1000-piece puzzle done.

i can get finally get back to work now. *cough*.

i finished my end-of-term report for the editor-in-chief/english language editor positions at my journal.

the report was almost 11 000 words long. yeesh.

as you can tell, i don't trust my successors to do anything, with good cause. see, i wrote everyone an e-mail saying, 'hey, congratulations on becoming editors. since we'll be working together, we should introduce ourselves...'

the incoming eic sends this message:

"As John wants to let me be the EiC, I accept the job. After what I saw of everybody's work and background, I am very confident that we will be able to work together in a very efficient way.

Finally, here is the story of my life :

I grew up on a farm located about 45 minutes from Quebec City. After high school, I studied two years in Quebec City in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program. The IB really was the true beginning of my intellectual life : there, I learned to think and to love knowledge, the World and its peoples. After that, I moved to Montreal, where I still live, for my undergraduate math and physics studies. Two years out of three have now passed. After that I intend to go on with graduate studies in physics, if possible in a prestigious American university, for the reason that it is there that I will find the best supervisors in my domain. I am interested in "fundamental" theoretical physics. By that I mean all that is linked to the structure of the Universe, interactions, fields, etc. I have a natural inclination towards mathematical rigor and beauty. Last Summer I worked (thanks to an NSERC grant) on a problem in quantum field theory related a precise lagrangian. This Summer, my supervisor gave me a larger project that lies somewhere at the intersection of (super conformal) field theory, string theory and general relativity, which means a lot of reading for the next weeks but also a lot of excitement and learning."

was that not the most pretentious thing you have ever read!?

god!

i wonder if i should tell him he sounds like an ass so that he'll stop inadvertently offending people, which will inevitably happen, or whether he already knows and just revels in being a total drip. i think it must be a language thing, mostly. he's still pretty high on himself in french, but it's not nearly that bad.

so should i talk to him about it?

i'm literally having chills of withdrawal from not making newspapers. i'm missing the company rather than the whole newspaper-making routine, of course -- my lab is full of social eunichs that don't know how to hold real conversations about anything other than physics research.

...

ever try to wash duck fat off of plastic? near impossibility.

...

i just wrote unicef a cheque for $100.

it's supposedly for a campaign to provide children with clean water, but i'm not sure if any of the donations are specifically earmarked.

i'd given to their iraqi children campaign last year and when i got the donation request yesterday, i found myself thinking about the $900 i owe in taxes and became a bit tempted to throw out the envelope and pass on giving this time around.

i opened the envelope, though.

clean water, huh? that's pretty fucking fundamental. i'd be pretty hypocritical if i didn't contribute to that.

my concern, though, is how exactly they were planning on bringing clean water to kids in zambia, cambodia and bangladesh; shipping a random boy a crate of dasani wasn't really what i had in mind. their literature says the money might be paying for water containers, purification tablets, contaminant-testing, sanitation education in schools, handpumps...but i'm just hoping i'm providing more than a temporary fix.

see, this is why i'd like get out there and do it for myself. too bad i'm too comfortable here in my insulated home typing on my laptop and sipping tropicana. i'd like to think that i'd take the opportunity to do humanitarian work in the field, but ultimately, i'm probably too spoiled. it takes quite a bit more courage than i have to up and leave for a strange country to offer assistance to a bunch of people i've never met. i rationalize by saying that it's presumptuous to offer help where none was requested but that's pretty much just a rank crock of horseshit.

i've just given unicef $100. why the fuck do i feel so guilty?

i have zero willpower.

but how can i get to work when there is a 1000-piece puzzle on the floor just begging to be completed?

how!?

it's monday and i am, in fact, not in a cabin at mount baker as i should be. however, i also am not at school as i (secondarily) should be. i've decided that my careful planning of my work appearances within the past week and through the weekend have earned me a day off 'marking' at home. i do have shitloads to do, though -- a final report for my journal being one of them. it's turning into this massive monstrosity that i can't even begin to organize properly.

...

last night was awesome. this and next years' editors came out to a sushi/korean barbecue restaurant where we (dmac, JW and PC, mostly) ate a gratuitous amount of flame-seared marinated meat. you could actually hear the famished whimpers of children in guatemala.

it's actually pretty remarkable that this place trusts their customers to cook their own meat without getting horribly ill and whipping out the litigation gun. we headed over to granville island for a pint -- or five, depending on the person -- where PK confirmed my fears that he would likely get the paper sued next year by describing with pride how he defied security requests NOT to follow the dalai lama following his talk in vancouver last week, and with such lines as 'canadians have this thing against eating cats and drunk driving. well, i eat cats and i drive drunk.'

oh, PK. so offensive.

...

AL sent me this link regarding stupidity and stupid people today.

...

my sweetie just came back from futureshop with our new keyboard. the prospect of having a functional control key is extremely exciting.

holy fuck. it's 4am and i'm still in the lab. i just finished taking spectra about 20 minutes ago and have spent the time since in a hazy stupour wondering if it's better for me to wait for the first bus of the morning (6:20am) or to blow 15 bucks on cab fare home.

damn, i'm tired. eyes...can't...focus...

it occurred to me today that within the next week, i'll have to get off my ass and get myself a bus pass.

over the last eight months, the beautiful u-pass has absolutely spoiled me: being able to travel anywhere within greater vancouver without paying bus fare is so much freedom -- freedom i'm sure going to miss...

i mean, i guess i did pay for the u-pass through my tuition, but it amounted to only $20 a month and when something's buried in a larger cost that i've already resigned to paying, it doesn't really register that i'm paying for it at all. now through to september, i'll have to shell out $63 a month for a bus pass -- one that will only take me across one zone of translink service. ~sigh~

last summer, i stuck to buying bus tickets, thinking the cost and hassle of having to buy them every other week would be enough to force me to take my bike to school and get some fucking exercise already.

didn't happen.

i think i biked to school once.

i would be fooling myself to think that this year would be any different, especially since i anticipate being in the lab virtually every day of the week at odd hours.

