all hail ye mighty procrastination

Yes, today is the day of procrastination. I have lab work to do, I have a chapter introduction and outline to write (which is difficult to make happen at the moment) and I'd like to go to the gym. But what am I doing? Watching DVDs with my housemate and writing little bits and pieces of the chapter stuff. I think it's probably because I have been thinking about the chapter I have to write stuff for, and realising what work I have to do yet to prove anything. Bleh, so anyway, what else is news I hear you ask?
Well, I may have a result. A result that may not actually mean much in the long run, but a result at least. I can make some cells change themselves a little. That's kinda cool. I might end up with some interesting results in my thesis. That is also cool. Okay, what else? I've started teaching dancing again. It was a lot of fun, with lots of giggles and silliness. I really enjoy teaching with Chris, we get along really well.
Um, what other news do I have? Not a lot, I have bacterial contamination again in my HeLa cells. But at least this time I know why. I'm finally getting over my cold. I'm going out to Tilley's this afternoon to catch up with some lovely ladies. There is lots of blues in Canberra this week. JJF has a blind date today (I wonder if she'll bring her guide dog with her). Actually the date should be well along it's way by now. I look forward to hearing about it. It has actually rained in Canberra over the last few days, it's a strange experience.
I ended up at the Services Club on Friday night with both my housemates. The funeral of the ACT Chief Police Officer was on Friday and they'd been drinking since midday. I have never seen so many police in one space before, nor so many drunk police officers still in uniform. None on duty I'd like to point out. While there I found another Canberra moment. One of the guys on LJS's team was the best man at a 'friend of the family's' wedding. He's been friends with this guy for about 20 years. Canberra is so like that, everyone knows everyone else somehow.
Anyway, after this disjointed post I'm going to go and get ready for the meeting with the ladies. Then it's onto work to get some serious shit done! Grrrr! I'm going to kick that labwork's arse and then get myself writing something vaguely interesting for the supes. Apologies to all who have found this a rambling post.

Hullabaloo Hangover

Well, I'm now back from Perth. Four days of absoulte madness. I have never coped on so little sleep before. I've never danced so well before. I've never ever had so much fun on a dancing weekend ever. Everything was great. I could go on and on about it, but it may eventually get tedious. I think I'll make sure that I cover all the highlights over the next few posts. This one will be thank yous to all those who need them.

Thanks to (in a vaguely chronological order):
-my mate Jane for dropping me off at the airport
-George from New York for putting up with me on the flight and keeping me, and our fellow traveller Steph, happy with swing clips galore
-Fi for coming to get George and myself and delivering us safely to the afterparty
-Michelle and Kev for looking afer me for the whole weekend and particularly for Kev driving me damn near everywhere and putting up with my constant chatter
-Ant for our very first dance together, and then all the others, and the hugs. We need to catch up properly next time, not enough hours in the day!
-every single person I danced with. Some notables are Kara, Xavier, El, Sam, Dave, Skip, Matt, Francois, George, Dan, Andrew, Peter, Pommy Dan, Bruce and the list goes on (I'm sure I've forgotten half of them because of sleep deprivation)
-my fellow members of team Brunswick.
-my fellow class members for keeping me entertained and joining in the red bull dash on both days of classes
-Jono-bo-bono for trying to get me belle of the ball
-Chez for the lifts and the giggles. 'Swingout, bitch!'
-My fellow Canberrans for representing our scene so well and for all the chats I had with various members of the group over the weekend, some good plans around there
-my Sydney mates, Bruce, Shaz, Kayelle, Michael. Love you lots and lots
-The teachers for the weekend. I had a faboulous time in all the classes I attended. Apologies if I missed a class or was tired on Sunday
-all those folks who were up until dawn bluesing on Saturday night
-Cindy for dropping me home Sunday morning so I could shower before going back to class
-Dad for giving me something to do between landing in Melbourne and flying to Canberra. I had a lovely nap on the couch before I left
-Bing for coming to get me from the airport


Okay, so that's some, if not all, of the thank yous that I can think of at the moment. I had a great, great, great time! I cannot get over how much fun it was. Of course, this tells you nothing of what actually happened but I'm still not completely with it since returning. I've got a sinus infection and am on antibiotics. Tomorrow will be two weeks since I first started feeling sick. YAY! Anyway, I'm going to go and get all my washing done and start to get back to my normal operations. I'm picking up JJF from the airport tomorrow morning and a ridiculous hour and have to get a lot of work done at work. I have prostates to dissect and some cells to transfect and virgins to collect, it's a busy, busy day.

