Show that carpet who's boss!

That's what Pumpkin does everyday to the carpet in my kitchen. Usually when I get home, the carpet is crumpled up and pushed across the floor. Recently, I've been pulling the carpet slowly when she's attacking it, which gets her even more excited and is really fun to watch. I took some pictures, and although they're not nearly as interesting as seeing it live, I feel they give a pretty good indication of what the carpet gets on a daily basis.Note her back feet are in the 'raking' position, so that she can get the carpet with all four paws. Her eyes, unfocused and glazed - I think she gets a high from attacking. Plus, the carpet can't attack her back so she doesn't need to be super vigilant on defense. I've had this carpet for years and it's the most unintentional cat toy I have.

Winter coat

When I was in Gibsons back in November, I inherited my mom's old winter coat. This is a coat that she has kept for a very long time but doesn't wear anymore. I thought that perhaps I could take it back to Edmonton with me, tailor it a bit and be able to wear it for the winter. It's really thick and heavy, as well as quite long over the legs, so I thought it might be great for keeping the wind off my lower half. I was worried that it would cost me a good chunk of cash to modify it, but was pleasantly surprised when it only cost me 65$ to completely tailor it AND get a new zipper (the old one was pretty sucky and always stuck). I picked it up on Friday and was very happy with the results. The tailor did an amazing job - you can't even tell that she took any fabric out (yes, I'm sure she did actually take out some fabric - it fits better now). I took some pictures: That's right, I'm a supermodel.
I wore it to Garrett's when it was around -10 and I was WAY warmer! The biggest difference was keeping the wind off my legs - it made a huge difference to how warm I felt! Way to go jacket!

Dresser disaster

Since I got my new dresser, Pumpkin has taken a liking to going into the drawers. At first I thought it was funny that she liked to climb into the drawer, until I realized this meant she would often dig at my clothes to get herself fully in. That got annoying quickly, so I stopped letting her go in.

Then, she started trying to get into the dresser at night. I was worried that she would scratch and damage my dresser as she tried to claw the drawers open, so I started sleeping with the water bottle beside the bed. When she would start to claw, I would spray the bottle in her general direction (I say general, because I was always fast asleep and never woke up enough to really nail her) and she would run away. I guess I eventually hit her a few times and it got to the point where I would just have to grab the water bottle and hold it up before she ran away. I've successfully trained her not to claw it anymore at night.

However, apparently she has not gotten over this behaviour. Often, when I get home from school or shopping, this is what I find on the floor:This is actually worse that I usually find, so I thought I'd take a picture. Usually, it's only a shirt of two, sometimes not fully pulled out of the drawer. Perhaps she was extra hyper (mad?) when she did this?

I'm not sure how to stop this behaviour, since it always occurs when I'm gone. Plus, she always hits the same drawer - I suppose that one is the easiest for her to get open. For now, I'll just keep refolding my shirts again and again. I guess she's got me trained up pretty nicely, hey?

German accordian dinner

On Friday, Garrett and I went to The Mill for dinner. We had a coupon and it was close to Garrett's new place, so we thought some German fare would be tasty and easy for us lazy bones (we didn't feel like making ourselves dinner, that is). We went in and right away I was impressed by the German accordian player. He was about 60 years old, complete with German outfit - lederhosen, vest, tie, funny hat. In addition, there were tons of German people at the tables who were singing along with the accordian. The atmosphere was fantastic! We were seated and ordered some yummy schnitzel items, which came with a ton of food. We gladly stuffed ourselves while enjoying the music, before squaring our bill and heading home again. Definately a neat restaurant that I would like to go to again.

Next, we watched our movie rental - the Weatherman, with Nicolas Cage. Now, normally I'm not a big Nicolas Cage fan, but I really liked this movie. It's quite an ironic film and I wouldn't call it a comedy. It's more of a 'realistic' film, in that there isn't the expected happy ending like many movies. However, things do get better, at least, for the weatherman and there are some resolutions to the problems. If you are loking for something a little different than your standard drama/comedy, I would recommend this film.

Day trip or so

Today I had a training seminar in Calgary on a piece of science equipment I want to use for my research. So, yesterday evening I rented a car and drove down to Calgary.

I wasn't super organized for this trip, since I was really busy over the weekend, what with the skiing and the homework and all... So on Monday, I looked up maps and got directions for Kathy's condo, where I spent the night. I also called car rental places to book a car for the next day.

Now, I ask you, does it seem unreasonable for me to expect there to be a single car available for me in all of Edmonton.

In my opinion, there should be lots of cars in Edmonton ready to be rented. However, apparently I am wrong - I called Enterprise (We Pick You Up): "I'm sorry ma'am, we have no cars available in Edmonton," they told me.

"No cars in ALL of Edmonton?" I asked, disbelieving.

"No cars," they replied.

Hmm...I thought perhaps Enterprise in particular was affected. Budget and National were my next choices.

Same problem.

At this point, I was fairly baffled. I mean, between the three car companies and all their stores in Edmonton, how many cars do you suppose they had? I would guess at least a hundred, probably more (Addendum: I found out from a cabbie that both Budget and National have at least 200 hundred cars each). And they have NO cars? Who are these people who are renting all the cars? What are they doing?

