The Life Roach

Another post, another post! I feel really bad for this blog. My last post was over a month ago. It gets none of my attention! If it were a plant, it would be dead. If it were a cat, it would be starving. If it were Koshka, it would be pooing all over the house.

That was what Koshka was doing for quite a while around here. I needn't recap all of the gory details - you can read about those on Bridget's blog. But I should say that the Poo Wars have calmed down quite a bit around here, mostly because of the increased number of litterboxes, and the new, super fancy, cat door! But enough about cats: I can see Meredith's eyelids getting droopy.

Since my last post, I turned 31! I had a fun birthday celebration with good Indian food, fine friends, and kickin' karaoke. Well the karaoke was sort of kickin' - everybody was feeling tired, so I only ended up dong one song: Late in the Evening by Paul Simon. I don't mean to brag, but I pretty much nailed it. I even knew the lyrics well enough to not fall for the incorrect lyrics that came up on the screen. And yes, I blew that room away. I also blew another room away earlier, depicted here:


Also within this last great void of blogdom I celebrated my favourite holiday: Halloween! I dressed up as robot Michael Jackson from the Future - conceptually, a great idea, but practically, very hot and uncomfortable.


Finally, another thing which has been captured my time lately is music! I am currently experiencing a renaissance of sorts. A rebirth! I AM BORN AGAIN! Well, at least Czechmate is. Czechmate was a musical collaboration that started with Brandon (Cornish Hen), Scott (Krispy Krunt), and Jeremy (DJ Boat Accident) in late high school/early University. The original impetus was for each of us to individually write songs that were no more than 2 minutes in length. I don't think it was ever explicitly decided that the music should also be genuinely stupid in nature, but that happened nonetheless. Oh boy, did we write some stupid songs! Two whole albums of incredibly bad music were released back in the day. And then, Czechmate went underground for a long while, while I went to grad school and got a PhD. But now it's back! Czechmate is the music I was born to make. I don't sing well, I don't have any playing skill, and I don't know musical theory, and I certainly don't have the patience or time to make . But I still LOVE making music. So, make it I will. You can czech out the recent work here. I am hoping it inspires the former Czechmate folks to write again. You know you should!

And what of real work, you might ask? Well, that's the other thing that takes up my time so far! I have been busy working this term on many, many papers. I submitted one paper a few weeks ago - infant research I conducted last year - and I just submitted another one today - a different infant project I also conducted last term. My dissertation may be close to resubmission, I'll start writing up another adult project next term, and my adult ERP study may FINALLY be showing interesting effects (after over a year of painstaking data collection!). So yeah, things are really cooking over here. I'm finally beginning to think I might actually be cut out for the job I've been training for these last 8 years :)

Well, the Christmas season is upon us already. Bridget and I will be getting a Christmas tree this Saturday, and are planning a holiday cookie party as well. Exciting as that is, I am a little sad that we are not heading out to Ontario this Christmas to visit my family this year. But, we decided last year that flying over Christmas is just too stressful and expensive. I hope to make another visit out there in the off season ASAP, however! I miss people, lots of people. If you are reading this, I miss you. My thoughts are of all of the wonderful family and friends I have spread around the globe who make my life so awesome!

Some of these friends, in fact, I saw last weekend in Eugene, while we were down for Thanksgiving. Here are photos to prove it! Oh wait, there are no photos to prove it, because I haven't downloaded them off of my camera yet, and I am at a coffee shop, so I can't access the camera now either. Grr. In lieu of pictures, you will have imagine fun pictures of Eugene friends. You can picture them holding guitars if you want, or holding guitars while naked, with the guitars covering up their private parts, like a bad 70's rock album cover.

Well, let's hope the next post comes sooner. Dear God, don't let this blog perish!