Welcome. Admission isn't much. Just your soul. Perhaps your as-yet-unfertilized offspring.
Hurm. Life has been, shall we say, challenging, of late. Lab continues to frustrate me. I want a vacation, but money is tight. Halley has a growth on her leg that has been around for a while, but just this week started changing colors. Ugh. I am thinking all sorts of negative things associated with that one. Manuscript writing is going more slowly than either me or my boss would like, adding to the stress. See, I have the complex whereby I can't stand to let anybody down, especially not a person whom I hold in high esteem. Weekly visits to Cambridge to talk were under review. I was doing so well, no reason not to go twice or once monthly. Hah. In steps the Stress Monster and all of my good work is lost. Or at least buried under a pile of stinky, smelly, oozing, searing Stress Monster poop. Really.
Ok, now that the torrent of my consciousness has been reduced to a stream, maybe I can make some sense of all this for you, my precious reader.
After the wedding, after Glasgow, things were supposed to relax and slow back down. Time was to be taken for writing. Conscientiously, I told my boss that she needed to exert some external pressure, as I am losing my will on this project. So she does. And in the meantime, I realize that I cannot actually work here during the day, since most of my labmates cannot wipe their own asses and have found me to be rather sure handed with the towels. Thus, I was being constantly interrupted with menial, stoopid, if-you-gave-it-a-moment's-thought-you-could-figure-this-out questions. For many people this would not be at issue, but I have concentration issues to begin with, so this was just exacerbating the issue.
My solution was to switch to nights. I have worked closer to second shift hours for the past two weeks and there has been some progress. My idea of nights is coming into the lab at noon or so and staying until midnight or 1. Then on Thursdays, I pull all-nighters, as I have to bee here at 9 AM for weekly meetings and if I went home to sleep, I would never make it out of bed in time. The first week was brutal, the second more amenable. It has been a while since I have pulled all-nighters. I swore when I got this old, I would not be doing this. But it does mean I get more work done with less distraction. ugh.
This week changed. I decided to get some bench work done, putting aside the writing for a week. Thus I am trying my damnedest to get a purification done in three days. Plus I am trying to get to sleep at more normal (1 AM) hours. This has been thwarted by my love (addiction, really) of caffeine and my desire to escape my own reality. Best way to escape one's own reality: read a book.
I just finished my guilty pleasure book, Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner, and am in the middle of The Fountainhead, by Rand. It is interesting. Though, since I can't read only one book at a time, I will start Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, which has been next to my bedside since early last year when I purchased it shortly after traveling to MIT to hear her give a reading. I was enthralled, to say the least.
Still waiting on reimbursements for travel to Glasgow. I am slightly peeved by this. "They" know I am a graduate student (they being the people who have yet to reimburse me) and are quite familiar with the whole paucity-of-money thing.
And in knitting/spinning/sewing news: spinning has taken a backseat until the manuscript is finished; I am currently 90% with
Tempting, 15% done with
FMB that I am doing for myself, and am in possession of the yarn and have made up the pattern for The Boyfriend Sweater.
Yes, folks, there will be a Boyfriend Sweater this year. Perhaps not finished this year, but at the very least conceived of and, perchance, cast on. TSB knows about it and he has been explicitly warned about the ramifications of the BFS. We shall see how it goes. Sewing is a bit stalled. Maybe some pictures next time. Of the 50's style kitchen apron I designed. If you are lucky...
ciao
