I think I am in love

With Werner Herzog

Since Grizzly man introduced me to the joy of meeting the love of your life at a mediaeval-themed diner, and the song of the coyote:

if you didn’t get that far, listen to the song here instead:

I want to sing along in a helicopter too!

Anyway the point of all of this (besides sharing the total awesomeness of being completely random), my folks were overseas recently, and my mother got me a documentary by Werner Herzog called ‘Encounters at the end of the world’ –

basically he goes to Antarctica and interviews some rather interesting characters.

P1 says as much as they were all crazy, I’d totally fit in down there. I might have been offended if I didn’t agree.

Can I go and find interesting people now please?

It's been a mixed week, starting with enjoying the horrendous sight of the bruises and ended with being really annoyed by the fact that the giant purple blotches are actually a little bit sore. Seriously, I haven't been for a run in a week (busy weekend and then falling off bikes), I can barely manage tai chi and ice-skating with swollen bruises on lower-shins meant that my skates actually gave me beautiful purple bruises-upon-bruises around my ankles. that's a lot of bruises.

Lowlights:

• I can't run. I need to think. I get my thinking done while I run.
• This weekend could be fun, but could be unbelievably awkward (you know when you know that 3 people are going to the same even and none of them get along and someone will end up freaking out and running off crying while the others sit and listen to the awkward-crickets?)
• It's hard to skate when you can't really bend your left knee. The cold was a fantastic numbing agent though!
• Marking. Markingmarkingmarkingmarking
• Teaching undergradlings to use a computer. Fun times.
• General lack of sleep made me a bit sick. the fever has gone, so I'm hopng it's over now.

Highlights:

• I learned a new technique for helping my balance in skating and it made a HUGE difference!
• an awesome half-hour chat with my tai chi class. I never would have thought that I'd feel so close to a random bunch of people so quickly, particularly since I'm a lot younger than most of them (there are about two people my age and they aren't always there, the rest are my parents' age).
• I spent the morning with my mom and we didn't fight. To be fair she DID decide to try and set me up with my optometrist (she went as far as saying he had displayed 'mating behaviour' towards me) and I let it slide.
• Leia is ok, which is a relief as I was very worried about her, and will be reassuring myself of her okay-ness by feeding her copious amounts of chocolate cake over the next few days.
• my team won at Trivia-night last night! who knew that one team member's knowleddge of obscure geography, another's interest in weird medical conditions and my reading random books on science would be so handy?
• The students aren't as bad as they were. Annoying and a bit dumb, sure, but they're beginning to show some personality!

All in all not entirely a bad week!

How is everybody else doing?

Chicken or beef?

So after an AWESOME tai chi lesson yesterday that actually made me realise just how pathetic my ankles are (we did something called a "Tai-chi walk" which had a lot of swivelling and lunging and then swivelling the other way) and how I've picked up bad habits already, I woke up not feeling the whole Pilates thing this morning. On the plus side besides my original four different Tai chi steps, I can totally turn corners now!

So anyway, I managed to force myself out of my lovely warm blanket-cocoon and dragged myself off to the 8m pilates class. It's cold at 8 in the morning, so we get to wear our socks instead of being barefoot! Last week the instructor told us to wear more interesting socks - my lumo-giraffe socks weren't even close to the coolness of his retina-blasting yellow and red toe socks.

So today we lined up in our stripy or polka-dot socks and got started. I love the instructor. Seriously, if I could compress him down to an mp3 and have him on my ipod, the world's depression problem would vanish! Besides being a walking ken-doll with every muscle imaginable around a waistline that's about as wide as of one of my socks, he's also incredibly INCREDIBLY camp and he likes to have 'girl talks' with us.

It makes clenching your stomach muscles while throwing your arms and legs around incredibly difficult when you find him amusing. The others don't seem to have a problem, and I've been able to hide my giggling enough that he thinks I have no core muscles and therefore no sense of balance, when actually I'm just falling over from laughing too hard!

For instance he started off this morning by telling us about the gelling agents used in ice-cream and how they are also used in the manufacture of rubber. And there I was thinking they used algae in ice-cream and rubber came from trees. Either way before I could get confused he pointed to his stomach and said "So if you have a spare-tyre..." And I fell over.

Later someone was struggling and he went to her and said:
"do you feel like you want to kotch**?" she nodded, trying to maintain her position, and he continued:
"You see ladies, if you eat your nice bowl on jungle oats before pilates you're going to be bloated. Jungle oats is such a good breakfast, lots of slow release energy. Yip it tastes like snot, but it's so good for you. But then it sits there and you can't use the muscles because you're just squishing the snot around."
The lady who had been struggling started turning kind of green. I had given up and I was sitting on my mat refusing to make eye contact with anyone.

