Not To Be Trusted With Knives

The Internet’s leading authority on radicalized geese

Nov
3

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Halloween 2019

Category: awesomeness, Geekery, movies, rampant narcissism Tags: , , , Leave a Comment

I was having trouble deciding what to be for Halloween this year and then my office announced that they’d picked a theme for the annual costume contest: horror movies. I figured that would help me as it would narrow down my options. But as I thought about it, most of the iconic horror movie characters are male: Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, Pinhead, Chucky, Dracula, Frankenstein, Jack Nicholson in the Shining. The first two female characters that popped to mind were sidekicks to males: Bride of Chucky and Bride of Frankenstein, and I wanted to be something that was more her own character. I did consider Carrie and one of the twin girls from The Shining, but felt the latter was really a costume that required a partner. I started Googling for ideas and saw a movie that came out quite a while ago that I really liked: Corpse Bride. Yes, I realize that she’s also a bride, but at least she wasn’t labeled as the bride of someone – she just happened to have been murdered on her wedding day.

So I set off to the thrift shops to find either a pink prom dress to be Carrie or a wedding-like dress to be Corpse Bride. After going to FOUR different Value Villages, I finally found what I was after. Well, I did find some actual wedding dresses at the first few Value Villages I went to, but they were a bit more expensive than I wanted to spent on a Halloween costume. And also I was creeped out at the thought of buying someone’s actual wedding dress at a Value Village1. As an aside, if anyone is looking for a super cheap wedding dress, you can find them at Value Village in the range of $50-$200, which is pretty cheap for a wedding dress!

I ended up settling on two dresses in fact – there was one dress that had a good top but was too short to be convincing as a wedding dress and another that was long enough (but not too bulky), but the top of it was too small for me – I couldn’t zip it up due to the size of my back and shoulders from my weightlifting. So I just zipped that dress up to the waist and put the other dress on top. As a bonus, the short dress is totally wearable as a summer dress for me – and together they cost me less than $20.

The hard part of the costume was the makeup. I decided to go full on with body paint and do the blue skin and huge cartoon character eyes and paint a skeleton arm because the Corpse Bride has a skeleton arm. She also has a skeleton leg but I didn’t bother to paint that because my long dress would cover it and also just doing the face and arms took long enough.

My sister told me about the unknown-to-me world of makeup tutorials on YouTube (my niece is a teenager, so my sister knows about such things) and I found this video that I followed to do my makeup. And then I found this other video that I used to paint my skeleton arm.

I had to get up at 5:30 am to put on all this makeup – you have to do a few coats and you have to let stuff dry before you can paint other stuff. And there was a whole production about getting my dress on with the minimal amount of damage to my paint. In the end, I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

Corpse Bride at the office
Here I am at my desk at work
Corpse Bride at the office
The skeleton arm was my favourite part.

The worst part was that the makeup crumbled throughout the day, so I had to do some touch ups and I left a trail of makeup crumbs wherever I went. I’m sure the cleaning people weren’t too pleased that evening.

In addition to wearing this to work, I also wore it to the gym, as my gym does a costume contest too. Here I am doing a chinup:

Corpse Bride chinups
Corpse Bride chinups

All in all, I was pretty happy with the costume and I got lots of compliments on both the look and the dedication that it took to wear body paint all day. But I’m pretty sure that I won’t be doing another costume involving body paint for a very long time! I’m trying to convince my team at work that we should do a team costume next year. They seemed pretty enthused by the idea when they saw the costume that one of the other teams at work put together: they dressed up at Costco! The same team the previous year dressed up as the Price is Right. So we are going to come up with some kick ass idea of a team costume for Halloween 2020. If anyone has suggestions, I’m all ears!

