dreamer

There are some hastily taken preliminary pictures of my house on my facebook. For those of you that want to see them.

It will look better once we`re done.

This past week/month has been completely hectic. A couple of weeks ago, Andrew and I booked some appointments to go look at some houses in Milton, because we need to move out of this place for multiple reasons. We ended up finding a gorgeous house that had just gone on the market that day, and our agent advised us that if we wanted it, we had to move fast because it wouldn't last long. We decided to go ahead and put in an offer.

Let me tell you, that is scary enough to make you shit yourself.

It so happened that another offer was made on the house the same day (let me say again that this was the first day the house was put on the market), and it was higher than our offer, even though we had offered slightly over asking.

So, we did not get that house.

On Tuesday, we had a few more houses lined up to see. We went, we saw, we were unimpressed...until the last one. It was perrrfect. Open kitchen for me, unfinished basement for Andrew, pantry, hardwood floors, three bedrooms, 1.5 baths, good sized master, everything we really wanted plus a few extras. We made an offer that night, because by now we are experienced home buyers and we know exactly what the process is.



Putting in an offer is very easy. Working your ass off to meet the time deadlines set by the conditions of your offer when it is accepted is fucking ridiculous.

On top of this, I was infected with the Death Cold, I worked a 6 day week last week, Andrew got hit by a car while riding to work yesterday (not as serious as it sounds but still really frightening), Andrew now has aforementioned Death Cold, and I had to go to a baby shower last night after work while Everything had to be done for The House.

By now, we (Andrew) have (has) submitted the astronomical ($8000!) deposit to the sellers, been approved for a sufficient mortgage, booked a home inspection, and lost a lot of sleep and probably a few years off our lives. Now we just have to find a lawyer, send the bank all the appropriate documents, pray that there is nothing wrong with the place, and find some time to move in.

I am SO EXCITED.

So, that's what's been going on with me.

Also, I am trying to get my natural hair colour back. It's not as easy as I thought it would be.

I was always alright in art class, as long as I was given a defined procedure to follow. Any time we were just told to draw something, or paint something, mine was a piece of shit. I have a very analytical mind. It's one of the reasons I enjoy working in a lab but not if I have to design the experiments. Anyway, I painted today.

For real.



See my blog for more pictures. Finished product will be up soon!

( ...and I have no life )

Man, I am so. bored.

My fitness level has sky rocketed because with so much free time, I just work out.

SOMEONE NEEDS TO CALL ME BACK. I am good! I am qualified! I will give you what you need!

I'm talking about a lab job, not what you were thinking.

Okay. On to ( the thing I got from Rachel )

I need a job, in a bad way. Unfortunately, I am riddled with an abundance of laziness and unwillingness to do any actual legwork required to find a job.

That's not true, actually. I look on 3-4 job sites 10-15 times a day (I have a lot of free time), but no one is hiring anybody right now. They are all firing. I emailed McNeil and begged for a job and they said sorry but we have actually for real no monies and we let half the team go already and so, sorry.

That's not a good outlook.

Paul is fucking scratching my elbows as I type and it's REALLY FUCKING PISSING ME OFF. Excuse me for a minute.

Ahhh, that's better. Trapping him in his bedroom by using the word "food". Heh. The cat knows like 3 words, and they are "Paul" (and variations on his name like "Paulie" and "You-Fucking-Little-Piece-of-Shit-Mother-Fucking-Bastard-Get-The-Fuck-Off-the-Desk-So-Help-Me-God"), "food", and "treat". If you want to make him meow really loud, you just keep saying "treat" over and over again and walk to the kitchen where the treats are. He goes apeshit. It's kittie drugs.

I need some non-cat friends.

( waiting for Andrew to get home )

TOMORROW IS LOST!!!!!!!!!!

Must find all my old LOST icons.

Christmas was orgasmic this year. I got everything I asked for plus lots of stuff I didn't and now my entire kitchen is rearranged and I have this mythical counter space I've heard so much whispering about and I looovvvvee it.

Andrew's sister got me Twilight which at first I was like, "uhhh, thanks. I hate reading books that are cool and everyone is into them because they usually suck. Hard. But thanks" Then I read it. HOLY SHIT good book. It's totally exactly the kind of book I always read that no one has ever heard of before. So, lucky Stephanie Meyer there.

Today, I am sick. I actually took my temperature because I felt so shitty, and I have a fever. Of 38. Or 100.4, as google calculator informs me. This is not cool, because for the first time ever in our relationship, Andrew and I had fun plans for New Years. We were to go out to downtown Toronto. We cancelled earlier, actually, because he has a migraine plus a death cold that won't go away, but wow. New Years eve plus us does so not equal love (NYE + AM ≠ ♥). It's disheartening. Sigh. Maybe next year.

In other news, I hope everyone had a great Christmas and enjoys a very happy New Year.

( ...and I should be doing homework )

( I too am supposed to be writing papers )

( stolen from Hayley and Rachel )

I FINISHED IT!
It only cost me four days, a lot of knives, and a killer backache, but I fucking carved the evil monkey into my goddamned pumpkin.



You can totally see my marker outlines and pinholes...but pretend you don't, and just bask in its awesomeness. Soak it up.

Mmmmmm.

Happy Halloween!

Check out my etsy shop:

Etsy: Your place to buy & sell all things handmade menaliase.etsy.com

I finally found an outlet to sell all the crap I like to make. Buy something from me, and help me make money to make more things. Tell your friends!

And all I have is ( this thing I stole from Hayley's facebook )

So, The X-Files movie was a very broad and grave disappointment. I'm not sure, exactly, what I had been expecting, but what I got was a long, drawn out romance affirmation between Mulder and Scully and very little by the way of, I don't know, a story?

