Mon, 29 Aug 2005
Things have been really good this week. Steady work, without being stressful. Plenty of relaxing time. And I got my (unofficial) marks back from my courses. I got a 73% in Japanese, which is as good as I could have hoped for, considering how badly I did on all my tests, and I got an astounding 95% in Graph Theory. My highest university mark to date. Not too shabby.
The weekend itself has been wonderful relaxing. I worked a week ago Sunday, (more on this in a later post) but took Friday off in lieu, so I've had a long weekend. Spent a lot of it reading, puttering about, playing games. Saw friends. Yesterday was really low key. I was pretty low energy for most of the day. Play a lot of Eve Online, and listened to the wind and rain outside my window. Fall is coming. Towards the end of the day, I was surprised to find myself a bit grumpy/moody, and I realised I actually hadn't left my apartment at all. So I went out for a bit. Was non-plussed by all the buskers that are here because of buskerfest, then went into the Gelato store for a white hot chocolate with lots of whipped cream, and to read my book a bit. Well WLG is on the main stretch of King Street where the BuskerFest thing is taking place, so I didn't get much reading done. Still grumpy, but at least now for real reasons, I went home.
Today was a bit better. Had dim sum for the first time in ages with friends I hadn't seen in probably about the same amount of ages, then went to see other friends I hadn't seen in longer ages, and get pretty much drunk from mid-afternoon on. I'm still a bit tipsy.
Bed now. More about last weekend later.
Tue, 09 Aug 2005
New toy.
I'm actually sitting on the walk in front of Whole Lot-a Gelata, on my day off, at the moment checking out what free wireless networks there are nearby. People seemed to have smartened up though, as out of the three signals I can vaguely receive, only the weakest one doesn't have a WEP password set.
It's no matter. Have laptop, will travel.
The past 18 hours have been rather interesting, however. Last night, home from work with my new toy, and I just start downloading things to install and play with, when the power goes out. It was rather similar to a power failure we had a month ago or so, in that it cut a strange swath of blackness winding its way around uptown Waterloo. I'm sure there was some rhyme or reason to which buildings had power and which didn't to someone, but there you go. The power finally went back on at around 11:30 and I played on my 'puter a bit before going to bed a fair bit later than I usually do. But hey, the next day was a day off, so it was all good, right?
...Except for the fire alarm that went off before 8am this morning, and continued to go off until well after 9. * sigh *
Yup. So my building's alarm is shrill and loud, almost painfully so. And I was jolted awake by it. Not knowing exactly what was going on, I groggily prepared for the worse, getting the harnesses on my cats and preparing to flee, just in case. That, and really, I didn't want them to endure ear-splitting klaxxons any more than I did. Carbon took some significant coaxing to get out from under the bed, and I doubt I'll be able to coax her as easily anytime in the near future. She took well neither to the noise, nor to being roughly handled while I tried to get her into the harness.
Griffith on the other hand just wanted to be fed. So while he seemed relatively unconcerned by the whole affair, he was a bit more wriggly than usual.
Again, Carbon really did not like to be outside. She's a timid little one. She accidentally gave me a really nice gash across the top of my foot.
Eventually, the building alarm guy showed up and everything quieted down somewhat. My cats got fed, and after a shower, I wandered off still dead tired to WLG for a coffee and a muffin. Oh, except in an effort to catch a fly buzzing about, the person serving me the coffee knocked my mug over, splashing my right arm in hot liquid.
I hope work tomorrow will be more restful.
Sun, 07 Aug 2005
Well, not the best weekend. Some friends of mine were getting married yesterday, and I was looking forward to it. I don't see them very often, and a bunch of folk from all over the place who I also don't see very often were also coming in for the wedding. Only through the course of the day, I was feeling progressively worse and worse.
