I was chatting to a friend on ICQ yesterday, and she forwarded me a picture of her ex. I had seen a photo of her from a while back, but I was kind of shocked at this picture because she had put on a lot of weight which made her look really bad. I never used to be too paranoid about my weight, but since the start of this year I've been putting on weight and although sessions at the gym tend to take it down a few kilo's, I'm never able to get back to where I was before. In August 1999 I weighed ~76 kg and this morning on the scales I weigh 88 kg, I guess I can pout it down to a mixture of hormones, getting past my youth and a sedentary work-life. I've never the sort of person who is inclined towards bulimia or anorexia, and I'm 6 foot tall so it's spread out, but I guess I've got nothing better to worry about. Still, I wish I was tall yet skinny like Jenny T, of course the heart problems would kind of suck.
Oh well, you can't have everything, I mean where would you put it?
It's funny, often I'll look back through my diary to see where I was a year ago. But what I often forget is that my diary stretches back much further than that, and that 1999 really was a much more dynamic (manic?) year. "The unexamined life is not worth living" is a quote from Socrates, well I've certainly taken that advice on board.
For my own recollection, the thesis is slowly drawing to a drawn-out conclusion (pardon the pun). I tidied up the Chapter 5 introduction to my satisfaction last night, and I hope to finish the discussion in the next few days. Laser Physics will hopefully be ready to go with the switching experiment in the next week, by about which time I hope to have all the microanalyses completed too. This close to the end I just wish everything was all over already. I want to spend some time at home, to see my parents and just spend time gardening and tidying up all the junk I've sent home over the last year. I find it a wonderful way of clearing the mind.
10:20 pm - According to an email from the Miami Professor, I will be able to pick up the faxed contract on Monday morning. It is rather scary when I think about it, but since most of the time I think about this whole expedition in a semi-detached kind of way, it usually doesn't feel "real". Somehow I guess it will be the same when it comes time for "THE OP" (pardon the overemphasis, I was attempting humor). That one morning I'll wake up and my plane will leave that afternoon, or that one morning I'll wake up and I'll be on my way to the hospital check-in.