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-7 Is Not Cold

The first 2012 update! To get y'all caught up on what's been going on with me lately, I would like to take this opportunity to say I PASSED PHYSICS. And everything else, but that's less important. Got a bunch of Cs, but as my brother said (in his Cookie monster voice), "C is for credit, that's good enough for me!"

Christmas was pretty cool. Literally all of my family members were home, it was so great to see all of them together. I got caught up on my sleep (which was great, even though I'm already behind again - oops) and Michael and I went out to supper for New Years. Anyway, the point of this post was to tell you about my day, which was loads better than yesterday (in which I showed up to my Physics lab with absolutely no materials).

Campus is actually a decent temperature for nearly the first time since classes started up again. That's the upside to accidentally stepping in a three inch puddle - at least you're not freezing your ass off while you do it. One of the guys I follow on Twitter said he walked a mile to and back from his music studio in 19-degree weather (Fahrenheit) because the subway was down and he just had to write. If you speak metric like I do, that's about -7 Celsius. And if you're Canadian, that's a damn nice day for January. In short, no sympathy for you, Grubbs (but do carry on with the fantastic songwriting!).

This semester I have four classes on MWF. In first class, I wrote all of my Chem notes in Tengwar. In second class, I think I actually passed a Physics test ("Favorite book" was part of the information we had to include at the top of the page, along with our name and student number, so it couldn't have been that hard). And finally, my last two lectures of the day were cancelled on account of illness-stricken profs.

Today was a good day.

~ Nicole

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Physics - 1, Nicole - 0

The bad news is, I completely failed my Physics exam on Saturday and most likely the course. The good news is, so did everybody else. I guess you could say I didn't handle it well...

I took a shot with my roommate before we wrote it for courage (which didn't work at all), came home and listened to some really loud music for a bit (which kind of worked), got mildly intoxicated (which - you guessed it! - did work) and then hung out with my brother until about three in the morning (which always makes me smile). Long story short, the prof can suck it as far as I'm concerned. I won't have to take the second part of the course now, so I can pick up a fun elective if there's room in my schedule next semester or I'll just have some free time to sleep. Awesome.

Next on my list of grievances is that it doesn't feel like December yet. I literally just realized that Christmas is next weekend - NEXT WEEKEND, people! - and my tiny part of Canada is still snowless. I actually saw a couple guys playing Frisbee on my way back from writing my exam. Global warming, much?

But not everything is a complete bust these days. I discovered a new social networking site called GetGlue.com, where you can check in to a book, movie, TV show, etc. and earn stickers. It's awesome!

And that basically sums up the last few days. I just wanted to post a quick update before I get really overwhelmed with the four exams I have left to write (Bio lab was today and I think I did pretty good, even if over a third of my multiple choice answers were D) and all the Christmas shopping I have to do. Tambourine shopping is not my forte, if you know what I mean.

Stay tuned for "Holidays, Round 2" in the next couple of weeks!

~ Nicole

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The Kind Of Sense That's Not (a.k.a. Buffyisms)

I kind of wigged out today about trying to find a new title for this blog. Our old url was mega wordy, but I think this one might stick. We we gonna go with a Whedonverse reference but we figured there wasn't a whole lot of sparkage there for those not Buffily inclined.

If any of the words in this post so far are making anyone feel out-of-the-loopy, don't freak. I realize that since it's 2011, we're borderline carbon dated with the whole word sitch. Buffy influenced a generation, including their vocabulary; the problem is it's not our generation.

TV shows aimed at teenagers these days are just sad. They're way unrealistic, and this is coming from a girl whose favorite show is about a vampire slayer. But I don't mean to go off on a tangent with this, so I'm just gonna get to my point: sometimes we use words that aren't technically words - even though they're totally figure outable - and everybody gets sort of frowny and then it's all downhill from there (hence the title). Also in the "not helpful" category is the fact that our hometown area is big on slang that doesn't make much sense at all.

