There's just something special about prancing around in your kitchen in nothing but tiny little underwear, listening to music you forgot you had, and sipping coffee all morning, isn't there?

Granted, it's been awhile since I've done that because I actually wrote that opening line for this post nearly 3 months ago. I guess it just goes to show how much of a procrastinator I really am.

Six months have gone by since I last posted, but fortunately, I was keeping a list of things to write about over that period. Of course, I'm not going to recount all my tales as thoroughly as I would have were I writing about them the day after. But I will try to remember the important things.

I have had quite an action-packed spring, summer, and fall, which is probably at least part of the reason why I've found it so hard to get back into school things this fall.

Things are generally okay with school, but I could be putting in quite a bit more effort. I finished off my courses in the spring, and somehow I managed to get an A+, an A, and an A-, even though this was right around the time I'd decided to withdraw from the program. Since then, the focus has been research, but even now I don't have a confirmed topic for my thesis, and as my advisor said recently, "the clock is ticking."

About a month ago, I had a brainwave in a weekly meeting with my advisor, but I needed to do some experiments to determine if the idea makes any sense. Well, I've finally implemented the experiment, and now I've been working on analyzing the results. To be honest, it really wasn't all that difficult, but the fear that it would be held me back from attacking the results. Now that I'm close to finding out if my idea holds any merit, the fear that it doesn't is holding me back a bit. I mean, if this idea is bogus, what on earth am I going to do for my thesis? So far, the results I'm getting don't seem to be all that great, but I'm going to try some more tests, and I'm also going to go back and enhance my implementation of the original experiment.

Now back to my action-packed, extended summer. The first big thing was a road trip to Montreal with my friends Stu and Stephen. Stu has a car, so we all chipped in for gas money and a hotel room and headed up for Victoria Day weekend. I had never been to Montreal, unless you count driving through in a U-Haul when I moved to Toronto, so it was good to see the city. I didn't fall in love with it like most people seem to, but I think that was to largely to a resentment I have towards the way people always rag on Toronto and romanticize Montreal. To me, it felt more like a large town than a city. While I thought the people seemed a bit friendlier, I also found them to be pretentious, if that makes any sense. We didn't do a whole lot of stuff in Montreal, but you can be sure we got out to the gay clubs. We also fit in a fair amount of shopping and saw a few of the sites like the mountain, St. Joseph's Oratory, and the Biosphere on Ile Sainte-Helene (not to be confused with the Biodome at Olympic Park). I had a good time. There are some photos here.

On the way home, I got to drive Stu's car for a good part of the journey. I've been learning to drive standard in bits and pieces, so that was really only my third time ever, spread out over about probably 3 or 4 years. But it went fairly well.

And now I've tired of writing, but I'm hoping to get back into the habit of it. Besides, I still have a ton of stuff to write about before this blog catches up with my present-day life.