January and February

I know that I had promised to keep this more updated, but apparently I’m not very good at managing my time. A lot of progress has been made on the school front. I presented my project for half an hour during the Ecology and Evolution Friday Philosophicals. I was lucky because the one professor who likes to interrupt and ask questions during the presentation, leading the way for all the other professors to do the same thing, was not there that day, so everyone saved their questions until the very end.

I also defended my proposal for my project during my proposal assessment. This was the most harrowing experience of my academic career thus far since it was almost like a thesis defence. I had three examiners ask me two rounds of questions for 15 minutes each. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, but it was still rather unpleasant. Luckily for me, I passed with no revisions to be made to my proposal.

I am teaching the lab section of Animal Ecology with Crisia this semester. I have two classes, and I only actually taught them in four formal labs. Then they have to come up with their own independent project (which involves many emails and appointments with students on my part), and I have a week to grade a two-page proposal and a ten-page research paper. Right now I’m in the midst of grading their proposals, and I wonder how I’m going to be able to grade their papers in a week.

Visitors

Eliott and Kevin came to visit at the end of January. We timed it so that they could be in for Western’s Charity Ball. Crisia and Nikhil were also there. We got to look all fancy for one night and all proceeds went to the Big Sisters of London. We went to The Keg for some wine and nice steak dinners then spent the night dancing at the London Convention Centre.

The next day, Kevin, Eliott, and I drove out to the ski hill for some tubing. This ski hill made the Laurentian hills look big and happened to be right in the middle of these suburbs. They had people working there whose sole purpose was to fling or spin people in their tubes down the hill. It was a fun way to pass the afternoon. After that, we picked Crisia up for supper and went to this place called Garlic’s, where everything served there had, you guessed it, garlic. It was yummy.

Kingston

I had learned during the week that followed that my grandmother was in the hospital in Kingston with heart problems. After much deliberation on my part, I decided to brave a snowstorm and head out there on the bus. Eliott, being the wonderful boyfriend that he is, decided to meet me there. A five hour bus trip turned into a nine hour bus trip, and when I got there, Eliott and I found that there were no taxis to be had. We started walking and a nice couple offered to give us a lift. It turned out that it would have been a very long walk indeed.

We spent the entire next day in the hospital with my grandma, who wasn’t too badly off. While I was there, I got to see my grandpa, two of my aunts, three of my cousins, and several people related to these individuals even though only one of my cousins actually lives in Kingston. As I could see, my grandmother was well taken care of. She is now out of the hospital, and I am told that she is doing much better.

Niagara Falls

This past weekend, I got to experience Ontario’s newest holiday, Family Day. Crisia’s friend Megan was in town and had rented a car, which meant that they had to use this opportunity to take a road trip. The destination was Niagara Falls, and I was invited along. This is probably the main reason my marking isn’t done yet. We got there in time for lunch at the Rainforest Cafe.

After that, we found our way to the Hershey’s store for fudge and then decided to experience one of the few haunted houses. This was hardly worth the $10 that they charged, but the only thing that made it mildly scary was the presence of these three small Spanish girls that would scream and clutch onto us. They forced Megan to go in front, while Crisia and I stayed in the back and laughed at poor Megan. There was a guy, who worked there, who would follow us around and grab us and make weird noises when it got too dark to see in front of us.

After that we spent a good amount of time at Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum. The most amusing part about this was this video that told you that only 1 in 3 people can twist their tongue a certain way and then asks you to try it in a mirror that was there. Crisia had been there before and knew this was a trick and told me about it but didn’t get there in time to tell Megan. When we made it to the end of the museum, we waited for a full 15 minutes on the other side of that mirror to see if we could see other people making faces in the mirror. There was also a spinning tunnel with a bridge that ran across it. At the end of the tunnel was a crooked picture of a chicken. Megan told Crisia to watch the chicken. She really shouldn’t have.

We went to our hotel after that. We were staying at the Mariott that looked over the falls. It really was a beautiful view. We ended up taking a 2 hour nap and then deciding that we didn’t really want to go out anymore. We ordered in pizza and spent some time in the hot tub at the hotel. We then watched the movie 3:10 to Yuma in our comfy beds.

The next morning, we went out to brave the cold wind to look out over the falls. They really are very beautiful. It would have been nice to go in the summer and take the boat or go behind the falls when it wasn’t so cold. We then drove back in time to make it for the Stable Isotopes Lab Christmas Party. Yes, I know it’s February.