Carrie’s Ramblings

Dixafix1
Carrie posted in Interest articles on September 20th, 2007

I received this from one of the RAs on the team. The last part is sad about our society but if you can’t laugh about it what can you do?

In Pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name. For example, the trade name of Tylenol also has a generic name of Acetaminophen. Aleve is also called Naproxen. Amoxil is also call Amoxicillin and Advil is also called Ibuprofen.
The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra. After careful consideration by a team of government experts, it recently announced that it has settled on the generic name of Mycoxafloppin. Also considered were Mycoxafailin, Mydixadrupin, Mydixarizin, Dixafix, and of course, I bepokin.

Pfizer Corp. announced today that Viagra will soon be available in liquid form, and will be marketed by Pepsi Cola as a power beverage suitable for use as a mixer. It will now be possible for a man to literally pour himself a stiff one. Obviously we can no longer call this a soft drink, and it gives new meaning to the names of “cocktails”, “highballs” and just a good old-fashioned “stiff drink”. Pepsi will market the new concoction by the name of: MOUNT & DO.

Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer’s research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.

Fine then4
Carrie posted in Rants on September 12th, 2007

Yeah I’m ticked. You could say that. Upset. Angry. Actually, at this moment sulking would be a more accurate adjective. It’s about Grad Office space.

Now I don’t want another office. I have an apartment to myself which isn’t roomy but it’s mine and I can organise it how I feel. (And organise I do!) Why would I want to spread my mess (though an organised mess) out in another space? Just another place for me to lose things. Plus the office space they’re offering me is approximately 20 metres away from my apartment in Kenora House here in Bartley Residence. (It’s been converted to office space, yet we were turning students away from Res because we’re full…don’t ask me, I just work here). So I’m like, Why bother? So our coordinator asks us to email him and let him know if we’re not going to be using it. So I did. And he emails back and says, “But you’re a GA! You’re entitled to that space and where are you going to meet students and such?”

I had an office in that House all last year and never set foot in it. I never even went in to have a look around. It wasn’t a problem. If I need to meet with my students then finding space is not difficult plus if I have Master keys anyway so I’ll just go and use it. And it’s not like I’m going to hold office hours there because the main door is always locked so students can’t just walk in anyway without an appointment. So no great loss there. Here’s the kicker though. There are 9 of us who are supposed to share 4 desks in that room. I shouldn’t complain, the Economics department has 12 on their list. When you need to use the room, you go to Front Desk during working hours (how many Grad students do you think actually do most of their work during working hours?) and sign out a key. There are 4 keys. First come, first serve. If you’re number 5, you’re SOL.

But, I suppose you’re wondering why this is even an issue since I’m not planning on using the room? Because the part that gets me mad isn’t even about office space. Lack of office space is not the department’s fault. It’s not even the fault of Grad Studies. We just don’t have enough space and complaining about it is not going to get us more space. There physically is not enough space. Instead of building office space on campus they built a Bike Shack. A fancy bike castle. So that the people who ride their bikes to school in the winter won’t have to store their bikes in the harsh -30C weather. IF YOU RODE YOUR BIKE TO SCHOOL IN THAT WEATHER I THINK IT’LL SURVIVE SITTING OUTSIDE IN THE SNOW FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS!

My beef is with the Research Centre. We have this reasonably spacious room, right in the Rec Hall (downtown Recerville) that we had used as our “Club room” last year. “We” being Grad students. We worked there but called it the Club room because we spent a good percentage of our time gossiping and venting. But we still got our work done. We’re big kids, we can handle it. We can also deal with the consequences of not getting our work done. It’s called Not-being-in-Grade-4-anymore. The room has 5 computers (4 of which are MACs), 2 nice big tables with chairs around them, and lots of cupboard space for storage of surveys or interviews or what have you. It’s called the Centre for Parks, Recreation and Tourism Research. Well I’m doing Park, Recreation, and Tourism research so why is it that I’m not allowed to use the room anymore?

Three students have been assigned that room as their Grad office. Three Grad students have been assigned the windowless sessional office at the other end of the hall as their Grad office(it could fit at least 4, if not more). The remaining 9 ORPT Grad students have to queue up to fight it out for a corner of a Bartley Dorm room. On the other side of campus. Far away from the Rec Hall and the profs and students who need to talk to us, and to whom we need to talk. Three students for that whole room! And it’s clearly not going to be like last year where we just went there and hung out anyway. Because at the end of the email is this nice comment, “The Research centre is NOT to be used as a place to congregate as it was last year.” Wow, that was subtle. What was the big deal with us in there anyway? So we chatted a bit, but it was a good working atmosphere and we could use each other as a resources and ask questions and do group projects and chill out a bit! Profs knew where to find us and they would ask if so-and-so was coming in that day and if not someone could MSN them and be like, “Come in today because Dr. X is looking for you” and you’d answer, “Okay, I’m on my way.” Students could ask us questions instead of bothering the profs. Jamie regularly made cookies as a form of procrastination and brought them in because she couldn’t eat them herself. Even Profs can’t argue with cookies. It was a good system.

