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.