A place to bitch about my PhD...

... & so shall I.

25 things meme

Blah blah post 25 random things/facts goals about yourself etc etc.

Here goes:

1. I have shaved my head twice in my life, once when I was 19, once when I was 29.  I hated it both times.
2. I was a vegetarian for about 9 months when I was 15. I was very very bad at it, ate no protein, and got anaemia.
3.  I know all the words to the following musicals: Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Les Mis, The Sound of Music, Oklahoma, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Chess, Rent, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and Grease. Probably more that I can't think of.
4. I don't wear makeup or colour my hair, even tho I'm going grey.
5. I *hate* small dogs, like chihuahuas etc.
6. I am really glad I went to boarding school. I loved it.
7. I really like licorice. Really really.
8. I am probably more disturbed than I should be by the fact my 8-years-younger sister is dating someone my age.
9. I would rather eat my wife's cooking than go to a fancy restaurant.
10. My current favourite musical moment is the chorus of 'Amber Waves' by Tori Amos, specifically the way she phrases 'glows in the dark'.
11. About 95% of the time I totally, completely forget that there are people in the world who would think that my marriage is odd.
12. I'm glad I live in a country & community where no.11 is possible.
13. I am very sure at this point that my PhD research is going to amount to absolutely nothing discovered. This does not bother me.
14. When I am online (specifically LJ pregnancy type communities) I feel extremely old to be having my first child. When I am out in public in NZ, I feel ridiculously young to be having my first child.
15. I am 30 and have never actually had a real (more than a couple of months, career-related) job.
16. I am a really good mix of both my parents. As I get older, I am increasingly proud of this fact.
17. My ideal job would be organising other people's stuff for money.
18. Sometimes I am jealous of my sisters-in-law, for totally different reasons for each one.
19. I cannot stand cold. I therefore probably live in a city that isn't right for me!
20. I think I would do really well at the hunter-gather lifestyle.
21. I miss having a lot of friends around. I am feeling increasingly isolated and would love to have a great big party!
22. I am a raving extrovert, but almost all my friends are introverts, and sometimes I find this very difficult.
23. Unlike telemicus , I *hate* academic conferences. I've never been to one that wasn't a total waste of my time, although I like getting free stationary.
24. I love my bump, but I'm starting to worry about getting stretchmarks!
25. I am really good at finding specific DNA sequences in pages of As, Ts, Cs & Gs.

Consider yourself tagged if you want to be!

Hee hee... last time I posted here I was pregnant and didn't even know it! Seems like I post a lot but it's all at the pregnancy blog because, well, first time mum, very preoccupied & obsessed etc!

Anyway, even tho I have plenty to do, sometimes it's nice to just sit down at the computer and read for a bit.  I can also handsew and read at the same time which I have been doing a bit lately. However, I seem to have lost touch with a lot of the blogs I used to read (a lot are defunct, some of my interests have changed, that sort of thing), so I am looking for recommendations for interesting, thought provoking blogs.

At the moment I'm particularly interested in global economics, personal economics (esp. frugality in the domestic sphere), pregnancy & parenting, blogs by expats, popular science and any blogs related to doing a science (lab-based) phd.

Does anyone have any recommendations? I'm not too picky, but I do prefer if the writer can spell, punctuate and use reasonable grammar (well, okay, maybe I am picky!),  and they have a decent number of readers who provide commentary.

Okay guys, hit me!

A *lot* better now.  I still have the remnants of the rash, and I'm a little more tired than I'd like to be, but it's a huge improvement.  I'm all back at work and working hard on project Phinish the Phd.

Godson Quinn had grommets put in this morning, which I'm hoping will improve sleeping prospects for his whole family.  It will certainly help with his walking and talking, as the constant ear infections have affected both his balance and hearing.  He's now 13 months old, and starting to become massively more mobile and expressive.  He can walk 4-5 steps in a row, but he's still at the point where it sort of takes him by surprise and  once he realises he's doing it he plops back down on his arse.   He is trying to talk so much but his take on words suggests that he isn't hearing them as well as he could be.  All dogs (including photos of dogs, of various breeds) are 'Ooof Ooof', but we have no idea if that is short for 'Look it's a dog, dogs say Woof Woof' or if Ooof is his word for dog. He doesn't generalise it to cat tho.  His main saying is 'What's that?'  (pronounced 'Wassssaaaat?') which he uses for pretty much everything. He also says 'Ta' (meaning thank you) which is his default expression for either giving or receiving an object.  He also says sentence structured sort of noises which his mother can occasionally understand but I really can't.  I expect he'll be able to repeat things a lot better when he can actually hear them properly.  He's so lovely.  I get to see him again on Saturday and I'm really looking forward to it as my virus has meant I haven't seen him for over a week. I want a Quinny cuddle!

Two days ago I started having a really sore neck - I thought I had injured it carrying Quinn around. It got worse, although paracetamol knocked it back some.  And then yesterday morning my waking temperature was unreasonably high for follicular phase - 37.0 degrees.  I started feeling itchy, and like someone had beaten me with the tired stick.

Waking temp this morning - 38.0 degrees. I thought maybe the thermometer was broken because it was giving me a sort of ahhhhhh I'm dying beepity beep, but apparently, no, it's more of a 'attention - human - you - are - sick' beepity beep.

