Strong Sad and Frank (Donnie Darko)... and snow!!!

Even though they are teen and pre-teen, sassy and sassier, my little sisters are pretty cool. This year they carved their pumpkins with what I hope was inspiration from their wise, cool, and utterly awesome older sister.

Oilers and Other Disappointments

I did not watch the last two games on account of having another engagement on Wednesday night, and not ordering the Pay Per View on Thursday. Accordingly, I have little more than the scorelines to tell me that something is wrong with my dearest Oilers, but I am going to just put some other speculations out on the table.

Our forward heirarchy, so to speak, is totally botched. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love that Hemsky, Sykora, and Thoresen are lighting it up. It just is slightly unsettling that our so-called top line is not really a top line when it boils down to it. It is almost equally unsettling that our third and fourth lines feature players that were once second-liners. I dunno, this may be slightly trivial, but it all just seems off-kilter to me.

What is also frustrating me is that once relied-upon mainstays are MIA. Granted, Stoll got two against the Ducks and Pisani finally cracked his goose egg Thursday, but these guys were featured prominently in that beautiful wonderful and glorious playoff run. What has taken them so long? Are they going to be patchy point-getters for the rest of the season? I think I am most disappointed with Torres. Not that I credit his "demotion" to bad play (Thoresen was looking pretty slick), but he should get his act together. From what I heard, he barely saw the ice by game's end on Thursday. I think he's just not playing his role as a grinder, a physical force. THAT is that the Oilers have been really missing - a true, physical presence. Winchester (or "Winchy" as I call him) kind of seems forced into that role due to his stature. He "fought" that Duck on Wednesday, but certainly looked green. I don't know, though, perhaps in due time he will fit into the role.

The polarized success of our special teams is a REALLY BIG PROBLEM. Our penalty kill is so good it's killing the opponents' penalties. That is to say that our power play licks ass. Needless to say that we are missing a Prongerian/Spacekian manning the point. Or maybe we shouldn't have FIVE FORWARDS ON THE ICE. What's the deal with that? Has it worked yet? Not that I've seen.

Remember that time in that Austin Powers movie where Austin lost his mojo? Maybe that's happened to Roloson. What was it on Wednesday - six goals on eighteen shots? Yipes. Markkanen wasn't much of a replacement, either. We'd better get that mojo back. I'll build a time machine and go to the past when Roloson was apparently cryogenically frozen, before his mojo was taken, and personally stand guard until I know the mojo is safe.

Maybe it was just that long homestand. Maybe it lulled the Oilers into a false sense of security - "We're unbeaten at home, we'll never see defeat!" Maybe we're actually the team that someone predicted to finished twelfth in the West. Maybe I'm just looking too far into things.

My other disappointments are these:

• My midterm on Tuesday night. I really should have studied for it a lot more than I did. But I was just so spent already. Hopefully everyone did as poorly as I think I did. And now I have the opporunity to hike up my cell biology boots and kill the next exam. I guess. Maybe.
• There is yet no news on my computer. The last I heard it was sent off to some centre and there is the possibility of motherboard problems......???? I really just wanted them to unmelt my power adaptor from inside it, give me a new one and send me on my merry way. When this whole melty thing happened, I really did not have the chance to back up any of my files. The power adaptor was obviously shot, and my battery ran out sooner than expected. This means my entire iTunes library, about a zillion pictures, and most importantly, the draft of my Lost post are all potentially gone forever.
• My indoor soccer season is about to commence. Normally this would be a good thing. But I have a distinctly uneasy feeling about this year. My team does not yet have a coach, nor a manager, the managerial tasks have been divided up amongst the team members, thereby increasing the chances of something being forgotten and whatnot, and only eight of the fifteen registered players showed up for our first practice. On top of that, fifteen players is not especially ideal. Each game you want to dress sixteen players - three forward lines, three defensive pairs, and a keeper. What's going to happen when people can't make games? We also have not set a practice day or days, nor do I think that everyone actually knows that our game schedule is indeed posted. Plus, this is all happening in French, a language with which I am not entirely comfortable, and that I have not practiced in months.
• I think I am getting sick. I suppose it's fortunate that it's happening after I have written the bulk of my midterms, but it's still rather unnecessary. I woke up barfy on Thursday morning, slept all Thursday afternoon, stayed up all Thursday night, and now I have a stuffed nose and sore throat.

I'm too young to be old.

I'm pretty sure that when I was in first year I had the capacity to stay up into the wee hours of the morning studying and whatnot, somehow wake up early to get to all my labs, and still remain comprehensible. Now I find that I am just always tired. If I am not in bed by 11:00, I will definitely feel it the next day. I'll find it difficult to form proper sentences. I will require a nap and/or coffee by noon. My sluggishness, of course, plays at that vicious cycle of being too tired to work, which causes you to fall behind, which in turn causes you to have to work harder and sleep less and become more tired and BLAAAAAH.

