Transition to weebly

So after a lot (not really a lot) of consideration, I've decided to make the transition over to Weebly just because Blogspot drives me crazy with page formatting constraints. I'm still more comfortable with Blogspot's UI but if I want to have a blog and pages, Weebly still offers the most versatile formatting and is easy to build a full site with.

I know, I know, I've changed blogs so many times in the past. First wordpress, then tumblr, then blogspot, back to wordpress, and then blogspot, then tumblr, and back to blogspot, and then another blogspot attempt, and now weebly. The difference this time is I'm happy with how the new blog looks (because it's so customizable, it's crazy! I shouldn't be allowed this much freedom in design) and I'm actually updating the blog on a regular basis.

Click here for my new blog!

The Blog of Monte Cristo

According to my Kobo, I'm only 6% done (that's 8 chapters, or 74 pages) into The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, who's also written stuff like The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask -- all of which I've seen movie adaptations for in French class way back in grade 9 (2007? probably). As always, I have a running commentary in my mind and usually by the time I sit down to think and blog about it I've forgotten most of the thoughts.

(book cover borrowed from Goodreads.com)

I've debated the value of Tweeting some of my thoughts as I read (@swanships), but I generally don't use Twitter much at all. Maybe I'll give it a go again? We'll see.

Alright guys and gals if you see random comments out of context it's because I'm tweeting my reading of The Count of Monte Cristo.

— Alice (@swanships) June 18, 2014

Try as I might, I can't get the tweet to centre itself on the page. It's a minor issue, but it's bothering me. Maybe I'll just... not embed tweets?

In the meantime, here are some preliminary thoughts on the book thus far:

• Villefort is actually a pretty sympathetic character. I don't know if it's personal bias or what. Maybe it's just because I've only read up to Château d'If so even in the film adaptation he was sympathetic up to that point.

James Frain
as Villefort



Guy Pearce
as Fernand Mondego

• Fernand didn't start off as Edmond's best friend? That makes the entire betrayal arc (aka the entire plot) somehow less epic. I mean, it's still epic, being betrayed in such a fashion and spending 18 (I think?) years in prison for something you've never done, but being betrayed by one's best friend adds a whole new level do it. I think the film did that well.

The .epub I have has a really ... not appealing cover.
Is that supposed to be Edmond or Dumas?
Why can't I have a cover with the Château d'If too?

grilled goodies

I cannot express how much I love my panini press. I've made almost everything BUT paninis on it. I grilled some eggplant and zucchini (thank you Ksenia for showing me that not all zucchini is evil, just the raw stuff they put in salads) and added a ton of protein on the side. 

Note to self: season the veggies more.

Grilled zucchini and eggplant, tea egg, two different types of tofu.

Little updates, as told by Instagram

[massive post about everything that's happened so far this week below]

The MCAT is done, I'm back in Hamilton running experiments (all day, every day!), and have started hitting the gym in earnest. Also eating healthy because now I actually have time to cook properly for myself and experiment with new ways of preparing veggies.

Before I came back I faced the eternal struggle of which books to bring back with me. Here's my shelf of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time (someone borrowed The Eye of the World from me 2 years ago. They haven't read it nor have they given it back, and I recently got a copy of The Gathering Storm for $5 at Indigo, so I'm 2 books away from owning the entire series. Only The Gathering Storm was bought new; the rest came from 3 years' worth of scavenging used book stores and the Thrift Store), and Tolkien (yes, I own two copies of The Children of Hurin and The Silmarillion. Long story short, Ksenia got me the softcover version of The Children of Hurin for my birthday, but the hardcover one went on sale and she got it, but she lost the receipt to the softcover. So now I have both. And I bought the softcover The Silmarillion at Indigo, and on the same day I paid the Thrift Store around the corner a visit and voilà, there was a used hardcover copy of it. So I bought it and kept the new one because The Silmarillion is one of those books you don't just turn away. I also had an extra secondhand copy of the Lord of the Rings (movie cover edition) but my bookshelf was overflowing so I re-donated that set. The set I currently own was a Christmas gift from a family friend, right around the time I first saw The Return of the King (remind me to blog about how I got into the Lord of the Rings in the first place), so it's been around a while.). And then there are my classics collection, of which I've only read half. I've had the set since grade 4 and never really read any of it after middle school, even though now I should be able to actually understand the books. But, since I've got my Kobo, I don't need to lug around the classics because they're all under public domain and I can download them easily.

Done the MCAT!

I didn't know I had scheduled my MCAT for a Friday the 13th until somebody pointed it out a month ago. Was I fazed? Not really. But it was a bit of a surprise that I hadn't noticed it.

Still, today felt good. I can't discuss details because I signed a confidentiality agreement, but the Verbal Reasoning section went more smoothly than I could have hoped for and everything else was pretty much...par for the course. I think. 

My pre-MCAT selfie. Gameface ON. Purse full of food READY. Phone and Ring Of Barahir CHECK. Let's go kick some MCATbutt.

Back in Toronto!

