Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Triffid's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, October 31st, 2009
4:38 pm	Quack They say there is a first time for everything.  This week was the first time I've ever been attacked by a muscovy duck.  I have no idea what it was upset about; I was just walking down the sidewalk minding my own business. The purse that I've been meaning to clean out because it was too full of  heavy junk came in handy as an improvised duck-thumper.  No humans or ducks were seriously injured in this bizarre encounter, as far as I can tell.  Also, ducks seem a lot bigger up close, especially when they are raising up their wings in an attempt to look large and menacing.  They are, however, still ducks, which detracts somewhat from the intended effect. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
7:43 pm	This tower was built by crazy people, and I don't think it's holding up very well. 10 years ago, I hit the library stacks to find more details on an interesting statement that I found in a psychology text, and after slogging back 40 years through journal articles citing other journal articles citing other journal articles, I was disappointed to find that there was really no reasonable basis for the statement.  A little later in the semester, I was told in a statistics class that studies that reject the null hypothesis are around 20 times as likely to be accepted for publication as studies that don't - and since much of psychology uses a 5% confidence interval, that's pretty sad.  I threw up my hands and declared psychology to be too aggravating due to people making up theories to match their personal world view and then trying to prove them with flawed statistics.  Too fluffy, I thought.  No wonder people in other sciences make fun of psychology.  I filled the minimum requirements for a B.A. and got out. I'd like to take that back.  Having spent more time on cell biology and microbiology than I ever spent on psychology, I find that the grass is not actually greener on the other side of the fence.  There's decently good grass on both sides, and it's randomly dotted with cow plops.   Good thing the good lord gave us all eyes, eh?  That way we don't have to rely on the other folks in the field to spot every steaming pile of poop for us. Current Mood: crazy (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
11:08 am	Dinosaur moment I gave my daughter an old 35 mm camera from a junk store to take to camp so that if she loses it, it won't be a big deal.  I told her I was going to put a roll of film in it for her since it's tricky to load.  "What's film?" she asked.  (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
1:36 pm	Some people suffer from road rage, but I suffer from road bemusement.  Mainly, why is everybody in such a hurry?   It doesn't do any good to honk when traffic is backed up as far as the eye can see.  The posted speed limit tells you the speed at which it is safe to drive in good weather, and driving 10 miles per hour faster than that at night when the rain is coming down in sheets and the road is under half an inch of water doesn't seem like a very good idea. If you cut me off in traffic on a motorcycle and I hit you, it will ruin my day, and possibly your life.  And finally, the reason there is 10-40 feet of space between my car and the one in front of me is not because I am driving more slowly than the car in front of me; it's because I don't like tailgating.   Yes, you can change lanes twice to pass me, and then I will be driving 10-40 feet behind your car and you will arrive at your destination perhaps 2 seconds sooner.  If you're driving, you're too young to die.  So turn on the radio, look at the scenery, and take a chill pill, m'kay?  You'll get there when you get there.  (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
4:11 pm	My road trip adventure I ran into a professor from the microbiology department in Ottawa.  We made some small talk and he told me that he planned to go to his friend's wedding in Tennessee but he was having some car trouble.  I told him he could ride with me, since I was headed to Alabama.  I wouldn't even make him help pay for gas if he would share the driving.  He was pleased, but wanted to pick up his friends, Paul, George, and Ringo, who were wandering some nearby hills.  John had wanted to go to the wedding too, but couldn't due to being dead.  I said that the car only had 5 seatbelts so we would have been short a seat anyway if John had been able to come. So we picked up the 3 Beatles from the hillside, and headed south.  It got late and we stopped to get a hotel room for the night.  The professor charged everybody's rooms to my credit card.  When I said I wasn't paying for the hotel and had them reverse the charges, the guys came to a general consensus that perhaps we ought to look for a hotel that wasn't $200 a night.  So we piled back in the car.  Somebody else was driving, so I was watching the scenery.  We came to a town with some interesting concrete architecture including a giant church with a sign that said "The End."  The rest of the town was plastered with signs to the effect of "The end is near, and Jesus is coming."  Some women in pioneer dresses and bonnets shot dirty looks at us.  I was uneasy.  Unfortunately, we absolutely needed to stop for gas.  The one gas pump in town ate my credit card and refused to dispense gas, which would have left us stranded except that we managed to procure a large plastic tub with springs that we could ride in.  