Yubsie's Yammerings

Super fun weekend with i_paint_the_sky. We wound up watching all of Princess Jellyfish. It's only eleven episodes, and it's so cute. Definitely recommend it for all the geeky anime girls on my flist. Someone made an anime about female geeks.

We also watched When Harry Met Sally. This is notable as previously I had only watched an old VHS where we wound up not so much watching the movie as listening to it, since we couldn't get the tracking fixed. :p

And as usual, we played the BSG board game. It's amazing what a difference not playing the game wrong makes! The humans wound up winning. Not easily, but we used the unadjusted distance to Kobol and still got there. It's a good thing I have still never been a Cylon, since by the end I was Admiral President Helo. :p

We also went costume shopping. I managed to find new boots for my Garnet costume, since I borrowed them from neekabe last time. I also went in with the vague idea it might be fun to do a casual Kaylee costume (also working on the layer cake :p). And walked out with...

( Well... )

Good weekend in Toronto, even if Vicki was unfortuanately working most of it. We had fun on Friday night though! We were left to our own devices on Saturday, so we went shopping. The TTC Daypass is brilliant. On Saturday or Sunday Ryan and I can both travel on one, which costs the same as four tokens. So we can travel as much as we want for what we'd pay for one round trip.

We went to Indigo, where I managed to find The Western Wizard by Mickey Zucker Reichert. I was surprised, since I was sure that entire trilogy was out of print. I'd been looking off and on for the first book for roughly ten years before finding it second hand. I also got the second Song of Ice and Fire book and Neil Gaiman's Batman comic. ALl in all, a good time! Made even better by discovering that the mystery gift card in my purse was actually for $50.

We were in Best Buy when a voice behind us declared that we weren't supposed to be in there. It turned out to be 2raggedclaws. I only know... five people in Toronto, not counting family in Markham. What are the odds? We then wandered down to the little anime store and generally got all sorts of good exercise in.

Then of course we went to see Legally Blonde, since that was the whole point of the excercise. A really fun show. I was impressed to discover that all the dogs used were from various humane societies. Also, the lyrics for "Ireland" had changed. Still all sorts of fun.

This morning was less than awesome when we discovered that we were boxed in by someone who was illegally parked. Not a good time. We did eventually get out and get home.

Right in time for me to discover I'd left my keys, bus pass and flash drive at Vicki's. Because I'm awesome.

So, the talk went pretty decently, I think. I got a few good questions, including one I had to ask the guy to take me through slowly afterwards (on the computational stuff).

But man, the guy before me thought he had a 40 minute talk when he actually had a 20 minute talk. I was kinda freaking out at that point because Kim's talk was pretty soon after mine in a different room and I was worried she wasn't going to be able to stay for my whole talk. She did manage it though. My talk was standing room only! Which... probably had more to do with the room being too small than anything else.

After the conference that day a bunch of us went to Vicki's to play the BSG game. Chris brought the Pegasus expansion and OMG it was EPIC. The humans won... but just barely. So many resources were at one or two. If the final crisis card had activated the Raiders, the civilian ships would have gone SQUISH. It... basically felt like the New Caprica rescue. :p

Also, we had apparently been playing Cylon attack cards wrong all this time. Which might explain why the humans always lost. :p

Other fun things at the conference: I ran into a friend from high school. I hadn't even realized she was in chemistry, so that was awesome.

Oh, and Steve (my supervisor from undergrad) was actually there this year. It took me days to actually track him down, but I did eventually get to talk to him.

After the conference (well, actually, I blew off the last afternoon) I met up with my mom and we went to see Mamma Mia. It was definitely more fun seeing it with her than seeing the movie with Ryan, since Ryan doesn't like ABBA. Also, the stage show is better because the male leads can actually sing and dance. :p It was lots of fun.

After the show Mom took me for supper and then gave me cab fare because it was pouring rain. Except it took me forever to actually get a cab. But I did eventually make it to the train station!

So yeah, we were an hour late even getting on the train. I was going to email Ryan from the train, except not only was the wifi not working... the power outlets weren't working. I'd never seen that happen before. Though I ran into one of the guys from the department at the station, so at least I was sitting with him and had someone to talk to (otherwise I did have a book...)

We also got stuck for like half an hour in Brantford when the brakes got stuck on one of the cars. Oddly, even though I've been on trains with much worse delays, this was probably one of the more annoying ones. I think it's because it was supposed to be such a quick and easy trip without even having to change trains, so when it took twice as long as it should have it was really annoying.

Poor Ryan though. He was at the station to pick me up at 9:30 when my train was supposed to get in and he had to wait until 11:30. And he had to work at six this morning. It was most unfortunate.

But, I'm back!

Day one of playing with a really big magnet went well. When we came back from lunch, we saw a bit of signal from one of the samples we couldn't see after running it all night on the instrument at Western. I was ridiculously excited about that very small but DEFINITELY REAL peak. And then we played around with a different sample and it gave us signal fast enough that we could figure out we could manage a way shorter pulse delay than we had been using because people before us used it. Which means we can get more signal faster!

I bumped into one of my friends from undergrad in the NRC cafeteria. I had forgotten that she works here now. The joy of being from Mount A: Everywhere you go in your field, the odds are pretty decent you'll come across someone you know. This is why I drive my current group crazy at conferences. :p

If I could just figure out why my debit card keeps not working, I'd be in great shape!

