The Scientist: November 2008

Up and coming...

Now that Kaylin and Joel's wedding is over, I'm anticipating being a little bit less busy (although, really, I didn't do THAT much to help with the wedding!). Upcoming posts include details from the wedding, plus decoration of our Christmas tree. I also have some posts in the works of Pumpkin's antics, so stay tuned!

The transformation

The other weekend, Garrett and I embarked on a journey of organization. It started with this:

This is Garrett's fancy flat screen TV on a cruddy little Ikea coffee table. It doesn't really do it justice, does it?

Garrett and I agree.

We went to Ikea, although not with the intention of finding exactly what we did find (a flat screen TV stand). Once in Ikea, we wandered around and bought some other organizational items, including a desktop paper tray and a drawer set for his desk. We also saw this little beauty on sale, which Garrett was immediately drawn to to.

For the first time ever in all our trips to Ikea, we didn't have to worry about the size of the furniture we bought, since the X-trail is awesome and fits most anything.

We spent the afternoon assembling the furniture, which was actually quite complicated to put together.

Here's Garrett, working hard:

Once the unit was assembled, Garrett organized all of the technology, cords and other assorted items (dvds, videogames). Here is the finished project:

While he was doing this, I tackled our other project for the day: organizing his desk and kitchen table. Garrett's desk is simply a table, so without drawers to store stuff, the surface quickly became cluttered. I assembled the drawer unit we had purchased and moved a lot of his stuff into it. I also sorted through all of the mail and papers he had laying around. Garrett has a bad habit of leaving mail in their envelopes after looking at it, the result of which is an abundance of envelopes all around his house. So, we sorted and tossed and recycled. I took some papers home to shred and filed the other important ones.

After the five hours or so of our cleaning extravaganza, we relaxed by playing one of my most favorite games - Lego Starwars!!

Looks good! (Garrett's sock does too).

There's a bum who sleeps in the field beside my house

While this might not be anything strange in itself, the weird part is that he sleeps right in the MIDDLE of the field. Not under a tree, not near the edge of the field, not somewhere with a bit of privacy. The middle. Not just once. Many times. The first time I saw him, I didn't take a picture, although I did note the occurrence as unusual. The second time I saw him, I snapped a few shots.

The last time I noticed him, Garrett was over and we were using a kit to clean up my headlights. The guy isn't napping in this photo (he laid down and started reading a paper first), but eventually he settled into his regular nap in the middle of the field, with his jacket over his head.

I doubt I'll see him much now that winter is settling in, but maybe next spring?

Recovering the old foot stool

A few months ago, I inherited my grandpa's old foot stool. We used to play on this all the time when we were children, turning it on its side and rolling along the ground. Anyway, the footstool was functional but not visually appealing, so I bought some cotton batting and fabric to recover it. I forgot to take a picture before starting, but you can see the old colour of the stool below:

I first stapled the cotton batting onto the footstool, to add some cushion.

I chose some dark grey corduroy to cover the foot stool - something in a neutral colour.

Stapling the corduroy overtop the cotton batting was a bit tricky, since the width of the layers was a bit much for the staple gun. I persisted and pushed hard on that staple gun, strategically placing the staples until the fabric was secure. Voila!

Foot stool is now pretty and new!

First snow!

We had our first snow fall on Monday night. I woke up to this on Tuesday:

It was really quite nice out during my walk to school that morning, with the snow coating the branches of the trees and the snow helping to quiet the noise of the morning.

I like it when it snows. If I could choose, I'd want fresh snow every week throughout the winter, so that the city never got very brown and dirty.

Canadian Leagues Conference

Since I'm the prez of the ultimate association out here, I headed out to Toronto last weekend for a conference with all of the leagues and provincial organizations across Canada. This event was run by the Canadian ultimate association. I wasn't super excited to attend, since I have been pretty busy at school, so I didn't book any extra time in Toronto except that which I needed to attend the conference. However, the conference turned out to be really good and had a lot of useful and valuable information. Some highlights included:

- insight into juniors programs run around the country
- some simple environmental policies that other leagues are promoting
- ways to improve spirit in growing leagues (like ours)
- playing speed point ultimate for the first time (hard work! Tiring! But fun).
- learning that 22 ultimate reps can drink over 200 beer in 1 night

Yes, an inordinate amount of beer was consumed on Saturday evening. Gladly, most of it was not by me, since I was so tired after our ultimate game on Saturday night that the beer didn't sit well in my stomach. I even went to bed before most other people! Say hello to Kim the lame-o! However, I thought that since our league was paying to send me there, I had better be capable the next day for the second half of the conference (which I was). Anyway, it was a good conference and I'm excited to initiate some of the programs in Edmonton! I'll try to tell you more about it once we actually get some of it going!

It's Hallowe'en!

Well, isn't this a little belated! I know, I know - I go through cycles where I post every day, then I'm a slacker for a couple weeks where I barely post at all. But, that's how life is - busy, not busy, no free time, more free time. So, now I'll try to catch up on what I've been up to, returning wwwaaaaayayyyyy back to Hallowe'en.

I had two costumes on Hallowe'en. The first one was a work costume. Both Rineke (right) and I (left) dressed as one of our co-workers - Mike Joyce. Check us out:

Oh ya, three, three, three Mike's in one.

He thought our costumes were mildly amusing. We even had matching footwear, although he didn't wear his stereotypical red socks that day like we did.

My second costume of the day was for the evening. We had people over to our house for the night. It was a nice, mellow gathering.

Darren, Rineke and I dressed as....THE INCREDIBLES!!

Perhaps you can understand why I didn't want to wear this costume to work?

Black underwear over red tights...a little uncomfortable for the work environment. Especially when no one else dresses up around there.

Bonnie and Sean dressed up as Sally and Jack Skellington from the Nightmare Before Christmas.

Kim and Bonnie!

Sean!

Our friends came dressed in style. From left to right: Corpse Bride (Leslie), Napoleon Dynamite (Todd), Violet the Incredible (Kim), Ninja (Mel), Bob the Incredible (Darren).