Procrastination is Inherited

So, I decided that procrastination is an inherited disease, which means that it is surely passed down from one family memeber to another. I used to think that maybe I had missed this gene, because I was soo on-top of things. I often had assignments done so long before they were due that I forgot about them in my drawer. I read all the required readings for classes in the first weeks of school, so that I would have time to read them a second time for detail. I never forgot appointments or pulled all-nighters...unless I was interested in the reading I was doing for a class 3 months from then!

I have changed my mind.

I think I DID inherit the procrastination gene after all, however I got the late-onset form. So, just as I was getting used to the "stress" of studying the same material for the 11th time just in case I missed something...it hit me.

It's my fourth year of university. My last year. I am partially completed my honours thesis, and I fall victim to its horrible grasp.

I avoid GREs and Graduate School Applications until that's all I CAN do because I am trying to fit 6 months of work into 2 weeks (or whatever). So as I desperatly attempt to get those "life" things done, my "school" things get left in the dust. And suddenly...

I'm starting and finishing research papers in the same night, I am reading the syllibus for the first time 6 weeks into the class. I am attempting to read the text for the first time as a form of studying the day before the exam. Stuff is sneaking up on me, I'm forgetting appointments, and my school world is chaotic.

I finally know what it feels like to be a procrastination queen!

Hopefully I'm as good at it as Jen. Man she was good...

Babies and Bubbles

So, it was bath-time at home this weekend. For the pets that is...
Kilo was first because she was the biggest, and presumably most challanging of the pet-baths.
She got all cleaned up, and got the rest of us almost as wet as her.

And then it was Hunny's turn. She didn't hate being bathed at first, and was ok while I played with her cute hair and gave her a soapy mowhawk. haha. It didn't stand up long enough to get a picture though, and I felt a little bit mean so...

Once she was out of the bath she got cranky cause she didn't want to be wet anymore. She shook and got us wet, and didn't respond to the blowdryer very well.

Needless to say, we left her to air-dry for the most part. She was shaggy and cute in no time.

I thought while I was at it, I might as well post some more pics of my baby being super-cute.

Playing with toys that are as big as her...

Looking Pretty...

And, cuddling with one of her "babies" on Jen's lap...

And in her bed...

That's all for now!!

Aint she cute?

Science Nerd

Thought I would fill you in...I learned today what happened to produce the cyclopse kitten. For those of you who haven't heard, there was a kitten born with a single eye. Of course, it was not alive, but just the same.Anyways...I learned that it is because when the brain was forming, the hemispheres (left and right side and front back) didn't separate properly. This causes the optic nerves (the nerves that lead to and form the eys) to be very close together and sometimes, only form one eye.

Unfortunatly this is a problem with human babies as well. They grow to term but are non-viable (ie. dead). I was shown this exact picture in lecture of a human baby with "holoprosencephaly"...talk about disturbing. I am not excited about dinner for some reason. Damn night classes....

In other news, I met a prof at University of Toronto on the weekend. I think he liked me, but I have to wait until the end of the week to find out if there is room in his lab for me. Here's to hoping...it would be nice to live at home again. I would be studying sleep function. Kinda neat...

Getting a Grip

I don't know how wide-spread this weather is, but I can assure you that all of Waterloo is entirely under a sheet of ice. This started the day before yesterday with rain. The rain is not surprising seeing as it is Waterloo, and at least a few times a year it happens that the rain freezes and covers everything with a thick and slippery sheet of ice. Now I'm not talking about patches of ice...the sidewalks, roads, and grass are covered. You can't avoid it, but instead you are forced to waddle like a penguin all the way too and from school.

Now, everyone else is also doing this, so unless you fall on your ass into a puddle (because it is still raining) then you're just like everyone else. But, it gets particularily challanging on my street because every block of the sidewalk seems to be slanted. So, your odds of falling are increased ten fold. Luckily, I have survived this storm without falling.

Today it is bitter cold, and snowing. So, the snow has covered the crazy sheet of ice, and has turned into a slush-covered arena, adding to the challange. Did I mention I hate the weather in Waterloo?

In other news, I miss my puppy.

It seems silly to me in a way because I don't miss kilo when I'm gone. I love her and everything, but she's not mine. Something about owning something (I imagine it's similar with children in a sense) makes you fall in love with it instantly. I feel like I'm missing out on first steps or first words. In this case though, it's more like first pee on the paper, and first tumble down the stairs and such...but still.

Hunny went to her first appointment at the vet today and she's perfectly healthy and beautiful, with one exception...her teeth. At 6 and a half months old, she has already got a bit of tarter build up. So, I shall go out and get her a wee doggy toothbrush this week. She's not gonna like it I'm sure. The breeder said she never brushes her dogs teeth, but apparently it's necessary. So, I'll bring her home a new "baby" (ie. toy) to play with to make up for her hating me. That will give her one more object to drag around the house, which will please the family I'm sure. hehe

Anyways, I have a lot of news about potential graduate school supervisors, but this post is already long and boring, so I'll go into it another time.

