Christmas time!

This week has been both productive and relaxing... the first half was spent polishing off my essays, which are now both finished. Well, I still have to add page numbers and other bits and pieces to make them APA style, as well as a title page, figures, and references. But my references are already stored in RefWorks, a program that writes your bibliography for you in dozens of formats-- how convenient! And my figures are already stored in "My Pictures", so I just have to click buttons for both of those and voila-- fini!

On Tuesday night, we had our last Hiking Society pub quiz before the the holidays. We go to a place called The Old Horse which has amazing bread and butter pudding, and is eccentrically decorated with hundreds of teapots hanging from the ceiling. Last time I talked about The Old Horse, it was decked out in Halloween decor. Now, there are Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling, wreaths on every door, and a huge display of santa and his reindeer right outside in the beer garden, which can be seen out the back windows. It's a cozy little joint, and has a regular pub quiz every Tuesday night-- and this time we were determined to win!

So Alex had asked us to research Wikipedia pages over the weekend, which I had completely forgotten about. I'm sure he was only half joking, seeing as he wanted to win as much as the rest of us! But when he brought it up again that night, I remembered I had looked up the page on Kate Middleton, and I generously boasted that I could now answer any question about the royal couple. However, one did not arise... There was one question I should have known, which was "Which CD came out in America in 2000 with the highest record sales?" I knew that answer, I just didn't know I knew it-- cos you see, I said "There's no way it could have been No Strings Attached by N*Sync, they weren't as famous as Britney Spears, so I'm going to say Britney Spears." So that's what we put, and it turned out to be No Strings Attached and I kicked myself for it.

But-- we won!

Well, we didn't win the whole thing. See, the quiz board is set up like bingo, so you win if you get a row of answers, four corners, or the highest number. We got two rows and four corners, and won 4 cans of Carlsburg beer! Yippee! And, although we did not score the highest in the pub, we scored our personal highest! Go team!

On Wednesday, I basically lazed around while Jana was busy in class. I had the compulsion to write a Christmas humor tale, which was going to be a normal story with a female narrator like me, and it was going to be about my car breaking down and Santa appearing out of nowhere to jump start it before disappearing as mysteriously as he'd come... but I ended up going with a story from a pine marten's perspective, though I only wrote a page before I got distracted by a Youtube video of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella.

Well, those little pine martens are hard to relate to. I made it so that they speak funny English, cos being non-human, it's hard for them to learn. Here's what I wrote before I abandoned it:

*
Pine Marten Christmas
*

Did you knows that pine martens er native to Englandness? Yes, you would think we was more exoticer than that, though I kin assure you that we er relatively elusiveth creatures, like the platypus or Sasquatch, so that makes up fer us livin’ in such a ordinary places. Picture a weasel has big cuter eyes, has fluffy tufty browner fur, has the cutest face you ever sawed, and you have a pine marten. We tends to pop around on our shorteth stubbly legs with seriously adorabley looks on our faces, pretendin’ we don’t want no foodstuffs from humans, which causes ‘em to take one greatest interest in us.

Lookit this one now—leapening over brushes and snufflin’ through the snows. Oh hey-ar—that’s me! I talks bout meself like that from time to time to perfectish my narrative making skill. I is, after all, a wee pine marten has little English practice. Any wayeth, see me stumpin’ fastly through the forest. I hurries because I see me fifter and I has a inkling to poke her with my nosey.

POKES!

“Hey Brilly, cut it out!” she chasties me squeaky. She has gooder speaking. She uses humanisms like ‘cut it out’ at many times.

“I kent cut it if I en’t got skizzers, Lulie,” I retort, smoothin’ the furs on my red-browny rump.

“It’s scissors, you dolt,” Lulie says in a longeth, smeary voice. She lickins snowflakes off a paws.

“Whys you lickin’, Lulie? You knows you gotta putten your foots back down.” I hop from me front to me back in playfully arches, flying snow all over her.

“Stoooop!” she whines. “You are supposed to be gathering berries! Mumarten said!”

“I knows what Mumarten says,” I says. “I gets berries from humanies.”

“You get bread crumbs and garbage from humanies.”

“Nuh-uh!” I protest. “Berries!”

“Old berries!”

“Yummy berries!” I digs around in me cheek pockets and pull out three bright redder berries.

Lulie gaspess, and I feel please.

“Oooh, Brilly! Where’d you get those?”

“I tolder yas, from the humanies! Thems young was out and has a whole bag full!”

*
Not The End
*

What I was going to have happen, was the berries were going to turn out to be poison, so when Brilly decides to eat one, it looks like the end, but Santa appears out of nowhere and squeezes her so she pukes, saving her life, then he disappears as mysteriously as he'd come. Christmas miracle!

I don't think I'll finish it though-- it's hard to write in pine marten English!

Anyway-- on Wednesday evening, Jana and I met up to go to the University Chamber Choir's caroling service put on by the Chaplaincy-- we were supposed to join in the singing at some parts but I hummed instead-- there's something about singing in a congregation that makes me nervous! The choir was excellent, by the way. There was a soloist at the very beginning who had such a pure, choiristic voice. Jana and I were disappointed they didn't sing "Carol of the Bells", but I figured it was too secular for a church service. Thet did sing a couple of familiar songs: "Noel"and "Oh Come All Ye Faithful". And, they had mistletoe available to bring home (Jana took a sprig), and hot mulled wine and spiced cider, for refreshments! It turned out to be quite nice. I met Annie there, who wished me a "Happy Christmas" before leaving, and me, being such an inarticulate grinch, just said "Sure!"

Why can't I say "Merry Christmas"? I'm such a Scrooge!

Well now, it's Thursday, and I have a few goals for today:

1) run the pilot of my study. Yes, I spent a good five hours on Tuesday with my adviser, watching him program the task. I seriously can't believe how much code goes into such a simple attention task. This is literally all it is: letters flash rapidly in the center of the screen. One of them is white, to distinguish it from the others (the target letter). There is a circle of Gabors (fuzzy roundish patches) surrounding the letter stream. One of them is at an angle to the others (the target Gabor). That's it! That's it-- well, basically-- and it took five hours of programming. And not from scratch, either. My adviser cut and pasted and changed bits and peices of code that were already written. And I just sat and watched in relative silence the entire time, while he muttered to himself "That goes there, oh but I can get rid of that-- we want that to be .08.." etc, until he'd remember I was there and say to me periodically, "I told you it would be boring! I mostly just talk myself through these things..." He seemed a little self conscious about it, but I persevered, and it was a learning experience, watching as he tested the code several times and worked the bugs out one by one until the task was perfect. Anyway, now I only have before 1PM today to run the task on a couple of guinea pigs (the lab is booked after that), so we'll see if it works successfully!

2) I also have to run myself. I haven't been for a jog in a few days, and I'm determined to squeeze in at least a couple of hours this week/weekend before I am off to Bavaria. Despite the dreary weather!

3) Lastly, I should try to stick the figures/APA format/references into my essays by the end of the day. My adviser generously agreed to look over my research proposal for me, and Jana claims she will look over my imagination survey write-up-- so I should get some feedback, as well, before I submit those! I feel pretty good about my work, and I'm confident I've done my best.

And that's that. Monday, I'm off to Bavaria for Christmas! I'll be sure to blog all about it, and hopefully Jana will remember to bring the camera. I can't wait to see that castle! Oh, and you guys be careful in Ohio with all your snow and 0 degree temps-- it's been drizzling rain here at about 40-ish degrees, so it hasn't been too bad for us. I think it will be different in Germany, though!

I will try to write another blog before then, but if I don't-- everyone have a happy Christmas!

Ho ho ho!