Thursday, September 17, 2009

how ya been feeling, how ya been feeling?

Firstly a dream.


There was a shiny black car driving around, erratically without a driver in the driver's seat (?) but it was being controlled by someone, a guy, but I don't know who.  And I was refusing to imprint on it, (by that I mean change its colour psychically) but this guy was relentless and then I gave in, and it became a baby pink colour.  Don't ask me how.


And then I was in a tutorial with the people from my Endocrinology firm at CX, with K, one of the SpR's who's probably had her baby now.  And she was telling us how she wanted to focus on the immunology aspect of endocrinology, and she had submitted a paper on it whilst she was in Canada.  It was the end of the tutorial, and we seemed to be saying "goodbye" as opposed to "see you next tutorial", in one of the H rooms (History) at my school.  So we left early, and I was commenting to A about how I used to hate it when teachers let us out late of class, because the next class would be queueing up outside the room.


(At my school, we used to move to different classrooms for every lesson.)


I gathered it was lunchtime, but then suddenly it was the end of school - the time passing wasn't a big deal to me in the dream - and I met E, a girl I used to know three or four years ago, so we got chatting on the way to the school bus home, which we both used to take, catching up over what had happened.


So we got to the bus, and some of the kids were annoying the bus driver, and he was threatening to leave without letting them on.  So anyway, I was like, please can we get on, I'll stop them annoying you, but I found that the first step was too high for me :(  so this boy helped me get on.  I made my way to the back, where my group sat, and I saw D doing her maths homework, using one of those... what are they called now?  STA?  SPA?  Anyway.  They were maths textbooks we used at school, and they were about 1000 pages long.


Then the bus left, and I remember checking the time and it was 15.36.  My sister wasn't on the bus so I rang her and she said she had lost something, but refused to tell me what it was, and wanted to ask a teacher to locate it for her, as my school had this tracking system to locate stuff that was lost, (not in real life!) and I told her, "how are they gonna know it's yours?"


----


Back in London now!!!  Got a couple of days before I go back to uni where my BSc awaits me...  It's going to be weird to get back into lecture mode, after a year of hospital related activities.  I'm going to miss hospital :(  But obviously, not the hours.  I am glad to have normal waking up times.


I've been having chest pain when I breathe :( (can't remember if I mentioned this before, but oh well) and it really hurts, but isn't there all the time.  It's also been moving about, and I had it checked out by the GP who decided it was musculoskeletal pain.  So that's why I haven't been doing much, or talking much.  Just, y'know, recovering and watching lots of films and trying to avoid packing for London.  I hate packing, even more than unpacking.  At least with unpacking, you know you're just taking stuff out.  Packing (for me at least) involves putting stuff in, and taking it out to rearrange it or compress it or make more room or take stuff out :(


But I did it eventually.  There must be some special gene, that codes for amazing packing skills and finding ways to fit everything in instead of sitting on the suitcase and forcing the zips to close.. seriously, that's what I do.


Helped my sister move into her uni halls - her room is like mine was except a little smaller.  She had loads of stuff and we had to drag it up two or three flights of stairs because her halls have no lifts.  NO LIFTS.  I don't know what it's going to be like when she moves out again...


Got to figure out what to get a couple of people for their birthdays.  We've never really given A a proper birthday celebration, like with cake and an actual present.  His birthday falls early in September, so most of us aren't around and we've not gotten him a present in the time that we have known him.  So.. suggestions people?


I reallllllllllly hate organising things for my friends.  I love them, but it's such hassle sometimes.  Some people just don't reply, some people are insanely late, some people just don't turn up even though they said they would... and friendship politics blurs things a little bit.  But we must all have a huge reunion, after summer, before people go off to their new Masters / degrees / jobs / lives.


Also, I'm going to dye my hair in the next few days.  Every time I do it, I think "I'm never going to do this ever ever again".  I hate the smell of the dye more than anything else, and that's what makes me swear off doing it.  But then after time passes, I think, mm, why not?  So it's been a year since I had these "never again" thoughts, maybe it's time to try again :)  I've done it purpley and browny in the past.  This time, I am hoping for a reddy/browny color.  What dya think?  The thing is, having black hair means that most dyes aren't (very / at all) effective and I don't want to dye it permanently because then you have to wait for the colour to grow out, i.e. the dyed hair has to grow long enough so you can cut it off.


P is currently in chocolate land, aka Belgium, a fact I have been lamenting, because a) I want to go abroad again and b) I want some Belgian chocolate.  So I have been promised purchases of Belgian chocolate.  He's back on Saturday :)  For those who don't know or who I haven't told yet or who are just curious, he is in the very last stages of thesis completion, which is in "Galerkin projection of discrete fields via supermesh construction".  (I have NO IDEA what that is.) 


Theses (?) are submitted and read by an internal examiner, and by an external examiner, both of whom must be familiar with the work you're doing, but not familiar with you, and you have a "viva" where presumably they ask difficult questions to prove you actually wrote the thesis and know what you are talking about.  Passing of the viva indicates you are now a(n academic) doctor :)


Normally, PhD candidates have 3 years of funding or scholarships but the deadline where you must absolutely hand SOMETHING in is 4 years.
P hopes to do it within the next couple of weeks, thereby becoming the first student in his group to submit on time (on time being within the scholarship funding time).  I have read his thesis, "read" meaning looked at it briefly.  He is incredibly eloquent though, the result of reading lots and lots and knowing everything.  I have been angling for a thanks in the acknowledgement, but didn't think I would actually get one as I have not contributed to the thesis in any way, except to point out one grammatical error.


But, not to sound boastful, here it is.
The last word of thanks goes to Carol – her kind soul furnished me with a world outside of work, and thereby kept me sane.
It made me a bit teary to read that, at the end of a very emotional acknowledgement of everyone else.  A LOT of people got mentioned, and their thankyou's are much more eloquent than that for me, but not as meaningful for me.


Aaaanyway, this is probably a very long post, much to say and update.  Hope you are all well!!!

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