One of the 'teacher's pet' types chirped up with "but then what do we eat?"
"you eat that snotty jungle oats! No ladies, I don't want to know what you had for breakfast, sardines on toast... yes that's high in protein! Do we have to discuss the difference between carbs and protein again?" (he did, but I won't go into detail because there;s no way I can do any kind of justice to a muscled-up ex-gymnast in a shiny yellow singlet acting out farming).

Teachers pet started again with "but that means we must eat our breakfast at six in the morning?"
"Yes Tracey, you eat at six, or you don't eat and you have breakfast an hour after you exercise. Eat a banana, do you like green-yellow or yellow-yellow bananas?" we all mumbled something to show that we were listening while Tracey sat up straight and said "Yellow-yellow!"
"Oh dear Tracey! You're on the way for a fat attack!"

Anyway after an hour of complete entertainment Ken-doll broke the news that he's leaving to become 'cabin-crew' for an airline. So sad!

And now I have to start teaching on Wednesday mornings so I'll have to find a different pilates class to go to. Sad times!


*** kotch is a delightful term for vomit

memememememememe!

I was tagged by the lovely Suvvygirl from Tales and Adventures of Suvvyland for yet another meme!

The basic idea is to pick 6 unimportant things that you love. So here goes:

1. ice-skating

Picture from here

I did ice-skating when I was in high-school, mainly because I was good at it (years of falling off my Rollerblades had got my balance issues sorted out) and I loved it! I was just starting the advanced/freestyle class when I took a break to write my exams when I was 16 and never went back. I still go to the local rink occasionally (there's one nearby now, I used to have to go out to krugersdorp ever Saturday. I can't do much anymore besides go forwards and backwards and the odd little step I sued to do, but I still love skating around and around, not doing anything special, and just letting my mind empty and relax.

2. Eyeliner

This is not me although I would love pink AND blue hair! The picture is from here (along with an awesome guide to emo makeup that ends with advice to keep it light to avoid 'looking like a poser' I think the emo community would be quite annoyed to find out how adorable i find them! In a cute puppy kind of way...)

For some reason, around the same time as I figured out how to wield a hairdryer, I figured out that eyeliner isn't all that difficult, and since then I find it difficult to leave the house without it. It's a bit like mascara or lip-gloss - makes you feel pretty instantly! Gosh I such a girl!

3. hanging around at a friend's house on a Friday night watching bad movies or playing guitar hero or just plain hanging out and talking nonsense...

I adore guitar hero as well, although the random character selection seems to be biased to picking the one we've officially (and not very affectionately named 'that skanky blonde one' or the KISS guy. I like this one: purple hair AND awesome socks! Winner!

4. Bad horror movies. I fin most horror movies hilarious, the more B-grade the better, although I actually went and saw Drag Me to Hell twice because it made me laugh so much! Other favourites include The Cave (where we've names each set as a different level so changing scenes you have to yell "Level up... it's the Aztec Level!!!" And of course if someone dies you have to make the appropriate "Game over" noises. The Descent (which has t be watched right after the Cave for full effect). Mirrors, the Fog, House of Wax (just to see the oh-so-famous death scene), Dark Water and that sort of thing.

5. Exercise. now that it's so flipping cold the only way I can feel that my feet are still attached to my legs is by warming up by exercising. I've been going to the gym since last March, but regularly since about November and I'm loving the way I'm sleeping better, feeling more awake during the day and just generally enjoying feeling vaguely healthy. I went to my first ever Pilates session today and it was a lot of fun! Way better than that yoga-tastrophe a few months ago!

6. My big puffy winter coat! It doesn't get cold enough for me to wear it often, but right now I'm all bundled up and cozy!

I'm supposed to be tagging people, but I'd rather they chose to do it... so if you want to write about 6 unimportant but oh-so awesome thing the please do! Just let me know so I can link to you!

Guilty pleasures

It's freezing, nobody is happy (except Luke) and I figured I would tell you all about the little things that are keeping me going at the moment!

• Spider Solitaire or hearts. This started as a lab lunchtime exercise where we would play hearts together and take great pleasure in screaming at the virtual players ('Ben'or 'East' is particularly vindictive). Spider Solitaire is particularly addictive, maybe I just like the fake fireworks at the end if I win? I also play before bed when I'm on fieldwork so that when I go to bed I don't close my eyes and see rocks and lizards, which means that I wake up exhausted from dreaming of chasing lizards all night...
  
• Scandinavian metal. How can you not love someone who experiments with different beard-braids? Plus the music is a lot of fun to exercise to! Just be careful or you'll overdo it and end up in pain... Or is that the point? And yes, being Scandinavian is a total bonus, it's so much more fun if they don't really understand what they're singing, just watch Nightwish singing the Pahntom of the Opera live - where they sing beautifully about the "Phantom of the Oprah!" What would that phantom look like? Would it host a talk-show about reconnecting with your family when the medium might not be all that good?

