least, the Vancouver Canucks first round pick, Jordan Schroeder of the University of Minnesota.
Welcome to the big leagues, boys. We here at NTBTWK will be watching your hotness, er, skill development closely.
Jun
26
And speaking of PhDs…
… check out my new one:
The other day I happened upon this Flickr photo, which lead me to this site and this toolkit for making my own Ph.D. in Horribleness. You know that you are incredibly, incredibly jealous of my achievements in the field of horribleness. Incredibly.
Jun
25
#37 – Going West
Sarah wrote a piece on her blog about the expanding world in which she lives, starting with her earliest memories in which the street she lived on was her entire universe to being a world traveller with friends all over the globe. Although I’m not nearly as travelled as Sarah is1, I thought I’d give this a try myself. But rather than an expansion, my life has been more of the proverbial3 “Go West”.
For the first 18 years of my life, I lived in the same place – in the town of Milton, Ontario, in a little house on the corner of a street and a crescent4. My best friend lived on the crescent, three houses away. My elementary school was about a two minute walk – I could literally hear the bell ring from my house and make it into class on time.
At 18 I moved slightly west and a bit south to the city of Hamilton to attend McMaster University. I lived in residence for my first year, spent that first summer back in my parents’ place and then headed back to Hamilton where I lived the next two years in an apartment on the west edge of the city. After that I moved back to Milton5 and lived in an apartment for the next two years while I did my last year at Mac and my year-long Master’s degree at the University of Guelph. Guelph being again further west.
After Guelph, I made the big move west – to British Columbia. At first I lived in Burnaby, BC, but that only lasted about 8 months as it turned out that driving the 20 km from Burnaby to school takes a friggin’ hour (!) and the Skytrain, to my great surprise, didn’t go to the university. The possibility that Skytrain might not go to the university hadn’t even occured to me. I mean, who would build a city where the rapid transit doesn’t go to the university where 50,000 people have to go every day, right? So, yeah, I moved, yet again, further west to W. 16th Avenue, near the university and lived there for about five years.
My last move was a short one – it happened when my ex and I split up – I stayed in the same ‘hood, but moved to sublet a friends’ basement suite, just for the summer. That was just more than three years ago!
Here’s a Google Map of all the moving goodness:
View Places I’ve Lived & Gone to School in a larger map
Except it doesn’t have my current place on it, because I don’t need the paparazzi showing up.
1Sarah and her husband Dave go on, by my latest count, at least 12 cruises per year and they are starting their new son, Teddy, off with his first cruise at the tender age of 8 months2! My neice by 18 months of age and my thesis have both been on more contenents than I, but who’s counting?
2Not that I’m complaining. Their cruise leaves from Vancouver, which means that *I* get to see them! And I can’t wait!
3If not actually “proverbially” at least the “Pet-Shop-Boys-songial”
4My parents still live there to this day!
5My then-husband hated his job in Hamilton, so he went back to a job he’d had in Milton. He didn’t have a driver’s license, so we moved to Milton to so he could get to work and I drove to school.
Don’t forget to 
Read about the charity that I’m supporting, Options for Sexual Health!
Jun
25
Congratulations Dr. Lauren, Dr. Mike & Dr. Rachel
In that last 7 days, 3 of my friends successfully defended their PhDs! Coincidentally, I know all three of them through my involvement in science outreach, meaning that not only are they brilliant in their respective fields of study1, but they are also super awesome people who volunteer their time to bring the fun of science to kids!
Congrats Drs. Lauren, Mike & Rachel – you guys rock!
Now I’m off to the beach to celebrate with Dr. Rachel!
1Chemistry, Biochemistry and Physics Education.
Image credit: Posted by dolescum on Flickr with Creative Commons-y goodness. I know that the photo actually doesn’t fit this posting, given that Dr. Mike is not a “girl PhD” but I found the photo doing a Flickr search for something to put with this posting and it was just too funny not to use.
Jun
24
Comtemplating Blogathoning. Wanna write a guest post for me?
So right after I hit “publish” on my 101 in 1001 check in posting, I ambled on over to my Google Reader and saw that Rebecca has put out the call for this year’s Blogathon, which just so happens to be on my 101 list!
Blogathon involves publishing one blog posting every half hour for 24 hours to raise money for a charity of your choosing. That’s right folks, 48 postings in a day! It also requires one to be awake at 6 a.m. on a Saturday, which I believe falls under the category of “cruel and unusual.” Yet here I am contemplating it!
Anyway, I’m writing this posting to plant a bug in your ear. Wanna guest post for me? Have any ideas on how I can come out with 48 bloody things to blog about? For example, last year Rebecca did the A-Z of Metro Vancouver: A is for Alex Fraser, B is for Burrard Bridge, C is for Canucks, etc. I think having a theme like that would help me come up with ideas, but I don’t yet have any ideas for a theme. Any suggestions?
Jun
24
101 in 1001 check in
164 days ago I made a little list. A list of 101 things I was going to attempt to do in the next 1001 days. Today seems like a good day to check in on my progress.
- items accomplished – 11 (or 10.9%)
- items in progress – 7 (or 6.9%)
- items on which I’m totally slacking – 83 (or 82.2%)
- days remaining – 837
- most surprising accomplishment – #40 – Buying a Smart Car!
- least surprising accomplishment – #94 – Buying pants!
There’s one item that I thought would be uber difficult but that I now think I’m close to accomplishing: #83 – achieve inbox zero and maintain for one full week. I’m an intermittent1 reader of Lifehacker and recently read this posting, which led me to this posting and this posting and this posting. So I’m gonna try all that and see if I can manage this whole inbox zero thing which, up until now, has seem about as likely to exist as Ogopogo.
Another one that seems within my grasp is #69 – do 15 minutes of yoga every morning for a month, thanks to Nancy’s blog recommendation about Yoga Today free videos. Because not having good yoga videos has been my excuse for not doing it so far. Though I may wait until my 100/200/200 challenge is over before I tackle the yoga!
1“Intermittent” because they have *way* too much stuff on their blog and so I often have to declare RSS bankrupcy on their feed as having 496 unread postings makes me want to cry.
Jun
23
And then my head exploded…
For some strange reason, last night my phone decided that it had too much information on it and it was no longer going to be able to store said information. So it wiped it all out. You know, it’s only entire life in that calendar and contact list. No big deal, right?
Mercifully, I had it all in my Palm Pilot desktop software, so I exported both my calendar and my contact list so I’d have a back up copy in case synching my phone wiped it out. Synching didn’t wipe it out on my desktop softare, but it also didn’t fix my problem – I still got the “there isn’t enough room on your phone for your data” error message and nothing on my phone. So I reinstalled the software, which managed to wipe out the calendar & contact list. No biggie, I have the backups that I exported, right? Except that when I try to import those backups, it says the file type is not compatible. You know, the file I exported from Palm Desktop software earlier in the evening is not compatible with Palm Desktop software. Because that makes so much sense.
I blame the spiders.
So, does anyone have any ideas on how I can make my freakin’ phone work properly again?? I mean, it still functions as a phone (for the moment, anyway) and despite the fact that it has wiped out my contact list, speed dial still remembers the names and numbers of the people on speed dial, but I really freakin’ need my calendar and contact list!!