Ahhh...vacation in Paris

Once again my blog has fallen by the wayside. But I have a good reason this time - I was away in Paris! It was my mom's birthday and what better way to celebrate than a week in Paris? The weather was a tad cool and rainy over there (while it was unseasonable hot and sunny in Toronto, go figure) but who cares, I was away on holiday. We saw all the touristy sites, ate great food such as crepes and red wine (my fav was this great Merlot that was only 2.21 Euro for a whole bottle!) and even had time to relax and explore the city. My favourite area was Montmartre, where I spent a wonderful Saturday afternoon and even had my portrait done by one of the artists.

The Louvre

The Eiffel Tower

Sacre Coeur

Crepes!

So, what else have I been up to? Well let's see...I went to the Wine and Cheese Show and sat through a "naked tasting" seminar (not as interesting as it sounds, sadly it was a "blind" tasting rather than the "naked" tasting it was billed to be). The show itself was pretty interesting and offered many, many wines, beers and spirits to be sampled but was surprisingly lacking in cheese! I almost made it out to some interesting HotDocs films (sorry V-pants, next year I promise), saw a taping of the Rick Mercer Report, enjoyed Mahler Symphony 4 at the Toronto Symphone Orchestra and...wait for it...resigned from my job! Yup, you heard me, I quit!

I decided that things were just too busy for me right now and that I really needed to put all my effort into finishing my dissertation and completing my degree. My last day will be May 1st, which will hopefully give me enough time to pull together the first draft of my dissertation for May 12th. I think things will go much more smoothly once I have the time to really get into my research again. Having some time off this summer (while I wait for revisions to be reviewed by my committee members) means I might actually have some time to do some crafting and hang out at the cottage.

Well, that's all the exciting news I have for now. Hopefully, I'll be posting again soon. Over the next 5 days I'll have seen Dirty Dancing, gone to the Opera and left the job I've held for the last 3 years and 8 months. I should have something to talk about!

I'll leave you with some pictures I took early this evening when out walking the dogs.

the new bedroom

I've had this blog for less than a month and I'm already delinquent. I've gotten behind on my postings and haven't learned how to reformat my page. Sadly I just haven't had the time to put into my blog (blog, blog, blog - that was for you Jim!).

I've been making good progress with my research though. I still have yet to run any anlyses on the data in my database but have completed all my interviews! I ended up having 20 participants for the interview portion of my study and am proud to say I finished transcribing all the interviews on Sunday (my wrists are still sore!). I had wanted to have that part done by the end of March so I met my deadline with 1 day to spare. On the agenda today is running some preliminary analyses (just descriptive data at this point I think) and reading through the interviews again and again. Having never worked with qualitative data before I'm a bit apprehensive of where to go from here. My advisor has suggested I just relax and read through the interviews a number of times, perhaps taking some notes, and the themes will start to emerge. At this point that doesn't sound all that helpful - I mean I don't think it works in the same way as those optical illusion images where if you just stare at them long enough the mystery image will emerge. My advisor has yet to stear me wrong so I'll heed her advice. I have a meeting with her next week so I'll see how far I get before then.

In other news, the bedroom is now finished. Well, the construction of the room is complete and Alex build us a bedframe but I still need to get 2 bedside tables and a dresser.

Here's a photo of Alex putting the first coat of mudding on the new drywall. The next photo shows the walls finished with the first coat of primer on.

Here the walls and the moulding have been painted. Next the new flooring is going in.

Finally, here's the room all done. The darker area under the window (instead of trim) is a poured concrete windowsill that Alex made. It's very funky and functional as a ledge (a favourite spot for the kitties).

The last picuture shows the view from our window. That first building on the left is the Assembly Hall, a community cultural centre. They have a performance hall, community meeting rooms and gallery space. In the summer there are musical festivals and fairs that take place on the grounds just to the left of the building, which is awesome for us - we can walk across the street to see some great performers, sample food, go on rides, etc. In the winter we have the Lakeshore Santa Claus parade that comes by the house.

The other buildings you see further down are part of Humber College's south campus. Just down the road past those buildings is the Lakeshore Yacht Club and a protected park erea. The park includes beautiful walking trails along the waterfront and picnic areas surrounded by over 30 hecters of wetlands and areas of native vegetation. The park includes the grounds of what was the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital which occupied the site from 1888 until 1979. It's a beautiful area - Max and Eva like to walk the trails and go swimming in the lake.