Canada Post, watch out.

On the way back from Buffalo today, I found myself stuck on the Peace Bridge for 20-30 minutes, despite the fact that the traffic hotline said the delay should be no more than 10. The delay was so far back that I couldn't even use my NEXUS privileges to dart past the queue. In the lane next to me was a tractor-trailer operated by Trojan Horse Ltd. As I approached it, I saw that it was also marked with its cargo: US Mail.

Cheers for google

For providing free wifi at the airport! I am way early for my flight,
but unfettered access to my email means I don't care! Ah, the simple
pleasures.

Sent from my iPod

From the HLS Exam Instructions

Reviewing prior years' exams while starting up my own law school study regimen, I came across this in one exam's boilerplate instructions:

"You may not use text-messaging-style or other abbreviations, or otherwise shorten sentences artificially to make the page limit."

ROFL.

lost in translation?

I can only hope. because I ate a couple and let's face it, I have no practical skills.

For the BSG fans (aka Me, Xiaodi, Dan)

I was at Duane Reade, the omnipresent New York pharmacy, today and noticed this Maxim cover on the shelves. I thought it was hilarious (set phasers to sexy? they didn't even have phasers in the series, and who needs one anyway if you can regenerate whenever you die)

I wonder what percentage of the Maxim reading male population actually watches BSG. I guess they're in for a treat this week :-P

But won't you be bored...?

That was the question that I was asked a lot when I told friends and family of my decision to take a year off before medical school. While the main motivation was of course to allow for time for my jaw surgery and subsequent recovery (tentatively scheduled for February/March), I also planned on... well... taking a year off. No job, no coursework.

Some people fretted that I would be bored, or that I would return to med school unprepared for the academic routine. Some hypothesized that I would eventually find something for myself to do.

Lo and behold, the doubters were (partially) correct. I stayed up until 3:30 AM yesterday reading this 26-part saga of a medical malpractice trial. Before going to bed, I counted the number of new feeds on my Google Reader that I had added just yesterday (about 5), and went over the next few books on my reading list.

I do more reading (of a serious, somewhat academic nature [or at least of sort intended for self-improvement or self-teaching]) in a week at home these days than I ever did in a week at college. Most of it is finance/economics/health/policy related stuff on Google Reader that often sends me following footnotes and PDFed articles all over the intertubes. Even when you take out the LOLCats and quick-skim CBC News articles from my feedlist, there's still a good couple of hours a day of legit stuff to get through. Plus the books and the New York Times.

So no, I'm not bored. But yes, it seems that I'm incapable of truly doing "nothing" for too long.

I am really bored at work right now.

There's a bucket of halloween candy sitting on the counter. It' s been there a few days, so all of the good things (kit-kats, twix, m&ms) are gone. All that's left are the plain hershey's bars and whoppers. I had never had whoppers before, because "malted milk balls" do not sound particularly appealing.

And unsurprisingly, they don't taste great. But they have a texture that is kind of like astronaut ice cream, and that was unexpected.