Hoping it’s just hormones

So I’ve had an awesome couple of weeks. Busy in the extreme, but always things that I wanted to do. Admittedly, my decision to calm down on the sport and the social life and spend more time doing my actual ‘job’ (it gets inverted commas because I pay to do it, or at best beg for scholarships) has crashed and burned and right now I’m out more than I was before (if that was at all possible).

So last weekend with the kiddies was awesome. It started badly with me having to spend the afternoon teaching drunk students ,followed by arriving at the field-trip place with a busload of drunk students, and eating a luminous purple meal (yes, purple). From there it really picked up though and I had a blast, leaving exhausted, but happy and sunburned and achy but in the best possible way.

Last week was heeeeecTIC – Monday night i was out, Tuesday morning I had a super-early start to teach my kiddies, Tuesday evening i went back to Tai chi for the first time in over two weeks. It was SO nice to be back, although I was very sore afterwards and for the next day or two!

Wednesday was skating – I got myself examined which was scary and I started shaking – this wasn’t made better by the fact that they made me take three exams at once (two for classes I skipped and one for the class I’m in) which included steps I’d never heard of before. The tester was kind enough to demonstrate so i could try them out though!

From there I had to hand my skates in to be sharpened, which was sad because I’d been looking forward to some skating-in-circles-thinking time, but good because I know that they’ll be sorted out properly, and I had time to go for a run afterwards which was nice!

Thursday I skipped tai chi and went with the Oracle, the nameless one and CG to meet up with some people and play some pool. I hadn’t played in six weeks and my skills went from abysmal to totally non-existent, but I had a blast – it was really nice to see the Oracle (who is quite shy sometimes and won’t join us often) having fun and dancing and chatting to people. CG was also looking like she had fun for the first time in ages.

Of course the time flew and before I’d realised it was 1am and we were going for pizza while my mother’s panicky messages started to come through and… so much for an early night… and of course I had to be up early the next morning and considering I’d only been to bed at 2:30 – it sucked.

Friday was The Day Of Many Meetings as usual, although my students took one look at me and decided to behave themselves which was fantastic. I nearly kicked a couple out of the class and it clamed them down a bit (even though they were still annoying). The plasticine I was using to teach them stained my hands and arms (and everything I touched, like my ears) purple. After that I went off to watch a movie and was asleep within a couple of minutes.

Saturday was my first day back at work since the fieldtrips and it was really nice and quiet and good to be back! I went home and passed out for a few hours and then headed off to meet someone’s new puppy (so so cute!). From there we had no real plans so we ended up going to Pretoria for a club launch which was hilarious and awesome – it was like a scene from a movie with glowsticks and bubbles falling from the ceiling and people in the most bizarre outfits ever. I was in jeans and a t-shirt but nobody seemed to mind! heck, i even managed to get two glowsticks from random strangers so that I could play the drums on the table…

On the way home we went to investigate a potential giant hole in the road only to find that it was surrounded by quicksand-y stuff. We figured this out when I sank up to my knees and had to be rescued. When we stopped off to swap cars I had to change into a semi-strangers PJs to go home in, while I thought my shoes were beyond repair.

So once again – a planned early night ended in me getting home at 4am, wearing someone else’s clothes. Awkward.

Yesterday I spent reading and sleeping and catching up on exercise a little bit. I also went back to church (I hadn’t been in a few weeks with all the trips and stuff) and today has been a day of working, marking, puppy-sitting, teaching (I want Luke’s students, they’re so much better behaved than mine!) and general movement.

I’m just feeling a little bit low at the moment. I know that by nature I’m a total loner, and all of the craziness is exhausting, but at the same time, looking back on each experience, it was awesome, I’d do it all again…

But right now I want to go and hide under a rock and not see another human being for a while. People are exhausting. I don’t want to be around them for a bit.

I just hope I can get out of this mood soon, as I have a crazy weekend coming up!

Sjoe!

So this weekend was INSANE! I spent most of it rushing around from place to place and dying of heat (never plan four different things on the Saturday after the Killers concert…), but it was totally awesome anyway.

I’m too tired to give many details so here you go:

We went to the KILLERS! It was awesome!

 

Although there were rather a lot of people. i was lucky enough to be able to see the stage (as I’m a bit on the tall side), even though we were behind about six GIaNT mutants (who were all friends, which was so strange). My friends are shorter than me but seemed ok with looking at the screens and jumping around like maniacs.

