Still ticking, and starting to have more fun

Busy busy busy.

The month started with Boss and Grad Student away at a conference, a conference for which we just barely managed to get the data in time to put into posters to present at the conference. Evidently there was also in incident where Grad Student's poster got THROWN OUT by the person cleaning his hotel room, and he had to go dumpster diving in the basement of a large city hotel to recover it. I'm told it wasn't even sticky when he found it. *shudder*

After they got back from conference #1, we had to get going on data for conference #2, which is right now. So for the past 3-4 weeks I have been at least up to my neck, and frequently up to my eyebrows, in all things work. Last week I stayed till 7pm one day, and 8pm on Friday, this was because the buttload of data we'd generated needed to be organized and categorized and made to mean something exciting.

Oh, and in the middle of this up-to-the eyebrowsyness, my parents were in California, so one Thursday evening after work I hung out in La Jolla, got a haircut, got Matt to drive up from our flat to meet me for dinner, then at 8pm I set out Northwards to pick up the parents from LAX (at 10pm) and drive us all to Granny's. All of which went very smoothly, no evil traffic, no delayed planes, no lost luggage (hooray). Matt took the train up to LA the next day, which did no go so smoothly at all. What should have been a journey of 4 hours door to door, with 3 of those hours spent on a comfy squishy train seat turned into 9 hours door to door, with 7.5 of those hours spent in a mysteriously too-narrow train seat that caused Matt to have interesting back and shoulder spasms the rest of the night.

That Sunday was my Granny's 90th birthday party, which went exceedingly well. She's a bit resistant to fuss and attention, but it was a low key enough affair that she was really happy. I got the bonus of finding out that the pearl earrings I'd bought her were extra appropriate because pearl is June's birth stone. Who knew?

The NEXT weekend, my parents and sister came down to visit with us, on the train (only 50min late this time), and in between trips to Marshall's and Designer Shoe Warehouse we watched a World Cup game in the bar of a casino, got pedicures involving a hand-painted flower on each big toenail (that was just me and my sister) and went to a cousin's university graduation ceremony.

That was also the weekend of Matt's and my first wedding anniversary. We went to the Wild Animal Park, with the aim of riding on a hot air balloon, but the wait for the ride was far too long, so we went back the next week. It was fun.

It was nice having a sort of re-tread of last year, with family around, a cousin graduating from UCSD (different cousin), and everybody reminiscing about our wedding day. The year has gone FAST, particularly the 2006 part of it. I hadn't realized how worried I was about my family's response to my scar, but Mum and an Aunt were pleasantly surprised, my sister found it more obvious than she'd expected, and my uncle enthused about how great I look, and how whatever I've been doing, I should keep doing it. I managed to avoid saying something about "oh? having cancer and getting a big chunk taken out of my face? I should keep doing that?".

So yeah. The looming depression that I have not mentioned much (if at all), and that led me to a lovely melt down at work last month, that depresion is being dealt with a bit. I'm in counselling, that helps, this time I'm not doing it as quickie crisis-fixing, I plan to do this for a while and really get myself on a more even keel.

The first half of this week I finished up two papers, and now I am taking the rest of the day off, starting with sushi for lunch with a good friend.

Whew!

I usually score "you have both male and female brain" on these types of things. I'm glad of it, I wouldn't like my brain to be so heavily influenced by the presence of my lady parts.

You scored as Either. You brain is neither specifically male nor female dominated in the way you perceive things and as bad as this sounds it can easily mean that you are capable of combining both limiting gender aspects to your advantage. Rather than being genderless you are possibly able think freely. This does not nec. mean that you are bisexual or androgynous or indecisive, though it might. Either 68% Male 57% Female 50% Neither 36% Should you be MALE or FEMALE?* created with QuizFarm.com