S. Worthen | Weblog

"Research shows if you get an e-mail from someone you know, you actually open it." *

I wonder how much funding went into sponsoring that particular bit of research?

* From a Metro article about a new Toronto advertising campaign encouraging every Torontonian to send spam an email to five of their friends and invite them to come visit.

Update: The website for this advertising campaign is here.

Today: I turned in grant application, photocopied relevant portion of ILL books, returned ILL books, had my hair trimmed, changed my plane ticket to come back on Monday, and went shopping. Bought: new shoes, film for the trip, and more boring things like toothpaste. I still need to reprint the overheads for my talk: I piled up the first batch too soon and some of the ink ran. I'm doing lots of laundry - that's the way I normally prepare to go on a trip. If all my clothing is clean, then packing is much easier to do at the last minute.

The wind is all bluster and ferocity today: large branches are everywhere, and an entire tree had blown over in Queen's Park. Each time I passed it, there were people clustering around it, touching it, as if they couldn't believe it was a real tree. An entire class' worth of grade school kids swarmed it at one point. Fall is really settling in - the trees are full of yellows, although plenty are still green as well. There aren't many reds yet. I kept appreciating the fact that, as a fully grown human being, I weigh enough to keep from being blown away. Speaking of fall, C. pointed me in the direction of this beautiful photoblog, currently featuring some lush images of autumn-painted woodlands.

Soon: My harp is going on a field trip this coming weekend to be restrung! I'll have a usable harp again! I leave tomorrow for a conference in Atlanta, a trip which will hopefully feature visits to a number of friends - or at least to parents of friends. I give my paper on Saturday. My students take their midterm tomorrow. I would like to think my life will be more tranquil post-conference, but many of the postdoc deadlines are at the beginning of November, a month which is approaching with alarming rapidity.

Recently: Another lecture - you would think lecturing on windmills would be easy for me. I've been eating lots of lovely Thanksgiving leftovers. There's only a tiny bit of remaining turkey. Speaking of Canadian events, a fellow member of my department now has an LJ as well: aerinah. If any of you have a favorite Windows LJ client, she's looking for suggestions.

Recently posted: la_monday is campaigning to qualify for a higher tax bracket, in "honor" of Marriage Protection Week (which is currently happening in the U.S.). On a completely unrelated subject is this contemporary variant on the Abbott and Costello "Who's on first" dialogue. In even more unrelated news, I now know something of how PointBlank came to exist (local free events paper from back home).

I saw Underworld yesterday and cared about very few of the character. I wasn't very taken by the main characters, but I particularly liked Lucien. The cute girl/plot device was likable, but would have been better if she wasn't such a plot device. It looked as if it was always daylight outside of the underground corridors when clearly it wasn't - the movie's about vampires. And speaking of a movie about vampires, did they ever need to feed? Apparently not. I had to close my eyes frequently - too many needle shots. It seemed like almost everyone needed to have a needle stuck into them at some point or other.