Hey Amy,

My friends birthdays were good. For one of them we ate cake and delicious stirfrys and then played board games all night, and for the other we sat around at Pizza Hut until we got into an argument about our relative body weights and had to drive to Walmart in search of a bathroom scale to settle the dispute. In case you're wondering the results were inconclusive due to poorly calibrated floor models and failed attempts at using others through their plastic packaging.

This week I was slightly more productive with my breaks between classes. I can't really work in computer labs due to the distractions of the

internet. I'll start off looking up something relevant to my studies on Wikipedia then suddenly its 4 hours latter and I'm still on Wikipedia reading about lactose intolerance or the Bermuda Triangle. Most other study places I find myself starring at a wall rather than working. It's not just that I'm lazy, but I've found that I'm somehow incapable of being productive while deadlines are far off. in the past I've kept track of how many pages of a paper I write per hour at different times approaching the due date, and theres nearly an exponential increase in productivity. Furthermore, I've had proffs comment that the end of these papers are very well done though the beginnings (For which I wasn't rushed) are somewhat weak.

I am usually quite good at not procrastinating when I work in the library, however there were several occasions last semester in which I would show up at the library as they opened and not leave (aside from getting food) until they were closing, and usually this would go on for a few days in a row. and so now I can't stand that place and it is my goal to try and get through this semester without stepping foot in the library. I'm not sure if this is an attainable goal, but I'm gunna do my best to stay out as long as possible.

Once again, your research sounds really cool. I'm probably gunna be working at the agriculture research center here in in Lethbridge this summer, and it will most likely involve sorting individual kernels of grain by phenotype, standing in a field, or studying cow digestion, so I'm really quite jealous of the interesting stuff you get to do. The Canadian Center for Behavioural Neuroscience is on campus here and a friend of mine is working there. He raises rats, trains them on a water table, and then dissects their brians. I'd be jealous of him too if it weren't for the part about killing the friendly little rats you've raised.

I was glad to hear you're now flu-less, though I'm getting nervous about my own health. Over the past two weeks most of my friends have comedown with really sore throats, and people all around me in my classes haven't stopped coughing. Typically I'm one of the last people to come down with an illness, and it usually strikes me just when I think I might finally be safe...

The coughing epidemic seems to hit U of L every year around this time. I suspect it's partially due to the fact that UHall (where most of the science classes are held) has terrible ventilation, and the air just recirculates through the rooms.

I've decided living in Lethbrige has made me weak. Winters here are always very mild with it never being cold for more than a week or two before we get a chinook and the warm winds melt everything and bring temperatures to above zero. I lived in Red Deer, Alberta till I was 10, and there several straight months of -15, or -20 was the norm, and I could handle it without a second thought. But then last night I couldn't barley handle walking through half a foot of snow in -4 degrees. Whenever my tells stories of living in Sudbury and Brockville she makes winter sound like Antarctica, so I imagine my complaints sound like I'm calling an ambulance for a paper cut while you stand around with a severed arm. Nonetheless, I'm ready for January to be done.

The psychology course you talked about sounded more exciting than the ones I took. A moral question I like to ask is about people trapped in

elevators , for instance, in one elevator is an old classmate you haven't seen in a few years and in another is three strangers, you can only save one elevator, which do you chose? then I'll switch it up with something like 2 children or 7 senior citizens?, 4 bank robbers or 1 nun? 3 pregnant ladies or 3 happy couples? 1 woman or 5 chimpanzees? one child with a terminal disease or a dolphin? ect. If you ask enough of these questions you can get an odd sense of the value they place on different traits and abilities. you also sometimes get into interesting discussions about how and why dolphins are riding elevators.

I've got stuff to do for school tomorrow so I should probably go now, but I hope things are going well for you.

Talk to you soon,