Different kinds of high

I'm at home, having flown over on the 18th.

The journey home was interesting, to say the least. I met up with my friend Sarah at the airport. Sarah has an even bigger aversion to flying than I do, and as we sat next to each other on the plane, this made the journey that bit more fun (Sarah: "I have two bottles of champagne in the hold. The bottles might burst from the pressure drop as we ascend. The corks may then hit the hull, puncturing it, and causing us to plunge to the ground. We're all going to die". Me: "This is making me feel so much better."). But flying with friends is fun.

As an aside, one of my fellow students, whose name I didn't know, was at the airport with me. I lived in fear of meeting Sarah and having the introduce the other party. I tried sneaking a look at her passport on the pretext of having a gawk at the photo, but she was having none of it, saying she looked awful. I eventually resolved the problem by looking at her e-mail booking printout, pretending to be interested in how much her flight cost when I was really scanning the copy frantically looking for her name. I found it, and then one of her friends, also in my class appeared. Guess what? Someone else that I meet all the time, but again with an 'elusive' name.

In the end we got split up so it didn't matter, but I am really sick of my complete inability to remember other people's names. Even those whose company I've enjoyed more than once in the pub. Bizarrely, I'll find myself recalling a raft of associated information about them, but their first name? Forget it. Go figure. I think I'll have to resort to using a filofax.

Home is the usual. Crap internet connection, and I have reams of research to do for revision and a report that is due in the first week I go back. Holidays? Ha!

And now onto something else.

Let me formally declare I am not a fan of shopping. Gay and not a shopaholic? The two can go together, and they've always made comfortable bedfellows in me. I'm very precise in what I want from clothes, so if I can't capture that perfect pair of jeans, or a shirt that makes my chest look like it has a larger circumference than my stomach, I don't buy them. I never compromise on this, which makes every retail expedition a source of misery for me most of the time. And I hate changing room mirrors.

Until today.

Yesterday, I went to Cork to try on clothes. It wasn't a complete success (I didn't buy anything), but there were clothes there that said to me 'maybe', and having tried them on, I made a startling discovery:

Since I last bought a pair of pants, I have lost about 3 inches from around my waist. As if this wasn't enough to spur me on, I also discovered, while changing in the rooms with the merciless mirrors, that the shape of my upper body had headed some way in the direction in which I had been trying to bulldoze it for the best part of a year. In other words, I looked a small bit less like the bespectacled toothpick in the Mr. Muscle ads. This is seriously gratifying. I never seemed to see any progress when I was over in Brighton, and I'd all but convinced myself that my genetic predisposition would ensure that I would remain a rake for life (I believe the term in bodybuilding circles is 'ectomorph'). I was almost on the point of giving up on all this, when I started noticing the results properly for the first time this week. So, all the protein milkshakes and bored waiting for weights benches to become free when I would really rather be doing something else have paid off, and I resolve to keep going. But I'm reaching escape velocity from the point.

After the novelty wore off, I stopped examining myself and exited the cubicle, giving way to the irate queue that had formed outside. I eventually went home to think about what I was going to do (I tell you, snap decisions are my speciality) and decided I would go back today.
So I went back today, took a deep breath and dived into the fray. Luck was on my side, and before long I had a groovy pair of jeans, a white long sleeve top, and a white linen shirt (and damn if that last one doesn't look cool). Spurred on by this, I met my sister for lunch and then went back for seconds. Three further purchases were made, all of them unplanned, but all of them quite fetching. I really don't want to think about how much money I spent though, but hey, clothes are an investment, right? RIGHT?!

So that's it. Some new stuff to swan around in this weekend.

All I have to do is go back to Cork tomorrow to pick up that slate grey pair of combats that will complement my runners perfectly, and would really go well with that t-shirt I saw on hungout.com the other day, which in turn would necessitate the purchase of a new pair of black jeans. Although then I'd need to pick up some new runners to match that...

A Problem? Who, me?

Well, my grant cheque has finally cleared and with St. Paddy's day in sight, the party is about to begin! This one is inescapable, but I think I'll be doing it without the green paint and the awful paddy sing-songs.

