101 in 1001 for my 1000th post

So, for my 1000^th blog posting I wanted to do something special. And I decided that the something special would be a “101 things to do in 1001 days” list.  The first time I saw one of these was on Dave’s blog and I may or may not have soon after written a parody version called “102 things to do in 1,000,001 days” on a satire blog that may or may not have been removed from the Internet for possible libel issues. Anyway.

The idea behind this list is to come up with 101 things you want to do – things you’ve always meant to do but haven’t gotten around to,  things you want to challenge yourself to accomplish and, let’s be honest, a few things that sound good but you are pretty sure you’ll do so that you can gain the satisfaction of checking at least a few things off your list.  As well, it’s important that the goals are clearly defined/measurable (or, as we say in the Research Methods world – you need an “operational definition” of each) so that you know whether or not you’ve done it.  Props for this idea go to triplux, who appears to be the creator of this idea (or, at least, is the first Google hit for “101 in 1001”).

So, after much thinking and pondering and reflecting and considering and deliberating and contemplating and ruminating and reading the thesaurus, I have come up with the following 101 items that I intend to do in the next 1001 days:

1. go to New York City
2. leave the continent
3. live above ground
4. run another half marathon¹
5. run the full marathon in Sacramento (i.e., the net downhill one!)
6. assemble my last 7 years worth of photos into scrapbooks²
7. give something a cool name (i.e., not just adding the letter “y” to the end of what the thing is a la “froggy” or “puppy”)
8. get my blog onto WordPress.org
9. participate in a political campaign
10. attend Women’s Campaign School
11. conduct some kind of  education research project
12. conduct another systematic review for the Cochrane Collaoration
13. publish a paper in a scholarly journal on the training program that I run
14. write something creative (e.g., a story, a script or a poem)
15. change a life
16. write a book
17. teach a course at a college
18. ski at Whistler ³
19. ski at Big White
20. ski on Grouse Mountain
21. learn to snowboard (or at least try it)
22. go surfing & actually stay up on the board
23. skate at GM Place
24. coach a hockey team
25. hike Black Task
26. hike the West Coast Trail
27. write a computer program
28. start a business
29. learn French (at least a little bit. Like more than just what’s on the cereal box)
30. write a blog entry entitled Word to Your Moms, I Came to Drop Bombs⁴
31. read something by Salman Rushdie⁵
32. visit Macchu Picchu⁶
33. for one week, go to bed at 9 and read non-work related books⁷
34. read The Last Spike by Pierre Berton⁸
35. take pole dancing lessons. Like, a whole set of them, not just the intro class.
36. beat my current record of 10 points in a hockey season (which I achieved on the Blazing Blades team in both the Winter 2007/08 and the Spring 2008 seasons)
37. teach the same course at UBC twice⁹
38. participate in the “365 Day Challenge”. This involves taking a self-portrait every day for 365 days and posting it to the 365 Day Flickr group.
39. make a list of 100 things that make me happy
40. buy a Smart Car
41. buy an iPhone
42. skate on the Rideau Canal
43. take Tod to a Vancouver Canucks game [Accomplished: 13 January 2009, Canucks vs. NJ Devils. Next time I should try to take him to a game when the Canucks win!]
44. take Tod to a Vancouver Giants game
45. go to a BC Lions game
46. go to a Vancouver Canadians game
47. see a Vancouver White Caps game
48. start composting
49. keep a plant alive for a whole month
50. write in my journal every day for a month
51. go kayaking
52. camp at Joffre Lake
53. visit Galiano Island
54. visit Salt Spring Island
55. visit Bowen Island
56. save $500 in coins¹⁰
57. deposit that $500 worth of coins into my 40th birthday savings account
58. write 10 friends real letters, on paper, with a pen and snail mail them
59. follow Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating every day for 1 month¹¹
60. go to a Bikram yoga class
61. go to a spa for a facial
62. visit 5 new American states¹²
63. visit Newfoundland
64. visit Nova Scotia
65. visit New Brunswick
66. visit the Yukon
67. visit Nunavit
68. do a 24 hr blogathon
69. do 15 minutes of yoga every morning for a month
70. sort through my many boxes of papers (most of which contain papers from my thesis), recycling the papers I don’t need and filing the ones I do need
71. find out my credit rating
72. determine my net worth
73. buy a bike
74. bike to work every day for two months
75. record a cooking show (at least 5 episodes)
76. publish said cooking show online
77. participate in five research projects (as a subject/participant, not as a researcher)
78. sell counter top dishwasher on Craig’s List¹³
79. see at least one Bard on the Beach performance¹⁴
80. put up a Christmas tree and decorate it with chili peppers¹⁵
81. live blog something
82. go to bed every night for a week with all the dishes cleaned
83. achieve inbox zero and maintain for one full week (where “maintain” = by the time I go to bed each night)
84. up my blog readership to an average of 200 readers a day¹⁶
85. break my current record of 460 blog views in a day¹⁷
86. write a blog posting about the Car Co-op¹⁸
87. go sky diving
88. resurrect my teaching blog
89. see the Dresdan Dolls in concert
90. see Groove Coverage in concert
91. see a show at Richard’s on Richards before it closes down
    
