Have I ever showed you this trick? You can see the infrared light on a remote control light up if you use a digital camera. These guys don't seem impressed. But we should still make IR Christmas lights that you can only see through a digital camera, yo.
Everybody was exhausted from a long day of phonology, so my 30th birthday gathering fit twice the uninhibition (?) in half the time. Thanks!
I'm allowed to start being a real student now. I didn't have any wine, though, M. I guess alcohol-free vegetarian Indonesian-Chinese Food Karaoke restaurants are to the linguist as wine is to the philosopher.
Kristina's dancer is more compelling than any of the photos I took at the Secret Vegan cafe dinner tonight.
By ridiculous coincidence, Tyler's visit coincided with Olivia's. wee-haw.
AMT shouldn't have to put up with this nonsense. Not on her birthday.
She made up for it, though, by being brave enough to open the door I sure as hell never would have.
I tried to tell her that Timmy's isn't as popular out here, but my claim was undermined almost immediately: Sure, Waterloo has four of them on campus, but you can't stand in the same place and see two of them.
When Martha heard that Edmonton had a Chinatown, she thought she'd like to check it out. I think she didn't think it would be very Chinese. It turns out she was right:
After knitting for a while at a hole-in-the-wall bubble tea place packed floor-to-ceiling with crates of mangoes, we went back to Jasper. Here's Mars at the arboretum, blithely unaware that she is about to be grabbed by a giant cactus monster
Before heading back across the river, we stopped in at the Macdonald for a little repose:
Martha was a little bit confused by this sign:
...but I thought it was pretty self explanatory: "Queen Elizabeth swimming in river: THIS WAY"
Eventually we made it to the restaurant, where they served us tasty Indian food by the bucket load:
All in all, a great visit.
Sure, I got to the party so late that it wasn't technically her birthday any more, but nothing could keep me from missing Kristina's birthday entirely.
Alison just found this Polaroid camera that causes everything it captures to be magically transported back in time 30 years.
Here's how it works: You have an idea for your hair that you think is awesome, then you ask Kristina to help you make it happen, and she says she's not sure if she can do it, then she makes it awesomer than you had imagined. 3 times so far.
This morning at 6 AM I found myself without sleep, slightly drunk, wearing a magic hat and singing in Swedish to a woman I had never met. It's not uncommon for me to lose my grip on the world and slide right off, but it rarely slides out of itself to catch me.
Vianey heard of my plight, and offered to donate her old camera to the blog. Here's the first picture I took with it, of Kristina giving her what she deserves.
The other thing about the cell-phone camera is that it has a huge delay between when I press the button and when it captures the picture. So, it took a long time to get the right picture of Chris offering me a slice of his home-made Jerry Orbach-O'Lantern pumpkin pie, and while I was trying we had a few misfires:
ACOL is a great conference that you should totally go to if you are doing linguistics in Alberta, as I'm sure most of you are.
Before going to see Eagle vs. Shark and that stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid Toronto-subway-zombie movie at the film festival, I got my hair cut and re-dyed by some kind of Norse mythological figure in my kitchen.
How could you not wonder what it's like inside a place called the Russian Tea Room? The tea wasn't that good, and I didn't try the psychic readers, but I like the atmosphere.
I swear, the room was dark when I took this picture, but Kristina managed to absorb what light there was and shoot it back at the camera. I chose the right person to dye my hair white.
Jingxia had over Albertans old and new (see below) for dinner tonight. I don't think we expected a 9-dish feast: red bean, eggplant, tofu, cashew, mushroom, beef, pork, chicken, and shark-fin soup. You can see how amazing it was. 
(you can also see how few people obeyed my silly-face directive.)
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