So in order to help clear up any weirdness about our speech patterns, I went all collagey and included links to two websites that have an assortment of vocab that's come out of a Scooby mouth at some point or another, as well as a link to a sort of dictionary that has a lot of the homegrown words we use.

Best of luck with the deciphering!

~ Nicole

The Slayer Slang Dictionary

Buffy Slanguage

Carleton Country Colloquialisms

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Oh Hey Snow, I Haven't Seen You In A While (What With All The Global Warming We've Got Going On Here)

So! I just made a split-second decision that I'm gonna try to update a lot more often with shorter posts instead of terribly infrequent sagas that no one really wants to read anyway because I had a thought that I wanted to share and 140 characters on Twitter just isn't enough sometimes.

Has anyone noticed people on Facebook using hashtags? You know, those words or phrases you see on Twitter with a little number sign in front of them. There's some kind of algorithm that catalogues tweets with tags like that into a searchable database or whatever, so you can look up tweets with content that you're interested in. (Tumblr has a similar thing that you can tag your overall posts with.)

Anway, the amusing thing is that Facebook doesn't have an algorithm for hashtags, so using them in statuses or wall posts is completely useless. Even subconsciously people are starting to realize that they'd rather be on Twitter. Just make the switch everybody, it'll be easier on us all in the long run.

Also, on a completely unrelated note we finally had our first legitimate snowfall of the year! I say finally because I live in Canada and it's November (do the math), and first legit one because it snowed about two weeks ago but it looked like someone was making a movie on an Ed Wood-type budget and didn't go for the good weather machine. Tried to hit my roommate with a snowball - because you can actually do that at university! - but it turned to powder in the air and I just ended up with a really cold hand. Maybe I'll wear mittens tomorrow… And by mittens I mean gloves, but mittens just sounds so much more homey, am I right?

Aaaand just I realized that this post ended up a whole lot longer than I planned for it to be so I'm just gonna end it right now. Bazinga.

~ Nicole

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Holidays, Round 1

The good news is, my brother and I won Trivial Pursuit against our extended family Saturday night. The bad news is, we failed to maintain the title when challenged on Sunday. You'd have to understand my family to get an idea of why this was such a big deal for me, and why this (and not turkey) was the highlight of my Thanksgiving weekend.

To start off, I'm Canadian. We do Thanksgiving in October, and in my family the end of November is reserved for hauling out Christmas decorations. Hell, this year they're planning to start on the 11th. I know, it sounds a little crazy but that's how we roll. We're a big family, and we do everything big to match. Big holidays, big noise levels and big competitions.

My mother's got at least a hundred first cousins, which means that in a community so tiny we have a one-lane bridge, I'm related to a lot of people (including Michael, my partner in crime). As you can probably guess, having so many relatives leads to having a lot of well-educated relatives, and it just so happens that most of them are my first cousins. There's a lawyer, an accountant, a few businessmen and even a free spirit or two. We're all used to being top dog when it comes to knowledge, so when we get together what choice do we have but to battle it out in board-game form?

When you take into account that my family members have been to more countries than I have provinces, my co-win on Saturday is pretty impressive. It's sad, really, that a girl fresh out of high school and her struggling-to-finish-his-bachelor's-degree brother can outsmart a couple of world travelers. Unless you're that girl or her brother, in which case it's pretty frigging awesome.

Word of our victory then spread onto Twitter and Facebook, and some of the famjam who didn't make it home this weekend issued a further challenge for Christmas when everybody will be there. Should be a pretty good time, nothing beats having everyone together.

Speaking of, in the spirit of Thanksgiving I'd like to put out into the cosmos all the things that I'm thankful for. My family, who welcome the thirst for knowledge that others criticize me for. My best friend, who even from a distance helps me be a better person every single day. Harry Potter, though it sounds silly, because it gives me a reprieve from the hard things that everyone has to deal with from time to time. Grey's Anatomy, because I would be lost without something to be so passionate about and dedicated to. My good health, the roof over my head and so many other things that make up the amazing life I am fortunate enough to have.