92. devise some sort of proper back up system for my computer files
93. get my ring from my great Auntie Bernice re-sized to actually fit my finger
94. buy a pair of brown dress pants¹⁹
95. bake at least one thing per month for 12 months in a row, without baking the same thing two months in a row²⁰
96. go zip cording
97. make homemade vegetarian marshmallows
98. go on a polar bear swim
99. recycle my old Sony Vaio desktop and my old Palm Pilot that are now just taking up space in my apartment!
100. scan all the photos from my pre-digital camera days
101. publish a blog posting for each of the next 1001 days!

So, there you have it.  I expect I’ll be posting updates when I get stuff on the list accomplished and possibly some excuses about my abject failures.

End Date: Monday, October 10, 2011 (thank you dateandtime.com!)

Footnotes

¹Ya, this one is totally cheating, since I’m already training for another half. But it’s hard to think of 101 things!

²Um, ya.  I have seven years worth of photos in boxes, waiting for scrapbooking.

³Can you believe that, having lived in Vancouver for more than eight years, I’ve not yet skied Whistler?

⁴This one is stolen from an homage to Dave’s 101 things in 1001 days list. He didn’t actually manage to do it, but I think I can. I think I can.

⁵Also stolen from Dave’s list. I’ve been wanting to read something by Rushdie, so here’s an extra push

⁶This is the last one I’m stealing from Dave’s list. Promise.  Also, Dan said I should go there.

⁷Stolen from Triplux.

⁸Which Sarah’s been telling me to read since forever. And which she just gave me for Christmas, so if I fail to accomplish this one, well, that would just be sad.

⁹I always seem to get a course for one term only.  I taught Nutritional Assessment last year as a sessional, but the department hired a new prof and he chose that as one of his courses to teach, so I don’t get to teach it this year. And then, this past term I taught another course as a sessional because the usual sessional needed a break from it for one term only, so I probably won’t get to teach it next year. Now I want some consistency!

¹⁰Just because it would be difficult.

¹¹i.e., meet the recommended number of servings for each food group every day and consume no more than one unhealthy “other” food per week.

¹²i.e., ones that I haven’t been to before. Or ones where I’ve only been to their airport/airport hotel (I’m looking at you Texas, Oregon and Arizona), if I actually go to somewhere other than the airport/airport hotel.

¹³since it doesn’t fit in my kitchen. =(

¹⁴I can’t believe I’ve lived in Vancouver for 8+ years and not once have I been to see Bard on the Beach. I like Shakespeare (I even have a minor in Drama that included a whole course in “Acting Shakespeare”). And I like beaches!

¹⁵Inspired by the tree at the Mexican resort I stayed at this Christmas.

¹⁶My 2008 average was 93 readers per day.

¹⁷Which occurred on Friday, September 26, 2008 as a direct result of my list of the hottest players in the NHL

¹⁸Which I have partly written and can’t seem to get around to finishing.

¹⁹I’ve been trying to find a good pair of brown dress pants since forever! Hopefully I’ll find them in the next 1001 days.

²⁰Because I really enjoy baking and I never seem to do it anymore.

2008 – My Year in Review

Wow, it’s the last day of 2008. How did that happen?  Seems like only yesterday that it was New Year’s 2008 and now New Year’s 2009 is upon us!

So, in a blog posting that fits perfectly into my “rampant narcissism” category, I give you my personal 2008 summary:

The Good

• I moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress
• I got to hear Gloria Steinem speak
• Got laser eye surgery
• I saw Madonna in concert
• I saw Chris Rock live
• I taught two courses at UBC (Nutritional Assessment & Topics in Food, Nutrition & Health)
• I got hired to teach another UBC course (Research Methods) and my first SFU course (Human Anatomy) for the upcoming term
• Tod got the greatest cat EVER¹.

