Blessed by the Potato

Well, it’s another extreme heat alert day here in Ontario, so air conditioned buildings are opened up to the public/homeless to prevent heat stroke and the like. People are encouraged not to undertake strenuous activity outside in the sun, and all the rest that the heat entails. Far away, some debate rages over whether global warming exists at all — let alone what we should do about it.

But I’m going to talk about the heat on a more personal note. I don’t care for the heat, not at all. I used to; but then, I used to be skinny.

I’ve got a lot of trouble sleeping in the heat and humidity lately, even with my air conditioner running. Of course, with the heat this bad, I can feel the oppresive heat draft coming in through the partially opened door (only my bedroom is air conditioned, and I have to leave the door open a bit for the cat).

Beyond that, though, I’ve got to worry about what it was that got me so fat in the first place: food. The stinking heat and humidity is just destroying the food in my apartment, turning everything mouldy really quickly. I usually have a sixth sense about that sort of thing, throwing leftovers out before they ever get the chance to go really bad. But lately I’ve been seeing spots of mould forming on, and in some cases even completely taking over, my food before I get around to tossing it. Icky. Also, and perhaps even worse than the mould, is that the heat is melting all the chocolate in my kitchen. My Twix bar came apart when I opened the package, leaving me with a mediocre cookie and some gooey chocolate & caramel to lick up. I picked up a Toblerone (that I thought was on sale, but didn’t ring up as such) today, and when I took it out of the cardboard, all the little triangles went smoosh in the foil. It’s a real shame, because most chocolate isn’t as good after being melted like that and then resolidified in the freezer. I need to remember that for the future, and either keep my chocolate in the fridge in the first place, or at least in my room that is air conditioned for part of the day. (Last year, it was August before I finally started remembering to do that).

Lots of people are talking about books lately, so I was going to put up a list of the books on mine, but then it occured to me that “the medium is the message” — while it’s true that the large number of sci-fi and fantasy books would give you a pretty clear idea of my personality, the clutter and disarray of the shelf would provide an even better idea. Not only do I have some books that just don’t fit on the bit of shelf that isn’t dedicated to school books, so they’re sort of thrown on top, in front of, or even behind the other books, I also have a shelf that is soley devoted to junk and clutter. Matches, spare keys, change for the laundry machine, my hat, duct tape — you name it, and it’s probably been misplaced there at some point, and taking up valuable book-displaying room.

I recently had to restock basically all of my dental care products, having simultaneously run out of floss, mouthwash, toothpaste, and been long over-due for a new toothbrush. It’s pretty cool to see the confused look on the checkout girl’s face when I come up with $50 worth of stuff to prevent cavities, and 3 bags each of chocolate nuggets and Skittles.

I have really terrible teeth due to a number of issues (genetics, stress, diet, etc.) and buy any toothpaste that promises to help reduce tartar and gingivitis (so usually Colgate Total or Crest Complete — both contain fluoride and a mild antibacterial). While my teeth could be whiter, I generally avoid the innumerable whitening toothpastes since the whitening agents can weaken gums, and I just can’t risk that. This time, I saw a new product: Colgate Enamel Hardening toothpaste, and was immediately intrigued. However, the only ingredient it listed was old-fashioned fluoride, at the same concentration as Colgate Total (0.243%), so I have no idea what might make it “enamel hardening”. I actually asked the pharmacist (much to her obvious annoyance), and she said she’d never heard of this new toothpaste, and so couldn’t tell me one way or the other. I played it safe and bought more Total (which was also on sale; the new stuff wasn’t).

It’s still been bugging me though. Is it just a marketing gimmick, since almost every kind of toothpaste does something in addition to “fighting cavities” now (tartar control; whitening; plus mouthwash; etc.), did they just re-label their plain toothpaste, relying on the fact that regular fluoride toothpastes harden enamel (their old-fashioned cavity-fighting mechanism)? The Colgate website doesn’t have any information on this version of its toothpaste, and a Google search didn’t help either. Anyone know what the deal is? I’d hate for someone to be fooled into buying regular toothpaste when they might be marginally better off with another type.

Some quick site admin stuff: Area Man & Jonathan, both of your sites were last updated in mid-April. Until you can meet the admittedly onerous demands of blogging once a month, I’ve taken you off the links list. Likewise for my left-wing political parties: see you next election! Note that I will leave the link up for Fair Vote Canada, since we’ve actually got a referrendum coming up in just over a year (though, AFAIK, the citizen’s assembly has yet to be formed). Bakarocket doesn’t appear to have renewed the domain… This has left my links section very sparse, but I kind of like it that way. Topical links are generally provided within relevant posts, and most of the other sites I visit regularly don’t need the link (does Penny Arcade, BoingBoing, or The Weather Network really need a link?).

