The Shins! The Shins!

I got to see The Shins! I love The Shins tres tres mucho!! It was pretty fantastic. They sounded like The Shins, but they mixed it up a little, and also played some covers in the encore. The crowd was pretty intense! Oh, good times. They played all the songs I really wanted to hear, so I was satisfied. Hurrah! Listen to The Shins!

So, I guess some more music talk. I went to a show on Friday, it was my friend's brother-in-law's band's CD release party. Say that five times fast! But it was really really good. Good crowd, not too big, good tunes, good company. They're called Dirty Penny, so check them out. The openers, Canary Mine, were also fantastic, so check them out too! All in all, a good music weekend!

If you like the kind of music I do, go pick up the new Arcade Fire album if you haven't already. It's brilliant. Also, Beirut is one of my current 'most played' bands, so check them out too.

Oh! And perhaps the most exciting news to ever grace this blog: I am getting published. Sure, I'm only second author, and sure probably only 5 people will ever read my paper, and sure the process was long and practically killed me (just kidding), but I'M GETTING PUBLISHED! Someone should bottle whatever neurotransmitter combination was responsible for the high I got when I found out, because they would make a billion dollars. But I want a cut! We could call it "Scentscess"! Brilliant!

So that's all the exciting news I have for now. A special shout out to the Flames though... Seriously, please start winning again. You're kind of dampening my good spirits!

Band is the devil...

3 rehearsals left. 3 more. I don't know if we're going to be able to pull this one off. 9 pieces, none performance ready. Yikes. And we played for 3 straight hours this week. My bim was numb, and my emboucher was shot. And my shoulder hurts now from lugging my bassoon all over campus. Man, why do bassoons have to be so heavy! It's really not fair. But I guess I could play bari sax, so it could be worse!

And I have to go to UTM the next two days! Not fair! Just because I haven't been there in a while... Sheesh! Lab meeting tomorrow, then office hours on Friday. Joy of joys. Maybe no one will come. But then I'd be resentful. But I'd probably be resentful if people came anyway. Sigh. No win situation I suppose.

Okay, bedtime. Maybe I'll dream up a good excuse for not doing any work since our last lab meeting... Riiiight...

Oh, and Facebook is addictive and ruining my life. The end!

I am firmly entrenched in what one of my classmates has referred to as "MA hangover". The thesis is done and I have buttloads of work to do, but I am not doing any of it. Instead, all I want to do is sleep. It doesn't help that I'm having this odd dizziness... I was going to write a reaction paper for my class, I swear. But I just couldn't bring myself to write two pages of pretentious crap about stages vs. emergent forms. I need to snap out of this, and quick. I've got two Glen(n)s waiting on stuff from me, plus a Janet. Sigh... I'm soooo not making this Feb ethics deadline... Meh.

I can't even be bothered to finish this post. If I can wake up tomorrow and not feel dizzy, it will be a better day. Oh, until I go to band and suck out loud. Is it reading week yet???

Yaaaaarrrrgggghhhhh!

I HATE track changes! Hate, hate, HATE! It is terrible! It may save trees, but I don't think it does anyone's ego any good at all. There's nothing like opening a document to see a sea of red. Fan-tastic.

Maybe if I just keep telling myself "this is the last set of revisions" (even though I know it's a lie!) it won't be so bad... I am just so very sick of reading this thing. It needs to be over. Like right now.

I am also very full of Thai food at the moment, which is making me sleepy. Though I don't see how I could possibly be tired, as I had a really long nap today. Mmmm... naps!

Hmmm... I just checked, and my already short thesis is getting even shorter! Who knew it was possible... It's 14 pages (double-spaced) right now, but I can see it being 12 or 13 pages in the end. Quite the stark contrast to, oh, everyone else's thesis. I love succinctness. It is fabulous. No need to use 12 words where one will do, right? Oh language... Maybe one day I will write a book, and then I can use as many words as I want...

I think that's enough of my incoherent ramblings for one day. Have a good weekend all! Have some fun for me, as I will be having very little myself...

Now, you may want to sit down before you read this, but I am ALMOST DONE my thesis! Yes, folks, that is correct. Almost done. Almost as in a few more minor revisions before I can send it to my subsidiary advisor. Almost as in on Monday I will be officially done! Then I will make $2/hr more TAing and get an extra $3700 from NSERC. This is all kinds of good news. Of course, I have probably just jinxed myself, but hell, I'm ALMOST DONE! Wooooo!

And best of all, I learned a lesson from this. Writing a thesis is not so bad. I just needed to get over the psychological "OH MY GOD THESIS" thing. Of course it helped that my entire thesis is under 30 pages. I have less than 15 fill pages of writing. I've written longer term papers, I'm pretty sure. So, the winner of the shortest thesis ever award is me!

