bad blogger's bullet points

• Graduation was stressful but worthwhile (also the house now looks nice for once), R looked great in his robes and funny hat and is a doctor at last hurrah, and I thoroughly recommend Le Petit Blanc for a family celebration


• Summer School was last week, it was fraught and frantic and far too hot, I nearly lost it in the middle of the week but fortunately the work let up slightly and the weather got slightly cooler and it became more bearable, so I made it to the end. And I did enjoy being back in a lab again. Now I just have the assignments to finish


• School Holidays are here so we have to look after our own kids bah. Took O to Gulliver's World yesterday, he said it was the best day of his life.


• Work Work Work is still always here, I have a report to write for Work-work and an assignment to finish for OU-work, before we go on holiday.


• Summer Holidays are next week, we are off first thing on Sunday for 2 weeks. Waah, half of me wishes I could stay at home and catch up with my life.

not waving but ...

... drowning under a tsunami of flat packs, paint, assignments, worry about shoes and the exact shade of green for the pashmina my fashun consultants tell me I need to get to go with my New For The Graduation dress (as picture but brown with cream spots instead of black & white), reports, meetings, trips to London, trips to Ikea, power tools¹, cleaning products², broken legged best friends, free vodka, trips to the tip, new white goods, washing & ironing, booking tables at posh restaurant, being too hot, fretting, worrying and panicking



I haven't even found time to order my copy of Key to the Identification of Academic Hoods of the British Isles, so sadly I shall miss out on the opportunities for academic twitching. Although I am hoping the Mongolian robes make another appearance.

1. tip of the day: do not let stressed, pre-menstrual, sleep deprived, living on diet pepsi, peanut butter, pitta bread & bananas, women lose with industrial strength hammer drills. They get very upset if the wall moves and makes their hole not straight.

2. several pods of dolphins have been sacrificed already

well it's not like I was busy

I gave C a quick ring yesterday (need second opinion on the exact wording of the engraving to be engraved on R's graduation pressie), only it ended up not being quick as she'd broken her ankle that morning (and this time, for possibly the first time in her long history of injuries, she hadn't even been drinking). She tends to not pay much heed to advice to 'rest' so wisely they have refused to give her a weight-bearing cast for at least a week. In fact they have told her she must lie down for a week, she can't even sit up. OMG. And she is the carer for her 80+ year old mother, who has limited mobility although fortunately (in this context at least) her primary care needs are emotional rather than physical. Unfortunately they live 120 miles away and I cannot get away from work this week and then I have a dayschool on Saturday, but I'm going up there on Saturday evening for a few days to get the shopping in and stuff. Oh and I've been volunteered for another working group on local issues. Ah well, ask a busy woman and all that (right up until the time she starts screaming hysterically ...)

must ... breath ... deeply

must ... not .... panic

Until today my to-do list for the next month looked like this:

• catch up on course work I am behind on
• complete assignment for main course
• do preparation for summer school
• do assignments for summer school
• draft poster presentation for summers chool
• go to summer school
  
• write 1 long report for work
• write 3 short reports for work
• spend several days working away
• do stuff with O (eg swimming, bike rides, theatre)
• spend a couple of hours a week on community committments
• lose several stone
• try to remember to do shopping, wash clothes etc

... the thought of all of which was starting to stress me out but I thought no, I can manage this if I get myself organised, it is do-able. And then today, I find out that I have to add

• gut house from top to bottom (or move)

R is graduating this summer after all. I had convinced myself that it wouldn't be until the winter now, because the assessment boycott meant that his external examiners hadn't looked at his revised thesis. But now the dispute is settled and the examiners have examined and he is going to graduate on July 12. Which I should be happy about, as it's been 5 years of hard work for him to get to this. Instead I have been in floods of tears at the prospect of his parents coming to visit in less than a month.

We don't actually know if they are coming yet. Although it's unlikely they would want to stay at home for the traditional cultural events, they are going to forn parts the week after so maybe they might not come. It sounds horrible to say it but I hope they don't, I do not need the hassle. R suggested we pay to put them up in a hotel, which sounds a terrible thing to do, but would be better than them staying here, at least we wouldn't have to make the bedrooms fit for parental habitation.

