too little butter

The dress rehearsal last night went quite well, even if we did spend the first two hours or so taking photos. There was only one slight little hitch with the music and aside from the finale [which it appears that more than half the women performing hadn't been shown before last night] all the dances were almost perfect. So we'll be practicing the finale on Saturday before the show. Hopefully I'll be able to be on stage during it, rather than in the wings with all the rest of the short people... I don't know how to solve the problem... but I'm sure it'll be fine on the night.

Then I went home, got home, behaved like a tornado, according to Button. Apparently that's what I do when I get home. Swirl around hectically before collapsing. Sleep happened and it was very nice. I managed to sleep through until about 5:30. Apparently we should've gotten up then, rather than going back to sleep, sleeping through the alarm and not getting up until we needed to be leaving the house. But it's not the first time that's happened and leaving 15 minutes late is not a complete train smash. Of course, it means that we don't eat breakfast or make lunch or any of that. And I'm not feeling well today. Some of which may be related to the lack of food for 3 hours after I got up, but I'm not sure about that. I think it's just general stress/lack of sleep/etc.

I'm actually having out-of-larp conversations with people other than my eldest son for a change... That's nice. And the information I'm obtaining [as yet all from my eldest son] is most illuminating. And I really need to get new glasses before I kill someone.

There's just too much work! Not enough time...

Linda Linda

Well. All I have to say is that Eugene has an awful lot to answer for. First Haruhi, then Zone, then Tomoyasu Hotei, now Linda Linda Linda and the Blue Hearts. I mean really - do I really need to have some punk-rock Japanese song in my head for days? No, I don't. Can I get it out? Why no, no I can't. And do you know why? Because of Linda [Linda - Linda Linda - Linda Linda Linda....]

Otherwise, work is happening at a frightening pace. I'm almost done working out the after-hours access to LN. I just need to speak to JL. Chemistry is going okay - hopefully I'll get the prac [mostly] done at the dress-rehearsal tonight. Siyoli and Heather and I are thinking of meeting up over the weekend to get some collaborative studying done for the test on Monday.

And from now on - no more dancing for me. For the rest of the year at any rate. Which is very sad, but at least I'll be able to get most of my work done. Which means less stress, which is almost the same as less pain and quite possibly better sleep. At the very least, more sleep.

The book review blog is going quite well. I keep posting things. If I worked less I'd be able to read more and then I'd be able to post more. That would be nice. And someone invited me to yet another networky thing called SisterWoman. But who was it? I don't know. I'm not entirely sure that I want to... For reasons that I'm not going to explain.

In other news I had a very strange dream. I'm not sure when it was since I don't remember having it, but I've been getting these weird memories of things I know haven't happened [the final Chrysalids larp, for example], so I can only presume that it's a dream. That I don't remember. And they're just bizarre! But I won't bore you with too many details...

what a weekend

So, the weekend happened. On Friday, Button and I went to see La Rondine at the Baxter. The evening started out ... interesting. We went in and went to where our seats should have been. I say shoudl have been because the seats were not there. They had been removed to make way for a camera. Presumably there's a reason that the seats were still being sold, but I don't know what it was. We went off to the manager, who got us some other seats, from which we couldn't quite see the stage properly. Luckily there were some empty seats near us, so we took them instead. As for the opera itself... It wasn't brilliant, but it was okay. The performances were good - some of the performances were quite lovely, but the opera itself was lacking.

On Saturday we went shopping - I needed more teflon tape, some warm tops [I know it's the end of winter, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm still cold and don't really have any nice warm clothes anyway] and some other things that I don't recall. Mission accomplished, we went home. Button headed off to his meeting in Khayelitsha, I lay on the couch and read my book. Eventually he came home, shortly after which I left for the LARP and he was picked up by a friend to go see a movie.

The LARP [Chrysalids: Celebration] was, as usual, fun. My character has become a lot more frail with the passage of time. She went into the LARP upset and she came out with a new feud - very important since she's no longer fighting with the Barnes' family. She fell down the stairs, after seeing some people in black rushing across the square - later she found out that they had stolen one of her grandchildren.

