A surprising article

Today, Joelle brought me a copy of the University of Alberta newpaper, called the Folio. Here it is:Let's open the front page up all the way:Nice cover, clean format. Looks good. Let's open it up.Wait, what do we have here?Is that someone familiar? How can that be, since that familiar person had NO IDEA that she was going to be in this newpaper?Not only did she not know that she was going to be in that newspaper, but she didn't know the "Bicep" would be published again, indeed even enlarged!

Most of you will recall my article in the AHFMR magazine a month or so ago. I thought that was the last I had seen of that article, which featured two photos of me, both of which I thought were a little funny looking:This one, and the one in the above newspaper as well. I was kindof glad the hype about the article was fading (the article is up on my department walls in two places!), and now this one came out! Aren't they supposed to tell me if they are going to publish my picture somewhere?

I wish I had my new hair cut when I got those pictures taken.

Hockey

On Saturday afternoon, Bonnie and I went to watch Sean's hockey game. I took some pictures of Sean's team winning 16-4 or so. Sean's the goalie on his team, so look for him in the net:Fuzzy - bummer. Next one:Better.Sean looks bored.Ooh, some action!Oh, bored again. No people or pucks nearby. I made a couple videos with my new camera, but I still haven't figured out how to keep it in focus when it's a movie...but this one is alright so I posted it here.

The Sewer Scope

Last night, I got home from ultimate practice and went to have a shower. After a minute or two in the shower, I started to notice the water building up in the floor of my stall - not a normal occurrence, that's for sure. I quickly finished rinsing and dried off, before heading upstairs to consult with the neighbours on our apparent sewage problems. Travis and Allie were already aware of the issue, since they had noticed that our laundry room had a bunch of standing water around the drain. The water seemed to be draining slowly, but Travis called our land lady and got the number for the city plumbers right away. The plumbers couldn't come until this morning, when they arrived around 8:30am.

I was glad they showed up, since I couldn't really use my water until they cleared the drains. So, this morning when they started working in the laundry room, I went to check out what they were doing and to find out when I could use the water to shower before school. That's when I got to see them using "The Sewer Scope"! Sounds exciting, no? Here it is! Well, sort of. This is what the Sewer Scope looks like if you Google Image it, but the one the plumbers used a slightly different one. Anyway, although plumbing is likely a gross job overall, the Sewer Scope was actually pretty cool. We were able to see images like this:It's a little small since I pulled it off the internet, but it's a picture of the inside of a pipe with water running on the bottom, although the view is tilted to the side. While working to clear our plug, we were able to see the main problem our drains got plugged - ROOTS! That's right, there were roots ALL over in our pipes. So, stuff (ew) going through the drains would get caught up really easily and cause blockages. See some roots:
Ours weren't as bad as this second picture. The next thing the plumbers did was use an auger to clear away all those nasty roots. I didn't see this part, since I was starting to get ready for school (eat breakfast, make lunch, yadi yah) but I certainly heard the crazy noises coming from their work. By 9:15, they were basically finished and I was allowed to use the water again, which I did with relish. The plumbers departing, leaving only a messy hallway for me to remember them by (honestly, why do these guys wear their shoes inside?!).

Getting presents ROCKS!

Here are some of the AWESOME gifts I received for my birthday.

1. A new CAMERA from Garrett. With which, I took all of these pictures!
2. A camera case from Kristina. She had an inside scoop on what I was getting from the G.
3. A field bag for ultimate from Bonnie. I really like it. It's the perfect size and it's cute and girly.
4. Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix, from Bonnie. Yay, two presents from Bonnie!
5. A photo box from Garrett's family. It's really nice. Not only does it store photos on the inside, but you can put photos on 5 sides of the box for display.
6. Mexican inspired clay bowls from Amanda and Ray. Unfortunately, one broke on the way here, but I can fix it! I know it! I just need to get around to super-glueing it.
7. Some DVD movies from Randy and Mic.
8. I also received a Body Shop bath kit from Joel and Kaylin that I didn't take a picture of because I already put it away in my clean bathroom.