  • It’s a funny thing to be a coach of a winning team. They did all the work and I kept getting congratulated! Not only at the conference, but I got congratulated by someone on the plane on my flight from Halifax to Ottawa and again by someone at the baggage carousel in the Ottawa airport.
  • I decided to do a stopover in Ottawa since I was flying all the way across the country, I figured I should make it worth my while. I hadn’t seen Sarah and Dave in eleventy billion years… or possibly two years which is (a) much longer than I usually go without seeing them and (b) far too long. I’m glad I was able to spend a few days just hanging out, catching up, and chilling with them. I may have also gotten them and their kids addicted to Pokemon Go. And they introduced me to Pokemon battles with trading cards (which is so much more challenging than PoGo) and to the TV show, so now I feel much more well versed in Pokemon.
  • Speaking of their kids, omg, their kids are adorable. And sweet. And very funny! Their youngest, Susannah, when asked if she preferred to calling me Aunt Beth or Dr. Snow, said she preferred Aunt Beth because “what is she, a doctor for cold people?” At first we thought she meant a doctor just for people who had a cold… and then we clued in that she was being much more clever!
  • Since I’ve been back, I’ve had a flurry of work to do – it took me a good week to clear through the back log of emails, but I ended Friday by checking off a lot more things from my to do list than I thought I would, so that made me a happy camper.
  • Making me less of a happy camper is that I’m *still* rehabbing my knee. I was expecting it to be a couple of weeks to heal and it’s been nearly two months! I’ve had it worked on by various health care professionals and my trainer at the gym gave me a knee-friendly training program (basically stuff to work on strength and stability in my leg, plus some stuff to make my biceps look awesome. Not that that will help my knee, but it gave me something where I could push myself without risking my knee and who doesn’t want to have awesome biceps, amirite?). The chiro tested my knee out today and I could see that it was actually improved – more stable and also I don’t have discomfort on the part of the MCL below the knee like I used to -only a bit of discomfort on the part of the MCL that is above the knee. So that made me feel better because I was thinking that the healing had plateaued, but now I think it’s just that it’s been getting better so gradually that it’s hard to tell from day-to-day.
  • My knee has been better enough to play hockey, as long as I wear a knee brace. I played two weeks ago (and scored a goal, I might add!), then was away for a week, and then played again this past week. So that makes me happy. And as an added surprise, someone who I played in the Longest Game with just joined my summer team, so that’s fun!

So pretty much catches you up with what’s new with me. And now that I’m back from my various travels, I guess I should figure out what I’m doing with my summer!

May
21

By

I’m Home For A Good Time, Not A Long Time

Category: rampant narcissism, travel Tags: , Leave a Comment

Hey, remember that time I went to Prince George? Well, I’m back from that trip, but not for long as on Saturday I’ll be heading east to Halifax.

Prince George highlights:

OK, so apparently my trip to PG was entirely food focused, but in my defence the day time was filled up with work and I had work I had to do in the evenings too, so pretty much my only non-work time was dinner!

Also, as I mentioned previously, the people were super friendly, which made the trip pretty great.

And now I’m four days into my seven days at home before I jet off to Halifax for a conference for four days and then I get a few days of vacay in Ottawa to hang out with Sarah and Dave who I haven’t seen in far too long! Now I just need to make it through three more workdays where I need to accomplished about 27 days worth of work… including writing the presentation I have to give at the conference! Wish me luck!

Apr
10

By

So Many Plans!

Category: rampant narcissism Tags: 4 Comments

So, 2019 is more than one quarter of the way done. I’d say “where has the time gone?” but I know exactly where it has gone – it’s gone into the teaching of the way too many courses that I’ve been whining about. Happily, all I have left of that is to mark the final assignment for one course, the final exam for another course, and mark the two final assignments for the third course. So really, I’m practically done!

Which means I can soon turn my sights to doing stuff around the condo that I’ve been itching to do (and which makes up like half of my list of goals for 2019). There is painting and building and installing and organizing on the horizon and it’s going to make me SO HAPPY! Also, if anyone has any tips for painting and building and organizing, I’m all ears!

I am also excited to set up my balcony herb garden again (and I’m sure the kitties will be delighted to have fresh catnip back on the menu). And also I need to clean out the frog tank and re-stock it with new frogs, because all the previous frogs passed away. So if anyone has suggestions for frog names, I’m all ears for that too!

I also want to do something creative – perhaps more sewing classes? Or jewellery making? I really, really want to take a stand up comedy class, but the next offering of the course I want to take starts when I’ll be in Halifax for a conference, so I’ll have to wait until the summer for that one.

And then I guess Scott and I need to figure out what our next trip is going to be1. We’ve been talking about wanting to go to Japan, but haven’t made any concrete plans. Any suggestions (for either a Japan trip or suggestions of other trips we might want to consider), I’m all ears for that too! 

