Fingers, do you need them?

I taught a private swing dancing lesson last night. It was in Gunghalin. Afterwards I rode my scooter to my tango lesson. I don't know how my fingers didn't drop off. One of the students in the private lesson said that he'd heard that riding at 80km/h had a wind chill factor of 10 degrees below ambient temperature. Last night was -3! This morning I didn't feel like I wanted to have fingers, they hurt so much due to the cold. The problem is that there is a tiny bit of moisture in my winter gloves, as a result, when I get on the road, cold fingers in seconds. It's all a bit crap.
What else is a bit crap is that I tried on some tango shoes, and they were lovely. They fit, they looked good and they made the dancing better. Well, that's not technically the crap bit, the crap bit is the cost. More private lessons needed to get those shoes. But then I think of my upcoming trip and think that maybe it's not worth spending money on shoes here when I could spend money on shoes in Europe. Or food even. Oh woe is me!
On another note, science appears to be even more my bitch that yesterday and all I need to make today complete is a yellow plus, white plus, curly, tubby virgin female. So cross your fingers for me that I get what I need.

PS I'm getting a haircut today and I may have dyed my hair VERY dark brown.

science is my bitch

Today science is my bitch. Tomorrow I'll be science's bitch. But today we must revel and enjoy because I finally have something going right. No doubt, by writing this down, I have now cursed myself to failure of the greatest degree. But for today, I don't care.
For the techical nerds out there, I have my yellow plus insertion on the second chromosome, and I'm one cross away from having no life and getting the BIG EXPERIMENT underway. This is the culmination of 3 years of work, and it's starting to look like I might actually have some results before I go to conferences in Europe, huzzah!
For now that is all, later there may be pictures of the dress I'm sewing, but only maybe.

Belated birthday presents

Last Monday I told my class that it was my birthday the next day. One student told me after class that if he'd known in advance that it was my birthday, he would have bought me flowers. I jokingly said that that was okay, I accepted gifts up until a week or so after my birthday.
This week he turned up, with flowers, for me, for my birthday. Needless to say, I was quite embarrassed and shocked. I was also rather pleased, but who wouldn't be. My teaching partner took a photo of the three of us, me, my student and my flowers. Here is the evidence:



As you can see by my quite red face, I was quite the embarrassed. Oh well, the struggles of being a good teacher I suppose. It was quite an effort to get them home. JJF took them on his scooter and they got drenched on the way home. It absolutely pissed down as we scooted along and I had to go sans winter gloves to work the next day. Trust the next day to be one where the temperature doesn't get above 10 all day. Grrrr! But eh, I got flowers. Aw!

Funny buggers

My cousin and I, in our youth, spent a lot of time thinking of silly things to do. Quite often we did them. We dyed his hair any number of different colours, collected furniture (with my brother) from the side of the road, and drank quite a lot of vodka. One of our silly suggestions was to invent the game of Funny Buggers. That way, whilst playing it, if anyone asked what we were doing we could honestly answer, 'Playing funny buggers'. This was probably about 8-9 years ago now that we came up with the rules.
Today, I got sent an email from said cousin. He's just moved in with the in-laws until the house he and his wife have bought is ready for them to move in. Something about settlement or something, I don't understand all the things to do with buying houses, I'm many years away from that. So anyway, he found the rules to funny buggers while packing and emailed them to me. Suggested I might like to blog about them. So here I am, and here are the rules:

Put all the plates in the linen press
Put all the dessert spoons in the oven
Put all the soup spoons in the microwave with a cushion
Stand all the teaspoons up along the mantlepiece
Short sheet one bed (if possible)
Put one sock of every pair of person A's socks in person B's drawer
Put one sock of every pair of person B's socks in person C's drawer
Put one sock of every pair of person C's socks in person A's drawer
Put all underwear in the house (extra points if this includes the player's underwear) under couch cushions, in pantry and other people's drawers
Turn all shirts on coathangers inside out
Mirror image a room (to greatest extent possible)
Leave around no less than 16 but no more than 22 notes saying "Nevil Maskelyne is a bastard (Longitude)"
Sticky-tape one grape to every item in the fridge

