because I'm tired of reading

I worked today! Not that much, but enough to be able to go to bed knowing that my waking up actually had some purpose besides getting a sore head and neck (bad dream, fell out of bed). I'm nowhere near where I planned to be today, but it's all progress and I'm starting to get excited about my project again.

On the downside my dog is sick. He was looking a bit ...not right... yesterday and he was licking his paw. Tonight he has almost no fur on his mouth and his paw looks HORRIBLE! it's almost hairless too... so I put some disinfectant on it all and a sock over his foot to stop him licking it (he looks adorable!) and I'm going to see how he is tomorrow. I can't get him to the vet until at least tomorrow afternoon, unless it's really bad, in which case Luke and Kelly will be TAing all aloooone! *evil laugh*!

One of the students from the field-trip made a little movie-thing of photos and videoclips from the trip and screened it today. It's really cool, I wish we'd done that for our third-year fieldtrip. I remember getting really depressed coming home from that because I missed it so much. That's the crappy side of being a post-grad. you get to go on trips, but it's hard to actually go the way we did when we were KIDSes. Anyway the movie we saw today was awesome, but I must admit, the clip of me falling over in the mudflats was a lot cooler in my head (less - for lack of a better word - ungraceful). Still funny though!

I also chatted to one of the new honours students in my lab today. She's actually really nice, I think we'll get along ok. She's also started her own CC - a homeschool tutoring company, and said I can work there occasionally. I'm not sure if I'm going for it, but at least the opportunity is there. I saw the other honours student too, but he and I don't see eye-to-eye much. he's still very much an undergrad at heart (aren't we all) and hasn't learned to distance himself from the KIDSes too well. I'm not saying that being friends with them is bad, it's just that he doesn't spend any time with the people in his own class (who are nice kids, really). So a) he'll have little/no authority when it comes to teaching his 'friends' and b) when the pressure starts, which it will, no matter how chilled he is, he'll be all alone with friends who have no clue about what he's going through. I would never have made it through last year without all the help and support I got from the honours room. I doubt he's even got a desk there yet. And every time I try to show that I'm around if he needs anything he freaks out because he thinks I'm stressing. I'm not. I just know what happens if you leave stuff too long. He's a really nice guy, I'm just not sure we'll be hanging out too much in the next year!

Anyway I'm going to go to bed to fall asleep over another paper. I missed working hard!

because I'm too lazy to post, and I don't want to annoy all my friends

Sarah just sent this to me. I generally don't like sending these around because I know a lot of people get annoyed by the 'send this back!' part. I'm also too lazy to make a real post because (short of going to a dress fitting, downloading articles and making a bead coaster) I've been pretty unproductive and have nothing interesting to say.

Here goes:

Remember to send yours back to the person who sent it to you!

a. Ever been so drunk you blacked out?
Once. I promised myself it would never happen again.

b. Put a body part on fire for amusement?
At work we used to pour Benzine on our hands and light it and then high-five the flam to each other. It was hot, but it didn't really burn us. It was so much fun!
c. Kept a secret from everyone?
Yes, I have quite a few. The trick is to keep quiet about the existence of said secret and then nobody bothers you about it.

d. Wanted to hook up with a friend?
Does making friends with someone because you wanted to hook up with them count?

e. Ever thought an animated character was hot?
The captain in Mulan...

f. Had a New Kids on the Block tape?
No

g. Been on stage?
A lot...

--- Favourites ---
a. Shampoo?
This stuff my mom got me that smelled like bubblegum. I've enver been able to find it again.

b. Soap?
The Clicks moisture burst range.

c. Colour?
Yellow and blue

d. Day/Night?
It depends on how much sleep I've been having

e. Summer/Winter?
Autumn

f. Favourite TV series?
Lost or Prison Break.

g. Food
Tomato soup, peanut butter curry, anything with creamed spinach and/or feta

h. Favourite Advert
that Cell C one where the lady keeps hurting herself.

i. Favourite Movie
The Boondock Saints, Thank You For Smoking

--- Right now ---
k. Eating?
I just had lunch, which was a chicken, lettuce and tomato sandwhich on wholewheat superhealthy bread.

j. Wearing?
Jeans, slops and a blue tshirt

l . HAIR is?
dark brown. Straightened at the moment thanks to my fantastic boss!

m. Drinking?
water

n. Thin king about?
Getting to work! Must. Stop. Procrastinating!

o. Listening to?
The new Faithless album. It's really awesome!

--- Last 24 Hours ---

q. Cried?
No
r. Meet ANY new FRIENDS?
yes
s. Cleaned your room?
no

--- Do you believe in ---
a. Yourself?
Not really
b. Your friends?
yes
c. Santa Claus?
not anymore. We used to booby-trap our rooms every christmas. I think the mousetrap in the Christmas stocking is what ended it for us.
d. Tooth Fairy?
I had the tooth mouse when I was small. I used to leave seeds for him with the tooth in a slipper by my door.
e. Destiny/Fate?
I think we make our own.
f. Angels?
Yes
g. Ghosts?
no
--- Friends and Life ---

a. Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend?
no. I think it's a good thing at the moment.

b. Who have u known the longest of your friends?
Cathy. we meet when I was 2 weeks old.

c. Who's the shyest?
probably Lynne.

d. Who's the weirdest?
that's about a 20-way tie. We're scientists...

e. Who do you go to for advice?
Lara, sometimes Jo.

f. When do you cry the most
When I'm stressed out.

________________________________________________________

resolution #43: I will be antisocial

I've decided that the root of all my problems is that I'm too social. After I left the wedding at midnight on Saturday and came down with flu on Sunday, proceeded to get very little done at wits all day today and now have to take a day off to do wedding stuff tomorrow... I've had enough.

The problem is that I just like people too much. I mean, in general, I wish there weren't so many, that they behaved better while driving and so on, but I like spending time with certain people. Today, after giggling our way through a prelab and getting horrendously bored during a tree identification lab, Luke, Kelly, Luke's sister and I went to have tea in my lab. Then Laura joined in and Brett and it was really nice. So I got to wits at 9:30 worked until about 11, went for coffee, got back to work, got lunch (my mom packed me a slightly dubious sandwich) went to the prelab to the lab and then only left about 2 hours later.

And every time I think about the huge workload that's being procrastinated I cringe and then carry on messing around. To make things worse I found an old PhD, and now I feel all inadequate. Maybe I'm just not ready. The only thing that's stopping me from deregistering and leaving the country is the fact that if I were doing masters I'd be just as ineffective as I am right now.

Anyway, I'm going to attempt to do some work and then go to bed.

Sounds like fun.

I'm such a Scrooge!

I haven't blogged forever. I'm sorry, but being so unproductive tends to leave me feeling extraordinarily guilty and I hate to admit it anywhere!

Last week was vry unproductive. I did do some stuff. Like go shopping for wedding gifts for two of the three weddings coming up, going to spend some quality time with my boss (who is one of very few people in this world who can straigthen my hair without the associated Diana Ross effect (i.e. it comes out smooth and un-poofy). I nearly fainted at a dress fitting and realised that if I'm going to stand for a whole ceremony I have to practice wearing the shoes more often. I also put a whole to-do list for the month togther, finalised some things with my supervisor and organised all my readings into folders. All the while spending a huge amount of time at Biosoc.

The thing is, my project has to be divided into 'chapters' and it's really hard to focus on each thing all alone. so I was wheelspinning because I dodn't know where to start. I hope this helps, because otherwise I'm deregistering and taking a one-way flight to Russia or something to hide from allo the people who have been so supportive.

Thursday was Luke's birthday. I gave him a jar of marshmallow spread in the morning and we went shopping for a present for Laura and got falafels for lunch. I also went along to the zoo and went inside the room with the lizard display. Sungazers are SO cute! They also showed distinct evidence for appetitive behaviour and learning... probably just my anthropomorphism shining through, but hearing the keeper arrive and running over to where the food dish usually goes is pretty obvious.

On Thursday night I went to Primi in melsrose arch for Luke's birthday. I got there first and ended up reprising my role as Luke's PA when I was shown around by the waiters and chose an area to book. It was a real awkward-turtle moment! It was a really nice and chilled evening, we sat around and chatted and drank teapots and took bizarre photos.

Friday I decided to be productive, so I sat and organised my readings, helped out some honours students with a variety of things, went to an awesome talk on Macaws in south america and went off to biosoc. After that I went home, changed and headed out to the other side of the world to Laura's birthday bash. It was also fun, albeit mildly awkward at first considering I got there before anyone that I actually knew, but I got to know a few people and it was fun. the place was strange. It had couches and things to sit and chat, but the music was really loud so it was chatting by way of screeching things to your neighbour and repeating yourself a lot. I also got them to make me a special drink that Joey always makes me, so Luke, Laura and I ended up with blue tongues. More hilarious photos followed.

Today I woke up feeling horrible, staggered over to Joeys house so she could do my hair, came home and collapsed for half and hour and headed of to a wedding. I really didn't want to go, but I'm so glad I did! It was a stunning wedding. I'm not generally prone to the whole girly 'awww' reflex, but seeing two people whon I really care about glowing and crying and really meaning what they said was so special. As someone who has been to literally dozens of weddings (when you're little and you sing, people make you perform at weddings for the pure kitsch factor) today was really really special.

So now I feel like a total Scrooge in the way I've been treating my brother's upcoming wedding. I'm really excited for it now, not just because I get to have a really fantastic girl as a sister, but because it really is worth all the fuss.