9. Lastly, I received a Lululemon gift certificate from Ian and Joelle, that I spent yesterday on a pair of (overpriced!) shorts.

Thanks to everyone for the presents! I like them!

Spring cleaning, bathroom style

I'm planning on moving in with Bonnie at the end of the summer, and she made a comment a week ago that all of my bathroom stuff will not fit in her bathroom once I move in with her. At first I thought she was crazy, because in my current bathroom, I only have two shelves to store stuff - no counter, drawer or cupboard space. At her house, I would have half a vanity cabinet, three drawers, half a cupboard and half a counter. Tons of room! However, upon closer examination of my bathroom shelves, I did notice a lot of items there that were relatively unnecessary and outdated. So, I started going through my stuff and was slightly shocked at the amount of junk I had.

Right off the bat, I was able to select a number of things that could go directly into the trash (my apologies if any of this stuff was given to me as a gift, but I have kept it for a long enough time that I can't remember you gave it to me anyway). See below, thirteen items that are superfluous to my bathroom lifestyle.Let's number them 1 through 13 from left to right. Items 1 and 2 are both items given to my sister by my mom at least 10 years ago. However, these passed to me awhile ago (no idea why) and have been around so long that item 1 had turned pretty disgusting by now. I recall it used to be a translucent blue liquid, but it had become an opaque, whitish-blue liquid. Ew. Item 3 is an almost empty bottle of travel hairspray. Items 4, 5 and 8 are tubes of hand lotion. Item 11 is bug spray, that I actually DO use during the summer, but that bottle was almost empty so I tossed it. The rest are just random stuff that I don't use often enough and can't really recall why I kept them.

In addition to the things I immediately identified as 'trash', I also realized that I have a TON of lotion. Lotion for all purposes and with many scents. Behold, my lotion plethora:And, in case you were worried I might run out, I also have this baby in reserve:Now, I admit it seems like I have a bit of a problem, but I bought the extra lotion bottle when it was "buy one, get one free", so I couldn't choose not to get the free one!

Here are my hair products.Some of these just became obsolete with my new hair cut, but still, there are a fair number of them living in my bathroom.

Behold further hair accoutrements:A bajillion bobby pins, also somewhat obsolete with the new hair.Above, find hair elastics, head bands, hair clips and more.

I also seem to have a problem with collecting too many travel shampoo and conditioner bottles. I had all of these on my shelf:Yes, one set was stolen from a hotel room. I also have this nifty little travel kit that contains not only travel shampoo and conditioner, but also travel lotion and travel body wash:In addition to the inane pleasure I take from cleaning and purging myself of useless stuff, I also happened to find a necklace that I had thought lost a few months ago!I was pretty excited when I found it. I did a little dance. That's how happy I was.

Finally, I was finished. After rinsing and recycling most of the superfluous items, I re-organized my shelves so that they look like this:Beautiful, clean and organized. I bet now I won't have enough stuff to fill even one of the drawers at Bonnie's place! Or maybe I will...but it's still better than before.

Interestingly enough, Bonnie wasn't the only one who noticed my shelves were overflowing. After I told Garrett I had cleaned my bathroom shelves, he mentioned he had noticed a few weeks ago that the shelves were getting a little full. Humph! Well, the problem is taken care of now.

By the way, does anyone want an extra bottle of lotion?

It's my birthday!

It's my birthday! Today I am 72! Oops, I mean 27! I feel the same. No different. No older.

This morning, Garrett came over and I opened PRESENTS! But more on that in another post. Then, we went for a walk around around the U of A campus, posting some EUPA (Edmonton Ultimate Player's Association) flyers up on bulletin boards as we went. While it might seem like work on my birthday, it was actually a really nice walk and we explored campus a bit more than I have since I started going to school there.

