| The penguin phase. |
[17 Jan 2009|12:47am] |
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Taking its cue from my dressing like an old lady, my body has decided to release my inner 70-year-old to run painfully lurch wild and free.On the upside, I'm getting used to being a human pincushion for the lovely MedLab ladies, and x-rays mean free ovary nukings nomnomnom. On the downside, I tried to convince the technician that i liked my reproductive organs well done, but she wasn't having a bar of it.
I'm having some problems writing the wedding ceremony and vows etc. Turns out that when you remove all the sexist, hetero-centric, religious and just plain vomit-inducing wording from the ceremony, you are left with precisely sweet fuck all. Does anyone have any good suggestions?
Also, we fitted Allanah's dress yesterday and she looks fucking gorgeous in it. I may need to whack her with the ugly stick a few times in her sleep so as to not be horribly shown up on the day.
For those wanting actual news, I have a 10-month contract with AsureQuality working in their laboratory which should do me nicely until I can abandon Christchurch and start looking for more exciting jobs elsewhere. I'm taking a fourth-year paper on resource and environmental management this year so I don't get bored in ther interim. Should be interesting.
......
So anyway, I have been banned from a llama-trekking honeymoon. I should order these cake toppers in revenge, y/y?
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| Scary..... |
[09 Apr 2008|11:24am] |
And here's how to do it wrong....
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| Wooo, South Park. |
[11 Dec 2007|02:31pm] |
"Love isn't a decision. It's a feeling. If we could decide who we loved, it would be much simpler, but much less magical."
A-fucking-men.
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| I loveded you, piggy. |
[16 Nov 2007|04:36pm] |
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In amidst all the working and uni and Serious Crafting, Nick and I have found ourselves a new place to live. Just us. No-one else. We signed the tenancy agreement today and we move in next Wednesday.
I'm so happy - no more hairballs in the shower, sky-high power bills from people leaving the lights on all the time, piles of weeks-old dishes, mysterious fridge mank, small lakes on the bathroom floor or drunk flatmates ranting at you when all you want to do is sleep, dammit.
And space. Trying to cram all our stuff into one room was getting interesting.Finances might be tight for the next month or two, but I'll just pick up a few extra shifts at work and we'll hopefully be okay. Nick's been offered a full time job at Hangup, so we probably won't have to resort to eating our shoes any time soon.
I'm thinking about having a flat warming-ish drinkies sometime soon (and hey, I need all the help I can get to finish my piles of duty-free alcohol). This also means that I can hold my longed-for stitch 'n bitches at the new flat (these may just be an excuse to get drunk and whinge a lot). It's on the wrong side of town for most of you, but it's vaguely close to the Orbiter route.
Speaking of crafting, next up is a hoodie for Allanah:
What surprises me is that they actually make polar fleece in that hideous shade of green.
Maybe I should make a toy piggy as well. Really, how could I not.
..... and possibly a cupcake.
  
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| For Andrew |
[24 Oct 2007|04:14pm] |
Who is no doubt sitting on Vent, but is probably not playing DotA.
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| RATM, yay! |
[18 Oct 2007|11:19am] |
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mood |
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 content |
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Two days ago, I stood on my hair straighteners and they made a very nice crunching sound. Much akin to the sound my makeup brush made when I stood on that as well. Too much stuff on the floor. Anyway, I bought some new ones yesterday while Will tried to avoid the women's wear section of Kmart, claiming hysterical females would accuse him of being pervy. Licking the faces of such people is a valid way to deal with them, y/y?
Anyway, they're pretty and black and fucking hot, and I've burned myself twice already. Then again, my last ones were kind of crappy, anyway. I have no idea where they came from. I was in a supermarket carpark somewhere in Papakura, and a random woman gave them to me (why are my trips to Auckland always like this?).
Speaking of Auckland, Nick and I have bought our Big Day Out tickets nice and early. Oooh, shiny. We just need to find somewhere to crash in Auckland, and then we'll book our flights. Is anyone else going?
I was browsing craftster last night and I came across this:
    
I don't really 'do' hats, but this is omfg super-cute.