...

and after all the anticipation, we might not be going to mount baker for our editors' retreat. turns out that about only half of us can make it.

so lame.

over the past week, i'd carefully choreographed my appearances at the lab and balanced my teaching duties such that i could justify disappearing for a couple of days ('uh, i'm marking'), but it may have been all for naught. i might take a day or two off, anyway. i've got some journal ends to tie up. but it won't be the same without seeing the newspaper kids. i didn't really get an opportunity to say a proper goodbye to some of them, thinking i'd be sure to see them at the cabin. at least i'll see most of them tomorrow night. we're going to shabusen (a swanky korean barbecue/japanese hotpot joint) for our editor turnover dinner.

...

my sweetie opened his anniversary gift!

he had no idea what i'd gotten him, and i guess now that he knows what it is, i can finally divulge it here: i bought him a kids' bath toy consisting of three hippos in inner tubes. you wind them up and they spin around in the water.

no, wait -- just hear me out:

he'd first noticed them on a cross-promotional hewlett-packard/toys 'r us commercial. i wasn't even paying attention to it when i heard a resonating 'HIPPOS!' from my sweetie, eyes wide and fervently pointing at the tv screen. 'i like the hippos,' he said, and each time thereafter the commercial was on.

on the card accompanying the gift, i wrote that i hope they bring him several minutes of unadulterated joy. hey, i'm just being realistic -- i don't anticipate that they'll still be quite as entertaining even a few hours later.

i wonder why they're so hard to find in Canada and why most on-line toy companies won't ship them up here. maybe they've killed or maimed Canadian children. i relayed this theory to my sweetie, who responded with 'but look into their eyes! they wouldn't hurt anybody!'

he likes them. i'm so pleased that he does.

i had to stay home today to wait for FedEx Ground to come deliver a package, which could have taken place anytime between 9am and 8pm, apparently.

it was worth the wait, though. the box finally arrived just now. it's my sweetie's anniversary gift. i sure hope he likes it.

poor guy.

at the cibc branch by the stationery store where my journal has its po box, there's this security guard who fills his day essentially by playing doorman. when he sees people coming (or leaving), he scrambles and to open the door for them. i'll bet it wasn't what he was trained to do in security guard school.

it's not really the fact that he's doing a menial task that doesn't really need to be done that makes him so pitiful, though. he just seems so very desperate for meaningful human contact that he'll take what he can get.

not everyone appreciates the door-holding, either. see, he opens it from the inside, and holds it open -- from the inside -- so you actually have to squeeze past him to get inside, through a door that isn't necessarily accommodating to the width of two grown people, depending upon how *ahem* 'grown' the other one is.

on top of that, though, he's a skinny balding man with large glasses, crooked teeth and pathetically wispy facial hair. it's not difficult for some people judging on appearance alone to find him just a bit creepy or off-putting. the other week he smiled and waved to a baby and the mother responded -- it's unclear whether it was instinctive or conscious -- by stepping away and protectively gathering the child in her arms.

i do my banking at the atm there whenever the journal gets cheques. today there was no cheque in the mailbox. when i walked past the security dude, i hastily shook my head to indicate to him that this week, he did not, in fact, have to open the door for me. he nodded and faked a smile, but his eyes genuinely gave a look of disappointment.

i feel sorry for him. he seems so unfulfilled. i find it regrettable that people wanting to rob banks have put him in the position where he is pre-emptively needed but is generally left with absolutely nothing to do. i wonder what he pictured himself doing as a career before he settled on security. i also wonder how he would respond in the event of an actual robbery or crisis.

ugh.

i slept on my neck funny a few days ago and it still hasn't gotten much better. it's stiff as hell and i can't turn my head in any direction without wincing. it's especially fun trying to cross a busy street and having to swivel my whole body one way or the other just to gauge traffic.

i've been doing some stretches, but they haven't been helping much. i've been sleeping rather shittily since it started and i think that's been exacerbating the problem because being awake to feel the pain is making me not want to move during the night and making me even stiffer come morning.

so i'm feeling particularly sluggish today. i'm a bit sleep-deprived and every natural movement of my head sends streaks of pain down my neck. i don't want to move and all i feel like doing is napping. *yawn*!

anyway, my lethargy isn't helping me be a very good hostess for racoons dude. he arrived yesterday. he's okay, i guess. a good enough guy, but i still don't see myself hanging out with him. he seems to have an affinity towards making blanket comparisons between vancouver and toronto. otherwise, he seems a decent enough house guest. at least he didn't cover our bathroom in body hair or anything.

ridiculous.

today i was forced to use these archaic optics postholders that our lab inherited from a man who could very well be the world's laziest scientist. these primitive instruments are absurd: not only would they twist apart if you sneezed in the wrong direction, they don't even hold standard optics posts properly. i had to wrap the post i was using with electrical tape before it would remotely fit. so, so lame.

my supervisor is the head of the department. you'd think he'd invest in some proper equipment. i was tempted to scream 'i can't work under these conditions!' and storm out of my lab.

i'm covered in soot and sand, i reek of campfire, and i love it.

last staff party of the year tonight. we had a potluck/kegger down on the clothing-optional beach. everyone in our party kept their clothes on, though. thankfully. i mean, i'm all for nudity that doesn't hurt anyone, but depending on the person, it could be pretty fucking awkward having to work with them after you've seen 'em naked. you know i'm right.

the food was abundant and tasty: curried vegetables with prawns, pasta salad, stuffed pitas, banana cream pie, bread with spinach dip. yum. the only challenge was to avoid kicking sand into the food, which we did reasonably well until the keg was cracked open.

