25 February 2007

Goodbye googlepages, hello google-blogspot!

Okay folks, it's been great here at googlepages, but this site is dead to me now.  :(  As much as I love it, it is just not living up to my blogging needs - or my mom's blogging needs :)  She wanted to comment on my posts.  I feel some allegiance to Googlepages, it has done a good job so far, but I don't feel that bad moving onto blogger.com. 

Okay, enough blabbering.  Here's the new site:

click here for the new blog!

Is that text big enough? 

Well, hope you enjoy it, it'll be more of the same I guess....except you can make  

22 February 2007

Old news...

I have not updated the site for a week now.  My camera has been acting up.  Shachak dropped it on the ground, and it worked just fine.  But then I dropped it again and it's sort of dying now.  So here's a picture from shortly before it bit the dust.

 Now those are reflectors. 

That picture was from last Friday when a few of us went out for Mexican food in Portsmouth. 

Janice and Shachak were also in attendence.

15 February 2007

Thursday

Snow Day!!

We got hit with a huge wonderful snowstorm yesterday and UNH classes were cancelled.  John thought it was a big storm, but it really wasn't that big compared to what we get in Fredericton.  I was surprised that they cancelled school - the snow wasn't even up to the bottom of the cars!  Well, okay, it did reach nearly to the bottom of the cars by the end of it.  So we spent the day painting, and drawing and I did a little math homework.  It was great.  Here's a picture of John painting his latest masterpiece - it's my favorite so far, it's scene from Key West.  When he's done I'll take a picture of it and put it up here.

The upstairs definitely smells like turpentine now.  Is that dangerous?  Turpentine smells sort of toxic to me.  But I'm not a doctor.  I just play one one TV. 

Yerba Mate

Has anyone besides Andrea heard of this drink?  It's a kind of tea that they drink a lot in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay.  I got it because it looked interesting and I wanted loose leaf tea.  But then I opened it up and it smelled like hay.  I promptly wrote Andrea an email to see what her opinion was.  This is what she emailed back:

yah i totally drank mate when i was in argentina.  all. the. time.  I even got a mate gourd and straw.  I think I left them at home in the ol' f-dot.  As i recall, mate isn't the best-tasting beverage ever, but you kind of get used to it.  Plus you can put sugar in it if you want to, so it tastes like sugary hay water instead of regular hay water.  Rad.  Andrea

So there you have it.  And Andrea knows what she's talking about.  She's not a doctor though.  And she doesn't play one on TV.  But last time I saw her she was carrying around a stethoscope, an eye/ear scope and a blood pressure kit.  So I guess that counts for something. 

Bottom line:  I have hay water coming out my ears.  If anyone wants some please stop by my cube and i'll give you as much as you want.  Be sure to add plenty of sugar!

11 February 2007

Chocolate, Cheese, and Pool Parties

I love cheese

Everyone knows it, even John's parents.  They sent us a Valentine's present: godiva chocolate, a wooden cheese cutting board, and best of all, a giant block of delicious goat cheese.  Wow, it's soooo good!  Thank you Carol and Loren!!

Alice Sneary loves cheese too, we proved it one day by stopping at the grocery store in the middle of a run, and buying two blocks of cheese.  People looked at us funny on the run home, but they knew not to mess with Cheese Fanatics.  Alice will have to come over and try out some of the delicious cheese. 

Sharks and Minnows

And you thought I was finished talking about Sneary....

Alice's birthday party took place last night.  It started out at the Dover Indoor Pool.  We played fun games such as Marco Polo, and Sharks and Minnows.  We even had noodle jumping race.  After all that swimming and splashing around, we went over to the Sneary-Schmidt residence and at a whole bunch of food.  Cheese, hummus, pizza, cupcakes, carrot cake...And best of all, we had Jeni's Ice Cream from Columbus, Ohio.  Val had it shipped especially for the party.  There were a bunch of wacky flavours like chocolate cayenne pepper, orange blossom, goat cheese and cherry, thai peanut, honey vanilla bean, and more. 

As you can see, I have consumed plenty of healthy and nutrient-rich food in the last two days. 

One more thing - as you can see, I have no photos of the event.  I brought my camera, but didn't take any pictures.  Terrible - what's wrong with me?  So if anyone has pictures, feel free to send your favorites to me and I'll put 'em up.

Dog-sitting

I am babysitting two dogs for a week in March.  They are Bill's girlfriend Alyssa's dogs.  John said that if I can handle it, and if I still want a dog after that...We might possibly be able to maybe get a dog.  Someday. 

8 February 2007

Thursday

A Poet and Photographer

Here's a picture of Gretchen's puppy. 