I still haven't reached X yet

Someone told me about three years ago now, that you have to do an experiment X times before it will work. I am currently onto attempt 15? of the same experiment. The one with the HeLa cells? Not sure if I've mentioned them. They have been (to borrow from Kath and Kim) the bain marie of my life for the last couple of months. I have to do a positive control experiment. That's one where you show that something works to prove that the experiment itself isn't flawed, just whatever you were using it on didn't work. So anyway, I got it to work a while ago, but the cells were unhappy and blobby. So the supes wanted me to just do it again and get happy cells, so the pictures would be nice.
I have been trying to get those nice pictures ever since. Every day is another disappointment with regards to this experiment. It's driving me nuts! I thought I had the solution to the problem on Friday. So Saturday, I looked at the cells. They were on a plastic slide that you can't see through!!! Fark. So then I chucked the little bastards on a glass slide, you can see through those, or so I thought. Turns out that the glass slide is too thick to focus through. So after many tears and frustrations yesterday I hit on the next plan to get it to work, thin coverslips! Today and tomorrow will tell me whether this works. If it doesn't I don't know how I'm going to cope. I think it'll be so ridiculous by then that I'll end up laughing. Then tearing my hair out and going a little more crazy.
Anyway, one day things will work I'm sure. Law of averages etc. But I still haven't reached X yet on this experiment. Cross your fingers and press your thumbs for me.

I hate getting colds

Today I have the scratchy throat, the fuzzy head and the blocked up snot nose of a sick person. Fark! Stupid cold! My plan is to live in tracksuit pants, take copious amounts of cold and flu drugs and have a water bottle permanently attached to my face. This probably means I'm going to end up with a psuedoephadrine high and spend my entire life in the toilet. Huzzah! Don't you love the weather getting colder and the bugs flying about? It's great.
In other news, nothing tragic happened with my scooter yesterday, though I was expecting it. My german relatives came for a visit, we're having lunch today. Lastly, experiments hate me, but still I live in hope.

Ah freak!

So life is hectic, freaking hectic. The stupid flies appear to be, once again, not transgenic. This frustrates the crap out of me. Combine this with sewing needs, visiting Germans and a lab talk next week, we have a very stressed Kate. But it'll be okay, you know why? It has to be. If it doesn't work out, my hair will fall out and I'll be a nervous wreck and I don't need that, so it has to be okay. Right?
I must keep on repeating to myself, you are not your work, you are not your work, you are not your work. Just because it's not working doesn't make you stupid or useless. Best get back to it, living in hope of something working in about 20 mins from now. Cross your fingers for me.

Oh dear, I be drunk, but my neighbours have wireless

Yep, had some red wine, half a bottle. And some homemade 'booze' (not mine, someone elses). I don't know that it's the wisest idea to have got myself a little tiddly on the alcohol and then make use of the fact that I have a laptop and internet connection at home.

Today consisted of sleeping, porridge, bit of TV, movies, more napping, some 'quality time' with the boy and a lovely dinner of Larb and red wine. Yum! Tomorrow I"m going to my aunts house for dinner, something delightful will be on offer. Sunday has me teaching a taster class at the national folk festival and entertaining the public with some swing dancing. I think I'm supposed to be wearing vintage stuff, so no doubt my dress will get an airing. I'll also have to go to work tomorrow and check out my babies (flies) and make sure that are going okay.

What else you say? Well my cousin has gone and bought himself (and his wife) a house. I look forward to visiting them there and eating some food and drinking some vodka. Yum!