The past three weeks have been pretty much the worst of my university career. Yes, I have learned a lot, but at a great price. I'm at school twelve hours a day, sometimes seven days a week. I barely see my family or friends anymore. I feel guilty for taking time out of studying to eat dinner. I have increased my caffeine intake probably tenfold. I get roughly five hours of sleep a night. It's making me feel old and worn out and not happy. And do you know what comes to mind? The Pope in that movie The Agony and the Ecstasy: "When will you make an end?"

Luckily, I don't get Michelangelo's wishy-washy answer, "When I am finished." I know that I will have a midterm-free week and a bit in just five days. I am planning to sleep a lot, to watch TV, and to perhaps heal my academic wounds with a little retail therapy. I could even finish that Lost post.

In other news:

• Jasmine has updated her blog.
• The Oilers are playing poorly and winning!
• I'm trying out these new contact lenses. I haven't worn any in about three months, and I have become increasingly paranoid about contracting amoebic keratitis, which is associated with soft contact lens-wearers. I'm going the daily disposible route, considering I only wear them twice a week at most anyway.
  
• My computer has nearly lost the ability to have its battery charged - its adaptor doesn't seem to be able to plug into it properly, or at all even. And it makes these weird noises when I touch certain areas of the touchpad. And it smells funny - like burning dirt and plastic. And okra.
  

Oilers.... WIN????

My increased frequency of blogging is a clear indication that I have three midterms next week for which I have barely studied.
Okay. Oilers. Maaaaaaan. All day I rued the fact that this game was on PPV. I saw kids in their Oilers jerseys all over school, which got me all excited, and then all disappointed because I knew I was not going to see the game. So I turned on the radio at 8:00, listened to the first period. And then, for some reason or another, I stopped listening and tuned in later to find the Oilers down 1-4. Sadly, I figured they were bound to lose and stopped listening altogether, my regret for not ordering the PPV dwindling. And now I read that Oilers won. Smyth records a hat trick. In a record time. How delightful. How glorious. How, how, dang. I should have ordered it.

Anonymous Beratings

Maybe it's because I am in a bit of a pissy mood due to midterms, but people (strangers) have really been bugging me lately. Unfortunately, I have the decency to keep my mouth shut. So, this post is a shoutout to all those people that have peeved me in the past while.

• Girl on the Bus: Your hair is a mess. Seriously. Did you cut it yourself? So you brush it? Wash it even?
• Man at the Bus Stop: It is quite tactless to tell me that I shouldn't have gone into Science and that it would have been smarter to be in Pharmacy, Business, or Engineering because a Science degree will never get me a job, and pharmacists, businesspeople, and engineers make more money.
• Exchange Students in the Library: Just because I can't understand what you're saying doesn't mean I can't hear you.
• Teens on the Bus: It is wholly unnecessary for you to talk as loudly as you do. So what if you are going to a Zombie Walk? So what if you think zombies are the coolest thing ever? So what if you would seriously wear a feather boa all the time if you had one? People could really care less.

I think I am forgetting a few, but I'm sure I'll come across some more as my mood worsens.

Sucktober and Hockey-ness

October 2004 was a definite Sucktober; it takes the cake in terms of suckiness.
October 2005 started as Rocktober, but progressively became a moderate Sucktober.
October 2006 is shaping up to be a throwback to 2004.

I am quite certain that I have never had such a difficult course load. Additionally, I am quite certain that I have never had such a crappy midterm schedule. Granted, I never have more than three in one week; they are just perpetual, never-ending, seemingly infinite. Plus, I have one at 8:00 in the morning the day after Turkey Monday. How? HOW? That's not fair. It's turkey time, not study time. It's really all making me feel quite disenchanted about school and my future and life in general. I spend all my time studying, it seems, and no time actually having fun or thinking of serious issues (like next April). Bah. BAH.

In other news, the NHL has commenced its regular season. Finally. I am elated. Overjoyed. I watched the Oilers' first two stints against the Flames. Their season-opener was rather impressive, I thought. In the off-season there was a whole hazy cloud of speculation about the new Oilers' potential, ranging from finishing twelfth in the West to finishing first in the Northwest. Now their depth and offensive talent are being praised. I'm not a psychic nor a true hockey pundit, so I'm not even going to give my prognosis. It's too early to tell anyway. Last year they won their first three, took a nose dive, and look where they ended up. I'm just going to cheer. And hope that Hemsky shoots more often. Good gracious! I think I have a super fan-crush on Hemsky. I get all fluttery when he's on the ice. And I love his line.... him and Sykora have got some crazy Czech wizardry going on there. With some of that Raffi thug business. I wish the Lupul-Horcoff-Smyth line would gel a little better. I feel Horcoff has not really been in it yet. He showed a flash of his brilliant speed on Saturday night, but he also made more than a few stupid passes in the neutral zone. And what's with that five-forward powerplay? Yipes. It's too gutsy for me at this stage of the game. It might work well if the powerplay started with an offensive zone faceoff and they had Horcoff or Stoll out there to win it. But all the times I have seen them try it they spent half the powerplay retrieving the puck from their zone or making bad passes at the offensive blue line. All in all, I have been very pleased, though, happy that they are back on the ice.