If we all wore navy blue pantyhose and made the right gestures, it would bounce forward.  We tried to get out of town in the bouncing tub, but the religious zealots were blocking off streets trying to keep us from leaving.  We had to cut through a building.  Finally we made it to a set of highway onramps.  Unfortunately, 4 of 5 lanes were blocked by elephants and vehicles.  We left town on the only available road.  Unfortunately, it was the wrong route number and we had left the map in the car, so we didn't know how to get back on track.  I was concerned that the guys would be late for the wedding, and it would take me forever to get to Alabama in a bouncing plastic tub. And then I woke up. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 8th, 2009
11:48 pm	Unrelated things Gran Torino is the best movie I've seen in a while.  Go see it if you haven't.  Don't let anybody spoil the plot for you - it's not entirely obvious what is going to happen.  (Contains excessive bad language and some violence, but they both have a good reason to be there.) Gotta love this ad for some weight loss product I saw the other day:  "We're so confident that our product will work that if you don't lose weight, we will send you another month's supply completely free!"  Gee, that's a good deal - another month's supply of a product that doesn't work!  I had a bit of a meltdown over my thesis project, and I'm moving to a different lab with a different advisor and a completely different project.  I lose a little time, but not all that much because my previous project had been going nowhere slowly for a year and a half. Today I ripped up some weeds and planted wildflower mix beside the carport.  I hope they grow up and look better than the weeds.  And hey, maybe things that grow in the wild can compete with weeds that grow wild and everywhere else.  As a bonus, they are supposed to attract birds and butterflies.  We shall see. Also, I made a doll and taught myself to crochet (more or less) so I could make clothes for it.  I am pleased with the result.  Now I want to make more dolls and doll clothes.  Since I don't need dolls, they will be pawned off on unsuspecting children. Finally, I am looking for strange but true facts about nature.  Anything about plants, animals, microbes, geology, astronomy, physics, oceanography... If you know a good one, tell me. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
6:55 pm	Meme from Sam Reflecting on 2008 1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before? I rode a dirt bike.  (Scary!) I got acrylic nails. (Now my real nails are wrecked, but it was amusing.) I tried absinthe. (Something like a licorice jelly bean dissolved in rubbing alcohol.  yum yum) I worked on an archeological dig.  (Ok, it's just a 200 yr old ruined building, but I still got to dig things up.  I found some beads and broken china) 2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I didn't make any.  Never do.  Any day is as good as any other to make a change. 3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Nope. 4. Did anyone close to you die? Nope. 5. What countries did you visit? Canada.  Though that doesn't really feel like visiting so much. 6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? A social life. 7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Well, that was a nice birthday party I had, so July 4 I guess. 8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? I don't really feel like I've achieved much this year.  I suppose I passed my classes again. 9. What was your biggest failure? I wasted too much time. 10. Did you suffer illness or injury? I had pneumonia, which was handily cleared up with antibiotics. 11. What was the best thing you bought? Plane tickets to see my family, and a photo book for my daughter with pictures of the last 6 years. 12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? My daughter.  I took her out to a roller rink on New Year's Eve.  She'd never roller skated before and she was wobbling all over the place.  She fell down a couple times before I even got my skates on, and I was starting to think it was a bad idea.  But that girl is brave and she just kept going.  We went around and around the rink with the bigger kids whizzing by while she held my hand for balance and slowly started to get the hang of it.  Ok, she's not quite ready for a roller derby yet, but she wanted to enter the race for kids 6 and under if she was allowed to take me with her to keep her steady.   So we entered and it was a tie.  Anyway, I was really proud of her and her attitude.  And she kept stopping to pick up things that had fallen on the rink so other kids wouldn't trip on them.  What a nice kid. 13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? Somebody broke into our house and stole stuff.  The police were useless and didn't bother to investigate even though we had a pretty good idea who could be responsible.  For a while it had seemed like they might, but they didn't follow up on things. 14. Where did most of your money go? Bills, travel, food. 15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Not a whole lot. 16. What song will always remind you of 2008? "I want to be buried in your backyard" because we listened to it a bunch in the office. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1HctfS-H0M 17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? Happier. b) thinner or fatter? A bit thinner.  