the aftermath…

So I took the shiny (literally, it ROCKS!) new hat out last night and it was a major hit! too bad my phone is dead and so there are no pictures, but I can safely say it was loved by everyone, tried on by everyone, and it still looks better on me :) Well it looks best of CG, but she won’t believe me…

And now I’m exhausted, and confused, and I have a weird bruise on my back (I think from when someone tried to pick me up when they hugged me) and trying to finish a batch of data-fiddling before going off to meet the Oracle and the Oxfordian (I will never call her an Oxonian, it makes me think of those stock cube thingies) In the spirit of getting things done (and stopping the awful waffling i seem to do lately)

Things I have learned:

1. I will never be able to play pool as I seem to get worse every time I try. This doesn’t stop me from loving it and doing a happy-dance whenever I sink anything!
2. Hats rock!
3. I love this site
4. Sometimes you run into people you thought you’d never see again
5. This can lead to very strange situations
6. I like having my own hat!
7. It is SO awesome having the group back together and drama-free, I knew I’d missed CG since the mega fight, but I don’t think I realised just how much she holds us all together and how she calms us down when we start going a bit too nuts.
8. I think it might be OK to date someone with longer hair than me.
9. I love my friends
10. Sometimes you have to be nasty if the other person doesn’t know how to take a hint. I’m dreading it though.

Living in the oven

It is HOT here. I’m talking fry and egg just by thinking of going outside kind of hot. Yesterday it was 35 in the shade at 4pm (that’s about 90 degrees to you Fahrenheit people), which makes me shudder to think of the kind of temperatures I work in on nice exposed (and heat-reflecting) rocks in the heat of the day. Last night I couldn’t sleep because it was too hot, I didn’t even want coffee yesterday (and I REALLY miss my coffee) and the lizards are basically not even bothering to show their cute little faces because they might just fry. Seriously I saw a couple yesterday, all sitting under nice shady overhangs (and not my lizards of course).

Today was better (although hotter according to the thermometer) as there was a slight breeze and I picked a very exposed outcrop to work on so that I would get the full advantage of any wind. It also has some nice overhangs that I could set traps in the shade (the traps in the shade (Me? Clinging desperately to the rock face setting them…). In this heat there’s no way I can set traps in full sun unless I want baked lizard.

And what the heck is going on with the geckos? I thought the ones I keep catching are supposed to be nocturnal! And they bite.

I didn’t know what day it was today. I had to figure it out by counting the lizards I could remember trapping and then adding in a rainy day for Sunday.

There is an epic ant-invasion going on here. HUGE ants, that could carry off small children. They seem to be followed by some rather large but relatively harmless scorpions.

I saw impala today! I know it’s not exactly an aardwolf, but I’ve never seen them here before (not on this farm anyway). There’s a very cool Marshall eagle that I see every day as well, and the fish eagles are making their presence heard (there’s a dam on my next-farm neighbour’s property and I’ve seen them hanging out there).

I had to lie on the rocks to get a trap out that had slipped back too far for me to reach it without my doing some impressive tool-use demonstration with sticks. I wonder if the local baboons will start using sticks while foraging? The rocks were SO hot, I may have given myself a stomach-tan through my shirt… And I didn’t realise the small depression in the rock was full of sand, so I have one brown leg and one khaki leg! I also have a burned ring around m wrist, I think my watch (which is pretty loose) rubs off the sunblock. I’m sure if the farmers didn’t think I was crazy by now…

Before I left CG gave me some music to try out while I was here and it’s been very enlightening! I LOVE listening to other people’s music, it says a lot about them. Or does it? Am I seeing previously hidden depths, or am I reading into music that I may have heard before and associating my own emotions? Either way, while some of it is a bit too screamy-metal for my taste (I like epic-adventure metal, preferably sung by Scandinavians. People don’t seem to get the distinction), there’s some really interesting music as well as some surprisingly gentle stuff that has made me understand a lot of the thoughts I had about her that weren’t connecting properly! Do you think that music reveals a lot about people? It scares me to think of what the music I like might say about me.

As much as I hate Facebook, I’ve been using it a lot here. Maybe staying connected is worth all the manipulative stuff I hate? Either way I’ve been having long conversations with a very special friend back home who isn’t going through an easy time. So I guess I can thank Facebook for helping me to get to know her after all these years where we just didn’t for some or another reason! Plus I LOVE the status updates that complain about traffic! Nothing like a little gloat!

