Kitty Playtime

Kitty cuteness continues to grow in leaps and bounds. The kittens are nearly three weeks old now. They can see quite well, and are learning to walk and climb. Interestingly, the runt of the litter was the first to walk, last week (though to be fair, the 'walking' at the moment consists of a few tottering steps, before falling over...hee).

They're also starting to play with each other, as well as us. Here's one responding to having its belly tickled. Too stinkin' cute...

Family Weekend

My mum was in town this weekend, for her annual Neptune musical visit. We had quite a nice day yesterday - some shopping, a trip to the Farmers' Market (where we ran into Stephane Dion, who was pressing the flesh with the electorate - how weird is that?!), and an afternoon spent watching Jane Eyre on DVD.

Went to dinner at Piccolo Mondo, which was excellent as always, then went on to Neptune. The show was...well, it was Beauty and the Beast. Capably produced and acted though, as always. We renewed our subscriptions for next year - the 2008 musical will be The Producers, which I'm quite excited to see.

Field Trip

This week, the project I coordinate has been hosting a training workshop in watershed management, for faculty members from our Asian partner universities. Six participants arrived from Vietnam and the Philippines last weekend, so I've been busy looking after them.

Yesterday, the group got out of the classroom and had a field trip. Luckily, we had an absolutely beautiful, sunny day to head down to the Annapolis Valley. The trainees visited a bunch of sites related to their work, like the tidal power plant in the Annapolis Basin, a farm using ecological drainage methods, and a couple of research test sites measuring water quality. But most of the day was spent at the offices of the Clean Annapolis River Project in Annapolis Royal. The trainees were all very interested, as the folks at the River Project are working on things like river water quality and the viability of the local clam fishery (which has been decimated in recent years by the opening of the tidal power plant).

All that was very well, but since I'm not an environmental scientist, I was far more interested in the building in which the River Project is housed. They're in the old train station in Annapolis Royal, which was restored by a private benefactor a few years ago to its original Arts & Crafts glory. The restoration job is fabulous (there's a short account of it, with a few pictures, here), and it's wonderful to see. Apparently, of the four showcase stations built around 1914 for tourism purposes in NS, Annapolis Royal's is the only one left standing - the others were in Yarmouth (for the ferry to Maine), Digby (for the ferry to New Brunswick and the Pines Resort) and Kentville (for the old rail hotel there). The director of the River Project told me that the woman who spearheaded the restoration spent about $300,000 of her own money, as a labour of love - and now rents the building to the River Project for a mere $500 per month!

Drama

Whooeee. Drama in the office today. Big, big drama.

I see resignations in the near future, I do. People are not happy, and I don't blame them one bit.

Dickens World?!?

Oh God. A new theme park is just about to open in the southeast of England. It's...wait for it...Dickens World. Jesus. I can see the baying packs of schoolchildren - not to mention busloads of waddling North Americans on package tours - now.

I know plenty of historic places have cheeseball tourist attractions (the Loire's Parc des Mini-Chateaux, anyone?), and I suppose they have their place - after all, people have to take their kids somewhere. But a Dickens theme park just seems wrong - especially given that it's sited somewhere out in the wastes of Kent, wedged between a shopping mall and a multiplex cinema. A journo from The Guardian, visiting the site last week, was suitably appalled:

Dickens World feels like Disney gone to the dark side. In place of the Magic Kingdom there is Newgate Prison; instead of talking animals there will be shady characters loitering in dark corners. Although the attractions are all faithfully Dickensian, the larks are very much 21st century. The centrepiece is a boat ride which, loosely speaking, is Great Expectations presented as a log flume.

Flume??!?! It's especially galling given that (in my opinion) no one in the world does a better job of interpreting and presenting heritage than the Brits. They're really letting themselves down with something as naff as Dickens World.

Lovely Spring Day

At lunchtime today, it was an unbelievable 21.7 degrees on the deck. I sat out, drank coffee and enjoyed the sunshine for the first time this year.

