Saturday, October 31, 2009

Honey, Where's My Super Suit?

Afro Boy and Extendo Girl went out for a night on the town.
We were .... frickin'.... SUPER.

We went to the Referee's house for a party. Everyone was super nice. There were two other superheros there and one arch villain, so we felt right at home. Our guns may have been filled with water at one point and used for squirting people.

His crew all made an effort to make me feel included, which was pretty sweet. The Salesman kept asking if I was having a good time, and then telling me they were all a bunch of assholes - which seemed like a bit of a contradiction (why would an asshole care?). They also liked to tell me how wonderful everyone else in their crew was, and how they themselves were not. Which was pretty cute. Afro boy is by far the goofiest of the lot, and spent the most time dancing, but everyone cut a bit of a rug. Even me.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A Chocolate Menagerie

I had the best night last night. Kippen came over so we could work on advent calendars together.
She brought me a chocolate menagerie:

and a decadence of jelly beans which we both nibbled on:


We read stories and giggled and it was cosy and nice and good and productive.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

:D I'm a genius!

omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg ... my Prof. who has the brain the size of a small planet gave me a compliment today ... omg omg omg... he said he was impressed at my ability to understand abstract and convoluted concepts and describe them consicely and clearly (unlike in this post)... omg omg omg omg omg... and he doesn't give out compliments that easily ... omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg

Monday, October 26, 2009

Dirty Words are the First Foreign Phrases Anyone Learns

Big Fish willfully misinterprets German sentences into dirty English phrases. Jaja and I were practicing German in the car, and every once in a while Big Fish would interrupt with a "what did you say?"
My favorite interpretations were:
Schmect gut ---> Smacked her good.
Guten Tag ---> Good and tug
Guten Nacht ---> Good nobbin
Richtig ----> Lick dick
Danke schön ---> Donkey shin

Common sense rules!

I, who know little of accounting procedures, just solved a huge GST discrepancy issue for my company by using my very practical brain.

My proverb for the day therefore is:
When looking at many columns of numbers that are all fairly similar it is safe to assume that the issue will reside in the one that is significantly larger or smaller than it's neighbours.

Way to go me!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

My mother's mantra

My mother says that her mantra before she wrote exams was "Love, light, intelligence."
Now there's a philosophy I can get behind.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

simple pleasures

my kitten is snoring, ever so slightly.

mummy just dropped off quite a lot of chocolate.

sometimes studying doesn't get any better.

Cat on a bicycle

My cats are silly. Although because they are shy with non-family, none of you generally get to witness this.

So here is a video. (I apologize for my cackle mid-way through, I think it's funny when people or cats almost fall)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBDMBEilsHc

Superficial happies

I have recently become enamoured of a revlon nail file.

It's a four step process that you can use to smooth and buff your nails.

And it actually works on my stupid ridge-y eczema nails. 80% of the ridges and bumps on my nails are now gone and I feel like I kind of have lady hands instead of reptile elderly monster creature hands. Now if only my cuticles would regrow...

It's also entirely possible that my enjoyment level is increased because liebchen seems to be entirely fascinated by the process and is in fact also using it on his own hands.

There is nothing quite so funny as watching your boyfriend buff his nails to a brilliant shine.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Eden Valley

The community I'm working in is amazing! The school is built around a ceremonial room that's like a tall narrow turrett with an atrium at the top. Such great energy at the school...apparently this reserve was originally like the Australia of the reserves where they sent all the "problems" and the community is transforming itself...

First day was great, feels good to be here! The inn we are staying in is this crazy farm by the river and every room has a different mural in it. Ours is a meadow...I'll do pics when I can.

More later in the week!

Your brain is AMAZING!

Think about these two facts:
1. When someone is talking there are about 25 different speech sounds per second that you hear and unconsciously identify. That's fast.
2. Half of the words you hear in fluent conversation are unintelligible when presented in isolation.
And yet you can understand what someone's saying! That's incredible!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Pans - the power of thoughtful gifts

Today I used one of my lovely/amazing cephalon pans (as I do most days) to make my eggs and I felt loved :)

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Fruit Bowl :)

Today after I finished my show at the AGO a little girl came up to me to show me her drawing that she had done at the drawing station. She was adorable, maybe 4 years old. I wish I had a picture of her drawing! She pointed at different blobs of colour that were contained by a brown circle and told me all the different fruits that they were and then we talked a little bit about which fruits were our favourite. In her drawing of the fruit bowl (that she said she might fill in with more brown later so it looked more bowl-y) there was a cherry, a blueberry, a strawberry, a banana, a tomato and a chocolate chip (!). And then she told me: "I brought this over for you since I thought you might be tired and hungary after your perfornance."

:)

There...I Fixed It! :)




Friday, October 9, 2009

Heat!

My building finally turned on the heat today....mmmm...warm.

Good thing since my personal furnace is in Nova Scotia.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Scientific Sonnets

okay, I might be in love with some of the philosophers on artificial intelligence, or at least their writing.
Consider this argument concerning consciousness: "Not until a machine can write a sonnet or compose a concerto because of thoughts and emotions felt, and not by the chance fall of symbols, could we agree that machine equals brain-that is, not only write it but know that it had written it. No mechanism could feel (and not merely artificially signal, an easy contrivance) pleasure at its successes, grief when its valves fuse, be warmed by flattery, be made miserable by its mistakes, be charmed by sex, be angry or depressed when it cannot get what it wants." ~Professor Jefferson's Lister Oration from 1949.

Jaja says she hopes I am never wooed by someone who writes scientific sonnets. hmph.

Hello my fellow mansions for souls

In 1950s when Alan Turing responded to the idea that artificial intelligence was sacrilegious and impossible because thinking was a function of human souls, which God had not seen fit to bestow upon animals or machines, he wrote, "In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates."
I find that sentiment to be beautiful poetry, and a very cosy philosophy.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Down the Garden Path and into the Bushes

We learned about ambiguity in psychology of language today.
I really like reading example sentences.

from the headlines:

EYE DROPS OFF SHELF

KIDS MAKE NUTRITIOUS SNACKS

CLINTON WINS ON BUDGET, BUT MORE LIES AHEAD

TORONTO LAW TO PROTECT SQUIRRELS HIT BY MAYOR

RUMORS ABOUT NBA REFEREES GETTING UGLY

from a medical record:
"on the second day the knee was better, and on the third day it had completely disappeared."