A Few Quick Notes 409

-Today was another beautiful day. In contrast to many of past few nights, the temperature seems to be remaining above zero, though the temperature drop was still about 10 degrees, maybe even as high as 11.

-I am now down to 2/8 with this year's Roll Up the Rim to Win contest. Apparently playing for Jess only got me through the initial days of the competition, I will now likely need to find some other cause to reinvigorate myself (though this doesn't mean that I won't also carry original burden).

-A few days ago Neil called our internet service provider about our sluggish internet connection. After a few minutes he learned that the problem is that due to an 'administrative error' we had been switched to a slower service some number of months ago. Apparently we are now to get some kind of discount, though I am not sure if we have been told exactly what this will entail.

Of course the good news is that we now have a much faster internet connection that doesn't seem to disconnect as frequently. The bad news is that we have once again confirmed that we are so lazy that we will wait months before dealing with an obvious problem.

-Maybe two weeks ago Neil and I were grocery shopping when we happened to come across some discount passionfruit flavoured pop. Much to my surprise, I was quite taken with the $1.98 product and decided to buy a dozen cans of the diet variety. After just a few days we were out and I was jonesing for more.

Yesterday night we went back and bought another dozen (along with more traditional groceries). Sadly, I pounded back five of the dozen cans this afternoon and evening. At this rate I am likely going to need to re-stock by tomorrow afternoon (that is if I want to re-stock before I run out).

-I am in the midst of preparing an essay for submission on Monday. While things are a bit rough at the moment I think that I have at least finally settled on the basic outlines of the structure (a development that was a long time coming). Hopefully I will be able to fashion something approximating a first draft tomorrow.

-Tonight all three of us went upstairs to have dinner at our neighbour/friend's apartment. We had a really great stir-fry for dinner and then a sticky toffee sponge pudding (that I prepared) for desert. It was a very pleasant affair.

-A few weeks ago this neighbour/friend and I decided to jointly acquire a seed starter kit (basically mini-green house with peat pellets) and together get a jump on the growing season. With a few of the seeds that I already had and a few more that I ordered from Vesey's (they have great seed catalogues) we managed to take care of the planting last Saturday. When I went up tonight, much to my surprise, I learned that most of the seeds we planted, including most of the tomatoes, have already sprouted and are quite perceptibly plants. This early and vigorous sprouting has really helped me get pumped about our upcoming container gardening season.

Hopefully at some point in the coming days I will be able to take a few minutes and explain what is going on plantwise and what I expect to happen in the near future.

-As many of you likely know, yesterday was St. Patrick's Day. Though I am not a particularly keen celebrator or St. Patrick's Day I did end up visiting a local establishment yesterday evening. I decided to head out to this particular event because a fellow political science grad student and former Nova Scotia premier Rodney MacDonald were to be performing together. While at the event Neil and I ran into a few other political science grad students, as well as my supervisor. All in all, I think it is safe to say that we had a good time and would likely consider heading back next year if a similar slate of performers happened to be scheduled to appear.