It's the I-can't-believe-it's-not-stein drinkies tomorrow, and you better all be there. All of you. Even the ones who can't possibly make it.
You have been told.
Mmm, warm fingerprints on my arm and stomach.
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| What the...? |
[24 Sep 2007|12:49pm] |
Teenagers have invaded my flat....
And they're cleaning it.
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[14 Sep 2007|08:29pm] |
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 listless |
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You know what's cuter than wheel rat running around all day?
Tandem wheel ratting!
I was going to hit the ultimate in sad pet ownership by filming them and posting it on youtube, but fortunately for y'all I lost my cellphone. Instead, I had a glorious, sleep-filled week of text-free silence until my car spat the horrible device back at me yesterday. I should lose it more often, really.
So, wheel rat (who is likely to be Zorra, is possibly Ruby but is probably not Illy - the food dye has rubbed off and why did I get rats that look the same?) runs around unmolested and I have a phone full of what is essentially the same message. hey. um. do u have your fone bak yet?
Rat envy is contagious, and I have infected yet more people.
Yesterday, Ruby gave me a cup of coffee made with icing sugar, and Trond treated me to a slice and a bite of his majestic chicken. I filled the bed with beads, and woke up snuggling the hot water bottle (mmmm, feels like facefull of shoe) that was supposed to be keeping the Feet of Perpetual Cold from being WMD's in the morning (nothing says love like a pair of icy feet to the kidneys).
This week at uni's been unbelievably busy. I've amplified, purified and sequenced (successfully?... no.) and sat through meeting after meeting. I may be forced to put Richard in a wood chipper if his inane, irrelevant and oh-so-damn long contributions are not blissfully absent from future discussions. Molecular biology or gtfo, bitch. Tammy and Marie, Tammy especially, continue to be brilliant in a glad-this-year's-supervisors-aren't-crayzeee sort of way. I feel so much more comfortable with a supervisor who has a good grasp on the use of the word 'fuck'. It means I don't have to watch what I say around them. I can even forgive them coming into the lab at the very last minute and saying, "Uh, you know how I told you to run those samples with foward primers? It should have been reverse......"
One day I want to be like her, spending someone else's money with a student doing all the labwork.
Coming to a lab near you sometime next week: new TAQ, new extractions, new PCR. Please, take a leaf from the Book of Luke and stalk me through my department. The serial killer in training who used to sit across from me in the lab has left, and I'm really starting to miss that nervous, don't-make-eye-contact feeling.
I did actually have a point in mind when I sat down to make this post. I want my Stich 'n Bitch back. I want to spend long afternoons/evenings sitting around slooowly (always slowly) crafting something that most of the known world considers hideous while gossiping and drinking too much coffee. I miss the whirring of sewing machines and the loud swearing when someone inevitably cocks up. Also, spending all this time sleeping makes me feel lazy. This is just the sort of faux-work I need.
Ruby tentatively suggested her place (she understands the hell I can unleash). Is anyone else interested?
I promise real sugar in the coffee and everything.
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| *Bounce* |
[28 Aug 2007|06:00pm] |
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Okay, so I've made a liar out of myself. Still, it's not really my fault. I cannot believe Nick said that I should get more rats if I missed my girls so much. And that putting them in his room would be fine. I cannot be expected to say no to that sort of thing.
So, now we have new furballs. Not really what we planned to do when we got up this morning, but I shan't complain. The only problem is all three of them (they're white with ruby eyes - little Einsteins!) seem to think that Nick is the Best Thing Evar and I'm mostly worth ignoring. I sense bribery in the form of treats on the horizon.
Allanah and I were going to break into a pet shop and huff the kittens, but apparently kitten 'season' isn't until November. we have instead decided to break into a pet shop and huff chinchillas. Mmmm. Our love is so Zorro!
And now, I cook tea.
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[12 Aug 2007|09:01pm] |
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Also, pancakes and sex ftw.