• This blog. It has made me laugh so hard I've cried on occasion, particularly the fireman cake...


• PHD comics! I know, I'm terribly nerdy, but the guy who writes it is really good at capturing what life as a postgrad is like, and almost always makes me chuckle, while thinking "I though it was just me!"
  
• Britain's got talent: admittedly I can only watch snippets on youtube, but when I was in the field I spent an entire evening doing just that, to the point where I got very emotionally involved and had a few nailbiting session while watching the final results (not just this year either!). I guess there's something in watching the ordinary man on the street show amazing hidden talents, and that makes us all dream a bit. I found the stories that hit me hardest were of the people who had to work really hard through difficult personal problems just to be there, I find it hard to sympathise with the kids with stage parents who kind of get forced into it and have a million lessons and choreographers and singng teachers and everything, it's so sad that they are really talented and they'll probably rebel and quit at some stage.


• Tea. Now that it's freezing I can't really indulge my coffee habit as much as I'd like as I just keep drinking it until I feel sick. There's something really awesome about a hot cup of tea when it's cold outside! The front-runners at the moment are regular five-roses (I do like Fortnum & Mason but we only get that when my dad has been in the uk recently), spiced-chai tea (like drinking hot-cross buns!), ginger rooibos, peppermint tea and of course cranberry and cinnamon!

• Watching terrible 'science' based crime shows on TV. I'm not sure what appeals to me more, the bad bad science, the worse portrayal of scientists or the stylish CGI effects. I'm really not into crime shows, but I kind of got sucked into CSI when we started playing "spot the dead-guy breathing" when I was working at the video store. Don't judge me!


• Green Wing! That show makes me laugh even though I've rewatched the funnier scenes WAY too many times!
  
  

I'm sure there are a bunch more, but I think I'll stop there for now! Here's hoping it warms up a bit tomorrow so I can start living again!

Before my fingers drop off from frostbite

It's FREZING in joburg right now! So cold in fact that people are letting their animals heal by themselves or something because I was at the vet for four hours this morning and I think we saw one animal and I sold two bags of dog food, and did some data analysis. Getting up and getting to work is awful because besides the cold and wind, today it's also raining, which makes life totally miserable...

At one stage I was freezing, despite the heater and several layers of clothing, and so I took the opportunity to make a cup of coffee. At that stage I had been sitting round for about two hours. Of course in the two minutes it took me to make coffee people arrived and one of the other employees helped them, leaving me feeling rather guilty that I'd only helped three out of four potential clients in the morning!

Anyway I was reminiscing about some trips today and I figured what better time to talk about where I would really really like to be right now (rather than trying to resurrect my calculus skills on a data-set that is way bigger than I had thought...)


The obvious choice: the beach! Lying on the hot sand, sleeping off the last dive. Walking along the edge of the surf. Digging around in rock pools and looking at the weird and wonderful animals there. Building random sculptures out of sand, digging giant holes and making wind shelters and then falling asleep against the temporary wall of sand...

Namaqualand - the most beautiful place in the world! Going exploring in the evenings where it's light until late because it's right on the west coast. Climbing rocks (and fences...) and trying to navigate when everything is so huge that any kind of distance perception is lost and estimations are way off every time.

Sitting in the kalahari, watching the random wildlife. I can't take credit for this photo, it's Luke's (The rest are mine). This was actually while waiting for our friend and his research assistant to fetch some giant mealworms for the owls.

The Kalahari, a bit further south. Something about the desert makes me want to climb rocks and watch the sunset.

Beautiful, no?

A road between Namaqualand and the Kalahari, where we saw desert dunes for the first time. Basically any road that is somewhere warm, stretching away further than I can see...

Like this one, on our way up from the Western Cape towards Namaqualand.

Or this road in the kalahari.

I'm really feeling the need for a road trip!

Unicorns

So while I sit and set traps and all that fun stuff, I do a lot of thinking. Bear in mind that in the course of about 4 hours I may catch two or three lizards, and as I have the routine of retrieving it, taking a blood sample, making notes, putting lizard in a bag under a tree and resetting traps down to about 4 minutes, there's a lot of time inbetween for random thought. So today, instead of my usual diatribe about why thorn trees are out to get me (they are) and ticks have some mystical radar for me (they do) and the rocks only fall when I've been standing on them for 10 minutes and am starting to relax (they do), i thought I'd let you guys in on some of what I was thinking today. Today was a good day, with amazingl little soul-searching introspection or rehashing past conversations while mentally slapping myself for my stupidity, so I figured it's as good a time as any!