It's been a while since I last updated, but that's understandable, seeing I've been studying for my MCAT almost non-stop for the past 2 weeks. I wish I had time to write more about the interesting things I've done since the last update, but there's really no time for any of that right now. Study, study, study. 

How do I feel? Pretty confident but at the same time still uncertain. My VR average is higher than it was last year, and I haven't really gotten below the double digits so that's a good sign. BUT I've been practicing with the AAMC tests I've already taken last year, which means the passages aren't brand new. I don't remember any of the answers to the passages, but I did remember all of the passages so I'm not sure if that has influenced my practice test scores. I also took a Kaplan free test and got a miraculous 12 on VR, BUT again it was weird. It was a weird test in general because instead of 40Q in 60min over 7 passages, it was 40Q in 50min over 6 passages. I'm not concerned about timing since I'm a fast test-taker, but having one less passage than normal means less passages to be stumped by...

Either way, it'll all be done and over with in less than 48 hours. I'm back in Toronto, for the first time since February.

Until next time (when I am free from the shackles of MCAT!),

~ Alice out

Eggplants and "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer

It's been a long week. I'm tired. I've been pretty darn tired for the past few days. It might be that I've actually started going back to the gym on a daily basis now; it might be some hormonal thing that will fix itself it a few days. Either way it shouldn't last long, especially if I sleep and eat properly.

Speaking of eating, I took a trip to Fortinos on Tuesday and spent a good $60 on groceries + some household supplies. Among my buys were eggplants that were on clearance - they looked like they were about to die (i.e. go bad) soon, so on Wednesday (after I found out the machine I used at the lab was being used by someone else) I resolved to cook the eggplants:

They are:

• Grilled eggplant drizzled with a blend of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, oregano, salt, and pepper. 
• Stir fry eggplant with green onions and salt
• Tofu in hoisin sauce with green onions and thickened with flour.

Retrospectively, the balsamic vinegar was excessive and in the future I might just season the grilled eggplant without it. The hoisin sauce was supposed to go with the stir fry eggplant, but at the last moment I realized the tofu had passed its best before date and that I should probably cook it before it spoils. Unsure of whether it was already spoiled, I didn't want to risk wasting the eggplant so I decided to cook the tofu with the hoisin instead of just lumping everything together.

Everything turned out a lot better than I expected; the tofu was a little sour but that was because of the hoisin, I think. Besides, I haven't gotten sick after two meals so I'm going to take that as a good sign.

-

I've already mentioned that I came home from the lab early on Wednesday; I neglected to mention I only ran experiments on Monday. I took Tuesday off, as usual, and came back Wednesday to find the spectrophotometer I needed was being booked out by the grad students that particular day, so I left almost immediately after and came home to cook. I woke up Thursday morning feeling exhausted and nauseous and very late, so I took another day off. And I usually don't stick around after lab meetings on Fridays so I came home after that.

Last night I began reading Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. 

My high school English teacher (because I only had one, but that's a story for a different time) had recommended it to me half a decade ago in grade 11, and I thought it was fascinating at the time but never got around to reading it. Eventually, I forgot the whole thing existed, until last night when I stumbled across a Reddit post about Mt. Everest and the bodies that lined the path towards the summit. Then I remembered an IMAX film I watched about an Everest expedition in which a mountaineer died shortly after making a phone call to his heavily-pregnant wife. After some digging, I found out that the movie I was thinking of was simply titled Everest.

It described the 1996 Everest Disaster, and to my surprise, Jon Krakauer (a name that had a ring to it such that despite never having read his works, I would remember forever) was part of the expedition team and that Into Thin Air was his account of what transpired. Funny, I had never associated Krakauer and the film.

I tore through the book in record time (nearly 300 pages in less than 18 hours). It was as poignant as I remember the film was. While I enjoyed the book for its quality of writing and narration, I felt guilty for enjoying it as a narrative because real people lost their lives 18 years ago.

It's a good book; I recommend it to anyone who has even the slightest interest in Everest, mountaineering, adventures, or just the outside world in general. I was too young to know anything when the tragedy occurred, but nearly two decades later it still hits me just as hard.

A N T S

Woke up to my floor crawling with a dozen large garden ants :(

They were pretty much all over the floor, mostly concentrated under my desk where I think they're crawling through a hole in the ground. I figured it was the stuff in my garbage and recycling bin so I emptied those, and then mopped the entire floor with Swiffer WetJet. There are less now, but I still get maybe one every couple hours. Before today I'd only get about two a week, if at all.

This fella made it all the way to my desk.
There was one who made it up my bedside table, another one on my bookshelf...
they're everywhere.

It apparently happens in this house when the weather gets warm, so either we'll have to talk to the landlord about it or I'm going to make some DIY spray or something to prevent ants from getting all over my room.

Also spotted a centipede in the bathtub as I was brushing my teeth - I tried to kill it but it scuttled away into the shower curtains and I couldn't find it anymore.

Speaking of bugs, this giant monster of an insect was hovering on our front porch, effectively barring my way in after a quick trip to Fortinos yesterday.