HP and i played guitar and we sang by the campfire. i brought along a little booklet of scrap paper so that everyone could give me their contact information. it was like getting my high school yearbook signed -- only this time, i actually have friends. i'm a' gonna miss 'em.

'porn' is a word recognized by bookworm.

despite what we did last year in scaring away two prospective graduate students (this was right after the TA strike and S&A were over doing the quantum mechanics assignment -- we were not in the brightest of moods), the department has graciously allowed us to host more visiting students next week.

this prospective student -- i have no information as to whether this dude is going for a master's or a PhD -- hails from the university of toronto and when i googled his name (is that creepy?), up came this nostalgia site that he apparently put together all about the racoons. you know, the cartoon with cyril sneer and the pigs. kinda cool idea, but the site itself is unfortunately pretty lame: there aren't even any pictures of the racoons on it -- just audio links that don't actually work.

whatever. it also appears that, at some point, this student also wrote some science piece for the varsity, so he could be pretty cool. we'll see.

what this does mean is that i have to sanitize our hovel: clean the week-and-a-half-old dishes cluttering up the sink and marinate various bathroom fixtures in bleach. i have warned the grad advisor pairing us up with this dude that we'll likely be more like innkeepers rather than sociable hosts, since we're both so ridiculously busy, but at least he'll have a comfortable place to sleep.

...

journal elections open in one hour! as of yesterday, there were three uncontested positions and two vacant ones. i fretted.

now there is only one vacant position and it may very well be filled in a matter of months by a friend who just didn't want to commit to something concrete at this moment. the prospect of a full board relieves me. the propsect of a largely inexperienced board kinda frightens me, though. i won't lie.

someone's got a birt'day, i wonder who. someone's got a birt'day, i wonder who.

...

the cherry blossoms are beginning to wilt and the ground is littered with soft pink petals. the street that runs up toward campus has cherry blossom trees (as opposed to cherry trees, which actually produce cherries) lining either side and whenever a gust of wind blows through the corridor, the petals billow through the air like snow.

there are so many of them.

i saw four or five shopkeeps frantically trying to sweep them up from outside their establishments -- one was using a leafblower (idiot), but it was largely futile. they just keep coming. i guess the diligent merchants want to get rid of them before they become this unmanageable withered rusty-brown pile. for the time being, though, i don't mind wading through a few petals to get to my groceries.

...

i picked up my marking today: 14 lab books. a bit daunting to me at this point late friday afternoon. i may try to get some of it done this weekend, then use having to mark as an excuse not to show up to my lab during my retreat. anyway, this one kid wrote this rather lengthy explanatory note about why he was late handing in his lab book. he concluded his note with his e-mail address so that we could let him know if there were any problems: a hotmail account with the handle 'jedicodepoet.' nice.

i had a lovely dinner tonight -- quite yummy indeed. i assert, however, that the peking duck i've had in edmonton is considerably better: not only do they use the whole duck to make 3 or 4 different courses, but they also carve the the duck for the feature dish right at your table, slicing off much of the meat along with the skin. you get so much more duck essence and goodness in your little hoisin-sauce-filled wraps(otherwise known as 'happy packets') that way.

at the restaurant tonight, they merely put pieces of duck skin -- and only the skin -- on a platter.

it was still delicious and incredibly bad for me, but lacking just a touch of duck essence and goodness.

in other birfday news, S&A got me the first two seasons of the family guy on dvd! although AL unabashedly admits that it was partly a selfish gesture, as she knew she'd be routinely invited over to watch her gift with me.

also, relatives of all sorts sent me cheques. yay for mothers and grandmas-in-law! they'll do wonders toward my $900 2003-year tax burden. oddly enough, i haven't been sent my notice of assessment for yet. perhaps this is a sign i'm about to get audited.

had a meeting with the supervisor for two and a half hours, and he wasn't a condescending prick!

perhaps he realized that making me cry was detrimental to his karma. (could i have phrased that in any more sterile a manner?)

sure, now i have to revamp my entire set-up, but it's not like what i was doing didn't work because i was doing something retarded -- it just didn't work 'cause it didn't work. doesn't get me any closer to finishing my thesis, but at least i don't currently feel like curling up into the fetal position and whimpering under my desk.

...

i'm excited about tonight: pre-birthday dinner of peking duck with S&A and my sweetie. it was going to be tomorrow night (on my real birthday) but S&A have to go to the symphony.