This is my first embed, I hope it works! Anyway I had this song stuck in my head today (it's a good song, despite the weirdness of the video!) and I got to thinking about Unicorns. The line stuck in my head was the "We're the Unicorns, we're more than horses!" and I started wondering about why exactly that is.

Almost every girl I know had posters of dolphins, horses, unicorns and (often) cats, right next to the Backstreet Boys or *N Sync (depending on which side you supported) on her wall. Bear in mind I was a teenager in the late 90's and it was cool then.

I have long since given up trying to understand the appeal of dolphins, they're ok, but really? Give me a likkewaan or a cuttlefish or a capybara anyday! But what the heck is the appeal of unicorns?

Horses I get. They kind of scare me, and as far as I know, besides the classic being dragged around by a trainer who is holding the ropes I don't think I've ever ridden a horse. But I love the idea of having the freedom to go just about anywhere without your legs getting tired, letting your transport feed itself and the general riding into the sunset thing. It's cool. The whole along a beach thing, not so much, but that's just me.

So you take a horse, which is useful, and has big eyes and therefore humans love them, and give it a horn and mystical powers? WTF? I mean really, who wants to hug a rhino?* I mean surely, taking something that's really amazing and useful and as close to man's best friend as his dog will allow, and putting something sharp and dangerous on it? And, if you take the magical powers out of the equation, all you've got is a kind of sheepish looking horse that looks like it's been the victim of a nasty prank.

On the other hand, there's always Charlie!



So do you guys like unicorns? Care to explain the point of the whole idea to me (no pun intended, really!)

*Not counting that baby rhino on the documentary who was wearing socks because his feet were cold and it was really incredibly adorable.

The weirdest ideas

So I had a pretty normal day, went trapping, caught lizards came home, took a nap, measured lizards... what on earth is there for me to blog about?

WAIT! I know! I went to this giant crevice network today, its usually good for a few lizards, but it's massive and you have to trap metres and metres of it to catch anything, so I usually plan a windy day (it;s quite sheltered) and then spend a morning there. So I went rushing off there today, saw a ton of lizards all running into the middle section and I went to set traps.

I decided to start from the left, so I scrambled up to the crevice, put the first trap in and then started thumping it around and adjusting it. The traps have to lie flat, otherwise the little buggers just crawl underneath, so there's always some scraping around to find the best spot. Then I saw something moving. "Hmm, that's odd!" I thought. "Maybe a skink is trying to hide but it's too small or something" so I looked closer.

Whatever it was came a bit closer too. Its tongue started flicking, and then it came even closer. Yip, there I was, messed-up knee, traps in hand, clinging rather precariously to a rather steep bunch of rocks, with my head halfway into a crevice having a staring match with a rather large snake. I felt like I levitated back about 5 metres, until I realised I'd just taken a step back, and so I rather quickly packed my things up and went somewhere else.

Something made a noise a bit later and I really did levitate - vertically!

In other news, my jackal friend is back! wow I should write children's books "Jackal said 'yip!yip!' Helen said 'Yay!'" I've missed having him around to watch or listen to in the evenings.

So anyway I was thinking today, while trapping, about whether or not the colour of nail-polish you have on your fingernails and toenails says anything about your personality. Toenails are covered more often than not by shoes, and so I would think that they might be a slightly more reliable reflection of a person's character, whereas fingernails are something of a statement.

Any thoughts?

Solitude

This is kind of how I'm feeling right now. I can't explain it, but at least now I know I took this photo for a reason!
So a few days ago I was chatting to someone who has become a pretty close friend over the space of about two days (I'm not even kidding, starting a friendship with an hour-and-a-half heart-to-heart is NOT who I am!) and we ended up discussing depression. When I was a teenager I was diagnosed with it and given the requisite little white pills. I took one. I think it may have been half of one, but I don't really remember. All I now is that I never took one again, I refused to live my life feeling like the world around me wasn't really real.

Anyway he said that when you're depressed the colours around you fade and the world seems dull and ugly. I didn't really think too much about it, except to remember a specific sunset that was beautiful, that didn't move me in any way emotionally although my intellectual side could admire it.

So this week, with the crazy hotbed-of-emotions that is the meat-market lab (can't really call it the primate lab now that it's being cohabited by a primatologist, mammalogist and me) coming to a rather unpleasant and yet necessary end last night, when I woke up this morning the world seemed a little bit duller. I did a very girly thing - put my head under my pillow and refused to face the day for a few more hours, and not because of exhaustion (although that helped).

And I've been gripey all day. The people around me have been so amazing, I have been patted on the back, sympathised with, bought chocolate, treated gently... and I just don't want to talk about it! I was amazed by the depth of response in some people, people who I never expected to get that angry on my behalf and yet who did. People who seemed to notice that something was up and treated me gently even though they had no idea why. People who pulled me aside and gave me sympathy without making a big scene (which I was dreading at one point).