Best be off before I embarrass myself any further with the drunken typing and nonsense I'm coming out with. Catch ya!

this might be too much information, but fuck it

So, I'm sitting here preparing my talk for tomorrow's cutting edge discussion. I'm listening to a very trashy CD, the pussycat dolls. While thinking about the talk and what needs to go into it, I realise something. I'm choreographing a lap dance to 'buttons'. Dear lord, my brain is strange.

update

Today my mum, a friend of hers, and the boy are driving up to Canberra for a visit. Tomorrow, my dad, the friend's husband and no-one else are flying up to Canberra. I am a little excited about this I must say. It's kinda crap though because I have work coming out my ears and will have to be in the lab tomorrow at a ridiculous hour of the morning and stay here until at least 3pm or so. We have a 'cutting edge discussion' tomorrow starting at 12. It's is supposed to be an opportunity for us to discuss topics relevant to the work going on in the lab and for us to have interesting and intelligent conversations/discussions about said topics. I've been chosen to present results from a science paper from 1998. It's to do with phosphoinositide signalling. In preparing my presentation, I have come to the conclusion that while it may be a great honour to be published in Science, I don't want to be. Those papers are so short and so dense. Each sentence contains about, as one guy from the lab put it, a years worth of work. It's bloody amazing. But it makes it quite hard to read and to really understand. There are no separate sections for methods, results, discussion. It's all together. Each of the three figures is about 6 experiments all crammed together. Madness I tells ya.

Anyway, we've got this discussion, it's happening at the supervisors house. We're having pizza for lunch. So it's not all bad. It should prove to be interesting, but I can see it dragging on. Particularly because I'll be desperate to get home and have a snuggle with the boy. Fortunately, he's brining his laptop with him and can work from home. The dogs will keep him company.

What else is news? Well, the same experiments keep stuffing me around, the flies aren't surviving like they should. Jo, the woman who does the injections for us, injected 260 embryos, 66 survived and she sent those to me. There have only been 24 flies emerging from those vials. Something about the DNA she is injecting must be killing the little buggers. I have asked her to inject some more, I don't know if any of the injected ones that have survived will actually be able to breed/survive, let alone give me transgenic progeny.

Dancing on a Monday is going pretty well. We've taken a break for Easter etc and will be back on the 23rd April. My students are lots of fun and I'm looking forward to seeing them all again. I hope they come back!

The weather is cooling down rapidly in Canberra (and elsewhere in the country I suspect). It's been chilly most mornings and the heater has definitely been on. Oh yeah, that's the other bit of news, EH, our new housemate has officially moved in. We now have two dogs, two fridges and a whole lot of stuff in the bathroom. She's moved from a place that she lived in on her own and is now living with us. She has a lot of stuff. She's lovely though and I can't wait until she's all settled in and we can start knitting together.

The last thing that I must update everyone on is the road rage incident I was involved in yesterday. But I haven't the time now. The good news from it is that I'm not hurt. The bad news is the stupid woman who road raged me could have killed me, or at least caused me to have another accident. She was so incredibly rude and a dangerous driver. The worst bit was, she had kids in her car! Okay, short version, the flies can wait for a second. She was tailgating, quite badly, so I slowed down. Was in the left lane. She overtook me, on the inside, horn blazing, ciggie in hand and finger extended. Bitch, bitch, bitch. I reported it to the police. We'll see what happens. But to reassure you Mum, I'm okay and I'll be fine, nothing really bad happened, I was more annoyed than anything else.

I'm busy, but took this personality test anyway

So yeah, busy, but took a personality test because it looked amusing. Here's the results, accurate?

Advanced Global Personality Test Results Extraversion |||||||||||||||||||| 86% Stability |||||||||||| 50% Orderliness |||||||||||||||| 63% Accommodation |||||||||||||| 56% Interdependence |||||||||||||||| 70% Intellectual |||||||||||||||| 70% Mystical || 10% Artistic |||||| 23% Religious || 10% Hedonism |||||| 23% Materialism |||||| 23% Narcissism |||||||||| 36% Adventurousness |||||| 30% Work ethic |||||||||||| 43% Self absorbed |||||||||||| 43% Conflict seeking |||||||||| 36% Need to dominate |||||||||||| 43% Romantic |||||||||||||| 56% Avoidant |||| 16% Anti-authority |||||| 30% Wealth |||||||||||| 43% Dependency |||||||||||| 43% Change averse |||||||||||||||| 70% Cautiousness |||||||||||||||| 63% Individuality |||||| 30% Sexuality |||||||||||||||| 63% Peter pan complex |||| 16% Physical security |||||||||||||||||||| 90% Physical Fitness |||||||||||| 50% Histrionic |||||||||| 36% Paranoia |||||| 23% Vanity |||||||||||| 43% Hypersensitivity |||||||||| 36% Female cliche |||||||||||| 50%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com


Stability results were medium which suggests you are moderately relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic.

