On Your Mark, Get Set, Write

This is a marathon week for the Studyboy. He is writing the first of his 3 comprehensive exams this week. He started Monday morning and has a week to write a 40 page open book paper explaining everything he knows about methods of research and explain how to apply them to his area of study. He's been in training for this marathon for about six months. He started with daily doses of heavy reading and progressed into short writing spurts to build both stamina and speed.
So far he is weathering the stress well. He just keeps thinking of it in terms of a theatre production week; the bit just before opening night when you exist on coffee, beer and smokes. (Except it's more like chamomile tea, rye whiskey and smokes. Oh how we age...)
I was in training too. As the wifely equivalent of those people that shove cups of water at the runners from the sidelines, my job was to organise fast and easy food service so he can just keep pounding the keyboard 11 hours a day. For three weeks I've been venturing into the frozen food section of the grocery store and stocking up on microwavable lunches. This was an education in itself. I finally got to see what all those TV ads were about. Wow, who knew food-like items came in a box?
As for suppertime: If you can make it in the slow cooker before you go to work I've eaten it recently. Partly because the oven is on the blink and neither of us have time to call the landlord. Is this what it is like to have children?
On Monday he passes in the first paper and has 2 weeks to recover before starting the second marathon paper. By then my job at the nursery will be finished (it snowed again today) and I will be able to cook meals that have a longer prep time than 20 minutes. It's a good thing too because I'm running out of ideas. Tonight I'm making fish cakes for tomorrow.
For Christmas, I want a framed piece of paper that says MRS.Ph.D.A.B.D. In Latin.

On the One Hand....

Sometimes you just can't win. Take today for example. Last week I toasted my left wrist pulling weeds. That happens sometimes. I get an RSI whenever I pinch and twist or gripe a handle too tightly. It's an old sports injury. So today I was giving it a rest by pulling weeds with my right hand. That's when I grabbed a stinging nettle that managed to find the gap between my gloves and my sleeve.
Left wrist is throbbing. Right wrist is stinging.
It's like the 3 laws of thermodynamics:
Can't win, can break even, can't get out of the game.

Weather Bingo

Today the weather was lovely, except the frost on the car this morning. Yesterday however, we played Weather Bingo at work. During the day we saw:
rain,
rain and hail together,
rain and hail and sun together,
sun,
hail alone
and snow.
Real snow. Not flurries but ten minutes of big fluffy flakes that blotted out visibility 200 feet away.

I was 'set' three ways. I needed a plague of locusts for the horizontal line, a tornado for the vertical line or a flash flood for the four corners. Alas, 5 o'clock came before any of those events occurred.

Heard on the Street

The weather continues fine here. Dry at least and above zero so that's the NL definition of fine. It means that the windows are still open and thus, this gem was overheard on the street outside the Study Lair today:

"Where ya to?"
"We're off to buy beer, because a house without beer is like a bar without beer."

Sure. I guess. If your house is like a bar. Er....

A Swedish Kitchen Party

Everybody knows that here in the East we like our Kitchen Parties. Face it. Traditionally the largest, warmest, most comfortable room in the house is the perfect location for a party. Plus, that's where the beer is, and by the time you walk back to the living room you need another beer so this is why the party always migrates even if it doesn't start out there.
On Friday, Studyboy emerged from the lair bleary-eyed from too much reading and we set out for a Swedish Kitchen party at our friends, Malin and Pablo's house. What made this different from the average kitchen party first became clear when Studyboy morphed into Carpenter Man and instead of taking a case of beer and a guitar, he grabbed the screw gun and a set of hex keys.
Malin, being Swedish ordered her new kitchen from IKEA, and on Friday night, several people were invited to assemble all the bits in all the boxes. In fact there were four couples. And here is what I learned from that experience:
Somehow, I initially ended up in the wrong room, and found myself in a speed competition with two men I had only just met. Just for the record, it only took me 2 minutes longer to assemble my cabinet alone than it took two of them, together. (with much discussion)
Next, I realised that Carpenter Man and I were the only couple to attempt an assembly together. Ever. All night. All other teams were strictly gender based. And segregated into separate rooms. I think this says something significant about Men, Women, and Couples. Don't you?
Also, while the men were racing each other, and trying hard not to follow the directions, or use all the bits, the women worked as teams and gave helpful solutions to each other. In fact, after a couple cabinets we broke tasks down into our strengths so we were much more efficient and finished sooner. Then we retired to the living room to drink while the men were still working.
Finally, I learned that if you don't live with a carpenter, IKEA is an excellent way to get a new kitchen. Even with the men 'helping' we got all the cabinets assembled and hung in three hours. But if you do live with a carpenter, then just buy the melamine and DIY, because hex keys are not fun.
I think next weekend is the doors and drawers party.

Big Grey Clouds-Not all weather related

Welcome to fall. I know that the season doesn't officially start until Sept 21, but the weather and many events have ganged up on me this year and I feel like it is here already.
Studyboy isn't exactly in classes again, his classwork is complete and his next hurtle is writing his comprehensive exams beginning in November, but he did make an appearance at grad orientation on campus last week to welcome the newbies. (Translation: He went to the pub)
I made a last ditch attempt to see all the summer theatre in the city over the last three weeks. Summer festivals and events, and pretty much all the tourist attractions pretty shut down here August 31st. I saw 4 plays in three weeks, but missed two others that I wanted to see.
The nursery is slowing down, and we are doing all those fall chores to winterize the plant stock and the facilities. Plus most of the production crew has been laid off, so the farm seems awfully big and quiet now. Surely this means I'll get my notice next, and then off to the job bank I go again. EEK.
It got dark. When did that happen? Last week I woke up in the dark to go to work and a few nights it was dark before Jake and I got home from our evening walk. And sometimes I needed to wear a jacket.
I made soup last weekend, and again this weekend. A stockpot full of soup is a sure sign of fall.
I went blueberry picking with the dog on Signal Hill last weekend. I'm not sure what the etiquette about picking berries on a National Historic Site is, so I was pretending to walk the dog if anyone happened by. The blueberries are wild, so it took about three hours of clandestine picking to get enough for blueberry buckle.
Turns out that was the last really good day we had together. Jake stopped eating about three weeks ago, and after tests and trying various things, the vet was still uncertain as the acute cause, although since being diagnosed with cancer last fall we have been expecting a decline to start. After three very bad days, we had the vet put him down Sunday afternoon. When we got home the skies opened up and it poured rain just like in a Gothic novel.
For once, our mood seemed to be affecting the weather instead of the other way around.
Hurricane season is here but the grey skies aren't all weather related.

A Day at the Beach

August has sped by and I cannot believe that it is Labour Day weekend already. I have been a little busy, so forgive the lack of posting please. The upside is that I have lots to write about.
Two weekends ago (Already!) I dragged the studyboy to Middle Cove Beach Provincial Park for the 7th Annual Clay Studio Beach Firing and Pottery Sale. This has been months in the planning, and we were incredibly lucky to schedule it on the only day that happened to be sunny and warm in a three week period. That Saturday was a glorious day, and the troops assembled early at the studio to load boxes of bisque fired pots, wood chips, firewood, food and tools into lots of trucks to make the trek out to the beach for the day.








The beach fire is a fund raiser for the studio, where we build a large wood bonfire over a pit full of pottery and fire pots in a very primitive way; then the resulting pots are sold to people as they are unloaded from the fire.
This was a sort of anniversary for studyboy and I as we went to the beach fire as onlookers last year on our first weekend in NL. This time we weren't onlooking though we were working. Digging, carrying, and wrapping up pots in seaweed and newsprint to create nifty effects on the pots. Once the fire was lit though, we had hours to sit and chat, eat and wade in the surf until the pots were cool enough to handle and polish for selling. The day was so nice that many families were there and they were very happy to buy our wares. The pottery was all donated by studio members, who also volunteered their time to be there that day.