I sit here in my office, zoned into the project I'm working on while blissfully listening to Imogen Heap when the malordorous tendrils of microwave popcorn waft down the hallway. If there's one thing that distracts the hell out of me it's the nauseating smell of (overcooked) microwave popcorn. And let me just mention that I work in a trailer (yup - a double wide carved into offices), with like 8 bathrooms down the hall (which add their own pleasant aroma to the area on occasion) and I've just found out there's some kind of mold in my office (offgassing a lovely musty smell as it eats through whatever it's embedded in and spores dancing merrily through the air). Throw some gag-riffic microwave popcorn into the mix and I'm about ready to puke. Please! Ban this insidious snack "food". Right Now!

A very good weekend for New Brunswick and our club in particular. Apparently our province pulled in 23 medals from the tournament overall (out of a possible 48 I think), so kudos to all the fencers. I did pretty well - gold in women's foil and 10th in the Open Foil event (out of 32). Battered and bruised now and just a tiny bit sore, this is the last event until February I think. Lots of time to reflect and lots of stuff to work on.

Ok so after an uneventful road trip from Saint John, here we are in Halifax already. Well, technically we're in Dartmouth (across the bridge from Halifax). Can I just say that complimentary high speed internet access totally rocks. It's also complimentary high speed wireless access in the rooms but I'm glad I didn't bother bringing the laptop - I'll be fencing (or refereeing) all day this weekend anyway so it would've been a waste to lug it around. Now the room is just a tad on the cozy side (4 people + 2 double beds = not as much personal space as one would like), but they're clean. We've done the weapons checks, explored the hotel - and boredom is slowly setting in. I guess we'll just have to channel surf until we find something interesting to watch. Well, we should probably get an early night in anyway so we'll be well rested for tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll be writing a positive update tomorrow evening.

Well, I'll be shortly on my way to Halifax to compete at the TriSword fencing competition. This event is kind of fun as there is a trophy for the top fencer in each category (Open Men, Open Women, U17 Men, U17 Women) in all 3 weapons. It's calculated based on your placing in each of the three weapons fenced. I won the TriSword trophy two years in a row - but that was years ago when I was competing in all 3 weapons regularly. Since then I've only been training in foil but I might give it another try this year anyway - if my knee holds up and I can summon the energy to fence all 3 weapons - we'll see. At the very least I'm there to compete in Foil and hope to gather as many points as possible and have fun doing so. Points and standings - my new goals ;-) Wish me luck!

Whilst rummaging around on the Experience Dynamics website I noticed they have a series of free (archived) web seminars on various user experience topics. I've already gone through the Content Usability one and plan on a few others.

While you're there, also check out their Importance of User Experience poster. I've ordered one for our office and will probably get one for myself as well.