It's not a bumblebee... nor is it a wasp. It's massive.
What is it?

Operation Camelopardalids

Rosie and I left at around 2:15am to head towards Faculty Hollow for the Camelopardalids meteor shower. It was cold enough to warrant a thick fleece sweater outside, and Rosie had the foresight to bring along rain jackets for us to sit/lie on while we watched the stars.

The sky was clear; a good sign. The forecast had indicated variable cloudiness, but there were barely any clouds and if there were, they were wispy and not in the north. Once we arrived at Faculty Hollow I spotted the Big Dipper -- fine, I spotted part of Ursus Major, but just the dipper part as well as a single deer meandering the Hollow. It disappeared quickly into the woods as we approached, and I tried to follow (with flashlight in hand), but the hill was too steep and I didn't feel like dying quite yet, so I headed back up and we set up camp in the middle of Faculty Hollow.

We had a good view of the sky and the empty patch of sky where the Camelopardalids were supposed to be -- where was Camelopardalis? I couldn't see it. The only stars I recognized were the Big Dipper and Polaris. Cassiopeia was either hidden behind the trees or there was too much light pollution to spot her. Speaking of light pollution -- when I proposed we set up at Faculty Hollow I had imagined it to be darker. I mean, the Hollow itself had no light, which was great, but street lamps lined the path behind it and spoiled the night sky in general, but we still got a good view of the sky, even if it was annoying to have to physically put my hand next to my right eye and pull my hood practically over my eyes to block out the light. On our way back we would discover that our neighbourhood actually had fewer lights and was less well-lit, even if houses and trees blocked a good chunk of the northern sky.

I pulled out my tablet and fired up the Star Chart app to see if there were any constellations/stars we could focus on, and to make sure we were actually facing Camelopardalis. It's a great app that uses the gyroscope/accelerometer to map the night sky as you would see if when you're holding your tablet up. The only downside was trying to pass the tablet to Rosie to show her something, since it is sensitive to changes in direction. She had her iPad fired up and playing Wall-E's Define Dancing - suitable music for what we were doing.

Camelopardalis and surrounding constellations on the Star Chart app.

The meteor storm's peak was projected to be at 2am-4am, with the peak peak (?) at 3:00am. Shortly before 3, I saw my first meteor -- of the night and in my life. It streaked slowly across the sky, just a little above Polaris. After that I may have seen fainter streaks, but honestly I can't be sure because there was too much light to tell whether it was my eyes playing tricks on me or actual meteors zooming past.

We left shortly after 3:30am to go home - although there wasn't a spectacular meteor show we were still pretty satisfied. We met three raccoons as we were crossing Cootes.

By the time I was home and settled in bed, it was 4:30am. I woke up at around noon today - later than I had hoped, but still. I saw meteors.

The next showers are scheduled for August 12 (Perseids), October 21 (Orionids), November 16 (Leonids), and December 13 (Geminids). I'm really hoping to catch the Perseids because it would still be summer when it happened, and the Orionids, because Orion is very easy to find and I always have a good view of it on my way home.

Until the next blog post, or the next astronomical event,

Alice out ~

PS: After some Googling I came across this Toronto SUN article: Camelopardalid meteor shower a bit of a bust. So I guess it wasn't just our bad location that contributed to a less-than-spectacular show. It's somewhat comforting to know that we didn't do anything wrong. The Universe just doesn't like it when I stargaze. I've yet to have a fully satisfactory stargazing session -- granted, the last time I really did it was in grade 7 at camp. Most times I've been out camping we were either under too many trees to discern anything, or it was raining. It was usually raining.

MAY 24 9:07PM EDIT
Other articles relating to the lack of meteors:

• Rare meteor shower falls short of expectations
• Camelopardalids meteor shower a bust, but not a surprise

new calligraphy supplies + planning for the meteor shower

I had the usual lab meeting this morning, and despite my results looking kind of wonky, my supervisor really liked it! Because it exhibited something seen clinically. I mean, the error bars are still pretty damn large and the plateau wasn't perfectly flat, but it still did stuff at the proper concentration.

I also showed them my data from Tuesday when I got super small error bars on another experiment, and how the data fit a quadratic curve more than it did a linear line of best fit. They liked it, so I was cool with that.

I headed home directly after in hopes of having time to do chores and study (oops, I just ended up sleeping). Made a stop at Curry's, something I've meant to do for the past couple weeks/months. I only wanted to see if they had refill cartridges or ink, but I ended up buying $50 worth of stuff:

• Calli | Daler Rowney - (Burgundy 013), 29.5mL [x]
• Calli | Daler Rowney - (Brown 013), 29.5mL [x]
• Royal India Ink - #95000, 30mL [x]
• Panache Master Calligraphy Set* [x]
• Tombow ABT Brush Pen (Red 856)- [x]
• Tombow ABT Brush Pen (Green 296)- [x]
• Tombow ABT Brush Pen (Purple 606)- [x]
• Tombow ABT Brush Pen (Black N15)- [x]

*I do not recommend this set at all; I will update with another blog post reviewing the stuff I bought at another point.

