Brian York's Life

Well, here I am again

Written on June 19, 2008

Well, it’s been quite a year. Probably one of the most eventful I’ve ever experienced. And, I suppose, this deserves some extended thought. Of course, I should really be posting this closer to the new year, but I have time right now (which I may not later), and now is when I’m thinking about it. Of course, with my memory being what it is (“I have a mind like a steel trap: anything that gets in ends up crushed and mangled”), I’m going to be concentrating more on what happened recently than on what happened some time ago, even when the less recent events are the more important ones.

I have to amend the above paragraph, since it turns out that I didn’t have time even when I was writing, so it’s now part-way into January (I hope it’s not February by the time I post this). Of course, no one ever said that I’d have time during graduate school, but I didn’t think it would be that much busier than my undergraduate work. Oops.

First off, a little format change. For those of you reading this through my website, there will really be no change. If, however, you’re reading this via livejournal, there will be a large change. That’s because I’m actually including the entire article (suitably amended into reasonable HTML) into my livejournal, instead of just a link to my actual journal. If you’re reading this via livejournal, you should really follow the link at the top of this entry to see it the way it was meant to be seen, but that’s entirely up to you. It does, of course, mean that it’ll be less of a priority than before to add commenting (and equivalent features) to my web site, but I probably won’t have time to do that anyway. Or, at least, not any time soon. So, that said, on to the rest of it.

This was my first Christmas ever away from my family. Now, I was about to say “away from Ottawa”, but then I remembered that, when I was quite young (maybe 6 or 7) my family spent Christmas in Stratford (Ontario) instead. I don’t clearly remember that, however, so really this is the first time I’ve been this far away during this time of year. And Christmas has really been important to me in recent years. Not because of its religious implications, but because it was my only real chance to actually see my (Ottawa) family and friends. While I was in Ottawa over the summer, I tended to be really busy with work, so December was pretty much it. And I’ve missed that. I’ve missed seeing my family and friends.

I also miss the snow, and the cold temperatures. I never figured that I would, but it seems that I do. I like seeing snow fall, I like walking through it, I even don’t mind shovelling snow (not very much, at least). And it never gets really cold here. The days get shorter (more so than in Ottawa, because both Vancouver and Victoria are slightly farther north), but the temperature stays warm, and it really feels like mid-Fall New Brunswick to me. I find it incredibly strange not to have snow on the ground, or at least frost and ice.

All of this makes it sound like I really hate things here, but that isn’t the case. Staying with Morgan’s family for Christmas was nice, and I really do fit in there fairly well. I’ve also had the chance to go out a bit, and meet some of Morgan’s friends. And I’ve discovered that I actually fit in to the group fairly well, which is nice. Morgan’s friends in Vancouver (and Kris, in Victoria) remind me a fair bit of my own friends in Ottawa and Sackville. I really enjoyed meeting everyone who was there, and I had a good time. Apparently I’m also not the only person who thinks I fit in pretty well, which is an encouraging sign.

One of the other big things this past year, of course, has been starting grad school, which has certainly been an experience. (And yes, I know that the previous sentence is grammatically ambiguous, and it isn’t clear whether it’s grad school itself, or the process of starting grad school that’s an experience, but then again either reading is pretty much correct so I’m sticking with it). As the previous parenthetical sentence probably shows, I’m not doing graduate work in English or any related discipline. Instead, I’m in Astronomy, the useless subject that sounds really impressive when you talk about it. Of course, I’d be the first to argue that Astronomy and Astrophysics actually aren’t useless, but it can be hard to come up with a good set of practical applications of them.

Graduate school is both more and less intense. The course work is at least as difficult (especially when the “review” section isn’t actually a review for you), and there’s also research work to be done as well. Things are a lot less competitive though, which does help. Some of the research work (at least in Astronomy) also involves travel to exotic places, which is a nice bonus. This year I’ll hopefully be going to a conference in Shanghai and an observing run at the William Herschel Telescope which is on La Palma (one of the Canary islands).

Another important thing I’ve done over the past year is get married (is anyone at all surprised that I consider this important?) This is another one of those things that’s quite a change, especially since it comes with nine-year-old a stepdaughter attached. Getting married was a time-vacuum, and a money-vacuum, and keeping our various relatives from going crazy at the concept (well, to be fair, mine especially) was a bit of a job, but I’m told that it’s not particularly unusual for things to work out that way. I’m really glad I got married, even though a year ago I really couldn’t have seen it happening. Strange how it’s gone from “Marriage? Maybe someday in the far future” to “Married? Me? Well, I guess so” to “I can’t believe I’m actually married” to “It’s only been a few months? It really seems like longer” all in the course of a single year.

I also moved across the country this past year, from Sackville (New Brunswick) to Victoria (BC). That’s also a bit of a process, especially since it was wrapped up in moving in with my fiancé, graduating, and going to a new university. Leaving Sackville (and Mount Allison) was really hard, and I still miss the town, the school, and (especially) my friends there. Someone should move both ends of Canada closer together or something.

Overall, it’s been quite the year, and in more ways than one. At the end of it, am I happier than I was at the beginning? Yes, actually, I think I am. I’m more hopeful too, which is probably a good sign. It’s been awhile since I looked at an upcoming year and was particularly optimistic about it, so that’s likely a good change. I’m nervous about school, about having a child, and about pretty much everything going on, but that’s not actually unusual. What is unusual is that, at least at the moment, I think I’ll be able to handle it, somehow. And that’s a good note to end things on.

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Entry last updated January 5, 2005