-

doing the timewarp

My life has regressed 20 years. I've listened to Half Man Half Biscuit non-stop for 3 days and tomorrow my friend K is coming over to help me with my chemistry. I met K at university the first time I went; unlike me he paid attention, did his homework and became Dr K and now senior academic Dr K. So I'm taking advantage of our 20 year friendship to blag some tuition, to help me catch up. I hope he can help me understand how to calculate the energies of Frenkel defects in silver halides (and also why one would even want to).

gratuitious random rant

I hate stoopid feckin hippies with their soya milk and their non-functioning tvs and their dirty messy vile white 'dreads' and/or asymetric hair-don'ts and their meals of vegan slops and their utterly self-centre self-obsessed 'hey let's not get heavy' world view which causes them to take no concern for or responsibility for the impact of their actions on others.

Thank you for listening.

experimenting

Me and my zen are experimenting with new music from my audioscrobbler recommendations. Playing with my toys beats working hurrah (and boo to my now-overdue assignment err ...). Meanwhile O has been doing lots of maths experiments in the week long Maths Circus his teachers held in class last week. He loved doing all the counting and weighing and measuring, and says maths is his favourite thing at school hurrah (his fave thing in class at school, obv playing with his friends in the playground is his main motivation for turning up every day)

happiness complete(-er)

To make things completely perfect I've now got one of those doo-dads from maplin that looks like a tape and means you can play your mp3 player on your old car stereo. Hurrah for no more having to burn mp3s to cd then tape them in order to have choons on the move.

PS BB7 starts tonight, I may be gone some time ...

in love

OK so it's not quite as small or slim or pretty as an ipod. But it's got a much bigger memory, and brains always beats looks in the end. I totally adore it. The only thing I didn't like was the earphones. It is so double plus ungood to have white headphones on a not-ipod mp3 player. Plus they didn't sit nicely in my ears, and had quite poor reviews for sound quality. But with my trusty sony earphones, the sound is beautiful (and doesn't leak much hurrah). And to make my happiness complete I got a cable so I can play it through the stereo. This bout of consumerism has made me a happy bunny. So what if I go deaf in 10 years time?

here comes the summer

Poor balcony, it has been much neglected since I stopped smoking and so no longer sit out on it every day in all weathers. However, a few days of sunshine has finally shamed me into doing something about it. We chucked out the mouldering peat free gro-bags, dried up empty pots and assorted weeds, and planted some nice new pots. It doesn't quite look like this picture yet (this is from 3 years ago) but hopefully it will be looking nice soon, and we'll even have some homegrown produce (just in time for us to go away for a few weeks and it all to get parched when the neighbours forget to water it while we're gone). I even got a hanging basket and some flowers for outside the front door. Just watch it stop being sunny now ...

coming over all cultural

last night we all went to the theatre, for what I think is O's first time seeing a real play in a real theatre (I don't know how that happened, that we've never been before, must make sure to look out for kid friendly plays to take him to in future). We went to see the fabulous Skid 180, written by our fabulous friend & neighbour. It was really impressive. The words are brilliant, the production is excellent and the on-stage bmx-ing is stunning. Go see it if you're get a chance, in Manchester or Australia. Several of our neighbours were at the show last night too, so O is now out on his bike, playing 'Skid 180' with his mates who've seen it too.