Curry's didn't have the Staedtler set, but after a quick Google search, Amazon sells them for pretty cheap and I can generally rely on Staedtler's quality (I've been using their triplus fineliners for a few years now) + Curry's actually stocks refill cartridges. When I asked the lady at the register if they had any Sheaffer cartridges she said they didn't, which was disappointing. Again, I'll tell the full story on a separate post.

Tonight is the first and possibly last time we'd get to see the Camelopardalids meteor shower - and I only found out about it yesterday. Weather permitting, I plan on dragging Rosie out in the middle of the night to Faculty Hollow to see if we can't watch a bit of the meteor shower. The last time I made a conscious effort to catch a meteor shower/astronomical event was two years ago - the Lyrids shower. I set my alarm for 3:30am, actually managed to get up and get dressed, and wandered outside. It was cold (mid-April, a day before my biochem final) and although the sky was clear I couldn't really see the sky because I only stayed on my street and the light pollution washed pretty much everything out. So I went back inside after 20 minutes.

Regardless of the outcome of today's adventure, I'll probably make another post about past astronomical events as well -- how I tried to follow the blood moon eclipse during exams but it was drizzling the night it actually happened, how the most stars I've seen in years was actually in Kingston on a tournament, maybe about how Orion's belt pretty much the only (partial) constellation I can recognize on my walks home at night because everything else is washed out.

Until then,

Alice out ~

Flowers from today (L-R)
Found these in front of the general hospital as I was waiting for the bus home.
Bleeding hearts on the front lawn of my former house. I've always really liked them for the vivid colouring and unique shape. To be honest they remind me more of cracked eggshells with egg white/yolk running out than bleeding hearts.

Spent a long time at the lab today; running experiments that turned out more or less okay. We had a meeting with a statistician, not that I really had anything to do with the meeting. But he told us stuff about t-tests and ANOVA (one way and two way!) and relative risks versus odds ratios versus risk difference. Although I took stats last year none of it really made sense. I mean, I got the general gist of what he was talking about but at the same time I was pretty lost and tired. Bonus: the statistician had a British accent. Good call on my part not to wear my I ♥ British Accents tee today. I'm not sure how much he would have appreciated it.

After the meeting we discovered there was a giant box that came for us while we were gone. It was a massive box, 1 metre in all dimensions. We opened it up, and in it were many, many packets of ice, some packing tissue, and two boxes of reagents. They basically packaged 180mL of reagent in 1,000,000mL of box. It was pretty funny.

As I was making the last run of the day, I decided I wanted to go on a solo nature walk. Maybe revisit Chegwin trail behind Les Prince, or maybe see how far Spencer Creek was. Basically avoid going to the gym today, since the weather felt really nice in the morning. Too bad it wasn't as nice once I actually left the lab; it was actually chilly and I was really tired. So I decided against the walk after all. 

I made it home pretty late (compared to usual days, anyway) and ordered take-out from Mr. Gao. Last time I had their food I wasn't overly impressed, and today was the same. I guess I should just take the extra 20 minutes to Dundas and order from Empress Wok instead.

On my way back I spotted a clump of mushrooms on someone's lawn. Since I resolved to actually use Instagram, I took a photo of it, slapped a filter over it and uploaded it to Instagram.

My anthology also came in today - 7 copies of it. Rosie got to read through the whole thing once her class was done, and she discovered a bunch of typos in it (alas, it was inevitable). But she liked it, so that was good. Maybe I'll release a poem or two on occasion, or just post the entire PDF (typos and all) on a separate page. We'll see what happens.

I definitely want to publish another one though, maybe of actual pieces that weren't made up while sleep-deprived and cramming for finals. And less typos. There are also stories that feel unfinished that I'd like to add more to, or just publish an entire anthology of short stories because I'm not much of a poetry person. Although there are several poems I liked in my anthology.

It's Thursday, so as always, I have an early-morning lab meeting tomorrow.

Until the next blog post,

Alice out ~

Springtime calligraphy

Today's experiments ran... not well. The control runs came out pretty good, but as soon as I tried using the AT-D plasma everything fell apart and the results don't make sense. I've re-adjusted some of the calculations, so hopefully tomorrow's runs go much more smoothly.

As I got home I noticed a lone tulip on our front lawn. I'm not sure where its bretheren are, but it was a nice tulip.

While I was uploading that photo I also found one I took of Mac earlier in the month. The daffodils were in full bloom and the sun was shining, and the campus actually looked very pretty for once. Because you know, if there isn't a honking lake in the middle of campus, it's usually grey, wet, cold, and miserable.

I ended up at Williams for dinner because I had no groceries left and HSM meeting began soon, so I parked myself across campus and ordered their chicken quesadilla. It turned out to be very soggy and disappointing, but while I was there I resolved to use one of my Hobbit Moleskine notebooks as the HSM notebook -- after a few weeks of deliberation I decided to use it after all. I had my calligraphy pen on me -- the only remaining working pen -- and set to working on a title page. It took me a lot of tries and a lot of practice, but eventually I gave up on having it look absolutely perfect and I didn't want to rip any more pages out of the book.