I guess part of me wants to cry because I feel so much like I belong here, and I have a little family of colleagues who are so totally amazing. It makes me feel like I am worth more than that, I am worth waiting for, I am worth someone putting in the effort and making me feel special. And that makes the colours a little bit brighter and tomorrow morning I may just leave the safety and warmth of my bed a little bit earlier.

And going away on Saturday (if it happens - it seems like the vehicle I was taking has been hijacked by the maintenance guy who won't give it back...) well I'm looking forward to it. I'm an analytical person, I don't bury my emotions, I just generally don't feel things very strongly, which is why this whole situation hit me so hard - I was all crazy and quivery like a teenager and I had no idea how to react to the fact that I was feeling the proverbial butterflies - and I can't wait for some solitude to think everything through and sort it out in my own head.

I've been in the city for far too long, and as much as I will miss the lab like crazy, I think it's time for me to get back to the field.

This has been (by far) the most emotional I've ever been on here. I'm sorry, don't freak out! Here are some pictures I've been looking at to try and relax and breathe a little bit.

I suck at chess

From time to time I cycle between narcolepsy (I have friends who can verify this after I fell asleep on a beach, in a car, on a chair, on floor several times during one weekend) and insomnia. I think a lot of this is stress-based, when I am stressed I just don't sleep, but prefer lying in bed paying out worst-case scenarios across my ceiling (I stuck glow-in-the dark stars up there too, but without my contact lenses all I can see if a greenish-yellow haze).

Last week, while I was really battling with insomnia, I downloaded a chess application to my phone and decided to pass those very long 2am-6am hours playing against my phone. I lost. Badly. And continued to lose. I had it set on easy, but I swear that thing is like the chess grandmaster thing like that AI program that beat the real chess master and really freaked out everyone! It's been a long time since I played chess, and the time during which I was any good at strategizing only really lasted about 3 months as nobody around me really plays it, but still!

As the days passed I felt my playing improve and I lasted longer into each game before quitting in a huff, but I still couldn't beat it. The insomnia worsened as I couldn't sleep without paying at least one game at night, which often stretched into several hours of battling a stupid cellphone app. One day I pulled out an old chess board and set up the game on there - I found being able to move pieces around in real life made strategizing easier - and did quite well until I made one tiny little mistake and the machine totally destroyed me!

By the end of last week I was exhausted and jittery and drinking WAY too much coffee and still losing. And we had to head off on field trip with a bunch of undergrads. To be honest, it was an easy trip, with 3 lecturers, the two of us and about 20 students. The lecturers stayed in chalets and we stayed in a tent to keep an eye on the kiddies.

Things I learned:

1. I am getting old/growing up. While this group of students was more immature than most, I found myself feeling increasingly different from them - the good old alone-in-a-crowd feeling.
2. I really cannot handle being around people all the time anymore. I ended up taking a walk at 1am on the Saturday night just to have breathing space.
   Although the men's showers are way cleaner than the ladies (for once) it is not advisable to sneak in and use them in case a bunch of men decide to queue outside your shower stall and discuss their personal lives.
3. Taking a random hike without students attached is a lot of fun!
4. My sleeping bag, while largely waterproof, lets water in around the zip.
   It rained, the tent leaked, I woke up with a soaking pillowe and wet feel, but a remarkably dry torso!
5. My new camera is totally awesome and I'm finally getting the hang of it (bear in mind this was first real opportunity to take it out and play around with the settings) although I have a LONG way to go!
6. The students who appear to be self-sufficient and enthusiastic in class are actually extremely annoying, particularly if they include a pair of severely over-competitive siblings.

Anyway here are some of my photos from the weekend. nothing too exciting but better than another weekend in the city!

A lizard, because I can! This little guy was adorable, maybe about 5cm long -including the tail! I'm totally saving up for a macro lens!

A frog, i don't know what the commong name is, but he was very cute. It was ouring with rain and a student who had caught him let him go and I dashed out for literally 5 seconds and caught him and ended up soaked - it looked like I had jumped into a swimming pool rather than just stepping outside!

A pretty view with a river running between two koppies

A fig tree, doing some pretty awesome weird stuff on a cliff.

A photo of Luke taking a photo. The students are being industrious.

Playing around because I could.

I have a vague idea that this is a Pelia something-or-another fern. We've always called it the cute fern because it's pretty adorable! By the end of the first day the students were calling it that too!

a caterpillar the size of a large rodent. It was HUGE! We thought it was a rat caught in a tree at first. We saw several of them on this trip, but I think the first one was the coolest. AMinly because I saw it first!

A very cool swallow nest with different coloured mud.

