jello. goodbye.

(circa 2005-6?)Sometimes life surprises. Because you never expect it to be that. Dangerous disguises.
That you never expect to see-
built to spill

dinner or a casting call?

"I wonder how much it costs to rent a baby" wondered Adam after watching an episode of buffy tonight about a baby-eating sewer-dwelling demon.

Hmm, interesting question. How much do baby actors earn?

Apparently it's a lot for twins:
-about $200 a day as extras
->$2,500 per weekly episode of a sitcom
-$75-125/hr for print media




And now to ruin your breakfast:
babies chosen to play newborns are coated in cream cheese and jam to simulate birth (ewww, a breakfast baby bagel)

bumper cars

Ranae: I think the drive down the mountain was way less sketchy
Weazy: Yea, except for the head-on collision
Driving home from snowboarding we managed to get hit head-on by a minivan skidding out of a turn while it was going UPHILL.
If that doesn't make sense to you, well that's because it really doesn't make any sense.
Add this front-end damage to the smashed windshield and obsceneties scratched all over it and I'm confident that I now have the most white trash vehicle in Vancouver. Any challengers?

biking 101

Bike Basics- always carrying the following:
a spare tube, patch kit, tire irons, allen keys, and a bike pump.

And I usually do... dammit.
I got school'd today though. Got my 5th flat of the winter on my way down to watch the sunset from 3rd beach with no spare tube or pump. Had been planning on buying a portable pump on my way home. ha! Lucky for me a cyclist appeared among the countless unequipped tourists riding past me.
Patched the 4cm long gash in the tube and tire to only get a pinch flat while pumping up. Round 2 was a success and I even managed to get the last bit of tire back into the rim by myself...a task that has eluded these weak-ass hands of mine until today. Feeling good that I could do it without another pair of hands.
Oh yea, and tomorrow is new pump day.

an expatriate xmas

My favourite xmas quote this year:
"I won't be home for a few days, don't drink my tang"
-words uttered to a 14yr old wade by his dad who was calling from jail.

so this was my 2nd xmas away from home. got a tree to make it feel more seasonal. Woke up late to open presents with Frances, which was a first for us.

I was fortunate to spend last nite and today with good folks, new and less new, and retire with an overly full belly of yummy food, beer, and wine each night. Feeling thankful alright.
Had a Guinness-themed xmas eve dinner at my place with a few fellow residuals. Dinner included:

Guinness chicken, guinness gravy, southern biscuits,bruschetta, walnut salad, and pasta salad all washed down with many pints of the geenniuss. Mmm, mmmm.

satan's xmas discography

Here are my holiday song suggestions, which are sure to spice up any xmas party:

Ramones- Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)
Pansy Division- Homo Christmas
Run D.M.C.- Christmas In Hollis
De La Soul- Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa
Crass-Merry Crassmas Album
The Vandals- Oi to the World! Album featuring the following hits:
'Nothing's Going to Ruin My Holiday' and 'Christmas Time for My Penis'

the twitching hour

still awake, still feeling mildly industrious. Much fun was had tonight in celebration of kimmay's b-day. had to eat some stuffed cabbage under threat of expulsion, lucky for me I love that hunky ass food. i should, i grew up on it. now that i think of it, we never got to the heart shaped b-day cake. hmmm, distractions.
well now it's time for nutella on toast and juice.
mmmm, my kind of nightcap.

semantics of safety

Remember kids: be safe in the snow out there. don't be the victim of the NARSID. Not only will you die but your death will lack any zazz.




Now the NARSID is not to be confused with the Narutard or Narwhal, the unicorn of the sea.

Like a hot knife thru butter

Grad school can be a bitch but it has it's perks. For example, blowing off data analysis yesterday and heading to Mt. Baker @ 6am with denny. My grin is the cumulative product of the following:
first tracks through 41cm of fresh powder, warm feet via the use of adhesive toe warmers, changing my hat so that the simpsons tossel didn't create gaps in my hood, nerding out on the chairlift, and getting the fuck outta Vancouver for a day.
A bit of snowboarding therapy is just what i've needed.
Barely anyone was there. We rode our asses off and pushed our limits in some gnarly, steep glades. As I fought to haul my ass up out of the deeps I realized I really need to work my abs more often. eek.

We ended the day practicing with our avalanche beacons, a great last run down in the twilight, and some ritual hot chocolate. Mmmmm.
I've said it before, and hopefully you've felt it as well, but i must state again that there is no feeling i know quite like carving through fresh powder.
It's the closest I think we will ever come to weightlessness.
Ahhhh.

boiling it down

Ranae: you know beck is a scientologist right?
Steph: what? seriously?
Tomasz: so what is the deal with scientology anyways?
Ranae: that alien ghosts infected the planet with negative energy
Tomasz: (incredulous laughter)
Ranae: yea, so basically god is a whore and scientology is his case of VD

nerdery

I made these maps today. it was tedious but fun. Here's what you're looking at:



map 1- the dots represent routes drawn by my research participants. They had to draw a 'safe' route from pts A-B.


Map 2- This a density plot of the routes in Map 1. Pretty neat.

GIS is often a evil repetative-task-master but sometimes you can make neat shit with it. I'm gonna have to go back and include some of the 'test' routes I drew. They included some pentagrams, 666, and various stick figure death scenes.
Science is fun!

Ohm nom nom

The 9 most badass bible verses

I found this on boing boing a few weeks ago (linked from cracked.com)and thought i'd share it with you all. 'Tis the season afterall.
The commentary accompanying these versus are priceless.
Trust me on this one and read it.