Aviary 2.0 and a little bit more

So the lab today I ran 3 more experiments. The first one turned out alright, except one of the samples failed to clot. So I re-made the heparin stock and ran it two more times. All the times were shorter than what I got last week, but the standard deviations were pretty small so I guess it's not so much my pipetting technique than the heparin stocks (which can be partially attributed to my pipetting technique). 

After the lab I met up with Adam again and this time we went for a walk behind Les Prince to the Aviary. It started raining almost as soon as I left the lab, and it was raining hard. I wasn't too deterred though because my boots weren't leaking (yet) and my jacket was holding up pretty well. But by the time I got home to drop my laptop off the rain more or less relented and by the time Adam and I got to Les Prince the sun was actually shining.

We took the trail up to the Aviary, except nobody was there so we just hung around the pheasants and peacocks for a bit. But before we got there, I found out that those weird lettuce things that sprouted everywhere are skunk cabbages and they actually smell like skunk if you broke off a leaf and sniffed it (which we did, oops). And that you should probably never eat the root of a Jack-in-the-pulpit because that stuff a) is a little bit toxic and b) burns the hell outta your throat.

A Jack-in-the-pulpit I found on Google

At the aviary, the male peacock was being all look at me and my majestic-as-fuck feathers to us, and not the female peacock, and it was dancing as well, not just showing its plumage. It was quite literally vibrating.

New card: Safe Travels

Adam is going on an archaeological dig next Monday to Belize, so I figured I might as well procrastinate some more and make a card and put my calligraphy to use. Too bad I had a really hard time to find a working calligraphy pen; I blame it 100% on not having any time during the school year to make anything. I definitely do not neglect my calligraphy supplies. Once I get paid for my lab work I'm going to make a trip down to Curry's on Dundurn to get more cartridges and ink, and maybe pick up some of their mixed paper grab bags.

As always, cards can be found on the Cards page. That is where I will be keeping all of my cards, since Blogspot doesn't seem to be as customizable as Tumblr. I'm actually thinking of transitioning over to Weebly just because they make designing the layout so easy. We'll see, I guess.

Safe Travels - May 2014

Base - blank card, blank parchment card

Belize - cardstock paper & scrapbooking paper

Fish - scrapbooking punch-out shapes

Fedora - cardstock paper

Lettering - scrapbooking punch-out shapes, gold metallic marker

Outlines- gold metallic marker
Calligraphy - PIGMA Calligrapher felt-tip marker
Words (interior) - fineliner
Envelope - parchment envelope & gold certificate seal

So this card was quite an adventure. At first the base was just the parchment card (see top-right image). It had a helicopter as well as the cut-out of Belize and the fish, but when it was time to do the lettering, the only calligraphy pen I had was a super cheap one that bled and fuzzed everywhere. The card became unusable, but I managed to salvage the cut-outs and transfer them (with the additional layer of parchment underneath) to the blue card. Then I decided to continue using the scrapbooking pack I had and added the letter embellishments on to the blue card. I also got rid of the helicopter because it looked super childish and it didn't fit in with the other elements.

Then it was time to do the interior. Luckily, one of my three PIGMA markers still worked (and it was the right width too, thank goodness) so I used that to ink in the main message and added the extra words in with fineliner. The thing about calligraphy is, it's a) hard to write consistently for a long period of time, especially with felt-tip markers, and b) is hard to read/fit on to the page. 

The envelope was initially the blue one that was paired with the base, but after consideration I used the parchment envelope instead because it fit the theme of the card more and because the blue envelope had enough wax on it to render the felt-tip ineffective. The gold seal was left over from a certificate pack I bought last year as part of a club event hosted for middle school students, so I added that as the finishing touch.

I only wish the lettering on the front was better; if only I had a gold metallic calligraphy marker instead of a fineliner, then it would have been perfect.

This card easily took a huge chunk of time, as with any card that involves calligraphy. However, this one took the most time (apart from the poinsettia card) solely because I had to scrap the parchment base idea, and because I spent a lot of time looking for a calligraphy pen that works.

The Aviary

Yesterday Rosie and I decided to take another Cootes walk. It started raining almost as soon as we stepped out the door, but we just donned our rain coats (or rather, Rosie gave me her raincoat so I didn't have to make a detour home) and headed out nonetheless.

We took the one remaining fork that we didn't take the other 2 times we went; it just led to some residential neighbourhood and wasn't too fun so we doubled back and went to the Aviary. It was actually open this time, and we made it 20 minutes before closing time so we had a good look at the birds. There were mostly pheasants, doves, a pair of peacocks, and a lot of parrots. One of the cockatoos was going nuts in his cage, squawking at max volume and displaying his crest.

Rosie met her twin.

More photos from our trail/hike yesterday, courtesy of Rosie's iPod:

(Clockwise from large photo):

A small creek that sprung up. Rosie's iPod's camera was good enough to capture the rain hitting the surface of the water.