It's ironic - everyone around me seems to be trying to lose weight while I try not to. c) richer or poorer? Poorer.  You know how the stock market has been.  My minor investments have taken a beating, like everyone else's.  But the wolf is not yet at the door. 18. What do you wish you'd done more of? I wish I got out more.  19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Wasting time on stupid websites. 20. How will you be spending Christmas? I spent the day hanging around the house with my husband.  My family didn't come until after Christmas. 22. Did you fall in love in 2008? Nope, just stayed there. 23. How many one-night stands? None, of course. 24. What was your favorite TV program? We have about 30 channels and nothing worth watching.  I'll watch Law and Order or House when I'm really burned out, but they're not great shows. 25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? There are a couple of people who I get extremely aggravated with periodically, but I'm not sure I actually hate them.  I'd be satisfied if they would just stop doing things that upset me. 26. What was the best book you read? My bedtime reading for most of the year was an old book about parasites.  I read about half of it.  Sad, eh? 27. What was your greatest musical discovery? Janis Ian 28. What did you want and get? I wanted to go to Burning Man.  We went. 29. What did you want and not get? Useful experimental results of any sort. 30. What was your favorite film of this year? I haven't seen anything really good.  Indianna Jones was okay.  It was entertaining and there were cute monkeys. 31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 30.  My sister-in-law and brother-in-law had a July 4th party.  There were lots of people, some nice sangria, and baby fireworks.  Well, and the dirt bikes.  I didn't know most of the people, but it was pretty fun. 32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? If I'd gotten help for depression sooner.   I guess it crept up on me slowly.  I've told people I'm busy with school, but I must confess that I lied.  I really haven't been doing all that much of anything, especially since the end of the summer.  I've been faking being fine because I figured I had no particularly good excuse not to be fine, but I really haven't been fine, though I think I will be fine soon.  Three weeks of chemical tweaking have made a pretty dramatic difference. 33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? Hand me downs.  My office-mates cleaned out their closets and gave me a lot of stuff. 34. What kept you sane? I haven't been all that sane, actually. 35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Nobody. 36. What political issue stirred you the most? I'm not sure.  I'm a bit jaded by the news, but I don't know if I've worried about people starting wars this much since crazy people crashed planes into the world trade center.   It seems like it's been a prickly year. 37. Who did you miss? I miss my family and friends in Canada, as always. 38. Who was the best new person you met? We met a nice couple at Burning Man who are thinking of starting up a youth hostel in New Orleans.  They were really sweet and gave us tea and cookies every day.  But we didn't keep in touch.  Still, I really liked them. 39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008: You can't go back in time, so you might as well look forward.  That is my deep thought. 40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: When you're gone the sun don't shine Light a light, light a light for me Bring me back home again (Comment on this)
Monday, December 15th, 2008
5:44 pm	Down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass - a fake nail adventure Today I got the inexplicable urge to ditch work early and go get fake nails just because I never did it before.  Apparently my work ethic is taking the day off. So I walked into the salon and told the lady behind the counter that I wanted fake nails, but I never had them before, so I don't really know what there is to know about them. "Sit down over there," she said.  She didn't seem about to head in the indicated direction, though, so I stopped to browse a display of nail polish.  "Sit down over there, " she repeated.  Okay, I got the message.  I sat down over there.   The nail salon lady meandered over a minute later, and without warning or explanation, brought out a whirring widget that looked like something out of a dentist's office and started to sand my nails.  Eeek!  She sanded my cuticles too.  "Relax!"  she commanded.  I tried to relax my hand, but she kept sanding it.  Every time she sanded my skin and I cringed, she'd give me an exasperated look until I relaxed my hand again.  I was beginning to suspect this was a bad idea, but since my nails looked like they'd been attacked with a belt sander, I decided I'd better let her finish. I learned that an absurdly long fake nail just gets superglued to the tip of your real nail.  It then gets cut to the desired length.  You could have enormous claws if you really wanted, though.  This is followed by more sanding.  Next, they get out something that looks like a watercolour brush, dip it in water, then dip it in powder.  The powder turns to goop on the end of the wet brush, and it is used to smooth over the nails, so you can't see where the real nail ends and the fake one begins.  The goop dries quickly.  This is followed by *surprise* more sanding!  Next, the ends are sculpted into a rounded shape using an emery board in ways that would make real fingernails splinter to smithereens.  This is followed by, you guessed it, more sanding!  And finally *whew* the application of a few coats of polish. My fingers still hurt, but they look rather amusing. The question is who on earth thought of this?  I'm guessing it was the same person who invented tequila and clamato juice in other lifetimes.  (Comment on this)
