Heavier Things

Today was such a beautiful day: sunny, clear blue skies, and warm without being too hot. The weather holds such sway in determining my mood. The winter grayness really depresses me, rainy summer days and nights make me lazy and content, and bright sunny spring days add that extra bounce to my step.

I went to see Jane Urquhart read from her novels today. She's a Canadian author who has quite the reputation. I bought my mother an autographed copy of her latest book, The Stone Carvers, for a birthday gift. She loved it, and from hearing Jane Urquhart read from it this afternoon, I am officially adding it to my list. There's a lot of historical context to her novels, and quite a bit of it Canadian.

I was also informed this week that I won an NSERC research grant summer position at my University. I've talked about this in earlier blogs: the research council only gives out 13 of these positions for all the natural sciences where you work doing research in your field in a lab for the summer. I got one of those 13 spots. It's good money, really interesting work, and going to put me leaps and bounds ahead of other grad school applicants. I'm happy, and at the same time I'm really pissed that I now have to stay in fucking Waterloo all alone for the summer. It blows. At least Dr. Teather is cool enough to give me some time off in May to go home first.

I'm off to have coffee/cake with some friends now before we head out to Retro Night at the Turret: 70s-80s-90s music, I'm excited.

Listening to: Hold On - Jamie Walters.

posted by Joanna @ 6:55 PM