Sophie's Socks and Stuff

My brain's so sieve like if I don't write it down here I'll forget.

• * Check old stock avanti lipids
• * Check lipids on different ultrapure electrolyte e.g. magnesium nitrate
• * Get sheet of thick glass from gel sets in biochem lab for capillary unblocking.
• * Finish maths homework on quadratic equations.

As you can see from that list, my life is way fun.

This is me and my big hairy manfriend at our departmental annual dinner. As you can see we are quite the most beautiful couple ever, just imagine what our babies would look like!

It's OK. Not great but I think I can sort the bits and pieces out and get some final stuff for my thesis. I still need enough results to fill another 2 chapters, this isn't looking promising and my thesis is way different to the original proposal. Oh well. It's really not that long to go, I just really, really hope my boss can secure some funding to keep me on as a postdoc.

This is a list of things that people who only met me for 5 days value about me.

• * I'm such a bubbly and fun person to be with
• * My enthusiasm about my work motivates everyone else
• * Because I was an infinite source of positive power throughout the days.
• * I am a true friend, and I should enjoy every moment of life as much as I did during the grad school in Cambridge.
• * I am friendly and good natured and someone who can see things through in a team.
• * I'm a wonderful caring and funny person and have a brilliant sense of humour and am simply lovely.

Ooooh I feel pretty great after going through all those things again. The sun is shining, I've got a lovely new skirt and back in the lab to try out some new lipid experiments (PEG lipids seem to be terminally duff). I think this is the start of a great new season for me.

Grrrrr. Lions have fur around their heads and so do I. Therefore I must me a lion. Rrrrrrrrooooooaaaarrrrrrrrrr.

These are some things I'm quite good at these days

• Explaining my work to people who aren't in the least bit scientifically minded.
• Explaining my work to super pro people who know way more than me
• Experimental work (pretty much anything from cell/molecular biology to electrochemistry/surface chemistry)
• Having no shame. I'm perfectly happy to parade about city centres and student nightclubs all folked up for morris dancing fun. It's not cool, it's not clever but I find it fun.
• Speaking to strangers. I'm quite happy at conferences and training to start up a conversation with someone else on there own. I think being ignored when lots of other people seem really friendly and in groups is horrible.
• Dressing nicely. Well I think I look pretty well dressed most of the time and get quite annoyed if I see people wearing clashing styles, fabrics or colours.
• Cheering people up and making them feel a bit better about stuff.
• Drinking gin.
• Baking cakes (not so good at the decorating part though as anyone who saw the infamous tit cakes can confirm)

There is some sort of huge departmental renovation going on at the moment. Mostly I have missed the disruptions but now the roof is being done and I'm on the top floor. Most days there is so much banging and stamping directly overhead I wouldn't be suprised to see a workman appear in the office through the ceiling. The builders are really not popular in my neck of the woods as they have managed to leave 2 roof hatches open twice over the weekend, each time resulting in flooding of the lab and the second time the flooding wrecked some very expensive custom made equipment. Still fortunately I don't do experimenting over here so I only get hassled by the noise on the rare occaisions I actually try and get some work done.

Another day. Another lot of nothing done. Aims for this week are:

• Do maths assessment homework (for thursday night)
  
• Draw spectroelectrochemical cell as near to scale as possible on paper
  
• Draw cell on computer with sizes.
  
• Read RAS review
  
• Email S
  

It's really not that much to do but I'd be suprised if I get it all done as I'm so apathetic.

I have a very lovely friend who refuses to get herself a mobile phone for no good reason. I know we used to manage without mobiles in the old days but now it's expected that everyone is mobiled up and changes to prior arrangements can be made and it's particularly useful for getting in touch if you are coming along later and is less stressful as you don't have to wait around, you can text/ring details if stuff changes. Anyway what really pissed me off was that my friend sent an email of her birthday plans which is all fine and good but finished the email with "I'll get hold of a contactable mobile number before the weekend" which I think is incredibly rude and selfish.

Argh I've got all annoyed and incoherent now but Grrrrr. Get a mobile yourself you silly moo.

Off to Wendy house goth night tonight. I think I might wear my favourite silver pleated skirt with either 50s style black satin top or black velvet wrap top. Not sure what shoes to wear though. Dr Marten boots, Dr Marten buckle shoes, red shoes, black patent stilletoes or black knee high boots?

Will quite possibly be gothing it up tomorrow night as well as a friend is DJing at black sheep and I should probably support him/massage his ego even though I'm not that keen on his music taste.

I know we don't get many visitors. I've never been a popular person but I love you.

Had some haribo fizzy sour sweets (tangfastics) and coffee after lunch and now I feel quite sick. Things aren't really improved by tasting the manky chicken burger I had for lunch, each time I burp.

I have no idea really. I think it's been a gradual decline. I met up with an old schoolfriend last week and was chatting about how much of a pleb I've become and she felt she was similar. I can't believe that at school I used to do ballet and at least one other type of dancing a week, guides until I was 14, played the violin loads (lessons, string groups and local youth orchestras), played piano, listened to a huge variety of music and read loads of "improving literature".