Orderliness results were moderately high which suggests you are, at times, overly organized, reliable, neat, and hard working at the expense of flexibility, efficiency, spontaneity, and fun.

Extraversion results were very high which suggests you are overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.


trait snapshot:
clean, self revealing, open, organized, outgoing, social, enjoys leadership and managing others, dominant, makes friends easily, does not like to be alone, assertive, hard working, finisher, optimistic, positive, likes to stand out, likes large parties, respects authority, practical, high self esteem, perfectionist, dislikes chaos, busy, not familiar with the dark side of life, controlling, high self control, traditional, tough, likes to fit in, conforming, brutally honest, takes precautions

stomach bugs and broken arms

So I got back from Melbourne yesterday morning. My stomach had been niggling at me on the entire journey, 10 hours on the bus. I didn't think too much of it at the time. When I'm stressed it usually makes itself aparent through my guts. I was just leaving behind my injured boy after three lovely days at home. I was stressed. But when I made it home and the stomach pain got worse, I figured it was actually illness rather than stress. Especially when, well to try and put it nicely, I got to pee through my arse. So yesterday, thanks to my mum (?) I was a stabby stomach pain, watery bummed individual. Thanks be to immodium and rest. Today I am much better. The problem with being sick yesterday was that I was supposed to be teaching dancing and couldn't make class. It had to be cancelled. Bum. But I'll be there next week and they'll have a great class because I won't be disappearing to the bathroom every so often to drop my guts, or doubling over with cramps. Yay!
This weekend was such fun, even though the bus trip was horrible. Saturday saw me arrive in Melbourne at about 8am and by 9 I was in bed with the boy, catching up on cuddles. Saturday night was spent at Mum and Dad's with the Germans (all 5 of them), my brother, his girlfriend and the boy. We (brother and I) made curries for everyone as Mum was not feeling the best, having suffered from her own gastric upset. We made an awesome Rogan Josh, vege curry and a pretty tasty dahl. There wasn't much heat in it though, we thought the chidlets might be eating it and at 3 and 5.5, they probably wouldn't be too keen on chilli. Turns out they had rice and jelly for dinner, so we could have spiced it up a notch. Still tasty though.
Sunday was a lazy day. There was a lot of sleep had. We ended up having dinner with MB and VE at Tran Tran on Victoria Street, then icecream at Brunetti's on Faraday Street in Carlton. We had planned on Gelati on Lygon street, but because of the freaking Grand Prix, it prooved too busy and difficult to go there. Was a good night, with much laughter and silliness. The salt and pepper squid was so tasty.
On Monday the boy and I went to the Jam Factory to see Hot Fuzz. We scored an awesome free park, which I think is impressive in South Yarra. We were two of only seven in the theatre and got to watch the trailers without sound. Fortunately, that was fixed before the feature started. I laughed pretty hard and really enjoyed the film. I now want to go out and see a whle bunch of cop films to work out where all the references are in the film. I've always been keen on Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright/Nick Frost as a creative team. Spaced was an excellent TV series and I loved Shaun of the Dead. They didn't disappoint, and the supporting cast were great too. Lots of my favourite UK comedy folk were there. Then we had lunch at Lucky Coq, $3 pizzas and little creatures on tap.
Monday night I had to catch the bus, so we caught the train into the city, had dinner at Mekong on Swanston and caught a tram down to Spencer Street ( I refuse to call it southern cross station). The bus was full, I was sat towards the front, by the window. I got a bit teary, saying goodbye. I hate going to Melbourne for this very reason. I have to leave again and it is always painful. I'm completely over the whole long distance relationship thing. I just want to live in the same city. I wouldn't even be too fussed if we couldn't live in the same house. Anyway, enough bitching, it's not that bad. It could be a lot worse and I should stop complaining.
The bus trip was painful, not just because of my guts. We stopped a million times, well actually 4. We stopped in Shepparton, Albury, Wagga Wagga and about 30 mins out of Canberra because we were 'going to get to Canberra too early and had to stop for a bit'. My knees ached, my neck ached and my guts poked me. I was most unimpressed with the whole thing. Never again people, never again. I'll walk from Yass at 3am after catching the train in preference.
Anyway, back in the 'berra. Working on a new interesting means of getting my deletion into flies. Trying not to kill my HeLa cells again (silly bastards got contaminated since last week), screening my transformants, dissecting some discs and psyching myself up for lots and lots of fly work to come. Woo! My life is so exciting.

