Birthing Day!

I'm in Manitoba.

Winnipeg was decent - nice weather, friends and family.

I came in especially for my grandfather's 90th birthday. He was happy to have so much of the family in for the event and the dinner was delicious. Also, it was deliciously awkward and tense - I LOVED it! At the same time, I'm beginning to tire of the same old family tensions. Can't we all just get along?!?

Speaking of good family times, I'm up in Thompson visiting my sister. It's a 7-8 hour drive from Winnipeg - eek! I will be here for less than 48 hours before heading back to Winnipeg for wedding-ish stuff. Apparently, my phone is completely useless up here - no 3G coverage means the phone does nothing! I suppose it's refreshing. Now that I've wasted time troubleshooting, I'm sure that nothing can be done and I can enjoy my time sans-cell!

Anyway, I had plan to get things done this trip, but that's out the window. I'm just going to enjoy my birthday and the rest of the trip.

happy birthday, world!

It really doesn't feel like I'm back in school; it's the second or third week back and I've only had one one-hour class, and I'm still having meetings to organize the year... I am doing lots of work though, I already have a 25-minute presentation due on Monday.

Also, I've been spicing up my SSHRC proposal. It's the same project as last year - an opera on the topic of Type-One Diabetes, but I'm working on making it much stronger. By the end of tomorrow, I will have gotten comments from 5 different professors with different thoughts on how I can make it even stronger.

Tomorrow is my first lesson of the year and we'll be talking about my proposal and thesis plans, so I'm very excited to get it all underway!

For Garry

One of the things I miss about playing for dance classes was the improvising. I would just play freely - not worrying about being original or even terribly creative. When I improvise at the piano, I feel like it's the easiest way of expressing myself.

Below, I'm posting an improv I recorded this evening. I recorded it on my Yamaha Silent Piano, so it's midi, but impressively so. I'm actually quite happy with how the tone sounds, etc.

Anyway, there's a reason why I'm posting it. I was recently informed that a dear family friend, my uncle Garry is losing the fight to cancer. His kidneys have shut down and he's moving into palliative care. His wife sent out an email, to which I wanted to reply earlier, but I just couldn't find the words.

So, when words aren't enough...

http://michaelpark.ca/site/ForGarry.wav

Back to School

Well, it's that time of year again; the summer is over and it's back to the books!

This is 21'st year going back to school, so I'm pretty good at it by now. Luckily, school supplies have gotten a lot easier over the years.

Since I use the same materials all year round, I don't need to make a special trip to the stationary store, in fact, I have pens and pencils galore!

Textbooks are a thing of the past. For my classes, we are assigned readings each week from a wide variety of sources, each of which are available online through journals, or in the library to photocopy.

I'm glad I get to avoid all of the newness that I had last year - meeting new people, getting used to new profs, navigating new buildings, learning a new city. This year, I'm settled into Vancouver and UBC. I know pretty much what I need to know to make school happen; it's just like I'm picking up where we left off in April.

I was almost worried that I was going to have to switch my sleep schedule back to something more normal, but the only class I have scheduled so far is at 1pm. I shouldn't brag, but that only scheduled class I have this term doesn't even start until the day before I fly to Winnipeg, so tomorrow seems like an exceptionally arbitrary date for 'back-to-school' celebrations. However, that's how it's happening, so Hooray!