Either way I am officially over the 1/4 mark for lizard collecting, not as many as i would have liked by the end of the day today, but considering the fact that I have to trap puny areas or climb to shade, I think I’ve been doing quite well! 

It’s so hot that my thoughts aren’t connecting properly, so I’m going to stop there.

Oh, and my connection here is REALLY bad and for some reason I can’t comment on blogs without either word verifications never popping up or weird error messages :( I AM reading blogs as much as I can though so thanks for giving me something to read while I’m out here! It’s nice to follow the real world a bit!

is it just me?

So now even MORE of my equipment isn't working... I'm starting to think it has something to do with me... And my supervisors keep wanting to talk about my Future and my Career. Fair enough, my PhD is coming to an end, but at the same time all I really want is a holiday. Can you be a professional vagabond?

And would they give me a hat if I was one?

In the meantime, I have become completely addicted to two TV shows -weird as I haven't watched TV for well over a year.

This is a montage of clips from one of them. Enjoy!

Confusion, reunions and general weirdness

So it was an interesting weekend. I started off dutifully dragging my achingness off to the gym on Friday, and discovered that I was actually able to run! My family sat me down afterwards and told me that the TOD is psychotic and this is all rubbish and so on and so on. They were somewhat mollified by my promising to avoid exercise for the rest of the weekend as I had a lot of stuff going on...

Saturday was the vet as usual, where I was joined by the very charming seven-year old daughter of my bosses again, who was very cool this time. She made me business cards (my name is "Hellin" now) as well as making me envelopes so that I could write her letters, and a proper 3-dimensional landscape thing of children dancing around a tree next to a tent on a beach. Seriously, for a sever-year old? Impressive. She also gave me outfit advice for the evening which was seen with great amusement by her parents!

In the evening I rushed off (late as usual) to Tamara's birthday thing. I was pretty scared, particularly walking up the road in her complex. It was a beautiful night, the crickets were chirping and I had the awful feeling that it was the opening scene for a slasher-movie. As it happened I made it out alive (not just because of the flat shoes) and although I couldn't stay long, everyone was really nice, they seemed to like my entrance of "Hi, nice mullet!" and by complete coincidence one of my ex-students was there with his wife. By even creepier coincidence I had been thinking of him recently in the "I wonder if he's still alive?" kind of way.

From there it was a sprint to chief-Goth's house, where I had a mild freak-out at my general lack of makeup (as usual. Seriously, I need to start taking eyeliner with me!) I was distracted when I had to do the eyeliner and nail polish on one of the guys. To his credit he sat very still and it looked AWESOME!

From there we went off to Goth-world, which had a surprising number of normal people there, including one of my students of course. Here I am with La trying to pull emo-faces. Well I tried, La is always smiling! I believe we took this photo shortly after the eyelinered-guy tried to set me up with the bouncer (who was gorgeous!) and we had swapped phone numbers. As I said it was interesting...

And of course we had to find people with hats... This guy was quite into the whole photo things... I had just jumped off the dance floor having gone totally ballistic for about 5 songs in a row (including headbanging to Song 2, fending off some dodgy guy and laughing at someone trying to dance with La who didn't even notice he was there) and so I was exhausted and my hair had decided to remodel itself...

Hat-guy had a scary friend who was actually really nice, but had a weird tendency to appear in the bathroom whenever I was there. hence the panic-face...

I also got to spend a lot of time with one of the people in the social circle who I've never got to know before (beyond the obligatory re-naming and laughing at us when we got a bunch of random strangers to yell at the TV with us one night). The problem is that eyeliner-guy and his girlfriend are trying very hard to be puppet-masters in the whole situation. Seriously, if I want to get to know someone I will do it on MY terms. Don't mess with me, I can make my own decisions! AAARGH!

From there I went to La's house and had hot chocolate and a great discussion about life before crashing until the next morning where we had a great breakfast at MacDonald's (don't tell the TOD!). Then I went home and slept before I went to work with La in the afternoon and Chief Goth brought us milkshakes and we had a great time dissecting the previous evening a La Girl of course...

