For once I just can't think of a title...

I've really fallen out of the habit of writing here. Maybe that's because I'm actually moderately productive at the moment. Vanessa sent me an article yesterday about how boring scientific articles are, and how we're trained to write in a really boring style. I managed to read the whole thing without losing concentration, which is the first time that's happened in ages. So maybe I'm struggling so much because of the boring style of scientific writing. The scary thing was that in the list of things to do to keep your writing boring, I identified with a lot of them! So my writing is boring too :(

On a positive note, the honours students finished their presentations yesterday. The first one was ok, not great though. The problem is that he's doing the whole 'my supervisor must contact me' thing, so a lot of his points were completely confused. Especially the experimental design, the stats and so on. Often he's start a sentence with something like "I'm not quite sure how I'll do this yet." As I said, he's still a K-I-D-S in a lot of ways. He's heading off on fieldwork in a few days, but doesn't know how he's going to store the animals there for 2 weeks, what to feed them and so on. He really needs to talk to my supervisor, but I don't know if he will. the thing is that my supervisor tends to forget about pretty much everything that's not in his immediate vicinity. It's annoying but you have to work around that and actually remind him of stuff. I'm not getting involved, so this should be interesting.

The other student's presentation was a lot better, she'd actually sent it to both her supervisors and me for feedback. So the supervisors corrected the science side of things and I commented on stuff like fonts and slide layout. she also did an extra practise session with me, so it came out sounding pretty good. There were a few issues, like the fact that she has absolutely no history with behavioural ecology and that sort of thing, so she's confused about the main issues that she's investigating. She's learning quickly and I'm sure she'll sort it out. At least she's not too proud to ask for help!

Otherwise I went to Claire's kitchen tea on Saturday. It was in Boksburg at the House of Ribs. TI was fun, very small. It's looking like this wedding is going to be a lot smaller than the huge ones I've been going to, which is nice. I'm glad I got a chance to meet some of the people who will be there.

Chris has been running the shop for Jo while she's away for 2 weeks. HE's gone a complete power-trip, taken practically all the shifts, kicked me off a shift (I wanted to go at 5 or so on Saturday when it got busy, he refused, and then told Jo I hadn't offered anything). she got really angry when I organised for Matt to work for me this Saturday so I can help with stuff for my brother's wedding. It turned out Christ had asked Matt already and then not told me. Then he called Jo and said I was refusing to work. She sent me an angry message and I called her immediately and she screamed at me. So I'm working on saturday and Carla is angry with me for not helping. I can't win sometimes :(

I watched some interesting movies recently. On Sunday I watched half of 'Little Miss Sunshine' before it went out. It was awesome! I can't wait to see the rest of it! I was laughing so hard at some points! I will make more substantial comments when I've seen the rest of it. After that I started watching 'Spellbound' which is a documentary folloiwing a few of the kids going to the national spelling bee in america. They show it on ESPN! It just really shocked me to see how long some people spend learning to spell words that they will probably never use. And the kids work so hard! Why does anyone care? It's spelling. And there's no international contest because nobody actually cares. I just feel really sad for kids who spend such huge chunks of their life doing that, What for? Will it actually get them anywhere. I guess they learn to perform under pressure and apply themselves to studying for something and so on, but really.

Then yesterday I took my huge piles (2 piles) of marking home to mark in front of the tv. I had a movie called Enigma, with Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet. I enjoyed it so much I kind of forgot about my marking pretty early on and just sat there watching it, so I ended up sitting marking until quite late last night. I left one set of memos at wits, so I only got through one pile, but at least it's done now. I don't know why I liked it so much, it's very different to the sort of thing I usually watch. I don't know, but I liked it.

Anyway I must go and read more boring papers. then mark a HUGE stack of drawings.