...

i was going to write a diatribe about the whole situation with khadr family yesterday, but i got distracted. (says HT: 'shirk work! kill bill!'). the current on cbc radio talked to three canadian muslims about how they felt about the khadr family and people wanting to deport them or deny them medical care, etc. that program routinely has compelling topics.

anyway, i don't deny that the khadrs' views are generally pretty repugnant: the matriarch of the family, for instance, says that she'd much rather see her son in an al-qaeda training camp becoming a 'true, strong man' than have him out getting into drugs and homosexual behaviour.

but she and her family are canadian citizens, and she's allowed to have and express those opinions, as much as they might offend our sensibilities.

the pro-deportation camp is citing the fact that we're tired of having canada perceived as being soft on terrorism as one of the main thrusts behind their campaign to have the khadr family shipped off. problem is, 'not being soft on terrorism' isn't written into the constitution and the charter of rights, whereas the freedoms of thought, speech and association are.

it gives me chills that having unpopular opinions could have me booted from the country by a zealous mob. it disturbs me that popular backlash in canada could be so extreme and reactionary.

csis and the rcmp are keeping an eye on the khadrs. as well they should. and if they break the law, they should be incarcerated, not deported. but until that happens, regular citizens should leave them the hell alone.

oh boy oh boy oh boy.

HT scored me a free pass to an advanced screening of kill bill vol. 2.

i wouldn't have needed to see it so badly if you hadn't dragged me out to the first one, thomas. curse you!

i now have in excess of $150 worth of keys on my keychain.

the physics building rekeyed its locks last week in an entirely astounding display of bureaucratic inefficiency.

to increase security, see, the doors were all changed to take only abloy keys -- thin rectangular prisms of aluminum that have teeth on all sides -- the idea, of course, being that they would be much more difficult to replicate.

however, with one key, i can now open all of the undergraduate labs and marking rooms, not to mention the machine shop and stores/receiving.

it lightens my keychain, to be sure, but all it takes is one key to get stolen for this shiny new 'security' to come crumbling down.

to deter carelessness, i guess, each key carries a $50 deposit. but i don't suspect that people who lose their keys deliberately go out to lose their keys, nor do i think that people who are likely to lose their keys are going to become any less likely to lose them just because each one is now worth $50.

anyway, i have three of these abloy babies. hence, $150 keychain. i'd better not lose these keys, i tell ya. $150 buys a lot of calamari.

as for the bureaucratic inefficiency that i'd mentioned earlier, getting new keys was remarkably painless for me, but not so for my friend AL and her labmates, who found themselves locked out of their lab for several days because the door was rekeyed before the keys to open the new lock were even available.

and parking and access control services required each member of the department to have a detailed form listing all of the keys they currently possess and the corresponding keys that would replace those. the administrator of the department spent more than 30 hours over a weekend just wading through the paperwork.

in the name of (questionable) security.

i'm not complaining, despite how it might seem. just observing, mostly.

i couldn't sleep all last night. i don't know why. this may seem extremely pathetic, but it may have been because i was thinking too much about what other people were writing in their blogs/livejournals and what i was going to write in response.

!

i was told once that keeping a journal helps you sleep, because you purge your mind of its baggage of thoughts.

hogwash. that seems to suggest that we all have a finite and static number of thoughts at any one time. it might work for some people, but it seems only to exacerbate the squeaking of my cranial hamster-on-wheel. maybe, like exercise, it's best not to write in a journal immediately before going to bed.

...

my sweetie now knows that i've bought him a gift on-line. he noticed my fedex delivery e-mail. it seems the package won't arrive until the 26th, when i'm supposed to be gone to mt. baker for the ed board retreat (oh the anticipation!) so he'll likely be the one who'll take the delivery. i made him promise not to open it until i got back, but if the contents are written on the box somewhere, that might not help things. i want to be there when he finds out what it is. he'll be so excited.

why does it take 13 days to ship by fedex ground, anyway?

...

so i've installed the simulation software the boss has been trying to get me to use on my home computer, and it's about 50 000 times faster than when i try to run it off my unix account at school. hence, i am "working from home."

interesting how it's now the mid-afternoon and i have yet to make any real progress on that front.

*shhhh*

i maintain that my progress would be even more stifled were i to go into work, though.

*ahem*. yeah, that's right.

on the bus ride to school today, i noticed the dairy queen advertising its new popcorn shrimp on its billboard.

admittedly, i haven't tried DQ's popcorn shrimp. it may very well be delicious. but there's something that i find disconcerting about dairy queen trying to do seafood.

twat.

i've resolved (this won't last long -- don't worry) to start using that as my default curse word. whenever something goes wrong, 'TWAT!'

bookworm doesn't recognize the word 'twat' in its dictionary.

bookworm's this game that i've playing on-line since i started doing these scans in the lab. it's essentially a grid of scrabble tiles, each with a letter and worth a certain number of points. you string adjacent letters together to spell words -- the longer the better, generally -- and you accumulate points and advance through the levels.

now, i understand how you wouldn't want a child's game to involve the word 'twat,' but that doesn't make it any less a word. what are the chances that a kid would spell out twat in the game without first knowing what it was, anyway?

'fart,' on the other hand, does seem to be a recognized word in bookworm.

i was a 'p' away from spelling 'juxtapose' on bookworm the other day -- no joke.

anyway, i just assumed that bookworm used the scrabble list of recognized words, but i looked up both 'fart' and 'twat' in the scrabble dictionary. scrabble, apparently, likes neither.

just a few weeks ago, the OED officially recognized "to google" as a bona fide verb. is that what makes a word? to have the OED finally take you into its fold?

i'd been fascinated for years with sociolinguistics and morphology, and how novel words get made and perpetuated. i really regret not taking linguistics as my major -- i'm a lot better at it than i am at physics, and just think: i'd have been able to study something i was genuinely interested in.

it seems human geography might offer some answers to language evolution as well. i don't ever recall human geography even being offered at my alma mater, but perhaps i just wasn't paying attention.

well, then, what makes a word a word? i used to be the ultimate of prescriptivists -- i had to adhere to a strick set of rules and be grammatically correct -- a relic from my grade 9 english teacher. my university linguistics courses changed all that. most of it, anyway. language is so dynamic, and even some of the guidelines we have now were considered wrong a few decades ago. how could we possibly not allow for flexibility, especially when it might even help get the point across?

i've since adopted a more liberal descriptivist view. a word is a word if it's used in a contextually and denotatively significant way that more than just one person can understand, right? in student journalism, we find ways to make up new words all the time -- or we use words in unconventional parts of speech. most of the time it's clear what we mean; for instance, when we verb common nouns.

