eponymous_rose

Only signs of a parallel universe today have been excessively cheerful people all around me (Overheard the following exchange with the bus driver when someone departed my bus: "Could I get off before the lights, please?" "Certainly! You have yourself a great day!" "You too, sir! Thank you!") and the fact that my boss's boss came to me in order to find a certain obscure scientific paper in a certain obscure journal. Lo, my Google-fu is getting known even there.

I've now written three dozen pages of extremely dry reports, which made me fear for the interestingness of my subsequent ficcings (though not, apparently, my ability to make up words), until I realised I'd managed to sneak in things like: "The GEMLAM model makes several valiant attempts to mimic the observed wind patterns, but the subtleties elude it by Day Two." IN UR LABS, PERSONIFYING UR SUPERCOMPUTERS' OUTPUT.

Anyway, in honour of finally having watched Scream of the Shalka, I've got a couple of recs that are born of having scoured the interwebs at large for fic:

calapine has written the requisite Withnail & I crossover, Making Time (Lords)! It is made of win, truly.

There's a spectacular longer fic by Cryptile as well, which I vaguely remember reading when it was recced on calufrax here - it is shiny and terrible and wonderful, and it is definitely one of the best fics I've read. The whole story is suffused with the confusion and bitterness and snarkiness and hysteria that makes up REG!Doctor, and the final product is just amazing. Go read it!

My Googlish peregrinations also came up with a shiny piece of art on the BBC website here. Neat!

(You can watch "Scream of the Shalka" here, on the BBCi player, free of charge! You don't even have to be in the UK - it loads fine for me. Don't let the flash animation throw you off! Persevere! It's Paul Cornell writing for Richard E. Grant and Sophie Okonedo and Derek Jacobi!)

And now I think there should be a quotespam. What can I say? It's a quotable serial.

( And there's no Pachelbel on this jukebox! )

(Thanks to darthcorrie for the reminder!)

This is long overdue, and does indeed serve a purpose beyond making shiny polls (hard to take, I know). I grew up in a family that watched the weather with rapt attention, mostly because my parents both happened to be living in Edmonton (and my mom happened to be toddling around outdoors, pregnant with me) when an F4 tornado ripped through the east side of the city. As a result, understanding the various risks of summer severe weather has never been much of an issue for me (especially not now that I study it for a living) - but now that there's a whole new generation of Albertans without any personal tornado history (although Pine Lake is still fresh in many people's minds), it's becoming apparent that safety awareness has fallen a few rungs on the ladder.

There aren't right answers to all of the below questions - I encourage you to answer before viewing my takes on them beneath the cut. I've turned off result-viewing, so nobody will know if you pick something that's a bit on the iffy side. These questions have been selected because they generally demonstrate popular knowledge - both myth and fact. I'd love to get a bit more information about this, and please read the section under the cut, if only to check your score. ;)

[Poll #1152652]

(Long poll is long. My apologies to your flist - let me know if you'd rather I cut it.)

( The results - and I'd love to hear some of your severe weather experiences, and/or your thoughts on all this. )

Thanks muchly!

All finished the labs - it was great fun, the kids were awesome as always, and even the volunteers lightened up a bit more. One group of girls really sort of got attached to me, since they finished the lab half an hour early and so we could just sit around and chat - they kept asking what I wanted to do "when I grew up more" (I was flattered - one group yesterday called me "old"), so I got to tell them about wanting to be a professor and such. And one of them got all excited at the prospect. Hee!

Have done my homework and discovered that the rooftop observatory on campus will be open to the public this evening for viewings of the lunar eclipse (and bonus Saturn!). Looks like a super-warm night, so I'll be there! (Anyone in the area who could watch and geek out with me? From 7:30-9:00PM? (nice timing hereabouts) No? Oh, well. I'll go alone!)

I shudder to think of the light pollution we must have, here. At least campus is close to the river valley, so there's a bit of a natural buffer there - no giant office buildings thereabouts.

EDIT: Double-checked my provincial voter's registration and am good to vote on the 3rd! I am being productive today.

Since it's my last day at work, and my supervisor hasn't yet wandered in and told me what to do, I am attempting to translate (without using the intarwebs) a paper from an Italian Meteorology Journal that is inexplicably sitting on my desk.

...and it's working.

...yeah.  I should probably not get into the habit of using spam lines as my titles.  That can only end in tears.

