Current feelings

I am a teensy bit overwhelmed at the moment. GAH. Why is it that when I am snowed under with work and home and everything else that instead of putting my nose to the grindstone and getting it done, my motivation goes on holiday? Seriously if you have seen my vacationing motivation please pack it up and send it priority mail back to me. I need it. I am thinking about taking out a missing ad on a milk carton.

I will be watching my mailbox......

Monday morning blues

I spent the morning at the dentist, bleurgh, getting a crown I have needed for ...um... seven years (winces). I do not like the dentist. My wallet does not like the dentist.

Couch Update

The static guard was purchased, the couch was sprayed and several lessons were learned.

1. Static guard in large quantities + person with asthma = bad mixture. John will be doing any large static guarding in the future.

2. Static guard keeps the electricity at bay for just under two weeks, the couch has resumed its crackling underneath my butt.

New skills

I have been a little absent of late. This is mostly due to the absence of any free time, which is a wonderful thing and a curse all in one. Firstly, I have had a few visitors this month - Amy came all the way from Blighty to see me. We had a blast: I got to see some of the Washington sights I had yet to visit; we spent two days on the slopes learning to snowboard (Amy) and progressing existing snowboard skills (Me); we caught up on all out gossip. It was so lovely to have her here and I feel quite proud of how I have overcome some of my snow-sports fears' this season. The place felt so empty once Amy left and then along came Steven to fill in the hole. Steven is an undergraduate back at the University of Tennessee who I have been working with. My landlords let him stay upstairs for most of last week and we did our best to work hard at the Musuem all week.

Then there have been the weekends...... every Sunday this month I have been taking a Red Cross course, which finished today. I am now a qualified Red Cross Instructor in First Aid/CPR/AED for Adults, Children, and Infants. Getting up at 8am every Sunday morning has not been my favourite thing in the world but it has been such a rewarding experience. I am apprehensive about teaching my first class but they do prepare us well and it seems amazing that I could teach others skills that could help to save some lives. Anyone need some training?

Shocking

I am feeling accomplished this evening. I had this very optimistic to-do list for my evening at home and, as I sit here on my comfortable couch, it is ALL done. Hurrah!! However, I do not plan to blog about my wonderful to-do list mostly consisting of bathroom cleaning tasks, thrilling though it is. I plan instead to blog about my comfortable couch. It is the couch of an S&M lover I fear. It is electrically charged. I wish I knew quite how this occurred but just getting near the cushions makes all the hairs on my arms stand up, quite a weird feeling. A bottom shuffle produces a lovely crackling sound from beneath my trousers and touching anything vaguely conductive while sitting on it is quite painful. In the dark you can even get a cheap light show..... I guess I got more than I paid for in that aspect but the 'oooh pretty' is quickly replaced by an 'ow.'

Tomorrow's to-do list: buy Static Guard.

Space pen lives to write another day

What I am about to say is a total nerd thing, but I fully embrace my identity so here goes..... Back last March, shortly after my Ph.D. defense, I was at Space Center Houston looking for a space themed gift to buy myself as a little pat on the back. I purchased a space pen, quite a nice one too (John covets it). It has become my favourite thing to write with so I was upset last week when it went missing. I searched high and low and there was no sign of it. Sigh.

A few days later I was doing my laundry and the drier was being unreasonably loud when I went to check on it. I opened the door and rooted around a bit and found the barrel of my pen, which had been separated from the nib, and the inner ink cartridge. This is all slightly puzzling since I was washing my sheets, my WHITE sheets, not items with pockets I may have put the pen in. However, what really struck me was:

1) The pen went through the wash and yet my sheets have absolutely no ink on them at all.
2) The pen writes like a dream still.

I love it more now. It is the pen love of my life thus far. I take thee space pen to be my lawful writing instrument, in washer and in drier.....

About bloomin' time I blogged

OK so rather a long time has passed since my last blog so perhaps I should recap the last month and a half. My 2008 ended very well. I went home (as in the UK) for the last two weeks of the year and John even joined me for the first week. He then flew back to spend Christmas Day with his own family. It was a little weird as I usually spend most of my time at home relaxing, with a little traveling around. This time I felt it was sort of my duty to show John a little bit outside of the little village in which my parents live. So in the first week I went to London for a few days, had a day trip to Banbury, and another to Oxford, then we also managed a night out with some of my nearest and dearest friends. My parents, being the loves they are, then threw a pre-Christmas Christmas for John so that he could experience the way us Brits do it (yay for Christmas pudding and brandy butter) before he went home. It was so much fun and I felt privileged to experience John's first foreign travel with him - and the company on the flight out there was wonderful. The rest of my trip was much less eventful as I got sick (I succumb easily to British germs now - I am pretending I never used to) so most of it was spent with my nose in a tissue and a mug of lempsip in my hand.

2009 did not start well. I had:
1) My harddrive crash right before an important deadline. This meant I lost data (a weeks worth, but enough to be REALLY inconvenient at that time) and all my holiday pictures (some of which have now been recovered).
2) A bent rim on one of my tires which required a trip to a scrap yard and several trips to the garage - oh and a new tire as well. Sigh.
3) A cough that made me sound like a sea lion. It was obnoxious.
4) Half a tooth fall out. I had already planned to book an appointment as I was looong overdue but this forced my hand. It fell out a week before my deadline too and I had no time to get it fixed that week and it was sore. I was grumpy.

2009 is already improving though. I shall post more news later.