going in circles but having fun outside of uni work

[kareina]

Had much fun at the dance on Friday, wound up staying till it was over, and then stuck around visiting with people for a fair bit longer. Finally made it home after midnight, and then baked a cake--it being finally cool enough to consider turning on an oven. Today was the birthday celebration for our local Baroness. The evening of our Baronial meeting not long ago I'd mentioned to her that I was going to stop on my way home from the meeting to pick up some silicon baking trays that someone was giving away on FreeCycle, but that I didn't know if I wanted all of them--the teddybear sounded a bit too cute. She commented that she'd be happy to take the bear, so when I picked up the pans and saw that yes, the teddybear pan was,in fact, too "cute" for my taste in bakeware, I decided that not only would I pass on that pan to her Excellency, but I'd also bake her a cake in it, in honour of her birthday. So I sent a quick text message to baronsnorri asking him what kind of cake his baroness likes He replied "chocolate mud", to which I replied "that isn't terribly period, should I bring one to her birthday picnic anyway?", to which he replied "yes please". As it turned out, I decided to do a chocolate beetroot cake instead, there being beetroot growing in our garden. It turned out yummy enough that I was willing to lick the bowl, despite the chocolate (remember that I actually dislike the taste of chocolate) while mixing the cake, though it was *much* better, if very pink, before I put he chocolate in. By the time the cake was done and clovis_t and I had done yoga and gotten ready to sleep, it was 03:00.

Needless to say, I slept in till 10:00, which gave me only an hour to do uni work before it was time to head to the picnic. Had a pleasant time at the picnic. After the heat of the past few days, it was nice to have a cloudy day--it even sprinkled on us a bit. Just enough rain that those of us working on sewing projects moved under a tree, but no heavy enough to make anyone else want shelter, nor enough to need to cover the food table. However, I was feeling like I should be working, so I left early, abandoning clovis_t and his armour bag there. He got a ride with the founding B&B over to their place for the after-revel, and stayed the night there, with plans to head to fighter practice from there in the morning. I'm to pick him up again after practice. Much more sensible than for him to have driven me home, then went back to town for the party, then home, then back for fighter practice tomorrow.

So I spent the afternoon and evening working away in peace and quiet. Can't say as I've really accomplished much though. I've been trying to finish up chapter three, which covers the southwest coast. Alas, that area has not provided very good results, and I really am out of time to try yet more calculations to improve upon them. Yet, I was tempted to try a bit more on one sample which did provide good results for the garnet cores, in hopes of getting one with a decent "path" estimate--modelling the changes in composition from core to rim. Unfortunately, weird things are happening with my attempts, and I begin to suspect that I need to just give up and report no results for that aspect. sigh. But I want it to work.

Ps my apologies for the various birthdays I've not sent greetings for the past couple of days--been trying to focus on work, rather than my friends. I don't love you any less, just really want to be done with the thesis now, and unless I do the work, that won't happen.