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[12 Aug 2007|08:50pm] |
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A while back, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jonathannz10 and I had a discussion about how useless undergrads are. They're not doing anything all that important, and they always seem to be running around under our feet in the lab. Clearly, what we each needed was an undergrad to do our monkey work for us, while we made sure they didn't run off with our lab equipment (whole centrifuges?!). We get our important work done faster, and our assigned undergrad... well, who cares?
Ah well, dreams are free.
They also come true.
Introducing my new lab assistant prolegomenon. She's very well-suited for the job, in that she looks good in a labcoat, high heels and a low-cut top.
Also, she's smart and she knows... stuff.
Seriously though, this is truly awesome. I can only spend so much time talking to myself in the lab.
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| I only just remembered... |
[28 Jul 2007|01:41am] |
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 Icy footses! |
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You know Ellelator Lady?
She's the scary, disembodied voice in the lift near Borders at Riccarton Mall. She narrates the lift's actions in an inexplicably traumatic fashion and touches you in your no-no place if you don't stand right in the very middle as you slowly crawl from floor to floor.
Anyway, while at Northlands several months ago, Sass and I made a horrifying discovery.
Ellelator Lady has a cousin.
Her name, according to Sass (and I believe her), is Ellelator Lady-Lady-La, and she's only a little less scary than her Westfield counterpart. Where do they breed these monstrosities? Who lets them out to inhabit mall elevators? Inquiring minds want to know....
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| Once bitten, twice shy? I think not. |
[25 Jul 2007|09:10pm] |
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Today has been a Good Day.
I slept in indecently late after reading Lance's copy of HP (does anyone else think the ending reads like badly-written fanfic?), blew off uni work in favour of going out for lunch, and we drove to Sumner solely for the purpose of having an icecream. Then we went adventuring down random streets and failed at getting lost in Lyttleton. Then I slept some more. Hmmm. Put it that way, and I feel really lazy. Still, I have actually been doing work as of late, so I figure I'm allowed a day off sometime.
Incidentally, what is everyone's stand on the Oxford comma? I don't know why I'm asking, it just occurred to me that I use it all the damn time.
I now have little flecks of mango icecream all over my back top and the ends of my scarf. But at least having short hair again means it didn't get sticky. If there's an art to eating in the wind with you hair loose, I certainly never learned it.
I love those moments when we look back over our lives and think, what if....?
Today, it was: what if I'd stopped being a doormat and finally stood up for myself sooner?
Fuck it, I'm simply grateful it happened when it did. You can't sit around and wait for happiness to waltz in the door and hand you a bouquet.
I have a small nugget of bad news. My two rats, Napoleon and Einstein, had to be put down. I'm not too upset about Poly - she was looking really sick. All shaky and patchy and dead-eyed, like Beta was before she died. She'd still try to clamber onto me when I'd go in to the laundry to talk to her, but she always looked like she was about to fall off. No, what gets me is that Einstein was perfectly healthy. She'd become really fat, but she was still sleek and glossy and bouncing around the cage. Well, when it was warm enough. Still, though it was sad she had to be put down, it's sadder to think of her sitting by herself all day with no company and nothing to do. I thought about it a while back, and it really upset me. I wouldn't want that life for her. Not that knowing that made putting her down any easier. I hate having to make decisions like that, when you know that whatever you do, things are going to sucksucksuck.
I really miss my rats, but I can't justify getting new ones (I know, I know - you can never really replace a pet, but don't you alway hope?) I'm never at home, I don't have the time to look after them, and I'll probably be leaving the country in the next two years or so anyway. Maybe I can just go to pet shops from time to time and smile nostalgically into cages.
Anyway, enough of that crap. What I really wanted to say is that my labwork is going really well, so you can all heave a sigh of relief. If anyone's filling your f-list with wangst, it's not going to be me (well, apart from the stuff about my rats). I'm using a really quick and dirty DNA extraction method and in-gel staining - none of the dicking around grinding up bits of specimen in liquid nitrogen and trying different buffers and different stains and different concentrations and sampling in the snow and only facing south-west while centrifuging and praying to the right gods of gel electrophoresis and sacrificing goats at the greenhouses to make my plants grow and....
