Today wasn't too bad I suppose, although I did quite a few experiments, I didn't actually get much done if you know what I mean. I did read however that after a significant hiatus, the diaries of Kurt Cobain are about to be released as a book. I figure that this will result in the population being split up into three main segments,
1) Those who think this is the most important thing to happen since the last Nirvana album,
2) Those who will look down upon Group 1 because Cobain is over commercialized, never mind that the same thing happened to Lennon, Elvis and most other dead musicians since Mozart, and
3) Those like myself who don't really care all that much about it.
Well, today has been much nicer than yesterday. Friday morning I somehow woke up with a stiff neck which put me in a lot of discomfort all day long. I couldn't concentrate and royally screwed up a reaction early in the morning and spent all day trying to fix it up. Alas after being at work until 7 pm, I made another simple mistake through a combination of stress and exhaustion. I came home and yet went back again to the lab where I took the reaction off to save what I could. I was very good, I resisted the urge to swear out loud the whole day.
Today was thankfully much better, my neck felt better and I bladed into work, getting some much needed exercise. I cleaned the reactions up and this time it worked for which I was eternally grateful. I splashed some chemicals on myself which was not good, but lots of water was enough to get that off.
I came home, bought some bread and milk and then talked to Allison for a fair while. She is baking away for a Halloween party she is going to tonight, so I've instructed her to take lots of photos. For myself, Call of Cthulhu has been cancelled and so instead Jill, Avi and I are going to an ice-hockey game to which Anthony is taking his school class as part of an excursion. Ice hockey doesn't interest me any more than football, but it's part of the American cultural experience which I happy to immerse myself in. Next weekend there is a Halloween party thrown by some friend of Anthony and Jill. Avi and I have been invited, but I'll wait to find out more details before I commit. I was all ready to get semi-Gothed up for tonight's CoC game, but it's been cancelled so I'll settle for jeans and a singlet top.
Well last night was a lot of fun. We arrived at Jill and Anthony's place in Fort Lauderdale and it looked a lot better than a week ago when we were helping them to unpack. Anthony wasn't there and Jill was getting ready and so we hung out for a short while and then a friend of Jill's from school arrived with her boyfriend (Lisa and Michael). After some transfers to different cars and a few missed turns we made it to the Sawgrass Mega-Mall which was just across from the ice hockey stadium. The heat outside was sweltering and I had taken my leather jacket because I figured it was going to be cold inside. It was cold inside, but first we had to walk the long distance to the ticketing office and wait in line. In a stroke of wonderful coolness, the woman at the ticketing office gave us our 6 $20 tickets for free! :) We got inside but somehow got separated from Jill, Lisa and Michael, but we made it to our seat in time for the "face-off".
It was a different take to a sport than what I am used to for either baseball or American football, there's a lot of motion, fast interchanges and the crowd seems to be more subdued unless there is an attempt at goal. Nevertheless it was an interesting experience and after the second period we walked over to visit Anthony and his school group for the final period. The game went into overtime and in the end was a 1-1 draw.
We dumped our stuff in Jill's car and walked over to Gameworks in the mall. Gameworks is a big arcade/money sucking device with a bar and restaurant where you put money on a card and play whatever games you like. Although there is one close to me and I had been inside, I had never actually played so I charged up a card and went looking for mayhem. ;) The bowling game was a little slow so I gravitated over towards the "Grab a big gun and kill lots of aliens" game. It was like a cooler version of Quake and after a while Michael joined me and we were in for some big monster killing action. Working as a team was pretty cool, and I know I was sweating from exertion by the time we finished. We were both being a little competitive, so we did "Virtual Fighting" were you stand in front of a screen and act out martial arts to fight your opponent, which I won 2-1. Of course I couldn't resist a little heckling "You got beaten by a girl" and so on. Then I beat him at a tank game, a motorcycle game, he beat me at a 4x4 game, but we had a great time. As I mentioned, we chewed through about $20 in maybe under an hour, but I didn't even notice the time pass so I think I got my moneys worth. Of course it's not something I'd do every day, but it's a heck of a lot more fun than going to a club and paying exorbitant prices for drinks and a cover charge.
I ran out of credit so I watched the other guys play, and then finally we went back to Jill and Anthony's place about 2 am. Lisa and Michael mentioned they were having a costume party next Saturday and invited me and Avi, so that should be something to look forward to. Daylight savings kicked in, but it didn't make me any less tired and so Avi dropped me off about 3 pm after we watched a little bit of "Nightmare on Elm Street".
Today the change in hours confused me somewhat, but I got up about 10 am and bladed over to the lab. The reaction I had been hoping on had failed and so I was cursing under my breath. Yet, knowing that going home wasn't going to make this compound I went back to square one and started again. I left those reactions to stir for a few hours and came home for a shower and some more sleep. About 3:30 pm I cycled over and worked away till about 6:30 pm, I am no more certain that the reaction is going to work this time, but this really is my last chance for it to do so. I'm going to be going in incredibly early tomorrow to work the reaction up and try to make up for some of the lost time.
I talked to Allison on the phone for a while this evening and we talked about our respective weekends. She'd had an ok time at her party and was there late helping to clean up. She got chatted up by a very drunk guy but fortunately managed to escape. All up she'd had a good time though and tonight was going to watch "The Thing" at a friends place.