The fellowship of the extended version

On my trip to Ayr to scrapbook last weekend my cousin and I decided to watch all three extended versions of LOTR...in one day. Twelve hours later, at 1am, I was thinking - even more than I did when I saw it at the cinema - hurry up and get on the ship and finish this thing! I must say I liked the extra scenes with the hobbits and Frodo still annoyed my with his constant worried eyebrow look. But now I've done it. I too have seen the the entire extended epic. The next day I was violently ill in the evening. I'm blaming too much TV - maybe I should have slowly become aclimatised to LOTR by watching the short verions one at a time again...maybe eating sugary stuff all day didn't help either.

a new internet game

I've been going to pubmed ( a medical/health data base)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
and doing searches on the words NASA And "word of interest" and seeing how many research papers turn up. 19 for bacteriophage. Its amazing what NASA is involved with. I got interested because a woman here is looking at a protein in crustaceans and she found they have been taking crabs up into space to look at muscle wastage (craaaabs in spaaaace). Then someone else piped up with the research done on gut flora to try to avoid methane built up in spacesuits...faaarts in spaaace! heh.

The big weekend

This has been something of an event filled weekend for me. I went to Gem club on Friday night and sawed a couple of rocks in half for my nephew, then after a late night, I had a very full Saturday. My cousin and I went to Creative Memories Scrapbooking day and scrapbooked all day, with a break for lunch - caesar salad at the Blue Bottle cafe - yum. Afterwards we walked down Gregory street to the Strand and watched the "Living Heroes" parade for VP60 day. Lots of veterans in very nice old cars, plus some very large pieces of current military equipment and people..the machines were large, not the people. After that we went down to the beach with the old picnic blanket and ate beef in lime and coriander with noodles (using chopsticks - in the dark) and waited for the fireworks display - we had a ring side seat. A jet went by at the end and hit the afterburners so we had a very impressive show.
Today I went to the memorial for the Battle of Porton (1945). My Cousin Bill (or rather my dads cousin), fought in it and was one of four survivors to unveil the plinth commemorating those who fought and those who died there. The death toll was pretty shocking and all who spoke said something about the tactical decision making to send the men in being badly flawed. The battle had been swept under the carpet until the daughter of one of the commanders wrote a book this year which brought it to the attention of those who make decisions about such things as memorials. Since Townsville was having VP60 this year, and most of the men at Porton came from Townsville regiments, they made a memorial at Anzac park. As my cousin Bill said, "about bally time".
Now I'm at uni setting up the freeze drier to refresh some silica beads. Speaking of which....

Sick of Pink

I have backslidden (is that a word even?) and am playing with my blog instead of getting to grips with rewriting a chapter, as I should be doing this morning. Having finally had my eyeballs peeled away enough by the colour of my blog so that I can't stand the pink anymore, I'm going green...but only in a colourific way. Hmm, as I glance down at myself, I realise I am also dressed completely in green - except the red socks. I wonder if there is a subconcious reason for all the green?

Finally waking up

I was tired all week last week. I even went home early and had a nap on Monday. Then last night I had broken sleep so I'm tired again this morning. I've been grumpy and short with people and part of my broken sleep is from waking up with adrenaline surges from dreaming about being grumpy and short with people. I'm now on my second cup of strong black Redback percolated coffee (from malanda) and I'm waking up. I may actually get some productive work done today.
I resent being dependant on "drugs" to function though. I should be alert even when coffee free. I just know if I go cold turkey off the coffee it will be futile in the long run because I'm hooked on the whole coffee culture, Gloria Jeans white chocolate Mochas. I'll just end up needing it again after a week of suffering through withdrawal fatigue.

Too many people with the same name

I got an email this morning entitled "Daves Food Joke" so I clicked on it and was terribly confused. "When did Dave join Dietpower?" I wondered..."and why?" Then I realised it was a different Dave. There should only be one. Didn't they watch Highlander?

So tired after a week off

I spent most of last week in Cairns at Ridges on the Esplanade at a conference on aquatic animal health. I had a really good time, made contacts, met up with people, discussed my thesis and a kit I'm designing for Tropbio and ate lots and lots. Ryutaro took us to a Japanese cafteria behind the night markets the first night - big yummy servings. The second night he took Kerry and I to Shamogen (I think). It was a more formal Japanese restaurant and was absolutely delicious. I ate japanese dishes I hadn't heard of and was taught how to eat them properly. Shibu shibu is my favourite. I also found a custard I actually like instead of despise. Its a savoury egg custard and tastes nothing like custard :) We topped off the night, after two hours of eating, with green tea icecream and bean paste.
I still haven't quite recovered. I'm very tired at the moment so I think I'll go home early. I've finished evaporating paraformaldehyde to sterilise the PC3 lab, so I don't have to be here till 9am tomorrow - nap time I think. Its not like I'm getting anything else of value done. I thought of going to chat to a bank and a medical insurance company about changing to them, but it just seems too difficult. Not to mention its cool and rainy here and great weather to be in bed.