Finally, I've gotta spill about how excited I am for the coming weekend. Michael is coming on Friday to spend a few days with me, so we'll probably co-write a post (wow!) at some point in that timeframe. Perhaps a note à la Facebook to shed some light on our seriously different personalities? We'll discuss that later.

In the meantime, I should probably head to bed... Even though I don't have class until one o'clock tomorrow, which never happens and - wait for it - I am super thankful for.

~ Nicole

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And So It Begins!

Now that Nicole has gotten over the first hurdle and made our first post, it's my job to make my first post and try to help discover the style of our blog, which I think will be informal but still organized and fun! 

My last year of high school is surprisingly going pretty well so far (hopefully I didn't just jinx it) but I like all my classes for different reasons, such as genuinely liking the subject or at least having someone I can talk to. I wish I could say the same thing about the bus but it's not quite the same. Let's just say that my bus is somewhat similar to Lord of the Flies plus Caddy Girls with a wider age range. It's all not that bad though because I feel like I'm learning from it; I feel like from watching the people on the bus I can now relate to Jane Goodall.

Changing topics, tonight is going to be a very good night for TV! The Glee season 3 premiere airs tonight and I am super pumped for it, and the second episode of Ringer is on too. Nicole and I love it already. It's was a little hard to follow from time to time but overall it has a great story. And SMG! Also this is going to be the first time in a while that I'm watching real TV instead of Netflix because with all my shows on summer hiatus I got into many new shows on Netflix, like the IT Crowd which is a brilliant show. 

Anyway, I'm going to wrap my first entry up. Remember if you like where this blog is going please follow it on Twitter at @PD_tweets, as well as our personal accounts @michaelmcneil and @nicoleduguay! (And I'm thinking about making a DailyBooth account so please follow me on that.) Peace out my lovelies!

- Michael :)

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Ready, Set, Go...

So, Michael and I finally decided that we've sat on our asses long enough (a.k.a. all summer) and it's about time we started writing this thing! Awesome. I also started my first full week of classes today, and my schedule is probably going to get insane super quickly. Not so awesome. On the upside we figured out how to work Skype, so the two of us had a long conversation this afternoon that pretty much ended with the decision to kick start this blog thing. We haven't really figured out a posting schedule or format yet so we're just gonna wing it for this first little while.

University life is crazy, in a this-is-totally-different-than-what-I'm-used-to-but-I-like-it sort of way. I haven't gotten lost yet, which I'm pretty proud of. Our house is hoping to lose its reputation as the most boring res on campus with the help of all of the awesome new frosh first years (which includes me)! Someone on campus decided that calling us "frosh" is hazing, which makes absolutely no sense... There's also a house rule that says no English muffins on Tuesday; I have yet to figure out why the hell that would be a necessary rule, but I'll report back when I know.

On another note, this weekend marks the longest amount of time that the two of us have gone without seeing each other since we were like twelve, which is totally ridiculous to think about because we're hitting a grand total of TWO WEEKS. Weird, right?

Anyway, segueing into a happier topic, September is a great month for television. It's probably my favorite month because of that - and because everything gets all pretty and colorful. New shows premiere, summer shows come to an end (True Blood finale last night, anyone?) and the Emmys are on at some point. 

To get more specific: RINGER PREMIERES TOMORROW NIGHT! My heart will probably break if our cable provider doesn't have the channel it's on, but y'all can expect some kind of super excited fangirl post sometime soon because I know it's going to be completely awesome. I've started watching True Blood (online) because I'm almost done the book series and I've been looking for a new show to get into. And we're also approaching the one-week-until-Grey's-Anatomy-premieres mark, meaning you'll soon find out just how obsessed I am with all things GA. Very few days of the year excite me like premiere and finale nights do, and since most of my returning shows start up again next week I'm in a seriously good mood.

And that's enough about me. I'm sure Michael will be posting his first blog sometime soon, but in the meantime we're still trying to get everything set up (archives, RSS and Twitter feeds, etc.) so if there are any suggestions or comments out there about things we should include in our posts or on our homepage we'd love to hear 'em.

~ Nicole