Making decisions

It's hard making decisions.

I'm in my final year of my physics degree. I've had a really hard time making up my mind about what to do next. Grad school? Job in industry? If grad school, where? Vancouver? Weather's nice, but no apartments near campus allow cats. Between housing price differences and minimum down payment increases, buying is out. Saskatoon? What would I do?

Well, I got a good answer to that last question. I talked to the head of the department yesterday and he offered me a really awesome sounding project. Basically, the standard model of particle physics says that there's conservation of Leptons. So that means you can't convert muons to electrons. But there's no physical evidence for there to be conservation of Leptons, it's just one of those things they assume. So this project aims to look at whether that's true. No one's looked before. We're talking potential Nobel Prize Science.

Yeah. That's what I said... "HOLY FREAKING AWESOME COOLNESS BATMAN!!!"

So I would do a year in Saskatoon doing coursework, and then spend a few months in JAPAN doing REALLY COOL SCIENCE, and then come back home and write my thesis.

I said "yes."

It's the coolest project I've heard about yet, plus it lets me stay in Saskatoon a little longer, and I'm frankly not ready to move away yet. I really like it here, and there are all the practical considerations (see above).

I'm hoping Grant will be willing to live in the house while I'm in Japan, man the fort and parent the kitties. I figure, if I weren't married, they would have to pay me enough to live off of, so there's no reason I can't survive off what they pay me, regardless of what Grant's making. Plus, he's getting really tired of life on the road, I think he's ready to come live at home. I'm certainly ready for him to come live at home.

So there we have it. Super duper awesome possibilities of sweetness. I'm so excited!

yum yum!

My latest kitchen experiment. Roasted veggies with herbed onion sauce. Potatoes, zuccini, cauliflower, and orange pepper. I meant to put carrot too but by the time I got through the other things, it was already too much for the amount of sauce. It's tastey! Easy too. Probably full of sodium, since I used a packaged sauce mix, but whatever. You have to pick your battles.



Ready to go in the oven.

Fresh out of the oven. Actually that's a lie. The potatoes weren't cooked when the rest of it was, so I had to painstakingly separate all the potato slices and cook them for another 20 minutes. I had anticipated this before I started, I should have listened to my gut. So this is technically after the potatoes came out and I had mixed everything back together...

They changed it, I swear...

I really like big round stic pens. They have a nice weight, they're super cheap, and ink flows really well. Or rather, it used to. I think they've changed their formula and made it even cheaper. I'm not impressed. I had this older pen, it had a neon pink barrel with regular blue ink, and I used it a lot. I also had this box of newer pens and I was using them for my notes. It seemed like they were a slightly different colour, so to test my theory I did a side-by-side doodle comparison. Sure enough, the older pen was darker and thicker, with less white showing through on the pen strokes. The newer one is lighter and leaves more white gaps. I really liked the old ink and this takes just a little bit of the fun out of writing my notes and doodling in the margins.

This may seem like a really stupid thing to blog about, but it's 1:46 a.m. and I just got another stupid mechanics question wrong, so I need a distraction. I don't know why I'm so terrible at this stuff. I've been practising and practising all week, and I still keep getting them all wrong. It's so depressing, since my exam is on Monday. I can't tell if the problem is that mechanics is really hard, or I just don't think enough like an engineer. It's an Engineering Physics class. I would have taken the Real Physics version instead, but the time coincided with my Chemical Quantum Mechanics course, which I needed to complete my Chemistry Minor. At this point, I'm regretting that decision. The Real Physics is a lot more math and a lot less stupid gears that make no sense. It's all this 3-d angular momentum stuff, it just doesn't click in my head. It's too real!

Well, not that QM is much better. We got destroyed on our midterm last week. It was ridiculously hard. We haven't gotten the marks back yet, but I hope he grades it the way he did in the previous course. Otherwise, I don't stand a chance.