I've even had time these last few days to read the new Pants book. It is so good! I love it, and I'm going to go tell Ann Brashares that in person in February! Also, the new Shins album is SO GOOD!

Also, watch the musical episode of Scrubs. It was pretty much the funniest thing ever. It all comes down to poo...

Shopping lessons...

Whew! Another boxing day in the books. I learned some important lessons today:

1) Do NOT underestimate the draw of cheap electronics.
So Nanaimo is not really that big. I didn't expect huge lineups at all. I was wrong. WRONG! Future Shop, though not nearly as bad as it could have been, say, if I was in Toronto, was still gong show crazy! I left my parent's place at 5:25 or so and drove in to Nanaimo, pulled into the FULL parking lot, and joined the throng. I was going for the cheap ass 250gig external hard drive. I found them fairly easily. Cleverly, I looked at the system requirements, which leads me to lesson 2.

2) ALWAYS check the system requirements. Preferable before getting up at 5AM. I discovered that the cheap ass external hard drive makers discriminate against Mac users. Bastards! I was not amused. It's a frickin USB hard drive! WHY can it not be Mac compatible??? I don't pretend to know a lot about computers, but it just doesn't seem like rocket surgery to me... In any case, I left Future Shop empty handed. I drove into town, thinking I would check out A&B Sound, which we don't have in TO. And this is where I learned lesson 3.

3) People are sheep. They will join a line for no particular reason other than there were other people in line. This stop was a bust. At this point it was 7:30 and I had to find somewhere to kill some time until 9 when the mall opened. So I go to see if Wal-mart is open. And it is!

4) Mall parking lots are empty at 7:30 in the morning. You can get a spot right by the door. Which people may bludgeon each other for later when you leave. So I go into Wal-mart and find CHEAP DVDs. Which I really don't need, but buy anyway. Not just DVDs, seasons of TV on DVD. Not a wise purchase for a girl with work to do, but the boxing day bargains clouded my judgement.

I went to about a million other places and found some stuff and was at home eating brunch by 11:30. 5 solid hours of shopping. Yikes! I am very, very tired now. Thank goodness boxing day happens just once a year... I think I'm getting too old for this nonsense!

Oh. My. God.

I'm home, We barely made it alive. No, seriously. I'll share my tale, it's pretty awesome.

My day started at 4 AM. So I had 4 hours of sleep, which was fantastic. The cab actually came on time, which was good, so I packed up the dogs and off we went (with only one minor incident... sorry Lady!). We go to the airport and get checked in relatively easily. I fly from Toronto to Winterpeg (I stop I didn't know we were making). After 45min or so in Winterpeg we fly to Calgary where I have a 6 hour (yes, 6 hour) layover. It was long, but good as Mary came to hang out with me! (Thanks Mary!!!). So after lunch and browsing and coffee, I go through security and go wait for my flight. We board pretty quickly, but have to wait for a no show. Boooo. So we leave (finally) and the flight is pretty okay. We saw the Northern Lights at 40000 feet! So cool! Landing was kind of rough as the pilot couldn't really see the ground. We had to wait to go to the terminal as they were PLOWING the SNOW away so we could get closer to the terminal. So. Much. Snow. So gross. So we finally get my bag and the dogs and go out to the car, getting wet up to my knees practically because it's so mucky. The dogs drink some water and Chloe eats a few cookies and then proceeds to vomit all over my pants. Yay! So we're driving over the bridge from the airport toward Courtenay in the rain/snow and all of a sudden there's a big 'BANG' and we're skidding over to the side of the road and making the most horrible screeching sound... So we stop, put our flashers on, and my Dad gets out of the car to see what happened and discovers our tire is flat and something is stuck under the wheel. Luckily a policeman pulled up behind us almost right away with his lights on. So he gets out of the car and he and my dad are trying to figure out what is wrong, a tow truck is called, cars are passing, rain is falling. So the tow truck comes, and my Mom goes and sits in the front of the police car, and I'm outside with the dogs, getting wet, crying, and feeling miserable. The tow truck starts pulling the car up and we discover that we ran over a snowplow guide or foot or something (which weighs about 60 pounds!). So the tow truck gets the car up, the dogs go in the car, Dad goes with the tow truck, Mom's in the front of the police car and I'm in the back. Yes, I was in the back of the police car. We go over to Canadian Tire where they are just closing their garage, but they (thankfully) stay open and fix our car. We finally got home without further incident. So that is my story. A big, grateful shout out to the police officer, tow truck guy, and two Canadian Tire employees who made sure we didn't get hit by anything, freeze, or have to stay the night in Courtenay.

Here's hoping that the rest of my vacation is better...