~ ANNE! ~

One more hour till we head to the airport. I finally managed to get some sleep last night (after a week of alternating insomnia and parties - no wonder I'm sick) and I feel great. I've managed to dump all the stuff I've been stressing about to the back of my mind, and have achieved some weird kind of calm.

Played soccer yesterday. I didn't mean to, but I went to a "Mad Hatter" tea party at Lana's with Chris, and he wouldn't drop me off at home because he was late for practice. So I came along, meaning to walk home... and true to form got sucked into the scrimmage. Next time I looked up an hour had passed and I had grass stains on my nice tea-party-going pants. Man, I've missed playing. I've told the girls to reserve me a spot on their team for next summer - they're great to play with, Chris is a good coach... and how could I resist playing on a team called the "Lunachix?"

(ps. John has just informed me there's a punk band also called the Lunachix... who knew??)

When I realized what time it was, I got John to pick me up - and got fed an amazing supper at his place. The roommates went all out and made dilled potatoes, stuffed mushrooms, stewed moose, corn on the cob, yorkshire pudding... it was crazy. They invited Old Dan, the widower from next door, over. It was really nice, he seems pretty lonely and was sure happy to have people to talk to. I stuffed myself silly. Much entertainment was also had by watching John's roommates try not to use any bad words while Dan was listening. They did a pretty good job (with much effort), except for Christine. Amusing!

I went in to talk to Marcia and Chris S.(old supervisors in the Psych department) this week. It was pretty interesting - Marcia mentioned that the things I'm interested in studying (history of advertising, advertising and visual culture) could be looked at from a marketing perspective. Don't know if I could actually bring myself to do a PhD in Marketing... but I guess research is research, right?

At any rate, I heard from Chris S. that they've finally got a paper on the chickadee spatial project I helped start. (I built the equipment, a box we labelled "The Asylum" because it was white, featureless plastic that scared the chickadees nearly to death when we put them in it for a trial). I'll be pretty interested to see how the data on that one came out. The next step would be to try the experiment with isolates (chickadees raised in captivity, so in a very geometric environment) and see if it makes a difference to their ability to use geometry to find a goal.

Anyway, enough geeking out. Should probably go get ready to go... TECHNICALLY my stuff is packed, but it's sure not packed well. Think I should do something about that. So off to Heathrow once again, this time with my two favorite octegenarians in tow. (They're meeting me at the Calgary airport) Should be an interesting trip!