Anyway, I must be off, the reception starts in an hour and I have no idea where the place is...

Unproductive in my bizarreness

Weird stuff is still happening. I've got to the stage where I can say "Oh look, a goldfish just carried a man out of a burning building"as if it were perfectly normal. Not really, but it's getting to that.

I got my flashdrive from my supervisor today. It's really pretty, white, 2Gig, quite fast data transfer (at least into m laptop, not my desktop). At the moment I'm typing this to pass the time while I copy the last batch f music from my desktop to put it on my laptop. i have a pretty big usic collection, so that's taken quite a while!

I had a dress fitting for the wedding yesterday. My blood pressure plummeted after about half an hour and I nearly passed out (high heels and all). I fund out that sugar water really does help and that it is possible to retain your sense of humour when you're feeling awful and nobody around you can speak English. I also had a really long talk with my future sister-in-lw, which was fantastic!

Today is my last day with my supervisor around for a while, so I'm trying desperately to get everything sorted out so I can just get some work done while he's away without needing him to ok anything. I haven't really succeeded because there are so many distractions at wits. to be honest I think i'm going to spend the next week or wo at home just working like crazy. I intend to have a draft of my proposal ready by the end of next month, so I ust get my butt in gear for this. I refuse to be apathetic about this!

Otherwise I've been spectacularly unproductive for the last few days and that's about it. My music is copied, so I am going to attempt to ge back to work.

And bizarre day continues...

The rest of the week was pretty weird. A lot of odd things happened and I finally gave up trying to understand the world at all. I decided that although the 7th of February must be bizarre day officially, the rest of the week kind of build up to it and then trails off slowly...

On Thursday I managed to come up with a big Question for my project and I sat down with my supervisor and discussed it. It's looking good, very rough around the edges with LOADS of other things I can add in. I'm worrying a bit about time constraints, after all if I did honours in one year, and each chapter in a thesis is like an honours project, that means in 4 years I can do about 4 studies. And considering that I basically did 2 projects last year (4 if you count the seasonal things), I can probably cram in 8. Or 16. Who's counting? It's also looking like I'm going to be going to my field site in a few weeks time to look around. It makes sense, I can't really write a proposal based on a system I've never seen before. I'm really excited to be going there so soon!

Yesterday was the world's most unproductive day for me. some people from Hawaii were coming to visit and I was supposed to drive them to Wits, but they didn't confirm. fortunately I was exhausted and was able to sleep in with a relatively clear conscience in case I was called to go and fetch them. Finally I just went to wits to find out that they'd somehow managed to get there themselves so I ended up joining the other behaviour group and the people from Hawaii for tea.

It was really odd, they had hardly any accents at all and they were very un-zoologist looking. They knew a lot of people studying just about anything and they talked about a lot of fascinating stuff. After that I went to the lab, did very little and went for lunch. After that they gave a talk and then Luke and his supervisor and myself discussed the talk for ages and then we sat around not doing much until the honours students finished lectures and we could go to Biosoc where I found the hidden stash of Brutal Fruit (warm, but still infinitely better than beer!) and from there we collected Luke's sisters and friend and Luke's friend Athena. after dropping off sisters and friend, Athena, Luke and myself went to a restaurant called Soi, which is a Thai/Vietnamese/I-can't-remember-but-there-were-a-bunch-of-places type restaurant. It was really nice, stunningly decorated and the food was really good, especially the chocolate mousse!

This morning I woke up late and decided to take Max, one of my dogs, for a walk. It's been a long week and I had a lot to think about, so I ended up dragging him all over my suburb and then along the nature trail along the river (the Braamfontein spruit) which is a really pretty route. When my best friend, Gloria, lived a block away we used to walk there almost every day and sit on the bridge over the river and talk about stuff. We had a huge fight about 5 years ago and haven't spoken since. I haven't really missed her until today. It's hard to live in a goldfish-bowl like our department, where you know everyone and they know you and every move you make is discussed. The problem with walking alone is that you can think things through, and if you tend to be oversensitive like me it can be a bad thing.

I found that on the other side of the river was a big rocky outcrop, so Max and I went exploring and then sat and watched the lizards there for about half an hour. By the time I got home he was exhausted and could hardly lift his feet and I realised that we'd been gone for over two hours and I had to go shopping for shoes and beads (no particular order) before work.

I ended up swimming first and then fell asleep, so I only had time to rush out and find shoes. I was successful!

They're beige, rather than the goldish colour that Carla wants, but I'm sure I can get them sprayed for the wedding. More importantly they fit, they're comfortable and I'll definitely wear them after the wedding (I'll put up photos of the other shoes if you want. They're... not my style...).

From there I rushed off to work (amid a rather nasty rainstorm) and found that Lara was working with me. so I bombarded her with all my troubles and she did what she always does: listened, sympathised, put it all in perspective and yanked me out of my comfort zone.

Unfortunately we couldn't go for drinks after work, as is our tradition, because Joey wanted her to go and keep her company while a bunch of her husband's friends were at her house watching rugby. When I explained how annoyed I was she agreed to straighten my hair tomorrow, so I'm not angry. To tell the truth I'm just tired and I'm going to bed now.

national bizzare day

The 7th of February is now officially 'Bizarre day'

It all started out in my usual reading-blogs procrastination session of the morning. I stumbled across this post: this post
It mentioned the 'awkard' turtle, a hand signal that could be used in an awkward situation to express the awkwardness of a situation without saying anything to the instigator of said awkwardness. It kind of replaced mutterring 'Awwwkward!' in a high-pitched voice or saying 'this isn't awkward at all' to each other.

Anyway, shortly after reading it, I actually started getting some work done, when Luke arrived to beg me to stand with him in all the queues for registration. So after finishing the paper I was reading Iwent off to join him and explained the turtle thing. Then it all started.

At first it was small things, like the girl in the queue behind us standing really close and giving me a really angry look, or people we didn't like takling to us as if we were all best friends. It escalated to seeing that the guy who makes our student-cards has put a picture from Dragonball-Z onto his card instead of his photo and Luke saying "Be friends with the strangers. They stop you from going CrAzY!' as a rather odd looking individual walked into the room that we were leaving (same doorway. Awwwkward!). By the time Luke's registration was over my thumbs were beginning to ache from the turtle sign.

Once that was all done I went back to the lab and pretended to work, when my supervisor and one of his new students walked in and had several awkward moments (although that's not too unusual, as anyone who knows the guy will tell you!) along with a long discussion about keeping a spot for someone whose name is still a mystery. Then we sat and looked at dead chameleons for about 20 minutes before I ended up on a quest for distilled water and he ran off past me going 'Shooo-eee!' - which is also not too unusual.

About an hour later Luke and I headed off to get lunch where we stood behind some gigantic guy who was getting way too friendly with his girlfriend in the queue, while very loudly yelling about the fact that there were 'too many faggots wearing pink' around. The only people anywhere near him were Luke (wearing blue) and myself (a girl).

After that, while we were waiting for our food we went to get drinks, and all of them were warm, so we went, warm drinks in tow, back to steers to fetch our food and switch the drinks for cold ones. The were really sweet about it and exchanged them for me, when some random guy at the counter started a conversation with me about the good deal I had got because he triend and they made him buy a new drink. Awwkward.

From that we went to watch the Weakest Link that Laura was running, where there were some unbelievably stupid contestants (Q: what is the white of the egg called? A: the yolk!) and a rather annoying presenter. Tom won and we were very happy for him.

After going back to the lab during a million other bizarre things that I can't even remember I was almost trembling with the weirdness of the day. I ahd an hour or two in which I procrastinated once more, before Laura called to say that the pub-crawl had reached Biosoc. So we went and met some rather strange people, including 'well-endowed girl', some guy with a palm-frond down his pants, Laura's friend Selwyn and a few others.

We joined the pubcrawl for a little bit, but as we hadn't got tickets, we couldn't get free drinks and sharing Laura's wasn't working too well, so we left and went back to Biosoc. The whole point of this was to get free drinks from a guy we're friends with there, but he'd left so we ended up sitting with a bunch of honours students for about an hour and a half chatting. It was really nice. I've missed the social side of being in honours. I don't miss the insane workload, but I really miss the honours room and all the people we used to see and the weird conversations we had.

By the time we left it was too late for me to go off to a church thing, but I was glad about that. Not because I didn't want to go, but becuse my mom was going to talk to them about a lot of the things she said on Sunday, including evolution and I thought it would be better for me to stay out of it rather than get annoyed and offend people and cause trouble. I figured that if I'd resolved an issue for myself I should let the others do that too, rather than forcing my views on them.

The final weird thing for the day was when my mother got home and we sat and talked about it for a while. It's very unusual because usually a conversation with my mother is either instructions from her and single-syllable answers from me, or it escalated into an argument in a few seconds. But I sat on the kitchen floor cleaning out my dog's paws (she has allergies) and she sat at the table with coffee and we discussed a whole bunch of stuff. Like what we believe and how it fits together and how it's ok sometimes if we can't understand. It was really really nice.

So diarise it now. 7th Feb, is INTERnational bizarre day!

stress!!

I'm stressing because I have so much work to do. Ia'm also stressing because I'm not stressing enough about the work I have to do. I mean usually I have no problem getting up at a ridiculously early hour and rushing to wits and staying there all day. So although I get distracted super-easily, I get enough work done before everyone else arrives and after everyone leaves to make it worth it.