It wasn't very X-Filesy.

It was all about faith and God, and believing. Somehow, coming away from the theatre, I had the feeling that Mulder had been portrayed as a sad, pathetic figure, and Scully was valiantly trying to rescue him from wasting his life, whilst performing medical miracles herself. The X-file was little more than a series of murders that a man may or may not have had a psychic link to - not the strongest plot line.

Where were the werewolve, the vampires, the Loch Ness monsters? When they said it was a "monster" movie and not following the mythology story arc, I was excited because all my favourite X-Files episodes (with a few exceptions) are monster of the week episodes. This monster wasn't scary, and very upsettingly, was predictable and boring.

I did enjoy the pencils in the ceiling though. Heh.

I'm going to go have an X-Files marathon now so I can remember why this show was the most awesome creation ever. Sigh.

I wrote an exam at 8:30 this morning after about 4 hours of sleep due to a hyperactive mind that wouldn't shut the hell up. The exam was pretty good. I needed a 59.25% on it to get an 80 in the course, or an 84.25% to get a 90 overall. I can say with reasonable confidence that I got at least 59, and I actually probably got more than 84. To translate, I effing rocked that shit.

When I got home I dicked around for a good amount of time. I was actually "preparing for a run" by drinking some water and reading digg. Then I decided to turn on the TV and What Not to Wear was on so that of course delayed my run for another hour. I finally did get out for a run though, and it really was a beautiful day today. The sky was so blue, and the trees were so green, and the road I was running on is a gravelly back road, and at one point I just thought "Wow, I wish I had a camera".

I'm a country girl at heart. I've never been awed by a cityscape. Give me trees and a clear sky anyday.

Anyway, I had been planning to take a nap at some point during the day but somehow I never got around to it. Like I never got around to studying for immunology either. OOPS. I blame Tyra Bands and then whoever that bitch is (Robin?) on Girlicious. I am addicted to these shows. I am a sad case.

All of this, of course, has resulted in me being SO. TIRED. LIKE. WOW.

But I still haven't studied immunology.

1.     Register for four 4th year hardcore science courses and one 2nd year hardcore harder-than-4th-year-hardcore-science-courses physics course for the upcoming Winter semester.
2.     Wait five months.
3.     Experience exams.

This program works, my friends. Probably even better than I've yet realized, since I'm only just over halfway done.

Maybe I should study instead of writing multiple posts on here.

Maybe I don't want to.

I wish the cell cycle didn't involve approximately five billion molecules that are all shortened to 3-letter acronyms that start with "c". I also wish apoptosis did not involve the same molecules plus about 3 billion more, as well as 2 billion that start with "b". Who the hell designed this? Cdk, Ch1, Cln, Clb, CED, CDKI, cdc2, cdc6, cdc20, cdc28 (I could go on), CAK, CKI, etc. etc., and then we get to bax, bid, bim, bcl, bh3, bad, bak, bok, bik, bmf, and to make matters worse, there are bcl-2, are bcl-xl and bcl-w and etc. Additionally, some of them are the same fucking thing. For example, cdc28 IS cdc2 and ALSO is cyclin B. FUCK THIS.

The sad part is, I am not making this up.

ETA: ( EGADS! )

Life really has a way of kicking you right in the ass as soon as you begin to think you're finally pulling it together.

So my second year course beat my ass. The exam was so hard, frak. Goddamned russian son of a bitch. Biophysics of excitable cells = worst course ever.

I think I might subscribe to the belief that chronic dehydration is the root cause behind many if not most of the world's chronic health problems. I make this statement based on readings I've done by Dr. Batmanghelidj (coolest name ever), as well as personal anecdotal evidence. I get headaches that I think are probably migraines every once in a while. The usually last for about a week, and then go away for a few weeks or months. A few weeks ago I was having a headachy week. The first day I took Advil, which, as always, did less than nothing. The second day I went to bed at about 4 in the afternoon because I couldn't sit up and keep my eyes open. The third day, I drank three glasses of water when I felt my headache coming on shortly after noon. Within 20 minutes, it was gone. GONE. I continued to drink shitloads of liquids the rest of the day, and I never got the headache. The rest of the week I tried to drink helluva lots of water every day (and I paid for it by peeing every 15 minutes), but my headaches stayed away.

So this doctor, I think he is dead now, but when he was alive, he regularly cured people's pain by having them drink water. I can't remember a whole lot of his stories, and I'm pretty sure all they are are personal stories. I don't think a clinical trial has been done, but I could be wrong about that. At any rate, I don't necessarily need someone to tell me that a treatment works for a significant number of people if I already know that it works for me. Anyway, one story of his I remember in particular is about a patient with a stomach ulcer. This patient had been tortured for a long time with unbearable stomach pain. He had been given the strongest drugs known to man, but nothing worked. Then Dr. Batmanghelidj came along, and gave him a few glasses of water. Within a few minutes, the patient's pain had subsided to a manageable level.

On a scientific basis, I think the theory is pretty sound. We need a lot of water to perform all of our cellular processes. When we dont drink enough, or when we drink too many diuretics, we are robbing our cells of water. In an attempt to function without water, they steal it from other places. For example, our body is in general agreement that the brain is pretty important. So, if brain cells are thirsty, they're the first ones to get water from other parts of the body. A lot of our water is lost by breathing - you can see this in the winter when you have frosty breath. When our brain cells don't have water, a signal is sent to our lungs (in the form of histamine) to constrict the airways, and decrease respiration, to free up that water for the parched brain cells. As an individual, we perceive this as asthma, and doctors treat the symptom with antihistamines that allow us to breathe again. BUT this treatment does nothing for the root cause, which is insufficient water.

So, I'm going to try to drink more.

A study break that I pilfered ( from Rachel )