Snow!

That's the word of the week.

It's snowed off and on the entire week, and we now have a little over a foot of snow here. Considering we're in the heat island that is Copenhagen, that's pretty significant. Other places in Denmark have almost 3 feet.

We've all been sick, cough, phlegm and the whole 9 yards, it's like we're passing the bug between us on a daily basis, which really sucks.

Tomorrow's the orientation for the Master's students at school; I'll have to dig out the car at around 8amish I guess. This semester is going to be geology for geographers, drainage basins and modeling and I think I'm going to go for the trifecta with nutrient cycling.

We'll see more tomorrow.

A Lazy Sunday

Seriously, everyone needs a lazy Sunday.

The baby woke up at 7am with a dirty diaper, I gave him a cup of milk and he wanted to go back to sleep. BONUS! So I got to sleep in, Hubby took over at 9 when Matthias woke up again. Then it was play, play, play and a good quality nap, dinner, play, play, bath and into bed.

It's not a bad life, if you can get it.

Tomorrow I'll get the baby off to daycare, get my shopping done and just putter around the house some more. We're throwing a Superbowl party next Sunday so I need to make sure I've got stuff ready for that.

Hubby also asked me to make a cheesecake for him to take into work this week, so I'll get that done too.

Don't know when my grades will be posted, hopefully before the registration for my Master's courses closes!

Finally Done with my Bachelor's*

* assuming I've passed my last final from Tuesday, that is.

Population Biology with Morten F. Pedersen.

Morten's a great guy - very knowledgeable and quite passionate about his field of study - which makes him a wonderful professor, IMO.

This semester has been rough for me, attendance wise. Between the baby needing tubes in his ears (twice), having pneumonia (twice), having lice (again, TWICE), Hubby having the flu and then ME having the flu (and the week before the exam, no less).

I forgot to mention in yesterday's post about the last minute 'change of venue' - which I found out about when meeting one of my classmates in SuperBrugsen (a shopping center like Hannaford's) who mentioned that she'd spoken to the House Secretary who had said that the exam had been moved to the second floor in the building, but she hadn't sent an email out because, "She'd sent so many out recently, she didn't want to overburden us"

Uh... you know - they LOCK the door to the exam at 10 am. If you're not IN the room, you're OUT of the exam. So knowing the right room is kinda IMPORTANT, don't you think?

Anyhow, I sent a nicely worded email to Morten about it saying that it'd be easier to get to the exam if one knew that the room had been changed beforehand....

In other news...

It's snowing again today, not much really - just enough to make everything pretty again. We have winter tires on the car, so it's not a pain to drive in (and it's flat like a pancake where we live anyway so no hills to conquer) . The house is a wreck, since both Hubby and I have been sick the past week, so I'll probably be spending the next three days going through everything and getting it back in shape.

I'm looking forward to my Master's courses: Geology for Geographers and Drainage Basins, Flows and Modeling. I've the opportunity to take other courses at Copenhagen University in the city, but I'm not really sure I want to be going back and forth between two campuses 30 miles apart on the train/bus with the baby in nursery school, etc.

I think it'll be just too much, and Hubby agrees. It's not like I'm going to be behind on any courses or anything, so I'm not worried about it. I'm going to speak to one of my old project supervisors, Anita Veihe, on possible Master's projects I can start doing some preliminary research on - as well as what the field trips are this year which are required (and when they are).

So far, I know there's 2 trips, and that I have to attend one of them.

The Faroe Islands or Manchester, England.

I'm personally hoping for Manchester, England - since they tend to eat mostly fish/lamb on the Faroe Islands and I can't stand either of those two things...

But, I'll find out more during the introduction period the first of February...

The last exam...

So today was my exam in Population Biology here at RUC. The last class I need to complete my Bachelors Degrees in Geography and Environmental Biology.

We had a studygroup meeting last week with Morten our Professor (who is one of the greatest guys out there), which included a 6 page pensum of formulas we were expected to know and understand for the exam.

6 pages of formulas... that's a crapload of alphas, betas, gammas, K1, K2, etc.

I busted my ass to memorize as much as possible and..... we used 1.

The Lotka Voltera model for competing populations:

dN1/dt = r1N1[(K1-N1-aN2)/K1] and dN2/dt = r2N2[(K2-N2-bN1)/K2]

Where a and b are the competition coefficients - the effect of species 2 on species 1, and vice versa. K is the carrying capacity of the species and N is the population. R is the rate of change in the population.

Whee.

The plus side, I'm positive I passed the exam, which means I can go on to my Master's studies without worrying.

4 Years...

It's hard to believe that it's been 4 years now since we lost Sue.  It still feels like it was yesterday to me.

They say that time heals all wounds, but right now that sounds like such a crock of shit to me.

I miss you so much.

Oh the joys of daycare....

Today Matthias came home from daycare with a little gift for us...

It's a 4 letter word that begins with L and ends with E...

...and it ain't love.

Yep, the gift of public daycare - Lice.

@)(#*@)%&_)@#*@)%&@)(#*@)($*()@*!!!!!

So at 4pm we drove down to the pharmacy and picked up two lice kits. One for Hubby and the baby, and the other for me - since chances are there wouldn't be enough solution in the one bottle to do my hair.

To make life easier, I took the clippers to both Hubby and the baby.  Now they're both sporting crewcuts, and are nit free.  (We only found 2 eggs on the baby anyway).

I soaked my head for a half hour before showering and sitting down to laboriously use the nit comb on my own hair.  Yeah, that was a fun half hour.

All the bedclothes, pillows and puffs are in the washing machine, 95 degrees C, and his plush toys that can't be washed will spend the next 4 days out in the shed.

Then next Wednesday we do it all over again to be sure we got the little fuckers.

Friday the 13th

Sheesh, life moves pretty fast when you'd like to stop and smell the flowers!

Matthias has had tubes in his ears, he's had pneumonia and now he's got crap coming out of the ear that the tube has already fallen out from.  

He's not feverish, he's not complaining about pain, he's not fussy - he's still the happy go lucky camper he's always been, other than he's got gunk running out of his ears.  

I don't get it.

So it's another round of Dr's appointments and everything for us.

Oh yeah, tomorrow's my birthday too.  I figure we'll just be homebodies and cook some nice steaks for dinner.  I'll be making a cheesecake tonight for my birthday cake so it's all good.