Well, it's been a week that at times has been both busy and slow. The boss was away at a conference which made things a bit more laid back. On Thursday he sent me proofs for the paper which had been accepted pending minor changes. I intend to get these done as soon as possible, but first I have to give a presentation on Monday. I "had a few wins" as my Dad would say, with some chemistry which I had no idea as to whether it would actually work, but which did.
Tuesday was the regular gaming night and then on Wednesday a group of us went out as part of a farewell for one of the guys who was moving away. Regrettably we saw "Austin Powers Goldmember" which was a really awful movie consisting of rehashed jokes from the previous two films which I had mostly escaped. I much rather would have liked to see "Road to Perdition" or anything with a modicum of intelligence behind it.
Well, today stared off poorly but quickly got better. I left home in between breaks in the rain, but I only got as far as the University gates before the downpour returned with increased vigour. I arrived at the lab completely soaked and therefore in rather bad humour. I put on two low-maintenance reactions (set and forget) and spent some time working on my presentation. By the time I had finished tweaking it, it was 17 slides long and very in-depth. I also tried working on the amendments to the paper, but the file was corrupted.
At 4 pm we headed up to the lecture theatre to give our talks. It was only two of us as the other person was not ready in time. I went first and I went into long and exquisite detail and covered even fairly trivial work that I had done which resulted in me going well over time. As things turned out this was the smart thing to do since I know how my boss works and it's details which he wants. The next person paid dearly for making that error.
The guy who went after me had half a dozen general slides which were mainly proposals and not very detailed and to put it mildly he got a roasting. I just sat there and shut up since I had survived my test of fire, but it was nevertheless rather vicariously painful to hear it go on. Finally after 5 pm we finished and went back to the lab where I made most of the corrections to the paper.
The weekend itself was a rather mixed affair. I spent much of Saturday at the lab working and the rest of the time sleeping. I chatted to Illara for a fair while on Saturday night and we caught up with what was happening in each others lives. Sunday was Ben's housewarming party and so I spent Sunday morning cleaning and getting ready for that. I was rather startled to have Avi turn up at my place at 11:30 am while I was still getting ready. I welcomed him in, but he was so early that even though I took some time getting ready, we arrived at Ben's place almost an hour early. This was a bit uncomfortable for me, but I eventually relaxed. I also discovered that I had no tape in my video camera, so I didn't have a chance to record any of the fun.
As it turned out, it was an unusual party, in fact it was more of a "hang-out". 8 guys spent the majority of the afternoon and evening sitting around playing two separate card games. Now although I don't mind playing cards, I find it a bit anti-social, particularly since I didn't know how to play that particular game. I watched a bootleg version of "Signs" which had terrible sound and which therefore lost a lot of the effect, I thought the end to be very silly (re: the water).
We finally headed home about 11 pm and I was feeling very rather tired and very fragile. I called Ally because I was very down and out, and she nursed me back to some semblance of normality.