DramaDramaDrama

Sorry to Sarah (again) but Hatting must wait, it’s been a tough week…

On Tuesday Laura came to visit! She’s been based in Oxford doing scary things like a masters in running around Columbia and a doctorate in visiting SA often and having a ridiculously dark tan for someone who lives in the rainlands…

Halfway through an awesome chat with her and The Great One (she’s like an oracle of advice for people like me who have no idea how to speak human half the time) I got a phone call from my mother to say she’d been in a car accident so I rushed off to fetch her.

She’s fine (albeit a bit shaken up), but the car isn’t, so after much paperwork (insurance accident reports and so on) and my mild freak-out at having to be the responsible adult for my mother (thanks for listening Luke), we’re also trying to figure out how to deal with being a car short, with me pulling long hours in the lab, my Dad (who came back from a business trip yesterday) working like a maniac and my mother’s tendency to never stay in one place for more than a couple of hours (her work involves lots of travelling and is relatively close to home so she’s used to driving backwards and forwards several times a day).

So I’ve been playing taxi-driver a lot, which means I have to limit time in the lab a bit so I have to focus more. It also means I’m three steps from foetal position under my desk most of the time, as my mother likes to schedule meetings in/around rush hour. There’s a reason I leave home at 5:30am twice a week and after 9 the other days, and why I never leave the lab before 6pm… People in Joburg can’t drive. Seriously!

At least nobody got hurt, the other person admitted to being at fault and has insurance and it was on a quiet street so there weren’t too many problems post-crash. I’m also hoping to use this as an opportunity to get my mom to go to the gym with me a bit and get some exercise, I nearly got her to dancing class this morning so maybe next week…

We’ll make it work, we have to, her car needs a new front axle, so it’ll take a while. I just feel like I’m living in a sitcom: “Sorry, I can’t go out tonight, my mom has the car!”

Oh and my phone died. As in the three buttons I absolutely cannot use the phone without (like the ‘ok’ button) don’t work…

Because this week wasn’t being nasty enough. On the plus side I get to use my dad’s old phone (which is like one of those nokia blackberry-esque thingies) which is AWESOME! and I’m about a year overdue for an upgrade anyway, so I’ll be phone-shopping with my father soon. Maybe me awesome cousin who knows about these things can suggest a new phone? I’m not handling the QWERTY keyboard well, I keep pressing letters more than once because I think of ‘L’ as ‘555’ and so on… I’ve also got longish nails right now so the tiny buttons are being really difficult. Any suggestions are welcome!

And Luke and Leia are back this weekend!

And I just had such awesome coffee!

Oh, and a preview, just for Sarah (and for Tamara considering you can just see the edge of one of the earrings I got at her open house last year!):

Once again, I’ve been IPODed

Not really, but I I played the IPod game when i first started this bog (a good 3+ years ago) and I like to redo it every now and then to see how my musical tastes have changed and generally have a good self-centred giggle at the deeper meanings I can find in just about anything.

I’m not having a fantastic day, for some reason loneliness really set in and I’m not feeling well and it’s raining and I just want a hot batch except that all I have here are showers and and and…

So it felt appropriate. You know the rules (if you’ve been anywhere near email in the last half-decade). IPod on shuffle and write down the name of each song next to each question. no cheating and skipping!

• IF SOMEONE SAYS, “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY? Pressed in a Book (the Shins). I tend to say strange things, so I guess it’s not that out there! I like the line about the untied shoelaces of life…
• WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
  Ziwere (Oliver Mtukudzi). I like this kind of jazzish African music, although of course the no skipping rule left me scrambling for a translation… to find that apparently there are no English words to describe it. so I guess I’m… indescribable? Untranslate-able?
• WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
  Til Kingdom Come (Coldplay). So, commitment? I love this song, it was one of the few I could stand listening to when my proposal was due so I played it abouot a million times!
• WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
  Playing in the distance (Grand National). Fair enough!
• WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
  Bed of Lies (Matchbox 20). I guess ‘I’m marking it down to learning’ is a pretty good one!
• WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
  Just like you (three days grace) I could be mean and angry?
• WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THEM?
  Do What You Say (Benjamin Gate). Nice :)
• WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
  I will possess your heart (Death cab for Cutie). I’m kind of glad that I don’t really believe in the ‘best’ friend concept!
• WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
  We are all made of stars (Moby) “Can’t fight the future, can’t fight what I see”
• WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY? Vicarious (Tool). I guess up until recently I was living for the people around me, rather than me. Although until recently Tool scared me as well!
• WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
  Gone Crazy (Marcy Playground)
• WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE? I really eyes (Cranberries). Was this thing written by a teenager? The quiz, not the song.
• WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
  Bad weekend (Art Brut). Ouch.
• WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
  If it makes you happy (Sheryl Crow). I refuse to be a girl and start planning a wedding without being engaged first. But I quite like this song!
• WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
  Prism of Life (Engma).
• WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
  The Phantom of the Opera (Nightwish). Clearly all those discussions on the paranormal in the lab are coming back to haunt me…
• WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
  Blister in the sun (Violent Femmes). But i’ve already GOT blisters from the sun…
• HOW WILL YOU DIE?
  Burnout (Sipho ‘hotstix’ Mabuse). No comment.
• WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
  I will not take these things for granted (Toad the wet Sprocket).
• WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
  The fix is in (OK Go) It’s all about getting lost and staying that way.
• WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
  Battery (Metallica)
• WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
  Suddenly everything has changed (Postal Service).
• WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
  Pain for Pleasure (SUM41) true…
• DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
  Sorrow (Gladiator soundtrack). Sad times.
• IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
  Rainy Day (Fools Garden). Apparently my IPod has more faith in my abilities than I do!
• WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW? Say Goodbye (Dave Matthews Band)
  

thanks for bearing with me! I refuse to tag people when we’ve all done this before, but if you feel like revisiting a classic (no pun intended) then feel free and please let me know if you do!