Yesterday, there was the last game before Simon and Adrianna head off to Poland. It was very exciting. We were at a party, the trickster spirits had arrived and decided there needed to be more 'fun'. Luckily, this caused Nagataka to spot the fox mask wearing individual. Who we followed into the basement. He/she admitted to being tainted, refused to turn themselves over to the people who deal with these sorts of things. So we attacked. We killed one henchman, it killed the other henchman and then turned itself into some sort of oil and floated away on the stream. After we attacked it, despite the fact that we met them without weapons. Of course, shugenja and monks don't need weapons, but Kamenosuke and Hideo were at a distinct disadvantage. I would've done something to assist Kamenosuke, of course, but he was managing just fine and I was having too much fun with Jade Strike [look at the pretty green light].

This morning, I have a meeting with my supervisor. I have to tell her that my entire 'pure' sample is now on the bottom of the mill and now contaminated with teflon tape. Stupid mill. And I wrote my first review for what am I reading.

performances

Well, the most exciting thing to happen so far today, is the appearance of my dear sister's 'online book club'. While it's not quite what I'd imagine a book club to be, it stars me, my sister and a friend of hers at the moment. She's added all her previous book reviews [back-dated, of course] and more will be coming. If you're interested in being part of it, leave a comment? Contact Phil? She's in charge, after all.

In other news, the milling continues - there will also be some mass spectrometry preparation today. And hopefully all the problems will be solved... Or something.

The belly show advances with terrifying speed. We've had our last practice [T says we're the most ready group of all, so that's exciting] and next up is the dress rehearsal and then the actual show. To those of you who aren't going to be there - if you don't have a good excuse, you should be ashamed of yourself. And it was sold out last week.

Tonight Button and I are going to La Rondine at the Baxter theatre. More on that next week.

donig a happy dance

Not literally, of course, though I'm sure my fellow grad students would understand. I am celebrating what seems to be a minor miracle. There I was hiding away from the mill, as I did not want to come back to it and find the rest of Wendall scattered on the bottom of the mill. Again. When I finally plucked up the courage to go back and have a look I found that, yes, some of the sample has leaked. However, the cylinder has remained closed - which means that I have yet more 'pure' Wendall powder!
While that may not seem very exciting to you, I assure you that I am very excited.

In other news, the car has finally gone in for repair! Yay! Today's the 20th. They estimate it should be finished by the 28th. Isn't that encouraging. I'd hate to know how long [and how expensive] it would've been if I hadn't been stopped or if the guy in question had been going faster than a couple of kilometers an hour...

Over the weekend I had flu, and so did as little as possible. I went to my grandmother's 83rd birthday party yesterday. It was fun, there was an overabundance of cake and lots of familial stuff.

My name is ... uh ... which one is this?

So, Dragonfire happened. Yay for Dragonfire! Who needs to be able to remember their name. Or anyone else's, when you've got Lara the LARP-nazi running around saying things like "no name-tags" and "no character sheets"... it's not like you've been spending the weekend changing your name every couple of hours. It was lots of fun though, and luckily Lara's sensible enough to give people normal names and have there not be too many people, so that it's not so hard to remember who they are. And so what if you forget the name of the person you just met - it's kind of like real life, isn't it?
And, I've got dice :) They're pretty.

So, that was my weekend. Aside from that, I've done very little that isn't actually work in the last week.

And this morning, I saw my very first dead person. At least, I think it was a dead person. There was an accident on the M3, which must have happened shortly before I arrived in the shuttle, as the ambulance hadn't reached it yet. From the looks of it, a pedestrian had been hit. At the very least, there were no cars stopped and just one person lying in the road. The reason that I'm presuming they're dead is that no-one was fussing around them as people tend to do with injured types. Possibly the police were just unable to do anything for the person, who may just have been unconscious, but there was rather a lot of wet road between the person and the rather wet gutter... But possibly if the person had actually been dead, the police would have found something to cover them with. Or one could argue that if the person had been alive they would have tried to put something on it to keep them warm. It's hard to be sure in either direction. The ambulance got there at about the same time the shuttle reached upper campus, I know 'cause I heard it.

In other news, Wendell should be finished defatting and I should now be able to start milling him. Lucky me.

already August

Time is moving so quickly! It's coming up for Dragonfire already. Next thing you know, the belly show will be over and I'll be writing an exam and it'll be the end of the year and I'll be going "where's my data?"...

