I’ve made it through the first semester of my program and things are looking good, if still very challenging. The real trouble is coming not from school, but from the weather. I am terribly happy that January is almost over, as this means two things:

1. The days are now significantly longer than the winter solstice, when it would start getting notably dark at about 3:30.
2. With one more — short! — month to go, we will be in the month that might have some reliable highs above freezing. At least by its end.

Hey, I’ll take these pluses where I can find them. And really, it’s only a fair trade-off for the summers we get here.

I’m ready for one of those any time now, thanks.

School has been running for a few weeks, now, and I’ve been in this house for more than a month. Both are starting to feel like home. I’m very, very happy that I chose Alberta for my PhD. I wouldn’t want to settle here tenure-track permanently (the approaching winter is frightening and it’s not terribly convenient for travel), but I can tell it’s going to be a very comfortable place to do my degree. I’m already involved in a couple of potential research projects with the faculty and am being well-supported with my own. Granted, it’s an incredible amount of work when coupled with classes (I front-loaded my schedule so that I’d have it easier later on), but it’s doable.

And I’ve taken the most important step toward making the house feel like a home: kitty! It was two kittens at first, actually. I brought home two brothers from a no-kill shelter with a very nice owner. Given the timing of the ending, I decided I’d wait to see which Potter characters they reminded me of for choosing the names. (What? Naming cats after literary characters is traditional! This totally counts!) There was an all-black, green-eyed boy that earned the first name. He was much braver than his brother and demanded attention, so he became Riddle. At first, the other brother — a tabby with lots of white — was Cedric, as I wanted a fair-complexioned name to play off the white fur. But seeing Riddle and Cedric play was just a little mind-breaking, and besides, the tabby was too much of a wuss to be named Cedric. Hmm. Fair-haired, a wuss, and tags along after Riddle… okay then, I instead had Draco.

Unfortunately, Riddle being so outgoing by the first, still-unfamiliar evening meant that he revealed his true hellion nature as he settled in. While I could deal with him until he grew up and relaxed, despite what it would have done for the stock prices of makers of antiseptic ointments, there was a real problem with Draco. When Riddle wanted attention, he would demand it by biting and pouncing until he was played with and would only ramp up his attempts if they were unsuccessful. When Draco got bit and pounced on, he laid down with the hopes it would stop and would only become more passive. When I had to pull Riddle’s teeth off Draco’s throat, I realized there was no way I could leave them alone once classes started. So, Riddle had to go back to the shelter, and the owner was thankfully just as nice then as she was when I got Riddle. She was happy to hear all I had to say about his personality so he could find a home that was a better fit. (I suggested that he needed a big, noisy family with adult animals, ones who would have absolutely no problem with smacking him if he bugged them too much. Not many kittens could handle that environment, but he sure could!)

Draco has since come out of his shell now that he doesn’t have his domineering brother to deal with, and is the typical kitten who veers between being adorable and being a complete brat. Ah, well. A kitten is what you go through to get a cat who you know doesn’t spray, got all his shots at the right time, and was never mistreated by an owner. If you look at the Flickr photostream on my blog (over to the right), you can see him there. He looks awfully cute in those pictures.

It’s a trap.

I’ve been keeping seriously busy as the move approaches. It’s a curious thing how, no matter how many boxes you might fill, rooms never seem to actually start emptying. And now I’m working on things like the file cabinet and computer desk, which still leaves the furniture taking up just as much space as before but now results in a stack of boxes taking up more room. There was already too much in this space to keep things well organized. I’ve been planning ahead for a long, long time in terms of housewares and whatnot, and by this point I have enough to outfit the eventual house quite nicely, but far too much for my current place.

That, and I got my student visa application back from the consulate in Seattle with a helpful note about how the wait time had ballooned to 8-10 weeks and I should just apply at the border. Wonderful. (I’d applied with six weeks of time, which — given 2006-2007 historical data where 2/3 of all cases were processed in two days — seemed like massive overkill.) The problem with this: the movers need to see my documents before they load my stuff and my electricity at the house can’t be turned on without that official-like government number the visa will provide me.

So, I get to take a flight up to Spokane this week, drive to the border, fill it out ahead of time, drive back, and fly home. That will be one long day, if one that has some very pretty stretches of driving. (The other option was flying to Seattle and doing everything right at the downtown consulate. That had a very specific application time window of… 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM. No, thank you.)

Hence the title of the post: I may be running under radio silence for a bit.

Or I may talk a lot more as I vent!

Let’s wait and see!

It’s an adventure.

