Facing fears

So, in a spate of putting-ducks-in-a-row, I've spent the better part of the last week doing huge piles of admin, ordering equipment, booking vehicles for the upcoming field season and sorting through data to get it into a workable form. I've also had bad days when I've gone home and needed to take my mind off life, so I've been catching up on movies.

It is here that I faced a very real fear... yes, really... believe it or not... I watched the whole of the Wizard of Oz. In one sitting! I think the fact that I had my phone with me, with a few close friends on speed-dial helped. The australian had also told me what she could remember of the ending which made it a lot less scary. I also found the Dorothy & Co were exceptionally annoynig, so I didn't really fear for them at all. Maybe if the lions, tigers and bears (oh my!) had succeeded in eating them they would have stopped singing... As for the wicked witch of the west who has been a recurring figures in my nightmares from when I was about 4 years old... well I found out that the stripy tights that scared me so much actually belonged to the wicked witch of the EAST! And the fact that I knew that witch #1 had a house land on her, and #2 did the whole "I'm melting! Meltiiing..." thing, they got a whole lot less scary.

I also faced another fear today, that is the fear of tring to do something I don't understand. As of this morning, I have decided to do some visual modelling with my data. It means that I've spent about 6 hours reading papers with really long equations that I don't understand, but I'm making progress!