he thinks he's people

A car just drove by and made a loud weird bang as it passed. Gavin, near the window, hopped up to have a look. He turned and looked at me inquisitively and went "mrrrrpprprp??". I replied "dunno little buddy. What do you think it is?"
I swear he shrugged his shoulders before looking out again and settling down in a sunbeam.

I love that our animals trust and communicate with us - they really cohabitate and share our home.

The chickadees are back in the front hedge. It's a sunny 12 degree spring day and I'm preparing for a day of odd little chirpy noises from both the birds and the cats as I (yet again) work on my thesis in the sunshine in the living room. I have a whole section of thesis to gut and rework and prep for my supervisor to read by monday. Gotta go.
Later taters...

wake up sleepyhead

Stole this meme...thought it would be a fun way to spend my coffee break and hopefully get my brain working. I am very tired and even a crazy interval bodyrock.tv workout and some elliptical sweating followed by a big mug of coffee after was not enough to get things moving upstairs...brain no worky no more. Zzzzz.
1. What is your favorite word?
It varies. At the moment the top few are: sparklepony and ubiquitous

2. What is your least favorite word?
stupid (to me it's the most hurtful word someone could say to someone else)

3. What turns you on?
Confidence. That and a glass of wine, some music and my luvs deep brown eyes...and the little muscle on his abdomen that stretches down his hips...*swoon*

4. What turns you off?
People acting like spoiled children and people who are petty. Turns me right off.

5. What sound do you love?
A few that come to mind: birds singing in the morning, cats making little nattery noises at birds, the noise a bag of freeze-dried coffee makes when you cut it open and all the air seeps back in.

6. What sound do you hate?
ambulance sirens- they make me sad. I wonder how the person in them is...

7. What is your favorite curse word?
fucksticks. It's brilliant

8. What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?
A chef. I'd love to have my own catering service.

9. What profession would you not like to do?
Secretary or accountant. I'm rubbish at desk work and typing and the thought of tonnes of typing out other peoples work? No. No thought or individual effort...

10. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
If so, no offense to the big guy, but I'd want to hear my Mum's voice. If there was a heaven, she would be there...and seeing her would be fantastic.

*grin*

I feel ever so shiny right now.

It's been a low stressy hard working few days and I'm feeling it. Feeling like a thesis robot.

A friend of mine who will be retiring soon is old enough to be my mum and sort of is like a mum to me. She works in the building with me and is a sweet sweet lady. Today I went down to pick up something and ran into her she was just beaming. Glowing...and she smiled with the hugest grin and told me it was because she was so proud. of me.

:)

She had been speaking to my supervisor about my project a while earlier and I guess he really had a lot of good things to say about me. That he was proud of my work and really thinks I am doing well -coming from him that is high praise indeed. I deeply respect him and her and I just feel all glowy inside to know that there are people cheering me on and people in my field who recognize what I am doing and that they see me for me and notice all my hard work. That I'm not just a thesis robot...I am so much more.

I am floating a few inches off the ground. It's like my mum came by from Neverland and hugged me.

Life somehow knows when to give you what you need just when you need a little nudge :)

Jazz hands

Trancendal Ubernote

Just avoiding my thesis a bit and eating some jello (yum).

I've got bread in the robot, and a nice Harp chilling in the fridge for when I'm done.

I ran across this today.

It is utterly odd and great and amazing and strange. The music is great and well...it can't really be explained, so have a watch.

always room for j e l l o

I am sitting here trying to decide if I want to go out, or just hang out at home.

I've whined lately that I don't get out much...Tonight J is doing lights at a masquerade party and I could go...but I've been running on little sleep this week, and I have no desire to go there and then leave right away because I'm falling asleep. I really just want to relax and not sure how :/

I could have a blast and end up there all night and then not get anything done tomorrow on my thesis...I *do* need to get lots done on my thesis. Maybe that means just being boring and entering some references and then maybe have a beer and watch a movie or be (ooh aah) all kinds of cool and go to bed early. I mean hey -I've already made some jello tonight...do I know how to have a crazy friday or what?

I wouldn't mind going to hang out with some friends at a party where I'm not doing anything and can actually just relax. With J working it'd be more just me with some of the girls. I'm just not feeling too girly... :)

Perhaps it's just time for jello. :)

LATER: Well I sat down on the couch and woke up 4 hours later to a call from J to come down to the show. So, I did. I got both - sleep and some fun. And now, today I shall have quiche and get to this thesis thing. I love it when a plan comes together...

MMMmm mmmm time for pie

Happy Pi day all you nerds and non-geeks alike :)

Don't have time to make a pie today (sad, I know).
Still...given my love of pie (and pi alike) I shall grin all day.
As should you.
And eat some pie.
I command you.
If you listen to nothing else I say all year hear this: go have a piece of pie.

Man, I wish I had time to do this...

What else is there

I heard this this morning and now I can't get this song out of my head...



This weekend I decided to see how many crunchy delicious foods I could recreate healthily. We had baked onion rings and crunchy coated tofu and they were, seriously, better than any fried ones I've ever had (thanks to Oh She Glows for the recipes). Then at certain points we had baked apple oatmeal and spaghetti squash with almond/Panko coated baked chicken. All crunchy. All delicious.

Yum.
How can you tell I cook to relax? :)

Other than a few brief periods of delusion where I tried to break up the monotony of typing my thesis and referencing said thesis by drinking beer with a straw and too much (yum) Gewurztraminer on sunday night, it was a productive, relaxing, tasty weekend.

We got out to see John Carter saturday night as a reward for working hard all day. It is fabulous. Made me feel like I was a 12 year old reading comics under my blanket with a flashlight again. A little cheesey, but full of imagination and boldness...hats off to the team that took A Princess of Mars and made a lovely little film about it. I loved Edgar Rice Burroughs's stories as a kid...so much imagination and amazing stuff came out of that man's mind. I'm glad to see a bit of it on the big screen...

And another week goes by...

Hope you all had a nice weekend :)

TGIF

Yes. Bring on the coffee and baked oatmeal please.
I am quite ready for the weekend...

J had to work early this morning, and so the cats thought I should get up at 430 too. Little smug furball bastards... I came in to workout fiercely and feel strong and awesome, but I am sure about 2 this afternoon I'll be fighting to keep my eyelids open.
It's been a long busy week. The busy busy is driving me a bit batty, but everything is still getting done, so in the end, I'll live. A little wine and baked oatmeal this weekend will set things right. :)

This weekend I have to do an edit/cut down of my first 2 thesis sections, as well as figure out how to use the reference software I'll be using for my thesis and (snore) put the 200 odd references into it. It will shorten the thesis considerably to use numbers instead of written out references and if I do them manually and edit later the numbers will all change. After having had to do that for multiple manuscripts for other people I do not DONOT want to do this to my 100 odd page final thesis. And so I will start picking away at this when I can and get this changed. MS word has some reference capabilities, but not for all required cases for me, so I must find an alternate. Mendeley might do. It's free, which is a bonus. I'm just dreading importing all the info. Yawn city. And I'm dreading more work on the hypothesis part of my thesis. It's hard to say it all clearly...just must Keep Calm and Carry On as they say. I am quite determined that a draft of the whole thing will be finished by the time we travel to young Grapecat's wedding in May (!!!). Come hell or high water or mild insanity - it will be so. Oh yes. It will be so.

And so, my good peeps, have a good weekend. Relax and hug the ones you love. Have a glass of your favourite beverage and take a minute to feel good about the good things in your lives. I'll join in with you at some point :)

Fluffy

I wonder how long it will take for my mead to clarify? I know I know it's only been a week...I definitely need to start up that IPA soon to distract myself. Seeing as I used apples...maybe... it never will? It could take months...

We had a lovely fluffy snow dump yesterday. It's been an obscenely brown winter and we got about a foot and a half of the fluffy stuff yesterday. It was easy to shovel and somehow it didn't seem like a chore to shovel with it being so light and the weather being so nice. It took ages, and it's snowing big cartooney flakes again this morning, so there will be more of that when I get home, but I don't mind it when it doesn't happen very often. It's nice to be outside. Makes me want to buy snowshoes :)

I so desperately want to make a snowman or snow cow with all of it but it isn't *that* kind of snow...yet...

Got mead?

Well, the specific gravity of my mead is down to 0.98, which means it's done fermenting. It was time to put it into a carboy for settling and aging. The problem with me using fresh apple squish is that after I racked it all off, there was shy of4 gallons remaining from a 5 gallon start. Not a huge deal, but when I put it into my 5.5 gallon carboy there was WAY too much room on top. The mead would have oxidized as it aged and gone off...and I refuse to ruin all my work :)

Soo...off to the brew store for me, where I picked up a 3 gallon and 1 gallon carboy and put the mead into there. The 3 gallon is nice and full and the gallon has a bit of room in it, but it also has the sludgy bottom stuff, so the 3 gallons should settle out really nicely and the 1 gallon will be what it will be. I should get at least 20 bottles of tasty mead in the end so I'm happy. Now I put it in a dark place and ignore it for a few months...it's at about 14% alcohol so it will need to age a while before we crack it. It may be on the dry side too, so when I bottle it I may add some honey to some of the bottles as a comparison and see which I prefer when we drink them at Christmas. The few mouthfuls I got while siphoning tasted alright so I am looking forward to how it ages out. I think this will become a yearly thing. :)

Since I have an extra carboy now (he hee) I picked up a kit to make India Pale Ale. When I have some free time in the next while I will get that started. It will be easier to ignore the mead and let it age with some beer in the pantry.

This is fun.

I love home brewing. Having a mini hobby while thesising has kept my brain a bit happier I think.

I don't do it near enough...:)

Plans for the future from the past

Ah. March is here. Thank frog. It's been a mellow winter weather-wise, but so much has gone on to make the darkness a bit too gloomy...I for one would like to leave it behind for the warmth and excitement of spring. I like leap years but I hate february. I for one am glad it's gone.

I ran across this meme on a blog and thought it was cool, so I will do it, as a reason to post. I find that other than my fitness blog where I log workouts and such shite, I don't have a lot to post about, and don't want to whine incessantly about my thesis to you all. This is a good compromise I think.

It's questions about how you'd be living now, if you asked yourself these questions when you were a kid. Here's my answers at age ~10:

My profession would be: Egyptian archaeologist

My spouse would be: The lead singer of A-ha, Morten Harket... Man he was hot. *sigh*

My car would be: Red Mazda RX7

My home would be: old and rickety with a big wooden staircase and a turret like a castle with a private room at the top full of books. Oh - there would also be an observatory on the roof, with a spiral staircase to get to it, and a fireman's pole to get back down in a hurry. Or, in a pinch, a lighthouse would do! :)

My best friends would be: people who wouldn't tease me and wanted to play adventure games and have waterballoon fights. Kids who liked to skip rope, play games with imagination, go camping...we'd draw and paint and make milkshakes all day

My backyard would have: a big pad for skipping double dutch, and a big yard for running around in and lying in the sun (I had this. It rocked)

All my dinners would include: Jello and rootbeer

My kids/pets would be named: Max and Maura. My dog was named Scotty.

How about you??