The Bad

• My Granny passed away

The Ugly

• Stephen Harper got rid of the National Science Advisor and it made me angry
• I feel like I was sick a lot – I had bronchitis, several nasty colds, and a UTI (TMI?)
• Injuries (fortunately all minor ones): groin injury (hockey),  seriously scraped knee (twice), strained wrist (hockey)
• The Governor General prorogued Parliament because Stephen Harper had a temper tantrum and didn’t want to face the House in a (despite what the Conservatives* say) completely legitimate non-confidence vote

Travels

• Yellowknife, Northwest Territories in March
• Los Vegas, Nevada for a hockey tournament in April
• Kelowna, BC for hockey provincials in May
• Edmonton, AB with Tod in May
• Toronto, ON to visit the fam in June
• Sun Peaks, BC with Tod in July
• San Francisco for BlogHer and to visit Katie in July
• Toronto, ON for my niece’s 4th birthday in November
• Los Cabos, Mexico with Tod for Christmas

Accomplishments

• My hockey team won our divisional championship
• I celebrated my one year workiversary
• I climbed a mountain
• I ran two 10 km races (Pacific Spirit and Nike 10K)
• I wrote a grant application letter of intent² that was accepted (yay!), which allowed me to submit a grant application that, if successful, will allow me to still have a job
• I receiving funding to plan a science outreach event in the new year (you’ll hear more about that later)
• I published my thesis in book form

Books Read³

• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
• The Pleasure’s All Mine by Joan Kelly
• What to Eat by Marion Nestle
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
• The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
• Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (just started)
• Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti
• Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind The Pay Gap-And What Women Can Do About It by Warren Farrell

Textbooks

• Principles of Nutrition Assessment by Rosalind Gibson
• Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches by John W. Cresswell
• Best Practices for Teaching Statistics and Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences, edited by Dana S. Dunn, Randolph A. Smith, Bernard C. Beins
• Philosophy And The Sciences of Exercise, Health And Sport: Critical Perspectives On Research Methods, edited by Mike McNamee
• Brain-based Teaching For All Subjects: Patterns To Promote Learning by Madlon T. Laster. (only a bit, because it turned out to be about elementary school teaching, whereas I was expecting it to be about university teaching)
• Conducting & Reading Research in Health & Human Performance by Baumgartner & Hensley (only partway through)

Misc

• I voted three times (one federal by-election, the federal election and a municipal election)
• I attended three blogging conferences (Northern Voice, BlogHer and BarCamp)
• I attended two learning/teaching conferences (one at UBC, one at SFU)

And what year in review blog posting would be complete without some nerd stats:

Nerd Stats 2008:

• Blog postings: 423
• Tweets: 2,227⁴
• Visits to my blog in 2008: 32,410⁴
• Average number of blog visits per day: 93⁴
• Most popular blog posting: Hockey Hotties (1062 views)
• Busiest day on my blog: Friday, September 26, 2008 (460 views, thanks to the Hockey Hotties posting)
• My first guest posting on a blog as a correspondent for Miss604 at BlogHer

¹OK, I realize that *I* didn’t get the cat and this is supposed to be *my* personal summary. But he’s the best freaking cat ever and he’s sitting on my lap as I write this, so it counts.
²A “letter of intent” (LOI) is an application to be allowed to submit an application. Anyone can submit an LOI, but only the people whose LOIs get accepted are allowed to submit the full application.
³I’m sure I’ve read more than this and am just forgetting some of them. This list is based on ones (a) I can actually remember without prompting, (b) appeared on my blog and so I saw them when I went through my blog to write this year in review, and (c) I still have out of the library, so I saw them when I checked what books I have out of the library.
⁴At the time of writing this blog posting.

OMGIHateUSAirways – The Final Chapter in the Saga

And now the conclusion of our harrowing tale of trying to fly on US Airways.  When we last left the story, our heroine and hero had spent SEVEN hours waiting in the San Jose del Cabos airport, been flown to Tuscon to walk through Immigration/Customs only to find out their luggage had been lost, then flown to Phoenix where they were put up in a hotel and given coupons for a horrible, horrible breakfast.