Our intrepid students returning from a collecting expidition in the big scary grassland!

Does anyone else see a face in the rocks?

Playing at the river. I didn't take my tripod that day and ended up balancing my camera on my lap to try keep it steady. Not fantastic, but I got the effect I was going for whch makes me happy!

The coolest classroom in the world!

do I LOOK like a people person?

I was at the gym the other night (the only thing keeping me sane right now) for the first time in a few days as I was pretty sick last weekend and i was enjoying myself. It was quite weird, I had expected it to be horrible, but evidently some degree of fitness had stuck and I was doing more than usual without feeling too tired.

I go at roughly the same time most days and so I've got to know the people who do the same. I don't know too much about them except the names I've allocated to them (The BFFs, old headband guy, rugby guy who looks like a certain cricket player but not, cool dreadlocks guy, the bodybuilder, the entourage, momkins and Tompkins and so on) but as a rule we don't try to get to know each other. I wear my headphones in the universal signal of "Leave me alone!" and most people get the message. I have nursing some new shiny blisters on my palms from the rowing machine so I went off to the circuit to finish up when along came little yellow t-shirt guy. He went straight to the middle of the circuit while I was about a third of the way through, which annoyed me but I ignored it.

Then he put WAAAAY too many weights on a machine, strained to lift the bar and let them clank back down- so loudly that I heard it clearly over my music. He repeated this several times until I looked up in confusion. He looked back and smiled and I smiled noncommittally and looked away. He started thumping and clanging weights again and I looked up in annoyance to find him staring again. I tried a sympathetic smile in the hope that it would make him go away. Instead he started talking to me.

I shrugged- the universal signal for "You moron I have headphones in and can't hear you and would gesticulate wildly but I'm currently moving weights around in a smooth and controlled manner as is says on the instruction board!" but he just kept talking. I shrugged again. Finally I pulled out one of the earphones and said
"what?"
"how's gym going for you today?"

You have GOT to be kidding me.

Finally after raising an eyebrow which made him repeat himself twice I decided on the polite route in the hope that it would make him leave me alone.
"It's OK, I'm having a good session thanks." he carried on chattering away and I left one ear open as if I was listening when actually I was just sending exasperated looks to Momkins who happened to be in the area, she nodded sympathetically and shrugged in the "rather you than me" gesture. Eventually I caught something vaguely interesting and asked him to repeat himself.

"I said I'm gymming to hard and you aren't working out hard enough!"
"WHAT?"
"Look at me, I'm all sweaty, you aren't!" I sighed.
"Well I'm wearing black, it's not exactly going to show up, now is it?" I didn't mention that his oh-so clingy polyester outfit was totally not breathable and that I was wearing a Nike magic-dry shirt, but I figured why extend a conversation when I was already adjusting my routine around him as he was still on his first machine and still unable to move the small scrap-yard's worth of weights he'd chosen. He smiles
"I'll bear that in mind... hmmm... wear dark colours..."

I moved to the weird oblique sit-up-but-not station (I'm sure it has a name) and the unthinkable happened. He asked me what I did and all about random stuff. When he asked if I cut up dead frogs I told him that I worked on lizards, which lead to him telling me all about how awesome anacondas are. I'm sure buddy. Moving on. When he asked what year I said "PhD" as shortly as possible. this guy was really not taking a hint!
"Oh! What's your thesis on?"
"Lizards."
"Oh really?" yes really, it's only the third time I've mentioned them. "Wow, not many girls like lizards."
"Well I do, and my friends are learning to like them too." at this he nodded seriously
"I bet you have a lot of friends!"
And no folks, don't think of this as me, with the sarcasm behind every second sentence - he was being sincere. I freaked out.

Well, freaked out in that I shrugged, replaced my earphones and turned to face the other way which is usual on that machine-thingy, so I wasn't being entirely rude).

Does anyone have any bright ideas on how I can get people to leave me alone at the gym? they would be greatly appreciated (ad not showering aLa Shield ads is totally out of the question)!

Upside-down

It's been a tough week so far, mostly because of the weekend that I had! First, several friends and most of my family have birthdays in February, so besides being totally broke, I get exhausted from all the socialising.


On Saturday I worked at the vet, went straight through to the videostore and worked (where I ended up eating chocolate cake with the guy who wanted to get me fired about a year ago) and then changed in the kitchen in the back of the shop and ended up sharing makeup tips with Joey while we did our makeup in the mirror over the cockroaches scuttling around in the sink (I'll work there, but I will never eat nything that ocmes out of that kitchen!).


