1000 words or 10km.doc

These days my life seems measured in numbers. I guess it's more accurate to say my productivity is measured in numbers. Today I wrote 1000 words to conclude the Canadian chapter of the thesis and jogged for a solid hour racking up 10km on the treadmill. It seems I really like these nice round figures to measure progress. I think I'm more proud of the latter figure because it's the most I've ever ran in one go. I'm sure to all you stellar fitness buffs out there 10km is chump change, but I've never been a long distance runner.

I've limited my cardio to once a week because I've read everywhere that it takes away from your other gains throughout the week in regards to building. As you can tell, I really am becoming a bit of a gym convert. There is a euphoria I get every time I conclude a good work out, relax in the pool facilities, and make my way home. The contented feeling lasts for the rest of the night and I miss it on the rare days I don't make it down to the gym. Without it, I think this dissertation work would feel like wrestling a lion, but with it the dissertation is like a little kitten - I give it some attention, take care of it, and make sure it grows into a cat (the simile kind of falls apart but you get the idea).

There have been two wonderful highlights to this week and they both happened to fall on Monday.

Bec celebrated her 24th birthday! After having previously gathered for some pre-birthday drinks last week, a few of us crashed over to the Aussi household on Monday to wish her a proper birthday. I was in charge of baking the cake. It was something I considered an easy feat, but as I gathered the ingredients I remembered that I hadn't baked a cake in ages. Honestly, I couldn't remember the last time. It was dreadfully easy though so I expect to do it more in the coming months. I made a Devil's Food Cake with Cream Cheese Icing. I garnished it with strawberries on top and in between the layers. Aside from the icing melting a bit on the walk over I would say that it was quite a success. Bec's housemates were generous with the wine and we sat around and shared a lovely evening. It's tough to celebrate birthdays away from home (the second one for some of us) so it was nice to give Bec a proper celebration. I even found a hilarious Donny Osmond themed card (with a voice message from Joseph himself) for the birthday girl. I think she appreciated the humour too - there's a market for these cards?!

The second highlight of the week came before the cake adventures. I had a wonderful two hour skype chat with Miss Emma Jane Hunter. Emma went to the trouble of getting incredibly dressed up for our conference call. She looked just as I remembered her. I gave her a formal update as to what was going on in the Spa and narrated some of the more interesting summer travel experiences. She told me about her summer in Prescott, the current gig in Ottawa, the SSW comedy happenings, and all the good stuff I'm missing in Toronto. It was a much needed update. I was happy to share and receive some goss, laugh the afternoon away over shared jokes, and make future plans. It may get lonely over here sometimes knowing my best pals are continuing on with their lives over in Canada, but all it takes is hearing one of their voices (Emma's dear sweet British inflection for example) and I'm reminded how lucky I am to have such a stellar group to return home to.

Today was spent on campus. It was productive, as I mentioned above, but it's icky there. The bus there was incredibly crowded both ways (although I did get to read more of my latest - Coelho's Veronika Decides to Die), the library was jam-packed and extremely warm, and I'm not as comfortable as I am back home. Luckily my efforts at raising our book haul back to twenty at one time was successful, so I have all I need at home to keep going. It was nice, however, to sneak in a quick lunch with Lotte and Courtney after their supervisory meeting.

We have a spooky Halloween party on Saturday night. Until then...

Doc's Prescription of the Day; Plan to mark big occasions. Highlights make the weeks and months more bearable. The current highlights I am looking forward to include Saturday's party, a visit from Talia, the trip to Berlin, and a possible November highlight still to be confirmed.