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.