Anyway, chemistry classes have been happening. The first week was a basic introduction to the required stats that we need. Which is good. And tomorrow there's a tut, which is better. There's an assignment due for friday and I don't really know what the questions are. I know what we're supposed to do - but what do you want us to tell you? the class is nice though, and we're starting to get to know each other since there are so few of us. For last weeks prac we did a intro to presenting thing, apparently we're going to have to do a presentation at the end of the course and this was a chance to see what it's like. I'm so glad I've had plenty of experience at this.

Then there is my 'get to bed early' plan. It's not happening. My social life is too hectic... Wednesdays is yoga, thursdays is belly... last friday, I did nothing and was very glad. Saturday I got a yoga mat, so now I can do it at home [if I ever am both at home and have the time] and I don't have to use the stinky ones at the gym. And it's a pretty yoga mat. Then Button and I had supper with my parents. It was nice.

Yesterday was not a fun day. After too little sleep, I woke up feeling less than my best. Much less. But off we went to find Wombat and head out to Die Strandloper in Langebaan for a general birthday celebration [well, two birthday celebrations]. The drive sucked 'casue I felt awful and couldn't get comfortable enough to actually sleep. Then we arrived and after some food and something to drink I felt a bit better. I was a little off the whole day, but the food was wonderful, the setting was brilliant and the company was better than both.

After that, Wombat and I and one or two other people descended on Sidrianna, to playtest a module for Dragonfire. Due to a number of circumstances, one of the playtesters had to leave and then I had to go [someone requires a set amount of sleep, if she doesn't get it, she gets really cranky and that's a bad place for her to be in, so she tried to avoid that], Wombat was getting a lift with me, so he needed to go... So we are reconvening this evening, to finish off. Which is good 'cause it was fun and I want to know what happens.

In other news, my first real sample [Wendall], is being defatted at the moment. It's been cut into small pieces, to make the defatting more effective. Hopefully I'll be milling next week and have my next sample being defatted. Unfortunately, I need quite a lot of powder from these bones and I think some of my samples are a bit small to provide them...

so hungry....

It's been a while, and I don't remember everything that's happened since last I was here... And all I've been able to smell all morning [on campus at any rate] is the smell of wet things - hair, clothes, whatever... it's that clinging smell that hangs around even though there's nothing damp here anymore.

Oh well, I had my first undergrad chemistry lecture today. Well, I've done undergrad chemistry before, but this was my first lecture of this course. It was quite fun. The class is really small, which is nice. Unfortunately I have realised two unhappy facts. The first - my bag is breaking. The second - lectures make me hungry. So I shall shortly venture out into the cold in search of food. I also forgot to get chmicals while I was there, so I need to go back and do that. I meant to do it last week, but I got distracted somehow.

Hopefully IN will be in today and I can begin my next stage of the project. Assuming I get the chemicals... Perhaps I should wait for KK to come in and talk her into putting off sorting for long enough to help me carry the bottles back here. We shall have to wait and see.

Shimmy, shimmy, shimmy, pop

So... stuff has happened...

The car has been assessed. Yay! Now it just needs to be approved and then I can be carless for a week and a half or so while it gets fixed. Won't that be fun.

I went to dancing. And learnt that TL had hurt her knee, had to have a knee-operation and can't dance for THREE MONTHS! Poor T. So now she can't be in the show, which is a pity. But the show will go on, she sent out the poster today, which I'm putting here so that everyone can see it. Rumour has it that all the dancers are going to get tickets to sell, so you can probably get some from me if you want them.

I also went to yoga - where are our usual teachers? Why aren't they around? I liked them, they taught regularly and were good at it. Now we're having a string of "I haven't taught in ages/very/often/at all" and the entire class seems to be based around what they like to do and are capable of, as opposed to those of us taking the class.

