Blessed by the Potato

Well, for a change I’ve got some good news: I won an OGS!

For those who don’t know, an OGS is a provincial scholarship worth $15,000 and is rather prestigious. Of course, I don’t actually get $15,000 more than I would have otherwise… it simply means that my supervisor doesn’t have to pay for a good portion of my pay, and I fill out a different box on my tax return (though I do take home about $1000 more than I would otherwise, which is exciting).

It was a big surprise when the letter came in the mail, since usually the rumour mill puts in some good predictions as to who made the short list, and I wasn’t there. I did win one last year, but lost it due to the delay in graduating with my master’s (it was only applicable to my PhD), which made it doubly surprising that I won this year, since they just took one away from me. It’s a real confidence booster at this point, and also some extra motivation to not fuck up in my PhD.

Aside from that, not too much has been going on. I bathed the kitty today, which was heartbreaking and painful. She makes the saddest little kitten noises when I bathe her, so there’s no mistaking that I’m a horrible horrible monster torturing the poor thing. Unfortunately, she’s been itcy lately, so it had to be done. She’s really crazy when she gets itchy, often running around the apartment at full tilt, as though she were trying to outrun the itches (this is to a much greater degree than the usual “kitty beans” daily tear across the apartment). I felt sad for her when she was itchy, and I felt sad for her in the bath, but at the end of it all I had a good laugh, because she’s less than half her usual size when she’s wet. She looks like a little squirrel. A wet squirrel.

I ran across Jamie’s website recently, and holy crap has a lot happened to him! He got married, moved to Japan, and took a bunch of pictures! It made me think of all the people I knew from physics, and all the good times we had back then. I figured that we’d keep in touch after we graduated, but I don’t think I’ve kept up with any of them. Sure, we all went through some very traumatic things in physics, and meeting up afterwards would inevitably remind us of some of that (such as drinking jolt and eating cheese like it was a job), and we did kind of disperse to the far corners of the globe, but that’s not really why I lost touch with all of them. You see, it’s because I’m a horrible, horrible person. Right now, as I write this, I could be back in Toronto playing poker with my friends. Instead, I’m here simply because I gave the cat a bath and after she scratched me all to ratshit, I was shaking pretty badly from the adrenaline and just didn’t feel like driving for two hours. And my friend Dan, who I’ve known since grade 1 moved out to Dancouver. Despite keeping in pretty close contact after I moved out here, I’ve barely spoken to him a half dozen times for the year he’s been out there, and I don’t think I’ve talked to him at all since New Year’s (not even via a much reviled instant messenger!)

Anyhow, I’ve got to stop leaving comments that are longer than the original post on other people’s blogs. That’s why I have my own website.