Exciting(?) happenings in the life of Kate

So the boy was mugged on Saturday night. 3 guys punched him to the ground, breaking his wrist as he landed, and he has a cut lip and a swollen jaw. He managed to get away from the bastards and into a taxi and made it home. They didn't get any of his stuff, so that's good. But man, did it shake him (and me) up. As a result of this, I am going down to Melbourne town this weekend. It's Canberra Day on Monday and so I'll be coming back to the 'berra on Tuesday morning. I already have plans for Saturday dinner, if anyone wants to invite the boy and I around for Sunday lunch, I'm sure we would consider the invitiation. Rules are though, you can't make us travel too far. The boy needs the rest, and I don't know if we will have a car.
Other exciting things, and far more pleasant things, are the following : I got a compensation cheque yesterday. I am considerably richer. It's more money than I've ever had in one go. I intend to bank/save most of it. But I will be getting my pole dancing pole out of that money. I'll also be having drinks tomorrow with my workmates to celebrate. Champale for everyone!
And lastly for today, I really should be dissecting some larvae, I scored a try in touch footy today. For a girl who has no team sport skills, I did good. We still lost, 5-7, but I helped a little bit in not making it 4-7. Yay!

I played touch football

Oh dear! I've turned into a Canberran even more. Today at lunchtime I played my first game of touch football. I ran around, in the rain, trying not to get touched by people who had very obvious skills in the sport. I also ran around and tried to touch them. But only when they had the ball, otherwise it's just inappropriate. But the endorphin kick was good and I didn't completely make an arse of myself. Pity then, that lab meeting is now Thursday lunchtimes, starting next week, and I'll miss quite a few games. Oh well! It was fun while it lasted.

I be a spaz pt2

I'm not really coping well today. I can't stop thinking about how I fucked up. I know what my problem is, I get worried about time pressures and rush through things. When I rush, I fuck up. Truth is, if I didn't rush so much, I wouldn't make those mistakes and I'd get things done right, more often than not. So why rush? Why panic? I think it's the knowledge that I only have months left of money, and lots of stuff to get done in that time.
Anyway, now I have to tell the main supervisor that I've gone and killed those flies. I told the other supervisor yesterday. She didn't look pleased. I hate disappointing people. The only good thing about this is, I'm the one who gets most affected by this fuck up. It adds time onto my being in Canberra, which sucks. But hopefully it doesn't adversely affect anyone else too much. Except that the members of the lab have to suffer my presence a bit longer.
Buh, so the only thing left to decide, do I mention the fuck up now? Or wait until my meeting on Monday? Nothing is bringing those flies back, so I can't see how a few more days might hurt. But I can also see how saying something now would get it out of the way and maybe make it a little less crap on Monday. So, people, pain now, or pain later?

On another completely unrelated note, it was my Oma's birthday yesterday. I called but was only able to leave a message. So happy birthday Oma, I hope you were having a lovely night out last night and I'll call you later.

I be a spaz

So the flies that are dead. Yeah, apparently I should have remembered not to kill them. Fuck! I really should have kept them. I, now, even remember the meeting where we discussed keeping flies even if they weren't quite right. Beh! Muh! Feh! I am having a "kate sucks" day, where I feel useless and stupid. Fortunately, I have done positive things rather than wallowing in my stupidity. I have worked and made plans and organised shit. It is all going to be fine, I'm almost convinced of that.