Up in London over the weekend in Kensington, meeting friends. Lots of food and drink consumed. Mussels rock! I'm definitely going back to them again.

My community pharmacy placement was today. I now know something about my future career path: It won't include community pharmacy work in the long term.

Tomorrow is going to be an onslaught, and getting up the day after to catch the flight home should be a barrel of laughs. Oh well, it has to be done. At least Sarah, one of the aforementioned friends, will be holding my hand for me on the same flight home.

A mixed bag

I FINALLY got my grant. The cheque was lodged on Wednesday, and now all I have to do is wait for it to clear, and partytime!

My biology test yesterday wasn't a total catastrophe.

I am suffering one of the worst hangovers in living memory, having hit the pub at 4pm yesterday after said test, and drinking solidly for about 10 hours. I got back to the house, collapsed outside my bedroom door and lay there for a while, before deciding that my bed would be preferable to the threadbare carpet. I got up, swanned into the bedroom of one of my flatmates, announced that there was no way in hell I would be going into college later, and asked her to pick up some notes for me. With that, I fell into bed, and showed my appreciation for it by vomiting all over the sheets. Twice.

I have to work tomorrow, and I have a feeling that this aftermath from hell is going to extend into the second day. After work, I must get on a train to London to visit two friends of mine that I used to work with in Dublin, which means I have to do some of the preparation tonight. God help me.

This is the last time I am doing something like this, I swear.

Sniff

I got my first fail in college.

The circus that started out as my first attempt at a titration practical two weeks ago didn't yield much fruit. I got an A+ in the first half of the lab, but an E in the second half. This was the part that saw me stay behind for two hours after everyone else was gone, determined to get it right. Relatively speaking, I didn't do too badly (quite a few of the class had failed both parts), but it was a monumental slap in the face, having worked so hard on it. Ironically, the successful exercise I completed in 10 minutes.

I had been forewarned about this by some classmates, which was why I was lying in bed at 4am this morning after a sleepless night, getting more and more angry about the fail that I was pretty sure was coming my way.

Today's lab was better, as I now had a feel for what I was doing, and it was fun watching everyone else go berserk looking for a pipette filler that actually WORKED (in a university that achieved a QAA rating of 25 out of 25 for its research facilities, dontcha know), but as today's exercise basically entailed more titrations, and I hadn't got the earlier report back at that time, I didn't know what it was I had done wrong the first time. Later on, I got feedback on the previous endeavour, and noting my mistakes, I know I unwittingly repeated some of them again today.

For those in the know, it was using titres that didn't agree to 0.1ml with each other, and not reading burettes to 0.02ml, an impossibility, given the equipment we have. Hardly worth marking someone down from an A to an E. Especially when they haven't in the least been warned about it.

Anyway, I made a decent fist of today's work, and after that I headed off down to the lecturer's office to discuss how I was getting on. I met him at his office, and sensing the time was right, settled into a chair to moan about how ours was the only group that never got an introductory session about labs in general (the reason why we were all running around like headless chickens on our first day), the severity of the marking of my report, and how crap a supervisor my lecturer in organic chemistry was, whom we had again today, but mercifully only for a short period of time before he disappeared for the afternoon.

It was then that the fire alarm in the building went off.

Undaunted, the two of us went outside and I got it all off my chest there, in the middle of all the people milling about. At least he admitted I had a point, saying that our group had gotten the bum deal.

Feeling a little better after that, I went off in search of the spawn of satan that marked last fortnight's report, only to find a note on the door of his office saying that he was gone and wouldn't be back until the 23rd of March. Gone while the going was good? Indeed...

The only respite of the day was the giggle session that was our meet-up in a study cubicle after the labs, where we started off checking with each other as we wrote our reports, but succumbed to hysterics within the hour.

No more of them for a month, thank God in heaven.

Now I have to pick myself up, dust myself off, and study for Biology.

Holidays on Friday 18th. Bring it on...

Crap Week...

I have another one of those horrible labs tomorrow. The general consensus is that it's worse than the first one.

I have a biology test on Thursday. In time-honoured tradition, I'm starting my revision tonight.

My grant still hasn't come, despite promises that it was going to be here by last Friday.


I am going to crack.