...

i wish that on this issue i could avoid my own pervasive hypocrisy, but i can't: never ever will i recognize 'nuculer' as a proper pronunciation of the word 'nuclear.' 'supposably' isn't a real word and the use of the term 'to impact' as a substitution for the phrase 'to have an impact on' will never be right in my books. it drives me mad every time i hear it used that way, especially on the news.

then again, i am a stodgy old maid.

TWAT!

MT, JW, MM and DmM all won JHM awards from CUP!

awesome awesome awesome.

i think it's wonderful, but i wonder how many entries CUP got. i know we inundated them with entries from this end (none from the production department though, i don't think), but three out of the five awards!? there must be papers of comparable quality out there...there must.

a couple of weeks ago, i submitted my funeral article to the society of environmental journalists. the entry fee was substantially higher than the JHM awards ($50 USD -- although that includes a one-year membership as well), and from the looks of things, my chances don't look all that promising.

well, here's to hoping.

upside:

i heard from the on-line company from which i'd ordered my sweetie's anniversary gift today. seems they can ship the product up to canada (in your FACE, amazon.com...). it might even arrive within the week. if that's the case, the only problem i'll have to face is restraining myself from spilling the beans about what it is...

*wink*

oh, the supervisor. universal force of extreme sadness.

this must be tiresome: reading posts with content no more profound than 'my supervisor makes me sad.'

today he looked at the spectra i took over the past three days and said that there was nothing there. then he seemed surprised that i was still looking at the old sample, EVEN THOUGH THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HE TOLD ME TO DO.

he also said, "it only makes sense to look at arrays that you think have a chance of producing results."

duh.

of course that only makes sense. but WHO was the one who told me to go through all of the arrays on this sample and systematically take spectra?

i've spent the several days doing exactly what he tells me to do, and he's unhappy.

what the hell am i supposed to do, then?
now he tells me i should be looking at the new sample and only at arrays that have a decent defect. but again, i point out the challenges of being able to pinpoint a single array on a field that's bigger than the range of motion of my translation and he says "that's irrelevant. you should be able to find a way to unambiguously know which array you're looking at."

"i'll find a way to do it," i said. "i'm not using this as an excuse not to do it. i just wanted to point out that it wasn't completely trivial."

to which he replied "very few things are."

then later on, he says "nobody's accusing you of anything."

i dunno. his delivery sure makes it sound like an accusation. then again, he always sounds disgruntled. always.

maybe what's ultimately upsetting me is that he is someone that i definitely have absolutely no capacity to read whatsoever, and he's one of the people that it's most essential that i do know how to read. but what do i do when i ask for suggestions and all he offers are sweeping comments about what it is that i should be able to do -- and quickly?

least helpful supervisor EVER.

this whole physics department has completely turned me off the discipline. i find that there are so many people that i can't even begin to respect.

...

i was contemplating yesterday starting this advent calendar in the lab counting down the days to my departure. just come in every day, eat a chocolate, then step back and look at it with satisfaction as the number of days dwindle.

what would also help the lab atmosphere, as my sweetie astutely pointed out, is reggae, blasting through all of the vents in the lab.

'relax, man,' i'd say to my supervisor.

and groove out to bob marley.

excellent.

so get this:

when i image my arrays (before i can take spectra), i have use this one computer to take data -- it's where the data acquisition software was programmed -- which isn't connected to the network, so i have to transfer the file onto 3.5" floppy, go out to the windows machine (the only networked computer with a floppy drive), upload the file onto my physics account, then go to a unix computer -- the only platform supporting the image compilation software, download the file and analyze it. three computers. just to get a damn picture of the crystal.

retarded? yes.

very.

i was relaying this woeful situation to my buddy d-mac, who replied, 'what, do they make you use stone tools, too?'

they kinda do, actually. i can't believe how ghetto some of the equipment is in this lab. they like to attach optics to posts using hot glue gun glue. and the ol' supervisor doesn't seem to think this is a problem.

~sigh~.

you know what? i promise to be less disparaging when i start my new program. i really do. i'll be positive and exuberant and revelling in how very cool the world of publishing is and how tremendously awesome my courses are.

i promise.

yay for me! i just managed to waste two hours of valuable lab time waiting for my laser to stabilize. the water chiller was *eep* almost empty and the laser power was fluctuating like mad. i topped up the water and waited over an hour for it to settle down. i don't think the system is entirely happy yet, but i can't really afford to wait any longer to work.

i don't know if it's the dry air in the lab, but i'm getting a sore throat and my sinuses are feeling funny. i can't afford to get sick now -- what with my supervisor being a big smelly turd-filled ass. there's a retreat that the paper's editors are planning for the end of april (cabin out on mount baker!) and i so very much want to go -- but it's over three weekdays.