So.  Comparatively speaking, our flight from Phoenix to Vancouver was not nearly as bad, but still involved the following screw ups:

• The pilot went to the wrong gate. Seriously. We were originally supposed to be at Gate B28 and then they announced that it was changed to Gate A23, so everyone started to walk over to the new gate. But then the person on the PA system said, “Wait. The pilot appears to have gone to Gate B23 instead of A23, so we’ll just have your flight to Vancouver board there.”  The fact that the pilot can’t even go to the correct gate does not give me confidence in the competence of this airline.  Not that I had much confidence left in them at this point.
• Yet another maintenance “issue.” We were delayed an hour at the gate because, apparently, the maintenance people didn’t fill out the paperwork correctly.  The pilot announced, in a very annoyed tone of voice, “Maintenance has to come on the plane to straighten out some paperwork.  The TSA is really picky about having paperwork filled out correctly.” Oh yeah, those darn safety people wanting you take the safety seriously, how dare they?  I also find it rather suspect that it took them an hour to “straighten out the paperwork.” An hour? Really? Again, this did not fill me with confidence.
• They didn’t have anyone at the lost baggage desk at YVR. They had lost baggage there – plenty of it.  Just sitting out in the open where anyone could have walked away with it.  We waited for 20 minutes for someone to show up.  We called their support line and the person we got on the phone tried calling someone to figure out why no one was at the desk, and then claimed that they couldn’t make any outgoing calls when we suggested that they get the airport to page the missing lost baggage person (you may recall from earlier in this sentence, they had already made an outgoing call).
• They left forms with people’s confidential information on it sitting right out on the desk for anyone to see. Seriously. I saw six forms with people’s names, home addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, flight information, signatures and the approximate value of the contents of their lost luggage¹. Eventually, someone showed up at the American Airlines desk next to the US Airways one and, after repeatedly telling us “I don’t work for US Airways. I don’t know what the other airlines do,” looked behind the counter and found our luggage, which apparently had been put on an earlier flight to Vancouver than us.  The person from American Airlines refused to put the forms with people’s confidential information out of sight, despite the fact that I asked her to do so very nicely three times, again with the “I don’t know what the other airlines do” line. Like, seriously, would it have been that hard to take the forms and put them under the desk?  At that point, I gave up on the whole thing and we left the airport, finally home in our beloved Vancouver.

So, to recap, here is a list of all the ways that US Airways screwed up on one trip:

• FOUR planes with “maintenance issues,” including two that were unfit to fly altogether
• a total of ELEVEN hours of delay² (not counting the two hours delay waiting to leave Vancouver, which was due to weather (i.e., the need to wait for the de-icer), which is not their fault; and also not counting an overnight stay in Phoenix, which was their fault³)
• They lost our luggage
• They don’t have a person at their lost luggage desk
• When luggage does eventually arrive at its final destination, they leave it out in the open where anyone could steal it
• They left several people’s confidential information out in the open, also available for stealing

Additional things that suck about US Airways:

• They charge you if you have ANY checked bags.
• They charge you for a can of pop or a bottle of water on the plane.
• They don’t have any food at all on their plane. Not even the over-priced crappy sandwiches or bags of chips that other airlines carry.

In conclusion, I will never, ever fly US Airways again and you shouldn’t either.  I feel lucky to have arrived home alive after that trip, quite frankly.

¹In fairness, this desk was also for a few other airlines and there were forms from people who flew on Air Transat & Continental sitting on the desk as well. So whoever had been at that desk for all those airlines totally sucks. And I bet it was a US Airways employee.
²One hour of them fixing our plane in Phoenix, waiting to go to Cabos; seven hours waiting for our plane in Cabos as they had to replace two non-functional planes in a row; about a two hour detour to Tucson because our flight was so late that we couldn’t clear Immigration in Phoenix; one hour of them “straightening up the paperwork” waiting to leave Phoenix to get to Vancouver; plus having to stay overnight in Phoenix
³Ironically, the only flight segment of our entire journey that didn’t have a delay was our originally scheduled Phoenix to Vancouver flight, which we missed because we were still in Cabos. It left Phoenix right on time.

OMGIhateUSAirways!

So. I’m in friggin’ Phoenix.

After waiting for SEVEN hours in the San Jose del Cabo airport, we *finally* got a flight to Phoenix. Most people on the flight had bailed by this point, with only 17 passengers remaining to take the flight. This was an Airbus A320 plane, which seats 179 passangers, and it had been full. Until we had to wait SEVEN hours.

