gnommi

Today I finally started writing the first discussion section of my thesis. This is a relief like you wouldn't believe! Finally all the data wrangled, analysed and correctly presented for half of my project! Now I can start to speculate wildly about its significance. My supervisor tells me that the commonest error in PhDs is to over-analyse data. I can absolutely see why... faced with data that you've ate, slept and breathed for the best part of a year, failing to make any connections with anything else or for it to be trivial is just unthinkable. Must... take... care... must... add... caveats...

In other news, I've invented another beetle:



This one is an ungodly hybrid between an Egyptian dung beetle and a Floridian orb-web spider. He cute! hobbit_dave thinks that I should mount them and flog them on Etsy. I have quite the collection now, and prints sell for around $30 and originals for much more... and MAN am I broke. I've tried to get a part-time job this week, but short of escorts and care assistants, there is sod all around. Even Ikea aren't hiring, Goddamn them.

Also, anyone out there alive? You're darned quiet these days...

... though I'm not sure why anyone would want the answers to these!

( survey thingy of deep miscellaneousness )

The sewing marathon finally all came together and prosepina looked absolutely BEAUTIFUL for her wedding*. Credit too to maracacha who was on hairdressing duty :D



The wedding went without hitch: nothing but happy smiling faces (apart from the spit-roast hog, which looked a bit put out). We stayed in the gorgeous and rather eccentric Banwell Castle in Somerset. More pictures to come after the hangover subsides...

*bit more detail of the cape here.

It's been a while, hasn't it!?

Well, I spent a week in London doing an intensive burst of lab-work to try and get the last project over with so we can write it up for publication. Then had one night at home to grab clean clothes then headed back for Field Day in Hackney and warehouse shennanigans in Hackney Wick.

( Field Day was incredible! )

This week, looking after my sister's shop while she's on holiday. Next week: prosepina's wedding outfit and finishing this thesis chapter!

Another day in the lab tying up ends yesterday. Must have photographed 100+ and scored easily 200+ slides and didn't leave the lab until almost 20.30, still with lots left to do. Headed over to join excy's birthday posse at Garlic and Shots and had a very overdue catch-up with maracacha, mock2, jasontheknight, Yvonne, Marianne and Timbo. We seemed to get lots of free Bloodshots* for some reason that we couldn't quite fathom: despite my loathing of tomato juice, they proved to be really quite more-ish. A bit like being smacked in the mouth with an extra-hot pizza, but with vodka.

Finally trudged home through the rain in the pitch dark over slimy gravel at 1am, entered the house as quiet as a mouse, only to have my insanely garlicky aura wake the sleeping Hobbit up all by itself.

*Vodka, tomato juice, garlic, chili, spices. Quite lumpy: crushed peppercorns, chili seeds and assorted other spicy stuff gets stuck in your teeth with Hilarious Consequences.

...but at least this one matches my journal theme!

Getting quite demoralised by my thesis again. Every time I try to finish off this damn chapter in earnest it just gets bigger but no more finished. EndNote web has now stopped being able to cite as I write too which is just UGH. I need to get the full desktop version but that entails going to London and I have no money in my account to buy a ticket with.

Seriously considering abandoning my thesis and just trying to get a post-grad research assistant or technical post somewhere nearby. I just can't see this ever being worth it. The thought of working in research and doing this for a living just fills me with horror.

After a spot of ridiculously late-night empirical boiler experimentation... no sleep comes.

All that is going through my head is this snatch of Keats:
What can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is withered from the lake, and no birds sing.

Stupid brain. Kill it with fire.

In other news, me and a Finnish friend 2-manned Molten Core today. Even Ragnaros. Loot was risible! Why was that stuff *ever* considered epic!? How the hell did we ever scrape together 40 people to do it!? Got feralheart shoulders, but mainly Arcanist and Cenarion. Typical for a 'lock/loladin combo. >_>

Upgraded to living well and truly in suburbia, where the squirrels frolic daily between 08.45 and 09.45, next doors cleaners come on a Tuesday and I still can't work the Economy 7.

Had to go into the lab again yesterday to sort out some data and to meet a former co-worker for a well-earned pint. Of course, the Tube was out, so we walked from the lab in Holborn to the pub in Smithfield (Bart's Hospital is right outside the market). Lovely weather for tramping through the City. My lovely friend Lydia and I rashly decided to walk back to Waterloo along the river, but we got the giggles so she had to stop on the steps of St Paul's along the way.



New house is more or less a done deal, so we will be moving on July 1st. All offers of manpower and boxes appreciated! Willing to make endless cups of tea/coffee ;)

Today has been laundry, cleaning, packing, making figures for my thesis, researching ALDH as a marker for cancer stem cells and trying not to eat the rest of the tiramisu.