This song (talking + AutoTune = music now, dont’cha know?) has been stuck in my head for 2 days. I now share it here because it is awesome, and want it to be stuck in your head too you to see it.
Carl Sagan rocks. He’s one of those guys I wish I had been able to meet somehow.
Dear Lab Reagent,
You are frozen. You like to be frozen. I get this.
But I need to use you in a reaction, which means I need to thaw you. Please stop being a whiny prima donna about being thawed and refrozen. It’s what you’re designed to do. That means you’re supposed to keep reacting properly, even after such tragic events as those previously described.
Love,
~The Lab Tech who just needs you to freaking work already!
This weekend was fun! Well, mostly. Some parts of it were sad.
The original plan involved going out wedding dress shopping with Garrison’s fiancée and my mom. We all went out for tasty breakfast, and then headed to Hanover to start our search.
Erin is a good bride to shop with. She had an idea in her head of what she wanted, but she wasn’t a bridezilla about it. Once we found the dress, we knew we’d found the dress, and didn’t have to look at 47 million other places to make sure we had “the best dress ever”. As it turned out, the dress was the first one she tried on, though she did try on 7 or 8 afterwards just to get through the other ones she had liked on the rack. It’s not poofy, but very elegant. It looks just stunning on her, too. I’d post a pic, but I forgot to get them off my mom’s camera. Plus, there is a really-low-but-non-zero chance that my brother might see my blog some time in the next 8 months.
To top it off, the dress was on sale for 1/2 off, and we were done shopping by noon!
Then we came back home and my mom and I got ready to go to Ms. Thielman’s memorial service. We met up with Dan Lynch there, along with most of the high school teachers. I got to talk to my favourite teachers, Mr. & Mrs. Taylor, for about 5 seconds, but that was nice.
The service was nice, too. It consisted of a few people who had known her standing up and saying a few words. There was a lot I hadn’t known about her. I’m not surprised, but I think it would have been nice to know before now that she loved Star Trek and wrote sci-fi stories for her writing group.
She had a small beige marble urn, inscribed with her name, and below that “Boldly Go…”.
Star Wars music, among other things, played in the background of the memorial photo montage CD.
By the time we got back, it was too dark to go out and plant the Letterbox I made for Kincardine.
My mom and dad and I went out early Sunday morning to try and plant it. We had a lovely little walk and found a great place, but there wasn’t enough time to backtrack and make viable clues to lead other people to it before I had to leave (before 10am). 🙁 So I had to un-hide it and take it back to Guelph with me.
At the time, I was really pissed off at the stupid Guelph parade, and the stupid city of Guelph fort having a parade in the middle of the day instead of at dusk when floats could be lit up, and more importantly, instead of at a time that would have let me do all of my tasks for the weekend. 😛
That said, once I got there I had an awesome time at the parade!
I’m the one in the green dragon PJs! ^_^
We walked along and gave out candy to little kids. When the candy ran out, kids were just as happy getting a high-five or hugging Tiger or Guilmon. A couple times I had to rescue
We all had a blast and are totally doing it again next year!!
Now all we need to do is find someone who has cable so that we can watch the recording of the parade!
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918), of Guelph, Ontario
Canadian Army
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
I heard from my mom that Toni Thielman passed away yesterday at 7am; just over 24 hours ago. She was still teaching up until 10 days ago. I heard via Ian that is was liver cancer; only diagnosed two weeks ago. Sad, and sudden.
Apparently, both the teachers and students held retirement parties for her before she left.
She passed away at her daughter Alison’s house in Oakville.
EDIT: for a way better post than I wrote, see Gord’s blog.
It was 20 years ago today that the Berlin Wall fell. I was 8.
I don’t actually remember if I noticed at the time. I was in grade 3. My dad’s plant had been locked out, and then on strike for almost 2 years and he was working as a pizza delivery guy.
I may have my timeline wrong; perhaps my dad had already moved to Kincardine for a job at the nuclear plant. I don’t know. I know the rest of us moved up in April, but at the time, my years were not divided into mere months, but into markers like summer, back-to-school, winter, Christmas, and my birthday. Perhaps they told me, perhaps they were too busy trying to put food on the table to explain far-way world events to an 8 year old who was too busy cutting out paper bats to listen/care.
What I do remember of The Wall actually occurred about a year later. I remember a Captain Planet episode, where there was this guy who thought the Cold War was still going on, and the Planeteers had to show him pictures of the Wall coming down before he would believe them. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but I came away from the show with the impression that the wall was a Bad Thing put there by Bad People, and now it was gone because it had been Wrong. I didn’t quite grasp that it had just happened. I imagine that I figured it happened in the BC era (“Before Caitlin”), as did all World Bad Things, like the war my grandpa fought in.
I didn’t grasp it until my grade 9 geography teacher pointed out, 5 years later in a lesson on European geography, that the wall fell “in our lifetime”. I remember what ripped jeans (covered in trendy patches) I was wearing. I remember being awed and horrified that something like that was allowed to happen at all, let alone happen in the late 80s. The world was supposed to be safe, and somehow, a mere 5 years ago, it wasn’t. It isn’t.
It was a huge paradigm shift.
I carved a new letterboxing stamp for myself today! I haven’t been out letterboxing much lately, because I was tired of using my store bought stamp. I didn’t want all the local Guelph letterboxes to have that in it, but until today I hadn’t had the time to sit down and carve one for myself.
Here is is, along with a scan to show detail:
My trail name is KittyCanuck, so that’s what I tried to convey with this stamp. I think it turned out pretty well, considering it’s the second one I’ve ever done. ^_^
This is a little heart I did for practise when I first started letterboxing. Very simple:
I think tomorrow I’m going to go out and do a bunch of letterboxes with my new stamp! Yay!
Fencing was really great tonight! They taught us a new technique. Well, an old technique, from about the 1850s, but it’s no longer in use in modern fencing. It involved blocking with the sword pointed down instead of up. It was really fun! ^_^
We also ordered some equipment, so by next week we’ll have our own stuff and won’t have to use not-quite-fitting community equipment. I’m really excited!
I wish it was still nice out, though. If it was still summer we’d be able to practise in our backyard, but if it’s really crappy out the grass will be too slippery. We could practise out in front of the house, but I bet Guelph has some silly by-law about no swordfirghting in the street. Crazy, I know.
Here is my thumb a week and a half later:
Now I’m sitting in my jammies in front of the fireplace with a book and some tasty spanakopita. Lovely!
Did you know that magnetic/automatic latches don’t care if your digits are in the way? Well, they don’t. Because they are jerks like that.
I squashed my thumb in the centrifuge lid today. HOLYSHITOW! I knew I’d banged it pretty good, but I was wearing purple gloves. I peeled ’em off to discover a happy little blue bruise forming under my nail. Urk. I went to the lunchroom and found a soft ice pack, and put it on my thumb while making little high-pitched noises and (presumably) weird faces.
My boss suggested I get it looked at just in case, so I tried to go to the walk-in clinic, but they were closed for some reason, so I went to my regular doctor and waited an hour to get told “yep, it’s a squished thumb, here, sign this WSIB form”. I mean really, it’s not broken, sprained, or strained, so there isn’t really anything anyone can do about it except put ice on it. Which I am.
Since I only hit about half of the nail bed, I shouldn’t have any problems with the nail itself, but I’m supposed to keep an eye on it in case the nail bed dies. But it’s just a blue bruise now, not one of those creepy black ones. Once it stops hurting, I’ll probably go back to wearing nail polish until it grows out.
I am somewhat concerned that I had to explain what a centrifuge was to my doctor.
I don’t have a soft ice pack here at home, but I found some old flax seeds and put them in a plastic baggie. It actually works really well. Which is good, seeing as the original reason I bought the seeds a few years ago was to make some hot/cold packs.
So this is my thumb:
So now I’m sitting at home in my fox PJs (post on that later, I still have to attach the buttons) with a sore thumb and a baggie of seeds.
I have cat litter in my shoes and water all down the front of my labcoat.
I cleaned out the cat litterbox just before I had to leave for work this morning. As I was tying up the garbage bag full of litter, the entire bottom of it split and dumped cat litter (et al) onto my feet and all over the floor. Nice!
Took me 5 minutes to find the dustpan so I could clean it up, because I was not scooping it into a new bag with my hands. Found the dustpan under the bathroom sink. WTF?
Cleaned up the cat litter. So much for stopping at the grocery store on my way to work to grab lunch, but fortunately I had an emergency lunch in the freezer that I could bring.
Got to work, and saw that the water cooler jug needed replacing. I took the old jug off and dragged a full jug over. There must have been some water left in the top of the cooler, because when I put the new jug on it splashed water all down the front of my lab coat.
So now I’m damp. And my shoes still have some cat litter in them that I can’t get out.
You know you want me life.