By this point,we were kind of starving. Because, of course, everything in the airport had closed down. And we asked the flight attendant what there was on the plane that we could buy and she said, “Oh, we don’t carry any food.” (US Airways, by the way, sucks.) Um, what? No food on the plane? I remember from the flight down to Cabos that you have to pay for your lousy can of pop (did I mention that US Airways sucks?), but you can’t even buy food on their plane? wtf? Then we asked what kind of mechanical problems they had that had delayed us for SEVEN hours and the flight attendants said, “Which one?” Apparently there were two non-functional planes (the first one wouldn’t pressurize, the second had some door locking problem) before they got this third, functional plane. So, counting the mechanical problem on the way from Phoenix to Cabos (which caused a few hours delay), that’s THREE major maintenance issues in one trip. Somehow,this does not give me confidence in their ability to maintain their planes.

The next ridiculous thing to happen was that they announced that we had to fly to Tucson to clear customs before we could go to Phoenix. Wait, what? Apparently, our flight was so late that the Phoenix customs people had all gone home. So we had to go to Tucson (which has 24 hour customs), get off the plane with all our luggage, clear customs, go back through security, get back on the plane and fly to Phoenix. No, really. And then we get to Tuscon and find that they have lost our luggage. Lost. Our. Luggage. They had SEVEN hours to get our luggage on that plane. SEVEN! (Did I mention that US Airways is the suckiest airline ever? Did I?) I have never, in my entire life, had my luggage lost. I was starting to think that lost luggage was just a myth. But no, US Airways lost our luggage. Way to go, US Airways!

Once we got to Phoenix, they put us up in a hotel (14 of the 17 people from our flight were on the shuttle to the hotel) and gave us little coupons for their horrible hotel breakfast buffet. And I’m not even making this up, the coupon said it was for an airline “distressed” passenger breakfast.

OK, I’ll have to continue this story later, as I need to go board my plane. Keep your fingers crossed for us to actually make it home before 2009!

Mi Navidad Mexicana

My Christmas vacation in Los Cabos, Mexico went a little something like this:

10:45 a.m.	Wake up1.
10:55 a.m.	Arrive at breakfast buffet restaurant.  Acquire coffee, refried beans, papaya and pineapple. Big decision of the day #1: French toast, omelette or fried eggs.
11:30 a.m.	Grab beach towels. Apply sunscreen. Order non-stop delivery of Coca-Cola Light2 with a slice of lime from poolside server.
11:35a.m.	Lay in sun. Alternate between reading, chatting with people and swimming. Reapply sunscreen as needed.
2:00 p.m.	Have lunch, where lunch = french fries, onion rings, nachos with fresh guac and salsa.  And Coca-Cola Light.
2:30 p.m.	Tod’s naptime. Big decision of the day #2: Decide between having a nap, reading, or going for a walk on the beach.
5:00 p.m.	Nap (if not already napping)
6:30 p.m.	Shower.  Dress up pretty.
8:00 p.m.	Big decision of the day #3: where to have dinner.
10:30 p.m.	Go to the disco, possibly followed by hot tub.
2:00 a.m.	Order sandwiches from room service.
2:45 a.m.	Re-order sandwich because they put bacon on my vegetarian sandwich.
3:15 a.m.	Sleep.

Repeat for six days.

Seriously, I could get used to a life like that.

Highlights of the trip:

• Los Cabos is gorgeous. Gorgeous!
• The people we met were very friendly. Friendly!
• Being a Vancouverite, I’m not used to sunshine, especially not in December.  Los Cabos was sunshine-y almost the entire time.
• In Los Cabos, I didn’t have to think about work at all.
• Standing on the beach, listening to the waves break³ and feeling myself sink into the sand as the waves rolled in and then back out.
• 3 a.m. room service sandwiches. So. Tasty.

