Weekend update

So I think the best way for me to do this may be to go week by week, as I often don’t have a ton of time to write every day.

Monday was actually not a protocol day at work, so I mostly worked on some data analysis. Got home with just about enough time to make some food before heading to my swing 6 class. Pretty good class, we were almost even. It was the last class of the session, so that means Dr. Swing time. Generally good comments, Alex seemed to think I did pretty well, he threw in a few variations and I managed to follow, so that’s always a good sign, he also liked that I threw in a variation myself. Aimee mentioned about my leaning forward a bit, and to be careful of my shoulder, so in other  words; the usual, and my knees during swivels. But generally overall ok. Afterwords I got convinced to go out for a drink, well I didn’t have one, but we sat around at Vice & Versa and chatted, ended up being Aimee and Alex as well as Gabrielle, Gabriel and Veronique. We called it a night around 11 and I headed home.

Tuesday WAS a protocol day, so 5:45 wakeup, followed by a long morning of blood draws and chatting with the patient. Had made a point of dressing in my usual black Tuesday wear, black on black. Managed to avoid most of the V-day nonsense. Simon was very sweet and gave the entire lab valentine-o-grams, a little card with stickers and an eraser. Got a little more work done on data analysis due to the conference that was coming up that Thursday.However, between the short night of Sunday (due to a late afternoon pepsi) and the equally short night of Monday (due to going out and getting up way too early), I headed home around 4 and took a quick nap before blues. After that I headed over to Brouhaha to meet up with Simon and some of his friends for the singles night out. Cynthia was there, 3 weeks post break-up with Benjie and a friend of theirs Annie. Later on, Annie left and Éric came to join us. We played a bit of foozball (I’m still as awful as I ever was) and discussed the single life in general. All in all, it was a nice evening, and as I didn’t have to be up at 5:45, I actually got a decent night’s sleep afterwards.

Wednesday, nothing terribly exciting at the lab, except that at 5pm was Marie-Eve’s thesis defence, so I was able to see at least the presentation part as well as the start of the question period before heading off to choir practice. Choreography went decently well, considering Walter wasn’t there, and I managed to get injured in the first 10 minutes. Nothing huge, just pulled a muscle in my thigh because I wasn’t warmed up when we tried the first runthrough. So I played metronome instead. The practice itself went decently well, Denis is getting better at running rehearsals when Norman is away. It’s nice to be singing People again, and finishing on something other than the Hallelujah was frankly refreshing.

Thursday was a protocol in the morning followed by the McGill Experimental Medicine Biomedical Conference (or some title to that effect). I was presenting a poster. Had a lovely chat at lunch with a few people from the IRCM. Starting kidding around about only allowing people from different categories at the table so we wouldn’t be competition for each other. Ran into Carlos, hadn’t seen him in a while. Chatted a bit with a girl from neuro who worked on Alcoholism treatments, something about the different personality characteristics behind addiction. They had two populations; the sensations seekers and the anxiety-sensitive, and it was fascinating to see that the effect of alcohol on their brains was completely different. My presentation went well, two of the judges seemed impressed or at least happy with the presentation, the other looked bored (I found out later that she seemed bored with everyone). Because they didn’t come around together, by the time the poster session was over, I had only been seen by 2 of the judges. I finally found the third one and explained I was going to pop in on the oral presentations as I wanted to see Simon present. When I came back the judges were chatting, so I went over and asked if he still wanted to hear my presentation. He said that he had heard some good things about it so that he would be right over. In the end, after my presentation, he told he he had been told my presentation was good and he was glad he had gotten to hear it. I didn’t win an award, but I’m glad I got some nice comments. Carlos won in his category, apparently it’s the second year in a row, impressive! After the conference I had troupe practice, it was an interesting evening. Quite a few of us were absolutely exhausted, I felt very non-function for most of it. We started working on a few acrobatic moves. I ended up partnered with Martin… he’s an odd one that one… he dances really well, but seems to be completely confused about technique… anyhow, we didn’t manage the slide, although the other two moves worked well enough. I did end up with a bruise on my ribs in the end from him clenching his hand during one of the jumps though. In the end I bailed on blues and headed home. Gave Tavish a lift as he decided that he was too tired too. Finally resolved the ‘is Tavish single question’ that has been plaguing me since October or so when Tanya suggested he had a girlfriend. When I asked if he would be coming out for Mireille’s birthday the next day, he mentioned he had a date. We kidded around when I dropped him off that I would have to check his status on facebook the next day to see how it went, if he had become ‘in a relationship’ or ‘it’s complicated’. (It didn’t).

Went in to work late on Friday, we were all a bit tired from the week. Frankly, other than the lab meeting, I don’t remember doing much… Afterwards over to Cats to help out with the Swing 3 class. Afterwards I had a date of sorts with Sivan, a guy I’d been chatting with on Okcupid. It was a nice dinner, we went out to the Korean restaurant I had seen on Prince Arthur. He seems nice, although that’s all I have for the moment as we headed back to Cats for the Downtown Stomp and didn’t see each other much afterwards. It was a good dance night, had a few pretty good dances. Managed to get up the nerve to ask Adrian to dance, and Randy tapped me on the shoulder at one point, so did Irwin. Got a chance to dance with a new guy, Fernando, who’s birthday it was. He had really good musicality, so it was fun dancing with him. Spent part of the night chatting with Gaétan. Sivan came by to tell me he was taking off around 12:30 or 1. Gave him two kisses on the cheek and told him I would send him my email and we could see about doing something, as Cats isn’t always the best place to chat. I bailed on the blues, just sat on the couch watching people dance before we headed out to Vol de Nuit for Mireille’s birthday. In the beginning it was Dany, Daniel, Gaetan, Philippe, Dominic (who I met that night) and Mireille. Eventually, we were joined by Tanya, Anne, Joseph, Anga and another guy I didn’t meet. There were a few raised eyebrows when suddenly some swing dancing broke out, followed by some blues, which raised even more eyebrows lol! We just about closed d

own the place. I ended up dropping off Dominic, Anne and Mireille around 3 am.

Saturday morning I had brunch with the choir social committee at La Petite Marche. Had a lovely meal and we got some planning done for the musical camp. Afterwards, Anne and I met up with Adèle and her friend Christine to go to the Jardin Botanique for the ‘Butterflies go free’ exhibit. We must have spent about an hour trying to get a picture of the blue butterflies, finally Christine managed to get one on a fluke. There were a decent amount of butterflies, but I’ve been told that it’s better to go later in the year and earlier in the day if you really want to see a lot of them. It was close to 5 pm when we headed out and got onto the subway… I think the person driving must have been new because they seemed to be having a lot of trouble stopping properly at the stations… Adèle suggested I join her and Christine for dinner, so Anne parted ways with us to go home and we headed Downtown for Vietnamese soup. In the end they convinced me to join them to go to the Snow Village after dinner. So I was pretty chilled and tired by the time I got home… in the middle of my roommate’s birthday dinner/party. I basically played the anti-social roommate and hit my bed, watched one or two episodes of How I Met Your Mother, and went to sleep.

And Sunday was recovery day, slept late, had a phone chat with the family. Dad’s back in hospital for his hip, at least now they think they got the infection. Seems some skin bacteria would have gotten into the bone during the infection, but this time they think they got all of it. Went to the gym in the evening and grocery shopping but other than that, read and did some stuff online.

Hmm… guess I should try to do this twice a week if I’m going to keep being this busy…