From there I went through to La's birthday party which was awesme, over the years I've got to know most of her friends, some of them have even become friends of mine independently of her. Lara herself had come dwn with flu that day and was merrily mixing flu meds with alcohol so that by 8pm she was running around, introducing me to ev eryone (I think there was one person I actually hadn't met before) and saying "This is Helen, she's doing a DOCTORATE! And she's divine! Isn't she divine? She's divine!"

By the time they managed to stop her and escape, she would turn to me and say "You are divine. I'm so glad you're here! So glad! I love it that yore here! Oh Bob, have you met Helen? She's divine!" and so on. It was really funny!


Once she'd had comething to eat she settled down and told us all about her first week at her new job and all about how exciting and scary and totally overwhelming but awesome it is. I'm really happy that she's found somewhere to work where she's obviously being challenged but also supported and she's learning tons! She's also an incredible stoyteller, and I think that all our years as friends has trained her to see the melodrama in every situation which made for hilarious stories!

So La's getting all grown up, Joey's divorce is being finalised on Friday, another girl just got engaged and someone else is 8 weeks pregnant. Meanwhile I'm still studying, living at home and nowhere near any of the landmarks I had expected to be reaching by now.

And so life is a little bit upside-down, I'm not sure where I am,or where I want to be. And while I have the most fantastic friends and mentors, bosses who are supremely understanding, funding (!) and pretty much rather a lot to be thankful for, I was still relieved to get home early this afternoon, crawl in to bed, and listen to the rain outside while reading about bizarre experiments which made me feel a little bit sick.

And very glad the the carnival-culture isn't very prevalent in South africa. I guess we had enough horrors in day-to-day life without paying to see more! And by the time we'd started figuring ourselves out the rest of the (Western) world had somewhat passed that stage!

Secondhand stealing, another iPod game

I had an exciting weekend, in that it was hellishly busy, to a point of my passing out last night and forgetting that I had schedules a breakfast this morning and then I got stuck in traffic after already leaving late and I ended up sprinting through Braamfontein and arriving 45 minutes late... so I figured rather than handling everything that has happened in the last 72 hours, I would do some secondhand stealing from here:

It's basically the usual bunch of headings, and you put your iPod on shuffle and see what happens:

My Life Soundtrack
Opening Credits: Someday, Nickelback
Waking Up: Who knew, Pink (I didn't even know I had it!)
First Day at School: Let me in, REM (followed by Let Me Out about a year later?)
Falling in Love: A Complicated Song, Weird Al
Losing Virginity: The World Below: Lifehouse
Fight Song: Sick of Me, Green Day
Breaking Up: Passive, a Perfect Circle
Matric farewell / Prom: If Looks Could Kill, Camera Obscura (it's catchy, I could totally dance to it! "tell me where it all went wrong... tell me I can make it better...")
Life: Falling Down, Travis (more of a walking through the rain kind of song).
Mental Breakdown: Over it, A (totally perfect! I can see myself freaking out to this!)
Driving: On the Way, I'm not sure of the artist, but it's from the Oasis Lounge album
Flashback: The Importance of Being Idle, Oasis (that's just rude!)
Getting Back Together: Home, Just Jinger
Wedding: Hold Her Down, Toad the Wet Sprocket (that's pretty much my attitude to weddings, it's unlikely that'll happen unless I'm under serious duress!)
Birth of Child: Sublime, Supreme Beings of Leisure (I'm assuming I'll be drugged up for the birth?)
Final Battle: Forgotten Years, Midnight Oil
Death Scene: What do you need? Goo Goo Dolls
End Credits: Bruised Water, Chicane

And the next song was Life's Gonna Suck, by Dennis Leary, just thought I'd throw that out there!

So are you?

So the other day one of my mother's friends saw me, but didn't say hi because I was talking to someone else at the time (and I probably wouldnt recognise her anyway). She called my mom to say she had seen me (why is this news? do people think I'm on house arrest?). At some stage during their lively discussion about me, my 'style' (for lack of a better word) came up.

She asked "Is she a goth?" my mother was a bit surprised and said asked why she would think so. Apparently, black eyeliner and blue hair makes me a goth. I was probably also wearing my super-cool paperclip earrings (I like them!) at the time. It really doesn't bother me much, except that my mother came home and relayed the conversation to me.

"I said, of course not! You're just enjoying being young!" I smiled and nodded
"Ok then!"
After a rather awkward silence she asked "So, are you a goth?"

Addictive...

Lately I have come to the conclusion that I have an addictive personality. Thank heavens I figured that one out without having learned the hard way on anything dangerous (should I say thank heavens that gambling was illegal in South Africa for so long that it didn't play any role in my developing psyche? Who knows...)

It all started with guitar hero (no, I am NOT addicted) when I mentioned to Chief Goth that it was a good thing that I didn't have it at home because I would do nothing else. She said that t wasn't a problem for her because she really doesn't have an addictive personality. I noticed that by the end of a guitar-her evening I would always stay for 'just one more song' until I was at least an hour late to be getting home and my family would be nervous wrecks sitting at home.