I figured I might be hooped for getting a car, but I didn't give up yet. I called a few more places - Avis: busy signal; Thrifty: SCORE! They had a car available. At this point, I didn't really care what size it was, so I ended up taking a 'standard' size. This turned out to be a PT CRUISER! Awesome!

After that my trip went a lot smoother. I picked up the car without a hitch (although the taxi ride there was interesting, but I can save that story for another time) and started on my way. I made good time to Calgary and found Kathy's place with little delay. I stayed in their spare room (quite comfy) and got up bright and early to hit the morning commute to U of C.

The drive actually wasn't that bad. Traffic was moving, if a little slow at places, and I had no trouble finding my way there. I parked in the hospital parkade and made my way to the room where the seminar was taking place.

The seminar was really great actually. Although I got a lot of comments like "I can't believe you drove all the way from Edmonton for this!" (it's only a 3 hour drive people, get over it!), it was totally worth the trip and I learned a lot of information that will help me immensely. Not only that, but I also got to sit down with the application scientist for the machine itself and he helped me design a lot of my experiment! EXCELLENT! That sort of help is invaluable and would have been worth the trip on its own.

After my seminar, I planned to drive over to my cousin's house for dinner (yes, I was invited). I called Sam and Mike and wrote down the complicated directions to their house, and set off. I figured it would take me about half an hour to get to their place.

Little did I know.

Calgary traffic is CRAZY!! Ridiculous crazy!

It took me 35 minutes before I even got to the Deerfoot freeway that would take me to Sam's. To give you a reference, it only took 15 minutes to drive that same road in the morning.

When I finally saw the Deerfoot approaching, I was appalled by the number of cars. Three lanes each way, completely full of cars as far as the eye can see (and that's pretty far in Calgary - no hills), all moving about 60 km/hr. Once on the Deerfoot, I came to a dead stop three times!

So, eventually I made it to Sam's house, although it took me an hour to do so. I don't know how people can live in that city and commute everyday. It would drive me insane.

Dinner was really nice, because my aunty Carol was out visiting Sam and Mike as well. Sam is actually due REALLY REALLY soon to have her baby! I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to visit them, since I suspected Sam might be having or have just had her baby when I was down there. But unfortunately for Sam, she was still pregnant! She was huge, but super cute. I had a really nice time visiting with them and their daughter Taylor was very cute and actually gave me a hug and kiss this time!

I drove home Wednesday night, arriving sometime around 9:30. I basically got home, put away my stuff, talked with Garrett on the phone and then went to bed. I was pretty tired! But it was a pretty good trip overall.

Delicious dinner

Tonight Sarah had a thank-you dinner for a bunch of her friends. You may recall that Sarah broke her kneecap a month or so ago while playing dodgeball with my team. She wanted to have a Christmas/thank-you meal for all those who helped her out while she was dealing with her injury. Nowadays, she is greatly improved in her condition - most of the time, she doesn't need to wear her knee brace while walking around and she is able to bend her knee a lot better. Sarah whipped up a dinner in grand style! She is an accomplished cook and treated us to some great fare: elk roast, mash potatoes, salad with pomegranate seeds and homemade poppy seed dressing, several veggie dishes and lots of other tidbits. It was delicious! In addition, we had a variety of wines to sample with our meal and desserts. We all stuffed ourselves silly and had a fun time chatting, visiting and sharing stories. It was a very pleasant Monday evening.

SKIING!!!

On Saturday, Garrett, Trevor, Mel and I went to Jasper to ski for the day. It was a marathon day, that's for sure, although skiing in the mountains was really great and exactly what we needed to get away from the city.

I got up at 4am and stumbled into the shower. Pumpkin was pretty confused but decided to get up anyway, so I fed her breakfast. I, however, was not hungry at all so early in the morning, so I abstained from chowing down until later. Garrett picked me up at 4:40 and we headed over to Trevor's, where we loaded up his roof rack with my snowboard and Garrett's skis. Next, the three of us picked up Mel from her place and we were off (with a brief visit to the Tim Horton's drive-thru).

The drive to Jasper usually takes about 4 hours, however it took us a little longer because we hit really bad fog most of the way there. This necessitated slow, safe driving, since we couldn't see much farther ahead than 20 feet. I slept a little at the beginning of the drive, leaning on Garrett's shoulder while the rest of the crew chatted about this and that. We stopped in Edson to have breakfast at the Smitty's restaurant, which was actually served quite quickly, allowing us to continue on without much ado. By this point, the sun was starting to come up and we were all waking up slightly.

We got to Jasper around 10:15 and to the ski hill around 10:30. We skiied down from the parking lot to the chalet and bought our lift passes, whereupon I split up from the other three skiiers. I'm a relatively new snowboarder, whereas Trevor, Garrett and Mel are all quite experienced skiiers and were going to stick together to hit the advanced hills. I was totally fine with snowboarding on my own, because it allowed me to stick to hills I felt comfortable with. I worked on my skills without worrying about slowing others down. Garrett also bought some awesome two-way walkie talkies before we went to Jasper, which allowed us to keep in contact with each other.