Oh, and apparently I'm not TAing this semester. Which is weird, since I've been the only Polymer TA for two years now. But Jiacheng is now taking that course... which is odd since his TA assignment was a full year course. I guess the bit about changes in undergrad enrollment meant that a lot of freshmen dropped out and they don't need as many TAs? I'm now going to be helping in the NMR room over the summer. I guess this is their solution to not being able to afford a new technician? I know there's a fourth year work study student helping in there during the school year.

I think it'll be good experience if I'm helping with maintenance and such, since that would make me more qualified to manage an NMR facility some day... which is what I'm starting to think I'd like to do. I kinda wish it could have replaced 213 instead of Polymer though. Even though I'm utterly NOT a polymer chemist and in fact mostly just know the stuff that the labs cover, Polymer is WAY more fun to TA than 213.

QotD (the day being last night...)

2raggedclaws, on what Raptors are good for: "Did he take a viper? No, he took the MINIVAN OF THE SKY!"

We instituted a bunch of house rules for the BSG board games, resulting in, for the first time, the humans NOT all dying! It was awesome. We decided we can send Raptors to try to find more resources and roll for what they get. Every time they did this, morale increased, so we decided they found a lot of weed. A 7-8 means... well, those long Raptor rides can get boring. ;)

The ability to to nuke a sector and take out all the raptors in it is also useful. And the President now gets the key to the airlock. But if the President airlocks a non-Cylon, they lose their title, get sent to the brig and the Admiral withholds sex. And yes, that last part is actually written in our house rules list. :p

We also gave Bill and Saul the ability to fly if they hand the Admiral title over to someone else until the turn after they return. If Saul is not Admiral, he also has to pass a breathalyzer roll. Hey, it says right on his card that he's an alcoholic.

But yes, the general point here is not all the humans dying!

Oh, and Fiddler on the Roof was amazing. I love that show oh so very much. Also, Tevye is such a woobie. Not quite Papadama level of wobbietude, but really, who is? :p "Do You Love Me?" is such an absurdly adorable song.

Paul and Krysten's wedding was lovely. SO many chemistry jokes. Which, uh, might have at least something to do with the fact that they met in the lab. :p Ian started reading from Krysten's thesis, and a relative eventually said "I think some people at the back are falling asleep."

This led to a big cheer from the back of the room because the people at the back were... all the people from the lab. Aka the ones who understood what was being read. :p

So yeah, lovely wedding. Beautiful ceremony. Hilarious speeches. I'm just sad we had to duck out early since Ryan had to work the next day.

Also, don't die of shock, but I actually wore... makeup for it. Weddings turn me into some kind of... girl! :p

Also, whee BSG season four soundtrack!

My bags... may or may not be packed I... may or may not be ready to go... Let's play "What is Yubsie forgetting to pack?"! :p

The cat was NOT happy with us taking her to the kennel. MOstly the "YOU PUT ME IN MY CARRIER! IN A BOX! I HATE BEING IN A SUPERPOSITION OF STATES!" thing, but with a dash of "You're LEAVING me here?". Poor kitty.

I'm SO glad we're taking the train. The airport we would almost DEFINITELY be making a connection at is having a lot of weather delays that are only expected to get worse tomorrow. So 26 hour train ride here we come!

The Christmas party last night was really fun. Soooooooo much food. My frosting vehicles (sometimes known as sugar cookies) were a big hit. We still have a few left to eat on the train. Which reminds me I should make some sandwiches. :p

Sooooooooo much cake. It's Ryan's birthday, so I spent a great deal of time kitchening. I was going to draw a TARDIS on it. Unfortunately, this plan involved picking up blue decorator icing (I made the rest of the icing) on the way back from church. I discovered when I went in that the grocery store I wait for the bus in front of closed yesterday. :p This also meant I didn't pick up toothpicks and had to test the cake with uncooked spaghetti.

But hey, I got all the dishes clean!

In between kitchen toiling, I played the sims. I've decided Billy and Remington's offspring are going to be named after Doctor Who actors. THis started when I named Billy's surprise alien baby David because I was watching Doctor Who. I thought Remington's current baby was an alien, so I decided on Catherine for a girl and Patrick for a boy. Of course, I forgot that it was actually a cheated baby with Billy because I was sad Billy's face wasn't going to have a chance to be passed on. But I named her Catherine anyway. So now poor Elizabeth is the odd one out. If I'd realized I was going to do this, I should have named her Elisabeth. :p

I also got a portrait of the entire Washburne clan. Did you know if you have 33 sims and a cat on lot live mode is so NOT happening?

( But I got my picture! )

Also, they're doing Maguyver myths on Mythbusters. It's roughly fifty seven frillion kinds of awesome. :p

Blaaaaaaarg, I hates pollen! Stupid allergies flaring up.

Naturally, I'm going camping this weekend. :p

Got a 93 on my essay (WOW Dr Usselman marks fast :p). It pays to be a scientist who knows how to structure a proper paragraph. :p I totally have my parents to thank for always emphasizing that scientists REALLY need to know how to write clearly. :p

People have started to get their invitations, it makes me happy. :D

Is this really all I have to say? Wow, my life is dull. :p Oh, we had a party yesterday to celebrate Yun's thesis defense, that was fun. Though of course we wound up talking chemistry, much to the confusion of the assorted significant others. :p

We took some glassware to be repaired today. Glassblowing is SO COOL! It's really amazing what they can do. We arrived in the middle of a lesson, which the student declared to be "art day", and it was so neat!