Happy Happy Joy Joy!
John Mayer hits the T. dot on August 7th and guess who plans to be there! that's right... MOI! This should be satisfying after missing his show in February. Anyways just thought I would share that. :)
See y'all later!

Ah dear Blog,
It's nice to be back! I would much rather write here any day than write presentations or essays but that has been my life lately. April appears to even more booked in terms of essays and papers. Currently there is a bit of confusion in one of my classes about when our final presentations will take place. They were originally scheduled for the last day of class (April 8th) but somewhere along the way our prof said we could discuss it amongst ourselves and choose an appropriate date and now of course most people want to put it off for another week but I cannot accept that. I am going to have mine ready as soon as possible but really... our final exam depends on when we have these presentations so we should have them sooner than later. It just bothers me that we were going to have them on the 8th as arranged earlier in the semester and so people would have had to deal with that and their other work assignments accordingly but now this gets the back burner when they have the option to get rid of it. My reasons for having it as soon as possible and sticking to the original schedule is that for some reason my last few weeks of April are when all my exams and essays are due so I really need as much time as possible at the beginning to get some studying and writing done but if I have presentations well until the middle of the month that is not going to happen. I'm just irritated with the whole situation.... God what a rant I have just written.

So ... this weekend has been a bit more relaxing than the past few weekends where I was madly writing up presentations. I decided to slow the pace a bit because I haven't been getting enough sleep or something so I need to chill out for a bit.
I am keeping my eye on housing ads and more seem to be going up everyday with pretty good prices and stuff. I have no idea what the places really look like but I think I am going to have to wait until April hits because most ads right now are for possession on April 1st and I really cannot deal with that at the moment. As it is I will likely have to buy some furniture for the place I live in next year and that will kind of suck because my line of credit will be approaching its limit soon. Yikes! ugh more money worries. Time to do some aggressive scholarship applying.

I can't wait for school to be done this term. I am tired and need a break. My job this summer will be physically tiring but hey... at least it will kick my ass into shape!

I have decided that next year after I graduate from this program that I will go to Italy for some travel and then participate in the dig on Sicily that is provided by UBC-Stanford University. I think its time I finally saw the other country that I study. If possible I think it would be great to do a bit of the western Peloponnese and Northern Greece that I didn't get to see before but this is up in the air still. I need to figure out a way to finance myself until next year and then figure out how to finance a trip. Ah well... it will work itself out and it is something to look forward to.

Dave has just invested in a new 8-track so he has been in recording heaven and hell for the past week. Hell, because it runs on digital technology and it's been a bit tricky to learn the functions but in heaven because it gives him so much more flexibility with the editing of his songs than the 4-track did. Not to mention he only had joint custody of the 4-track and it never seemed to be available in his time of dire songwriting need. Someday I am sure he will have to own his own 4-track just for simplicity but I think he is really going to grow to love that 8-track. And soon there will probably be another investment in a data card so he can store more songs that are in the works. I am glad someone is enjoying the end of their term at least. :)

Anyhow I will try and check in more often as for the moment assignments and such seem to be in a little bit of a lull. Check ya later!

~Denise~

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

It's been an interesting week for me. When Lori was visiting me we had 'Pi' Day on March 14th (ha ha.. get it... 3.14) so we went out to eat pie. And Monday was the Ides of March so I had to have a caesar although I didn't really.Instead I had a caesar salad... and today its the day of green beer and celebrating my Irish heritage... except that now I have to share it with everyone who isn't Irish. Oh well at least its all fun and games in the end.

