Steffi's Nest

While finishing the thesis I’ve become insanely addicted to online web comics and web graphic comics. I’m blazing through Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell and came across the best pigeon dancing ever!

Wikimedia commons

Five minutes… just five minutes, I really need to rant!

I enjoy research, I really do.  Most of time.  Some of the time, surely.  Right now, I just want to go open a bakery somewhere with a spinning complement and never see another chipmunk, line of R script or mixed model ever again.  I don’t even want start on structural equation models.

It’s not the work that gets me, it’s the un-work that is driving me nuts!  I have no problem running SEMs or mixed models or sitting in a tree watching chippies for hours on end.  What I can’t stand is the feeling of despair as I run in to yet another bloody error in the analysis or reason why my stats are no good, or find yet another thing that I can’t do, for the simple reason that no one so far has tried to do it!  Then I sit and stare at the computer, look up a bazillion references and start all over again with yet another technique, confident that THIS time it will work.

This is another hydra. Not quite the one I was talking about, but definitely a sign that I've been TAing too much, as well. These guys are awesome, though! You should see them eat Daphnia! Credit to Stephanie Guertin http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hydravulgaris.jpg

Seriously, this is like fighting the hydra!  Each new technique illuminates more intricacies and more things I should have controlled for, analyzed or somehow must account for.  I feel for Hercules, it’s bloody frustrating to see what you thought was a simple problem (i.e. one neck) grow new problems faster than you can solve them (or, once again, heads or necks, what ever you prefer).  I guess I just have to find a way to cauterize them.  But, from what I hear, Hercules had help so that doesn’t seem fair (I’m conveniently forgetting all the time my lab mates have spent explaining various statistical tools to me, because I’m officially “Feeling-sorry-for-myself”).

While, there is no doubt that this is an incredible learning experience, I want finish my thesis!  I want to actually be WRITING my results, not re and re and re and re and re-analyzing everything YET AGAIN!

Sigh, I’m done.

xkcd is a great webcomic, but this is by FAR my favourite dream!

Well September was eventful!  Not a lot of thesis advancement, but at least I got my NSERC application in and it looks damn nice, too!  Even if I do say so myself.

I guess my favourite part of September was the beginning.  The resourceful biology grads organized a canoing trip!  Remember that rainy summer?  Well this was the one weekend of sun all summer!  After a harrowing time trying to find a park that still had campsites and canoes (everyone had the same idea as us) we were off!

Continue reading → Bears, Racoons and NSERCs

About a month ago, I went to Toronto to work, meet friends, chill with family, go to Muskoka, go see Riverdance, and go to a Nia event called the Heart of Nia.

Katia and a very red Steffi after a particularly energetic dance

It was loads of fun, especially since Katia, my mom, and my first Nia instructor, Jill, were all there.  It was an extra long Nia class with a whole crowd of Nia-ers (sadly only 2 guys were brave enough to come).  As mom pointed out, I’m constantly astonished at the range of ages, backgrounds, body types and fitness levels that you see in an average Nia class.  When ever I push people to come, they’re always worried about being out of shape, or not knowing the moves, or not agile, etc.  That’s never been a problem from what I see!

Continue reading → Heart of Nia

So my new little visitor is officially a resident.  I had a couple inquiries, but the most promising was from a lady who had a whole flock and had lost a couple budgies all at once.  Since she was worried about reintroducing a potentially diseased bird back into her flock, I offered to adopt the little one, and now he/she stays with me!

After several harrowing baths (he was covered in some sort of oil, that took some getting rid of), a trip to the vet, mite treatment and bleaching of cage and toys, and 40 days in confinement (the bathroom), my visitor is ready to meet his room-mates.  Happily they’re all getting along quite well, with the usual amount of squabbling.  The little one’s name hasn’t been decided upon yet, though, since I’m not yet sure if it’s a girl or a boy yet.  I’m thinking about Excalibur, Avalon and Guinevere, though

On Monday, Don dropped off an old budgie cage that he and Vanessa didn’t need any more. I’m the only person they knew with budgies, so I was lucky enough to inherit the beautiful cage. My guys already have a cage, but since Morgan is NOT a morning budgie, it’d be nice to have somewhere to put Lancelot at night so I can have him covered and NOT waking me up at 5:30am. Ah well, so much for that idea!

This afternoon I got a call from the building supervisor. Are you missing any birds? PANIC! Ok, ok, one, two, check. No I’m not missing any birds. But, there’s a sad little budgie sitting on someone’s balcony down on the fifth floor!

Down I go, I mean, what’s sadder than an escaped budgie?  It rained yesterday!  He probably got mugged by the pigeons and teased by the sparrows.  Who knows, maybe he nearly made lunch for a cat, dog, raccoon, hawk or funny-looking person (this IS Montreal, after all).  So after after neatly nabbing the little guy and impressing everybody with my efficiency, I stashed him with some food, water, toys, and warm rice bags (bags of rice zapped for warmth) in the conveniently available cage.

We’ll see how he does in the next few days.  Right now he’s being quarentined in the bathroom away from Morgan and Lance.  Partly for their benefit, but mostly for his (Morgan would eat him alive!).  I”ll put up some posters tomorrow to see if someone claims him, if not, I guess I’ve got a threesom, which will be OH so entertaining!  Especially since I’m not sure if our new one is a boy or a girl (still a baby).  If it’s a girl, Morgan will be really really really unimpressed!

Lancelot’s buddy

Okay, I never expected to be the person to try baking biscotti.  It looks so exotic!  But when I went home for Easter, mom had a great big tin of home made biscotti.  Hmmm…  So I decided that I should be able to do this.

It boils down to:  ANYone can do this!  And they’re really really really yummy.  Chocolate mmmm and they’re great with coffee, double mmmm.  I think I’m going to have to wrap up this post because I want to go get a biscotti

Here’s a yellowy picture of my yummy biscotti, complete with Italian espresso maker…. mmmmmmmmm

You can get the reciepe I used from David Lebovitz’s site

I didn’t bother with the glaze because I’m lazy and didn’t feel like using any more egg.

Spring is here (or past) and with it my passion for growing things!  Last year I was able to have a garden at the field station, growing lettuce, tomatoes, shallots, beans and lots and lots of mint for our dining and drinking (mmm mohitos!) pleasure.

This year, however, I don’t have access to any land, anywhere!  That hasn’t stopped me though!  I’m determined to create a balcony garden, even if my balcony is North-East facing and only about two-feet wide. After a harrowing bike ride to carry two 35L bags of soil/compost, a five hour stint of creating and stocking various pots and much watering, I have a 9th floor garden!

So far I have two types of basil, sage, spearmint, cilantro, chives, nasturtiums, bush beans (we’ll have to see about these), three cherry tomatoe plants and calendula.

On the left here, you see an earlier picture of my garden, minus the third tomatoe plant.  Note the big green bag hosting one of my tomatoe plants!  You can also see lovely Jade (the leaves underneath were taken off by me, since I’m trying my hand at bonsai-ifying it).