It's very much a ho-hum day here in the office.  I set myself up to do some fun and interesting work on the simulator but was cut down my prof.  Ugh.  So I've reread papers, will probably make some graphs and generally sulk on account of slow moving research.  In the face of all this boring an tedious work I've had to improvise to keep myself awake.  Good thing I watched "Pirates of the Carribean" last night because I've decided to become a pirate.

 

Yes the pirates life is the life for me.  Courtmartialled in the British navy for having been too sassy I've hoisted the flag of the skull and crossbones and set to sea for more lucrative adventures.  It true, I collect booty and drink rum.  Of course I had to dress as a boy to get into my crew, women are bad luck on ships you know.  However, by the time I was discovered I had so thoroughly built my reputation as the toughest bastard aboard that me mates wouldn't dare oppose me even if I told them to eat gunpowder and go for a smoke.  I eventually mutinied my own captain, and after some of my finest swash buckling I had him walk the plank at the tip of a sword.  He begged so earnestly to join my crew I took mercy upon him and he is now the best damn galley cook we e'er 'ad.  I led me crew on to adventure and booty on the high seas and we all be rich men.  I've retired my flag for now and I be toiling away at this blasted thesis, clasped in iron to me desk.  When it be done I'll be gathering meself a new crew of sea worthy bandits and taking to the seas of adventure once more.  I'm sick of the land lubbin' scally wag of a graduate degree!  Master?!? Arrrgh, I already be a Captain!  Give me booty, rum and wenches and I be sailing until I gets meself to the door of Davy Jones' Locker. 

 

(Ahh... if only...)

I excuse myself in advance but I have to share my new love of snot.  (If this sentence disgusts you I don't recommend reading further, it will only get much, much worse)  I was sick last weekend.  That nasty- my-head-is-swimming- I'm-tired-all- the-time-uggggh kinda sick.  Then I got better.  Better in the sense I didn't feel like I was going to die anymore.  In fact, I felt great.  The only problem was that all the stuff that was making me sick, i.e. snot and throat mucus, hadn't fully made its way out of my system.  No indeed not.  It congealed. 

 

Now since I was "feeling" much better all my cognitive senses were in order to fully appreciate this decongestive process.  Here are my findings.  SNOT IS THE MOST ENTERTAINING SUBSTANCE EVER!  No really, when I feel my head getting nasaly and all my v's are pronouced as b's I know its time to reach for that tissue and blow.  I can feel the chunks of badness flying out of my head and hitting the back of the tissue with a satisfying *thwack*.  Then I feel like I've done that much more to rid my system of this marvelous mucus.  And we aren't talking that watery clear, snot that just comes down like an incovient stream while you are actually feeling too sick and too slow to wipe it away.  This is congested, settled in, stubborn snot we are talking about.  I feel so good when I check the tissue and find the custard like substance.  Now its on the outside, not the inside.  Really if you think talking about blowing your nose is disgusting, picture the stuff pooling in your sinuses and then tell me which is worse.  So, since I'm doing it every 10 minutes I've come to appreciate blowing my nose.  I've created a rating system based on colour and consistancy.  There is a certain pride when you look at it and say "I made that".  Bonus points if when you throw it out it hits the bottom with a satisfying thud.

Who would have thought that the advice of millions would actually be good?!  I had a problem.  It was bugging me.  I was looking for it to go away but it wasn't so I tried something new.  Instead of avoiding it and putting it to the back of my mind I thought it out.  I spoke it aloud.  It felt good.  It felt so good infact that while I was busy problem identifying I came up with the solution!  The whole thing only took 15 minutes!

 

So here is my advice of millions to you.

 

"To thine own self be true."

 

May it be to respect your own hopes and dreams or to stop lying and telling yourself everything is just fine.  Listen to what you think and feel and make you own choice for you and you alone.   

 

*Head Smack*  I've even heard that from my mother.  Just takes 25 years to figure it out.

 

 

I'm in the garden with a cup of tea.  I have a new book and its gripping my attention except when I pull myself away to gaze at the flowers.  I'm enjoying the sun which is warm, not hot.  I'm feeling the breeze gently ruffling my hair.

 

Mentally.

 

Physically I'm in my office and I am wondering how many bulldozers will it take to clear all the calculations sheets and result tables off my desk as I curse profusely.

 

Now, I'm mentally taking a hammer to my monitor and satisfying mental sparks are flying.  Ahhh, that's better, now what page was I on...