(ps- i think i finally got the formatting bugs worked out. woot!)

computerless

and break your laptop? My POS laptop has finally shit the bed, maybe it was heavenly retribution. Or maybe it was just a POS. Got a loaner but the internet hook up isn't working. My recent digital silence is combo of not having the internet at home and working my ass off on my thesis. I think it's safe to say that there is a significant correlation between those two.

Some good news: I finished a draft of my literature review and am hoping to finish my methods and results chapters by the end of the year. Freedom is getting closer and closer.

The bad news: I won't be back in the 'burgh for xmas. I am charging all the hoodrats to raise a pint for dear old me when you're all together at the hotrod this year. I'll be there in spirit. And somebody please give Swiss a 'welcome back from Africa' hug for me and then check his oil. You know, make him feel at home.

approaching a critical mass (of pink bikes)

Just got back from a cold but dry November Critical mass. yep, that's right, i said 'dry'.The temperature is hovering around 0c so I bundled up and only my toes and fingertips got chilly, which is to be expected. We took some weird routes tonight, which usually means bikers were not at the front for a large portion of it. It was a great ride nonetheless and i got to see and talk to a handful of rad folks i don't see often enough. Headed over to the Black Frog to dork out with my fellow geographers afterwards.


In other news:
I just added a new mini-bike to the stable.
Say hello to my little pinko commie bike.
She's a rapido made in czechoslovakia.


This brings my total to 8. I've been told I got a bike problem.
Here's the break down:
1 old trek mtn bike, midge (my centurian road bike), 1 mini bmx,
1 new lil pink lady, 1 mini-tall (in progress), and I'm selling the other 3 'casue they're too big. I now have 4 bikes with some debatable shade of pink on them. Have i mentioned I hate pink? oh, the irony.

Here's the story of my new mini:
I bought my mini bmx from a guy named steve a few weeks ago and saw this gal sitting in his basement when i was there. I told him to call if he ever wanted to sell her. Luckily for me, Steve
likes seeing a bike go to someone who would appreciate it. I found some similar ones online from the 70's but none of them had the flat-yet-curved rear triangle combo like this one. We'll just call it a beer shelf. I'm gonna extend the seat tube so my knees aren't so bent,
other than that she kinda fits (it's good to be small!).
Looking forward to my first mini-ride ever this sunday with some of the mini-bike army.
yee-haw.

the devil in higher edumacation

according to robin, it snowed 6 cookies today.

we all handle stress differently, sometimes we hunker down and bang out what is needed. somtimes we opt instead to get baked with a few friends and on a 9 o'clock whim throw together
the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies in less than 4 minutes.
srsly, less than 4.

I've been battling my literature review for the last 2 weeks. i'm making progress but it's quite possibly the hardest section of the thesis to write. so far, my master's degree is the most masochistic endeavor I have entered into, one reason being that I rarely see the fruits of my labour. I sometimes miss working at the food coop where I managed stocking and receiving.
It was rad to see the product of my efforts every day(and i got a hell of a workout and tons of free organic food to boot!). sure it wasn't giving my brain an acedemic workout (one of the reasons I wanted to go back to school) but i at least i got a sense of daily gratification, which is often lacking in grad skool.

I've definitely been feeling detached from my thesis for the last 6 months. I used to be so fired up about getting other people fired up about science but my passion has waned as i ran into hurdle after hurdle. Oddly enough, a book I read on learning styles last weekend has begun a rekindling of that passion and it feels good. cognitive science is pretty rad shit.

For a long time there was no end in sight. getting data made the glint at the end of the tunnel become static. getting the lit review completed will bring it into full view. tonights fucking off hasn't furthered my goal but let's just go ahead and call it therapy.
tasty, tasty, therapy.

In other news:

Daniel Johnson's 'Hi, how are you?' album, which is probably the most successful cassette tape recording ever, was just re-released as a limited edition vinyl last week. I've been millimeters away from pressing buy for several days now.
so hard to resist.

vancouver weather

i'm kinda known around these parts as someone who bitches about the weather. I won't disagree but i have to say that vancouver gives me lots material to work with. 

For example, here is an excerpt from the vancouver weatherpage forecast for tomorrow:

'We are expecting a mostly dry day on Tuesday but the air mass will be a bit on the unstable side meaning anything can happen.'

I've learned that you have 2 options here:
always carry a rain jacket/umbrella or be prepared to get wet and deal with it.

I'm getting used to the rain but i do miss the sun of TN.  if only the Alleghenian orogeny had occurred more recently than 300 million yrs ago. This summer was a bit chilly and rainy but this fall has had way less rainy bike rides than expected. Although, it's currently pissing rain in the city snow is falling in the mtns and that's exciting. 

Tonight, i'm gonna hunker down inside to write my thesis and eat the last of the cookies i baked saturday nite. They didn't come out flat (thanks to shortening not butter) and i avoided over-cooking 'em again. 
looks like i've got my baking skillz back. 
woot!

an introduction

Howdy. Soapboxpudding here. 
I created this blog in the summer but until now have let it lie dormant.
Time to rectify that.
I've gone through a lot of upheavel lately and am now reconnecting with neglected parts of myself, including my creativity and sense of self.

I don't have a clearly defined directions for this blog so we'll see where it goes. I do know that it won't include long personal posts. I can't stand that shit. I do have a hankering that it will include brief bits about some of the following:
science/geology, bikes, dogs, shit, and the humour and randomness I've been finding 
in the people around me and my current geographic location. 

so to begin, here's a hello from me and the bean.

thinks i'd like to sit in:

Jello (mission accomplished 1998)
Noodles (mission accomplished 2003)
Tapioca pudding
Tiramisu
Lemon-meringue pie
Adzuki beans
nouget
coffee beans
baked beans
marshmallow
creme brulee
nutella
yogurt (vanilla preferably)
co-co wheats
grits