Witness the rather scary progression: from all dressed-up, to all-dressed up and rained on (sorry for the weird crop, CG would kill me for putting photos of her up here)

 

… to exhausted, rained-on and all-screamed out (and still wearing a seatbelt). I have to admit to spazzing-out completely when they started the “I’ve got soul” bit. I’m talking jumping up and down and SHRIEKING “It’s my song! Oh my gosh! it’s my song! they’re playing my song! Oh my gosh ohmygoshohmgosh!” and so on. What can I say, I have a a history with it. Note the flashing bunny-ears as well. They kept us entertained for most of the evening (the others got pink ones, I got blue ones) as well as the drive home, not to mention annoying enough of the tall people to get them out of our way…

After getting back and joining in an epic guitar-hero rock band game and generally being  bit over-tired and therefore manic we collapsed and I woke up the next morning to rush home and change, meet someone for coffee and go off to Tamara’s open house market-ty thing. It was AWESOME, the jewellery was absolutely stunning and I’ve already hijacked a Christmas present for me (they look better on me than the potential giftee anyway). Don’t judge me!

From there it was off to Athena’s braai, where I met a bunch of new people, got to document extreme pool-entries:

Appreciated some awesome T-shirts:

  

Reconnected with an old friend (who is also a blogger…). If we ever start a band i think this should be the album-cover. The angry face in my case was the product of extreme exhaustion, not unhappiness!

Appreciated Athena’s super-braai skills (she’s vegetarian, yet quite talented at cooking dead things)

Attempted to take another lab-photo

If we could stop laughing for long enough to take it…

If you’d seen attempt number two, you’d understand my grimace…

And of course, flashing (and fluffy) blue ears, while a total bonus, didn’t quite fulfil my weekend-hat-requirement. Fortunately Tom’s hat DID. Anyone in Spain who feels like buying me a hat, please do so! This one is AWESOME!

Unfortunately while the fun didn’t end there, I left my cameras at home for the rest of the weekend, so you’ll have to take my word for it!

Now to recover and face the week ahead! Which is easier when you have exciting things, like my appointment to re-blueify my hair tomorrow. And of course, visitors like this in the lab:

3…2…1… AWWWWWWWW!

is it just me?

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

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

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

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

The mystery of the Silver Scissors

Not really, when I was younger and gave up playing hockey in favour of ice-skating classes we used to drive past the 'silver scissors hair salon' every Saturday morning on the way to skating classes. and thus ends the mystery. The true enigma though is the way that my hair can transform completely, with no help from me at all!

The scenario is this: You go to get a haircut, for whatever reason. I have a LOT of hair so it's usually when the thinning from the last cut has grown out and I end up looking like a season 1 X-files character :

Until I give up on styling and just try to tie it back which results in another x-files impression (fortunately my clothes are generally NOT made out of old lace curtains):

(photos from here and here).

Eventually, in terror of ending up like this:

I book a hair appointment.

I love going to the hairdresser! You get your hair washed for you 9the ultimate in pamperage I think) and if I go to the right place I get a scalp massage as well that leaves me very happy wth life and so relaxed I can't stand up without wobbling slightly. And then the stylist asks what you want.

There are two possible answers to this questions. I tend to alternate between option 1:

"I want a (insert type here) cut with (insert specifics) and make sure that if I dry it (insert dream styling method of minimal effort) way then (insert ideal style) will happen. And make sure when you (insert style - layer, feather, fluff or whatever) that you avoid the small family of black widow spiders living behind my left ear!*** Ok thanks, I'm going to read my magazine now!"

and of course option 2:

"You are a stylist, which means I trust you around my head with a pair of scissors. Make me pretty! "

Now that Joey's husband's sister's husband's aunt is out of the question I went back to the lady I used to have cut my hair. I generally let her do whatever she wants, and if I give her direct instructions she has been known to refuse (and while I appreciate her stopping me from getting a fringe, or a mohawk (not that I've asked, but I'm pretty sure she would draw the line at shaving my head)) and do something that actually suits me, I was in a giving instructions mood.

Besides, she refused to dye my hair blue, and I really loved having blue hair!

So anyway they cut and trim and use the scary thinning scissors (they scared me so much I screamed "WHAT THE HECK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" the first time when she put the scissors right next to my scalp. And eventually they finish and you leave feelng all pretty - enough so that you might even skip a day or two of gym just to avoid sweating and having to wash it any sooner than is absolutely necessary.

Eventually you wash it and style it and voila: you gone from this:

straight back to this:

No effort required!

Is it a miracle? What's te word for a bad miracle? Maybe it's karma getting me back for all those years I didn't check if my shampoo had been tested on animals.

***(for the record there are no spiders, just wanted to make sure you were paying attention)

Oh, and if you want a good giggle check this out.