Lowlights of the trip:

• Apparently, I’m the first vegetarian to ever set foot in Mexico.  To the point that on Christmas Eve, I was told that they couldn’t make me anything for dinner. After talking with one of the guest services peeps (who said, “Oh, would you like them to make you something special?” to which I replied, “No⁴, I just want something vegetarian!”) they agreed to make me… a salad. Because, you know, us freaks only ever eat salad. And who wouldn’t want a salad for Christmas dinner? In the end, I  managed to convince them to give me both the salad and a turkey dinner, hold the turkey.
• Sitting in the San Jose del Cabos airport writing this blog posting. Our flight was supposed to have left 5:30 p.m. and it’s now, as I type this, 8:30 p.m.  The plane we were supposed to be on hadn’t even left Phoenix by 5:30 p.m. And apparently they can’t get us any other plane. And so now we are scheduled to leave here at 9:20 p.m. Which is going to make it rather difficult to make our 8:59 p.m. connection from Phoenix to Vancouver. So. Looks like I’ll be staying either in Phoenix (given that the 8:59 p.m. is the last Phoenix to Vancouver flight of the day) or here in Cabos⁵ (if this stupid plane decides never to arrive).

Books Read on This Trip:

• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (start to finish)⁶
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks (about one-third of the book)
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (about half a page)
• Research Design by Creswell (the chapters I hadn’t yet read) and Conducting & Reading Research in Health & Human Performance by Baumgartner & Hensley (bits and pieces – since I’ve been stuck in this airport)

Things I Learned On My Trip:

• Spray on sunscreen, which starts out invisible, turns green. The towel you lay on while wearing said sunscreen will look like it has grass stains on it.
• Coffee whitener is highly flammable⁷.
• Broken bones don’t hurt until you move them⁸.
• Los Cabos airport appears to be a tent.

¹Important, as they stop serving breakfast at 11 a.m.
²Which is what they call Diet Coke in Mexico. I didn’t see diet Pepsi anywhere.
³Of course, being a Vancouverite, I can easily get to the ocean. This was a reminder that I should make a point of doing so more often.
⁴Seriously. I’m not asking for the moon here. I’m like, “just give me the veggies from the turkey dinner, hold the turkey!”
⁵Kicking myself for joking in my last blog posting about deciding to stay in Mexico. Staying sounded nice, but not if it means staying in the airport!
⁶Thanks to Sarah & Dave, who gave this to me for Christmas.
⁷Didn’t actually have the opportunity to see this in action, but we were assured that it is true.
⁸Didn’t learn this firsthand, but one of the people we were hanging out with broken his toe playing beach volleyball. I was sure it was just dislocated, given that it didn’t hurt and bones have lots of nerves in them. But when the doctor showed up, he said it was broken (as he was able to move the joints normally, meaning the joints couldn’t be dislocated) and that it didn’t hurt because it wasn’t moving.

Two Week Warning

Today is the day that Beth travels back to Vancouver. Unless she’s decided that Mexico is so nice that she’s going to stay. Which, you know, totally could have happened. Anyway, today’s blog posting contains not a link or a cute photo of cats in boxes, but rather, a very important reminder: Beth’s birthday is only two weeks away. I’m just sayin’

The Smoking Gun’s Top Ten List of Mugshots for 2008.

Now that Christmas is officially over, it’s time for all the various news channels and websites to start releasing their “best of 2008” lists.  Beth’s still enjoying a couple more days in the Mexican sun, but she thought you might like this:

The Smoking Gun’s Top Ten List of Mugshots for 2008.

Happy Boxing Day

This is two cats in a box, in honour of Boxing Day:

Cuteness!

Photo credit: fofurasfelinas on Flickr.

Merry Mexmas!

Wishing you a Merry Xmas from sunny Los Cabos, Mexico!

Can you believe I actually found an image, avaialble for use via a Creative Commons licence, that combined Christmas (since it’s Christmas), Spanish (since I’m in Mexico right now)  and my beloved Flying Spaghetti Monster (since he’s my beloved Flying Spaghetti Monster)?  It’s like a Holiday miracle!

Photo credit: Pitius on Flickr.

‘Twas The Night Before Christmas…

and all through the blog,
not a Bethy was stirring,
‘cuz she was too busy learning to salsa dance on her vacation in Mexico. Or perhaps it’s merengue today. Or maybe yoga on the beach. Whatever it is she’s up to, she’s not here blogging.

She did, however, leave this link for you today. It’s a discussion about the sex (not the gender, as the headline says) of Santa’s reindeer.  Hint: they are probably girls.

Beth Can’t Come To The Blog Right Now

She’s on a plane heading to Mexico.  She’ll think about you while she’s laying on the beach.

She left this link to a podcast that you can listen to while she’s gone.  It’s a WNYC Radiolab show about sperm. She especially liked the part about the sugar room in the fallopian tube. That was not something she knew about prior to listening to that podcast.