On Tuesday, there was the game. Now, do I remember what happened? One of the thigns that happened is that WH is going to be busy on Tuesday nights until Hodgestar and Confluence go to Poland... so we're going to be playing on Sundays until then, excepting Dargonfire and the week before.
Anyway, there we were having a discussion about how to proceed with our investigation, with Yashamaru and Kamenosuke failing to communicate properly... Off we went to question some guy, who was almost rude [not a good plan if you're a ronin and Hideo is around ... he might kill you for it]. There was some kind of commotion outside, just as we finished the ... interrogation. We went outside to find the square filled with hysterical geisha. It turns out that there was a trickster spirit in the geisha house, which they all thought was a goblin. It was looking for its orange-thing ... the fox mask we're also interested in finding. Then, there was another one in the bookshop... Nagataka and I narrowly managed to avert disaster as another one tried to light an enormous pile of fireworks. We managed to get them all to congregate in the Running Fox Inn, where a less-than-reliable ronin/bandit was on hand to tell them about when he saw the fox-mask. And then we talked them into going home - we'll light some fireworks if we need them to return. And then ... we sat around discussing the next step in our investigation again.

And that's been my week so far. This morning I went off to SAHRA with Button. I had to deliver a report [or three] to ML for MP. Apparently someone broke into SAHRA last night and tried to steal a radio, but failed. Poor ML had to come through from Somerset West to reset the alarm. From there it was off to Heritage Western Cape to deliver another report for MP - this one to NN. Then I foudn my way back to Hiddingh so I could get through to UCT on a really dismal day, when I have very little to do here.

This weekend is fairly fully booked with nothing tonight [yay, nothing!], yoga in the morning [assuming I can drag myself out of bed], an archaeological get-together at A&A's in the evening, with the possibility of trundling off to Stones afterwards, to say goodbye to the Purple-Polka-dotted-Panda, depending on how late the archaeologists stay up... Sunday will probably involve a trip to the market, depending on the weather, followed by roleplaying in the evening...

Happiness

It is a lovely warm, summery day in the middle of winter in cape town. Some might say that this is because cape town's weather is unpredictable at the best of times, but they're wrong. It's because Button is back and the city is celebrating. And even if it's not, I am.

The airport stole his bag, but then told him that barring any strange occurrences they should be able to get it to us today... Then they phoned at 9 this morning to tell us that they'd have it to us by 10. It turns out that they actually meant 12, but the point is that it arrived!

Otherwise, the car is going to see an assessor this week, so progress is being made, if slowly.

The weekend happened. It was fun. On Friday I went with Conrad, Wombat and Dave Sharpe, to Lara and Dave's and we watched Doctor Who. It was cool. On Saturday I saw Dave Sharpe again, this time at Simon and Adrianna's, where Neil was also in attendance. We played games and sat around talking till far too late... but it was fun.

Dull and Dreary

It's a dull and dreary day in Cape Town. Dismal, even. There's apparently supposed to be a front moving through sometime today. Leaving us with [hopefully] clear weather for the trip to Yzerfontein tomorrow. At the very least, it should be clear up at the site.

In other news, there was a game last night. It was fun... Having been told to investigate the fire, we set about doing that. We started by talking to the man behind it all, and then getting some interesting information out of his daughter, who is set on being a magistrate, much to her parents' horror. Then, Kamenosuke went off to sit around being confused, I gather, while the three of us headed into town to do some investigating. We went off to meet with Kamenosuke and discuss what we'd learnt, when Yashamaru returned from wherever he'd been. Kamenosuke and Hideo then went into town to keep an eye on Hideo's uncle and his betrothed, while Yashamaru, Nagataka and I went to speak to a rather cranky Isawa ishiken. After that I tried to explain some stuff to Yashamaru, but was swiftly distracted by his introducing some interesting magical theory stuff. In the end, it wasn't necessary, but it was an interesting discussion, by the end of which Ishie had forgotten what it was they'd been talking about in the first place...

There were other things, but they weren't as interesting.

Tuesday *again*...

I'm beginning to think that the world is entirely made up of Tuesdays...

In other news, I am taking a well-earned break from work. I've done 15 boxes today, and many more individuals since previous people who did the accession didn't understand the concept of 'one number = one individual' ... they don't seem to have a clear concept of cleaning the material either. But it could be worse... it's getting better. I'm on my 16th box already... I think I'm going to go home slightly early today since I've done loads of work already and I'm filthy and need to have a bath before the game... Score one for the sand in the boxes/bags...

In other news... there's not much news since yesterday... But there will be news tomorrow, 'cause the game's tonight and then on Thursday we're going up to Yzerfontein to check out the excavation. I'm excited.

.................................................................................

Actually, now that I think about it, I've done 16 boxes since I printed ... which makes it more like 20 boxes today...

