Babbles of a Procrastinating Grad Student

It's 11:35 pm here, and D and I are about to hop into his hot tub to ring in 2013.  I may have had a bit too much wine and Kamora, so I suspect I'm going to pass out about 3 minutes after 2012 goes out the door.  :D 

I'm kind of hoping that we'll be able to see the firewords from the hot tub.  Or maybe just Natures fire works - the northern lights!  *hopeful* 

I should probably write something of more substance, but see comment about wine and Kamora.

HAPPY 2013!  I'm off to sit in a hot tub surrounded in snow.  YES! 

(This is going to do wonders for my cold)

My thumb is burning. MY THUMB IS BURNING OMG. And so are my calves, but for entirely different reasons.

First, the thumb.

So I made this stirfry tonight, one that I've made before. And I was careful after chopping the jalapeno pepper; I washed my hands 3 times right afterward to make sure I got all of the juices.  But obviously that didn't work, because right after touching my lips and scratching my nose, THEY STARTED TO BURN OMG.  And now, hours and many handwashings later, my thumb is burning like trees flooded by lava and omg omg IT HURTS!  :(

Second, my calves.

This is from earlier in the day and entirely the Yukon Maybe's fault.  He took me for a "walk" to try to find a cave. ON A MOUNTAIN.  Oh my goodness, I'm utterly pathetic. I'm so badly out of shape, and my many breaks and huffing and puffing was embarassing, especially next to him and his utter lack of out of breathness.  But it was fun, and while it's hard now, it'll get easier.  I hope.  :D  But for now, my calves are burning, and I suspect that my thighs will also hurt once I'm less distracted by my calves (and thumb). 

Ow.

780 km down, 2500 km to go!  I (finally) managed to get away yesterday, but only by about 2 pm (and it was 3 pm before I actually got onto the highway).  Because I really do suck at packing, I didn't get to bed until about 4:30 am the previous night and was up by 8, so I was pretty tired while driving.  I offset this by eating way too much crap.  Which sort of explains the stomache ache this morning!

Anyways, I hit some wicked weather systems.  There was a giant storm just as I crossed into Saskatchewan, but I only caught the edge of it.  But then, just as it was starting to get dark out, I hit a really intense storm.  I'd stopped for gas and found out there were tornado warnings from there to the Alberta border, and the skies just ahead were this yellowy-brown and I swear the soundtrack from Twister started to play in my head (you know, that instrumental part that warned of approaching tornado).  Decided to drive on anyways, because I'm stubborn, and hit the heaviest rain I've ever seen about 30 seconds later.  Seriously, it was raining so hard I could barely see the highway!  I couldn't even turn off the highway because I COULDN'T SEE IT, and I certainly didn't trust pulling over.  I just drove slow and followed along the edge of the highway and ditch.  And then it petered out to nothing about 4 minutes later.  The clear skies ahead is what drove me onward.

So I gave up on camping last night and drove straight on to Saskatoon.  I definitely made up for my late start yesterday!  Onward to Grande Prairie, Alberta!