Than last week Luke, Laura and I ended up playing on a WII at a new coffee place on campus and I realised that as much as I had very little desire to play 10 pin bowling, by the end of it I would have stayed there for the rest of the day quite happily.

Last week Luke showed me how to win at Hearts, which was a lot of fun, with both of us yelling at the computer a lot. A few days later I decided to watch a DVD before bed and ended up playing hearts instead For HOURS. Although apparently I'm not the first to fall victim to the evil game.

So I guess I will just have to stop myself from ever buying any for of video games, and I will have to exercise restraint on my laptop. My desktop is safe because after a nasty run of solitaire addiction I deleted all the games (as well as some mildly essential operating files, oops) about a year ago!

I'm typing this at the desk I've appropriated in Luke's lab. I started spending a few hours a day here, then full days once Luke had arrived... About a week ago Is tarted working late, staying in the lab after Luke had left. Today is the first time I've been here before him and let myself in with the spare key from someone n the lab across the passage... I feel kind of guilty, I hate people going anywhere near my stuff if I''m not around, but I just couldn't face the idea of a)stairs and b)my lab-mate upstairs...

All credit to Luke for actually being nice about the whole situation, and for letting me stay here. I would have kicked me out a LONG time ago!

So my weekend had a quiet start, I had computer trouble on Friday and so ended up staying at university until 8:30 or so - not late for a normal day, but pretty late fr me on a Friday. On Saturday after a horribly hectic morning (which extended about an hour further into the afternoon than it was supposed to) I dashed home and had lunch at super-speed before dashing off to meet Candice and a couple of her friends for an afternoon of geocaching. I haven't been geocaching since I left the field in November, and I haven't done a serious geocaching expedition in rather a lot longer, so I decided to put exhaustion aside and go for it! It was also a good opportunity to take my new camera out. As it was my first serious attempt at photography with the scary new SLR, the photos are pretty terrible, and I battled a lot at first (I realised once I'd got home that I'd set it on one thing while I thoughts I'd set it on something else... but for a first try it wasn't too bad, and at least I know that some of the skills I've learned from other cameras do carry across, so now it's just a matter of getting to know my way around the controls quickly and then a lot of practice!

Geocaching was interesting... I'm not usually a fan of geocaching in the city, besides having to hide from normal people while you're hunting, I have also learned the trick of poking around with a stick rather than your hands n order to avoid some of the more charming things you can find in the undergrowth around here. The caches Candice had picked out were actually pretty nice to find, although we only found two in the afternoon, we didn't end up covered in mysterious muck or having to explain ourselves to security guards (like last time). The sole unpleasant part physically was that I was COATED in blackjacks at the first site, but considering that I rock-hopped across a really disgusting waterfall and made a concerted effort to climb a tree in really unsuitable shoes, I think we did well!

After that I went home and had a nasty dilemma of having to choose between working for Lara on Sunday (and thus giving her an extra day on her holiday in the Drakensburg) or going to Chief Goth's house for a braai. I decided to be a good person and worked, which I regretted a lot as it turned out I was working with Laurin (of the spastic colon) who was acting as annoyingly as always, with the added bonus of being on energy pills or something. It was like working with an insanely hyperactive talking machine with the volume UP. Fortunately her boyfried came to visit and they went outside to chat, so I had a little bit of a respite, but as she keeps getting in trouble for spending half her shifts ouotside with said boyfriend, every time anyone came near the counter or the phone rang she came screeching back in, usually yelling about something she thought was funny or imitating dumb comedy shows she's been watching over and over and over... I never thought I'd be the type to share exasperated looks with customers, but after 5 hours, we were all sighing and rolling eyes at what she considered to be her charming antics.

After that I rushed across to Chief Goth's house to join in for the tail end of the braai. It turned out it had been rained out, but she, a friend I'd met before and her brother were there, so I neded up staying until almost midnight, playing guitar hero. It was a lot of fun, but of course monday arrived, and now I am completely exausted!

To make things worse, I went to the zoo this morning. Luke was showing the new honours student around and I tagged along and took the opportunity to go say hi to Thandi. She was really sweet and she remembered me and it was awesome, but she also crapped on my back and smeared it ito my hair, so I had to wash it all out in the bathroom and now my shirt has a huge wet patch over the shoulder. It was worth it to see the little fuzzy monster again!

Things that make me feel better when I've had a bad day

So I haven't been in a very good way lately. I don't want to talk about it. when I feel unhappy with life, I like to look through my old photos and remember the adventures behind each one. So I figured that today I would share some of my favourites. I'm not going to explain them, but rather let people use their imaginations!