Deer behind the Aviary. This photo was taken during the Easter weekend. It was just foraging with a few pals not 3 meters from us.

Weird cabbage-like vegetation from the Easter weekend walk. When we went yesterday they've all grown into full-sized vegetables. Rosie and I couldn't figure out what they were or if they were even edible.

More deer, this time just behind Les Prince on our way back from our walk the weekend after Easter. When I tried to approach them they all scampered off, but we spotted more just hovering near the alpine towers.

Whenever I have the time, I like to make cards for people - friends, family, professors - for any occasion that could possibly warrant a card. All I hope for is that they like it as much as I like making it!

Safe Travels - May 2014

Base - blank card, blank parchment card

Belize - cardstock paper & scrapbooking paper

Fish - scrapbooking punch-out shapes

Fedora - cardstock paper

Lettering - scrapbooking punch-out shapes, gold metallic marker

Outlines- gold metallic marker
Calligraphy - PIGMA Calligrapher felt-tip marker
Words (interior) - fineliner
Envelope - parchment envelope & gold certificate seal

So this card was quite an adventure. At first the base was just the parchment card (see top-right image). It had a helicopter as well as the cut-out of Belize and the fish, but when it was time to do the lettering, the only calligraphy pen I had was a super cheap one that bled and fuzzed everywhere. The card became unusable, but I managed to salvage the cut-outs and transfer them (with the additional layer of parchment underneath) to the blue card. Then I decided to continue using the scrapbooking pack I had and added the letter embellishments on to the blue card. I also got rid of the helicopter because it looked super childish and it didn't fit in with the other elements.

Then it was time to do the interior. Luckily, one of my three PIGMA markers still worked (and it was the right width too, thank goodness) so I used that to ink in the main message and added the extra words in with fineliner. The thing about calligraphy is, it's a) hard to write consistently for a long period of time, especially with felt-tip markers, and b) is hard to read/fit on to the page. 

The envelope was initially the blue one that was paired with the base, but after consideration I used the parchment envelope instead because it fit the theme of the card more and because the blue envelope had enough wax on it to render the felt-tip ineffective. The gold seal was left over from a certificate pack I bought last year as part of a club event hosted for middle school students, so I added that as the finishing touch.

I only wish the lettering on the front was better; if only I had a gold metallic calligraphy marker instead of a fineliner, then it would have been perfect.

This card easily took a huge chunk of time, as with any card that involves calligraphy. However, this one took the most time (apart from the poinsettia card) solely because I had to scrap the parchment base idea, and because I spent a lot of time looking for a calligraphy pen that works.

Mother's Day Card - May 2014

Base - blank parchment card

Green background - cardstock paper

Floral background - scrapbooking paper

Tree branch & birds - cardstock paper

Lettering - scrapbooking punch-out shapes, Sharpie fineliner

Embellishments - scrapbooking stickers

I made this once I realized I wouldn't be able to make it home for Mother's Day this year, the first one in memory that I've missed. Inside is an apologetic note about not being home.

Birthday Card - May 2013

Base - cardstock paper, ornamental stationery paper

Circles - paint samples

Lettering (cover) - silver metallic marker

Lettering (interior)- Gold and green calligraphy dip ink, brown calligraphy cartridge pen

One of my favourite calligraphy projects. I made this for a fencing teammate who was leaving us for U of T because his research supervisor is re-locating. I decided on the day of the fencing get-together of the year that I would make this.

The gold/green effect in the letterings was an accident -- I used a cartridge calligraphy pen to dip into the gold ink, but there was leftover green ink within the nib, causing this blending effect.

The cover didn't measure up to my standards; the inside was more or less perfect and the front looks like a 10-year-old made it. I didn't plan what the card would look like on the outside -- opposite of what I do with the rest of my cards.

Poinsettia Card - December 2012

Base - cardstock paper

Poinsettia leaves & petals - foil scrapbooking paper reinforced with cardstock paper

Poinsettia centre - cardstock paper, gold calligraphy ink, gold metallic marker

I made two of the exact same cards - one went to a friend while the other was for my family. They took a very long time. I printed out a template for poinsettia petals and leaves, stenciled them on the scrapbooking paper, glued it to cardstock for reinforcement, and cut them out individually. The scissors I had were not sharp and the handle was a little too small, making progress slow and painful. One of my favourite cards because colours worked out so well + the foil designs on the scrapbook paper highlight the poinsettia perfectly.

Birthday Card - November 2012

Base - cardstock paper

Button - corrugated cardboard, Sharpie

Pocket watch - cardstock paper, gold metallic marker, Sharpie

Collar & Hankerchief - cardstock paper

Embellishments - fineliner

Made for a friend who watches ABC's Suits. The message inside the card "You got Litt up!" is one of the characters' catchphrases. The collar is 3D - it flips up.

Birthday Card - August 2012

Base - cardstock paper

Edges - scrapbooking paper

Rabbit - cardstock paper

Lettering - silver metallic marker

Made for my cousin, who was turning 24. He was born in the year of the rabbit.