So, yes!  Finally got my copy of "The Year of Intelligent Tigers" and am looking forward to lazing around this evening reading it.  If anyone out there hasn't heard of WhoNA.com, I highly recommend that you look 'em up!  Quick, polite service - shipping within hours and arrival in Canada after only seven business days - and fantastic prices.  Gold stars all around!

Okay, I'm done advertising.

Lunch with work-people was nice - we went to a diner I've been meaning to try out and discussed how hard it is to get a job in our field.  The answer is, apparently, "pretty hard", unless you want to work as a forecaster/researcher for the federal government.  Which is my backup plan (after academia), anyway, so yay!  I think I'm gonna contine with my rabid connection-making strategy, though, just to get my foot in the door.  It makes me feel a bit mercenary: "Hello, there!  Pleased to meet you!  How can you help me?"  But, y'know.  A necessary evil.

1. Fiddled around with graphs and such, waiting for the afternoon meeting.

2. Gave up with graph-related fiddling around and snuck off for fiddle-related fiddling around.

3. Sat down at the piano and nearly missed said meeting.

4. Took notes on my supervisor's one-hour What Not To Do During a Thesis Defence Examination lecture.  (Salient points: do not annoy the examiners because they're the ones with the thesis in their hands.  Do not fight with the examiners because they will beat you up.  Do not try to impress or confuse the examiners because they are smarter than you.  If the examiners start warring amongst themselves, go get some popcorn and do not interfere.  Do, however, try to make the examiners feel guilty for skimming your thesis instead of studying it, if only because it's funny.)

5. Rambled for an hour about my latest set of graphs and was surprised at the extent of squee over my findings.

6. Was offered a fantastic academic career on a silver platter.

7. Um.  Wait.  What was that last one?

Yeah.  So my supervisor and his post-doctoral student caught up with me after the meeting and offered me employment for the rest of my undergraduate career, my name on a paper that'll in turn be cited by every serious paper on hailfall in the next few decades, their support if I want to try and get a sneaky research job with the government for my internship (as opposed to the usual forecasting gig), and, apparently, a subject and supervisor for my Master's thesis.

I did a very convincing impression of something flabbergasted.

So, yes.  Yay work!  This is definitely not something I expected to happen this, well, early in my life.  Still hasn't quite sunk in yet, that I've made these awesome connections.  Veddy intimidating.

In other news, I decided to watch some Seven episodes last night, and got about halfway through "Time and the Rani" before getting fed up with Mel (just... stop screaming?  Pretty please?) and the not-particularly-competent writing.  So I skipped ahead to "Dragonfire" and enjoyed it much, much more.  Ace endeared herself to me right off the bat by dumping a milkshake over the head of an annoying customer.  (Figures that the one time I didn't want to do that to a customer, I wound up doing it by accident anyway.)  Also, y'know, by blowing things up.

I then listened to "Fearmonger" and was extremely impressed.  That was intense.  And the plot was so twisty!  *happy*

Only downside to today is that the ankle's acting up again, so I cancelled fencing as a precaution.  I don't suppose my walking on it for two hours did much to help matters, though.  Still, it feels better than it did!

Not a lot.  I've been hardly working working hard (I've actually eaten supper at work two days in a row), but there's nobody in the office.  Um.  That's weird.  I think one guy is on holidays.  One girl, I know, always works from home.  Oh, and the other guy finished his thesis and is just waiting on some professors' comments!  It's still odd, though, to come into work and not see anyone all day.  I sort of feel like they must all be out having some sort of wild weather party, and I missed the invitation.  Heehee.

I got some stuff accomplished in terms of writing!  I dunno why I stopped for so long, there. 

This epic!fic I'm writing is gonna be a change for me - I really do like what you can do with one-shots, in terms of tight narrative and wonky symbolic tenses and backwards timelines.  Planning something this long feels weird, and even a little bit aimless, but I'm slowly wrapping my brain around it.  But it's fun, and I can bring in recurring motifs and whatnot.  Yay!

I've come up with a really twisted idea for my ficathon entry.  Woohoo!

I picked up a few music books from the library, pieces by composers I don't typically play - Liszt and Clementi.  I love Clementi's sonatas because they feel so relaxed and cheerful after all the Beethoven o' doom I've been playing lately; also, I can actually sight-read them with zero difficulty, which makes me happy.  Liszt?  I'm still a little hesitant.  I love the way he plays with different tempos (Au lac de Wallenstadt), but... *shrugs*  Dunno.  I've only played a couple of pieces, so maybe he'll grow on me.