I have added another title to my list of things that I am, "Bike Rider".  I am not a Cyclist, I leave that to the people who actually know what they are doing, and I'm not a Commuter with a milk crate attached with bunjees at my rear.  I am a Bike Rider.  I have an old school helmet that would probably become dust if I actually fell on it, 10 year old gym shorts held together in the back with a safety pin and a bike chain that had enough goop on it to feed the entire Goopian People of Goopdom who ues goop as their main diet staple (about an ounce or so).  But bad style (or BAD style) and maintenance problems aside I did ride 80 km this weekend in order to visit Friend.  I took it easy unlike a cyclist, but not easy enough to make me a commuter.  I enjoyed the view, had many water breaks while getting plenty of mild heart rate increasing fun.  Friend must have been entirely bored, being of the cyclist persuasion, but he has the patience of a tolerant rock.  I like bike riding, getting from one place to another in a leisurely-exercise-type way.  Its better for the environment, is a good way to pass the afternoon and totally justifies the ice cream bars and dill pickle chips!

This morning I was walking down Mt-Royal Ave on my way to school, thinking my think-y thoughts when I noticed something amiss.  The lines from the crosswalk became distorted, they stretched past the road and onto the side walk.  In the middle this of street paint warping there stood a door-way like passage framed in reflected light.  It looked as someone had cut it out of the air and the road paint was reordering itself to move into it and form an inviting walkway. 

 

After having read my umpteenth sci-fi novel and not forgetting the lessons of C.S. Lewis I thought the only think-y thought possible, "Here lies a doorway to another dimension!  Let me bravely pass through it in search of adventure and alternate realities.  Hey maybe I will get some kick ass mutant powers!"  I contemplated the infinate possiblities, none of which was the possiblity that this was just Mt-Royale's new artist exhibiting his ubran creation, and passed through this inter-dimensional portal (IDP amoung those in the know).  Once through it the world was so familiar yet so new.  I strained my eyes looking for the small changes but remarkable changes.  Lost in wonder I wandered out into the road almost getting hit by a car, now there is an interdimensional change I'm not ready for.  I waited for the signal, half expecting the feudal ninja lords who rule the city to come out and take me to their leader, crossed the road wondering when I will sprout my wings and fly, and just as I thought I saw a cat speaking to its human slave I passed through the Return IDP located on the otherside of the crosswalk. 

 

So I sit here, being regular non-flying me, doing my regular thesis work its no wonder I took my tiny break from this particutlar universe today.  I know, time for a reality check.  I'm not giving up my IDP daydream so here is one for you.  To the artist who set up the interactive sidewalk binoculars pesdestrains can turn view different parts of the street's artwork; if you think they will be used for any higer purpose than trying to peek into residential dwellings in hopes of finding a naked hot chick, you've got another think coming.  Now that's reality!

I have not been posting lately because I want to become more positive and I feel ranting into cyber space is not the way to accomplish this.  I'm waiting to post something about how I feel wonderful or came across something so unbelievable/hilarious/crazy I need to share it.  But as I sit here 13:10 on a beautiful Sunday its just not coming to me.  So I'll wait.  Maybe I will shoot for a "why its cool to be a ninja" post later in the week because as we all know it's way cool to be a ninja!

I'm back at work.  Procrastinating again.  Well, not really, I came in early and am exhausted from my weekend trip and am taking the time for a tea hoping it will feed some life into me.  Friday I went home and spent the weekend with my family.  After some hustling and bustling to figure out a schedule we all had a great time.  I went to dinner with Mum, Dad and Friend on Friday night and on Saturday I went with Mum and a relative to Woofstock.  (No typo there)  And I learned something, being the crazy cat lady with 18 cats is one thing; being the crazy dog lady with 12 chihuahuas is a whole other level.  Watching these women performing mouth to mouth on one of these twelve tackily dressed pups on stage for a prize is something I would like to have unburned from the inside of my skull. 

Saturday night was filled with drinking (possibly to help with the images encounted earlier in the day) and plenty of tomfoolery.  Who knew quiet, tea drinking me would be front and center, rocking out to the brother's friends garage band, Lost Subject.  Here is the the feel good story of the weekend.  The brains behind the band is a kid I've know through my brother for many years and for the past few he didnt' have it so good.  He has been dealing with depression and bottled up angers that have worried his family immensly, most of which comes out in his music.  (Get ready for the feel good cause up to now it's been so uppity.)  Turns out his family are his biggest musical supporters, his brother is the drummer and his folks are amazing.  I mean the stuff must scare them stiff but they support these kids to the end.  They got two buses together to bring thier friends to the concert, printed T-shirts and made CDs to promote.  Not only that, but on the bus this kid's Dad gets up and says, "I've got a Lost Subject prize pack for the person who can answer this trivia."  I was touched that, after dealing with what must have been such scary family problems, next to me rocking out just as hard was this kids parents.  Angry music, but lots of love.

