In Victoria again… and enjoying it!

So, as you may surmise by my title here, I have once again begun my crazy summer travel schedule. Like last year, I'm attending DHSI (Digital Humanities Summer Institute) in Victoria. This time I'm taking a course on Data Discovery (last year's class was on Project Management).

Yesterday I arrived, following a 1.5 hr delay (1hr delay on the plane arriving in Edmonton, half an hour delay while we were on the runway as it happened again) due to radar outages. The pilot asked us to write our MLAs if we wanted to complain. Essentially more than one plane cannot land nor depart without radar at the International Airport, so this slowed things down considerably.

Once here, I took the shuttle to campus, got settled in my residence room (same building as last time, different wing! I actually really like my room though my other room had the Ethernet cord plug in in a more optimal location. I wish that my netbook better loved the wifi here, because it would make things a whole lot simpler — but whatever, Ethernet works fine too. I could have just brought a longer Ethernet cord, but I really don't think a 50 foot cord is optimal for traveling.

As for the rest of my day yesterday, it consisted of two things: firstly I text messaged or called a bunch of folk who are either living here or who I know were here, and secondly I took the bus down to Willows Beach for the Oak Bay Tea Party. One of the first things I did there was meet up with some of the Oak Bay Kiwanians who were running the tea house there — it's their one fundraiser and they put SO MUCH work into it. I ate a hotdog, had some good conversations and watched a relative of one of the Kiwanians enjoy the rides and games (she was a great kid!). Then I walked the beach, wrote a bit, and essentially enjoyed Twitter and whatnot before deciding I needed at least SOME exercise, and so I walked back to campus. For most of my walk I could hear open air music of some sort playing, so that was kind of nice — good songs in any case. The weather was absolutely perfect (unlike Edmonton, so I hear).

I ended up in bed early (I was absolutely exhausted), and up this morning early to eat breakfast (not as pleased with breakfast as I was last year at this point, but it's not bad either). And now, I'm just catching up on things online. I might actually get some work done, but we'll see. I imagine that the fact that I'm brainstorming ideas and thinking thesis nearly all of the time helps regardless of whether I actually get much done in actuality so there's that at least.