Afterwards, we were joined by Mel and Kristine at the pub to watch the hockey game (the Oiler's won!)Next, Garrett and I had sushi for dinner and then hit up a movie (The Bank Job - it's good, see it!). It was a really, really nice birthday.

Kicked some bowling butt

On Friday night, a few of us went to the Bonniedoon Bowling Lanes and bowled a couple games. It was a fun time and the company was good, but the best part was how awesome I was in the second game. Check it out:Right hand column, beside the name "Kimbit". That's right, you saw it: 196! I almost scored 200, but unfortunately was stuck with 196. But, I'll take it!

First day of new hair - attack of the styling

On Thursday morning, I attempted to style my new hair cut for the first time.

I was suckered into buying some foamy mousse stuff from the salon, so I applied it as directed after I showered in the morning. After this, I followed the stylist's instructions and leaned over upside down while blow drying my hair. Easy enough and my hair dried quite quickly since it's so short now.

However, upon righting myself, I discovered a flaw in the styling guidelines. Mainly in the 'bangs' department:
This picture is a little fuzzy (what do you expect with a timer and a self portrait?), but you can faintly see the problem with the bangs. The next picture is the profile shot which does a bit more justice to the 'bang' problem I faced:Upon returning to upright, my bangs remained horizontal. As in, sticking straight out from my head. Hmm...

I immediately chuckled, took these pictures and then wetted the bangs down completely, expecting this to solve the problem. While it did help a little, it didn't entirely increase their respect for gravity. I followed up the wetting with a second round of blow drying, this time while upright and blowing the bangs down. Next, I tried a bit of hairspray and some other styling products. My last resort was to wear my toque on the way to school, although it wasn't that cold out, to try to squish the bangs down. In the end, the bangs looked ok, but were annoying because they stuck in my eyes all day.

This lesson shall be remembered for the future. I will have to try a new strategy for blow drying on Friday morning.

Early Birthday Gathering

On Wednesday night, some of my friends joined me for some birthday drinks. I planned this gathering a few days ahead of my actual birthday because of the Easter weekend - a number of people had plans to be out of town over the weekend.From left: Mel, Deanna and me.From left: Ian, Joelle, Trevor, Todd.
From left: Mic, Randy, Evan.
Bonnie and Sean were there too, but I missed getting their picture (well, I did take one of Bonnie and I, but we look funny so I didn't post it). As well, Leslie, Jessica and Raymond showed up later too, post photo-op. So, it looks like I was pretty popular! We didn't stay out super late, which was fine with me since it was a Wednesday and I intended to go into the lab on Thursday morning (which I did).

Short hair

Have you ever tried taking pictures of yourself and they all end up looking really weird? That's what happened to me tonight, while I tried to take pictures of my new hair cut to post here and to send to my family directly. I took about 20 pictures of myself and I only feel that 2 or 3 actually look like me or don't look super nerdy/dumb.

Let me remind you of pre-hair cut hair:This was taken a couple weeks ago at my Grandpa's house.

Here are the pictures after which I modeled my new hair cut:Jodi Foster, in her new movie called "The Brave One".The hair dresser was very accommodating to my hair cut requests and did a very nice job replicated Jodi Foster's hair. Do you agree? Here are the pictures of myself that I thought weren't super nerdy (one of which is from an early birthday social gathering tonight):
I like this last picture better than the first one - once I figured out that I should put my hair behind my ears, it seemed to look more normal. Anyway, I've been on the fence about whether I like it, although lots of other people seem to think it looks great. I think once I get more used to it I'll like it more. And tomorrow morning will be the test as to whether I can style it on my own.

Joelin and Kay

Garrett took some engagement photos of his brother Joel and his new fiance, Kaylin. They took them down the street from Garrett's parent's house at an old abandoned barn. The pictures turned out really nice and I put some up here for you to see.

Here is the barn, sans people:

And here are Joel and Kaylin, also known as Joelin and Kay, if you mix up their names like I did a little while back!