Oh deary me! It still makes me laugh. We were and are most daggy and nerdly. I look forward to playing funny buggers once he's moved into the new house.

the bog log blog AKA the turd that wouldnae die

So Saturday night, I end up at home after spending some of my afternoon sewing at JJF's place. I've made myself the pants of my PJs and have cut out and started sewing my dress, more details later. We'd watched a lot of the goodies in that afternoon. It was all good and lovely, we made pizza for dinner with fetta and roasted capsicum and salami, was rather delicious. Add to that a nice bottle of red and it was a swimmingly good evening. Until I ventured to the bathroom. We had an immortal log issue.
I'm not sure if it was me, or my housemate Em (we share the bathroom) but there was something there at the bottom of the bowl, that did not disappear when I flushed.
JJF told me that bleach sometimes works, so I bleached the bastard in an attempt to vanquish it. But alas, the next morning the little bastard was still there. JJF had also suggested the use of dishwashing detergent, but as I was in a rush, I just bleached it some more and tried to get it to die properly. I then headed out for my day. The day was lovely sunny and bright. I walked up Mount Ainslie, went to work and dealt with my flies and then made it home just in time to change, watch some Kath and Kim with Em and then head out dancing.
When I got home, the immortal log was gone and I assumed it had been my bleach that had done the trick. Until I talked to Em. Turns out that she had made use of a stick to dislodge it from it's new home and sent it on it's way to the processing plant. I cannot believe how persistent that little turd was. It was the little turd that could.
Anyway, the rest of my weekend was vaguely interesting, but I'm too busy to talk about it. Suffice to say, my mother had another birthday which she said she enjoyed. I pulled a muscle on my pole on Friday night and I got my scooter back with a new drive belt, new seat upolstery. Tell you more later, I have lunch to eat.

DJ Kate

Hello there. I am DJing at the jumptown social tonight. Hooray! I get to play music I like and watch other people enjoy and dance to it too! That is exciting. So if you are in Canberra and can make it to the Canberra City Bowling Club, Elder Street, Braddon at 8.30pm, come and join in the fun. If not, I shall show you the pattern and fabric that I am using to make myself some PJs from.



Speaking of DJing as I was earlier. I've just been listening to some of my swing music to determine what to play. I've found that there is one song, that no matter how many times I listen to it since my grandma died, it still makes me cry. It's nuts. I'm not even sure that we listened to it much together in the month before she died. I'm not even sure if we talked about it, but every time it gets me, I miss her terribly. Every time I listen to, get this, I've got a gal in Kalamazoo. There are other songs that remind me of grandma, lazy bones, song of india, what a wonderful world, the list goes on. But this is the only one that sets me off. I think it's odd, but a completely reliable outcome. There is a list that has been going through my head in the last 9-10months, of things I remember/miss about my grandma. This has been one of them. One day I'll get them all together and make a post out of it. Not today though, can't spend too much time upset when I have to go and get myself organised to make the PJs and DJ the songs for the lovely people. Wish me luck.

Merry boofday to me!

Hello one and all. I am now offically 27. We had rescued and better cupcakes for morning tea today. I am having lunch in a little while with friends. Dinner this evening will be with my housemate and some lovely ladies. I hope to get to the gym this afternoon. And I miss my boy. What good is a birthday without birthday sex?
I'm sure there is a good answer to that question. I shall endeavour to find the answer in the course of today.

What next you may ask of the scienticiankate? Well, in my 28th year I intend to finish my PhD, move overseas and get a real job. But in the short term I intend to eat a lot of cake today, drink some lovely wine, lift some heavy weights and snuggle up in bed with a good book (The second coming -the passion of joe panther).

If I feel like it, this afternoon I'll post some pictures of my recent sewing projects, they're kinda cool.