After all that... Things I learned this weekend:

• I know a lot more about music than I'd realised.
• I really suck at being out of my comfort zone. It's amazing how I can be the life and soul of the party and do crazy stuff as soon as 'My Girls' are with me. On my own it's just plain scary.
• Getting to know the quiet people is immensely rewarding
• sometimes eating burgers in the parking lot with a close friend is the best kind of hanging out.
• People are generally nice
• I should avoid a certain lip-gloss in future (thanks for pointing that out NOW Leia...)
• I don't like being a puppet
• I don't speak Girl. Or Guy. How the heck do people read so much into things? I just don't see the fine print. Seriously, I need a sign around my neck that says "Mind Games Prohibited" It would make life so much easier.
• People really DO say "I can like to" In my case it was a dodgy old guy who said "I can like to chat you up!" while looking down my shirt.
• Shy people are really good human shields.

Anyway that's enough for today, I'm off to have lunch with Leia as I think we have a significant amount of news to catch up on!

If you're going to (i.e. accidentally crashing) a Tim Burton-themed wedding reception

It helps to have a cool hat. And to be mildly scary (the one in the red was actually really nice, if a bit creepy).

Besides wearing enough makeup to make blinking difficult, cultivating the emo-face is very important. Smiling might crack the makeup (although La isn't very good at keeping a straight face).

If you don't have a cool hat of your own, it's OK to adopt someone else's. In this case we adopted both the hat, and the owner (who had a very nice waistcoat and a steady hand with the eyeliner).

The only bad part is that we weren't able to find the bride, so I'll just have to imagine what she did with her dress...

Crawling for coffee

You know those silly cartoons with people crawling along in the desert looking for water? Well that's basically what I did this morning, looking for coffee. Last week I was annoyed to find out that Monday had been taken away because of the public holiday on Sunday (we have a rollover to Monday if it falls on a Sunday, if it's on a Saturday we just lose it), but I must admit that having yesterday off was exactly what I needed.

This weekend was AWESOME! I can't actually write about all of it because I do need to do some work today, so I will list the highlights. If you want any more detail let me know and I will elaborate on points.

Anyway this weekend I:

• Was on time for work
• Had insanely dodgy conversations with friends of friends
• Went out for dinner and ordered a salad because I felt like lettuce.
• Laughed a LOT
• Found out that with one more trial run I've got the job as freelance photographer at Jo's studio!
• Bonded with a makeup artist at the studio (the poor girl has had a tough few months) and learned a bunch of new makeup tricks!
• Convinced my boss to start geocaching
• Met a lot of guinea pigs (I blame that movie...)
• Went out pre-goth clubbing, and was proposed to by some random guy I'd met 45 minutes before. Escaped by accompanying a friend to the bathroom and not returning.
• Was protected by Chief Goth who refused to let anyone ask me questions without her okaying them first
• Went goth clubbing and met a bunch of people at a Tim Burton-themed wedding reception
• Begged a bunch of scary goth guys to let me wear their hats. Took photos.
• Adopted a random goth boy (with very impressive guyliner) and wore his hat a lot. He proposed. Nice waistcoat.
• Started off the dance floor when the goths were too cool to dance.
• Was "Do you come here often?"-ed by someone on the dance floor while trying to escape from his scary friend with the beard and one of my undergrad students who happened to be there. Later on we danced and he poured a drink down my back. He also asked me "where does it end?" a lot (turns out he was asking my name. Whoops).
• Raced a car through a drive-through (on foot). Won by a technicality (that I could stand between their bumper and the car behind).
• Got yelled at by Chief Goth who took us home, said goodbye to the others and burst into tears.
• sat up with Chief Goth trying to be supportive (until 4am).
• Had coffee for breakfast while sitting on the grass. It was nice, but the coffee meant I was unable to sleep for the rest of the day. had hectic conversations with CG, I'm hoping I managed...
• Had a braai to celebrate my mother's homecoming
• Saw EEbEE who had come to Joburg for the weekend! He has hair now.
• nearly died having had an hour and a half sleep the night before and staying up late talking to people in the parking lot.
• Washed and vacuumed my car!
• Cleaned out a cupboard (this led to interesting philosophical debates, like "why was it ever a good idea to buy black velvet pants? and "Who even SELLS black velvet pants?")
• Spent time with my brother and his wife.
• Cycled about 80 km (over the whole long weekend)
• Nearly killed people for talking loudly in the gym.

So ja... that was my long weekend! Do you understand my need for coffee?