Gripe

Ugh, today is such a monday.

Woke up with a headache and exhausted (despite having slept for nine hours!).
Icky weather (what's new?).
Above-average boring classes.
Lost my bus pass (most of my family, I'm sure, will have a chuckle at this. I know I tend to lose everything, but how I managed to lose something I use several times a day and keep in my jean pocket is beyond me).

Luckily, a girl just emailed me to let me know that she found my bus pass in a classroom this morning, so I guess the situation isn't too bad.

So finals start next week. I spent the weekend studying, studying, and--oh hey!-- studying some more. I was super lame and anti-social, which means that I refused to go out, avoided people I recognized at the library (too grumpy to make a social effort), and even hung up on a friend. By accident!
Once again, Beat and I are teaming up for some nice, long, 8-hour stretches at the library. Then when we go home to eat, and I head over to the coffee shop on my street corner and study some more.

So, nothing fascinating is going on in my life at the moment...

I did cheat on friday though: my swing partner is back from Alaska for the week, so I went out to swing dance! It was a lovely time--as usual-- and I'd forgotten how well I got along with Thomas. An excerpt of our conversation:

Me: How's Alaska?!
Him: Alaska... Well, it is a simple beauty.
Him: And by simple, I mean you get tired of it. Very. Fast.
Him: If I see another humpback whale... I'm gonna shoot it!
Me: But Thomas! You're a marine biologist!
Him: *Crazy look*

He has to spend months on end on a boat with about five other people. Looking at whales and fish and stuff. Crazy! I wonder what job I'll end up with?

Random pictures

I found myself roaming through the apartment, taking pictures of things that make me happy.



My stock of boeuf bourguignon. I tend to make this whenever I'm homesick (hum). It's better than it looks.



The fruit bowl. I like fruit. They finally started selling clementines! It's the single best thing about winter.



My light. It only cost about 5 dollars; christmas lights, pins, and all.

A most enjoyable evening

I'm slowly trying to enter finals mode. I spend at least five hours at the library a day, but it really doesn't feel as though I'm getting any work done. It's slightly distressing.
I've also started to drop my regular activities (yes, yes, I know that this is bad). I haven't been to the gym in over a week (mostly due to the fact that my work out buddy has broken her finger-- useless, I tell you!), and it's been been three since I went swing dancing! So far, I've had four worried phone calls as to why I'm not there/will I come dancing?
But hopefully, that should get remedied very soon as I've gotten some excellent news! My swing partner from last year has come to visit from Alaska! Ee!

Last night, I skipped swing dancing to study with some friends. Okay, so what if very little actual studying was accomplished!
We all met up at my friend's place for dinner. This is my 24-year-old-professional-dancer-turned-biology-major-and-english-minor-(due to injury)-with-a-hand-in-all-of-McGill's-plays friend. She's also vegetarian, like a VERY disproportionate amount of my friends, so every time she mentions potlucks I squirm a little, because the only thing I can cook well is meat.
Her apartment is just two blocks away from mine and is lovely. It feels like one of those artsy/classy apartments seen in movies that take place in New York, but that you know are too nice to really exist.
She'd ended up making soup and squash ravioli (two words: wonton wrappers. They're the perfect size for making ravioli!), which was delicious. Another friend brought chocolate fondue, with lots of fruits, and I brought wine, cheese and baguette (being french, haha). It was so good, and I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.
It's nice to just relax for an evening.
These people are in all of my classes, and yet they're so much less stressed out than some of my other classmates. I wonder if being stressed out actually makes you work better?

Also, I have some excellent news! A teacher has agreed to hire me for next year AND next summer! I'll be working on his lab, which works on protein and mRNA maturation in mammalian eggs. This is fascinating work (to me, anyways), and if my results are interesting enough, I might end up a co-author! Next week, I should be going back to learn how to do Western Blots (they allow us to see which proteins are present at what time).
The lab itself is about 35 minutes from where I live, in a hospital. It's actually amazingly complicated to actually find said lab (I will take pictures to prove my point).
The downside of the job is that I will have to kill all of the mice that I will end up using in my experiments. Prof. Clarke says that it's hardest at first, but that eventually you get used to it. Which isn't necessarily a good thing.

It's snowing! For real this time!

The scene: the kitchen. My roomate and I are eating breakfast, when all of a sudden...
Sarah: Oh my gosh! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's so pretty!
Me: What?! No! Nooooooooo!!!!!!
Sarah looks at me in shock, then bursts out laughing
Me: That's it, I'm calling my mom.

So there it is, folks. Snow! I expect I'll run outisde to frollic and take pictures soon. But until then... I'll keep on reading Cognitive Psycology. Yum.