So, off to the doctor with me.  I have a virus, thank god not the norovirus that has closed down the hospital, but not an entirely pleasant experience either.  I haven't had anything like this since I was a kid.  I am covered in an itchy red rash, all my joints ache, I'm so hot I'm putting out as much energy as the Long Island nuclear reactor, and I'm as tired as hell.  I have been asleep most of the day.

It's a damn pity, S & I were going to take Quinn for the night so that Rob could get some sleep.  He has gone sort of grey.

Hmmm... I wonder if a warm shower will help the itching.

Eh, grody

You know it's bad when there's a day that the sun finally comes out and you throw all the windows and doors open and realise later that it is actually 1C (33F) outside and you DON'T CARE.

We really hadn't seen the sun for the best part of a month.  Snow yesterday, although it didn't sit. It is taking almost a week to dry clothes. It is hard to do routine stuff like wash your face because the water is icy and you have to go out of the warm room to do it. My goosebumps have goosebumps.
Fortunately we haven't had muchy black ice so we have been able to drive when necessary.

Why do I live here again?

Write something interesting I guess...

As promised:

Monday - Moderate cardio (this will be 30 min on the treadmill, for the most part)
Tuesday - Weights (Quad Tri Calves Delts)
Wednesday - 20min Intervals + 10min steady state
Thursday - Moderate cardio
Friday - Weights (Ham Pec Lat Bic)
Sat - Circuit (this is a class which is basically weights & interval)

Well, I’m certainly feeling a lot better.  I really didn’t realise just how sick withdrawal made me until it went away!  It was truly unpleasant experience. Summer and I have been having a really hard time the last couple/three months and but things seem to be starting to look up now.
Anyway, here’s an update for prosterity.  Might be long, but it’s in bullet points!

create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out ourCalifornia travel guide

It looks like tomorrow S & I will be sitting down and going over our budget, especially as concerns the use of the car. 
The price of petrol just hit NZ$2.00 a litre, although it has been hovering just below for a while now.

To those in the US reading that, I should point out that this equals US$5.94 a gallon, and whenever I hear yanks complaining about gas prices I wanna bop them one. To paraphrase Fred Dagg, you don't know how lucky you are!

Just wanted to bitch, I'm done now <g>

:::::walks home::::

Looks like I have some reading to do!

Meme snagged from raykel

I have a new cake up here. Other than that, not too much to report!

2007 Year In Review meme
Nicked from moorina

I'm an Aunt! Yay! Connor Gatewood Moldt  7lb 10oz born this morning our time.

New cake up here.

Today, I hate humankind. I am wallowing in misanthropy. I hate them with their fat legs and skinny legs and pink hair and whining and I hate retards and stuck up smart people and breeders and campy fags and boyses and girlses and I hate animals too.

The only person I don't hate right now is Quinny because he is cute and smells nice, and at 14 weeks old, hasn't had a chance to piss me off yet because I don't sleep in the same house as him. Other than that, everyone sucks. Yes, even you, dear reader!

A week ago Rhodri and I were trying to rescue some cultures that had fallen to the bottom of the liquid nitrogen tank ( I won't mention how they got there, or the name of the goombah who forgot to reattach the safety bar before she dunked them, thus causing them to slip).  Anyway, it wasn't easy, and long story short, I ended up with a contact burn on my right wrist.  It's been okay, but now the dead area is spreading a little and it itches like hell.  Remember those tricks they did on kiddy science TV where they dipped a rose in liquid nitrogen and removed it, then hit it against something and it shattered? Yeah. So, don't do that to your flesh. That's all the wisdom I can pass on.

Today was a public holiday, and I had a day off because I went into the lab on Sat and Sun. We were going to go and have a sunshiney spring picnic, but the wind was gale force and would have caused several forms of chaos, so we stayed at home and ate our bumper bars in peace. Not a bad day, all told.

Finished yesterday - 1 quilt for my soon to be born nephew-in-law.  Machine pieced, machine quilted.


not the best photo, but it gives an idea.

Ooh... it's been a while since I posted - I didn't realise.

The last few days have brought me to the realisation that I've reached a milestone - I'm going to have to decide what to do about the hair.

I am twenty-nine years young, and have had very dark brown hair for most of my life. When I was 11, 12, it was almost black, but has lightened slightly since.  I used to dye it in my late teens, but it never really took much in the way of colour unless I bleached it first, which never appealed to me.
I have left it undyed now for about 6 years, other than a temporary for my wedding 2 1/2 years ago, so the whole length of it now is my natural colour.
I started greying when I was about 21, and now have a stripe from my right temple, not fully filled out, that is white. It's not hugely obvious but it is rapidly filling out and will soon be a stripe about 4cm wide.
I have no memory of my father (who as a young man had hair the same colour as I do) without grey hair. Now he's 55 and it has been pure white for a good 5 years (what's left of it, anyway!)

So, I've advanced to the stage where I need to decide if I'm just going to let myself grey naturally, or if I'm going to start covering the grey.  My gut instinct is to just let it go, but I also don't want the friends of my children asking them if I'm their grandma!  I think a white stripe could be sorta cool. Fortunately my hair goes pure white rather than dirty grey or yellowish so it wouldn't be that bad.

I really don't know. Am I too young to start going really salt & pepper? Would that influence job prospects etc?  Would it make me look considerably older than I am?

Crikey.

I have a new cake up at  cake_decorating

Rejoice, for spring is springing and my tinnitus is GONE!!!!! ( Many months of pulsatile tinnitus can drive you half-mad)