Monday, November 17th, 2008
10:27 pm	I love this website. http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-land-of-the-wolves/author.html (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
6:22 pm	Halloween approaches Halloween has always been my favourite holiday.  I love the hokey scary stuff.  I used to love trick-or-treating, and now I love giving candy to children.  I don't think there has been a year since I was 2 years old when I didn't dress up at some point.  So this year Michael and I took Miriam to a haunted house - you know the kind with actors that jump out at you - and I thought, "Why have I never worked in a place like this?"   Not only do I love Halloween, but I love jumping out at people and scaring them. (But I mostly don't do it anymore because they usually don't like it, and I might get hurt if I surprise them too much.)   How would a person make a career out of that, I wonder? Also fitting with the Halloween theme, I had a dream last night about going to the grand canyon and seeing the world's largest worm.  It was 20 feet long, and they kept it in a pit and fed it human corpses, because apparently there were a lot of people who had put in their wills that they wanted to be eaten by the world's largest worm when they died.  It was um... very graphic.    (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
12:29 am	Mini movie review: The Dark Knight Notice to Hollywood:  Movies about homicidal maniacs trying to make some kind of point about human nature by terrorizing people into doing distasteful things are no longer clever and original.  Thank you. (Comment on this)
Monday, September 8th, 2008
4:51 pm	10 random minutes that changed my life I was 15 years old, and I was on the way home from downtown on the city bus.  I thought I could transfer at Baseline Station, but as the bus I was on pulled in, the bus I needed to catch pulled away a early.  They're not supposed to do that.  Annoyed, I looked around for a seat, and who should happen to be there but Dinu from my French class.  I always liked Dinu; he was a nice guy, he looked cool, and he was a bit mysterious.  Off and on, I secretly wished he'd ask me out, but he never did, and I was still too shy to ask him out.  I wasn't too shy, however, to plop down next to him and ask about the book he was reading.  As it turns out, he was liking his book, and wanted tell me about Anne Rice's vampire chronicles.  Mildly interested, and even more interested in getting to see Dinu some more, I accepted his offer to lend me Queen of the Damned, and arranged to meet him at the mall after dinner. I never did end up going on a date with Dinu.  I think he might've been seeing someone at the time, but that's not important.  What is important was that, at 15, I thought Anne Rice was brilliant, decided that vampires were exciting, and went all gothy.  This led me to start hanging around a goth store downtown, run by Linda,  who described herself as a den mother for a lot of sick puppies.  By spending time in Linda's store, I ended up meeting people who played Vampire, the Masquerade, and got invited to play.  That became my new hobby, and ended up being the way I met everybody I dated for years, including my ex husband.  My ex introduced me to an even geekier hobby (if that's possible), MUSHing.  And that's how I met Michael, many years later.  Michael persuaded me to move to Alabama and go to grad school. Sometimes I wonder: if my bus hadn't left early and Dinu's hadn't been late, what would my life be like today?  Would I have eventually found my way to the land o'goth and RPGs anyway, or would I have taken a shine to something else that would have lead me to different interests and a different life?  Would I have dated other people?  Would my daughter have been born?  Would I have ever ended up in Alabama?  What would I be doing to make a living?    I wonder if Dinu would be weirded out or amused to learn that I consider running into him at a bus stop to be one of the most significant moments of my life. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 5th, 2008
10:46 am	What's up with me lately. It's been a busy summer.  I survived my microbial physiology and genetics course.  I passed my qualifying exam.  Now I can focus on research.  This is a mixed blessing, since I'm quite ambivalent about my project.  On one hand, there's progress: not only have I managed to obtain my protein in a soluble form, but it actually does something. Reproducibly.  On the other hand, it's been a long slog to get this far and it's not that exciting. I took Michael to Burning Man.  It was a hot dusty year and the city was twice as big (physically and population-wise) as last time, which made things a little less pleasant.  The line to get in was 5 hours long.  Several events we tried to go to were so crowded that there wasn't room for all the people, and others just didn't happen.  Since the city was twice as big, that meant trudging twice as far to be disappointed.  Michael doesn't want to go again, and I have to, sadly, agree that it may be time to find something else to do when it's my turn to pick a summer vacation again in 2 yrs.  Still, it had its moments.  We stumbled across some amazing musicians, had several incidents of serendipity, and met some really nice people (especially our neighbours.) This October, I'm going to go Pennsylvania to see my aunts and uncles and grandparents who I haven't seen in a couple years.  Christmas may be in Mobile. And that is my story. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
8:36 pm	The joys of home ownership <grumble warning> A couple weeks ago, we noticed that the laundry room wall is wet and growing mold.  Suspecting a plumbing leak, we called a plumber.   It turns out that the problem was a thin copper pipe for hooking up an icemaker, which was dripping, presumably since before we bought the house.  Why you would want an icemaker in the laundry room, which is right next to the kitchen, is beyond me.  Anyway, instead of turning the water off all the way by tightening the shutoff valve like a normal human would do, somebody shoved the end of the pipe into a hole in the wall so that it would drip inside the wall instead of on the floor.  When we moved in, I didn't know what the pipe was for and never gave it much thought since it was behind where the washer and dryer go. Hence, the 8 months of slow dripping and heaven knows how much rotten wood and insulation behind the moldy drywall. Arrrgh! <grumble complete> In other news, I got a sewing machine and made Michael a pair of shorts from a pattern and it looks alright.  I'm quite pleased with myself.  They have a pocket and everything.  (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
11:56 pm	Our new neighbour  A mockingbird has taken up residence in a particular tree in our neighbourhood this spring.  It likes to sing around midnight, and it's got quite the repertoire.  In addition to chirping and tweeting, it does a pretty decent crow impression, a cricket sound, and a noise like a squeaky door.  Sometimes it'll imitate us if we whistle at it.   Every few seconds it switches and tries something new, kinda like a car alarm, but prettier. (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 19th, 2008
12:36 am	Dooom. DOOOOOOM! JarJar Binks will rule the WORLD!  AHAHAHAHA. ( See my hat of doom! ) That is all. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 16th, 2008
6:09 pm	More about the garden This afternoon I decided to plant some bushes in my yard. If they don't die, there will one day be a giant blueberry bush out front, and jasmine climbing up the fence. However, in the process, I found out exactly why I can never get rid of those annoying weeds that spring up again a couple days later, even when I pull them up as best I can: a giant underground lattice of roots and tubers. They remind me of the mandrake roots from the Harry Potter movie, minus the faces.  ( Look what I found in the dirt today! ) Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)
Friday, February 15th, 2008
10:26 pm	Homicidal Maniacs and the News Shows that Love Them I'm starting to get seriously ticked off at the media. Every time a crazy person shoots up a mall or a school and then kills himself, he gets his name, picture, and personal information splattered all over every major media source. So what do desparately crazy people do when they want to go out in a blaze of 'glory?' They go shoot some innocent bystanders first, knowing with dead certainty that their face is going to be on the front pages tomorrow. The media could discourage this by refusing to publish any identifying information about people who go on shooting sprees, but they don't because they know the public is a bunch of morbidly curious rubberneckers who are going to click that link, watch that news spot, buy that paper, and send advertising revenue soaring. Enough already! Quit clicking those links, people! Turn OFF Nancy Grace. Current Mood: angry (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
1:10 am	The hazards of babelfish Today at lunch we went out to a middle eastern/Greek/Lebanese restaurant for lunch. At the bottom of the menu, "Enjoy your meal" or some approximation thereof was written in several languages. According to my Jordanian friend, the Arabic actually said, "You will be enjoyed in a meal." (Comment on this)
Monday, January 14th, 2008
6:22 pm	Another cryptic message from Grizelda's subconscious. My family was vacationing in Texas just by the Mexican border, in the same condo we'd supposedly rented every year when I was a child. Michael and I went down to the beach along the Rio Grande with a little girl relative, and we waded across to the other side because it was only waist-deep. On the other side, we strolled through a Mexican town and went to a movie theatre that played old black and white silent movies with Spanish commentary. I was happy, because they were playing one of my favourites. On the way back, as we were walking from the beach to the condo, I spotted an enormous alligator. I yelled for Michael and the girl to get out of the way and they did, but the alligator bit my leg and wouldn't let go. It wasn't painful, but it was quite inconvenient. Fortunately, I had a special alligator-foiling jacket. I lay down on the alligator, then got up again, and some of its skin got peeled off, creating a pennant with an image of Dick Cheney on it. The predictably dismayed alligator went away, and we returned to the condo. What does it all mean? (Comment on this)