I need to pull out my Debussy now I've got a real piano to work with.  Wonder if I can still play "Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum" up to speed?  Hee.

Tomorrow's gonna be a long day - I'll be sneaking away from work for a couple of hours to practice piano and violin, then sneaking back and working like mad, and then I'll be leaving early to go for celebratory scholarship dinner with the roommates, and then I'll be running straight from there to my violin lesson.  At which point, I suspect, I'll have fallen asleep.  How awkward.

(Harry Potter's out soon!  I must use my Shakespeare-shouting-"Expelliarmus!" mood as an homage. :D)

ETA: I'm now going to listen to "The Last".  And give myself freakin' nightmares.  Whee! :D

I figured that since I tend to write a bunch of random meme-like things, anyway, I may as well have some interesting questions. So here's this week's thefridayfive, because everyone likes to feel unique! :D

1. What sets you apart from your friends?

My interest in old movies and my sometimes-overbearing cheerfulness, I guess! :D Oh, and my inability to maintain eye contact. That's always awkward.

2. What sets you apart from your family?

Not a whole lot, really. I don't drink - ever - so I guess that's something. Also, my family's known for its punctuality - obviously, I missed that boat! Heehee.  Oh, and my (relative) patience with technology.  The first time I ever heard my Dad curse just happened to coincide with the purchase of our first computer.  How mysterious.

3. What sets you apart from your coworkers/fellow students?

Coworkers? That I don't have a degree. *sadface* Fellow students? That I can sit in one place for eight hours and review the same material without taking a break. And that most days I'd much rather study than do absolutely anything else.

4. What is the one thing about you that is most unique?

I'm physically incapable of getting bored. :D It's a nice trait to have, but it means that I often feel I have to make excuses for just hanging out in my room and reading dictionaries or whatever it is I do.

5. What is your most interesting quality?

Interesting to other people? I'm not sure, you'd have to ask them. My most interesting quality to me is the seemingly random way that I'll dive into weird (and potentially not-so-good) situations. Or not. Makes things unpredictable, to say the least, though, like most impulsive things, it often backfires.

Well, that was exciting.  I hadn't memed in a while! :D

Heehee - my mood icon looks like some sort of a commercial for generic orange-coloured beverage.  THE DOCTOR AND ROSE ENDORSE ORANGE JUICE!  This is trufax.

1. Slept in.

2. Got up and started working, nearly forgot about breakfast.

3. Received a bowl of cereal and a cup of hot chocolate from roommate number one.  Said hot chocolate contained little marshmallows.  Pledged my undying love, scarfed food.

4. Gave up on actually going to the office around eleven, decided that if the supervisor's working from South Africa this week, working from home can't be all bad.

5. Squeed with roommate number two over the huge freakin' scholarship she's just won, to the tune of ten thousand dollars.  Entered definitive good-mood mode.

6. Gave up on work altogether by twelve, sought out pasta and pesto sauce, scarfed.

7. Ate enough candy to do something that sounds like a hyperbole but probably isn't.

8. Started picking away at 2,000-word chapter of epic!fic, got frustrated, wrote the whole thing from a different character's point of view and sporfled at own jokes.

9. Discovered, via the internet, how to cook with eggplant.

10. Plotted with roommate number one to festoon roommate number two's room with streamers and celebratory balloons while she was at work.   Wondered why said plot involved pretending the violin was in need of repairs, but went with the flow.

11. Dropped roommate number two at work, laughed evilly.

12. Purchased streamers and balloons, recalled childhood fear of balloons, jumped embarrassingly when two balloons popped.

13. Decorated roommate number two's room top-to-bottom.

14. Fell down a flight of stairs, badly bruising arm and dignity.  iPod unharmed, the lucky so-and-so.

15. Realized that supper got forgotten somewhere in the mess, and that, it being 9 PM, a simple chicken salad was more in order than anything involving eggplant.  Filed eggplant-related knowledge away for another day.

16. Surprised roommate number two and all was well.

17. Discovered that they're calling for a high of 33 tomorrow.  Winced and cowered in anticipation.

18. Wrote this list.  Whee!