A Few Quick Notes 283

-The reported high today was 9 degrees, and as this temperature was recorded at the airport I would imagine that it actually broke 10 degrees in downtown Halifax. The high temperatures and clear skies have made for a decidedly springy feel. Unfortunately it has already dropped to just 2, and is forecast to head below zero for most of the rest of the week.

-Yesterday I attended a few sessions of a conference sponsored by Dalhousie's Centre for Foreign Policy Studies. All of presenters were graduate students studying some form of international relations. The events during the day were relatively traditional presentations with question and answer periods afterwards. The way they did the question and answer periods was rather strange. Instead of taking a question from the audience and answering it, they collected several questions and then had the presenters answer a number of questions in a row. I don't think that I would recommend this method.

In the evening I was able to attend the closing dinner at the Lord Nelson hotel, the event included an address from Canadian Senator Hugh Segal. What was surprising about the dinner was how sparsely attended it was by participants. I guess a number had already left town, but you would think that if you were in town you would at least stick around for a free meal at a fancy hotel.

-Between the final presentation session and the dinner I went to a classmate's house. Shortly after arriving I started talking with a few of my classmate's girlfriend's friends. All of a sudden I realized that I had attended high school with one of the friends, as well as the friend's older sister. Not surprisingly, this woman didn't recognize me as I don't think we spoke to each other during our entire time in high school (I only knew who she was because I was in the same grade as the older sister).

-We managed to lose another Ultimate game this evening. This game we forfeited because we had not female players, apparently none of them could make it. We ended up playing a scrap game, which was OK, but not quite the same as a real game. The frustrating part of the loss is that this is one of the few teams we have actually beaten, so a victory was a distinct possibility.

-I had to make a post-game trip to the grocery store. I was able to pick up both butter and celery, among a few other relatively standard items.