Birthday Card - July 2012

Base - blank card

Lettering & Embellishments - silver&gold metallic markers, Sharpie

This card was extremely simple - marker on a blank card. I printed out a treble cleff vector, cut out out and traced it over.

Birthday Card - July 2012

Base - cardstock paper

Squares - cardstock paper

Embellishments - foil scrapbooking paper

Lettering - gold&silver metallic marker, Sharpie fineliner

Family of Cards - May & June 2012

Con-graduations

Base - cardstock paper

Stripes - cardstock paper

Graduation cap & tassles - cardstock paper

Lettering - Sharpie fineliner

Outline - silver metallic marker

Glue stick and hot glue gun

Made for my brother for his elementary school graduation. I am extremely proud of this pun.

The edges of the stripes and graduation cap are peeling off due to lack of glue & the glue stick being dry.

Father's Day Card

Base - cardstock paper

Background - teal scrapbooking paper

Tie - cardstock paper 

Lettering - silver metallic marker

Glue stick and hot glue gun

Tie and collar are 3D. The card turned out smaller than planned but still good.

Mother's Day Card - May 2012

Base - blank card

M - foil scrapbooking paper

Lettering - silver metallic marker

Glue stick and hot glue gun

This was made on the same day as the Thank-You card.

Thank You Card - May 2012

Base - blank card
Outside flap - foil scrapbooking paper
Lettering - Sharpie
Glue stick and hot glue gun

This was the first card I had made in a long time. I tried experimenting with an X-acto knife instead of using scissors, but the cuts, while straighter, were not clean enough. Because the card base was glossy, using a calligraphy marker or pen was impossible; I had to use a Sharpie instead and the result wasn't quite what I was aiming for.

Shoulder updates & the anthology

My shoulder's been feeling a lot better Friday. I attributed it to not having to do any pipetting, but when I carried about $20 worth of juice home from Fortinos today, I've realized that the pain was completely gone. I highly doubt the anti-inflammatories had much to do with it; it's been almost 3 weeks--half the time it would take to heal broken bone, and plenty of time for strains to die down.

Yet, clumsy me managed to smash my elbow into the headboard as I was trying to prop myself higher in bed while simultaneously balancing a laptop on my knees. It hit my funny bone, sending a numbing jolt down to my ring and pinky fingers, and I realized that the funny bone was actually the ulnar nerve. I might have learned it at some point in anatomy, but I can't recall if I actually have.

Well, now I know.

I hit my funny bone as I was editing my anthology (after 3 hours, it's still tingling). Sometimes I can really surprise myself with how well I can write/BS. One of my favourite poems in the anthology was literally the result of not having enough pages 72 hours before the deadline, and contains some pretty cool metaphors that only sleep-deprived me could come up with.

And then there's the matter of the acknowledgements section. It's about three pages long in the anthology (a small book format), and starts off with this gem:

I mean, I wrote it a month ago and I thought it was pretty brilliant at the time. I still think it is. 

I've just put the order for my anthology in through LuLu; I plan on ordering 7 copies. 7 is a good number. One for Bob, one for myself, and one for whoever else wants one.

 ~~Spread the love~~, right?

Wow it's been a long week.

I just woke up from an afternoon nap. I'm kind of really exhausted.

Ran experiments all week except Tuesday and today; Tuesday I was nursing my shoulder (at its worst), and today I decided I couldn't run more experiments in my current state so I left early. When I was running experiments, I was pretty much on my feet for 5 hours straight, and because I was in the lab I couldn't eat or drink unless I took my lab coat and gloves off for break. My logic was though, I might as well finish up as early as possible and just go home early, instead of staying for lunch. I got home late afternoon most days anyway, and I was never really that hungry.

Except for Thursday. I slept late on Wednesday, and got up early enough to make breakfast instead of stopping by the Tim Hortons' on the way to the bus stop. I made eggs and toast, but my throat was too dry for toast (I'm blaming my dehydration on those long hours in the lab). I could barely stand on Thursday; I'm not sure if it was the tiredness or hunger. It also messed up my results; my three runs of experiments on Thursday came out with the greatest standard deviations. I just wanted to get home and sleep, because I had something important later in the afternoon that I wanted to be fully alert for.

I generally don't sleep well anymore - it's a result of odd study hours and bad habits lingering from last term when I didn't have any morning commitments and waking up at 10:30am was perfectly acceptable. Now, I'm getting up at "normal people hours" (7:00-7:30am most days) but still sleeping at 1:00, 2:00, sometimes even as late as 4:00 in the morning. And it's not like I'm studying hard or anything; I'm just awake on the internet, wasting time or chatting with friends.

Things can't continue this way if I'm supposed to do lab work and study for the MCAT, which I haven't really started doing in earnest yet. It's only week two of the summer, and I'm already running out of steam. I guess for me it's a strict 1:00am bedtime, proper breakfast (with carbs. Carbs are important), and no dawdling when I get home.