His name is Maxwell.  After James Clerk Maxwell from Scotland, who is famous for taking the first true colour photograph in 1861.  He also liked to write songs and poems and accompany himself on guitar.  In fact, he wrote this little ditty as a Parody of a Robert Burns poem, 'Comin through the Rye':

Gin a body meet a body
Flyin' thro the air,
Gin a body hit a body,
Will it fly? And where?
Ilka impact has its measure
Ne'er a' ane hae I
Yet a' the lads they measure me,
Or, at least, they try.

Gin a body meet a body
Altogether free,
How they travel afterwards
We do not always see.
Ilka problem has its method
By analytics high;
For me, I ken na ane o' them,
But what the waur am I?

 -- James Maxwell

Useful translations:

gin = if

ilka = each

ane = one

ken = know/understand

waur = worse

Oh yes, I guess he's also known for some work he did on magnetism 

and electricity. And a unified theory thereof. Perhaps you've heard tell of 

Maxwell's Equations? But I'm sure that G and Ryan named their dog 

Maxwell because of the original Maxwell's colour photography and lyrical 

genius. 

Well, you learn something new every day. From Wikipedia. And from 

Scottish people. 

Yoga-tastic!

Last night Lynn, Janice and I went to Yoga - it was really good.  Dover Yoga has a great studio.  For anyone who's interested, we're in a beginner's Ashtanga class.  I am trying to convince John to take a class with me, it's a lot of fun and it feels great.  Not sure that he's convinced, but we'll see. 

No dog

I don't think that we're going to get a dog in the near future.  I even had John looking at the adorable dogs on Petfinder.com.  He wants one too, but the timing is not right.  I spend too much time at school, and he spends too much time away from home for it to work right now :(  But isn't this little guy cute?  His name is Shorty, and he was given up, along with his brothers, when their owner got too old to take care of them.

7 February 2007

Wednesday

John and I are tentatively and cautiously thinking about getting a puppy.  Actually, I should say that I'm thinking about it, and John's being the voice of reason.  I've made a list of pros and cons, but when it comes right down to it, how can you say no to an adorable little pup like this?  (His name is Taffy)

6 February 2007

Happy Tuesday

Survived the Midterm

It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.  I told Val this morning that I could understand the math from one line to the next, but I really didn't know the big picture.  It's kind of like standing in front of a giant painting so close that you can see the details but have no idea what it actually is.  It reminded me of Jim Gardner describing the view from a submarine window.  I guess it's hard to figure out large scale geology from a square metre of rock - well, unless you're REALLY good.  And all this made me think of the Bloom's taxonomy diagram that Dave Monahan showed us.  I'm probably on that bottom step.

Dark Beer on a Cold Night

John's high school buddy, Les, came up to Boston for a trade show.  John went down and is hanging out with him, probably at a good Irish bar.  I hope he's doing his Irish relatives proud and drinking lots of Guinness! 

5 February 2007

It's so Cold!

Peru was much warmer

Here's a picture that John took in Mancora, Peru.  I think it's my favorite of his sunset pictures.  I almost asked if it was sunrise or sunset, but then I realised that it's pretty tough to get the sun to rise over the ocean in Peru.  (Although I think we had a question like that on our Geological Oceanography final last year)

Too cold to walk to school

It's really cold out today, John drove me in.  What kind of Canadian am I???  I found this picture on the Interweb, I thought it was pretty good.  It gets the point across.

3 February 2007

Snowy Day

Winter Wonderland

I'm happy to report that we had a beautiful snowfall.  John and i went for a walk at around 10 o'clock last night.  The snow was falling thick in giant flakes, everything looked so pretty.  Here's a picture of John standing by the road near the bottom of The Three Chimneys.  My camera takes some really strange pictures.  It's really a crappy camera, mainly because I am rough with it and it has gone everywhere with me.  Someday I'll get a new one, but Kurt said that he likes his old digital camera because its problems give the photographs 'character'.  This made me appreciate mine more.  So watch out, I'll be posting all kinds of poor quality photographs in the name of 'character'.

Here's another picture of the view from our living room window at around 7:30 or so. 

Let's go to Morocco!

Last night John and I went to a meeting of the International Friendship Society (I might have the name wrong).  It's a group of international people who meet every month and have a potluck and someone presenting something.  Last night a girl from Morocco did a presentation on her country.  It was pretty cool because John worked in Morocco a couple of years ago.  Mashkoor told us about it yesterday afternoon. 

2 February 2007

I heart Bessel Functions

Bessel Funcions are tough. I have a midterm on tuesday.  I wish I had a better picture to show here, but this one will just have to do.  I like the color of the second order Bessel shown here.  Would you call that chartreuse?