In other news, I ordered a pole to go in my living room. It'll take several weeks to turn up, but it's going to be fabulous. My corsetry supplies arrived today (I'm sewing a corset), and I'm going to walk up Black Mountain in half an hour and get me some endorphins. Endorphins are the shit, they make me less mental.

I read something on someone's blog today. A message that they got from a friend, I think it's fabulous:

Today is international spaz day. Please send an encouraging message to a retarded friend, just as I've done. I don't care if you lick windows, interfere with farm animals, use your strong hand to wipe your arse, can't talk or occasionally shit yourself. You hang in there sunshine you're f***ing special.

I have a new plant

As the post title suggests, I have a new plant. I usually suck at the care and maintenance of plants. Don't know what it is, but it's just not my thing. But I've decided to give it a go. Here is my lovely new venus fly trap in a self watering pot. I have christened her Daisy and she has already caught a bug, yay!


That's all for today, I have a list as long as my arm to get through!

if my life depended on sterile technique, I'd actually survive today

Yep, my cells were plated last night. There is no sign of a bacterial infection, we have a winner! I am now dealing with the stinky stuff and will be on the microscope by 11am at the latest. Mind you, now that this is working other things aren't. When flies die prematurely, like before you can cross them to a transposase to maybe mobilise the P element again, that sucks. Having to tell the supes that the fabulous idea of not waiting for the new transformants to come through, just crossing the old stock, on the wrong chromosome, to a transposase, isn't going to work because the old stock is dead. That sucks. Maybe I won't tell him. Well, not yet.
Enough of the nerd speak, I know that a whole bunch of people (well maybe 5 or so of you) didn't understand that and didn't want to. What else is news you ask me? Well, SKW, housemate and new public servant, is moving out. She's found a place closer to her job in the south. She's moving sometime in the next month, she failed to tell me exactly when. I am pleased to know that she won't be living out of her car after E moves in. Yep, we've got a new housemate lined up. So, it's all things a changy in my house.
JJF has applied for the AFP and has been accepted for testing. It would be hilarious if he was in the feds.
I have joined film group again this semester and went and saw Children of Men on Saturday night. I managed to sit, once again, next to the freak in the theatre. Hooray! I don't know how I manage it but I do. Almost every time there is a reasonably full session of a film, the freak sits next to me and wants to chat, during the film. Buh! Apart from that though I really enjoyed the film and absolutely loved Michael Caine. He's fabulous, "pull my finger".
I have dancing tonight. I'm teaching a whole bunch of people in the ANU Bar, come along at 6.30pm if you have nothing to do. It's going to be shirtloads of fun. I have made a playlist and it includes a lot of Cab Calloway. I have found he's a really good guy to listen to when you are running at the gym. Something to do with the pace and beat of his stuff. It's great. I particularly like 'A chicken ain't nothing but a bird'. Apparently you couldn't fool Columbus, because Columbus was smart, a chicken ain't nothing but a bird. Anyway, dancing should be good fun. We had a whole bunch of people there last week and it went really really well. We even made a small profit. Woo!
Oh yeah, I bough stripper shoes last week. Will post a photo when I get one. They are hilarious. Almost impossible to walk in, but they do the job for pole dancing and that's the important thing. They have clear soles and are black patent leather. *roar*
I don't think there is anything desperately interesting left in my life of the last little while, how sad. So I'll head back to the stinky chemicals and the biohazard hood and bring more tales of crap here later.

if my life depended on sterile technique, I'd be dead

So, trying to do the stinky experiment this week. You know the one with the cells that I either kill or won't attach? Yeah, those fuckers. Well, turns out my sterile technique isn't. I completely suck at tissue culture. Now this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone out there, least of all the woman who has been forced to transfect cells three times already in an attempt to get this experiment working. I think I'm cursed. The worst of it is, I am reliant on someone else to do stuff for me, to at least get transfected cells. This means every time I fuck up, the more work she has to do and I really don't want to waste her time like this. It's so frustrating. So I've had my little cry in the office, the advantage of being in the lab so early, you won't get caught. Now it's time to go to the fly room and hope like hell I haven't infected them with bacteria. At least there is little risk of that.
What to do with all the spare time I have now acquired? A bit more self-flagellation should do. Then maybe some hitting something very hard. I'm rather unimpressed that they've taken the boxing bag down at the gym, I could do with hitting the crap out of something.
FARK!

hands up who gets to go the beach tomorrow. ME!!!