Let's do this? Let's do this.

The best coffee

It all started as a joke, really. All of it.

Rosie downloaded Tinder a few weeks ago to see what all the fuss was about. She got chatting with a really nice guy, and of course, she received quite a number of, erm, questionable greetings and/or one-liners. And a date for Saturday.

I was intrigued. I was curious. And more importantly, I was procrastinating.

So I downloaded Tinder too.

More meds and a lot of doctors

As somebody who desperately hopes to be a physician one day, I am pretty bad at being a patient.

I don't get things checked out unless it's been bothering me for a long time (see: my shoulder), and I don't take my medication as directed (I forget to!). I am a noncompliant patient; shame on me.

-

Now that a full 24 hours has passed between now and when the medical school acceptances rolled out, I have a bit less anxiety about knowing who got in and who didn't. I mean, sure, I am insanely jealous that hey did and I didn't even get a single interview, but at the same time I'm happy for them. For most of them anyway--the ones who have worked hard and deserved it.

Now that I've had time to reflect a little why I feel this way. I think I've mostly pinpointed it to feeling inferior to my peers. We all started out the exact same. Suddenly they are med students, while I am still kicking around in undergrad. I feel like a small child next to these legends, because let's face it, the people who are in medical school are pretty much demigods in the eyes of BHSc students.

More Ms: Math & Meds

Today's May 13th, aka the date a large handful of Health Scis were waiting for. Med schools released their admissions offers this morning, and I've been avoiding Facebook because I'm in no state to read all the status updates. It just rubs it in how I mucked up my app and MCAT this year. I really want to know where the 4th years are going, but the 3rd years...not so much.

I dropped by the doctor's today to get my shoulder checked up. She said it was probably just muscle strain, and she started me on anti-inflammatories. The MSU insurance package (which I couldn't opt out of because student athlete policy or something) covered 90% of the cost (!), leaving me to pay $1.52. That's...pretty neat! Especially considering I have no idea what our family's insurance policy is/how it works.

While I was waiting for my appointment, I hung around MUSC, just doing physics for the MCAT and I've come to realize just how far I've slipped since the course last year, and how bad at math I am: apparently 60/60=10. Yeah. That bad.

SHINGLES?! (◕︵◕)

Mei suggested that I might have shingles.

I don't want shingles.

I want to be a happy and healthy human being

(◕︵◕)

But it's been a couple hours and the burning/itching is still there. Definitely going to pay the Wellness Centre a visit tomorrow. If it's not shingles maybe at least they can give me some sort of analgesic gel or something to soothe it.

(◕︵◕)

Shoulder things :(

I've mentioned my shoulder in a previous post - I've written about how I probably pulled or pinched a muscle or nerve. The radiating pain has more or less receded, my my shoulder blade will still flare up with pain sometimes. And today, it started itching. I want to say it's a rash, because it's painful and itchy at the same time like one, and when I scratch it there's this strange disconnect - almost like the skin is numb or very thick and leathery. Either way, not all the sensation's there, but there's a dull ache there too. I first became aware of the weird feeling of not feeling myself scratch my injured shoulder when I first realized I injured myself. But this rash-like symptom only came to notice this evening, which is really concerning. I've also discovered a very continuous and straight bump going from my right shoulder to the bottom of my neck, almost completely horizontally across. And then there's a smaller one of those things closer to the outside of my arm.

I looked up the symptoms and either I have a dislocated shoulder (honestly though, on bad days it feels dislocated but slightly less painful), contact dermatitis, allergies, or (the worst), scabies. I really hope it's not scabies or anything related to an infestation of bug/fungi. Because that would be gross.

I've been putting off getting it checked out at the clinic for a while now, but if the rash-thing persists I'll have to go in.

I've never had medical problems before, someone please make it stop :(

It's Friday, which means lab meeting at 9:00am! I set several alarms to make sure I woke early enough to grab breakfast and make it to the bus on time. I did, thankfully, and arrived early enough to be the 3rd person in the room. It was either that or fifteen minutes late, which has happened more often than I care to admit. My presentation was short, just presenting results from Tuesday because we messed up on Monday and Thursday.

I ran the same experiments again today, and now the results actually resemble something conclusive. After the end of a long week, I just wanted to go home and sleep, and that's what I did.

Of course, Friday also means Hannibal.

You can imagine how that went.

The Big Ms

The past week can pretty much be summarized in 8 Ms:  Moving, Mom, Mmm-mm, Marvel, Moleskines, Musical, MCAT, and Mistakes. Most of it happened on Tuesday and Wednesday; I got so caught up in my lab and MCAT work I never got a chance to sit down and write about it -- not that I usually sit down and write about my day in the first place.

So I guess the first big thing is I've decided now is as good a time as any to begin blogging properly (instead of hanging around on Tumblr all the time). It's summer (or so they say; I wouldn't know because I'm still so busy), I've moved to a new house, and I've finally started running experiments in the lab. It's pretty much the freshest start I can hope for right now, and I'm definitely not complaining.