This week I have slept through my alarm-clock every morning, never got to wits before 8:30 - 9:00 am and left every eneving when it was still light. it's ridiculous! Today I arrived at 9 and have spent a grand total of maybe 3 hours in the lab.

In the meantime all I've done is come up wth a lot of reading to do as well as a framework that might or might not work... I feel so... unproductive.

The crappy thing is that I have a reputation for working incredibly hard, but I really don't. I'm just so unproductive that I put in incredible hours at the lab and manage to get the usual amount done. And if I get myself stressed enough I can turn those wasted hours into incredibly productive ones.

I just wish I could get stressed enough.

SUPERMOM!

I told my parents about my run-in with Creationist-girl and the Christians. My Dad and I had a good laugh about it once I'd calmed down. My mom went on the warpath. This all unfolded right before she started a sermon-series about New Age theories and beliefs. So she's been working in how fundamentalism can be harmful and that evolution is actually ok.

It's really sweet to see her protecting me like this, but I sit through each sermon dreading the moment when she tries to explain evolution. We've got a protocol whereby she comes and runs a fact-check by me ebfore she preaches, but she can get carried away. Does anyone know a good layman's book explaining the basic principles of evolution? It's her birthday tomorrow...

In other news I just sat down and outlined a potential project and various questions I want to answer in the next 3 - 4 years. Suddenly it's not so scary anymore, I'mjust really excited about all the cool stuff I can do. Once I see my supervisor (over coffee?!) it'll probably be all shot down and back to square one, but for now I'm ok!

It's hot...

It it SO hot today, I don't know what to do with myself. I want to swim, but I have so much work to do still.

I was planning on working at work yeasterday morning, but when Matt arrived still drunk from the night before I had to do actual job-work rather than reading papers and so on. Then I ahd to rush off to do some shopping for Lara's birthday and then off to her birthday party last night. It was fun, at a Greek restaurant in the Design quarter, a centre I've never been to before. They have a Primi there, which was right next door. It was really nice to see Drew and Justin again, I really missed them, but I'm afraid that it was a bit awkward because most of our little gang (Joey, Justin, Drew, Nikki - who wasn't there, and so on) really don't like Lara's other friends very much. So we just sat in awkward silence for a lot of the evening. Drew was in a particularly bad mood, and as I was next to him it didn't help much...

Once Drew and Justin left it got better and the evening finished up with the waiters coming around to sing happy birthday, but first they blasted us with some kwaito-type music and made her dance with them! It was hysterical! She was still relatively soberish when I left, but half an hour later I got an sms from her to say 'thank you for your friendship' which makes me wonder about what happened next!

Work this morning was the usual, except that Nikkie (not Nikki) failed to arrive for her shift. So Matt and I watched Will Farrell movies and I failed to get any other work done, once again!

So I'm off to work now, I sketched out a basic outline for a project at work today, so now I just need to flesh it out with some actual research!

Here is a picture I took in Namaqualand while Luke and I were exploring our 'back garden (i.e. the mountains behing our house just over a small fence. Climbing it was always an adventure!).

Growing up

I was going through old photos yesterday afternoon. I realised that a big part of growing up is losing things. Yesterday was my brother's birthday, his last birthday at home considering he's getting married next month. He was hardly at home at all.

I found an old photo of me holding a lizard. I was about 4 years old. I remember chasing them a lot (they lived under our wisteria which grew around the front of our house) but I don't remember catching more than one or two. It was in a pile of photos of old friends who I used to spend all my time with. I see two of them about once a year, but even that is awkward. It makes me wonder how long the friendships I have right now will last.

I went to the vet yesterday. I used to work there (as a potential vet-student) and loved it more than any other place in the world. It was nice, I had a long chat with the vet who has been incredibly supportive of me in all my studies. I also realised that I won't be hanging out with the vets during surgery again.

I went to a church function last night. It was fun, we all dressed up (except me and my friend Sarah who read the 'smart-CASUAL' on the invite and wore jeans). when I was youger I was super-involved in the church but over the last few years I've pulled more and more away frlom it. I was wondering why, I had a lot of close friends there at one stage. Then last night Brian had an eye-patch that was too small and gouging his eye so he decided to move it to where there might be a third eye, so I suggested the top of his head cosidering the whole 'pineal eye' thing. Someone turned around and attacked me verbally because I was 'taking evolution into account.'

It wasn't that they were uncomfortable with the idea, I'm used to that (although the general response is 'lets not go there' which really annoys me). It was the fact that someone I'd never even met before about a week ago felt comfortable speaking to me like that. There was no opening for me to explain what I meant or the fact that I am an EVOLUTIONARY biologist which means that believing in evolution is as much a part of my identity as the fact that I was sitting at a church. Instead some little kid who's just left school and has never really looked at evolution felt comfortable giving me a 'talking to' about it.

Just to round off the incident when I left the little group to find someone to talk to who wouldn't attack me and not allow me to answer them, one of my friends who had seen the whole thing took me to one side and asked me to be more 'sensitive' about the way I talk about evolution.

Anyway the evening ended with dinner and watching 3/4 of the 'Phantom of the Opera' (scratched DVD, not mine) and little creationist-girl had to leave because she thought it would be too scary for her. That's right. Don't look at things that scare you.

I'm tempted to throw the whole 'growing up' thing out the window and follow her around muttering 'Darwin! Darwin!'

But I know that the only response that I'll take is to avoid the church functions in future. Because that's what I always do.

That Ipod game

I'm at wits, downloading articles on our freakishly fast new internet connection (seriously, I used to mess around and blog and stuff while things were downloading. This new efficiency is disconcerting!).

Anyway, I'm not sure if it's because I just saw Laura and she mentioned her Ipod or because it's just been stuck in my head lately, I decided to play the Ipod game.

Yes, it has one another victory!

Here goes:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...

01. Opening Credits: 'Per Te', by Josh Groban. It's good credit's music, I can imagine the deserted street with bits of rubbish drifting around (black and white of course).

02. Waking Up: 'Strength and Honour' for the Gladiator soundtrack. I do wake up pretty slowly...

03. First Day at School: 'We're dancing' from Center Stage. Man, it's an annoying song. Why do I even have it? I hated school, so it's pretty apt... but the first day was fun!

04. Falling in Love: 'All Understood' by Jack Johnson

05. Fight Song: 'Run on' by Moby

06. Breaking Up: 'I just don't think I'll ever get over you' by Colin Hay (Garden State soundtrack)

07. Prom: 'When you were young' by the Killers

08. Life's Okay: 'You are the world' by Live

09. Mental Breakdown: 'Come Sail Away' from Southpark

10. Driving: 'Harvey the wonder hamster' from weird Al

11. Flashback: 'When you come' by Crowded House

12. Getting Back Together: 'Daffodil lament' by the Cranberries

13. Wedding: 'Never let go' by Deep Forest

14. Birth of a Child: 'Somebody Kill Me' by Adam Sandler

15. Death Scene: 'Fall' by Something Corporate

15. Funeral Song: 'When you say you love me' by Josh Groban

16. End Credits: "Clont Eastwood' by the Gorillaz

this is weird!

I feel terrible!

Ok, my supervisor is totally messing with me.

After a long day of admin, registering, chasing the IT guy around with my laptop and then not going to the zoo, I was completely exhausted. Fortunately, because I was waiting for my laptop, I went to the lab and settled down to pretend to do some reading while collapsing over my keyboard and getting some much needed sleep. I say fortunately becuase, as I was settling down (but not yet sleeping) my supervisor walked in and acted all upset that he'd disturbed me working. He needed my help to fill in the forms that would give me a very nice bursary for the next 2-3 years which goes under 'living expenses.' After that he was all nice to me and said he'd get me a new flashdrive and told me all about his pets (minus 1 hedgehog; + 1 tortoise = a severely depleted succulent garden).

So now the urge to throttle has decreased moderately (it's still there, kind of like an itch behind my fingernails). I hate the way every time I get sufficiently angry to do something about it he goes all nice. I'm beginning to think I'm just an experiment too...

Anyway, the point of the title, I just got the report from the post-mortem on the iguana. Basically the people taking out her organs (and it WAS a her) forgot the kidneys and the parathyroid glands, so it's not as conclusive as it might be, but there were calcium crystals pretty much everywhere. Attached is an article on the importance of balancing calcium and phosphorus in iguana diets. I quote:

"Not only will Ca be lost to an iguana’s bones if it eats spinach frequently, but excessive calcium oxalate crystals can damage the kidneys sufficiently to cause uremia and death from renal failure."

I feel terrible... and even worse because a little bit of me is glad that I wasn't the one feeding her for the last few months of her life...

Good thing I have a lawyer...

I may just be overreacting as usual, but I think I must just kill my supervisor by the end of the year.

For starters I got to wits this morning after a very busy time of trying to find my brother's fiance's sisters house (she told me left instead of right on the phone and I got really lost in a suburb I didn't even know existed until today). I'm also not feeling too good yet, although I was ok-ish until about 2 or so, but being sick always makes me a bit more emotional than usual.

It was fine until I went to go see him. I got to see Vanessa again, which was fantastic! We all thought she'd be moving to a different department, but it turned out she's staying! It's really awesome and she has her own room, which is really nice but a bit on the dusty side. A temporary situation of course.

Anyway, just to clarify, the last time I went to my supervisor, I outlined what I wanted to do and he said it was all fantastic, but too big for a masters, hence the Big PhD Decision. All fine. So today I went to find out what it is that I'm actually supposed to be doing (there's no structure, which is horrible!) and he pretty much said that I don't really have a project outline, gave me a bunch of ideas and then pretty much questioned whether what I wanted to do would actually fit in or not. So basically the last time he just said yes to everything to force me into a PhD.

I'm not sure what's worse, the fact that I know have to prove what I want to do to the person who has already okayed it twice, or the fact that I have to get through 4 years without throttling the guy.

Thank you for smoking

I slept for almost 10 hours last night and woke up feeling relatively human! It was fantastic!

Anyway when I got to work I found out that it was just me and Matt2, with about an hour of Joey sitting with us after opening. It was so nice to sit and chat to her again, I really missed her and Lara while I was away!

The bonus about working with Matt, besides the fact that he's a really nice person, is that he works pretty much every day and so he's seen pretty miuch everything. Despite this, he's more than happy to let me pick the movie and to watch something again. That is really rare in a staff member, trust me!

So today we watched 'Thank you for smoking' which was brilliant! I don't know what was better, his amazing ability to shift his arguments and keep the opponents completely off balance, or the wqay in which he'd very reasonably allow his opponents to blow holes in their own arguments. It was very impressive and I think the writers deserve an oscar, although, considering the subject matter it's pretty unlikely.

It also brings me back to a topic which I've been quite interested in over the last few years. why is it that the tobacco industry is practically banned from any advertising at all, while adverts for alcohol are everywhere? When I was small, every movie would start with about 5 advrts of very tough guys climbing mountains and skydiving and then smoking. Fair enough, it puts ideas into children's head and so on and so forth. But a little while ago i was at a movie and we counted over 10 adverts for alcohol before the movie started. And I'm not talking beer. I'm talking whiskey and vodka type stuff.

If I was a parent, I would far rather have a teenage kid who smoked than one who drank that stuff.

I'm not saying that smoking is good. I'm just saying that if it's not ok to show an advert for it in any movie (and I'm delighted in the shift in perceptions regarding smoking over the last 10 years), why can you find adverts for alcohol everywhere, even in kiddies animated movies? Surely they should be restricted to movies that are R18, when they're actually applicable to the audience?

Just a thought.

I'm baaack!

I got back about 2 days ago, but for some reason could not bring myself to blog. I think it's because I'm really tired and a bit dejected about life at the moment (ignore the bad grammar, I'm exhausted!) and writing about it invariably ends up as a bitching session. I hate bitching on my blog because it always comes back to haunt you when it's written down!

The field-trip was fun. The student I was worried about was actually ok. I think she figured out pretty early on that I knew what I was talking about, so it was ok. She's also pretty insanely manipulative and the entire camp adored her pretty quickly so I got sucked into the 'we love her!' vibe. there were also others who were a lot more difficult. On the whole I pretty much spent the whole time running around like a maniac. I think the only time I went to bed beofre 1:30am was one night when I collapsed at about 11 or so. we were also up before 6, mainly to go swimming in the sea before breakfast which was AWESOME!

I also got into my first mud-flats mudfight, which was hilarious because there were 2 of us running around slinging mud at each other while all the students stood there looking confused while their 'authority figures' acted like kids. A few minutes later I fell into the mud (long story) which was even funnier!

On the downside I lost respect for a lot of the senior people there, some of whom I had already disliked but still respected and some that I had always liked and looked up to. That always sucks! I also spent a lot of time thinking which is very dangerous, so by the time I got home I was in a full blown panic about the whole PhD situation.

Fortunately, after much correspondence (about something entirely unrelated) with one of the PhD students that I really do like and respect, I mentioned it and got this as a reply:

'Think it is a good move...because although in general I don't agree with Hons going to Phd, you are getting so much experience with other projects that I don't think it will matter that you miss out on one more learning opportunity before you are let loose on the world with your phd. And, as we all know, you are more than clever and hard working enough to breeze through it! So, don't think it's insanity - just a well considered career plan. '

So now I'm feeling a lot better about life! Yay!

I also spent a lot of time at the zoo over the last 2 days, and I got to play with Josh, the baby chimp (he's ADORABLE! and he bit my shoes and stroked my face and held hands with me...) and help medicate some of the monkeys and then hold the baby lemur while Luke chopped up food for him. It was really cool!

Last night I went with Luke and Athena to see 'Blood Diamond" which was actually really good! I felt so sad at teh state of the world in general, which is what I love and hate about movies like that. I'm glad I decided to work on animals rather than people! It got me thinking, what is it about shiny stones that makes people want to kill each other for them? What are they actually good for? If you love somebody enough to marry them, why not get the engagement ring tattoed on? Or even a piece of string would be ok. It's the principle. I mean I understand oil in that we need it for transport, and gold can be used in circuit boards and so on. But what makes us care about stuff like diamonds? Is something that's pretty and shiny really all that important?

Right now I'm exhausted and not feeling too good. the little voice in my head is muttering about tick-bite fever which is extremely worrying. Some people got it after the field-trip last year and the blinding headaches and nausea are fitting just a little bit too well right now! I'm going to bed to pretend I'm ok!

Some things to say before I go...

I'm off to the coast tomorrow with about 30-40 second and third year students. It's quite scary, I haven't re-studied too much of the work, and I wasn't too fussed about it until today when I saw the class list. Firstly, there are a LOT of third-years, so they probably know the basics already. Secondly, one of the first years that I TA'd last years was a really difficult person and made my life extremely miserable on occasion. And she's going. Oh dear.

Generally I get along with all the people on the list that I know (which is about 2/3 of them). It should be fun. The downside is that it's now nearly 9pm, we leave at 6am tomorrow and I haven't started packing yet. Today I had to get to wits at 8 to see the registrar to finalise my move from masters to doctorate. She only got there at 9:30, so I waited around for a good 45 minutes (I was late) just to get my form, cross out MSc, write PhD next to it and put my initials there. I went to chat to my supervisor afterwards and he said that because it was an official document that I had to sign, I'm the only one allowed to make alterations. Any lawyers out there with a loophole for me?

After all that I met up with the girl doing the catering for the trip and we went shopping. I learned a lot. a) I now know the place where a lot of big restaurants and supermarkets buy their pasta and sauces (oh yes, cost price!) and b) 48 people eat a lot in 10 days. We literally spent 2 hours in Makro and came out with 3 PACKED trolleys. Actually it was 2, but while Jen was at the checkout I ran outside, got another trolley and filled it with 100 litres of milk (in boxes obviously). Then I ran back with the heavy and wonky trolley (it kept spinning in circles) aroun the line to the cashier and Jenny, while fending off angry housewives who thought I was queue-jumping.

After all that I amnaged to get back to wits and drive home just in time to let the gardener and the maid (is there a better word? I use 'helper' and nobody knows what I'm talking about and 'domestic engineer' is too euphemistic) out and collapse in front of the TV until the traffic died down. then I went to find sunblock (is it just me, or is it really hard to find in my part of Joburg?) and ended up discussing relationships with the girl working at the videostore there. I don't like her much.

After that I went to work to fetch a DVD for my brother and found that my friend LAra was working so I ended up sitting with her for nearly 3 hours. I haven't worked with her for a few weeks and I really missed her. She has a way of pulling me out of my comfort zone when I'm being lazy about it, but at the same time being totally supportive. and we laugh a lot. the main topic of amusement is the Italian restaurant next door which has a new menu which is printed over pictures of Italian stuff. the starters are on a Mona Lisa page, Pizza on the leaning tower of... Piza. Not Pizza! and so on. The dessert os on a picture of the statue of David. The problem is the words are almost grouped around cartain... region. And right next to the very charming crotch is the description of a dessert with 'icecream, toffee sauce and a few nuts'

So I just got home and decided to procrastinate by writing a post before I go. It's hard to leave in a way. the trip is awesome, but I'll miss everyone here as usual. And at wits everyone was all excited to see me and I realised how much I missed it. In particular I got a "You're back! how fantastic!' with a handshake from Marcus. A "Hi!" wave from Neville. A whole discussion with "it'll be fantastic' from AAA, a long chat with his new student, Ben and so on. Even the cleaners were all happy to see me. And a certain non-smiling Russian smiled and waved, but didn't talk to me. Bonus! It seems like everyone knows about my results and the impending PhD project. And they're all psyched about it!

I love wits, but I'm starting to worry that I'll be there forever. Is that bad?

More clarification

After yesterdays post (and a very sympathetic and horrified sms from Luke), I figure it was time to explain the rather hectic events unfolding in my life over the past 2 days.

I went to wits to chat to my supervisor and somehow came across sounding like I'd done a lot more research than I actually have (some catching up is in order but I'm too lazy right now). He agreed on pretty much every issue, added a few components in and said it'll be a fantastic PhD project. PHD!! I mean woooooooah! It'll take roughly 4 years and then I'll be a DOCTOR. That'll be when I'm still 25 turning 26. It's just scary! I'm really excited though, and my supervisor has been treating me VERY differently. In a good way. It just feels like he wants me to be around and he's excited for my project too. He also spent a huge chunk of today doing admin for me (writing letters, getting things stamped, getting me approved to change my application from masters to doctorate and so on) and then actually called me to tell me all the news rather than just emailing me in a week's time which is what he usually does. He's also giving me a 3 year scholarship, which on top of my other scholarship (I don't know if I have it yet) will give me a pretty nice bunch of funding.

The iguana died. Rest in peace. I will look at my scars with a new fondness and explain to the people who think I tried to kill myself that they were the product of a somewhat tricky relationship with a temperamental reptile who I cared about rather a lot.

That's it for now!

Just breathe...