Tomorrow morning is going to be a busy one for me. I'm picking up BT to take him to the gym at 5.30am. He's going to Singapore tomorrow, and doesn't want to drive to the gym and then have to drop his car back home, before coming into the city to catch the bus to get to Sydney, to get to Singapore. So I'm driving him to the gym first thing.

I'm then heading to the last boot camp of the season. It's been a hard 4 weeks. I'm still bloody sore today from yesterday morning with Vince, the hot Jamaican.

After boot camp, I'm into the lab briefly to get some fly work done and to have a shower.

Then I'm off to the airport to pick up the boy.

Then we are going to the beach!!!

We're off to Narooma for two days of sun, wearing a hat, sea, without jellyfish I hope and relaxation, read: shagging. I'm very much excited. Then after the beach it's back to Canberra.

Saturday night we're going to the Stomp at the Albert Hall for some good tunes and the dancing. I think I'll be mostly doing the dancing and the boy will be listening to the tunes and eating his body weight in chips that are usually on the tables.

What's news you ask? I have bruises again from pole dancing. On the tops of my feet no less. I have sore muscles from boot camp. I have tissue culture cells that hate me and don't want to spread out like good little cells. I handed out a lot of flyers today advertising my swing dancing class. ANU, Monday night, at the bar, 6.30pm, $10 students, shit loads of fun. My flyers read:
Good music-guaranteed
Great dancing -guaranteed
Getting laid- guaranteed*
*not a guarantee

It got some giggles and amused me. I hope some of them turn up! Otherwise it's hanging about with Chris and trying to stop myself from drinking lots of beer.

Most importantly in the next little while though is the visit from the boy. I am hanging out to see him. It's been about 6 weeks and I'm ready for a visit. I'm not sure when we'll see each other next, so I'll have to make the most of his visit. Work is going to get very busy from now on and I don't know how much time will be devoted to travelling. But I've rabbited on enough about that already.

Oh, yeah, and I settled with the insurance company today. Give me 6-8 weeks and I'll be richer. How much richer, you may ask me in private.

why I suck at tissue culture and other stories

I've got one experiment that requires tissue culture left to do. It's a positive control for the really shit labeling system that I was trying to get to work in Drosophila. Unfortunately, I suck at tissue culture. I have no idea why I suck so badly at it, but I do. I had cells ready to go yesterday, but they weren't adherent enough, so I figured I'd leave them for the night and get in early this morning. Which is great in theory, but not so great in practice. I get here at 6.15am and find that the cells are flat, they are all spiky and not looking great. Certainly no good for the labelling steps that were required. FUCK! So now I'm in the process of trying to get more cells set up so that maybe I can do the labelling this afternoon. Maybe. It's so frustrating to suck at something that others find so simple. This time I don't even know what was wrong with the cells. Only that they weren't right. At least last time it was obvious that I had bacteria wriggling around in there.

I even got someone to do the transfection for me so that I wouldn't contaminate the cells too early in the process. I wish I'd been able to convince that same person to get the cells onto the slide for me. Maybe if this fucks up and I don't have any cells to work with I can convince her to do it. It's a massive favour to ask, but perhaps chocolate will be my friend and get me the help I need. Or diet Coke, or sushi?

Onto other stories. Last night we had an awesome thunderstorm. I made it home just in time to avoid the rain. I got to sit inside and just enjoy the fact that the garden was getting some water and that I didn't have to go out again. I had the house to myself. LJS was doing a bomb search (she's in the bomb squad, how cool is that?) and SKW was, as I found out later, in Sydney for some purpose or other. On a side note, SKW has started her new job doon sooth and is looking for somewhere else to live. With the rental market so tight, I think it's been difficult. This has meant that bomb-girl and myself have been asking around for a new housemate. Not to put the mockers on it, but I think we may have found someone. Will tell more when I know more. But it could be really, really good!