  1. Hopefully I will actually get around to blogging about our Scotland trip and our Palm Springs trip before our next trip! [↩]

Mar
28

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Elevators

Category: rampant narcissism, random Tags: , , Leave a Comment

Elevator buttonsThe elevators in my office building are very, very slow. It’s only a 7 storey building, so I’m not sure why it takes eleventy hours to get from the ground floor to the floor on which my office is located but it does. You often have to wait several minutes for the elevator and it’s super annoying when you just want to get to work – or you just want to leave! The other day, as I walked up to the elevator and the doors were closing, I pressed the button to get the doors to re-open, knowing that if I didn’t it catch it, I would be stuck there waiting for several minutes. Someone from my office was in the elevator, saw me press the button and *pushed* the “close door” button. I mean, the doors were closing, I pushed the button and they started to open again, and she pushed the freaking “close door” button and the doors started to close again! So I pushed the button again, and the doors opened and I got in. And this person does this big exaggerated sigh at me. I was stunned. So I said, “I really didn’t want to have to wait 5 minutes for the elevator to come back.” And she’s like “Well, I just wanted to get going.” Seriously. She didn’t want to be delayed by 12 seconds, so I should have to be delayed for 5 minutes! I figured I won that round, because she actually ended up costing herself more time by not just letting me get in the elevator the first time I pressed the button.

Elevator ButtonOne of the two elevators in my condo is broken, with just a sign telling us “We are waiting for parts to be shipped to us to fix the elevator and we have no idea when they will arrive.” So there’s also a bit of a wait for the elevator when I’m at home. But funnily enough, I’ve not had anyone try to close the door on me. What’s more, I’ve had some variation of this conversation several times since the one elevator broke down:

Me: Thanks for holding the elevator! I can’t believe what a big difference in wait time it makes having just one working elevator.

Other Person: Yeah, it really does. On the plus side, I’ve met so many more of neighbours because it seems like there’s alway someone else in the elevator with you!

“I get to meet more of my neighbours!” is *such* a New West thing to say.

Elevator ButtonsSo I wrote the above two parts a few days ago and hadn’t had a chance to post them… and then the elevator situation at work got weirder. Yesterday, the elevators would not come to the floor my office is on. They would go to all the other floors, but not mine. I may have been listening to too much of the SAYER podcast, but I’m pretty sure I have offended the elevators – probably by complaining about how slow they are – and now they are plotting against me! And then today the office admin person sent around an email saying that they were aware of the broken door handle on the first aid room and maintenance had been called to come and fix it. So basically the elevators are out to get me and they’ve sabotaged the first aid room so that when said elevators attack, there will be no way to save me.

 

Yes. I’ve definitely been listening to too much of the SAYER podcast

  • First photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/raeallen/8049027193/ 
  • Second photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/phelix/3148944/ 
  • Third photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aloha75/16275579257

    • Mar
    16

    By

    (More Than) Halfway There

    Category: rampant narcissism, Teaching & Learning Tags: , , 1 Comment

    It’s mid-March. Which means it is, mercifully, more than half way through the semester for the eighteen billion courses that I’m teaching right now. I mean, I love the classes that I’m teaching – one is statistics, another is data and research management, and a third is program planning & evaluation1 – and my students are awesome. But oh my gawd that is a lot of balls to keep in the air at the same time, along with my regular day job and various other sundry things I do.

    Two of the courses run the full semester (one online and one in a weekly night class), but the other one is a half-sized course that runs over two weekends (Friday and half of Saturday one weekend and then three weekends later, half of Saturday and all day Sunday). I taught my first of those weekends on the first weekend of March and it was totally flashback to my MBA, which ran on a similar cadence and occurred in the same venue. And also the feeling of sheer exhaustion.

    Right now, every day is go to work, possibly go to the gym or play hockey or teach a class (depending on the day), then spend the night marking assignments/creating assignments/develop course material and activities/making slide decks/reviewing online discussions and responding to students. Unless it’s a Saturday or Sunday, in which case I get to skip the “go to work part”. Every. Single. Day.

    But I’m more than halfway there. I’ve completed week 10 of 15 weeks for my two full semester courses and half of my classes for the weekend course. I’ve only marked 6 of 14 assignments/tests, so there’s still a fair bit of work to do on that front, so I guess I’m a bit less than half done on marking and a bit more than half done on teaching.

    I am really, really going to enjoy May this year.

    1. Yes, those topics are exciting to me. YMMV. [↩]
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