Generation gap

So not all teenagers are rude, inconsiderate and oblivious...Walking in to school this morning, there was a kid ahead of me and I was just a couple of steps too far behind him to catch the door as he went in but he actually turned back and apologized for not keeping the door open for me and then proceeded to hold the second door wide open for me to go in first. There is still hope for our youth!

Meanwhile on my way home this afternoon, some woman pulling out of the parking garage at Westmount Square drove straight past the sidewalk into my path while looking the other way and when she did turn her head to check if any cars were coming she did not even see me or notice that she had come within a foot of running me over. Women drivers, sheesh!

Last week's bbq photos

BBQ Pics

I think she liked it, revisited...

MicroAsg2.pdf

For those of you interested!

A good beginning to the week

Monday morning was my first Basic Biochemical Analysis class. The 9:30 start did not in any way alleviate my dread of the day. I guess the heat finally started getting to me cos I really did not want to be going to school yesterday morning. Luckily my mood improved by mid-day. We had Cathy & Eric over for supper and unloaded a few of the leftover burgers on them (but we didn´t manage to get them to take any home, darn!) And for dessert, we taste-tested my homemade vanilla frozen yogurt. I will have to make it again & tweak the recipe cos I am nowhere near to rivaling Chapman´s!

Lazy, hazy days of summer

Saturday was a beautiful day for a picnic which is what the plan was, how appropriate! My class got together on Ile Ste-Hélène for a wonderful food fest. Everyone brought some kind of dish typical to their country (samosas, samsa, couscous, dumplings, sushi and lots more but I don´t know the names...) plus we had hot dogs and chicken burgers and regular burgers (which we didn´t even end up cooking so Tim & I will be eating lots of hamburgers in the next few weeks!) Tim & I had gone over early to stake out a shady spot and set things up and it was 2 o´clock by the time everyone had showed up and we imposed the cooking on Tim. Lots of fun was had by all, playing soccer & frisbee, blowing soap bubbles and chasing after little kids. It was neat too to get to meet people´s better-halfs & kids. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end, it broke up around 6 and needless to say, we weren´t hungry for supper. So we decided to beat the evening heat by going to see Batman Begins. Very enjoyable and I only nodded off once, very momentarily (of course, it was during a car chase scene!)

Sunday we were supposed to go for a bike ride with Cathy & Eric but we "bailed" on them because of the pouring rain. So we did some Sunday shopping instead. Luckily the rain subsided by mid-afternoon so Tim got to play softball and I got to go watch him as I had no homework to do. Good game, but who ever heard of a tie in softball?!? Weirdo rules...

Softball

We had a realy good game last night against TMR, unfortunately we lost it in the 10th inning. We would have had more runs if their shortstop hadn't been so good. I think he got at least 3 double plays off of us. Gotta stop hitting singles...

I think she liked it...

Re: Assignment 2


"Hi Christine,

This is the best assignment I have received. This is exactly what I was looking for. It's creative, original and covers all the labs and reflects on all the steps taught along the way. It deserves 100% and I wonder if you would allow me to show it to other students as an example. I really enjoyed reading your assignment.

Have a great three-day rest before classes start.

Yolanda

Dawson College"

MicroAsg2.pdf

Day off

As you can see, I've been too busy to blog...Intensive Microbiology was, well, intense! But it is over now, I emailed my last assignment last night. Hopefully the teacher will appreciate creativity...our assignment was to write up how to maintain sterility in the lab, the techniques used, etc. So I wrote it a bit in story form, about a student named Christine and how she performed each experiment. I even started with "Once upon a time" and finished with "Happily ever after, the end" ! I'll know by Monday how that went over as our marks should be in by then. But this class was really good even if it was a lot to take in in a short period of time. I feel like I really learnt a lot about working in a lab and the teacher was really amazing. So today is a day of rest, I don't know what I'm up to yet but I'll be sure to write about it later!

Weekend update

Well, I guess we had a busy weekend seeing that it is now Monday evening and I´m just getting around to posting the last few days´ goings-on...Let´s see, Thursday evening we took possession of Ganache (a.k.a. Birdie) as we are budgie-watching her while Mommy-France is away. Mommy-France was quite reluctant to leaver her but I assured her she is in good hands (or wings as the case may be!) We´ve put her in the dining room for now and she has ventured out of her cage a few times. She´s not too good at finding places to land yet though. She usually ends up quickly retreating back to her cage.

Friday morning was hair-grooming time. Tim gave himself his bi-weekly trim and I hennaed my hair. I would post a picture but I don´t have one yet! Anyhow, I guess it doesn´t show drastically as not everyone has noticed that I coloured my hair red. Or maybe I did a bad job of it & they´re just being polite by not mentioning it!!!

We took off in the afternoon to go over to Cindy & Andrew´s (curling/softball pals) as it was Cindy´s second annual 29th birthday celebration. Andrew had done an amazing looking roast on the bbq but we were about to leave for our softball game just as he was going to carve it. So we got a few slices to go but needless to say, we went back to the party (to the food) after our game. Should I even mention how the game went? 30-1! And no, not in our favour! I blame it on the wind...At least I managed one decent hit and one or two catches.

Saturday we invited ourselves out to Rigaud to see Steph & Olaf. Ome, their eight month old kitten had given birth to four kittens of her own the day before (precocious one, isn´t she?!) The kittens were absolutely adorable. 4 little stripey bundles mewing away with their eyes still shut tight. We went for a walk on the mountain and managed to regain all the mosquito bites that had faded from the previous weekend. Swarms & swarms & swarms of them, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!

Yesterday we took a ride over to the Shore & checked out Cathy & Eric´s gazebo. Very nice. (check out the photos at www.rambleoncat.blogspot.com)

And Day 1 of Microbiology began today. Oh boy. We already have our first test on Wednesday. Today was mostly spent learning how to use a microscope (with a sidebar of Chair 101 - how to properly adjust one´s lab chair!) I got to demonstrate my limited artistic abilities in trying to reproduce various drawings of the slides we were looking at. Mixed green algae nevr looked so awful! Five hours in the lab sure made for a tired Christine. But I did manage to do an hour and a half of reading to review today & prepare for tomorrow. Now ask me if I retained any of what I read! Staining, smears, Kingdoms, Phylums, eukaryotes, prokaryotes...zzzzz......