I spent the whole day on the green runs, mostly on the runs with the T-bar. I really improved as the day went on, getting more comfortable with going faster and making my turns with confidence. I fell a few times over the course of the day, so my butt and knees are a little bruised, however none of my falls really hurt that much except for one where I hurt my wrist a little. I also became a master of the T-bar, which is tricky with a snowboard, because you have to stand sideways while it pulls you. It took me a number of tries to get all the way up on the T-bar. When I finally did, I was very proud of myself, although I had to celebrate by myself, which was perhaps a bit weird for other people who saw me...

I snowboarded a bit with Garrett in the afternoon, which was fun because I could show him my new skills. The ski hill closed at 4pm, so we all met up at the chalet and started out trip back to Edmonton after changing out of our ski gear. We had a pizza dinner in Jasper, filled up with gas and then started back to E-town. We met fog again on the way back, but not nearly as much, so again we were a little slower than usual getting home. However, I think we all had a really fun ride on the way home, because we rocked out the tunes. Garrett and I were in the back seat and we played music from the Ipod, challenging Mel and Trevor to guess the artist and the song name in order to win points. We actually played this for about 2 hours before we broke down to just playing music, usually singing along. We made it back to Edmonton around 10. Once I was home, I had the best shower ever, took an Ibuprofen to dull my aches and hit the hay. My bed was so so comfy.

Midstream completed - check

On Friday at noon, I gave my midstream seminar. It went really well, as judging from the positive feedback I got from several people. I have found that my project topic ends up being quite interesting to a wide range of people, regardless of what they themselves are actually studying. I also make a lot of effort to give comprehensive talks to teach the audience really well.

I actually gave my talk twice on Friday - once with my supervisor, Lorne, who was out of town until the morning before my talk, and the second time in front of my department. The funny thing is, when I practiced the talk with Lorne it took me 50 minutes. When I presented it to the department it took me about 44 minutes. I shaved 6 whole minutes off my talk, simply by talking faster when in front of an audience. I know I talk really fast - even on a regular basis, I'm a fast talker - so before my talk, I try to remind myself to take my time. However, once I get going, that thought doesn't cross my mind once and I just go go go. As well, I really like my project and my experiments have been working well lately, so I was excited to present my data. This means that I talk even faster, because I am excited! It's going to be something I have to work on, but I don't know how much slower I can talk - it's not in my nature. I think I'll just have to make my talks longer than 50 minutes in practice, so that in the real thing, I am not short on my time.

Busy Blogger

Sorry for not posting much this week!

I have my midstream seminar tomorrow (departmental seminar on my data, "halfway" through my degree) and I've been doing a ton of work on it every night. I had my talk done on Wednesday, but then I practiced with Mike and Karl and they had a bunch of suggestions, so I did some editting. Then, today, I figured out how to analyze some of my data and wanted to add that to my talk too. Thus, more work.

Basically, by the time I work in the lab all day, come home and eat dinner, then work on my computer all night, I don't feel like sitting down and writing in my blog. As well, I haven't really done anything 'interesting' to write about! I will post more once it's done!

Crazy camera pictures

Last night at the brewery tour, we were playing with Brian's new Apple laptop, which happens to have a pretty decent camera on it. We started taking some pictures, when Brian showed us the 'effects' we could add to our pictures. I give you a sampling of the goofiness that occurred. No further description is really necessary.

Aprikat

On Saturday evening, my dodgeball team went on a brewery tour of the Alleykat microbrewery. Our team mate Brian is a brewer and offered to show us around. For ten dollars, we got the tour and samples of beer. We showed up at 4pm and had some samples in the front bar area, as seen below:Then we went on back to see how the brewery works:This is their bottle labeller which is from the 1940's. It looks like it:Apparently it still works really well!

We had a great time and ended up staying quite late, visiting and having fun. See tomorrow's entry for some funky pictures taken during this time...

Leech on society

Parking ticket companies. In particular, the one that starts with IM and ends with PARK.

Tonight, Garrett and I went to an Irish pub downtown to meet up with Garrett's sister Sarah for her birthday festivities. This pub is right next to Futureshop, such that they share a parking lot. However, a portion of the parking lot says 'This lot is patrolled 24 hours. One hour parking for Futureshop customers only'.

When Garrett and I got there, the lot near the Irish pub was completely full so we went over near Futureshop, which I might point out, was CLOSED. At first, we parked right in front of a sign as described above, but we decided we didn't want a ticket, so we drove to the other side of the row that didn't have any similar signs. As well, we thought that if we were only there for an hour it would be ok. After all, Futureshop was closed - they didn't need those spots!

Sure enough, when we got back to the car, we had a parking ticket. ARG!! Why on earth are they patrolling a lot at 11pm on a night when it's minus 25? Oh right, to suck the living cash out of people.

I feel that companies like this provide no benefit to society, aside from providing some jobs to people, and they merely reap the benefits of others misfortune.

Addendum: Garrett's brother Joel also got a ticket at the same lot. Double ARG!