Point of Reference

I'm at my friend's place, trying to get some work done on my thesis while she's off doing real (paid) work. Doing work is proving to be difficult, however, because one of her cats has apparently decided that the paper crane on top of the monitor is the Enemy. Or possibily just amusing prey. Either way, a cat paw swooping down in front of the screen is very distracting, as is watching the cat do backflips while batting around a paper bird.

The holidays are winding down. semiotic_trader and a_just_society have departed for home and other family visits respectively, steninja is leaving tomorrow morning to visit her boyfriend's family for a couple of days, and I'm getting ready to return to my apartment to make sure it's still standing and to tackle my pile of work before heading to Ottawa for New Year's Eve.

Christmas this year was the typical warm and uneventful affair: family, food, gifts, and games (poker and Scattergories). Christmas morning was the usual free-for-all. One would think that having reached a point where the youngest person in the household is now eighteen and legally adult, Christmas morning would be a somewhat more sedate and civilized affair than when we were children. It's not. We were all woken at the ridiculous hour of 7:00 whether we wanted to be or not (the blame for this rests squarely on my grandparents, who came over to join us for Christmas morning), and then we all tramped down to the living room where we tore open our presents as quickly as my mother could hand them out. The only different between now and when we were children is that when we were children, we were sent to bed early on Christmas Eve and thus were fairly well rested when 7:00 rolled around. Now that we're older, that's no longer the case. This year it was about 2:00am before we got to sleep, thanks in large part to a particular sister of mine who couldn't sleep and consequently decided that the rest of us shouldn't sleep either. It was actually all quite amusing until 7:00 came.

I actually braved the Boxing Day sales the next morning with two of my siblings in search of a DVD player. Our early morning excursion was all for naught--the line up was out the door and we refused to wait--but by evening things had calmed down and I was able to snag a player at FutureShop, which miraculously still had some in stock. So now I'll be able to watch DVDs on my television rather than my tiny (but very thin) LCD monitor, and hold that Buffy marathon that I promised to a friend of mine.

Happy birthday, semiotic_trader!

My beloved mp3 player has stopped working! ::sob::

Do you know how dull it is to spend forty minutes on a treadmill without music?

At least it's still under warranty. I've emailed the manufacturer; I'll see what they say.

I'm about halfway through marking the 101 exams. I'm quite amazed by the number of people who had trouble with the word "source." (Cohort I understood, but source?) I should be finished tomorrow, and then I'll have no excuses left not to work on my thesis. At least until we get approval to go forward with the next stage of my massive design project.

Yeah, my life's a bit dull these days. Maybe I'll have something interesting to post next week, after the whirl of Christmas parties. For now, I'm going to go back to marking and watching fan vids.

I bought candy yesterday to hand out in my study groups as prizes. I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have brought it home. ::grin::

They're testing our fire alarms today. They're very, very loud, even with my door closed.

And I'm all alone for two weeks as MacGuy just left for the west coast. Should be an opportunity to get lots done.

I'm killing time until the GSU meeting. Again. And wishing I didn't have to go, because I was getting work done until I opened LJ. At least I'm a co-rep, which means I only have to show up every other month. I really shouldn't complain about a two hour commitment every other month. And I wouldn't, if it didn't mean that I lose three nights in a row. And if I didn't have a four hour lecture to look forward to tomorrow.

My study group today when suprisingly well, especially for the Monday group, most of whom normally prefer to emulate statues during study group. I'm becoming a big fan of group presentations. It's a little less pressure for the students than targeting them individually for answers would be, but it's still interactive. And the time passes a whole lot faster if ten minutes of it is spent watching them flip through their books. ;) I think one of the best parts about being a TA for this class is the opportunity to run four study groups per week. While in many ways that's a pain, it also means that I get to try out different techniques with the same material and see how it works. I'm finding it very educational.

Time for the meeting.

I managed to get quite a bit of work done yesterday, but today I'm back to wanting to do nothing but sleep. I realized I was going to have a problem when I woke up after nine hours of sleep and wanted nothing more than to go back to bed. I tried to fend it off with a run on the treadmill, but that only worked for a couple of hours. My prospects for work did not improve when I turned on my computer and realized that I'd set it to run scandisk. That took about half an hour, during which I started reading Foucault's Pendulum to pass the time. Bad, bad idea. I can never put a novel down once I start to read it, and I know it. Now my day looks like this:

Take nap
Wake up
See book lying conveniently beside me
Pick up book and guiltily read a few more pages
Sit down at desk and resolutely open Word file to begin work
Quickly check email, LJ, and assorted forums for updates
Become overwhelmed by need for another nap after all that reading
Repeat

On top of that, I was supposed to meet a friend at noon. I couldn't remember whether we had decided to meet at my office or home--we discussed both--so I decided to stay home, figuring that if she couldn't reach me at one, she'd call me at the other. I still haven't heard from her, which leads me to believe that she probably tried me at the office and forgot to bring my home phone number with her. Of course, I couldn't get anything done during the two hours when there was still a realistic chance that I'd hear from her.

So, let's try again. I've got about ninety minutes until I have to leave for class. I've got a mug of spiced cocoa made from the LCBO's holiday magazine and a couple of raspberry cookies. Let's see what I can get done...

Friday night, I wandered through the Royal Ontario Museum's Art Deco show with some friends from school. It should have been a very impressive collection, but most of it failed to impress me. I don't think that's the fault of the museum so much as the fault of the era--Art Deco just leaves me cold. The only pieces I liked were a few Asian-inspired works and an amazingly detailed tapestry depicting a potter at work. Oh, and the dresses; I did like the dresses. The thing that did impress me about the whole experience is the effort the ROM puts into promoting the museum as the place to be on a Friday night. Free admission, free food, live performances (Greek dancing in this case). What more could you ask for? They're promising holiday music in a couple of weeks; I think I might return for that.

Speaking of holidays, today is shaping up to be a very holiday-oriented day. Actually, a holiday-oriented weekend, since MacGuy and I went to see the Christmas-themed Love Actually last night and followed it with some PC Candy Cane Chocolate Crackle ice cream, which finally appeared in the local grocery store yesterday. Today is the 99th annual Toronto Santa Claus parade, and then I think we're going shopping for Christmas decorations for the apartment. Minimalist, of course. Oh, and somewhere in there I'll also be working on the thesis. Naturally.

Last post of the day. Check out the picture: http://www.naral.org. If I were a Republican or a pro-life supporter, I'd be after the head of the person who approved that shot. Since I'm neither, I take a certain pleasure in seeing it spread around.

(You can also see it here, where it's larger and probably more permanent. I think the picture should be accessible to non-subscribers even if the article isn't. Although if you're willing to sit through the ad, the rest of the article is worth reading too. The part I found particularly informative was the discussion of last year's decision to amend the State Children's Health Insurance program to include fetuses. They could have just extended it to include pregnant women, but then they wouldn't have gotten to debate about whether pain medication during childbirth ought to be covered.)

The problem for Canadians, of course, is that once they ban abortion in the U.S., all those activists will be facing an end to their hobby, and then they'll probably look north for new targets. Don't think that a ban on late-term abortions is the first stop in an effort to ban all abortion? Take a look sometime at who Bush is nominating to various judicial positions, not to mention his choice of W. David Hager, a pro-life supporter who prescribes prayer and Bible study to treat women's medical conditions, to head the FDA Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs.