kareina

The past few days have been kind of low energy, with not much work being accomplished. While it hasn't been as hot here as it has been in Portland, it has still been hot enough to slightly lower energy levels, and having started the week with adventures followed by a late night I haven't really perked up to normal energy levels since, as you might have been able to guess by how infrequently I've posted this week.

So, what have I done? Well, in terms of uni related stuff my biggest accomplishment prior to today was successfully registering for the conference in Edinburgh that I'll be attending at the end of August. ( Sounds simple, doesn't it? ) Then I booked air fare home from the Textile Conference in Eindhoven, Netherlands. At that point it was late, and I was too tired to work out how I'm getting from Edinburgh to Eindhoven, so I called it a night and went home, where I stayed up late cooking food for the next day (because it is nicer to do the cooking after midnight, when it isn't so hot, and it is easier to just grab the already prepared food the next day, rather than cooking when I'm meant to be working).

This morning, despite the late night, I got up early, but I played hooky from uni work and instead when to the Natural History Museum with clovis_t. Their mineral collection is even more impressive than that which lines the halls here at uni (and the stuff here is very, very nice!) (he took photos if anyone is interested). They also have lots of dead things (both fossils and taxidermy) if you like such things. The near-by planetarium wasn't open today, nor was the (living) butterfly enclosure (just as well-those places tend to be really hot--I'll try that some time in the winter, when it will feel good). However, the Villa Belgiojoso Bonaparte Museo dell'Ottocento, which is across the street from the Natural History Museum Park, was open, so we wandered in there for a bit. What an opulent building. Some time after Napoleon quit using it it became a public building and houses an art collection. Unfortunately, the people who run the building didn't think things through when they decided to set a bunch of 22 cm high metal cubes scattered around the room that contains nothing else but a very lovely painting, on the ceiling. Yes, you guessed it, staring intently at the ceiling I failed to see the block. Felt it. Twice. Once when it impacted my right shin (leaving a small divot), and again when my right knee landed on it as I overbalanced and failed to correct. Ow! No, I can't remember what the painting was any more, why do you ask? (Ironically, I'd considered putting one of the small frozen bottles of water into my backpack before I left the house in the morning and decided against it. After that bump I wish I had--it would have felt nice to ice it straight away.)

After the morning's adventure we went home for a short nap and some lunch before coming in to uni, where I found an e-mail confirming that, finally, the conference payment worked, and I am registered. He let me know that he will be doing the booklet of abstracts next week, so please get him the final version by Monday, so I did a couple of minor edits and sent it off to him, letting him know that I'd also sent it to my advisor for comment, and promising to let him know if the advisor was happy with it, and if he wants any changes to get them turned in as soon as possible (and also let my advisor know about the Monday deadline). Then I celebrated the successful registration by starting to make the poster itself. I've got the first, most important, figure complete, and notes about what other figures I'll want to add later... Yay, Uni work!

Perhaps for my next trick I'll finish editing that paper for which I'm a co-author.