music note #4

my mom was here for a visit over Easter weekend, and we were wandering around the shops on Bloor in the Annex one day. at one particular shop, we were listening in on a conversation between two cashiers about 1) which two albums they would select if desert-island bound, and 2) what their last meal would be if they were about to be capital punished. since i could write a book on 2), i'll instead share my brief reflections on 1). it was an obvious choice for me.

1. Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
2. Abbey Road (The Beatles)

both of these were always around when i was growing up, and then brought back out at various points in junior high and high school. i actually remember when my mom bought me the tape of Bridge Over Troubled Water; we were on a trip back to Waterloo, ON after moving to Ottawa. i think i must have gone through it 100+ times over the week that we were in Waterloo, and now i still get a feeling of coming back to something you'd left and missed a lot when listening to each song.

if i was allowed to add a third album, it would be:

3. Mermaid Avenue, Vol. 1 (Billy Bragg and Wilco)

and three weeks passed

i'm still here. i would say that i have been busy, but i actually don't feel that i've been accomplishing much lately. sitting in front of a computer all day and partaking in rapid fire e-mail with the faculty members of my transfer exam committee, in hopes of coming to a consensus on a date and time for said 'exam', doesn't exactly qualify as consuming work. but, this was definitely the major accomplishment of the past three weeks. you see, i am currently registered at U of T as a Master's student, but plan on sticking in grad school and finishing a more extensive series of projects (one of which involves the work i did while in Bangalore last December). instead of writing up a Master's thesis, defending the Master's thesis, applying to the Ph.D. program, and waiting to get accepted to the Ph.D. program, i can directly jump into Ph.D. student status by writing up my Ph.D. proposal and defending it to an examining committee. most of March was spent on the writing part, and now i've been going through the administrative muck of organizing the exam itself. seems it won't be happening on May 15, as i had originally hoped, but instead on May 29. fair enough.

apart from this exam bit, i'm also working on a few papers. counting some cells, to round out the project i originally had finished at the end of February. playing with a potential new experiment in the lab. planning a few trips for the summer. i'm heading to Saskatoon, Vancouver, and Whistler for a brief visit and conference for the last week of May (ironically, right before the transfer exam). then Montreal for a week at the end of June for another conference. then! i've managed to get myself sent to a microscopy workshop in New Haven, CT at the end of July. since it's 100% cheaper to fly to NYC than to anywhere in Connecticut, I'm going to do so and extend the workshop stay for a long weekend with a good friend who is living in Manhattan. this will (finally) be my first visit to NYC. i'm working on my restaurant & shopping list already. will accept suggestions from anonymous bidders.

percy is now almost 9 weeks old. i think he has doubled in length since i got him, though i can't tell for sure, and has recently begun engaging in adolescent-type behaviour. this extra length affords him the ability to shimmy up dangling towels and the back of the couch. he is currently licking my big toe.

it's a boy!

my life changed in a significant way this friday evening. for the first time in my life, i own a pet that doesn't live in a bowl full of water on my shelf. appearing below is percy, who is now 5 weeks and 4 days old. he seems to be adjusting nicely to a rhythm of sleep, play, eat, sleep, play, eat, sleep, etc. tonight, after helping out in the kitchen with dinner, percy feels like watching capote.

meet percy: