Cold

I'm cold. Very cold. Winnipeg has been in a nearly continuous deep-freeze for at least 3 weeks now, with never more than a few days warmer than -20C, and windchills usually in the -30 to -40 range. Last night our power went out for most of the night, and went out a few times again this morning, meaning our heat didn't work and is still not working quite right. It also scrambled our internet again and it needs to be sorted out properly.

I'm going to Edmonton on Saturday for a 4-day visit with Angela, including an evening with Elizabeth. Luckily it's supposed to be no colder than -5 there! That leaves me with the problem of what to wear to the airport...it's going to be -30 here that day, and -5 when I land in Edmonton. Hrm.

Edmonton plans:

-IKEA - I'm bringing an empty suitcase to fill with IKEA stuff. Seriously.
-WEM - there's some new stores (H&M anyone?) that I'd like to check out, as well as some old favourites like Sanrio, the Glow store, etc. I'm really hoping to find a bento box at Sanrio (if not, I'm still buying some Hello Kitty chopstick sets) or at T & M
-Whyte Ave
-Yarn stores (Hello! Of course! Never know what you can get in different cities right?)

-Restaurants: I'd LIKE to go to Yianni's and possibly more places, but my funds are limited

-Not sure what else we're going to do yet, but we're going to have fun! Tea drinking and knitting are of course included....Angela, should I bring any DVD's for evening entertainment? Have you seen "Stardust" yet?
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Sooooo hooooooooooootttt...

Oh. My. God. It is sooooo hot here. We are in a humidex warning, this afternoon it got up to 41 with the humidity.

The scary thing? In the upstairs of the mill (where we work, it's completely unventilated) it was so ridiculously hot that outside at 41C felt cool. Knowing now that it felt like 41 outside, I'd wager that it's at least 50C upstairs. It was so hot, that less than a minute after turning off the fan, we felt violently nauseous and dizzy. Because of the high humidity, you can sweat properly either, so there's no particularly good way to cool off. I'm already wearing just a tank top and shorts at work, not sure how to cool off any more!

I finished the sockapalooza socks, except for grafting the toes (no darning needle or crochet hook) and blocking them. I noticed that I somehow wound up with two less stitches in one sock, but I checked and since this is stretchy lace they fit the same.

I also spent my spare time today (during scanning, between changing maps) graphing out the yoke of this sweater:



It's one of Hermione's from OOTP. It took me FOREVER, some tears, some photoshopping, and finally good old paper, pencil, ruler, and tracing paper to get it right. I wanted to make sure I accounted for the decreases properly, since I wanted it to be a proper yoked sweater. I think I've got it now! I'll try and post a picture or something soon.

OK I'm all for winter but this is ridiculous

GEEZ. This morning, windchill of -27C. Since it was warm yesterday we had snow, sleet, and freezing rain, and with the temperature this morning that (along with the slush that had formed) froze into a solid 2" of ice on the sidewalks that the city did not salt OR sand.

This was not regular ice either. It was slippery ice. Ice can have many different textures: soft, hard, sticky, slippery. Because of the freezing rain, a lightly pebbled surface was created, which as all curlers know creates an incredibly slick surface that's even more slippery than a smooth rink.

Somebody owes me.

God has a sense of humour....

You know what it was last week? Around -5C. You know what the air temperature (not including any windchill) was this morning? -27C.

Coupled with yesterday's problems, I'm guessing either God has a sense of humour, or karma is getting it's own back from me finding a beautiful, cheap wedding dress so easily.

Today's exams actually went quite well. My Historical Archaeology midterm was really weird to write, since it was 3 long answer questions in 60 minutes. I scribbled like crazy, and all my information was good and relevant, but I really don't feel like I answered the questions at all, mostly because they were like this:

Discuss the history and archaeology of L'Anse aux Meadows. How does it differ from other New World colonizations?

Well, with the amount of information I read and we took notes on in this subject, I could have written for all 60 minutes, and I still wouldn't have covered everything i thought was important. Ergo, I didn't get down everything I thought was important :P But really, how much can one write by hand in 60 minutes? And I really spent only 5 minutes of it NOT writing, for turning pages and briefly thinking lines through.

My Engineering Geology exam however went very, very well. I knew the answers and worked them through confidently, and I had MORE than enough information for the last question in particular.

Now I'm studying for Geochemistry, which I have tomorrow. There were issues with the first time he gave the test (which I missed) because...well, first let me explain about the class. It's a fairly difficult subject, and our professor is actually a Grad Student, whose advisor (and usual professor for the class) is currently on sabbatical. The notes he's using are hers, but they're kind of disjointed (apparently the class was very hard to follow when she taught it). To make things worse, our professor is Russian, and doesn't speak English well. It's not that he lapses into Russian at any point, but he translates literally from Russian as he speaks, so that grammar and terms often make no sense. (Think Yoda but worse with a thick accent - cute in a puppet expounding Jedi knowledge, senseless in a complex science class).

Anyway, the initial exam was 12 questions, of which you had to answer 8. Each question was weighted differently, and he stated at the top of the exam "The goal is to get the most marks possible". What he intended was that your exam would only be marked out of 100 if you answered the 8 highest valued questions. Otherwise the highest possible mark you could obtain would be below 100. Since this wasn't clearly stated and the class did poorly as a result, he's reissuing the midterm, and that's when I'm writing it.

I dunno if I'm any good Geochemistry or not, I guess we'll find out tomorrow. I've been doing a mediocre 75 in the labs so far.

BAH! Again!

Only this time it's not because of Christian extremists and Global Warming. It's because of Environment Canada and The Weather Network.

This morning when I got up it was (and currently still is) -40C. Did you see that? -40C. We are the coldest major city in Canada at the moment, MUCH colder than Yellowknife, Iqaluit, Whitehorse, Toronto...

What does The Weather Network say? "Extreme cold warning for Toronto, with the wind there it will feel like -33C! Also very cold through the whole of Eastern Canada!" then, as an afterthought, "and all the way to the Alberta border, really". Well NO #*$&^! We don't even have an extreme cold warning here! The school buses are closed, but other than that it's business as normal here in Winnipeg!

I keep forgetting that The Weather Network is based out of Southern Ontario, and weather is only extreme when it occurs down there, or in someplace really exciting or fun to say, like Eureka.