Also, since my dad is a mondo Habs fan, we watch as many Habs games as possible. The one on Friday night... golly! Those Sabres really brought it to them. Watch out for those Sabres. I think they are going to do very well. I'm glad Montreal got redemption against the Leafs on Saturday, though. Granted, they probably should have done it in regulation, but still. Plus, I hate the Leafs. Always have. Always will.

That was a little babbly/scrambly. I just get so excited about hockey.

I'm still working on the Lost post, though I fear its completion will not come until mid-November. At least by then I will be able to talk about the WEIRD new season. This series gives you question after question left unanswered, which is oddly really good. There is lots of room for speculation, which just intrigues you further. It's the only show, apart from The Amazing Race, that I can foresee watching with any real fidelity. Unfortunately, I just don't have much time for the remainder of shows I planned on watching.

Okay. Enough. Happy Turkey Weekend, my fellow Canadians.

Blogging Under the Influenza

This is the post I alluded to last week. It might be a little bit overdue, but it's still something important, or at least interesting, to me

If you are a student at the U of A, you're probably aware that our Public Health Response Committee has sent out a massive electronic survey regarding the possibility of an avian influenza in hopes of devising a plan of action should such a pandemic erupt. And, of course, the whole topic of the survey made the cover of our beloved campus paper last, last Thursday. If you are not a student at the U of A, or have not yet seen the survey, here is a link.

Considering my university career focuses on things such as this feared pandemic, this survey was of particular interest to me. It's epidemiology in action, not just figures and statistics I have been learning about. Naturally, I took the survey, and was initially quite perplexed with the nature of some of the questions. Why are they asking me if I think I'm going to get food poisoning? Or cancer? What does sauerkraut have to do with anything? Was this survey really trying to collect information for a pandemic plan, or was that an ulterior motive? Thursday's issue of The Gateway also featured an opinion article concerning this survey, and it was relieving to see my suspicious sentiments echoed.... at first.

After reading this article a few times over, its ignorance dawned on me. My ignorance dawned on me. It just so happens that a few months ago I chanced upon a blog whose author talked on avian influenza and it got me all riled up. I cared about the fear and ignorance surrounding avian flu, its portrayal in the media, the fact that this thing could potentially kill half the people it infects. And after taking that survey I had thrown all that out the window for what I thought was critical thinking. In fact, I was thinking cynically.

Cynical thinking is, after all, not critical thinking, but the opinion article's author, one Miss Robin Palmer, seems to have the two confused. Her article centres around the seeming uselessness of some questions; she implies a lack of intelligence put into the questionnaire reflected in these questions, and flaunts a wishy-washy "I'm-actually-all-for-a-plan-and-maybe-I'm-just-taking-it-too-personally-but...." to cover her behind. So, does the survey really lack intelligence, or was it a lack of simple logic and reasoning that led Palmer to conclude such?

Her first attack is on question 17. She writes:

The “General Information” section was fairly bland until question 17, which asked “How likely do you think you may be affected by the following disease or injuries in the next year?” The person being surveyed was then asked to rank several diseases or injuries based on their likelihood of occurring. These diseases or injuries span the distance of “cold” and “annual flu” right through to “heart attack” and “traffic injury.” Now, I don’t know about everyone else, but I can’t exactly predict when I’m going to be struck by a bus.

Firstly, this question does not appear under the "General Information" section, nor does a section entitled "General Information" exist. It appears under the "Risk Perception" section. Presumably, figures exist for the average citizen's risk of contracting a cold, flu, cancer, having a heart attack, etc., but no such figures exist for avian influenza. Obviously. There are lists of confirmed cases, but those tell us little about our chances of getting it, at least while the cases are few and isolated. Thus, this question is guaging the public's perception of the risk of the pandemic happening, as the section's title suggests, in relation to conditions of known risk. It is not, as Palmer purports, a demand of prophecy, a prediction of one's own demise. Results of this question will give planners an idea of how much people know about and/or fear this potential threat, and will elicit a response of appropriate education and information about the real (though approximated) threat. In her conclusion, Palmer expresses that she doesn't "generally plan ahead for heart attacks," likening the ludicrousness of such a notion with that of developing a vaccine for avian flu. While I will talk on the idea of a vaccine later, I claim that planning for heart attacks is not so ludicrous. After all, a prevention plan is still a plan. People do what they can to reduce their risk of having a heart attack by keeping fit, eating healthy, yadda yadda. You must know your risk before you can reduce it. So, is developing a plan for avian flu that may encompass means of prevention really that crazy?