Sometimes a scooter isn't great

So this is what happens to iced cupcakes when you have them in the back of your scooter in your top box. They fly around all over the place and get icing everywhere. Looks like there is a lot of cooking for me tonight.
Yep, I'm brining cake into the office for a reason peoples. I'm 27 tomorrow, at 4.32pm, my dad would no doubt point out. So I'm providing cake for morning tea tomorrow. But I think these cakes may end up being eaten today, I'm sure they'll taste alright, but they're not exactly the best looking specimens. Bugger! I was so organised. But not to worry, I shall just be forced into cooking more cake tonight, and icing them once I get into work. Lesson learned.

'oh baby, it's cold outside'

So, I'm cold, really cold. I am up, ready to get myself to work, well almost, but I can't seem to move away from the couch. The reason for this is twofold. It's freaking cold in here and I'm wrapped up in a blanket, waiting for the heating to kick in properly. The second is, it's finally really autumn outside, it's cold and grey out there. I'd rather stay in here and keep warm-ish, once the heater has done it's job. But that's not really realistic. We have lab meeting today, I have flies on the go, I want to go to the gym today and work my muscles (I'm back up to benching 25kgs, woo!). So give me 15 mins to get everything together and get my motivation and I'll get there, promise.

Other stories you ask? Okay, I started tango lessons last night. On the recommendation of JJF, I went along to learn the 'walking dance' argentine tango. It was mostly fun, but the presence of Harry Halitosis and Cary Cave Chest made it less that fabulous. I have now learnt, though, to walk backwards, sideways and very occasionally forwards, to music with so many violins it's crazy. I think over the next few weeks it'll get more fun and more interesting. We'll see, I might bring mints along and offer them to Harry when it's our turn to dance. Solve the problem in a nice way.

Oh yeah, and my pole dancing pole was unsuccessfully delivered yesterday. Did I tell you I ordered one? Yeah, so it's being delivered again to work on Friday. That way I might actually receive it this time. What is it with couriers? I have no idea how I'm getting it home after work on Friday though, I don't think it's something I'll be able to chuck in the top box on the scoot and carry home that way. Strapped to my body maybe? It comes in a carry case. We'll see.

Okay, I'm really going to work now, really.

Days of Our Lives

So I finally caught up with my cousin on Friday night. We had scrummy laksa, frustard (frozen custard) and caught up with all the family gossip and I learnt all about her boyfriend (who I'm yet to meet). I have to say that on hearing about him and seeing the very few photos of him, I thoroughly approve. Lovely! She has promised to lend me the book she got for her birthday, assuming she finishes it before she leaves Canberra. Yay! It's apparently a murder mystery and all the characters are sheep. I am quite looking forward to it.
Thursday night saw me at the pole dancing amateur night. What a cack! The dancing was pretty good, I've learnt a bit about pole dancing choreography. What works and what doesn't. I didn't win the lucky door prize, but didn't have my scooter stolen either, so that was good.
So yeah, onto the title of this post : days of our lives. Sometimes the lives of my friends are much more interesting than the soap operas of the midday variety. I find it hard to keep up with. What I would like the most is for my friends to be happy but at the moment, I have no idea how that is going to happen. Someone is going to end up pretty sad. All I can do is offer my ears up for the listening and try and support the sad ones. It all just proves that in life, like comedy, timing is everything. So good luck my fiends, look after yourselves and if you need to vent, I'm here.
In other news, we had to suffer through an OHS presentation during the week. It was best described by my fellow student over at antethesis. I'll leave you with that.

ow! my brain hurts

So, I'm trying to learn about notch signaling and monoubiquitylation of Notch ligands at the same time as writing an introduction to a chapter for my thesis, the majority of which isn't actually done because I still have to really get the experiments underway. I mean, I've done some experiments to suggest there is something going on, but nothing definitive yet. So it's a little weird. But do-able I suppose. But the two topics could not be different so my brain is a little bit the sore. And everything has to be done by Friday, which is my new dinner date with my cousin. I'm quite looking forward to it, laksa, yum! (not so much looking forward to having everything done by then, but the food should be good)
Oh yeah, and pole dancing amateur night is tomorrow now. It's at a kinda dodgy club in Kingston. I'm quite looking forward to it, giggle value should be high.
Anyway, I'm just procrastinating and avoiding going back to reading those articles, so I'll leave this here for now. Wish me luck with the articles!