Pah. My gels are perfect. My PCR's working, I have loads of DNA fragments the right length and I can fuck up some of the steps and it'll still work. My honours supervisor can bite me. Marie, who I'm working with now, is awesome - I love her attitude to labwork. Not before 10 in the morning, just microwave that gel and use it again, and ignore everyone who say you shouldn't vortex all your samples. This freezer? Yours. These gel boxes? Yours. The pretty new pipettes that *gasp* actually work? You can use those too. And she's not a stress bunny. And she doesn't keep on disappearing off to Nigeria.
.....
I'm sounding a little scary-enthusiastic here, aren't I.
I have nothing else to report, except this icon reminds me of purpledragon3. And it makes me giggle.
Also, Paula, I'm totally okay with the fact that you have no idea why I did what I did and you think I'm a bitch. I'm also okay with everyone knowing this. Thank-you for telling me. I'm not being sarcastic; I do actually mean that. Sorry I didn't mention that sooner - I just cleared out my inbox and found your deleted comment.
Anyone else going to the Decadence and Deviance party? I'm driving down with sol_crea, king_richard, and eladrin. Allanah has named this mission Operation PDA and the cute war has officially begun. Team Awesome lives on!
EDIT: I found another picture of Poly.
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[05 Jul 2007|09:09pm] |
So, it'd be bad taste to do this to my rats when they die, wouldn't it....
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[30 Jun 2007|02:40pm] |
In my grand tradition of getting fnu infections while overseas, I am on antibiotics yet again. I should really learn, and getting better medical insurance with my travel stuff. This doctor was better than the one on Norfolk Island, though, and gave me drugs I can *gasp* actually take.
Anyways, it could be a lot worse. I can still bounce about like an idiot, I just can't drink.
... Well, supposedly.
We're currently crammed into a gaming cafe in Chinatown. Soon, I shall escape and have grand adventures in the marketplace. Adelaide is a lot like Christchurch, with the flatness and all, but the public transport system is way better. We've been rocking around on cheap bus and train passes that we're totally not allowed to have, because no-one ever checks. Freedom! After several overseas trips of whirlwind rushing through random cities, it's really good to be able to take the time to explore a place decently. Especially when I don't have to do it by myself.
If you want me to buy you exciting stuff while I am over here, or send you a postcard written in the world's worst handwriting, leave me a comment. I'm currently looking for an umbrella with ears on it, as I sorely miss the sheer heinousness of my old one. I've only bought one pair of shoes. So far. Fingers crossed and all.
*hugs*
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[22 Jun 2007|11:02pm] |
Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net
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[22 Jun 2007|10:59pm] |
"Regarding our night of passion; unexpected consequence = BIZARRE LOVECHILD!!1! If you wish to apply for custody, press '1'. If you wish to apply for abortion, press '2'. If you wish to apply for COMPLETELY UNRELATED ORGASMS, dial '69'. Oh yeah baby.
Also: we roxxors, everyone else is a n00b. Craptember is teh lose."
See, this is why you are AWESOME.
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| Update OMFG. |
[22 Jun 2007|09:51pm] |
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 peaceful |
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Oh, right. The journal thingie.
God, this week's gone so quickly. I'm going to blame... Sass and d1rtyf1lthy, I think. I can't remember large amounts of last Sunday night, but I can remember being threatened with being kicked out of the Bog (Sass had been cut off by the time I finished work at 5 - a round of applause, please), tipsy-but-still-legally-under-the-limit driving around town (whyyyy do the liquor stores close so early on Sunday? How are we supposed to get our drink on?) and one of the most amusing, albeit curtailed, trips to Countdown evar.
When you lose at booze, drink Fi's duty-free alcohol instead. Drink it like woah. Caleb and I did the sensible thing and banned Sass from the daiquiris. For her own safety, you understand. The vodka and the wine, well that was an entirely different matter. I chain-smoked and woke up with my mouth tasting like cack, a few vague memories of throwing up (mostly) in the rubbish bin and no memories at all as to how I got into bed. I'm pretty sure there was a broken shot glass, which Sass cleverly discovered with her bare foot. We only knew this by the blood on the floor.