It's weird, I finally sorted everything out, I have the next 4 or so years planned out and I'm really excited and a bit nervous. Everything today went surprisingly well (except getting the dog to the vet,which just didn't happen...) and I got home, following an exciting and fruitless iguana hunt and a smoothie, all bubbling with excitement and dying to tell the world.

So I called a few friends, and chatted things through with them and that was ok. and then I told my parents. Who shot it all down in flames. my mom's response was 'Well that's destroyed all our hopes of moving overseas!' and my dad said 'why do you want to do it?' and I said 'Well it's big and exciting, and it hasn't been done before so if I get it-" and he interrupted and said 'and when you DON'T?'

I'm hanging on to the excitement for all I'm worth right now.

It's harder than I expected.

and it all starts again...

Schools went back today. So the lovely, calm, Christmas season non-traffic became the usual Joburg, road-rage with broken robots experience that we know and love so much. And for some reason, although I'm technically still on holiday, it all got hectic. MAybe it's a built-in thing from 12 years at school.

Today started with a fantastic experience of sleeping through my alarm clock (after sitting up until 2am playing the Sims2 on my laptop. The game is evil!) and waking up 15 minutes after I was supposed to be at Carla's place meeting the other bridesmaids and being measured for my dress. I got there a mere 40 minutes late, and ended up chatting to her and another girl until 1pm, when I realised I'd promised to drop off a DVD with a friend for movie-night tonight. So I went careening home, fetched it, dropped it off, got some lunch and managed to go and see Jo for 20 minutes before my shift started at 3.

Tomorrow I have to get the dog to the vet and home in time to clean my car out and go fetch someone at 9:30 to go for coffee to get her back by 11:30 so I can go to wits and see my supervisor about what I'm doing this year. Somewhere in between all that I need to start studying for the field trip next week. And go sunblock-shopping. With a 2 month break you'd think I'd get everything done in time.

Speaking of which, I'd better do some research on what I actually want to work on this year. Otherwise I haven't got much of a hope of being able to do it. Tomorrow will be an interesting test of my manipulating and persuading skills! Wish me luck!

I watched Thumbsucker today. I've wanted to see it for ages! It was a good movie but SO depressing I hated it! So I started watching Lords of Dogtown, but didn't get time to finish it. It was actually a lot of fun!

Here's a picture of a frog that we rescued from a swimming-pool in Darling. He was so cute!

movies...

I was working at Sunninghill again today. It's really boring, and has the added advantage of nothing working. We have no scanner so we have to type in all the barcodes, which is tremendous fun, the keyboard occasionally stops entirely too. Today the backup didn't work (and this is vital as if we're robbed during the night we need to prove exactly what we lost in order for the insurance to pay up, and the only way for that is the backup disc). I managed to get around it by formatting a blank CD (that was read-only in spite of being a RW) and restarting the computer a few times. By then my shift was more than over, and a flood of customers arrived and sat for half an hour choosing movies (which are not backed up now because the thought of doing it again killed me).

Anyway, the point of this post is: movies. I've been watching a lot lately because I've been working alone. Weirdly enough, the ability to pick a movie quickly and stick to it only exists when I'm sitting for 2 or 3 people who disagree. Joey says it's an Aries thing: we don't back down. I don't believe in star signs, but that was just creepy! So I'm basically drifting around trying to find something. Unfortunately that branch I'm at is small and we only get a few copies of the blockbuster mainstream stuff, comapred to the other branch where we have a lot of series and independent movies.

So: lousy movies I've watched in the 3 days:

1. Date movie. Don't ask me why, I was desperate!
2. Just my Luck (the most boring thing I've ever watched the opening scene of).
3. My super ex-girlfriend (such a different idea, so badly done. and Uma's too old for those boots, I'm sorry).
4. Grease (I blame Lara. We laughed a lot though!)

Mediocre movies I've watched in the last 3 days:

1. Groove. I'm sorry Luke, I'm sure if you've been to raves and stuff it's better, but I just felt really sorry for the guy who just wanted to go home.
2. Confetti. It had some fantastic moments, but it was disappointing. I also got quite bored by two of the 3 couples.
3. Cars. It's just plain boring.

Good movies I've watched in the last 3 days:

1. October sky. But i knew it already, it's one of my favourite movies.

The ratio of 4:3:1 shows how desperate I am! Anyone who likes the same kind of movies as me (eg Garden State; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Don't Say a Word) PLEASE recommend something! i have 4 shifts to go before I go away next week!

just for the record

I do not HATE Grey's anatomy, I just wasn't exactly blown away by it. And I got this weird impulse to take MEredith by the shoulders and shake her! But now that the second season has been taken out and I won't have a chance to watch it until I get back at the end of January, I realsie that I have become rather attached.

That is all.

And by the way, I'm leaving next Tuesday, so if anyone is planning on organising anything, please make it for this week!

I'm lousy at being sick with dignity.

I'm sick. as in congested, dizzy, so hot that I'm freezing (why my poor hypothalamus puts up with me...) and unable to breathe. It's weird that I'm sick so often lately. I was sick for a lot of honours but I put that down to stress and eating too much junk food. Now that I'm on holiday, relaxing and actually eating salad a lot, I keep getting sick. Maybe I'm just cut out for the academic lifestyle after all?

I also found out that the scholarship forms for me to go overseas were actually due 3 weeks ago, either I wrote it down wrong when I phoned them or they made a mistake. I'm not too upset because I've been doing a lot of thinking and I had decided that I didn't really want to go for it for a bunch of reasons that I won't put here. I was going to anyway, but now it's decided for me. So now I'm just waiting for wits to get its act together and tell me if I got a scholarship or not (if I didn't I'll be SO annoyed!) so I can get started with thinking about this year. I planned out a project already that is very different to anything I've ever done and that my supervisor has ever done (he doesn't know about it yet...) and I'm trying to find some articles to back me up, but it seems that I got a bit too original because nobody has ever done anything like it before. I'm waiting for him to get back from holiday so I can go talk about it. I'm also supposed to be getting my project from last year ready for publication, but I only managed to read 3/4 of my abstract before I found the third typo, so I just couldn't look at it anymore. I hate looking at projects once they're in and finished.

I've been watching Grey's Anatomy a lot. I dislike it on principle: it's unoriginal (covering very little that E.R and Scrubs haven't done ages ago), the 'drama' is ridiculous, and it's written by someone who has no idea about anything, but 'likes medical shows' so decided to write one. It's fun though and I enjoy it occasionally, if just to marvel at how ridiculous the story is getting. Some of the actors are really good too. The thing is, I have nothing to watch at the moment because I'm waiting for Jo to get her act together and bring me the Lost and PrisonBreak that she has at home, and I just discovered how much fun it is to watch DVDs on my laptop in bed. So I decided to get started. and I guess it can't be so bad beasue I have 2 episodes to go until I'm done with Season 1.

I worked today with Nicky and Jo. Jo had stuff to do that she's been putting off for a bit because, as nice as Nicky is, it's pretty much a fulltime job working with her. She's pretty insecure and needs to check everything before she does it. we also organise everything by 5digit codes, and she's dyslexic, so we have to keep an eye on her. She's pretty amazing that she manages so well and so cheerfully, and she doesn't let it upset her at all. I'm pretty sure once she gets used to it she'll be fine, it'll just take a while for her to get to know everything. I just sat and had some corenza-C type stuff that's pineapple flavoured and made me really dizzy, but somewhat less congested. When I got home I passed out to the incessant screeching of my grandparents' budgies who I'm babysitting at the moment.

Now I'm going to try and give my bird to my dad (she's upset by the budgies and got a bit clingy) so that I can collapse on my bed with tomato soup and the last 2 episodes of Grey's anatomy.

Oh. My. WooOord.

Happy new year everyone!

On Sunday I went over to Joey's house with a bunch of people from work, as well as Jana and Corne (aka the toothless wonder) who are friends of Lara's. It's kind of a work tradititon that every year the 'adult' employees who are all pretty good friends get together for new years. Last year was also at Joey's but it included Drew and Justin who are now out of the circle completely and acting like complete tools. I miss the old them.

It was a lot of fun! Before we were a bit worried because Chris was there and he can't drink so I hoped he wouldn't feel left out. La and I were also exhausted, but we got over it pretty quickly. We started off with a braai (Afrikaans people are amazing at braais, and as the only first-language English speaker there I got to experience "troo-Kultuur" in a BIG way!). The thing is, Jo and Lara had been working together and had decided that we each had to have 3 different cocktails before the countdown. The problem was we decided to eat first, so we sat drinking all kinds of other things while the men got all manly and poked the fire a lot, until we realised that it was already 11:30. Lets just say I hope the video we took gets burned. When Jo makes cocktails she always triples the ingredients for some reason. After all that we still had 15 minutes, so Corne went and made other stuff (called 'liquid cocaine') and then Jo made other cocktails and we had shots and...

After the countdown I was treated to real Kultuur when Jo revealed that she owned the entire collection of "Stamp" which is kinf of like sokkie-treffers except that a lot of it is English songs remixed with the sokkie beat. We all sang along in various stages of tunefulness (in one song all I knew was 'bokkie-bokkie!' and I missed it by half a line every time) and just sat around talking complete crap and dancing around. Chris was entirely shocked, didn't say a word all evening and then sat outside once the singing started. I felt really sorry for him, but every time I tried to talk to him he didn't respond at all, so we just left him.