oooh I'm so 'cited

I've been thinking for a while that I must enter the century of the fruitbat and get one of these newfangled mp3 players, and almost bought an el cheapo one t'other day. Now some kind person has given me some £££ which they insist I spend upon myself and their £££ together with my existing ££ may add up to ipod £££ whoo. I'm thinking of getting a 4gb ipod nano. Anyone got one, are they as good as the hype? Or should I maybe go for a non-appley one? Even tho they look so kewl and sleek and mmmmmm

edit: I'm tempted by the Creative Zen 8 gig model now ... slightly less good looking maybe but twice as much gigs and good reviews ... decisions decisions

making your own fun

So, I was googling to see if there was anything on t'interweb yet about the bmx dirt jumps mounds track thingy the local bike punks have been building near our house¹ (they have made a fab job of it, and are also trying to teach the local scrotes some skills and some manners if they want to use it too, so no doubt the council will come round and flatten their unofficial fun boo), and inadvertantly discovered a local car park is a prime d0gg1ng location. Ewwww. But then in the process of finding the explanatory linkage, searching bbc news for d0gg1ng found the news that K9 is getting his own series hurrah although this is going to provoke several months of 'when's the K9 show on?' then several more of 'but why haven't we got jetix on our tv?'. Boo.



1) please insert correct young persons' vernacular, but you get the idea.

so how was your day?

This is how O says his was:

"a shiny rainbow star, all colours of the rainbow"

And what makes a shiny rainbow star of a day? A 2 mile 'walk' in Grin Low Woods on a slightly damp day, in which he and his best friend climbed trees, looked for bugs, played with sticks, explored Gruffalo caves, ate jam sarnies and moaned about being cold; sleep on the way back in the car; get home and play cars with best friend for another couple of hours; have ice-cream for pudding. Hurrah for shiny rainbow days.

big boys do cry

Poor O was emotionally drained by tonight's Dr Who. He was alternately delighted to see K9, terrified of the BatPeople, devastated when K9 was destroyed, and finally choked with tears when K9 reappeared right at the end. Followed by rummaging in the toybox to find Teksta. Awwww.

disappointed

I know I shouldn't be surprised or even care about this, but I can't help being yet another person who'd burn my White Stripes records if I had any (threatening to delete my mp3s doesn't have the same ring). Bill Hicks put it best:

Do a commercial, you're off the artistic roll call, every word you say is suspect, you're a corporate whore and eh, end of story.

talking of procrastinating ...

... today I finished my first Gruaniad hard sudoku puzzle hurrah

you talking to me?

I found an interesting article while surfing instead of reconfiguring investment strategy. It all sounds very familiar:

Procrastination is not just an issue of time management or laziness. It's about feeling paralyzed and guilty as you channel surf, knowing you should be cracking the books or reconfiguring your investment strategy. ...

"The main reason people procrastinate is fear," says Neil Fiore, Ph.D.. ... "Procrastinators fear they'll fall short because they don't have the requisite talent or skills. "They get overwhelmed and they're afraid they'll look stupid." ...

Children of authoritarian parents are prone to procrastinate. Pychyl speculates that children with such parents postpone choices because their decisions are so frequently criticized--or made for them. Alternatively, the child may procrastinate as a form of rebellion. Refusing to study can be an angry--if self-defeating--message to Mom and Dad. ...

Several symptoms of depression feed procrastination. Decision-making is another problem. Because depressed people can't feel much pleasure, all options seem equally bleak, which makes getting started difficult and pointless.

I looked in vain for the second page telling you how to stop being a procrastinator :-(

hurrah for t'internet

everyone to whom I am related and most people with whom I work now think I am a World Expert on all things computerish. Little do they realise the Seekrit of My Awesome Geek Power comes down to 3 things

• RTFM
• push all the buttons just to see what happens
• if you don't know, google knows someone who does

Thus when R shamefacedly confessed to jamming the cd drive, I fixed it armed only with an unbent paper clip

More fun with paperclips:

• history of
• art with
• uses for

climb every mountain

well, for certain values of 'climb' and 'mountain', where 'mountain' = 'west pennine moor' and 'climb' = 'drive up to the top of hill and then walk along on the flat'. Took us over 2 hours to go 3 miles around Blackstone Edge but it was fun. O brought B along with him (for O, anything experience is better if he can bring a friend) and they ran about getting muddy in peat bogs and climbing up embankments and generally having fun. Next weekend we're visting the Nine Ladies (weather permitting).

Now I should be devoting myself to curly arrows but have distracted myself with the aid of wine and sing-a-long-a-Bill on the headphones. I really must remember not to listen to music I really like while working.