'just go,' says my sweetie. 'call in sick. i'll cover for you.'

if i miss too much work now, though, i won't be able to justify going to myself, let alone my supervisor.
as LB says, 'just four and a half more months!'

whee!

there!

once again, i've succumbed to the peer pressure that is the internet.

now you can comment! it's not very sophisticated, but whatever. monkey hate technology.

it's all gossip.

i was thinking about what i found so alluring about journalism. sure, it's partly about performing a public service and tackling hard-hitting issues, but some of it is being the first to know and the first to be able to tell everyone else about it.

it's just gossip, really. perhaps a little less vacuous than a lot of the trashy speculation and rumour out there, and it's more or less been factually verified (depending *ahem* on the publication), but it's essentially all about telling other people things about other people. and it's such a rush to know that you're reaching a large number of people with your news without the distortion of multiple-generation re-imaginings and re-inventions of what was initially said.

i was talking with JH, the culture editor of our paper. he's really into arts reporting and wants to do broadcast arts journalism as a career. we discussed how much of a challenge that was since the majority of the "entertainment reporting" is mostly glorified advertising or trashy celebrity gossip. print media can be clouded with the same kind of refuse, of course, but it seems the most flexible of media in that regard. you can write trash, but you don't have to. uh, right?

***

hey, guess where i am right now...

that's right! not a cloud in the sky, and i'm in my lab having the pads on my glasses weighed down by my laser goggles and gouging third and fourth nostrils into the sides of my nose.

i've found a variety of ways to occupy myself during the scans, though -- beyond updating this blog. yesterday, i finished up my rear-end report for the paper to earn my april paycheque and today i'm busying myself with a bunch of journal bidness. i'm running for the production post, you see. i have to get organized enough to produce a cover letter, a CV and a portfolio, and i'm feeling pretty lazy about it, since it's pretty much a forgone conclusion. nobody else is going to run for the position. i'm not even really bothering with the portfolio, actually. i mean, i laid out the april issue and made a friggin' media kit. if that isn't enough to get hired at this thankless job that doesn't pay anything, then the level of dumbness that this world's reached is beyond saving.

that may be the case even if i do get elected. whatever.

***
oh croissants. why do you have to be so bloody good?

***

it's so perfect it's dangerous.

after my day in the lab yesterday, i was tempted to write my supervisor saying, 'i looked at 8 arrays today, and still see no features. just wanted to let you know that i wasn't on my couch smoking weed and masturbating to HBO.'

it's going to take me an extreme amount of self-restraint not to write that next time he implies i'm lazy. oh god. he's going to fire me, isn't he?

***

why is ralph nader running for president?

sure, there's no question that he'd be infinitely better than bush and that he'd make the utmost effort to serve the people of the US, but that's hardly the point right now.

nader should realize that as much as he is a force of good, bush is a millionfold a force of evil and the priority should be about getting him out of office, not perpetuate some idealistic and idyllic fantasy.

'that's the problem with left-wing idealists,' my sweetie said. 'they don't know how to play hardball. they just don't think there should be hardball.'

***

i bought the anniversary gift for my sweetie yesterday. well, to be precise, i paid for it yesterday. ordered it over the internet and i'm a bit concerned about why i haven't received a confirmation e-mail about the order. it was the only place i could find what i was looking for. they don't carry it up in canada, and most of the on-line stores won't even ship it up here.

anyway, their website says 4 business days they should get back to me, so we'll see. i hope they don't tell me that they also can't ship to canada. if they can ship it up here, i hope it shows up on time.

YOU ALL WILL BURN FOR YOUR BLASPHEMY

that was the message attached to one of the copies of our Maclame's spoof issue and jammed into the office door handle.

i think it might have been a prank, but i'm not ruling anything out. although it really wasn't all that blasphemous. ah well. at least we don't have to shut down, like these chumps did.

***

i was in a toy store today. it was horrifying: concentrated overpackaged and unnecessary gaudiness, and a fisher price cd player looping through grating screaming-kid renditions of 'the farmer in the dell' and 'happy birthday to you.' i'm so glad i don't have kids. and if i ever do spawn forth progeny, i really don't know what i'll do if they insist on spending hours at the toystore or going out to see movies like Rugrats. i think i might have to be committed.

***

another beautiful day. another day holed up in my lab. i usually use dinnertime as an escape, but it's good friday today -- i doubt very many places around campus will even be open.

speaking of dinner, though, i did end up going to dinner with my lab group yesterday. it was, in my mind, anyway, slightly more awkward than it usually is. i didn't say very much and i just sat back and watched my supervisor fail to start conversations.

"so...what's the latest news from iran?" he asked the iranian grad student in our lab.

"uh...i don't know what you mean," the student replied.

seems all my supervisor knows about this student who's been with him for four years is that he's from iran and that he has a wife.

not much to go on.

he made similar attempts to start conversations by posing these sweeping vague questions that made it clear he didn't really know anything about anyone in the lab.

"how was your course?" he asked me.

i wasn't taking a course. i was petrified that he didn't know that, assumed that i was away so much because i was taking a course and would be even more disgruntled with me if he found out that i was, in fact, not taking a course.

i didn't know how to answer him.

instead, i just talked about the course that i taught.

i taught my last lab yesterday. possibly ever. i really like teaching -- it's the marking that's absolutely dreadful.