The past week has been pretty hectic... most of last week I was trying to cram all my unfinished work in before Lori came to visit but that didn't really happen. She arrived on Saturday morning and then we spent the afternoon at Stanley Park because the weather was gorgeous and it's the stereotypical tourist attraction in Vancouver. Not having a car makes it somewhat difficult for me to show her all the places that my dad and I saw last August when we first got to Vancouver. Not to mention that at this time of year such attractions as the Capilano Suspension Bridge are closed. The other thing is that Vancouver can be expensive and I noticed that the walking everywhere was catching up to her just the way it did to me when I first moved here. Sunday we didn't do too much because I had a presentation to finish for Monday (which I did) and so we went to church in the morning, went out to lunch afterwards and had a somewhat relaxing afternoon. Well... Lori did at least anyways... she got to watch some movies on tv and the Brier Cup while I chained myself unwillingly to my computer and stack of articles and books. I felt so awful neglecting her that way but she is the one on vacation and unfortunately school is still full on for me. If she had been able to stay the entire week there would have been more of an opportunity for me to show her a wider range of Vancouver. On Monday I took her to school with me where I had hoped to show her the Museum of Anthropology but we discovered that it is closed on Mondays. So we went back to the reading room and I set her up at my carrell so she could work on some of her teaching plans while I went to class. And wouldn't you know it but there wasn't enough time to even get to my presentation that I spent all of Sunday doing. Whatever... now I have the rest of the week to brush up some of the areas which were sketchy. We went to the pub with some of the CNERS gang and then out to White Spot for dinner with Christie in tow. Gotta love the double Bellini... mmm.
Anyhow yesterday we went shopping on 4th Ave. and went to Sophie's Cosmic Cafe for lunch where we ran into her friend Erica (the only other person she knows in Western Canada and whom she had been trying to get in touch with). Erica apparently had just returned from Cuba the night before and was only in Vancouver for the afternoon before going back to Victoria. It was such a fluke occurrence but sometimes something like that can really make your day. It definitely made me smile. After lunch we took off for the airport and there is where I had to leave her so I could boot it to school in time for 3pm class. Just in case your wondering it took about an hour for me to get from the airport to school (not like it matters really).
I think it was an enjoyable four days. I really miss seeing my family and I felt somewhat empty returning home that night to not have her with me. I also think that Elaine was a bit freaked out that there was another person living here... someone on my side! HA! Sucker!

For now its back to the grindstone and more presentations... My life is one long presentation lately. All these assignments, essays and exams will take me well into April and so where will I ever find the time to find a place to live?
I am getting concerned that I might have to move somewhere where there is no furniture and then have to invest in that. Ugh... school is just getting to the point where I cannot afford it anymore. I HATE being in debt... I cannot handle it very well. I wonder how long its going to take me to break even after I am done this degree? Should I even move onto the next stage of my education with debt looming over me? Probably not, but I don't want to be in school forever... AHHH... all these thoughts are somewhat stressful and all I need to do right now is concentrate on getting through March and April alive. It's going to be one interesting month though.
Anyhow perhaps a pint of green beer will take the edge off? Until later... ~D.~

I've been a bad blogger... just swamped with work and occupied with my cousin Lori's visit to Vancouver... sorry for the short update but there will be a longer one later. She ships off to Calgary later this afternoon and I have class til 6pm... so optimistically I will be back here tonight with more details of the past week?
Cross your fingers...

I tried to post another image... didn't work... gotta go to school. Talk later.

I have had a good weekend so far albeit not very productive. Last Monday class was overbooked with presentations so I got out of Eleusis which was a good thing but I should have been revising it all week and here it is Sunday night and not a word of it has changed. *sigh* It could be a long night.
Last night I went to a lecture on the Dead Sea Scrolls by Jodi Magness and it was actually very good. The hall was overpacked and at some point the fire marshalls came in but they just looked around and left. I doubt they wanted to disrupt such a crowd of people listening to a lecture on archaeology and religion. People were sitting in the stair aisles and wherever they could. I guess its an issue that has a strong appeal to the religious side of people and not just the archaeological nature which is kind of why I went. Anyhow Jen, Karen, Anthony, Christie and I went to Dentry's after for a drink. I said hi to Mike who works there (and whom I used to work with when I was in high school and worked at Camp Ekon) and we just chatted for a while. It was a good night but I apparently missed Colin Firth hosting SNL as I had three messages on my machine when I got home from my sister and Dave urging me to watch it but it was over :( Hopefully it will be a re-run soon. Anyways before I start getting any work done I must have a nap or I won't make it past 10pm...

From what we have all heard in the news yesterday I think that this t-shirt campaign to Free Martha is a bust. The same thing happened with Winona Ryder (well she got off a little easier than she should have) and so I think that t-shirts are bad karma for celebrity trials... However I would be very amused to see this walking around in public.

I just received this story from Greg and found it very interesting. This is a situation where the Red Army should have been encouraged to use their grenades for fishing, eh Dave?

Oh sweet Coke... how I have loved you... but Dasani ... I always knew you were a rip-off!

Ok... short post for now... long day ahead but you gotta check this out. I don't really know about the product name but I think the commercial has its desired effect. Gotta love European advertising!