I absolutely hated school. I think my teenage years were the worst ever but I did heaps out of school. These days I like my work/education better but I am a useless pleb otherwise. I sometimes go to the St John ambulance meetings because I think I really need to do something current to bung on my CV and sometimes I get into reading the odd book (usually Terry Pratchett or some kind of fantasy or chick lit) but nothing like the classic and contemporary novels I used to devour 10 years ago. I daren't go near a musical instrument because I'm right back at beginner level now. Heck, I don't even listen to anything very complicated even, maybe the odd bit of Vaughan Williams while cooking or hoovering but nothing particularly different.

I suppose my life mostly feels like a big heap of nothing. I get happy if I get a good experimental result in the lab but I'm not exactly motivated to write it up and look up new stuff to develop and understand it more. I'm happy enough hanging out with my boyfriend and going out for the odd meal or beer and staying in and watching TV but I really don't feel like I do anything. I keep saying I must but it's always the same old same old. Eventually get up, potter about have breakfast, get to work check emails and blogs and talkboards and mostly arse about, maybe potter about town at lunch then same in the afternoon and go home or to the pub. God it looks even sadder written down. I just really, really don't seem to be able to pick myself up and get going to try and achieve anything.

It's a yukky grey day outside so I thought I'd post something that makes me laugh to cheer me up

Today I leant (from the lovely sparkly pink princess/Laura) that epistemology is the theory of knowledge.

I think I really might be. Just been for a chat with one of my supervisors and feeling pretty good about stuff. I may not have all that many results to put in my thesis but I think some of the ones I have got are really interesting and groundbreaking stuff. And one of the most interesting and productive ideas came all from me and my results have been so good my supervisor is writing grant proposals around it. I feel really proud of that. I may not achieve anything much in my life but it's a bit satisfying to have done and published one new weeny bit of research that someone else might read and find useful and be able to develop further.

Anyway after that brief bit of egotism what I was going to say was I was having a chat about the work I did last week in liverpool and I felt like I could really contribute to the discussion. I had got the results on my own and had a look at them and was able to interperate them quite a lot and have a detailed technical discussion about their implications. I know this sounds really, really geeky but it's made me feel quite good about myself. And if I'm happy. Well that's the most important thing. I think we all get our happiness from different places, I would love to be happy by seeing/having more friends or being slimmer and more good looking but that's not so likely so when I feel good about a good day at work I embrace it and sqeeze all the happiness out.

It seems like most nights or walking home from work and other random times I think of loads of different things I could write about on my blog yet when I get to work the next day I can't think of anything even vaguely interesting to write about.

I ended up having a very nice birthday all over on Saturday. I really really love my birthday. I always see it as the one day in the year dedicated to me and things I like to do. Anyhow I'd emailed friends to meet me in a really nice quiet bar just out of town and ended up getting really stressed out as I didn't want to head down to the bar all on my own but didn't want to get there late in case other people were heading down on their own.

I managed to get through lots of gin, often I like to have a bit of a theme to my drinking on nights out so for my birthday I went for the every type of gin, Gordons, Bombay Sapphire, Tanquery and plymouth. Despite the gin I think I was the soberest person out and about, mostly as I was hanging onto the presents I had been given. I got a funny squishy frog pyjama case and a bubble sword which was lots and lots of fun.

Been having a lovely day so far. Off home for a bite to eat and change shoes and apply warpaint then back into town for orange jiggers, gin and dancing with friends. Woo Hoo.

You'd think that by the time I reached my 26th birthday I wouldn't get so excited about birthdays but no. It's my birthday tomorrow and I'm very excited. I just hope some of my friends come along and join me.

Well I've been away and now I'm back. I ended up having a pretty good almost a week in Liverpool. It was lovely to be out of leeds and into another lab. I'm pretty amazed and chuffed with how much I've achieved during the nearly 3 years of my PhD. I started off as a biochemist and keen to do molecular biology stuff but as there was no one to take me through those experiments and we were waiting to get new stuff delivered from america I started on the chemistry side of the project which is what I've been doing ever since. It's been really hard but these days I think I've got a pretty good understanding of the theory and interepretation of my experiments. I found out yesterday that most of my friends think I'm really clever which has pleased me as I've always been pretty average (I always scored Bs and Cs at school and barely just scraped a 2i at university) and people with way better degrees and understanding of science think that I'm clever. Anyway this week I have finally progressed to the hardest branch of science and was working in a physics department! I can't say I really understand the physics much but it was a nice change and I got some good stuff out of it and it was lovely to work in such a friendly lab. Best of all if I can improve on the stuff I did this week I might get another paper (in a top journal) and a mini chapter for my thesis. Woo

I'm not travelling far (only a week in liverpool) but I hope my mind will be broadened so that I return as a bit of an expert on RAS.