New Mommy

I am officially a new mommy to the cutest puppy on Earth. Her name is Hunny, and she's a 6 1/2 month old yorkshire terrior. Mama Dukes and I went out to Wierton up north to see the litter of pups that we initially were going to choose from. They were super-cute, and I wouldn't have minded taking all of them home, but as cute as they were, it was hard to tell what they were going to look like when they grow up. Their mom is a "blue" and "gold" silky-haired yorkie named lily. We saw here, and she's cute, but not nearly as cute as Kira, who birthed Hunny. Kira is a blue and tan soft-haired yorkie, which is exactly the same as hunny. Basically, they call them "blue" because there is a hint of steal-blue colour in their coat. But they appear black and tan coloured.

I am so super-excited about having Hunny, but it's sad at the same time, because I can't spend every day with her. Unfortunatly, my schedual at school is busy, and I have long days (sometimes at school 14 hours a day). So, I left her in the fabulous care of my family, where I know she'll have company to tend to her most of the day. I wouldn't want my new baby to be lonely. It was an emotional good-bye this morning when I had to come back to school. It was hard enough leaving the family before, but it's only for 3 more months.

I have included pictures, but they seriously don't do her justice. She's cute as a bean, and her personality is one that you can't say no to...hense the reason why we took her home, even though we weren't intending to get a puppy until closer to the summer. Luckily, Hunny has had over 6 months with a breeder who has been careful to train her. She can be groomed standing, and is paper trained (although she's having a bit of a hard time adjusting at her new home). When the weather gets better, we'll train her to do her business outside with kilo.

Speaking of Kilo...she's jelous a little bit, but we have made sure to pay her a little extra attention so she doesn't feel replaced. Luckily, they get along fine for the most part. When Hunny tries to bug Kilo when she's eating it's a bit of a different story, but as with the cat, They'll manage to get along fine I'm sure.

Anyways, I just thought I'd let everyone see my new pride-and-joy.

Me and Hunny, right after we finalized that she was coming home with me.

Hunny all messy, finding a new home on the arm of the couch.

"But mama, I don't want to smile...quit flashing that bright light" (by the way, hunny does smile...it's sooo cute)

Hunny woken up from her nap by the camera flash again...

Hanging out in Rachel's lap...

I will post some more pictures next weekend when I go home again. This time, I'll catch her when she's up and booting around the house, and if I'm lucky I can get her groomed and snap some shots of her with a little ribbon in her hair, it's soo cute.

Answer to an Important Life Question

I know this post will not mean much to some of the people who may read it, but to some, it might just be as hillarious as it was when I had this long-standing edge-of-your-seat question answered...finally.

I was sitting in my developmental biology class (for some reason my entire life happens at school) and we are learning about limb development. Now this is kind of a boring topic, and to be honest I was only half paying attention. The other half of my attention was somewhere off in graduate school applications (soo stressful).

Anyways, the prof is blabbing on and on about different genes and mutations that can cause abnormal arms / legs / wings etc to form when suddenly I looked up at the slide presentation and guess what I saw?

An Exact Replica of Kiki's feet!!

Now, Kiki (as we lovingly refered to her as) was a summer student at my previous place of employment (being discreet here to avoid legal complications). She loved to come to work wearing flashy sandles that drew a ridiculous amount of attention to her feet. AND she had naked toes, which is a total workplace no-no.


So I couldn't find a good example on the net so I had to do a semi-accurate drawing of her feet. The long and short of it is (haha, I made a funny), that her toes were all really long and finger-like except her big toe, which was short and stubby. Something like this:
So it turns out that at some point in later development her mom injested/exposed to some retinoic acid or some other teratogenic chemical that caused a gene to mutate causing her big toe to be underdeveloped. This apparently happens often in thumbs, big toes and genitals. It's not usually brutally noticable, but if you ever see a person with really weird looking feet or hands (or genitals for that matter) you might think of this post. If you want to read the stupidly-confusing details of the gene, it's called Hoxa-13.

Anyways, it's 1AM but I had to get that outta me. I laughed silently but very histarically in a small lecture room. I was totally red in the face. I felt hot, and as soon as lecture was over, I told the first person I saw (that I knew). It wasn't as funny to her...but if she knew KiKi....hahaha

Feeling the winter frost

So, I'm sitting at my computer last night thinking about how stiff my fingers are from the cold. It sometimes gets a little chilly living in a basement when the heat is paid for by the landlord. This means that the heat control is locked and if we want the heat turned up, we have to call him and have him do it. So, I check the thermostat upstairs which reads 17 degrees. Minus about 5 degrees for basement living and I'm in a chilly 12 degrees. so I tuck myself into bed to read instead of type (which is turning out to be more difficult by the minute) and I decide that I will call mr. landlord in the morning to have the heat adjusted.