Look, a ... uh ... thing

So, the weekend has gone by, and I'm wondering why it is that I got up this morning? On the other hand, my samples have all been filtered [rather than left to stand, making the department stink of chemicals]. So that's done.

Otherwise, the weekend happened, but I did very little. I spoke to Button and then to Wombat, who came to visit me. That was nice. And I rewatched Samurai Fiction, which put me in mind of the L5R game, as one of the main characters reminded me of Kamenosuke... if he wasn't such a nice person, that is. When I first watched SF, I didn't get it - which makes one wonder about my mental abilities as it's not that complicated. To be fair I was half asleep and not really interested in paying very much attention at the time...

And now... I'm waiting for lunch to be over so that I can go down to the SEM in the Physics building, while exploiting the fact that the Wombat and Hodgestar are similar looking in appearances. And I've decided to be semi-consistent wrt the whole not using people's real names bit...

Not my day...

Well, yesterday started well. It went rapidly downhill when I tried to weigh out the powder and realised I didn't have nearly enough. It's hard to have an idea of how much powder weighs 5g when you've never seen it [and let me just say: it's a lot!] I suppose it was a good thing that we did that before we went to MCB, so we could add some giraffe powder to my cow. The day went well, though boringly - centrifuging is fun ... the first time. My last tube of the day [there are two more to do this morning] resulted in unhappiness when the tubes decided that they wanted to spend the rest of forever in the centrifuge buckets ... with my sample. After much effort they were removed. As it was, I was late and got the late shuttle, that went first to lower campus and then back to upper campus, before going to hiddingh... And then, just when I was near dancing, a bit early, yes, but not late, some guy drove into the back of me. He was very apologetic and seemed nice enough, but I'm not exactly a sterling judge of character, so we'll just wait and see. As it is, I made it to dancing [and wasn't actually late 'cause we started late]... When I finally got home I realised that my gate-opener wasn't working. I avoided the lifts, once I'd finally gotten my car in - no point tempting fate and I've been stuck in there before [and this time there's no Button to come to the rescue]. This morning I woke up sore. Very sore. I think my body objects to being jerked around like a ragdoll... Hopefully today will be better, but I don't hold out much hope. For a start, I think I left my lights on...

I'm so excited!

Yay! This morning I am going to be centrifuging my samples! It's so exciting! Well, I suppose it's only the one sample. Which I probably should have weighed before now, but we'll manage. IN and I are off to the MCB building at 11ish to meet MC, the woman in charge. She's going to help us get started and hopefully it will all go well. I'll be sure to let you know...

Yesterday WK had a look at my interesting maxilla and told me that it was not actually a deciduous tooth, this guy [or girl] just had an extra tooth. Apparently she's had a couple of those previously. Otherwise, not much else interesting happened. We had two lots of kids [little kids!] coming through to look at human remains. The first was a man who had discovered a skeleton in his garden, while having a trench dug. That was excavated and is now at the museum. So he brought his daughters in to look around and see what happens and so on... They were between 7 & 10 years old. Later on two women came with four kids for the same thing, except the oldest child here was about 5! I'm all for educating children, but surely when it comes to something like this, it's better to wait until they're older? I don't know - how much can a two year old understand about some bones? Can it really understand that this was an actual living human being? And what about a child that's slightly older, who does understand that they're looking at human remains? How does it affect them? I guess at the end of the day, every child is different and the parents probably have the best idea of what their children can cope with, but if it was up to me, I'd wait till they were at least 10 or older, to make sure that they can understand what we do and why we do it.

Despite telling myself that I wouldn't go to yoga last night 'cause I just wasn't in the mood... I did. And I'm so glad I did. I knew that it would be Etienne taking the class, which I was dreading, 'cause the last time he took it, I didn't enjoy it. It turns out that it was exactly what I needed and I was left in a happy place.

This morning I came in on the shuttle with AM, who is a wonderful person, despite being Australian. He has a wonderful girlfriend AW, but she's not with him this time. I saw him yesterday at the museum and so was surprised that he was coming in to UCT this morning, but apparently he's got so many rocks to look at from all over and only 4 more weeks to do it in, that he's following some sort of hectic schedule and since SW isn't at the museum much this week, he's going to do a long stretch next week and spend some more time with the UCT collection for now...