My kid's preschool artwork, part 4 of 7:

Fisherman.

A doctor.

Freestyle painting.

A palette with brush and painting.

Kites.

Easter card, outside,

Easter card, inside.

This was supposed to be a dinosaur.

More freestyle painting.

And more...

A dirigible?

A sailboat on the ocean.

All right. I think I did better with the rotations this time. My kid's preschool artwork, part 3 of 7:

For father's day.

???

Yellow...

More yellow...

A gumball machine with 14 gumballs.

A flower with 10 petals.

Freestyle painting.

A volcano.

A big letter A.

CAT.

A school bus.

A train engine.

My kid's preschool artwork from 2011–2012, part 2 of 7:

Uh... dinner plate with hands and feet?

Freestyle painting. I think I have this rotated the wrong way.

A turtle. (Yes, really.)

Rainclouds and psychedelic rain

More freestyle painting.

???

Mouth with teeth.

Dragon mask, to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Yet more freestyle painting. Again, I think I should have rotated this. Oh well.

Ice cream cone.

Freestyle painting.

Hands as a flowering plant.

Yup. Freestyle painting.

Last September I had all of these grand plans to take photos of my kid's preschool projects and post them here. As you'll notice, I've been a negligent bum, and we had to contend with a massive pile of crap crafts in our living room. Anyway, I finally got a chance to photograph his stuff (unfortunately I've long since forgotten when, exactly, these were made), and whether you give a shit or not, here it is (part 1 of 7):

A pizza.

Supposed to be the Ismaili flag.

Freehand paintings/scrawlings.

A frying pan with eggs and fries.

An apple.

A rainstorm.

???

The Greek flag.

A leaf

A dreidel.

A slice of watermelon

This used to be covered with dry leaves. It was some welcoming of fall thing, I think.

Gah. I need to get caught up. Have a couple of craft projects I still have to get off the camera and post.

But this post is about guinea piggery. I took the Lil' Dude to SFU to participate in a study to see how temperament affects social and emotion development in 4- and 5-year-olds. He played a bunch of games, and they monitored his reaction. He almost didn't go through with it, getting intimidated by the first exercise, where the researcher showed him four images and asked him to point to the one he thought was associated with a word she uttered. We had to stop, and I had to feed him a snack and negotiate with him. Eventually the researcher started another game, and he seemed to open up after that.

It seems that right now, he interprets what people tell him pretty much at face value. They tried a Simon Says–type game, and he didn't really get it—he just did everything he was told. On the questionnaires I had to fill out, one of the question asked me how likely he was to feign enthusiasm about getting a disappointing gift. At the end of the session, the researcher pretended to wrap a gift and gave it to him. He opened it and discovered a stick.

"What is it?" the researcher asked.

"A stick!" he smiled.

Thing is, I think he was genuinely happy about the prospect of a gift stick. I don't know what that does to skew their data. Anyway, after the hour-long session, he got to pick out a "real" gift (a set of markers that had stamps on the other end) and he got this certificate he seems pretty stoked about. I got $20.

I just finished a twenty-minute survey about how I perceive my future self and how that might affect my health.

No compensation, but I can enter myself into a draw for a $50 gift certificate to an online bookstore.

I went to Women and Children's Hospital yesterday to take part in the Vogue study, which is taking vaginal swabs from 300 healthy women to look at how vaginal microbial ecology affects women's health. They're going to do DNA testing on the samples to investigate vaginal microbiome. (Sorry if this is way too much information.) Anyway, in addition getting the swabs done, I had to answer some questionnaires about my general health and sexual history.

Compensation: $20, for about an hour and a quarter's time commitment.

I've been meaning to get this photo off the camera's memory card and post it, but I've been too busy up until now. I made a marmot from June Gilbank's marmot pattern but modified it to stick the legs on the bottom rather than out front, and I added a scarf. Then my sweetie fabricated skis. We sent this to NS as a thank-you to her for babysitting when we needed it:

Yesterday I took part in the "Early Life Study" sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. The study looks at how your socioeconomic situation in childhood affects your health and well-being as an adult. I did a bunch of computer tasks, answered some questionnaires, got my blood drawn and my blood pressure taken. The thing took 3 hours, and I earned $100.

Over the next three days, I have to collect my spit four times a day. After I send those in, I get another $25.

Ungh. I broke down and got a Twitter account. Don't be surprised to see something on there I've already said here. I rarely have original thoughts anymore.

If I were in charge of engineering crosswalk buttons, I'd make it so that multiple pressings actually make the light take longer to change.

Kale and miso—a surprisingly tasty combination.

I really need to stop reading bumper stickers. I'm at about an 80:20 rage-to-amusement ratio.

"My hockey stick broke!"

"Sweetie, that's because that's not a hockey stick—it's an ostrich."

Tucked-in sheets = stiff ankles in the morning.

FIRE ALARM!