Clearly, I should do this all again tonight.
On a slightly less destructive note, eladrin and I went to Hanmer on Monday, which was much with the freezing-cold-tasty-foods-and-soaking-in-hot-pools goodness. And then we went to Babylon Heights on Tuesday, which was... well, pretty damn strange, really. But well worth seeing. And then we went to the ballet last night.
*deep breath*
OMFG Swan Lake squeeeee!!! Soooo good to finally see the damn thing after years of playing the music for it. The costumes were amazing (even if I am inclined to agree with the Press reviewer's comment that the sorcerer had a tribble on his head during the ball scene) and it was all just so shiny-pretty-drooooool. We had seats right in the front row, which may not have been ideal to watch the dancing, but were great for staring into the orchestra pit (which you know I did. And then I stopped after the concert to chat. Because otherwise I never get to see my violin teacher any more. I did not excessively critique any violin solos. Nope.)
Oooh, and there was the dinner. And the wine. I was still a little squiffy after the concert. We were running a little late, so we had to rush dessert. I think we may have set a new time record for pudding consumption.
See, I can remember what culture is. All I have to do is make it to the opera again and stop piking from orchestra, and the feelings of slackness will be all gone. I even have a Bartok sonata lined up to learn. I may never even bother getting the music for it, but I love feeling all organised about it.
And now for something completely different.
It has come to our attention that king_crea are just too damn cute. eladrin and I hereby challenge them to a cuteness contest.
.... We're mostly joking. Mostly.
We figure we'd be off to a good start if we actually updated our joint journal *pokes out tongue at Allanah*
So, the no doubt stupid amounts of photos we take on our trip to Adelaide will be posted on same_breath, just add us if a million and one shots of us getting pissed will somehow be amusing to you.
On that note, I'm probably going to be away for the next eight weeks or so. I'm heading off to Perth to do my ancient DNA work after the Adelaide trip, so if you want to see me before I go, drop me a text or something.
.... And now, I put clothes on and go feed Trond's cat.
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| Rat-a-tat-tat, par down to char Tat. |
[08 Jun 2007|07:57pm] |
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mood |
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 not at all surprised |
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omfg with the twitchy-caffeine-not-enough-sleep-feels-like-sick-fun-wheeee!
While I know that 7 O'clock in the morning is in fact a real hour at which real people get out of bed and live their lives, I feel that I am just too out of practice to be doing that shit. Note to self: the coffee does not make it better. EPIC FAIL.
Work today was full of muppets. They come out of the woodwork for the weekend; I'll be knee-deep by Sunday. Today, some bright spark decided to reverse through the main doors and into the showroom. WTF. I think they needed help loading things into their car, but Nick, Robyn and myself were all too busy trying to scrape our jaws off the floor to be any real use. We have a carpark for a reason, people.
In other news, you, jonathannz10 , are made of awesome and win. See my lack of sarcasm! Only the most masochistic saintly of people can stand to have me rant at them over large cups of coffee for extended periods of time. Plus, departmental gossip ftw. Which reminds me. If you really do want a tshirt that says "I'm not with her - she's too fucking crazy," I know someone who'd just love to make you one. It would make them all gleeful and stuff, and I love seeing them happy. Please continue to be wonderful, or I will be forced to give Jo your cellphone number in revenge. Mwa.
Flights to Australia have been booked. A couple of weeks in Adelaide, then... ah, I don't actually know how long I'll be in Perth. Due to the bullshit cloning laws in this country, I have to do all my aDNA work at Murdoch. Four weeks at least, probably longer. I'm really starting to miss being at home. The constant living out of suitcases wears a bit. Still, reallyreallyreally looking forward to Adelaide. Should be good fun. And hey, it's not like I'm paying for my trip to Perth. I'll enjoy the free travel while it lasts.
Many thanks to those who can read between the lines and still see me. I love you in a platonic-but-still-very-appreciative-we-can-negotiate-sexual-favours-if-we-must sort of fashion. :P
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