an adventurous, interesting, and educational week

Whirlwind Toronto Trip
My trip to Toronto was lovely, except maybe for the work part. And the jet lag. Nothing like having to start work at 6:00AM according to your biological clock! On Tuesday when I arrived we went straight out to Waterloo for a family dinner at my brother and sister-in-law's home to celebrate our parents' thirtieth anniversary. Everyone was there except Aaron, but we had a good time anyway.

After a full day of workshops on Wednesday, I spent the evening with my friend Fatima. We had lots of good, long conversation about relationships, family, and faith. And also a bit of medicine. Did you know that sometimes when two people spend a lot of time together and one of them is psychotic, the other can start to believe the psychoses as well? Fatima had encountered a case where a mother and a daughter both believed that every time the daughter opened her mouth to speak, worms came out of it. So you have to separate them to see which one you need to treat and which one is actually okay on their own. Fascinating!

Thursday was another full day of workshops, followed by a hurried dinner at the airport and a flight home. There was a kid somewhere on my plane who enthusiastically yelled "Blastoff!!!" when we took off.

Rainy Rollercoaster Adventure
On Friday it was right back to work, and I didn't even go home after work because I went to "Fright Night" at Playland (the local fairground/midway) with our church youth group. I have a thing for rollercoasters, and as a volunteer sponsor my ticket was paid for, so how could I refuse this chance for free rollercoasters? Here's the catch: it was POURING rain. And it wasn't a warm evening! I managed to stay dry under my umbrella while in line, but the first rollercoaster ride was the wettest experience of my life. At one point we went underneath something that was pouring extra drainage water from a roof or something, and it smacked me in the face and filled up the little basin formed by my two legs and the seat. I stoically survived the second rollercoaster (there were only two) and one haunted house before excusing myself and fleeing home. I can't remember the last time I was soaked through to the skin over such a large percentage of my body.

Geek Alert! Beware!
And finally, I must share with you my latest internet addiction. Galaxy Zoo is an online project to classify thousands of galaxies. The fact is that humans can classify galaxies as elliptical, spiral, mergers or "other" much better than any computer program, so after reading a brief tutorial and completing a 15-question test, they let you log in and classify your little heart away.

It's really exciting, because in many cases you are the first human being to see or take note of these galaxies! A computerized telescope took all the photos and prepped them for classification. It's completely addictive because of the "random reinforcement", just like gambling. By far the majority of the galaxies you see are plain old elliptical galaxies, or even just distant smudges, like this: But every once in awhile you get little rewards like this: Or once in every few hundred times you get a wicked-awesome reward like this: That's right, that is two spiral galaxies beginning to collide! Amazing!