Blessed by the Potato

I know not many of you are checking the site at all anymore, and it has been far too long since I updated. I’ve been very busy of late, and been having a lot of trouble with writer’s block at work that seems to be tranferring to the website as well. Things have been crazy busy there: in addition to all the work for my crazy project, I’m also teaching a class this term (!) which is incredibly demanding. I’m responsible for everything, from planning the syllabus to creating the assignments, delivering the lectures to booking the rooms… and this is a brand-new course, too, so I don’t even have a textbook or anything to use as a guide. The damnedest thing about it is that my first class is today, and I still have no idea if I’m getting paid for this, or if I was suckered into volunteering. It’s a lot of work, so I really hope I’m getting paid, but on the other hand, my new contract prohibits me from moonlighting (on the gripping hand, volunteering would likely count as moonlighting too, if I really wanted to get out of it). I’m stuck, of course, because I want to teach: I think it’s a vital part of getting a PhD, and it’s a real shame sometimes that there aren’t more teaching opportunities around in this department (especially less demanding ones).

So, I’ve had two posts “half-written” (in actuality, it’s far fewer than half the words, but I’ve put some of my thoughts down in point-form so I don’t lose them) for over a week now, and I had hoped to get them up on the weekend. Since they’re not up I don’t want to make any more promises about when they will appear, but will try to return to a frequent updating schedule soon.

In other news, I made some very good-looking cinnamon rolls last week and remembered to take a picture of them, so hopefully I’ll get that off the camera soon and up on the recipes page.

Finally, curling season is upon us again, and I hope to get into at least two leagues this year. It’s a bit of a shame that UWO is taking out its curling ice: it’s putting a lot of pressure on the other clubs in London, and means that a lot of students who found it pricey last year won’t get to play at all, since it was actually really cheap ($75 at UWO last year for 1 game/week; London Curling Club is $170 base + ~$40/league night for students, $420+ for regular members). I’m planning on joining the London Curling Club, and hope to play at least twice a week. One thing I’m not really looking forward to is that they heavily segregate the men’s & women’s sections. There are only two mixed leagues, and I can’t make one of them. It doesn’t really matter, but I found I preferred playing in mixed leagues in the past: they tend to be a lot less competitive, and the presence of women helps keep the banter cleaner. Of course, this will be a proper curling club rather than a university one, so those probably don’t apply… Finally, I don’t know if I told the story of varcity curling here from last year. Basically, I was interested in trying out for the varcity curling league here at UWO last year. I checked the webpage, found the time & location for the information meeting, and went. It was on a Thursday night in the worst rain we’d had in years. I don’t know why I insisted on going, but I went. My shoes were soaked through before I even got to the bridge. At that point I just gave up and enjoyed being soaked right through. When I got to the room, there were 4 other prospective curlers waiting… and waiting. We waited, soaking wet, for about a half hour, and no one showed up. No one came with a message to say the coach was stuck in the rain, or that the team was full. After a half hour, we just started drifting away to go home. I could have emailed or called the coach after I got home, but I wasn’t too interested in working with someone who’d skip an important first meeting like that, and I was a little leery of the whole varcity idea anyway (I was hoping the information meeting would tell me something, such as how much of a time commitment it was). At the end, I was soaked right through my jacket, through my shirt, pants, and even underwear. I was wet. I couldn’t wear my shoes for 2 days.

So tonight was the information meeting for this year’s varcity curling team. I figured I was still somewhat interested and wanted more information, so I marked the day on my calendar. As was fated, it rained today, quite a bit at that. I decided I wasn’t going to be a sucker twice, so I drove up to campus to see if it would be worthwhile. I don’t know if it was the rain or what, but campus was absolutely packed (and this was at 7 pm), and there wasn’t a single parking space near where I was going — even the pay lots were full. There were, of course, spots in the more outlying lots, but most of those are not much closer than walking from my place, and I wasn’t about to do that again. I’m still thinking about emailing for details: being on a varcity team looks good for scholarship applications (I think), and while I have no idea what the commitment is like for the practice schedule, I know that there are only ~8 games in the competitive season, held over 2/3 weekends in January/February, that third weekend only taking place if we win — not too shabby at all in terms of demands on my time.