So anyway, doggo and I spent the night in front of the teev,waiting for my lamb curry to cook. I've made this curry before, it's from a packet mix from the indian shop, that is below the pole dancing studio. It's a very, very hot curry, or at least, hot to me. But it's so goddamn tasty! I made enough for three meals and added chick peas for a bit of variety. I'm quite looking forward to eating it. It did, however, take a long time to cook. So it was a late one for me last night, which made getting up before six even more fun.

What else you ask? I'm off to a WIS (women in science) yum cha today. Should be good for a giggle and full of pork and prawns to boot. Last time I went to yum cha in Canberra, I ended up going with a muslim and a jew. You realise how much pork and prawns are in yum cha when two of the 6 people you are eating with, can't/won't eat them. But I love a bit of pig and am not too adverse to the shellfish, so today will be great. I'm looking forward to the pork buns and the various dumplings and all that good stuff. I'm salivating as I type.

Yesterday, thinking of food, I went to the multicultural festival. This predominantly consists of lots of food stalls and displays of various national dances and music on two stages. I was watching some, guessing here, dancers from Vanuatu(?) while eating some souvlaki. I had to leave, though, when the song came on that had approximatly the following lyrics "We're your mate. Something something great." It was really painful to listen to. Give me crazy singing, give me drums, give me interesting instruments I've never seen before. But please, don't go into the 'look at us, we're Aussies, we are. See, we're using the term mate to show how we are totally Aus'. I'm completely convinced that they're Aussie. I don't need some John Howard-esque use of mate and mateship to convince me that you belong here. I'd much rather see you showing off the culture of the country your family came from originally. Even if they came here 200 years ago. You can, I would hope, as an Australian, be proud of where your family originally came from, and be proud of the stuff you get up to here. I know I am. I love all the German stuff, and it is definitely part of who I am. Got to love a bit of bratwurst and sauerkraut and punctuality. I don't know where I'm going with this rant, so I'll stop. Suffice to say, the dancing was great, the song was shithouse.

I'll get into the joys of little britain later and tell you all about my 'I'm the only gay in the village' t-shirt. But for now, I'm off to the fly room to collect me some virgins and yell at the little bastard to breed!

little britain

I'm going to little britain live tomorrow, in Sydney. It's going to be awesome! I have a friend who I'm currently doing the pole dancing course with, who went in Melbourne. She loved it. I think I'm going to have to do something to ensure my face doesn't hurt from too much smiling/laughing. Yay!

I had a really good meeting with my supervisor today, huzzah! Looks like I'm going to Europe to go to two conferences. The first is a cell/molecular/developmental biology conference in Dresden and the other is the 20th European Drosophila Research Conference in Vienna. It's going to be great fun. The boy and I are going over together and looking for work/visiting people while we are over there. I'm very excited about it. It also gives me a good goal, get my lab work finished before then. I'm probably going to have to book tickets pretty soon. At least I'll get my ticket funded. The rest I'll have to fund myself, but that'll be okay I'm sure. So, I'll be off in late August and back by the start of October, end of September at the earliest. Yay for science and yay for nature magazine that showed me the first conference, which you can find more information about here: elso2007.elso.org

Okay, what else is news? My friend JJF has actually really decided to leave Canberra, after threatening it for 2.5 years. He's apparently sick of the whole place and is looking to move to Melbourne or Perth. I've got my fingers crossed for Melbourne, but that's just me being selfish and wanting to be able to hang out with my mates. BT is about to head off to Singapore for a family holiday and his delightful girlfriend GT is about to go to Vietnam, then Singapore. Lucky buggers! Because BT is one of three boys, GT gets a lot of attention from BT's mum, and gets lots and lots of really tasty food. I'm quite the jealous. I wish I had someone so delighted by my presence that they cook me really good food.

Oh and as a final note before I go to the gym, we cleaned our carpets on Saturday. The three ladies of chez Scullin hired a steam cleaner after the cleaners cancelled on them. It was hard work, especially as it was hot on Saturday, and the crap that came out of that carpet and not even worth thinking about. But the carpet is now quite lovely and clean-er. I don't think it would hurt to give it another going over. But I'm buggered if I'm doing that again, it really was hard work. Add to that the wet carpet smell that you get after, it'll be a while until I want to do that shit again.