12:00 pm - Sunday 13th January 2002

Weird Steph Fact # 372

There's nothing I like more on a Sunday morning after my morning coffee, then opening up the paper to a friendly, welcoming pile of junk mail. Now, as much fun to read as junk mail is, one should not presume that is all necessarily the same high quality. Dry-cleaning coupons, offers for air-conditioning inspections truly rate close to the bottom of the list. Conversely, ads from Home Depot, Circuit City and Best Buy tend to rate much more strongly, well set out, interesting color schemes, glorious levels of fine print and so on. If only some of the articles and columns in the newspaper itself had such attention to details... oh well...
Anyway, I'm sitting out in front of the lab catching some fresh air and waiting for my reaction to come up to room temperature. I haven't really got a lot else planned for the day, but if nothing else I appear to my boss to be fairly dedicated. The local SCA group is having their regular Sunday event in the park not far from my house. I probably should attend, but at the moment I guess I'm just feeling a bit non-sociable.
I actually feel a bit happier to be at work at the moment, because I have something interesting to work on. My boss has asked me to look at making some "Multi-Dimensional Arrays" (abbreviation = MDA), which I find more interesting than the kinetic study I was working on before. I also found a whole bunch of the starting materials which I feared was in short supply, so I don't have to be so frugal anymore.
Speaking of frugality. At the moment I have no idea how much money I have in my US bank account, I'm still waiting on my pin number before I can actually use the card. Not that this is a problem, give me a loaf of bread and some non-orange cheese (most of the cheese here has beta-carotene added for color) and I'm happy. I admit that I'm not actually doing a lot in terms of social-life these days, but that may well change.
Yesterday I had brunch at Denny's with Jessica whom I hadn't seen since early December. Life had been up and down for both of us, but neverheless, it was a nice way to spend the Saturday morning. We drove around the Sunset Mall area, and she pointed out two gay clubs which I had no idea that they even existed. I admit that I would probably stand out like a sore thumb at both of them, but what the hell, if I ever get a dancing urge, then it's somewhere to party on.

7:05 pm - Home again. I'm fairly bored at the momet to tell the truth and tomorrow is Monday, so it's back(?) to work. I probably should develop some hobbies to keep me interested because at the moment all I have is work and home, I tried joining the gym, but you can only sign up during the week. I figure that I need exercise over and above what I get from cycling to and from work. I'm keeping what I eat to a minimun, but the fat won't go away without some persuasion.

7:50 am - Tuesday 14th January 2001

Well, it's a good thing yesterday is over. To start the day off, the Chinese grad student and erased all my files while installing Windows XP. I was pretty pissed of course, even though the loss of data wasn't too great, so I really gave him a dressing down (First time I've used my "Dr" to let him know his place). After that, the day went up and down, though I actually did get a few reactions to go as expected. I have the first regular meeting with my supervisor on Wednesday at 4:30 pm, so I want to get some data together for that. Anyway, I'll mail this off so I can post it at work later... take care y'all...

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