Chapter 5

The latest chapter I handed my supervisor has been handed back with a "please sit down, think about what it is you want to acheive with this and try to rewrite, possibly with flow charts" comment. Apparently I managed to write a chapter that even the supervisor, who knows what I'm doing, couldn't follow. He said he tried his best but it was beyond him. Oh well, more work to do I guess. On an up note, I just counted my sequencing and I have a total of 38 000 bases of DNA sequenced for my next chapter...almost done there :)

A week later....

It took me a whole week to get over the bleary, tired phase of no coffee. If it weren't for the fact I enjoy my cappuccinos so much, I'd seriously consider not starting drinking again when the diet is off. Strangely I have had no actual coffee cravings, or any other cravings for that matter. I went off the idea of chocolate in a matter of days, in spite of the lindt chocolates sitting on the bench. This is the only diet I've been on where I've had a whole week without feeling deprived in some way, I hope that doesn't mean I'm not going to lose any weight. "No pain no loss" sort of thing.

On related news, I set the kitchen on fire on Sunday....or at least a pan, but with great presence of mind, and thinking about how badly I could splash burning oil round the kitchen if I was foolish enough to pick up the pan, I picked up the lid and dropped it over the top, thus putting it out. Then I spent ten minutes with windows and doors open, fanning the fire alarm to stop it beeping. Nice to know it works.

I'm now at stage two of my "while my parents are away I'm going to clean up the house" plan. I've tidied up the kitchen and done the household tasks that needed doing before my parents left. Now under the house. I'm going to haul out everything beside where the car is parked and repack it in some form of order with shelving involved. It doesn't help that most of this is bits of wood and metal my dad thinks will come in handy someday. I expect it will take all weekend.

Next weekend I have to have the kitchen cleared out as the renovators (read my uncle and aunt who have a house repair/renovation company) will be coming to gut the kitchen to build our new one. After all my efforts to clean, the house will be in disaster phase at just about the time my parents get back....of course.

Very Sleepy

I'm very sleepy. This is not a good way to start what will be a very busy week. I think part of it is that we are having a cold snap here and I just want to curl up in my nice warm bed. The other part is that my parents went to Scotland on Saturday, so I have the house to myself which is a little out of my normal habits. Not to mention I took them to the airport on Saturday morning and had to get up at 4:20am to do it. They will be tireder than me though. I calculated they were travelling for 38 hours to get to Edinborough. I also started a diet on Saturday so there may be toxins releasing from my liver as I type.

A chapter!!!

I have finally handed in chapter 5 of my thesis to my supervisor. Now I'm working on materials and methods - for a quickie hand in to make it look like I've done more work :) I'd be writing it now, but I'm getting bleary and I'm filling in time till the tangential flow cell is finished and I can go home.

Juicer

I have a new juicer and went to the markets yesterday to buy some fruit and veg. So far I've tried apple and carrot and apple carrot and rockmelon - yum, also easy to clean. I was going to try beetroot in there too and ginger, but I forgot to buy ginger and I've missplaced the beetroot. The juicer can also make sorbet, mince meat, make pasta and shave ice (though I think you need another attachment for that). I'm going to freeze some apple and make apple sorbet this week. I also saw a pizza maker which makes pizza in 5 minutes. I tried it - crispy on the bottom, golden on the top, gourmet style - amazing...If I had a couple of hundred dollars free I might be eating a lot of pizza.

Pink nails

I am currently typing this with nails almost 2cm long - plastic, pink nails. I thought I'd try the technology and see if it had improved since the last time I tried. It has. The nails look very realistic, are glued on with an instant set very strong glue (don't glue your fingers together - or worse, your eyelids) and seem able to weather the pounding I'm giving them. Most people think they are acrylic, professionally attached nails, so I must have done a good job.
Downside; typing is hard, doing up buttons is really hard and there are some other things that you have to pay a lot of attention to so you don't injure yourself while doing them.
Upside; I have long pink nails :) ..... Usually my nails are short, bitten and broken. And the fingernail polish is chipped within 5 minutes of application.

as promised, I'm writing more

I said I'd write more and so I am. That chapter I was talking about last month is three paper references away from handing to my supervisor. I found that I'd made an erroneous assumption in my discussion and had to edit, but on the up side, I found a paper discussing something I'd given up on finding an example of.

I spent last long weekend house sitting - air conditioning, 1m wide flat screen tv, extensive cable channels, evening strolls round the hills of Yarrawonga, looking at houses I'll never be able to afford...I didn't get very much work done. Maybe next long weekend I'll clean out under the house :)

In two weeks my parents are going on holidays for a month to Scotland. I'm taking this opportunity to go on the liver cleansing diet, as I've gained a lot of weight and this is a good way to clean out all the garbage in my system prior to seriously not eating junk food. I've done it before and know that there's no way I'll do it if there are other people in the house wanting to use the kitchen. You actually have to do proper meal preparation for it and it's too complicated doing that if my mother is cooking for other people at the same time.

My mum is buying a juicer - just in time - fresh vegetable juice is on the diet list. (I just skipped that part last time). And before you wrinkle your nose up, the next door neighbours have let us sample some of their vegetable juices and they are really lovely. The trick is to put a bit of fruit in to sweeten it.