Eventually we went to bed at around 4am, but I was so hyper I couldn't sleep too well and we were up again at 8. I had to rush home, shower, change and go to work for a double shift. I worked with Jo in the morning and Lara in the evening. Jo was really feeling horrible (for a short girl she can drink!) and I was all cheerful but unable to do anything very quickly. By the time Lara arrived I was exhausted. All of our customers were either tired or hung over or both, often accompanied by overtired toddlers who cried and screamed... And it turns out one customer who I always thought was a man, is actually a woman. She has muscles and a deep voice and a BEARD! apparently she's jo and Lara's personal trainer and she trains in a bikini. Scary stuff.

The worst was at about 8pm when a guy came in with his teenage sons. He was wearing shorts that even an ecologist would be embarassed by. They probably belonged to some poor Ken-doll at some stage and they were all stretched at the bottom so they curled up, making them even tinier. Plus he'd tucked his shirt in. We both packed out giggling but managed to hide at the back until he came to get his movies and somehow we managed to talk to the guy. I don't know how. After he left we both collapsed into giggling fits and then the phone rang. I think we left it for about 2 minutes before Lara managed to regain composure enough to semi-talk to the person, who thought she was sick and needed help. I just sat there laughing so hard I think I actually cried a bit.

Today was a lot harder, I'm still tired and I had a lot of stuff to do. I also found out that there is some big stuff going on with my family and my parents might move overseas, so I'd have to move into a flat or something. That means I'll have to find a home for my birds and my dogs and I don't know if I could manage it. It was really upsetting and I yelled at my mom and then sat sulking and watching Scrubs all afternoon. And then I drove around Joburg for a good hour to calm down. When I got home I sat and carried on with Scrubs when my dad came in and told me to pause it. I figured I'd be getting the typical talking-to for fighting with my mom when he made me close my eyes, and when I opened them there were these boxes. you see for Christmas I got a card and some money from my dad and it said that Ebay couldn't deliver an iguana in time. This was the 'iguana.'

My Dad just gave me a laptop! It's beautiful! Far better than anything I would have bought for myself! It's a Dell with a big screen and bluetooth and a DVD writer and everything! I named it 'The iguana' already and tomorrow i'm going to go and get the software for Office and go talk to the IT guy at wits about all the other stuff like antivirus and that.

It's so beautiful! I love it already and I can't even do anything with it yet. The lousy thing is it's cheaper to order the software online, but then I have to wait up to 10 days for the money to clear and delivery and by them I'm away on the field trip. I'm tempted to go spent the extra money just to get started right away.

I'm so excited!

Yay!

As soon as it's up and running I'll take a photo of it and post it. I'm going to bed now, I'm still so tired. And just for the record, Nagtmusiek is EVIL! At least I rain-checked the Jagermeister!

Stop fighting or I'll TURN this AROUND!

I'm typing this with a bird on each shoulder. Occasionally one of them walks around to the shoulder that is occupied by the other bird and they start squawking and pecking. So I pick up the one that was originally there and move it to the other shoulder. Ah, the stress of life in general.

Today was odd. My Dad is stiff off from work and managed to get a particularly nasty dose of flu that has him wlaking around like a zombie, sneezing and sniffling and being hugely productive and rather sensitive about things. My mom and I went off to breakfast and he got highly offended that we hadn't invited him on account of his being in bed with a thermometer sticking out of his mouth. By the time we got back he'd done two loads of laundry and a gigantic pile of ironing. He just doesn't know how to relax!

Anyway breakfast with my mom was marginally less awkward than usual. I'm not sure why but we're actually getting along relatively well lately. After that we split up and went shopping and I ended up buying clothes (as if I didn't have enough) which are very different to what I usually wear. I like them though. I had to rush off to work to get approval for them right away, so I went and had lunch with Jo and Lara. They had Steers, I had celery and mango. for some reason I've been craving celery and mango so much that I haven't eaten very much else for 2 days so now I feel a bit sick. But mango is amazing! I love mango.

We were also talking abut a leaflet I picked up while I was shopping. it's for a part-time course in being a field guide and covers stuff like:

• Taxonomy,


• Grasses


• Trees


• Earth studies


• weather and climate


• astronomy


• Ecology (savannas)


• Geology and geomorphology


• animal studies


• mammals (biology,taxonomy and behaviour)


• amphibians


• reptiles


• arthropods (focussing on insects and arachnids)


• birds(biology and identification)


• fish


• guiding


• signs of the veld


• bush navigation


• plaeoanthropology


• and ecotourism

From what I understand it's a one-year course with a weekly lecture in sunninghill (which is close to where I work) and it has weekend field-trips for practicals. And it looks like they may go to the REAL desert. I was talking to Jo and she was saying that if I do it she'll do it with me, which would be so much fun! I'm very tempted to go for it, so I'm waiting for them to send me the information pack thingie. The frustrating thing is that you can go all over the website (www.africanaturetraining.co.za) and there is nothing about the price. It's so so annoying!

anyway I came home and caught up on a few hours of sleep and now I'm probably going to work on my CV for the Edinburgh application. Or maybe I'll just have some more mango (MANGO!!!) and go to bed.

Oh yes, and I'm happy to say that all of the people I know in matric (except for Sarah whose surname I kind of forgot) has passed and done really well. YAY! And my mom came rushing in this moring to throw the newspaper at me and show me that my friend Lynne got 6 A's and that there was a whole long article on Luke's sisters (which mixed them up a bit too. I guess that's an occupational hazard of being a twin). She also told me that I would be in all kinds of trouble if I didn't phone and congratulate them RIGHT AWAY. It was a pretty awkward phonecall... but quite amusing at the same time!

Here's a picture of some books. It was in this old rickety shed that we used to store our animals in Darling (there was a lot of cool stuff, like huge saws and bear-traps and a baby bird that liked to fly into your feet whenever you were feeling mildly unsettled) there was a pile of dusty books. Eventually curiosity got the better of me and I looked inside them. It's basically an acocunt of every day on the farm for over a century. The netry would say something like:

16 January

Killed 1 goat

Took Martha to Worcester

and so on. the writing was illegible most of the time, some of the older entries had been done with a quill pen! I intended to take a picture of a page but I forgot. I'll have to go back there someday and get one.

Educational...

Today has been one of the most educational days ever. I started off sleeping in (I've been having trouble sleeping, so is it up until 1 or 2am and then sleep late from exhaustion) and then at around 10:15 my mother and I decided to go for breakfast. As I started getting dressed and so on I got an sms from Jo asking why on earth I wasn't at work. I had no idea... so I panicked and called her and she was really nice as usual, saying if I'd made plans it was ok I didn't have to and all that sort of reassuring boss-type nonsense. I love my boss! It's really really unlike me to miss a shift, I've been working since I was 15 and never missed a day (except once when they were going to call me in case of emergency and there was an emergency but I had food poisoning and told them to sort it out themselves).

So I got dressed and drove like a maniac, only 45 minutes late for work after all. I had also planned on going in to wits to give the iguana some mango for Christmas and say Hi to Oliver, but then I had to sms him and cancel and I felt really bad in case he'd taken a day off because I was feeding her today. It turned out he'd left his phone at home after all so it was ok because he was entirely unaware of my coming through.

We also caught up on the gossip. It turns out that two of our customers (both married) are having an affair with each other. It's really sad because we know both families and they're all extremely nice people. It's also ridiculous that they've decided to spend their 'quality time' together in our store considering they're regular customers and they know that we know them. It's so obvious that even Chris noticed it independently.

I was working with Jo and the new girl, who was a lot nicer today. She'd not the fastest learner but it turns out that she battles with dyslexia. I have a lot of respect for her attitude towards it. Lara also came in and bitched about her second job (assistant in Drew's law firm). She's planning on quitting it soon.

After work I went home and started watching Final Cut. It's a movie where people have chips implanted in their brains beofre birth that record everything as it happens through their eyes. After they die it's edited and made into a movie and friends and family go and watch it. the story is about a guy (played by Robin Williams) whose job is to edit all the hours and hours of footage. It threw open a lot of ethical considerations (how do you choose what to leave out? and is it right to portray a really nasty person as a good person through their own memories?) For instance one guy who was really nasty and molested his own daughter. It started off with him going into his little girl's room and saying he loved her and her answering that she loved him too. After that it gpt unpleasant. So he edited out all the nasty stuff and just had them saying they loved each other. It was so wrong! Also, if you think about certain events a lot do they show up more often in your memories?

Unfortunately after 45 minutes the DVD started sticking and jumping and I stopped watching. There's been a problem with that movie a million times before. I know it's been sent in for repairs about 10 times. All 4 copies of it. I was a bit relieved, it was upsetting me slightly.

Anyway I stopped watching and decided to rejoin the world of the living for a bit and took my dog for a nice long walk and then took the other dog swimming. If anyone has access to my memories someday I hope they pick those ones.

OD on movies and sugar!!!!

Merry Christmas everyone! Sorry I haven't updated, the problem with coming home a week beofre Christmas is that everything becomes an insane rush to get all the shopping done and the cards written and so on in time for the Big Day.

This year was the first Christmas I remember that I wasn't roped into reading in church or playing endless carols oor anything. I also went to midnight mass, so I didn't go to any of the morning services. We also had the big dinner at my grandparents house so there was no rushing around trying to finish all the preparations and stuff. Which makes this the easiest Christmas I have ever had. Seriously, I slept late on Christmas day!

