Greetings loyal subjects.

I apologise that you haven't had a note from your king in some time, but I've been very very busy. Taxes, nserc forms, becoming a member of APEGGA, looking for apartments, dealing with course stuff, preparing for labs, reading, writing letters, meetings, and particularly geothermobarometry have been taking up my life this week.

And I still haven't sent Joe his birthday present. I'm really sorry Joe, I swear it'll be with you soon!!!

APEGGA is the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta. I was not really interested in becoming a member at first, but then I saw that it allows me to stick the letters P.Geo ("professional geologist") after my title and degree, and more importantly I may get a sweet deal on car insurance as a member, to the effect that owning a car might just be a possibility. I just need to fill out an application form and stuff, and then apply to a certain insurance company that has this deal with APEGGA. In any case I wouldn't get a vehicle until after the field season.

The weather has been awesome here for the last five days or so. 6-8 degrees every day and sunny. The rabbits are out again, in force. I saw four last night near my house, and they're starting to develop brown colour on their backs. That or they'd been rolling in all the mud. Biking on Sunday was ridiculous... I went into the park for the first time (on bike), and spent three hours fighting through the most horrendous sticky mud ever. It was so sticky that it increased the diameter of my tyres by several centimetres, such that it was being peeled off by the forks and the frame, and the brakes. This stickiness also stopped it from flicking up at my coat, so my coat is still clean. My pants, socks, and shoes are not, but they're all old and I don't care. It took half an hour to clean the bike when I got home.

My tellular cellaphone stopped working for no readily apparent reason on Saturday afternoon. I'd been speaking on it that morning and it hadn't left my desk. It's fine in all respects except that it gets no reception. I took it with me biking, in case a tower was down or something, but from the top of the hill with a panoramic view of the city there was still no signal. Took it back to the store Monday night. The surly clerk threw it into a bag to send it off for fixing, and gave me a crap replacement. It's bulky, heavy, low tech, and has no scheduler (I may be screwed). I'm liable for a totally mind bogglingly ridiculous $400 if I lose or break it. It's not worth a tenth of that. What a fucking scam. Ten days I'm stuck with it at least. So it's staying at home. I'm not bringing it out with me at that alleged value.

BAH! enough ranting/complaining. Good day to you my people.