Actually, I’ve had it for a while, now. But I only thought to post about it — and my school building — now. Come behind the “read more” cut and see pictures, won’t you? Continue reading

Even though I thought the program itself was a great match, it was still a very hard decision to choose Edmonton. I know exactly why that is: I had seen everywhere else with my own eyes. A comedy of errors involving a winter storm and a cascade of flight delays meant that I never did manage to make it up there during the decision process. I was turning down places that I knew, that I could picture myself in very easily, in favor of a strange place in a different country. And as appealing as it looks in photographs, they just don’t do the job of walking the streets and seeing who’s walking them with you.

Good thing, then, that I’m headed up there next week for a visit! I have a house all lined up, paperwork in order for travel and loans, and all those other points that could cause massive stress if I had let them sit until the last minute.

Actually, considering my normal behavior, I’m amazed I didn’t. Perhaps I’m maturing!

Or perhaps I have a lot of free time to kill this summer and, for once, put it to good use.

Either way: go me.

I finally have the chance to kick back a little! I’ve hit two of the three big summer sequels with friends. That is, we caught Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, but I have not seen Shrek the Third. All things considered, I am totally okay with this state of affairs. Donkey will be loud and obnoxious, Shrek will be loud and obnoxious, Puss will be the best part of the movie by far: we all know how it’ll go.

I enjoyed Spidey much more than reviews lead me to expect. I did find it to be busy, but nothing like the levels that people were hand-wringing over. I followed it easily enough and found it to be an overall fun-but-stupid ride. I’m perfectly happy with that for a summer movie.

As for At World’s End, well… I’ll misquote a friend who was discussing a game plotline: “It’s like Victor Hugo’s Pirates of the Caribbean.”

It is possible to be both fun and depressing, but I enjoy summer movies a lot more when they go for the “and stupid” route to finish that equation.

And I am off to…

That’s right! Come late this summer I’ll be heading to the Great White North. (Though it won’t be white quite yet. After all, the people there only seem to talk about seven months of winter.) I’ve accepted a PhD program position offer at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton. It seems like a really good match in terms of interest and support for consumer behavior research, as well as being a very supportive program for the students themselves.

Also, Edmonton itself seems like it will be a pleasant place to live for four years. If I wind up in the right area I can ride a train in to campus, completely avoiding the roads during the snowy seasons save for the quick jaunt to the park-and-ride. There’s plenty to do (metro area of a million people, after all) but it’s spread out enough that when I need peace and quiet to focus, I’ll have it. And the summers? Average high of 70, which is… something in Celsius. I’ll really need to learn that. (Yes, the winter temperatures are… something much lower in Celsius. It’s a lot easier to warm up in cold winters than it is to cool down in hot summers.)

Finally, even though I had no logical reason to do so, I had always sort of associated Alberta’s landscape with Saskatchewan’s. You know: wheat fields, and… well, wheat fields. Never mind that I knew that the Rockies fell neatly along the border between Alberta and British Columbia, or that I had been to Alberta (many years earlier).

And then I did some Flickr surfing and reminded myself. Oh, right. Within driving distance of my school is this.

I am officially an accepted PhD candidate! I’ve heard from multiple places at this point, and some of it is a little more fuzzy than others, but I will most certainly not be out on the street come next fall, left alone and unwanted.

…With a MBA, okay, the whole poor me picture doesn’t quite hold up.

But still! Terribly exciting.

Upcoming travel, some to visit schools and interview, some just to see the area and campus:

March 23 - 26: Syracuse, Ithaca
March 28 - 29: Edmonton
April 6-7: Eugene

I am going to be so very tired come April 7th.

The area around the UofU was, as I had heard, absolutely gorgeous. Mind, I was viewing it with bare trees and in the middle of an uncharacteristic and awful inversion that made the 10,000-foot peaks framing the campus barely visible. The Sugarhouse area (which is more affordable than the Avenues) had its own charm that was a little less immediately obvious, but no less present.

Unfortunately, the campus itself didn’t quite have the same charm as the areas around it. I now realize why the university website generally shows long shots that feature the campus’ position against the mountains, not the specific beauty of the school itself. I’m used to a state university setting, mind, but BSU has a very traditional academia feeling: heavily pedestrian, parking lots kept to the outside edges, no roads running through the campus proper. UofU is very much banded by roads and parking lots, which makes it feel less like “going to a university” and more like “going to a random building and talking about business.”

Now, granted: the program is very good, and I would happily attend. And the city itself is great.

But would it have killed the original architects to scratch in a few more spaces for lawns?

In other news, the more I read, the more impractical the iPhone seems for me and the more I want it.