General Update

Just thought I’d make a quick post to generally update what’s going on in my life at the moment.

Work: Working on three projects at the same time, none of them currently announced, but suffice it to say that things are busy there. Not too stressful, but never enough time to get it all done (which is a bit of a stress in and of itself). We recently hired Kev and that seems to be working out very well. He is helping to get the load off of Chris and the other Kevin, and getting a bit of coding in for good measure.

Home: The apartment is a bit messy at the moment. In house news, we have (today) applied for our mortgage. I was hoping this would be signed and sealed today, but their approval zone decided to have someone drive by to make sure there is a house on our lot or something; we should hear back from them mid-week. This will draw a successful, but stressful home financing period to a close. I have a half-written entry regarding the house buying process that I may post someday. (Not sure yet if that one is going to be for prime time, or just kept for posterity on my laptop… it has some uncomplimentary things to say about some of the professionals who supposedly helped.)

School: School has been a source of high stress for the last few months. Basically I’ve been a bit stalled. I’ve been reading and reading to try to prepare for a meeting with one of the experts who came to my talk last year. I have some data to analyse relating to the model I was working on, but little idea how to move forward. Basically, a cognitive science student should have more to offer than a just-so story about his model, but crowd and fire simulations are obviously hard to test. To make a long story short, I met with the expert and she had some suggestions on how to move forward. Not a case of “take this free data to test your model with,” but at least some ideas on how to move forward.

Sports: I am doing the running room’s learn-to-run clinic again this spring. Last summer I basically stopped running after the May 5k race — “I’ll just take a few weeks off…”. (Although I did do a fair amount of biking last summer.) Part of the problem last year was that I didn’t make any connections in the running clinic. This year the group is nicer, and I look forward to chatting with the other runners on Monday nights. Also I am doing the Wednesday night practises, which I can continue with once the clinic is over. As of last weekend our bikes have been fixed up, so I may do some biking to work too.

Wedding: We are still targeting February 2006, and are thinking seriously about the Museum of Nature as the location. This location (believe it or not) is going to be gutted as part of their reno plan, but likely not until 2008. We went to a wedding show today (mercifully not too big) and made one happy discovery. The owner of the photo studio that shot May and Dan’s wedding has moved to Ottawa and opened a branch here. This is good news as I love the photos from their wedding. The photos are important to us.

Stress: With all this on the go, as you might imagine, my stress levels are a bit high right now. Too high, really, as they are starting to make me feel unwell. I’m trying to compensate for this by trying to create weekend downtime, but this cuts in to school productivity, so may prove counter-productive in the long run. I think once the house is financed and insured I’ll feel better, and am looking forward to the move being complete.

I was feeling like I was starting a sore throat, but am feeling better today. Perhaps I will go for a run this aft after all.

return to cmh blog

2005-04-16 16:29   ...2