The day itself was the usual blend of family togetherness and family dysfunction that I associate with any of the big holidays. I got a lot of soap and a few books. One is a really awesome one on wildlife photography that tells you all about the technical aspects of the photographs as well as the 'inspiration' and all that. I wish I'd had it before the trip! I also met an old friend of my grandparents who they met on a bus tour through Namibia before I was born. He's German but has lived in America for a really long time (the accent is unbelievable!) and has amazing pictures of hummingbirds that he showed me. He's travelled all over the world and he mapped out the perfect 3 week tour around the western part of America and now I'm dying to go!

Other than Christmas I've been spending a lot of time alone, just thinking and arbing. I watched a lot of TV for a bit but that got boring so now I'm spending a large part of my days just driving around. thinking is getting unpleasant, I've got too many unsolved problems, like the very minor 'what do I do with my life?' thing. I've been ok with just carrying on as long as I'm having fun, but I'm scared to go back to wits. I remember what honours did to me and I never want that again. It also hit me the other day that I have a lot of fun, but is that really enough to build a career and someday support myself? Scary stuff!

I've also been trying to spend time with all the friends I've been neglecting all year because of work and Wits and so on. It's harder than I thought: they're either away or working most of the time and when I do spend time with them it's really awkwad like we haven't got anything to tlak about anymore. It's getting a lot better though. Tonight about 8 of us went to movies (we saw 'Flushed Away' it's SO funny!) and had a great time, and now I ahve a lot of plans with them which is really nice. I've also been doing a lot of housework. My family has gone into a 'Clean the House!' frenzy and my brother got a lot of gardening tools for Christmas so I get roped into helping him rake leaves and sweep and stuff a lot. If I object I get the 'This time next year you won't have a brother anymore!' speech. And there I was thinking I was getting a sister. Oh well.

I worked at the Sunninghill branch this afternoon, that was a lot of fun too. It's in a tiny little centre that's mostly closed off for renovations and I had a lot of memories of working at the old petshop in Illovo before I was moved to Paulshof - almost no customers. It was nice, I wouldn't mind working there more often, partly because it's next door to a Spar and I got Mango juice which is incredible! I also managed to watch two whole movies during my shift - 'Lady in the Water' which was awesome. Not quite up to the standard of M. Night Shymalan's other movies but I did enjoy it. I think what threw me was the way that the director had a biggish role. The thing is, in all his movies he has a cameo role, and it's always fun to watch out for him, so I was all like 'Yay! Cameo!' and then he kept reappearing. It was very beautifully made though and quite thought-provoking. After that I watched 'Memoirs of a Geisha' which was beautiful and disquieting at the same time. I felt so sorry for her!

I figured that with the title of my blog I'd better add in some reptile photos. This is a lizard we saw in Namaqualand a lot. They're quite small and run really fast. I managed to get pictures of this guy by getting the focus ready and then chasing him from under his bush. Not very nice for him, but it worked!

And here's a picture of me that Luke took one evening in Darling. It's not the most brilliant photo, but I love it!

ho-f***ing-ho

My burgeoning Christmas spirit died during the afternoon shift at work.

It started off ok, I slept in, wrapped all of one present, played with the dogs (I had to pretty much cut all the fur off Jesse's back legs and her stomach yesterday because it was so matted so I was spending some quality time with her). After lunch I helped my brother put up the tree. It was a little bit under duress, I'm not a big fan of pulling out all the decorations when nobody will be here on Christmas day, but it was quite fun. We also ended up chatting for quite a long time about photography ("Mr SLR" doesn't know the difference between aperture and shutter-speed) and honeymoon plans and stuff.

Work started off in a pretty hilarious mood. Someone returned the box for their Playstation game but instead of the "Brothers in arms" game it was a movie inside. Called (and I'm being serious) "Wet Cotton Panties" with an option to skip straight to whichever sex-scene you want. Joey had to call them and ask them for the game. Even the big tough-guys I work with were blushing!

After about an hour we had a big storm. And the power went out. We surived for about an hour writing everything down and doing the manual swipey-thing with credit cards and so on and then the power came on. So we rather stupidly put all 4 candles away (we should really be a bit better prepared!) and after ten minutes the lights went out again. it took about 45 minutes (the flashing Chritmas hat was rather useful in avoiding collisions with customers) before the power cae on again. Byt then I was really annoyed and frantically trying to enter all the transactions into the computer system when Luke and Dave came to drop off photos from the trip. I was not in the best mood, but it did make me feel a bit better to see some friendly (albeit giggly) faces rather than all the frustrated customers!

It was a long shift. Eventually when the power decided to stay on (we didn't blow out the candles and I think that ensured a bit of luck - I'm not superstitious at all!) we watched Hoodwinked - mainly for the crowd of about 10 kids who came and sat on the carpet in front of the TV and demanded a movie - and had chips with sweet-chilli dip. By the end of the shift the Christmas hats were in a pile under the counter and the Chritmas CDs were hidden behind the non-playstation game and we went for drinks.

The owner of the Thai restaurant got all Christmas spiritish (her staff all have Christmas hats with flashing green trees) and gave us free drinks. It turns out my friend Lara's got a lot of stuff going on so we sat there for a long time before we both claimed exhaustion and went home. My mom and I had a very long conversation about tomorrow NOT being Christmas (it's just Sunday) and I went and wrapped the rest of my presents.

It's not that I don't like Christmas, I just hate the fact that a time that we're supposed to be celebrating something amazing is turned into such a stressful occasion where we have to spend huge amounts of money and rush around like maniacs. And christmas carols...

And Blogger has decided to lift my spirits by not letting me post pictures! so I decided to upgrade to the new BLogger and it seems to like me more. Here you go, a pretty 'desert' sunset!

The Christmas spirit

My boss has turned into a monster. She's forcing us to wear Christmas hats while working (if we're caught without them we'll be fired on the spot) as well as playing Christmas music over the sound system. We only had two CDs - one orchestral and the other instrumental with pan-pipes and things... but now we have about 5 including the 'Beatmas' CD which is performed by 5 guys dressed in Santa suits and sunglasses.

The hats are all pretty disgusting. They're usually only worn on Christmas eve and Christmas day, but we have 9 staff members and I don't think the hats have ever been washed before. I flat out refused to wear one so Jo made me wear hers. It's clean but it's also covered in flashing stars. The customers find it very amusing and all think that they're unique in their comments (I mean 'Nice hat!' is so original of course). The best was one customer who said "you're being forced into the Christmas spirit? Ho-f*cking-ho!" I liked him!

It was weird though. Between our playing baseball with a plastic bat (courtesy of the kiddies meals from Nando's) and various Christmas ornaments and messing around with the left-over 'magic candles' from Springbok we started to get into the whole Christmas thing. we'd have taken the hats off in a heartbeat if we dared, but Matt1 and I started singing along and dancing around to the songs and stuff and it wasn't entirely bad. It was really strange!

Here's a picture of the road to the study site in the Kalahari. There can't be many people whose route to work looks like this!

insights into life from staring at the TV all day

1. I can procrastinate even if I'm not pressed for time at all.
2. Woody Allen makes movies that make me feel uncomfortable about being human.
3. Does TV desensitise us or are we all actually predisposed towards violence already?
4. It should be illegal to end a series with more than one cliffhanger ('Prison Break' being a prime example. What if the show was cancelled? What would we do then? Send them an email saying 'Just so I know, what happened to Jo Smith after his head nearly fell off in the finale? Did they manage to reattach it or did they just transplant his brain?') Excuse my example. I tried to invent something plausible but decided against it.
5. People in movies hardly ever have boring everyday names. How many ties do you see the characters running into people with the same name as them? And why are so many names symbolic of the year of their life that's portrayed? Was their mother supposedly psychic? Maybe this is why Hollywood people can't give their children real names.

I finished the first season of 'Prison Break' last night. It was so frustrating! I've also been having trouble sleeping and I think I got too involved in it and I ended up reading Steven King (who wrote some passable stuff apparently. Maybe the books I tried before were just the bad ones. Or maybe I was just lucky to get the good one this time) until early this morning when I passed out over 'Hearts in Atlantis.'

I went through to work to drop off the DVDs to fins that Laurin the One Who Talks was there. she's unbelievable. Quite often I just walk away while she's talking. It doesn't seem to affect her and I get to avoid whatever health problem she wants to go on about this time. she did have one entertaining story of when she worked at hotel school they locked her in a fridge for over 2 hours. Jo was almost twitching by the time I got there so we ended up joining Drew and Lara for lunch next door. It was fun, I haven't seen Drew in months and he's always entertaining. He told me that all I need to shut Laurin up is 'a small case of death' and it'll be just fine. Maybe his idea of his ability as a lawyer is slightly inflated?

After work I waited for Carla to call to tell me to come through for her mom to take measurements for my dress. Weirdly enough she never called so I ended up at home watching 'Match Point' - don't be fooled by the presence of Scarlett Johansson - it's an interesting movie albeit slightly depressing. The style of filming was very aggressive (at ome stage they filmed the main character through a mesh fence) and very clever at the same time. Lots of symbolism but it is very obvious and quite harsh sometimes. I enjoyed it, but I had to admit that the main character's 'downfall' didn't really seem too bad to me. Which is really scary because he did some terrible stuff, but I found myself surprised at how bad he felt about it all. Which is why I think TV has desensitised us all. Maybe after 'Prison Break' where someone dies almost every episode, or 'Lost' where according to the cast 'as soon as your issues are resolved you're going to die' the whole concept of murder is somewhat skewed. Maybe if I'd watched it six months ago it would have shocked me more. It was a good movie though and very cleverly acted.