At first I thought it was just a caffeine headache from not getting my coffee that morning. By the time the actual ceremony was over, a lovely informal thing, on the beach of the groom's parents' cottage on the shore of Lake Huron, I had a really nasty throbbing headache, and sitting out in the hot August sun wasn't helping much. We got to the reception and I went for a lay down in the hotel room the Thingos had booked for the night. I got up for dinner, but found I was to nauseous to eat. So I pretty much slept through the whole reception. I feel pretty bad about missing out on my friends' special day. I apologise profusely, if you are reading this. And congratulations.
Today, I'm feeling marginally better. I'm eating, and I'm mobile, but I feel a bit disconnected from my body a bit. We'll see how I feel tomorrow. Maybe my new iBook will help me feel better. If not, at least I don't have to get up and stagger all the way over to my desktop to blog about how sick I am.
Fri, 05 Aug 2005
I have funky ice cubes. 'nuff said.
Update: I guess they're not really cubes.
Wed, 03 Aug 2005
The most literal interpretation of this would be that my courses are done for the term. Whatever will I do with all my free time? Why sign up for another course, of course!
So I'm enrolled in C&O 355, Mathematical Optimizations, for the Fall term. For you keeners, here's the course description as listed in the course catalogue:
Linear optimization: feasibility theorems, duality, the simplex algorithm. Discrete optimization: integer linear programming, cutting planes, network flows. Continuous optimization: local and global optima, feasible directions, convexity, necessary optimality conditions.
Don't ask me what all that means.
So my birthday was quite nice. I had a reasonably productive day at work, then went out for a fabu dinner at Charbrie's Four Seasons. It's an excellent place, if you're ever looking for something a bit upscale when you're in town.
Also tangentially birthday related. My iBook isn't here yet. There's a deal for academics (students, mostly, but it seems that staff and faculty would also qualify) where one gets an iPod mini for free, or the equivalent discount on a more expensive iPod. So I got that, plus the Apple Care. (A must for laptops.) And can you believe it, they shipped it all as three separate shipments. I received the Apple Care box today. Great.
And on with the tangents. I went to the Waterloo Public Library today, because I wanted light and fluffy reading, and didn't feel like buying a new book. I think this is the first time in approximately fifteen years that I've checked a book out of a public library, if you can believe it. A Discworld book. I'm probably going to go to bed soon and enjoy it.
G'night.Mon, 01 Aug 2005
I probably could have updated a little more recently. Lots of stuff has been going on, or about to go on. I'm done classes, as I've probably already mentioned. I even wrote a final test for Japanese which went if not better, then at least no worse than the rest of the term.
It's also the long weekend, which is nice. It is supposed to give me a chance to relax, but really, all I've been feeling these last few days is tired. It's hard not to relate this with my coming birthday. I tend to be a little moody, but I really don't know if this is any different than any other lull that I get into, and I just associate it with my birthday because it's so close or not.
I never really figured out birthdays very well. As a kid, my birthdays used to usually be a bit of a disappointment as they would coincide with the long weekend. More than once, I'd have a party where only two or three of my childhood friends could make it. Now, the long weekend is a bit of a blessing as my birthday falls on (or near enough) the weekend more often than not. But I still am a bit weird about the actual event.
I'm not one for partying with large groups as such. I almost never go out clubbing, and if I do, I'm usually the first one to want to call it a night. The thought of being the centre of attention for a day, in my head seems like more of an obligation to me, in that I can't really just say "thanks for coming, get out now" when I inevitably tire before everyone else. I imagine this is vaguely what newlyweds must feel like at their wedding reception.
At the same time though, I feel I need recognition of the event. It is, after all, my birthday we're talking about here. I'm a pretty social person, but I sort of had to work at it. So I end up feeling slighted if nobody acknowledges my birthday, but at the same time, I feel resentful of people imposing on my time if they do spend time with me. That's no good.
Things are not a total washout though. I broke down and ordered an iBook for myself on Friday. This seems to be part of a disturbing trend. But according to Apple, everything's all been shipped, so by the end of the week, I should have a new toy to play with.