"everyone is outside drinking and partying," said one of my students, "and we're in here putting circuits together."

i know how you feel, dude. i totally opened up after the lab period ended and started chatting with my students like a normal person. i feel like i have to be professionally guarded or something while the term is on, and it was kind of cool to be able to shoot the shit with my students. a lot of them seem really frustrated with their courses and the structure of their program, and i've definitely been there...still there.

i just went to dinner with my sweetie. i was just so miserable that i started crying on the way to food. he took me to eat in the SUB and ran away to "pee and get cash." later on in the meal, JW and MM showed up 'cause my sweetie had actually gone to the newspaper office to tell them to come hang out with me and cheer me up. later on, LB came and ate dinner with us. "he sounds like a dick," she said of my supervisor. "you should just say, 'look -- i have lots of other commitments and i resent that you're implying that i'm being lazy.'"

he's not really a dick, i guess. i know he's not trying to be malicious. but he doesn't understand me or how i operate AT ALL.

one of the people in my lab invited the whole group to dinner tomorrow night: a rare social event. i was all for going a couple of days ago, but now, i really don't feel like it. i just don't know if i can hang out with those robots. i think i might just get despondent.

today, when my supervisor came in, i told him about a problem i was having with the simulation software: that it seems to have a 3-year time lag and changes that I make take forever to update. instead of helping me solve the problem, he essentially just bitched me out and accused me of using it as an excuse not to get anything done. that was what got me particularly upset.

but anyway, i'm back in the lab now. the borg have all gone home, and thanks to the newspaper crew (and Belle and Sebastian), i feel a lot better. i love those kids. and i love my sweetie. *hugs*

...

in other news, they just did a 10-minute fire alarm test on the building. it wasn't annoying at all...

...

also: i'm completely out of clean underwear. maybe when i start coming to work a biohazard, my supervisor will let me go home and wash my clothes.

my supervisor just came to check up on my progress in the lab. i feel like crying. i'm so miserable here.

i got this message from my supervisor today:

"How far have you got with the FDTD simulations of the gaussian excitation? When you don't have access to the laser you should be working on these full time. I guess I don't have to paint the picture any clearer than you probably have it already in your mind, but you have to bear down and get some serious research done asap, both for your thesis, and for this project's chances at success (cf the hungry competition)."

to which i'd just love to reply: FUCK OFF.

FUCK the fuck OFF!!

i just spent the last 40 hours putting together our biggest newspaper of the year, and everything kept getting humped near the end. the printer had given us the wrong page numbers on the flats, and they made me send them FOUR revisions. if they (a) had given us the right page numbering in the first place or (b) knew how to give proper instructions of what the flats were SUPPOSED to look like, i wouldn't have kept everyone there an hour past when they could have gone home.

i feel like shit. i also feel like slugging my supervisor in the belly. it's not like i spend the time when I "don't have access to the laser" dicking around, drinking, smoking up or watching TV. i've been working my little ass off, pulled in five directions at once. it was our LAST issue that i'd just worked on, so his timing was shitty as hell. if he'd just given me another two days, that message wouldn't even have been relevant.

my friends are being quite supportive of me -- although not productively so. "just tell him 'i don't need your stinking master's degree. i'm getting me a NEW master's,'" they tell me to say.

"just reply to his message with, 'duh.'"

"what is this research of which you speak?"

i want to.

i really do.

ass.

***

fortunately, also in my inbox was a message from my dear friend VM, who seems to have different but equally aggravating problems with his own grad supervisor. here's my favourite excerpt:

"...he usually notices the smallest of things and gets this smug smile of superiority when it's something he finds amusing. Case in point, I was drinking a can of mountain dew at a meeting at Nortel. He noticed this but didn't say anything. Then the next time I saw him, he asked me where my can of mountain dew was, claiming that I was the only person he knew who drank 'that stuff.' Well, sorry to have forgotten my bottle of 1959 Chateau Fombrauge vintage merlot at home, you pretentious fuck."

...

being able to commiserate makes things just that tiny bit better. thanks, dude.

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

i just got word that i've been accepted into SFU's master of publishing program!

hooray! the next twenty or so months of my life, at least, are a little less nebulous than they were an hour ago.

well, to clarify, i've been 'recommended' for admission. i've also been 'recommended' for a $6000 entrance fellowship.

but i assume this means that i got it. *blush*

physics will only be kicking my ass for another four months. then: no more!

yup.

in the lab again. it's an amazingly gorgeous day out, and here i am in my dungeonous dark-as-night laser lab. my future for the next four months at least -- until i get this fucking thesis done. i have goggles on to block out the laser light so that i won't blind myself or inadvertently give myself cataracts. good idea, but these goggles weigh down on my glasses, which are producing these flattering red indentations on either side of my nose.

that, and i look like a spazz.

i just found out about half and hour ago that all of the data i took over the last two days is absolute refuse. fantastic! nothing like two solid days of wasted effort when you desperately want to get done and get the hell out of here.

ah well. here i am complaining again. if i whine on this blog, maybe i can spare my friends? likely not. *shrug*. at least now i think i'm taking actual real and useful data. we'll see. maybe i'll just ditch this degree. how many more chumps with M.Sc. degrees do we really need anyway?

***

it's actually amazingly refreshing to be writing again. i used to write quite a bit, but since january, i haven't really had the time. the only things i've written in the past three months were wanky pieces for this physics journal i put out. the last issue with me at the helm as EiC came out on wednesday and i'm really relieved to get it all out of the way. i mean, i have a few loose ends to tie up here and there.

however, i can't help but wonder if the angst that i've been feeling these last few days are a manifestation of the pangs of loss that i'm somehow denying.

i'm really uncertain about the future of the publication right now -- i founded it, so it's kind of my baby. the dude who'll likely become editor-in-chief is my current french editor. he's a good guy, i guess, and he's really reliable and dedicated to the journal, but he's also a hard-core nerd who doesn't really seem to appreciate that there are fields other than pure theoretical physics that students should be interested in. i'm just afraid that he'll betray my vision of the journal and take it somewhere i never would have wanted it to go, losing advertisers and driving it into the ground.

