Sunday, January 16, 2005
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Guests and Fish
Before I make the requisite apologies for having neglected this blog for an undue amount of time, I would like to point out that the diminishing frequency with which I attend to this page is nothing compared to that of
some other peoples' blogs. Yes, make no mistake, I know where to put my apostrophes, 'people' in this case is in the plural. Having established that, I am sorry that I haven't posted in a while, considering that there are things to post about just very little time to do so.
An old Polish Proverb states that "Guests and fish stink after three days". Well, I've had guests for three weeks and I guess that in these times of advanced food preservation technology only one of them, really, has started to stink. Heh. Today I'm planning to have a "girls' day" with Lisa. Tragically, although she has been here for three weeks, the presence of other people, school and work has kept me from spending any connect time with her. Not that I mind the presence of everyone else in the house, it's just that hey, a girl's got to reconnect. We don't really have a solid itinerary, we just know that we have to get cat food eventually and perhaps catch
National Treasure. I know it got rather sketchy reviews, but hey, we both like
Nicholas Cage so the movie really is moot.
Jim's making a spectacular pair of chopsticks for my grandparents. He's making them out of
Bird's Eye Maple and
Snakewood. My grandfather's pair is mostly Snakewood (which is darker with really rich bands of colour running through the wood) capped with the Maple at a 45º angle. My grandmother's is the same except the woods are reversed so that she has more of the lighter, pretty wood. The best part about all this is that at the tops of each chopsitck he's going to inlay a small round of mother of pearl with either the Chinese character for "Zhou1" (obviously their surname) or, failing that, their initials. Initially Jim didn't want me to see any of the chopsticks' progress -- he just wanted me to see the completed project. But enough sulking meant that I got a glimpse of an unfinished piece and even in that rough state, it loooks gorgeous. Now I really can't wait to see both pairs when they're absolutely done. Considering that Lisa's going back this Thursday, the heat is on for him to complete it. He says he's completely on schedule though, which is fantastic.
School so far has been pretty good. First assignments are due next week and while I still have 5 hours of Carden every week he's not so bad. I like Carden, it's just that he really, really can't teach. On a more distressing note, however, it seems as though I'm unable to find a lab partner. I sure hope that the profs allow me to do this first assignment alone. I've been putting it off hoping that someone will turn up and volunteer to be my lab buddy, but I guess everyone already determined who their buddy would be before labs began. So did I, actually, but time changes et al meant that my lab buddy had to transfer to a different section, leaving me rather stranded. I think that there are an odd number of people in my lab, which would explain my dubious situation.
On a note that is not completely unrelated to the paragraph above, I was wondering if anybody out there knows of a good detox program. Since David and Lisa don't really have anything important to do on their "next days" (they are on holiday, afterall) we've been drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Copious is probably an understatment here. In fact, it's not even ten in the morning yet and I'm staring at a bottle of sherry next to me (there are precious few places in my house right now that you can sit and
not be next to alcohol in some form or another) that is barely a fifth full and we only bought it two nights ago. It's not a big bottle mind, but in light of the other "barely full" bottles that are lying around...well...
Hmmmmmm...I want a cookie.
I really hate all these "diary" like posts. What I did blah blah blah, what I'm doing blah blah blah. I think they're boring and self indulgent. But seriously people! Cut me some slack. After all, I did work till really late last night and am waking up early just so that I can post a little. Not to mention,
some post is better than no post. C'mon, I think you know who you guys are.
posted by Joie! at
9:20 a.m.
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