This weekend was quite fun! We had a big get-together at our apartment, kind of as our last chance to see all of our friends before everyone starts living in libraries. My contribution to the night? I wrote down over 50 pick-up lines, threw them in a hat, and forced our guests to use them at some point during the night.
My personal favorites (warning, some are a bit risque!):

"Is there a mirror in your pocket? 'Cause I can see myself in your pants"
"I lost my phone number, can I have yours?"
"Hi. You'll do."
"Bond. James Bond." (thank god no one used that one on me)
"If I told you that you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?"
"Did we go to different schools together?"
"Hi, I just wanted to say that I noticed you noticing me and I wanted to let you know that I noticed you too."
"I wish I were a math problem, 'cause then I'd be really hard and you'd be doing me on your desk."
"Baby, I wish you were x^2 and I was x^3/3 so that I could be the area under your curve."

(Hey, I'm in science, I had to throw some nerdy ones in)

Final season begins

So finals are now less than a month away. It's about time for a nice, healthy dose of panic, wouldn't you say?

The problem is, I actually did really well on my midterms, so I don't want to get lazy and start slacking off...
Speaking of slacking off, I had a lovely weekend! (My escuse for not working: I had a midterm on Thursday, and finals were more than a month away)
On friday night, I went to the other side of the mountain (Montreal is seperated in half by a mountain, the West side is more anglophone, the East side is more francophone-- I live in the West side) to visit l'Univeriste de Montreal.
U de M consists of many big buildings quite close to one another (unlike McGill, which is a little more spread out). It was really interesting to get to go inside, meet the students (most of whom are real quebecers), and capture the ambience of a different university. My friend hosts a radio show there on fridays, so we got to chose songs and tinker around for quite a bit in a radio station studio!

On Sunday I went to a Rufus Wainwright concert. For those of you who don't know, I love Rufus Wainwright! This was the third time I've had the luck to see him live, and he never disapoints. I went with my friends Kate, Stacie and Rich and could hardly contain my excitement the entire time. I especially love seeing him play in Montreal, because he grew up here. He always gets sentimental and starts sharing all of these childhood stories, or mentions he really like to eat at St. Tropol (an awesome sandwich place).

I am getting desperately low on food. So far, I've run out of: bread, vegetables, milk, butter, eggs... the list goes on. I mostly have pasta, bacon and fruits left. I know I should go grocery shopping but I just. Can't. Do it.
There are days when I wish I could close my eyes and all my errands get done for me...

PS: Thanks Will for posting on my guestmap... I wasn't even sure if you knew this blog existed.

Some pictures of Halloween

Due to popular (hem) demand, some pics :-)

Halloween at the Cat's Corner:





I told you that the sea monster was amazing.



The guy never let go of his guitar, even when he was dancing. It was impressive.



Watch those corners!




And the night out at Mad Hatter's...



Our costumes : a man down on his luck in the 1930s, a hipster swallowed by the indie industry (people who didn't know me didn't get the social commentary, which made it even better), and a pirate.
I wish I had test tube shot glasses.

Happy Halloween!

Hello ghouls and gals!

I hope you all had a terrifying Halloween, but seeing as how most of you don't live in North America, that's probably unlikely (or at least, I hope it is).
I personally went to a swing dancing costume party on Friday night (yes yes, I'm a nerd, I know). Now, I have this tendency to ALWAYS over dress when it comes to costume parties. There's this part of my brain that hasn't matured a day since the age of four, and I'm secretly delighted every time I can dress up. So I went as a demon (in a renaissance dress), and nervously show up after the beginner's class was over.
Who was I kidding? These people are swing dancers. Heck, they get dressed up every week for no occasion at all. Needless to say, their costumes were amazing! There were synchronized ninjas, cool cats, a rubix cube (watch out for those corners when you're dancing), a sea monster, a plethora of demons, vampires, undead... and even a live band.
On Saturday night, some friends and I went to this bar called Mad Hatter's. It was great, they had all of the super nerdy halloween music and a costume competition.
So finally, it seems, I'm starting to build up a social life again. Whew!
However, I was at the library the morning after by 9 A.M. It's so funny because it ends up always being the same people in the same places at the same library, day after day. We're like barflies. Or barnacles.
I have a midterm tonight, and after that, studying for finals begins! I'm looking forward to the break though-- there's usually a lull in the workload in mid-November.

Oh and: Beata and I have started writing a Romance Novel during the course of our work-outs. It's authors will be Victoria Bond (sadly, my name already sounds too much like a Romance Novelist's!) and Breatrix LeChamp (although this might be our main character's name, we aren't sure yet).