Here's a quote "The man who said "I'd rather be lucky than good" saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a litte luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose."

For all the reviews etc look at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416320/

Here's a picture of sunset on our second-last day in the Kalahari. It was really really pink!

I have more photos but they aren't uploading for some reason. So watch this space!

why is Christmas shopping so complicated?

After a steady few hours finishing up on 'Lost' season 2 this morning and then finally getting part 2 of the first season of 'Prison Break' from work (and the end of the season is shocking. How can they do that to me?) I went to do some Christmas shopping.

As per usual I ended up in the situation of not knowing what to get some people and other people being too easy to shop for. So I buy some people several gifts and others none. And then I sit down and try to redistribute all the gifts easily. The hardest is my grandmothers - I can't get one a big present and the other one a small present because my parents will get upset if their parents aren't treated the same.

Tthis year I decided to be smart and buy them matching gifts, so I was all set for some uncomplicated shopping. Very funny. so i got my soon-to-be sister-in-law some earrings and then I found a nice display photo album but it was pretty expensive so I decided to get that for her and my brother and then each of them a small present for themselves. I refuse to buy 'house stuff' for Carla because I don't think it's fair that she only gets that while my brother gets all the random stuff he wants for himself. But then I went to a jewellery store and ended up getting her a bracelet. So now I have a small present for my brother, a big present for his fiance and a gift for them to share. So I considered shifting the photo album to my brother but it's too girly. The alternative is to save it for part of their wedding present and then get my brother something else. Why can't they just be normal and ask for chocolate or something?

Otherwise it was a pretty successful day. I have gifts for my parents, my grandfather and my boss, which leaves me with an aunt, two grandmothers and the other boss. By Monday.

I also went to see Sarah at work. The bookstore is a lot smaller than I expected but I had so much fun arbing around and looking at books. I've reread my books to such an extent I had to resort to Steven King last night. I nearly bought 'Brother Fish' by Bryce Courtenay (he's one of my gfavourite authors and I have almost all of his books) but then I started flipping through it and realised it involved post-traumatic stress and war, just like his last 5 or so books. I'm tired of post-traumatic-stress. He writes so well but he needs some new subject matter! So I decided to leave it until next year when I have more energy.

Then I sat and watched a ridiculous amount of Prison Break. Now I think it's time for me to get started on my application forms for Scotland. To tell the truth I'm not sure I really want to apply, but that's just apathy.

I was going to add a picture but blogger won't let me :(

we're not immature...

I was at work today. It was pretty boring. We have a new trainee called Nicky (so now there is Nikki and Nicky as well as Matt and Matt...) who is pretty nice. She's a bit shy but nothing really bad. I also get the feeling that I'm really not going to get along with her in the long run. I don't know why. Lara said the same a bit later.

Anyway Jo had to go and run errands for the other branches and Nicky and I were left alone together. We watched a bit of 'Snakes on a Plane', which was ok, not as funny as I'd expected although it had its moments! I will probably finish watching it at some stage, we had to stop when it went out to a customer. I just finshed the first half of the first season of prison break but the second half is out for the rest of the week, so I'm a bit annoyed :(

Once Nicky had left Jo discovered that the second hand bookstore in the centre (at which Justin no longer works. He found a better shopping centre up the road :( and left us) is selling a bunch of cool toys. Nicky had bought some putty stuff that is supposed to change according to your mood. Pretty much none of us feel anything except varying shades of bluey-grey as the putty got dirtier and dirtier. So Jo bought some of that rubber stuff you squeeze onto a little tube and then blow really cool bubbles. we spent half an hour blowing bubbles and trying to play volleyball in spite of a large fan next to us. It was also fun watching the static charge act on them. Jo just couldn't hit them away because they kept sticking to her in all sorts of inappropriate places.

Once the afternoon staff arrived we went to the bookstore and struggled with issues like 'Will Lara really believe that the rubber stick-on cuts and grazes are real?' and 'does bouncing putty really bounce?' finally I got a tube of the bubble stuff and a balloon that was supposed to be a flying saucer and Jo got a farting putty set (it's putty in a plastic toilet and as you push it it in releases the air... sounds pretty realistic too!) and a cardboard tree that grows blossoms if you put it in water (I had one when I was small, it was so rox!). We went back to the store and experimented with our new toys. I feel really sorry for the customer in the store. It was a lady with two small kids and every time Jo pushed the putty stuff we all fell over giggling and the baby girl was fascinated. The last straw came when I blew up my 'flying saucer' and let it go. It shot around the store and as the air was released it made a loud buzzing/whining noise. Chris sat looking shocked while Jo, Matt2 and I literally rolled around laughing and then repeated the whole process. Several times.

That was pretty much my day. After work Jo and LAra and I went and had drinks and then I came home and watched random DVDs until my parents got home. Right now I'm waiting for them to leave the TV so I can finish the second season of Lost.

I also got the stitching programme on my computer to work. Here's a panoramic shot of sunset in the Kalahari. It came out really small because it's so long :( so you'll have to take my word for it. It was amazing!

Things I missed about Joburg (and didn't always realise it)

1. Driving. I love having time to myself to go wherever I want. My dad also surprised me with a 'present' of a full petrol tank when I got home, so I'm pretty happy about that.
2. Having time alone. As weird as it was to wake up the first morning back and realise there was nobody in the room, I really missed having a bit of quiet time to think to myself and just ... exist (lack of a better word).
3. Internet connection. Not that the email was really worth it. Although there was a very amusing one regarding the free food at wits. There was a graduation and afterwards there was all this food left over, so they put it in the tea room and sent an email around saying there were free leftovers if anyone wanted them. And then some guy got really annoyed and sent one back saying that it's incredibly rude to offer leftovers to someone who wasn't invited to the party. I figured that academics were pretty universal in their response to free food. Apparently not. Regarding the internet connection, there were 3 Weebls-stuff cartoons I hadn't seen yet. Score!
4. 24 hour access to 5500 (and climbing) different DVDs. We also got the newest documentary (which features my lizards). My boss called me a loser today. I wonder why. I also have a terrible headache from watching about four hours of TV this afternoon (following 2 episodes of 'Prison Break' and 'Blade' this morning. 'Blade' was actually really cool, although I'm hearing very conflicting reports on the sequels.
5. Christmas bonus! I love my boss (not the one who called me a loser. Although she is also totally rox). And it's not just a bunch of money in a bank bag (like commission), it comes inside a Christmas card! to tell the truth I was half expecting just a card woth a note saying wither "You're fired! Merry Christmas!" or something more polite like "We're not sure if you still work for us as we haven't seen you in six months. Take care!" Instead it was a very sweet message (I can't read the writing but it looked like it included 'happy' and 'family' and 'joy' and stuff) and rather a lot more money than they gave me last year.
6. running into random people. Like my friend Sarah (not the blogging one. Another one) who came to sit next to me at the carol service on sunday. She's awesome in that she's very excitable and talks faster than me, while always increasing in volume. At one stage (Joy to the World) the organist (who may have been my father but I'm not admitting to it) got a bit carried away and I got to watch her turning purple with supressed giggles. After the service we also had the worlds loudest conversation about the mertis of going to the drive-in. Which entirely depends on the quality of the movie. If you watch a good movie it's fun. But if you watch a bad movie you get to ignore it and sit on the swings for an hour and chat until you get motion sickness. The downside is that there are only two swings. But there's always the slide so we're sorted.
7. 'Prison Break'. No, it isn't 'Lost'. But I'm addicted anyway.

That's all!

I'm baaaack!

we just got home from the Kalahari. It's two days early and I must admit, I'm glad that the trip is over, as much as I'm also quite sad. It's always a bit depressing to get back to Joburg to realise that you missed everyuone like crazy, but they carried on living while you weren't there!

The trip was exhausting and hot. Pretty much every conceivable thing that could go wrong did go wrong too, which got really annoying by the time that our car just stopped AGAIN (it died 6 times if you joing breaking down and getting stuck in sand) or the cows attacked our traps AGAIN. At the same time it was really amazing. I've seen more of my country in the last 4 weeks than I saw in the 21 and a half years that I've been living here. It all makes me want to just stop what I'm doing and go exploring all the places we couldn't stop off at and all the places on the East that we never went to. I laso learned that the friendly South African is not as unusual as Joburg has led me to believe over the past few years. I got more warmth from small town people who didn't speak English than I have in ages here (Joburg is rox, I love it to bits regardless!). I also learned that the Afrikaans that I regularly hear and sometimes speak in joburg is very different to the real boere-taal, and so I had to revert back to the traditional Afrikaans I learned in high-school. It was entertaining to most people to say the least!

We also got to see some of the most bizarre town names (Putsies, Lutzputz, Kakamas and Dingleton to name a few) and some unbelievable river names (Volstruisfontein is the only one I can remember at the moment).

On top of the other stuff we had the 'honour' of being the biggest even to happen in a lot of small towns in quite a while. It's a mixed blessing, for example in Darling we had a braai/party thing thrown for us, and in Kamieskroon we were looked at strangely by everyone and a lot of people dropped what they were doing and came to beg from the strangers. Small towns also sell soft drinks at ridiculously low prices. for example you can buy a litre of Fanta Grape for R6, and if you take the bottle back they give you R2. Which is possibly causing the CO2 shortage?

I'm going to go eat some of the biltong I got from Hotazel (say it out loud. And no, I'm not kidding) and go to sleep. In my own bed! And tomorrow I get to drive My Own Car! Score!