Step on

Garrett gave me a step counter out of a box of Special K, so I used it to see how many steps I take during the day. These are just preliminary results and I plan to use the counter all day for several days next week to get a better estimate.

1572 steps - home to school

2289 steps - 10am - 12:30pm in the lab

So, round trip just from home to school is about 3000 steps, and during the day at the lab, I probably walk about 5000 steps - that's about 8000 steps per day! Not bad!

New mattress has arrived!

On the weekend, I bought a new mattress! It's a treat to myself after putting up with an old crappy one for a lot of years. I was able to get a good deal on it too (ya Sleep Country Canada. Why WOULD you buy a mattress anywhere else?), since it was the last one in the warehouse of a discontinued line. I didn't get to see it ahead of time, but I did try out some mattresses that were similar to it. The best part about the mattress shopping was that I was done buying it within 15 minutes. Yea speedy time saver shopper!

In addition to buying a mattress sans boxspring, I bought myself a bed frame. From Ikea. We looked at United Furniture Warehouse (dunh dunh) but bedframes are expensive at real furniture stores AND they often come as part of a 7 piece bedroom set. I don't need that. So, we went to the trusty, student friendly Ikea and found a decent bedframe for a moderate price. The hardest part about buying the bedframe was (1) finding the double sized frame in the warehouse and (2) getting the bed frame into the car. Garrett and I have managed to fit some fairly large pieces of Ikea furniture into his wonderful little car, but this was definately the largest box yet. We eventually had to take all the pieces out of the box, and when we'd finally fit all the pieces in the car, we had to drive home with two windows open. Brrr...luckily this current cold snap (minus 46 with windchill!!) hadn't hit yet so it was tolerable.

I set up the bed frame on Saturday since Garrett was around to help me, but the mattress didn't get delivered until this morning. It came promptly before 10am and they took away my old mattress too. Good deal! I took a picture of the new mattress on the new bed frame:Doesn't it look plush and comfortable?!! Then I made the bed up and took a picture of that:It looks pretty tall, hey? Maybe we should have set up the bed frame so the mattress would sit lower, but as I mentioned, I hadn't actually seen the mattress before it arrived at my house, so I couldn't really know how tall it was.

So, after my tiny homage to mattress commercial jingles, I will sign off.

Gone and sent 'er away!

Today I did it! I finally finished all the reviews on my paper and sent my manuscript off to a journal for it to be reviewed and hopefully accepted! It was exciting and scary at the same time when I pressed the "Submit" button on the online submission page. However, by now I feel great about having sent it off, and I'm eager already to hear the results. We probably won't hear anything until mid-February at the earliest, though. Keep your fingers crossed that it gets accepted!

Snowshoe racing videos

Here are the videos from our hike up Bourgeau Lake Trail on Nov 10, 2007. Once we reached the top meadows, we had some snowshoe races just for fun.

Race #1: Kim vs Bonnie:


Race #2: Joelle vs Deanna:


Race #3: Kim vs Joelle:


It was hard to tell who won in Race #3, since I was win the lead, but Joelle threw herself over the finish line at the last minute, so we couldn't really tell if she was over before me or not. It was fun!

Updated: fantastic pictures by Garrett

I just want to direct you all towards Garrett's Flickr site, where he has posted some new pictures he's taken. They are really nice and I think you'll enjoy them. Go here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tea_earl_grey_hot/

or click on the link on the right hand side (Tea, Earl Grey, Hot).

Dragonboating movies!

These are a bit old, and you'll have seen them if you're on Facebook, but here are some videos of one of our dragonboat races from last August. We are the boat on the left. You will recall that I was wearing a white lab coat as the steersperson.