I seem to spend much of my working days either talking with collaborators or forwarding information between various parties, the amount of hands on chemistry I'm actually doing is, I feel, pitifully small.
Friday was interesting, one of my bosses who actually works in another state but whom supplies with our money was in town, an uncommon occurrence. He had lunch with my other boss and the engineer from the company in town. Later in the afternoon we had an informal meeting in the lab, trying to work out what the intellectual properties (IP) rights were and how patenting would be sorted out. It was a fairly high level discussion, much beyond what I am used to. Given the heat of the day, I was happy to go home and have a beer and then go to bed.
The weekend was fairly low key which was fine, the weather being up in the high 90's (+32 C) during the day which meant that outdoor activities weren't much fun. I hung out with Tiffany on Saturday afternoon, just hiding out from the heat with a few drinks. Later on we walked over to Tanya's place (Tiffany's sister) where Brandon is staying over the Summer. We hung out there since it's a half-basement apartment and therefore much cooler than Tiffany's place. We crashed out there listening to music and later on Tiffany spiked Brandon's hair (he's rather punk). We ordered pizza and sat around watching “The Osbournes” waiting for it to cool down somewhat. About 9:30 pm we went over to the theatre to watch “Johnny English” with Rowan Atkinson which was funny, but fairly forgettable. About midnight we went back to Tiffany's place and sat around playing “Golden Eye” on her Nintendo, but I was really tired, and we finally all dispersed about 2 am.
The next was spent as I have often referred to as “luxuriously lying around” and it was very enjoyable. I went shopping for groceries about midday and came home to talk to Ally about her long, exhausting trip down to Comic-Con in San Diego. Alas, it had been incredibly hot down there and she had spent much of her time standing in the line to get through the doors. I had to jump off the phone as I was going to breakfast with Tiffany, Brandon and Tanya at a fast food joint, so I leapt for the shower, and as I got out there was a knock at the door. They had arrived a little earlier than expected to pick me up, so I spent a few frantic minutes making myself clothed and respectable.
We went to “Generic Fast Food Place” and then back to Tanya's place to hang out. It was about 3 pm and there was a “Laser Rock Hall of Fame” at the local planetarium and so Tiffany and I, and after some convincing Brandon also went over to see that. It was pretty cool although I guess I was hoping for something a little more modern, but it was pretty trippy nonetheless. We went back to Tanya's place for a few hours to hang out as Tanya cooked burgers and then she dropped us off around 7 pm. I was going to go for a run since I'd been rather slack about exercising since the weather had been so unbearable, but as I went out the door Tiffany rang. The temperature in her room was about 92F and so we decided to kill two birds with one stone by getting her out of her room and going for a long walk through the various trails in and around town. It was nice out, and so a lot of other people were taking advantage of it as well. By the time we got back around 9 pm, things had cooled off somewhat, so we hung out at her place for a while as she cleaned up her hard drive. After bumming around there, I headed home to crash about 10:30 pm.
Today was fairly unexciting as always, I arrived at work about 9 am and made up some polymer samples. The teacher is nice enough, but maybe of late I've been feeling the need to have some space from her. She'll only be here for another fortnight or so, so I guess I should just deal. I met briefly with the engineer from the company in town, he is very excited about our materials and dropped off a lab book so that things would be nice and clear cut for when we applied for a protective patent, maybe sometime later this year.
11:30 pm - At midday the high school teacher had an informal luncheon meeting with the foundation who provided her scholarship, and my boss had asked me to stand in for him. This was fine by me, so there was a free lunch and some various small talk and we all dispersed after about an hour. I wasn't very productive in the afternoon, I bummed around but didn't get very much done alas. About 5:30 pm I came home, ate, started writing this entry up and then crashed out for an hour or so. I woke up a bit before 8 pm and went for a run since I've been very slack over the last week. I do believe I'm getting fitter, and although I may be losing some weight of course I can't be sure. The whole thing is that the density of muscle is approximately 1.1 g/cc and that of fat about 0.92 g/cc which means that unless you're starving to death or are morbidly obese to begin with, weighing yourself won't actually say anything about your losing weight. My personal preference is for the “pinch and jiggle” test which means how much flab can I pinch on my stomach, and how much does everything jiggle when I flex my muscles and slap my thighs. Not exactly scientific, but it works.