I can't vouch for Palmer's credentials and how she knows what a vaccine is. She describes them as such: "Vaccinations work by injecting a person with weakened or dead pathogens so that their immune system can produce antibodies to fight off an actual invasion of those pathogens." I cannot disagree with that statement as that is exactly the mechanism by which some vaccines work. She continues, "The fun thing about pathogens is they’re unique to each strain of infectious agent. How exactly does the Public Health Response Committee plan on producing these pathogens without knowing the strain of influenza?" This is also true (though the semantics of her first statement are not cohesive), and especially pertinent to avain influenza since the major targets for attack my our immune system are the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteins on the virus' envelope. It is these two molecules that determine the strain (i.e., H5N1 refers to a hemagglutinin of type 5 and a neuraminidase of type 1), though classifying something as a certain strain doesn't account for the entire molecular complexity seen by our immune systems.

Anyway, I'm being a little longwinded here. My point is that, yes, it is nearly impossible to develop an effective vaccine without acutally knowing, in great molecular detail, the strain that will emerge in a pandemic. However, I doubt the Public Health Response Committee plans on trying to develop a vaccine itself, as Palmer suggests. In fact, development of a true vaccine would take at least six months after a pandemic erupted. The whole point of the questionnaire was, again, to guage the public's knowledge on avian influenza in general. I will hazard a guess and say that not all people know how a vaccine works. In fact, recent portrayals of vaccines in the media, such as in the most recent X-Men movie and the television show Lost, are a little skewed. In both cases, I will assume that the vaccines they feature are passive vaccines, which work by giving infected or potentially infect people antibodies from another source as a means of protection or combat. It's not as effective nor as permanent as the aforementioned attenuated, active vaccine. So the public might be getting the idea that a vaccine for avian flu is a cure, a treatment, which is really not what it is. Again, the point of this question is to give the planners an idea of what they have to tell people in order for a plan to work smoothly. People have to know that there is no vaccine, so reducing our risk will have to come by some other means.

Perhaps the most touchy section of the questionnaire is the one entitled "Willingness to Volunteer During a Pandemic." It brings up the issues of volunteerism in such a crisis, forced volunteerism, and the possibilty of penalties to those who refuse to help. Palmer doesn't exactly develop her stance on this section fully, but from what she has written, I will imply that she thinks it goes a little too far. Yes, conscription (in Canada) may seem like a relic of the past, a violation of personal freedom, yadda yadda. But that's in context of nations versus nations, ideas versus ideas. An avain flu pandemic, if it emerges as deadly as predicted and feared, is life versus death, man versus virus. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say. Did conscription sound like a good idea during the World Wars? Yep. Might it sound like a good idea if a pandemic hit? Why not? Plus, maybe this is just me, but I would rather answers these questions now and know that a plan might involve this so-called conscription than to have the whole idea forced upon me when this pandemic is in full flight.

I started writing this a week ago, so I have lost my train of thought. I don't know what I wanted to say from here, but perhaps this would be a good time to stop anyway. Like I said, I was unsure about this survey when I first read it, but time and thought, logic and reason have brought a bit of clarity. Being proactive for something as devastating as this pandemic might be is perhaps of utmost importance. Understanding that planning calls for unusual and touchy questions will only help the cause. So, I really would rather take a "cuckoo test" over one flu that will liquify lungs, leaving me to drown to death in my own blood.

Interlude

I have another post coming. It's going to be long and potentially boring, so I thought I would get some unrelated bloggables out of the way beforehand:

• The internet chez Krista is up and running once again. What joy! However, having dumped our defective Telus connection for one with Shaw, we have received one free month of movie channels as a perk . On the eve of midterm hell-fiery death, it is needless to say that I hardly require yet another reason to procrastinate.
• I have discovered the glorious hilarity of Little Britain. I think I am going to either buy its three seasons on DVD or ask for them for Christmas or something. Too funny.
  
• My Spurs won today. THEY WON!!! ... albeit by a controversial penalty that really wasn't a penalty. But they are in a position to take what they can get. The match was a home game and I couldn't help but finally feel a sense of fraternity with my fellow Spurs supporters. They were cheering and singing, having a general good time (though booing Sol Campbell of Portsmouth, a former Spur, which is quite tragic considering how excellent a player he is and his years and years in Tottenham). And Berbatov was back! He had a hand (or head?) in Murphy's goal, too.
  
• I have made zero progress on my Lost post. I haven't lost hope for its completion, though. I will finish it... eventually.

Later. Or... L8Rzzz?