Highlight of my week: Answering “Did you go to Western before you started your PhD here?” with “Yes, I did my Master’s here.”

Low point of my week: I think I might have accidentally sold my soul last night for some sleep. I was really tired, and actually went to bed before the sun was fully down. I woke up a bit before 1 am though, and just couldn’t fall back asleep. With increasing delerium and sweating, I think I was actually begging out loud to just fall asleep; I’d do anything for sleep. Then there was a hint of a foreboding presence, and I fell asleep again (around 7 am). It could just be the sleep deprivation talking, but I’m really afraid that some dark transaction took place in those final moments that preceed unconsciousness, those seconds that you can never quite remember no matter how hard you try.

Ouch, I spent most of the morning with my rear end glued to the toilet, but thankfully I seem to be empty now. Oddly enough, though I feel really super bloated right now (and that’s backed up by extra tightness in the waistline of my shorts… ugh).

Now I’m helping Netbug rebuild his site. Unfortunately, comments are going to be a bitch, so I’m probably not going to bother unless they were really long or really deserving of long-term archival. Since that’s just one spud’s opinion, let me know if you had a comment on his blog you want restored, and if you can remember which post it went with. I think I have all of them from November on (note that this is a pain for me since the comments are only linked by the post number, not the title…). For now, his domain isn’t pointing to the rebuilt site, but I’ll drop him a line to get it back up.

Oh, and that WMAGNFARB.

As Cancun nears I find I’m increasingly terrified of the prospect of heading down there. Everything is just such a fuck-up with this conference that I have to wonder if the organizers were getting serious kick-backs from the demolished hotels there to try to con some scientists into filling space when all the half-way sensible tourists were staying the hell away. It’s the middle of June, so Ontario is already getting plenty hot (though it’s looking like it’s going to be very pleasantly mild while I’m gone), so it makes no sense to hit the tropics now. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. It makes me feel like Casandra again — not because of the emasculating feeling of getting pulled along against my will out of the country, but because all of the problems we’re having now we foresaw back in January when the conference details were announed: the hotel had been all but destroyed in the fall, and in January were predicting a reopening date just a month before the conference was scheduled, and hardly anything is that on time. In early March — still plenty of time to reorganize — the hotel announced that renovations were late and pushed the reopening date to just two weeks before the conference. Still, the organizers insisted it would be fine… ugh. Even with all this craziness, the conference rate we got wasn’t much better than the one we got in Ireland. So it’s not even going to be cheap…

Sure, work will pay for most of my way, so people ask me why I’m so dead-set against a “free vacation”. Unfortunately, a conference is neither: while my room and flight will be paid for, there are numerous other expenses that make the week there significantly more expensive than just staying home… and it’s certainly no vacation. We’ll be crammed into our rooms to save on space (it looks like at least one person from each room will be on the floor), and we’ll be going to boring lectures all day long for 5 straight days, with “social” events all night long where we continue to talk shop: it’s more intensive than a normal week at the lab, and that’s not including having to sit on a plane and deal with the airport at each end. I’ll have one and a half days at the end to try to unwind, but those will be on my own coin (damn you, Joce!) and with my luck someone from the conference will be staying late and shadowing me to pick my brain the whole time.

I’m visibly grumpy (or worse) about the whole affair, and people try to cheer me up in bizzare ways: “It’ll be great, you can sit on the beach and drink Coronas…” Hello, pale enough that I still burn even with SPF45 on (though at least then it takes more than an hour), and I think beer is vile. “I’ll be so exciting, getting to see new places…” That’s encouragement I just don’t understand. What’s so exciting about new places? I think people like this are deeply disturbed: they take a terrifying experience and it morphs over into something exciting. It’s like people who just don’t feel thrilled unless they place their lives in mortal danger. It’s something others have commented on a lot: are “extreme” forms of entertainment a sign of the impending doom of civilization? Has modern living made people so numb and jaded that they can’t be reached in any vaguely normal way? Are our lives so worthless that we’re ready to risk them for a cheap thrill?

I don’t understand the trend for travel for its own sake. It increasingly seems like people go on trips just to say they went there, even if the place they went didn’t really have any redeeming characteristics of its own. Everyone seems to want to visit Europe at least once (and only once :) but very few seem to know why other than the fact that it’s there, and because their kid brother did it last year.