Sunday I was on a meet and greet marathon.  Meeting so many people my head would have spun if not for the fact that all of them were so nice.  Sunday night I was in bed happily dreaming about a great trip back.  Good company makes for good driving.  But now its Monday morning, my tea is done and I should get to it!

Let me fly off the handle for a couple of minutes here.  It's either I explode my anger onto cyber space or I take a high powered rifle up the bell tower.

 

I HATE MY SIMULATOR!  To complete my thesis I need to plug numbers into a very expensive piece of software that is supposed to politely and quietly return numbers to me that would mimic the behavior in a reactor.  Very novel idea, it saves me from calculating everything by hand or writing my own code; things many more smrt than I cannot do.  In essence, I need the damn thing.  The trouble is the DamnThing knows it and is toying with me.  After all of Friday spent cursing the "cannont find XML.zip" error.  (What the hell is an XML.zip anyways!)  I spent this morning trying to get the thing to boot up.  My solution to the problem (also the solution to XML.zip errors), uninstall and reinstall the whole DamnThing.  HA!

 

The easy solution would be check the manual Christa, go to technical support Christa.  Yeah well the manual was written by a bunch of monkeys that like to type "Refer to the online support" every couple of lines or so and the online support is, get this, an online forum/chat room with other disgruntled users.  Double HA!

 

End rant... start chemkin... "XML.zip file missing".. climbing the stairs to the bell tower... see you on the new at 6.

???

 

Thesis is going well.  I have a game plan to get to the finish line.  Personal life, friends and otherwise, going even better.  Better than I ever could have dreamed in some cases.  So in the midst of all this happiness, what do I do?  I brood. 

 

*Smack hand to forehead*

 

True, my life is coming to a crossroad once again with the prospect of leaving school forever and I think I might be having thesis separation anxiety.  Eep.  Add to that the fact I've made some really big decisions, for which I don't spend a single second thinking that they were wrong, but all the same they probably had a bigger affect on me that I realized.  My life has taken a hairpin turn that still hasn't cleared the bend.  And although I love the direction its going, you've got to give me a minute to readjust which normally comes in the form of the feeling that I'm too stupid, needy or selfish to repay the universe all its good karma. 

 

I'll get over it by tomorrow.

I can speak french.  Of course I can only speak french slowly, with a bad accent and in a no pressure environment.  In any other condition I choke.  Yesterday's conference registration desk was not a no pressure environment.   

 

Conf Participant (in french):  Hello, this person will not be coming to the conference.  Can you please remove him from your list?

 

What I thought I responded:  Sure, just let me cross him out like this.

 

What I actually responded:  Bien sur!  Laisse-moi lui crosser comme ca.

 

In french the verb "se crosser" DOES NOT mean "to cross out".  The worst part was I realized as soon as I said it.

 

Look it up.

 

Note to self:

 

Self, do not eat four sandwiches, two helpings of pasta salad, two desserts squares, three cups of tea and two chocolate chip cookies unless you want to reduce your vacabulary to "Ooohhhh", "Uuuggghh", and "I shouldn't have done that."

 

Nuts to anyone who says I don't eat enough.

 

Point of Interest:  "Hey! Wanna Throw Up?" is also the name song by the electronica/punk group, Minus The Bear.

"Go home!  You don't know what you are doing!  You can't do this!"  I expect someone to jump out of my lab cabinets and shout this at me at any moment. 

 

I hate my thesis.  It's holiday Monday, 7 pm and I am commencing my crack down.  My thesis results are due on the 31st of August.  I have to have everthing done for that date.  Unless I have a definate plan you can find me in my office, possibly crying.  Then after grinding my pretty nose (a favourite feature) into an ugly stump I get to write the damn thing while searching for meaningful employment.  The trouble is I don't think I can do it.  I'm scared out of my wits.  I know I have a great support system.  In fact Friend made sure I had some dinner to eat tonite and I don't take that forgranted, but there is no one who help me when my planning fails or my computer crashes.  (Note to self, make a back-up disk)  I know the thesis will end but I just don't feel like I can do it.  Up to this point nothing has worked and I don't think it will miraculously start.  To compound the problem, this feeling of failure is setting up feeling of failure on the job hunt front.  I can only imagine the interviews, "My reasearch?  Well sir, currently it is lying on the scrap heap because I can't get it to work and I don't feel like trying anymore.  Oh, and I waste all my time writing blogs." 

 

Back to looking for the site density of Nickel that I know doesn't exist and fixing the GC that hasn't worked in 10 years.  *sigh*

 

 

I had an offical "Mad at God Day".  I'm not a religious person but I do take comfort in the idea that something is looking over us and helping us get along.  However, this Something often has a twisted sense of humor.  I guess they are supposed tests of humanity and goodness or something to keep us on the straight and narrow.  But eteranal battle between good and evil aside, on this occasion I've accepted fact (what choice have we got) while waving an angry upward fist.  He gave something to someone who didn't deserve it (I'm not trying to pass judgement, but trust me, I know) and the took the same thing away from someone who did.  I know these two occurances are only connected through me and one didn't influence the other but I can't steer my thoughts away from it.  I'm so upset for the people who didn't recieve anything but at the same time pissed off that the other got another chance to abuse his.  This is diverting my attention from those who need it and makes me feel selfish.  I suppose that this is supposed to be a test of virtue as well.  This sucks and I'm upset.  For one day I'm not going to take it.  Angry fist wave your waviest! 

 

I did forgive the Big Guy, its not prudent to stay angry at Him for too long.  Lightning stikes, plague of boils, etc,etc...    Not to mention the tragedy of growing old and cynical.

 

Actually, there was one pina colada, but it came in a tumbler with no umbrella.

 

I'm back from my vacation under the island sun.  And after our first close encounter where I was burned to a crisp in uncomfortable places the sun and I got along just fine.  In short, here is the trip.

 

Tour of Dan's Island school where high school kids have their parents pay big bucks for them to bask under the island sun, get an education and be worked down to the bone with physical exercise that includes tying a kayak to your foot and swimming for 2 miles cause just paddling was too wimpy.  Then we got a set of beach cruisers (one speed, wicked witch of the west style bicycles) to be our transportation for the week.  By the end of the week we clocked 75 km on those things.  The rest (the abbreviated version) was as follows, get up in the morning beach cruise to the beach, chill out, lotion up, get in the water, snorkel, dry off, beach cruise to the next beach, repeat. 

 

Highlights include:

Here is my master's project in a very small nutshell (keep reading, you don't need to the understand the technical to understand my pain) ...

 

Part I: determine a theoretical reaction mechanism for methane oxidation on Ni.  

 

Part II: refine the kinetic parameters of the initial mechanism. 

 

Upon reading copious amounts of boring articles I ran across this bit of useful information "[The refining of kinetic parameters of the initial mechanism] can be a time-consuming, tedious, or even impossible task to accomplish."

 

At least I can reference my initial fears with a scientifically proved and published theory.

[AIChE Journal, Vol. 46, No. 10]

I have to do a stupid press review for my french class once a week.  I hate it.  It makes me not want go to my french class.  But I'm desperate to learn french so once a week I sit and grumble.  The trouble is that I am a complete and utter fence sitter.  I don't have opinions.  Well at least not very strong ones.  I know genocide in Darfur is really bad, the environment is heating up and I don't like Stephen Harper.  But when I read the paper its to bone up on the facts or discover a new topic to be aware of and then form my own fairly straight forward ideas on the subject.  I never think myself an expert and therefore don't feel the need to discuss adnausem where I will only come out sounding stupid.  If you can't or aren't willing to go out and change it, or don't have any new and exciting ideas that will make the difference, its all just talk and babble. Merely reading the article in the first place gives me all the info I need to make my own personal change.  I recycle, I try to pay attention to foriegn policy so I can make an informed vote which is never Conservative.  That is it, end of discussion and end of french press review get on with the grammar I so desperately need! 

 

But I digress, the point is that I've come up with my own personal rebellion to this french class tryanny.  I am bringing the most ridiculously dumbed down articles.  Once I spoke about the cavier black market and vacations to the tropics, this week is spring cleaning.  HA! Take that!  Unfortunatley the whole thing backfired and now I'm fantacizing about cleaning in behind my fridge.  And getting some natural alternative to EZ-Off to clean my oven.  (See, look at me being influenced positively and making environmental changes.)  I even think I will rotate my mattress.  So read the paper, vote, invest and make personal changes accordingly and then get on with life.  And if you pick up a cause and change the world for the better then I applaude in advance.

 

Although I'm sure Freud would say otherwise, this is a random list I created of internet key words.  I'm getting all sorts of strange hits for people looking for "homemade ninja weapons", "plain clothes", or "ninja outfits", "plot outline of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" and the ever famous "lesbian short story".  (Still can't figure that one out *shrug*)  Now its a mission: dupe as many people as possible!  Let's see what I get..

 

...my guess is "naked ninja photos" is going to come up at least one....