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!

Don't hate me...

You know when you get a song stuck in your head and you can't remember enough of the lyrics to google it, so you kind of have to live with it for WEEKS. The only thing that will get it out of your head is to hear the whole song for some obscure reason...

Well anyway, I had this problem the other day, and so of course I whined about it on Facebook (as you do) and Sarah suggested a different song. You know those songs that are insanely catchy but awful at the same time -like 'it's a small world' or 'I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts' or the Macarena or something like that.

And so she suggested this song instead. I've been torturing poor Luke and Leia with it for a wile now because I find it hilarious. To be fair, Leia was whining about having a different song stuck in her head earlier, and I DID solve that problem for her... Plus it's just too easy to say "hey look at this!" and then pull my headphones out of my laptop... yes, I'm a bad person.

So don't hate me for this, but I officially name this the catchiest song of all time (not in a good way)... it also gets bonus points for the high-waisted leather pants and the rest of the band dressing as fruit (I can't decide which is better - the trumpeter-banana or the drummer. Thoughts?)

Realisations

Sorry for yet another miserable post. Here goes:

My project has been crashing and burning in the last few weeks. the thing is, I probably have enough for a PhD at the moment, but not a good one, not an interesting one and the novel cool stuff I've been waiting to do is currently hitting a brick wall (the experiment is, I'm not planning on throwing lizards around in construction sites).

basically I've been organised and had everything planned, and now at the 11th hour I have been let down y pretty much every single person who had promised to help me. I'm talking "Sorry, this person spent all your research money, you can't order anything right now!" to 'Oh dear, this chemical costs R5000 per milligram and I seem to have lost the bottle! Don't worry, I know you need it this week, but it only takes 6-8 weeks to deliver if you order it now!" kind of let down.

So last night I lay awake trying to make a Plan C (A and B crashed and burned already) I began to feel the panic attacks as they came and went and I might have sobbed into my pillow a little bit more than I'll admit to. Add on that I'm exhausted and can't sleep and this level of panic makes me nauseous which doesn't help and I'm hitting hay-fever season so I have a cough and a runny nose and a sore throat... I made a plan and lay in bed on Google (I love having mini-google on my phone) researching the possibilities while trying to ignore the fact that tai chi has become really difficult and I'm not looking forward to it and the people I would usually go to for advice on this (i.e. my mentor, an older PhD student who knows her way around these things and Luke) are all off overseas and I felt REALLY alone...

When I realised a few things:

1. I shouldn't have this much responsibility. While I've always been very independent, being totally alone at this level is ridiculous and I don't know why I put up with it.
2. I need a supervisor. I need someone to help me and tell me what to do. I can't keep on doing everything by myself. It's just making me sick.
3. If it doesn't work out, I'm still 24, as much as I want to finish next year, the world won't end if I don't.
4. I can always do fieldwork later the lizards are active until March-April at least.
5. Breathe in, breathe out. Breath in... breathe out...

So at 3am I got myself up, found a scary price-list for everything that I need and sent it to myself so I could handle it today, sent an email to my superV demanding a meeting and managed to get a few hours of sleep.

So maybe there's hope... either way I can sort of breathe again, as long as I think calm thoughts every few minutes!

Keep out of reach of children

So on Saturday I got to work to find that my boss had brought his older daughter to work. She's 7, precocious, quite friendly and one heck of an artist for her age. Seriously, she drew some incredible pictures, including an entire 'bird book' with things like parrots, blue cranes, peacocks, sunbirds...

Unfortunately I had done sprint-intervals cycling on Friday evening as well as staying up late doing paperwork and so when I stumbled in and headed straight for the kettle (I don't usually have time on a Saturday to make coffee, this time I decided the sick and bleeding animals could wait) I was not very enthusiastic at the prospect of being the impromptu babysitter for the morning. There was a rabies scare recently in a nearby suburb, so people were streaming in, my least favourite client kept calling and hanging up on me when I couldn't give him updates (I'm sorry, I can't ask the vet when he's busy with a cat the got semi-eaten and an owner in hysterics) meanwhile I'm trying to do everything I usually do with a seven-year-old perching on the counter in front of everything I need. NOT a good time for rehashing every Hannah Montana and Mr Bean episode ever made (and writing scripts for new episodes)!

When its your bosses child it's also quite difficult to do the usual babysitter style thing ("No sweetie, I don't think the cat likes being dragged around by its head. No, I need to put something in that drawer, no I don't want to make up a story because I have a queue stretching out the door right now..."). Fortunately she charmed most of the clients which made my life moderately easier. She also wrote a letter to my sister-in-law (I was going to the birthday party that evening) and decorated the envelope and got very involved in the whole thing. My sister-in-law loved it, so it was very cute.

I also worked a shift at the videostore because it was Jo's brother's birthday and he didn't want to work, and it was fun the guy I worked with used to be really annoying because he was so busy showing off to the boss (who isn't even there) that it gets really irritating and I just want to give him a gold star to shut him up. This time he had decided it wasn't worth it and he's going to resign, so we had a fun afternoon where we got everything done and still managed to watch the whole of Kung Fu Hustle - the only bad part being that people would ask us what it was about. I watched the whole thing and I still can't explain it. It was funny though!

I also found brand new bad-horror cave movie! I can't wait to watch it!

And now I'm sitting with my coffee trying to get everything done so that I can track down the incredible disappearing Scientist so that I can get chemicals from her and take them to the crazy Russian and get back to med-school to finish the rest of my samples.

Fun times!

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?