Case in point: a friend of mine, let’s call her “Dimple” went to Peru recently. Why Peru? I’m not even sure she knew. Perhaps a game of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiago brought back some fond memories, who knows. Anyhow, while there she had just a horrible, rotten time, and had to come back early. She bruised some ligaments falling down the stairs at her hotel (depending on who you ask, she was either so drunk that she fell down them in a stupor, or the hotel was such a dive that there weren’t any lights in the stairwell). Her travelling companion caught one of those diseases that used to kill my settlers in Oregon Trail, like dysentary or cholera or something like that. I’m not actually sure if she survived or not, since I haven’t seen her since (and there hasn’t been a glorious “Peru slideshow” emailed around, not even one of the inside of the bathroom, or of the yellow-green drinking water).

Yet, the surviving member of that expedition is all keen to hop back on a plane next vacation and go somewhere else. Do people never learn? Maybe it’s my advanced degree talking here (Master of Science for those who haven’t been keeping up with the posts :) but I’m more than ready to not only learn from experience, but to learn from their experience so I don’t have to go through that: I’m not going to Peru. And if I do, I’ll be going somewhere with clean water and lights in the stairwells, which would probably make the trip too expensive to be feasible, so the same net effect results (“Dimple” makes a metric shit tonne of money at her job, so if that was all the vacation she could afford, then what chances do I have?). Humanity is unique in our capacity to learn from the mistakes of others, and our incredible disinclination to actually do so.

I also don’t understand the high cost of going away on vacation. I’ve gone on a number of vacations on my own dime, and they were fairly expensive to me, blowing about a month’s salary for a week away. But some people just go crazy with it, blowing away several months’ worth of earnings for a few days away somewhere; some people even take out sizable bank loans to go globetrotting. Man, I had trouble going into debt for my education; Wayfare took time off before her master’s to work and build up some savings. To rack up debt just to go somewhere else and snap a few photos seems deeply irresponsible to me.

Moreover, I don’t get the appeal of big cities. Sure, most of us live in cities: they’re where the jobs, houses, and grocery stores are. When the mood strikes, they also have stadiums, museums, and lasertag/opera (actually, that would make an awesome mashup). But once you live in a city, there’s really very little point in seeing another one: it will simply be jam packed full of buildings, people, and very subtly different museums, galleries, and stadiums. Their streets might be laid out a little differently, some of the buildings might be a little more decrepit, and the river they’re built on might be a bit different. But really, big cities are very similar to one another, and make for very expensive vacations that are not very restful. I really don’t see the appeal, particularly for New York. I single it out because recently Wayfare had wanted to go until I pointed out why it was an incredibly bad idea, and for the first time ever she actually listened to me instead of singing baby elephant walk in her head, and changed her mind. It’s pretty bad off in terms of crime and dreary buildings, and doesn’t have a whole lot in the way of interesting history. Sure, it has lots of professional sports… but that includes the Yankees. But most of all, it’s featured on TV all the bloody time. Half the shows on TV take place in New York (it won’t be long until even Lost has a scene set there), so you get to see a lot of it right from your own living room. What isn’t there is available on your friends’ photoreels and their own horror stories of going there (I’m not sure whether the scariest one was about the creepy guy trying to lure young girls into back alleys, or the one about the smelly homeless guy who tried to come into the conference hotel, and harrassed the scientists because they were the only ones who could stop the government from screwing with his memory… and his bladder control. I think my conferences draw a “certain element” — another reason to dread Cancun). Plus, it was recently the scene of a major terrorist attack. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Who needs that shit on their vacation?

Above all, I find it odd how people just don’t get where I’m coming from with all this. “What do you mean you don’t like to travel?” “Are you afraid of airplanes?”

No, I’m agoraphobic.

“But think of all the new people and exciting places and different foods…”

Seriously, not helping.

“So, you’re like afraid of open spaces?”

We had an interesting conversation about agoraphobia at work as we were discussing this nightmare of a conference. No, agoraphobia is not a fear of open spaces. It is instead a fear of uncontrollable situations, and in particular of crowds. Agoraphobics simply tend to be more vigilant people who are more conscious of the terrors and perils of daily life. They’re also people who require less stimulation to get the adrenaline flowing.

It can be somewhat crippling at times, particularly when other stresses or depressive episodes are already screwing with your brain chemistry. At those times, many thanks are given for the internet. But it can be managed; by preparing for the stresses and anticipating problems, one can make the fear managable (this of course is what leads to over-packing). Of course, for a big trip like this, I’m going to spend the next week sleepless as I go through nearly every eventuality and try to prepare for it. There are limits though: there is no way in hell I’m going to Japan next year, the quadruple whammy of a giant flight over the ocean, a completely different culture (with different ways of greeting each other, dressing, laying out rooms, committing ritualistic honour killings/duels, and even weird toilets!), a completely different menu (featuring smelly, smelly fish everywhere) and a very severe language barrier (at least Spanish uses a few of the same words and letters) is just simply too much.