‘Tis The Season

I’m actually amazed I made it this long before hitting the hard core holiday party season.  I mean, it’s Dec 10th already and I’ve only had one holiday event!  So, for the record, because I know you are all dying to hear about my plans, my holiday parties this year consist of:

• dinner with a bunch of my trainees after our seminar this past Monday
• drinks with a bunch of my friends from school (current and former students in my PhD program) tomorrow night¹
• my friend Erika’s annual 12 Bars of Christmas on Saturday.  This will be my third year attending this illustrious event.  Due to last year’s severe overcrowding, the guest list has been scaled back to only those people who attended the year before. Also new this year: everyone participating has to make a donation to the most appropriate charity: the Canadian Liver Foundation.
• holiday party of my old lab group on Sunday.  Despite the fact that it has been over two years since I worked in that lab and the fact that I didn’t officially work in that lab², I still get invited to the parties. Which is super nice, because they are a lot of fun.
• office lunch at Sandbar on Granville Island on Monday
• lunch with the Dean of one of the Faculties that I teach in on Wednesday
• Blogger Meetup at Ceili’s on Wednesday as well

Man, just looking at that list makes me tired.  Thankfully, I’ll have lots of time to recuperate over Christmas while lying on the beach in Los Cabos for an entire week.  You know you are jealous.

¹Depending on how late that goes, I may also try to swing by the Best of 604 par-tay afterwards
²My lab, which only consisted of three people, just kinda hung around their lab and used their stuff.

Products That I Just Don’t Understand II

On my recent trip to San Fran, I found myself yet again flipping through the SkyMall magazine. While I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t have any new products as good as the branding iron for your dinner or the all cookie diet or the tailgate party slings, it was still rife with ridiculousness. The guy sitting next to me on the plane seemed to think I was quite strange, sitting there laughing to myself and ripping pages out of SkyMall. See the things I do for you?

First up, we have these toys:

Extra points to that one for referring to the mobility-impaired elderly using the word “cripple.”

Tired of not looking like an idiot when you sleep? Why not try the Spacesleeper Travel Pillow?

It’s like sleeping with a zero IQ!

Have way too much time on your hands and no friends? Why not spend the next year of your life trying to solve this crossword puzzle?

Also from the land of ridiculously large things, there’s this inflatable TV screen:

Because, you know, if a TV screen can fit inside your house, it’s just not big enough.

And this next one is just dirty. Dirty, dirty, dirty.

And finally, from the Humiliating Your Pets category, we have such fine products as:

Doesn’t this dog really look like she’s “enjoying her privacy”? No, really. She doesn’t look like she’s serving 25-to-life. Not at all.

When not trapping your dog in an undersized jail cell, why not let her look through this lovely porthole:

I’m sure the other dogs won’t laugh at her.

And finally, there’s a solution for those of you who have been wishing that your dog could take a shit in the house. Seriously. I’m not making this up.

Seat Guru – Infant Not Included

While waiting for *4 hours*¹ for my flight home from SFO yesterday, during which I was (a) Twittering with another BlogHer attendee who was also stuck at SFO, (b) talking on Skype, and (c) being looked at like I was crazy because I was talking loudly to my computer, I was also checking out whether I would have a good seat on the plane, should I ever actually get on the plane, using Seat Guru. Seat Guru provides you with all kinds of useful tidbits about your particular seat on any given plane, including:

Detailed seat map graphics.

In-depth seat specific comments denoting seats with limited recline, reduced legroom, mis-aligned windows.

Color-coding to help identify superior and substandard seats.

In-seat power port locations.

Galley, lavatory, Exit Row and closet locations.

The Guru informed me that my seat was neither particular good, nor particularly bad, that I would have a personal TV screen and an in-seat power port. However, I have to say that there was some false advertising with respect to the in-flight amenities:

My seat did not, in fact, come with an infant.

¹It was delayed 2 hrs^a, but I was already there well in advance of my flight, because you never know how long it will take to get through security.
^aFirst it was delayed due to weather, then it was further delayed because the “front flap” on the plane “wasn’t working.”

As you know, I was the BlogHer’08 Official Correspondent for Miss604.com and so I thought you might like to see the stuff I wrote over there:

• Thursday
• Friday
• Saturday

I have to head to the airport now.  I’ll miss San Fran, but I’m always happy to go home to Vancouver!