The only silver lining in all this is that these marks don't show up on my transcript for Grad School applications. Those get sent out this week, I've already applied for both UBC and Queen's, and acceptance will be based on 2nd and 3rd years, as well as reference letters and research experience. The latter two I have in spades. I've got 4 "publications" even though they're all posters and conference talks, and my reference letters are very strong, which is awesome. My grades are decent, they could be better but I chose to have something resembling a life over the past 3 years. The feedback I got from Queen's was very positive, and UBC's application process was much simpler and more straightforward, which I take as a sign of less competition. Plus, TRIUMF is really really big, and that requires lots of menial labour (i.e. grad students) to run experiments during midnight - 8 a.m. beam time, and go through reams and reams of data. All of which amounts to good chances for me! Also, they don't require you to have a supervisor picked out ahead of time, which also seems less competitive. ALSO I applied on the third day that applications were being accepted, which makes me most likely one of the first applicants, which shows enthusiasm. With any luck, that enthusiasm will also buy me a nice entrance scholarship, which will ease the burden somewhat. Still waiting to hear back from NSERC...

What is that??!

I was driving my friend home Friday night, coming up the offramp from Circle to 108th and I see this fluttering in the shadows to the front-right of my car. Figuring it was some kind of animal, I slowed down. I'm glad I did. As this thing flew out of the shadows and into my headlight beams, I just about fell off my chair, seatbelt and all. You'll never guess what it was: a massive, honest to god OWL!! Shucks! I didn't even know we had those in Saskatoon. Mind you, being as they only go flying around at night, what are the odds I would see one otherwise?

What's that noise?

I was standing in the kitchen, making coffee, and I heard this strange noise coming from the window. I couldn't figure out if it was someone snooping around or what. So I cracked the blind to investigate. What do I see, but half a dozen little sparrows fluttering around. A couple of them had perched on the bottom of the window frame and were flapping their wings which was whipping into the window and making the noise. One of them was also tearing at the plastic or caulk around the window, which doesn't seem like a very healthy idea for the bird but that's how evolution works right? Survival of the fittest?

This looks really scary. But adunno. The reviews on Amazon are promising... (http://www.amazon.com/Profoot-night-adjustable-bunion-regulator/product-reviews/B002Y0SALK) ...some people wore it every night for a couple months and started to see improvement. Can it be that a little plastic splint can actually correct generations of hereditary discomfort? I suppose it's what they do to correct disfigured backs and legs, just with stronger plastic. Well, maybe it's worth a shot?

Best Terrible Costume Ever!

Idea totally stolen from the internet, but he actually made a costume of it. I took the ultra low-budget route and made it an un-costume.

Take that!

About frackin time!

FINALLY got Android 2.3 for my phone. It's only been out for a full year before they decided to trickle down the update. So far my phone has crashed once and shown one network error. Bearing in mind, I've had it updated for a grand total of 5 minutes.

To its credit, it did remember all the applications, settings, contacts, and calendar events... so that's a bonus.

I also discovered that I've had data roaming turned off, which may explain why I had trouble with my phone in Manitoba. We'll have to see when I go home for Christmas if it's better. Good thing I'm taking the train.. looots of time to find out!

Really nailed it this time

I made my famous tomato pasta sauce today. I never measure the seasoning, so it's always a little hit and miss. But this time, I really got it. So tasty!! I think I went a little heavier on the basil & oregano than usual, and I know I put an awful lot of mustard and garlic powder. Boost that with a good shot of salt and pepper, and as usual a ton of parsley. I tasted it, and it was literally perfect. I think it helps that the green pepper I used was from my garden, and even though I picked it almost 3 weeks ago, I'm pretty sure that's still a lot fresher than the ones from California. I had onions this time, so I put those in of course. I've pretty much stopped buying garlic because it usually shrivels up and sprouts before I actually use it all.

Attacked by the big mean Ground...

Note to self: cornering really fast on grass using a street bike... bad idea. Breaking your fall on bamboo stakes, tomato plants and sunflowers... bad idea.