As was earlier intimated, I had a lot of trouble with my agoraphobia while I was writing my thesis. The added stress and late nights and general depression made leaving my place rather difficult for a while. Thankfully, the internet was there. And World of Warcraft (but, and this one is going to kill you, but I never explored the new Silithus, because it was too alien and scary). Right now, I’ve got a battle ahead of me to get through the next few weeks with this stupid trip looming. I spent almost three hours yesterday compulsively going over my insurance and plane tickets. The important parts are highlighted and circled, so the whole affair is starting to look like a biologist’s undergrad text book…

I’ve heard of people accidentally getting on the no-fly list (or simply having a name similar to someone on it) and being delayed and/or grounded completely for that… I wonder if I should look into getting on it. Accidentally, of course (if I ever do need to go to the states, I’d have to be able to get my name off of it)…

“So,” the conversation continued, “why don’t you like travelling then?”

The hairs standing up on the back of my neck, the sleeplessness, the worry, the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, the dry sweats, leaving my place, leaving my kitty all alone, spending a week away from my friends (really, really away)… in short: everything.

“That’s so weird.”

On a related note, here’s an article from the Onion not too long ago that I liked.

As I said in the comments of my last post, I passed my master’s defense with relative ease. Now I just have a few corrections to make to my thesis and I’ll be done completely, and can move on to my PhD.

That also means that it’s time to start my diet/exercise program in earnest. I’m not off to a very good start — I only went for a 10 minute walk today, and had a large pizza for dinner. I don’t feel too bad though, since it’s still celebratory, and since they were very late with it (they hadn’t even started by the time I got there to pick it up) they knocked the price down to $8 and gave me cheddar cheese without me even asking (I actually didn’t mind the wait — I wasn’t in a hurry and used the time to extend my walk with a lap around the block). Bonus!

The celebration weekend for the MSc was all right — we had some last-minute drop-outs for health reasons (Shubh’s mom and Dimple’s reluctance), and a good chunk of the party left first thing Sunday and missed some good eats and cards. The whole thing made me feel kind of old though — the latest I stayed up was 2:01 am, and that was a pretty sad sight at that point. Must be the coke withdrawl (I think I only had 6 the whole weekend).

More good news than my own was shared though — Reggie announced his engagement and showed off what 4 month’s salary will get you these days (yes, for a diamond it was pretty big and sparkly, but I still have trouble believing that that much money goes into finger ornamentation that doesn’t even tell time or shoot laser beams). Plus, Joce brought her latest boy toy/legitimately serious boyfriend to show off (though I don’t think he was entirely comfortable stranded in the wilderness with a bunch of old men who might die and stink up the joint before the ambulance could arrive should any sort of fatty-food related coronaries occur).

When I got home, I found a letter from my landlord saying they were going to come in today to change the toilets and showerheads to new water saving ones. I won’t be sad to see the toilets go (which are the original ’62 fixtures) since they don’t work any better than devilish no-flow ones do… but that showerhead is a classic. It doesn’t have a ton of settings, and it doesn’t need them. It has one setting that just simply gets the job done. My shower here has the best water pressure of any shower I’ve ever used. My parents used to have a similar no-nonsense showerhead, but replaced it some years ago for a detachable one with a hose, and showering at home hasn’t been the same since. It has a ton of settings, which can basically be summed up as “useless spray, wide useless spray, narrow useless spray, wide gentle dribble, single stream dribble, single stream high powered massage, and three stream pressurized shower” — of which, only really the last one is of much use for getting shampoo out of your hair, though the effective rinse area is pretty small.

Anyhow, I didn’t sleep at all last night because I hate the thought of someone coming into my apartment while I slumber, so I got up at 9 and waited for them on the couch… and fell asleep and snoozed right through until almost 2. Around 4, they dropped off another letter saying they won’t be here until tomorrow (Tuesday, so today as I post this). I’ve got a bunch of stuff that requires going in to the hospital tomorrow, so I’ll have to let them do it without me here (which is a shame — I was going to try to save my showerhead).

My allergies have been pretty bad this year. That’s the problem with Wayfare: not only does she have crazy, ridiculously over-sensitive allergies, but she also spreads them to everyone around her. It sounds nuts, and I didn’t believe her when she said she gave her strawberry allergy to her best friend in high school… except I used to only have fall allergies (ragweed), which are mostly itchy eyes… but I’ve been pretty damned sneezy the last two springs, too. Plus I gained a mouse allergy (but that can also happen just from working with them as much as I have).

I think that’s about it for tonight.