So, this morning I'm still freezing and I can't figure out why I have no heat coming through my vent. I'm tempted to place a bag of snow on the thermostat to indicate that it's freakin cold, and to trigger the heater. But instead I check the temperature again and it reads a whopping 15 degrees (upstairs!) So, of course I'm frozen...that explains the icicles forming in my nostrils.

I call Mr. landlord and ask politly if he could please stop by sometime today to turn up the heat. But, it turns out he's away for the weekend visiting family. He sais he'll come monday night. Monday!? I'll be dead by then of hypothermia...so don't bother. Click...

Just kidding, I didn't really say that...

He calls back about 10 minutes later and has me check the furnace. It's not on, nor is it blowing any sort of air. So, I check the vents which are also deadly quiet. And I report the current temperature (14 degrees and quickly falling). I hobble over to the fuse box (the 6 layers of fleece I have on are slowing me down a bit). And I flip the breaker for the furnace. Nothing...

Furnace is broken.

I don't know what he's going to do about it seeing as he's out of town, but if I don't get some heat soon, I'm going to buy a space heater. I own one but it's in Oakville. I shoulda thought about that when I went home last.

Oh! landlord just called again to get heating places phone numbers. I guess he's sending someone over to fix it. Yay! In the meantime I'm having another Hot Chocolate and a hot shower (hot water still works without a furnace right?)

Off to a great start

Picture this...
you show up on the first day of school pretty excited to start some new classes. As you know, my first research class in biopsychology was cancelled.
Jump to Thursday (ie today)...
you show up for the second scheduled class of research in biopsych only to find a group of people waiting at the door. Prof's not here yet...about 4 or 5 minutes past the scheduled start time people start whispering things like "do you think she's even gonna show?" and "I heard this prof is a crack head..."
so now I'm a little worried. I am paying over a thousand dollars tuition for this course after all...but what are you gonna do?
so the prof shows up. She's about my height, kinda stalky and butchy looking. She's got no hair as far as I can tell under the touque she's wearing (indoors!?), and she's sporting a boston redsox's t-shirt and a pair of army pants. weird.
so she doesn't know the code for the door to let us into the classroom, so we wait another minute or two. She finally gets some dude to let us in to this tiny "classroom" she hands out the syllibus, and as it's going around the room the last guy gets a copy that has no staple. He said something under his breath and the prof speaks her first clear words to the guy with no staple.
she sais (in a thick new-orleans accent that makes me laugh) "what? havin' no staple aint gonna kill ya is it?...shhiiittt"
this is going to be an interesting class.
The introduction went something like this....
"Sorry I wern't at class tuesday for you's that came, but I was held up at the border. Apparently they thought I was a merderer or somthin', but why dontcha have a peek tru the syllibus and take the rest o' the week off?"
"basically, you're writin' three papers, watchin rats swim, and dissecting a sheep brain. see ya..."
Total class time (out of 3 scheduled hours)...wait for it...4 minutes.
why do I bother?

Oh holidays....

I don't know when it will be (if ever) that I realize that I get absolutly nothing done over any sort of holiday long or short. Be it weekends, or three week holidays, I can't work. It's like I stop working for one day and all is lost. I have no motivation.

So christmas break just passed like the blink of an eye and all those lovely time-consuming projects that I put off for christmas holiday remain unfinished. In fact, I still haven't gotten into the swing of things back at school yet. When I got to campus this morning a full hour-and-a-half before my first class to leave plenty of time to do the number-puzzle-thingy in the Toronto Star, I found there to be no newspapers delivered. So, instead I sat and stared at people in the atrium while drinking my large cup of Timmies coffee. I didn't open a school book and get something productive done. I didn't check my email or even enter the computer lab. Nope...I just stared off into space wondering what I am going to do with myself now that I have no living beings to speak with.

You see, my sister moved out last year, but luckily my old roomies came back last term so I had a room to retreat to when I needed a break from the chaos in my brain. But now...they are gone on co-op work term and I am left lonely. In fact, noone seems to be living in the third room downstairs (not yet anyways), so I don't speak to anyone all day/night. But I digress....

So, there I am with my coffee thinking about nothing, and I decide to go find my first class (first day of new classes causes problems when I have no sense of direction). So, I find the room and on the door is a big sign posted saying "Jan 03 2006, PS363 Classes Cancelled"

Great...I have waisted a full hour and a half doing nothing. And now, the next hour and a half is open. I opened my lab manuel and made some notes, had another coffee and did some more staring-into-space-like-I-have-nothing-better-to-do. Meanwhile...my thesis is un-touched since before christmas, the stats lab I teach is un-prepared, I forgot to do the research work for my prof/boss that he asked me to do on my holiday, I'm three chapters behind in my full-year course, and it's only the first day of class.

Needless to say, my day only got better. I killed some more chickens in lab, watched Dr. Phil, made some more stir fry (my specialty), and checked my email a thousand times. After all was said and done, and my day was utterly unproductive, I decided to blog. What better way to procrastinate?!

Apparently I feel less guilty about taking breaks when I have noone here to "watch over me". That's gonna have to change.

Chow