I found out a couple of days ago that the application I submitted in the fall to renew my research grant was successful. I have funding for another five years!

What's more, I've been given a 10% increase over my previous annual level of funding. Even though that doesn't work out to be a lot of money, it's a big deal. In this funding cycle, the overall budget for all grants in my area fell significantly. It would have been enough of a victory merely to remain at the same level of funding. To have received a raise is very gratifying. It is, to use the language of the evil ruler of the country next door, a Mandate. It almost makes me feel as if I should actually do the work I said I would do in my application, even though that's highly unusual. Nahhhh.

It also helps my putative upcoming tenure case, since the increase in funding looks good on paper. Of course, what would help even more would be to get some papers published. I'll find out early next week whether that's going to happen for a big paper I submitted at the start of the year, and I will further try to tilt the scales by submitting a paper or four a week later. The next two weeks will be rather busy.

This is truly a glorious week here at Thingo central. After years of waiting, we finally ditched the pathetic excuse for a toilet in our upstairs bathroom and replaced it with an American Standard Champion. The upstairs toilet pretty much didn't work right from the day we moved in, and in the past month or two it basically stopped working altogether. Every flush became a baroque dance of turning valves, jiggling handles, plunging, and so on.

Those days are now behind us. We now have a new toilet. No -- not a toilet, a Champion. Frankly, I don't think I could come up with a better name for a toilet than that. Its flush is mighty. It doesn't hurt that it's a six litre flush (alas, it doesn't come in a dual-flush model). It doesn't have racing stripes or flames painted along the sides, though I think it really ought to.

I'm not sure what an appropriate finishing touch would be. Perhaps some appropriately themed bathroom reading material? Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut? The top book hit on Amazon for "champion" is probably not appropriate with little kids in the house.

Daylight savings time has officially begun, a month earlier than last year. Unfortunately, this means that I have one less hour to be productive in an otherwise work-intensive weekend.

The reason for the time change of the time change stems from recent legislation in the US. Congress voted to extend daylight savings time, with the "reasoning" that more daylight would equate to less energy consumption. Canada responded with what was probably the only sane choice it had, which was to follow along with the same change. So here we are in March, and somewhere during the night an hour vapourized.

I hear congress is now working on legislation to increase the length of the second by a few percent so that the day has only 23 hours instead of 24. Because, you know, we'll all use less energy in the fun new 23 hour day than we did in the archaic, Euro-centric 24. Think of the savings! With the money we save, we'll be able to pay an army of workers to stuff these politicians' fat heads up the tailpipes of SUVs.