So yeah, I’m bitter. I’m not even mad though. But I’m bitter. Fine then, I’m not welcome in the Rec Hall anymore.

AND HERE’S ANOTHER THING ABOUT GRAD SCHOOL! I met with my committee yesterday who all inhaled deeply and raised their eyebrows when I answered that I was planning on graduating in May. May would be the end of the term. May 2008 would the end of my 2-year Grad school programme. IT SHOULD NOT BE HARD TO GRADUATE AT THE END OF YOUR 2-YEAR PROGRAMME. This should not be unreasonable! It’s a 2-year programme; in May, it will have been 2 years. And I’m WAY ahead of my classmates. They haven’t even collected their data yet and I’m analysing it already. If it’s so impossible to finish ORPT Grad school in 2 years, THEN MAYBE IT SHOULDN’T BE A 2-YEAR PROGRAMME. I’ve been here for 6 years. I love Thunder Bay, but it’s time for the real world. Two years is enough for me.

But it’s alright, I’m not even mad. Now I’m going to finish in two years just to spite them. Because they thought it couldn’t done. Without office space. Take that. Fine then.

Bhiking0
Carrie posted in Recreation on September 8th, 2007

Yeah that’s right, Bhiking. It is this sport where you set out to go mountain biking but spend a good deal of your time pushing your bike over logs and around bolders or flying over the handle bars and landing on your face. Don’t get the wrong impression! It was really only a modest attempt at mountain biking…we weren’t wearing kevlar body armour or anything. Helmets. Helmets save lives. It was an old ATV trail that was somewhat overgrown and unmaintained over in a block called Prince Jarvis on Lake Superior.

We were supposed to start out at 3:30 pm. So at 4:00 pm we pulled out of the school’s parking lot with 2 paddles, 4 mountain bikes (with front tires removed), Darrell (my prof), 2 other GAs and myself all crammed into a pick-up truck with a canoe on the roof. We drove 45 minutes or so to the access point way out near South Gillies and unloaded. Four-wheel drive was a must on this road and with all the rain we’d had earlier that day getting out was going to be interesting, but we decided to drive off that bridge when we came to it.

First we had to paddle the bikes across the mouth of this river that empties into the Lake to start the trail. That was a funny image: 2 people wearing PFDs paddling a whitewater boat across a 10 metre wide river with 2 mountain bikes piled in the middle. Oh for a camera…

The trail was clear and relatively smooth for the first couple of clicks which was nice to warm up with. The only problem was that because it was an ATV trail the centre of the trail had really thick grass that was too hard to bike through, so you fell into the ruts on either side. But then we kept getting smacked by the trees and bushes on the side because we on the edge of the trail. If you tried to get back up on the centre or switch sides then your tires would just slip in the mud and you’d wipe out. I wiped out. Several times. It was funny though. Only one nasty gash on my leg as a trophy. Even when I jammed my front tire into a log and came to an abrupt stop and flew over my handle bars into the mud. I like mud. Mud is soft. I was okay, bike was okay, and we got a lot of laughs out of it.

The area was beautiful too. The topography was great and you can tell there haven’t been many people in the block because the vegetation is super thick and trees are well-established. There were towering cliffs and ridgelines all around (250-600 ft) and the trails went down to cobble stone beaches that looked out on to the back side of Pie Island and Mink Island on Lake Superior. We saw that the only people who use it are anglers and hunters simply by the type of garbage left behind. Fishing line and shell casings…and they wonder why they have a bad reputation. The land is apparently owned by the MNR but has remained forgotten for years. It was originally homesteaded for mining and of course eventually logged but that was way back in the 20’s and 30’s. The Crown bought it back, or re-inherited it or something and then gave it to the MNR who never got around to logging it again and instead put in a series of hiking and ATV trails. The land is sheltered by high bluffs and cliffs, slightly off the beaten path and pretty well just forgotten. Which is why it’s such a great place to visit now! It was beautiful.

We were biking the trails to scout the terrain for a First Year Rec lab that we’ll be running at the end of the month. We wanted to use the bikes to speed up the process and scout more trails in less time but ended just barely making it back across the river before we were engulfed in complete darkness. We didn’t get back until 10:00 pm but it was a good day. The first time I really enjoyed mountain biking because it wasn’t so hard that I couldn’t ever ride and had to walk most of it but still challenging enough to push the limits and try new things. Even it if was mountain bhiking.