Had an inspection tour around the garden this afternoon. The snowdrops (below) seem to have survived the Easter Sunday snowstorm unscathed, and are still blooming. There are a few crocuses about to pop - maybe tomorrow? And the libanotica and daffodils are just on the verge - I imagine we'll see blooms from them in another week or two.

Kitten Update

The kittens are ten days old today. As you can see in the pic above (click to enlarge), their eyes began opening earlier this week. They're still a bit rheumy and bleary though - A. says their vision won't be very good for a while yet.

Happily, they all seem to be doing very well, as is Mother. They're still not very interactive, and don't do much other than sleep, nurse, and wobble about their little cage. I tried introducing one of them to the buns on Thursday, but there wasn't much response. Maybe in another few weeks...hehe.

All Done

So...as of now, my formal teaching duties are discharged. I just submitted final marks for my course.

Results were fairly standard, I think. I awarded two A- grades (yay!), eight B-range grades, eight C-range grades, and four Ds. Unfortunately there were six Fs. Feel kind of bad about that, but I had no alternative - none of those students submitted their final exams, and five of them didn't submit essays, either. Those two assignments together were worth 70% of the final mark. What can you do?

Still, I really enjoyed the experience. I hope I might have another opportunity next year to teach again. Problem is, the conditions have to be right, given the fact that I already work full-time. But we'll see what opportunities arise...

Facebook Again

I was just going to blog about Facebook when Jonathan beat me to the punch. In the last two months or so since I updated my profile there, that place has really started to blow up. It's quite amazing. Despite the fact that I go there only once or twice a week, and haven't really sought anyone out, I've already got 15 friends. And the truly amazing thing, as Jonathan already pointed out, is that 14 of them are people I actually know in real life. This is in stark contrast to MySpace - where I've only met about 5 of the 40 people on my friends list there.

Perhaps it's the fact that people on Facebook use their real names that makes it so much easier to find people. Certainly, I've actively taken steps to make myself semi-anonymous on MySpace - I don't necessarily want people finding me there. Recently, I even made my profile there private after accidentally emailing one of my students from a non-university email account - I certainly wouldn't want my students seeking out either my MySpace page or this blog, as both contain a bit more personal info about me than I feel they really need to know.

Which brings me back to Facebook. Anyone can type in my name there and find me - but all they'll get is generic info about my work and education. I've no plans at the moment to include any personal info there (if for no other reason than that I don't want to get stuck having to update yet another internet presence). And I actually find the mini-feed and status updates can be a little creepy - I know I can set up filters for different users to see different levels of information about me, but that seems like an awful lot of work.

It's very amusing, though. Earlier this week I had a giggle looking at the Facebook profiles of some of my students (four of them found me and added me to their friends). Of course, this includes the running 'wall' commentary among several of them, that took place early last week on the subject of their final exam for me. Hilarious. Have they forgotten that by adding me as a friend, I can see all their posts? Or do they just not care?

In any event, I predict the rise of Facebook will soon see the demise of MySpace, for sure - at least for social applications.

Kittens

Today, A. brought more visitors home from the clinic - a cat and her five, three-day-old kittens.

This cat's owners brought her in to the clinic about two weeks ago, to be spayed. At that time, A. discovered she was pregnant - but the cat's owners didn't want to deal with kittens. So A. agreed to house mother and kittens until the babies are weaned and he can re-home them (at that time, mother will go back to her owners).

As there's some respiratory infections going around the clinic at the moment, A. wants to keep them all here, at our place. We'll see how we get on with that - our house isn't exactly cat-proofed - but in the meantime, the babies are tiny, helpless and adorable. I made a little video of them, for posterity:

New Fireplace

When we bought our house two and a half years ago, one of the 'to do' projects from the very beginning was our living room fireplace. I've always disliked the look of it, and wanted to give it a bit of a facelift. But it took us a while to figure out what to do - mainly because A. and I disagreed on the fire itself. While I love the atmosphere of an open, crackling fireplace, A. argues that they're too inefficient (which is true). But the kind of high-efficiency, airtight wood-burning inserts A. favoured were, in my opinion, hideously clunky and charmless. In the end, after visiting various showrooms, we compromised and bought a small wood-burning insert which can be operated with the door open. Not as efficient, certainly, but it retains a little atmosphere in the living room, at least.