he's also not a native english speaker -- and it shows. i don't really want to slag on someone just 'cause they can't speak english absolutely perfectly, but for this job, it's kind of important. i mean, i'm sure he'll do alright...

the other dude applying for an editorship seems competent enough, but he hasn't corresponded with us in the last month. i don't even know if he's still interested. and one thing that you definitely need in an editor is promptness in responding. our submitters and advertisers just don't have the patience to deal with someone who won't get back to them for weeks.

i'm trying to convince myself that i've stopped caring about the journal, but everybody knows that's bullshit, and easier said than done. i'll still be doing the layout, and of course, nobody wants to see something they've worked on for two years go up in flames.

anyway, writing. this is really liberating, remarkably: writing knowing that what i say doesn't have to be perfect, right or even coherent.

i'd discovered a week ago when i read the literary supplement we run in our newspaper every year that my experience in journalism has dulled my appreciation for creative writing, even creative non-fiction. i was reading the winning piece in the supplement for the long non-fiction category and kept thinking, 'why does this have to be so flowery? god, i could write all of this in half as many words.'

i like that, here, i don't have to be succinct. not that i can help it anymore, really.

daylight savings.

stealing yet another much-needed hour of my sleep and of my life.

i'm a wuss, i know, but the time change really jetlags me and fucks me up.

it's also bizarre that they call standard time 'standard,' considering the majority of the year -- albeit only an excess of two weeks or so -- are spent on daylight savings rather than on standard time.

ben franklin was the turd who actually came up with the brilliant idea of DST and it was implemented in twentieth-century wartime as an energy-saving measure, but studies have shown a noticeable (like, 7 per cent) increase in the accident rate the two days following a time change. i only know this because i'd written an opinion piece a couple years ago about DST and how, for a few days a year, it makes me wish i lived in saskatchewan.

a few of my students, a fellow TA and i were discussing the society-mandated concept of time -- not in any kind of a fundamental philosophical way, but whether we actually function more efficiently when we're running on the urban clock rather than on natural rhythms. of course, they were all saying how wonderful it would be if the sun -- not the cesium clock in ottawa -- dictated when we rose and slept. i personally would never be able to wake up with the sun on a regular basis, i don't think. i've been programmed into loving sleeping in just a little too much.

it's saturday and i'm the only one in my lab. the only thing keeping me company is my Beta Band disc -- their most awesome Three EPs. it's perfect in this completely dark setting.

i should have given more credence to my gut instinct when i first visited this lab before i started working here. it was eerily lifeless, and there was no music -- only intensely serious-looking graduate students focused on their work.

physics is their life.

...it isn't mine.

lab life has improved dramatically since i moved a computer with a sound card into the laser lab, but the fact is that i'm still not where i belong.

my supervisor and i have polar opposite personalities, not to mention priorities. i can't really talk to him about anything other than work. we're not friends -- something i'm not all that used to in a supervisor. when i did research in my undergrad, all of my supervisors were my friends. we'd shoot the shit and hang out together.

i'm happiest now when i'm with the campus newspaper kids and insulated in their shortlived bubble of idealism. for the past seven months, i've been doing the layout for the newspaper (something that my supervisor can certainly NOT know about), and the staff is amazing. they're all so genuine -- i couldn't have asked for better co-workers, really. the year's coming to an end and i know i'm going to miss them a shitload of a lot. i also know that, as much as we'll try, most of us won't be able to keep in touch.

they've all got shit going on, and i'm happy for them. one of them is interning at TIME magazine, for crap's sake. one of them recently got elected the regional bureau chief of CUP, the national student press co-operative, another got an internship at his home paper (after only his first year of student journalism -- a pretty incredible accomplishment that i know many people would have liked for themselves), and one of the news editors recently got hired to work at an equestrian magazine down in virginia. one of my best friends back home managed to hook himself up with another year in the bubble by getting elected as the incoming editor-in-chief. he's also responsible for planning the national CUP conference that happens each year in january. he's got his hands full, but he sounds awfully happy to be where he is.

it seems i'm the only one left wringing my hands. i've applied to a master of publishing program at simon fraser university -- it's got an amazing reputation and it only accepts 18 people a year. i haven't heard anything from them at all, and the application deadline was months ago. i'm more than a little frustrated that they didn't even do me the courtesy of acknowledging receipt of my application package or letting me know when i'd actually find out whether i've been accepted.

i'd call them and ask, but the lady advising for the program sounds pretty disorganized and generally useless. she sent a book i'd ordered from her to the wrong address, and sent me an application package covered in coffee stains. funny how i still desperately want to be accepted, even as much as they've jerked me around.

i never anticipated that I'd actually be blogging.

this exercise in frivolity and self-indulgence, though, has been spawned by nothing other than unadulterated boredom -- not some fanciful delirious notion that someone in this intangible ether will actually find any of what i say interesting or insightful.

you see, i'm working in a photonics lab right now trying to get my research done for my master's degree in physics -- a degree that i've since decided i should never have started. not only are my motivation and enthusiasm for this research essentially completely quenched, the scans that i'm currently taking involve an awkward amount of waiting -- an average of about 3 minutes: not short enough to keep me constantly occupied, but not long enough for me to be able to leave and do something else while the scan does its thing.

oh, and i'm also in a pitch-dark room, making reading anything other than whatever's on this computer screen more or less impossible.

so here i am. keeping a journal isn't really a bad idea, i guess. thanks for visiting, and hope something here piques your interest...