Great News! I’m up to sorting out the references in my thesis. I think I’m done the writing part and once I’m done this reference sorting, I’m going to give it to the department head and let him deal with it. I’m writing a Master’s while working on a PhD because of a personality conflict that lead me to leaving a PhD project 3.5 years in. My former supervisor doesn’t want to have anything to do with me so I don’t think he’ll want to edit/approve my thesis (and if he does, I don’t want him to as one of the areas of conflict is about writing style). I have no idea of what is going to happen, but the head wants me to hand it in and get credit for the work I did, so I’ll let him handle the field of land mines that will be getting this approved.
In the bad news category, D and I spent the weekend using the majority of a box of Kleenex 3-ply tissues with lotion. Yup, we got “the cold” that’s been going around. Knocked us flat out. I can’t really tell you much about what we did (I remember eating Chicken and Gnocchi Soup and doing a jigsaw puzzle) but it’s now Monday evening, so I guess we survived.
I never did write about D’s birthday party. It was a party because despite having lived here for almost 4 years, we haven’t had a party yet and a lot of his friends had never been here. We picked a weekend, then noticed it was the day before his birthday, so a party it became. There were a few last minute cancellations (as can be expected with toddlers and flu season), we ended up with 4 people under 3 years old and 9 older than me (I made15 total). This highlight was a 15 month old getting a hand into a bowl of hummus and finger painting on the coffee table. I wanted to join in, but his mother looked so horrified that I handed her a paper towel to clean up urgently. Everyone was fed and happy and I got several compliments on my lasagna and monster quesadilla (like a Mexican lasagna with layers of cheese and spinach and refried beans – it’s from a cookbook by the Dietitians of Canada so it must be healthy right?).
What else has been happening here. Last night we went to my parent’s house for dinner and slid through an intersection on the way home – yup, it’s snowing again. I’m about ready for winter to be over. We didn’t get any pictures snowboarding 2 weekends ago, so I’ll attach one here from last year – this is my brother carving it up at Holimont. This same brother currently has offers from 4 prestigious universities to do his PhD and several have yet to respond. We’re gonna be a highly overeducated family!
Knittingwise, I’m up to the decreases on Shedir from the cashmerino aran my knittyboard SP sent. I’m hoping it’s not too big around. If it is, I’m going to redo it with only 6 repeats around so it’s a snowflake on the top. That’ll make my new supervisor happy. I’m past the heel on the second D blue sock. There’s only the 21 stripes to go up the leg. I did find a really cool bindoff today on the net – luckily I left a REALLY long tail on the first sock, so I can undo the cast off I did on it and redo it in this awesome way.
It wouldn’t be a good day without a gratuitous kitten picture right? Well, I have two. D really likes this first picture from when I was trying to picture the yarn the other day and the second one D got of Fred sleeping yesterday. He is the least cat-like cat when it comes to sleeping.
Fred has started testing gravity. He wants to make sure that the mammals with opposable thumbs that change their fur daily haven’t repealed the law of gravity in the last 5 minutes. If it moves, it’s fair game to be pushed off the ends of whatever it’s on. This has lead to an increase in the entropy in our house. That’s my excuse for the untidiness and I’m sticking to it!
SPALC 