The installation was done today, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. We took some snaps to show the transformation.


BEFORE: The original setup. Ugly, undistressed red bricks, a tacky brass screen that was too big for the actual firebox, and tired, stained old tiles on the hearth.


DURING (bad pic, sorry): Until such time as we decide on a new mantel and surround (a future project), we decided to try painting the bricks white. We chucked out the old screen, and started taking up the old hearth.


AFTER: Insert installed, and new hearth laid with large porcelain tiles.

It's not perfect yet, but it's a huge improvement, I think. Eventually, I'd like to see about installing a new mantel - one in oak (stained to match the floors) would be really nice. But that's a job that can wait!

TPB

New season of Trailer Park Boys started again last night (and Showcase is even starting to stream it online, now). God, I laughed. In last night's episode, the boys end up getting wasted and stealing meat from the grocery, only to resell it in the parking lot of the liquor store (while fending off the competing mackerel/blueberry guy).

Is there anyone in Nova Scotia who hasn't bought fish and blueberries off a guy parked at the side of the road?!? Heh.

Buried

It started snowing late yesterday afternoon, and carried on through the night. By early this morning, we'd received a total of 25-30 cm - making this the biggest snowfall of the winter. Only once in December did we get anywhere near as much as this.

It's put the kibosh on our (as well as everyone else's) Easter plans. The brunch we had planned at my in-laws' place will now be a lunch, no doubt, since everyone will need time to dig out. Main roads seem pretty clear, though. At least A. is happy - he can get the snowblower out.

While a snowy Easter kinda sucks, it's not that unusual for Nova Scotia. I seem to recall plenty of Easter Sundays in my childhood, where we were still blanketed with snow.

Teh Funneh

Fave Easter-themed cartoon ever:

Halifax Urban Greenway

Reading The Coast today, I found out about a project in the works for the city, the Halifax Urban Greenway. It's a proposal to create a walking/cycling trail around the whole of the peninsula, following the existing CN railway cut.

I went to the project's website and found out all kinds of info on the proposal. The first phase, around the south end of Halifax, has finally been funded by the province, and work will begin on it this year. No word yet on when the rest of the project might go ahead, but I very much hope it will. The second phase would link Chebucto Road and the Northwest Arm (right outside my door, basically) with the university campuses.

Needless to say, having access to a quiet, green walking/cycle path to get to work each day would be heaven.

Helicopter Parenting

In universities, we're hearing a lot now about the current crop of Generation Y, 'millennial students'. They're a privileged bunch, with high (and often unrealistic) expectations of themselves - and they're quite conformist too, having been hothoused by their eager Boomer parents.

Interesting column in yesterday's Globe & Mail (via Workopolis), on the undue influence these parents are now wielding in setting these kids on their career paths - some journo has snappily nicknamed the phenomenon 'helicopter parenting'. I've certainly heard crazy stories this past year, about a certain type of parent who won't hesitate to confront professors about lousy grades earned by their children. But showing up at career fairs to hand out your kid's résumé? Ridiculous.

"Hello, Life? Is That You?!?!??"

Finished teaching tonight. *collapses*

Handed out the take-home exam, which is due back this time next week - so I actually have an entire long weekend ahead with NO course-related work to do. First time that's happened since Labour Day - seriously.

I've really loved teaching this term - but I can't wait to mark the exams and be done with it. I am soooo looking forward to getting my normal life back. I figure I've put in, on average, 55-hour work-weeks since September last year. Nearly all my other interests have gone on the back burner in the interim, but thankfully, that's about to change.

One of the first things I jettisoned from my schedule last autumn were recreational classes, so I've happily signed up to go back to yoga this spring - starting that on Thursday night. I'm also anticipating some dance classes this summer - just waiting for the uni dance society to announce their new schedule. I'd love to go back to bellydance again, as it's been a year now since I last did that (and the lovely hip scarf and veil I made for myself have been gathering dust).

Quite excited about what the next few months will bring, I must say. :-)