If only his bow glowed like a light saber. . .

Woah - I'm listening to this piano piece called Hawk Circle. It has me absolutely staring into space. Do you ever get that? Does it ever happen that you hear music and an entire scene unfolds in your head? I think maybe I should be making movies.
I don't get the deal with this piece, under artist it says Michael Hedges, who's a classic guitarist. Does he play piano too? Who is to know, but he rocks my world. Those are the pitfalls of using winamp for literally all of your musical needs.

Oh where does this picture come from, you ask? Well let me tell you. Alaina and I were walking the streets of Victoria, BC, and we came upon this busker. He was actually a very good fiddle player. Blew my mind, especially in that get up. He was across the street from me, so I would have had to risk traffic to give him some money, but if there was a busker I'd toss money at, this was the guy. Now call me insensitive, but a homeless woman was sitting against the wall just feet away from me as I attempted different exposures and lenses to capture vader over here. "Spare change sir?" she softly called up to me. I looked at her, "no, sorry." I replied. My philosophy and giving money to the homeless if for another blog. But suffice it to say that if I had food or some manual labour she needed done I would have donated that, but not money. What I wanted to say to her was "Lady, across the street is a guy who dresses like darth vader in the hot summer sun, then struts and scampers around playing a fiddle like he's the devil that went down to Georgia and skywalker is the "boy". You don't see me going across the street and paying him for his magnificent performance, so what makes you think I'm going to throw money into your little hat there for nothing!? Your legs work, go dress like a storm trooper and get in there, and then I will toss you both $5." But I didn't. Somehow I think what dark humour that philosophy might posess might have been lost on her, but nonethelsess it went through my head.

So things are starting to come together, Anne gets surprisingly frequent internet access for someone in southeastern Africa.

Woah - the song just ended and it's Michael Hedges thanking the crowd as they applaud. Is there anything this guy can't do?

Back to reality. Okay so right now we're trying to coordinate a meeting in Switzerland to get our feet under us, then possibly a day or two in Marseilles, soaking in some culture. Let's hope they have hostels on the French Riviera huh?

Anyway the anxiety is fading. Now the only thing I'm worried about is the stupid lab. I have to count dots on brain slices that may not have dots. This may not seem like a big deal to you. "no dots, so what?" you may say. Well I'll tell you what. I spent all of last semester trying to make these brain slices have dots on them, and dammit all if I can't count them a lot of money and time are down the drain. There's a good chance my sample quality will be hot garbage, but I think that is alright, since Mike (who is the Master's student who shows me the ropes) and Francesco (my PhD supervisor) are two very understanding guys, and a big part of why I'm doing this now is so I don't shit the bed next year when it counts. When I'm doing a degree. So let's hope that works out huh. . .

Also Francesco said something about possibly getting this really big group grant, which may mean he has the money to fund me through the dept of Biomedical sciences, which would free me from the shackles of the Psychology depts rediculous regimen of useless courses, and open up a door to a world of cool courses and a cool dept. I'm not going to hold my breath for that one.

In other news, the rents have taken off to florida. Yes they have a small motor home, and yes they like going to Florida in it, but don't let them deceive you. They hate crowds, and they hate beaches. Well, abandoned beaches they like. Florida has some incredible hiking. There are some beautiful state parks there, and they like to hike the mountains, mangroves, check out the everglades, look for birds, etc. Let 'em run around for a little huh, they're still young! I thought for awhile there was a conspiracy theory here, I thought maybe they were snowbirds and they were just going down and sitting in trailer parks getting sunburnt and fat. But when they come back they're tanned, in shape, and they have good pix. So I guess that shoots that theory all to hell, in the words of my mom. They left this morning, so maybe by tonight they'll be out of the snowy latitudes, although these days I think I could probably bike out of the snowy latitudes in like a day.

By the way, keep the guessing up for the name of the lost fat guy.