10:50 pm - Thursday 30th March 2000

Today, much stuff happened. *g* Just got to love that grammar. ;)

Well, at 8:30 am this morning I got a phone call asking me to reschedule my Friday appointment with Dr S****. I asked for 2:00 pm today and that was unexpected but fine by me. So after a shave I got to the lab where I discovered that my student card was not working still. It had died on Wednesday no doubt due to my details being changed. Today however I did manage to corner the Business manager and ask him to do it when he could. This might mean a weekend of not being able to get into the lab… scary.
But anyway. I got my wonderful tri-iodo material in a 72 % yield (1.04 g) which makes me happy and confidant for the next step of the scheme which is currently stirring away. I also isolated another new gold compound (I've lost count of what number this is) which is needed for a systematic comparison. So, four reactions on, two good, one probably bad and one yet to be fiddled with.
At 4:30 pm there was a free pizza lure to get all the graduate students together for a pow-wow and I unashamedly stuffed myself so as to avoid having to cook or deal with dinner. I felt rather ill afterwards, but while the sun was burning to death low in the western sky, I went for a cycle over to Kings Avenue bridge and then to the south side of the lake and then home. I felt it was needed, and it was good to exert some real energy. Oh, and yes, I did take a full repair kit and bicycle pump, I wasn't going to learn that lesson twice. ;)
But, my more important news for the day was my visit to the Doctor's surgery and the return of the test results…
Basically there was no significant difference. Previously on pills, my oestradiol count was 38 pg/mL and on the implant it was 42 pg/mL. This is normal for a baseline female not during the active part of the menstrual cycle, but for non-normal females like myself, ideally it should be higher. We decided to put me back onto the pills in conjunction with implant and measure again in a month, and if that makes no difference, then so be it, and I'll have to deal with it. I'm glad Peta told me to insist on the tests, because it really does give a qualitative idea of how I am doing and what the comparison is like. I'll start back on the pills on Saturday (1st April) to keep the book-keeping simple. ;)

Phew! What else? I finally emailed Mack back, something I had been meaning to do for months, but which I had just not gotten around to. He's got my real email address, so I hope he won't try to search me out. I did do a search on "Steph Hurst" and I only came up for me signing Soba's old (now abandoned) guest-book, so that is good, I like anonymity.
Also today, Nikki was really great and she changed my email account for work to the new name, I need to tweak the signature, but all engines are go!
My supervisor tried to get me to look at two new areas, and although I feigned some interest, I really didn't want to stuff any more work onto an already loaded schedule.
I need to organize this pewter mug for Red's 21st tomorrow, that means more phoning around. I'll do my best…

Good heavens, I almost forgot. Yesterday (Wednesday) I had an appointment for a consultation on electrolysis. In the most condensed form, the place here in town does blend electrolysis at short time rates of $2 a minute and long periods of $3 a minute. My internal response was "Ouchie, they're getting paid up to $180 dollars an hour to inflict that sort of pain on me?!?!" At the moment, I think my best move is to pay for half an hour and see how that is, and then maybe move onto an hour and see how that goes. Keeping it short means I can pay for it, unlike a full 10 hour clearance which would set me back ~$1800… even the woman in Sydney (Reid - She does multi needle galvanic) is only (only?) ~$60/hour… *sigh*
But still, if I can shop around (so to speak) to get my blood chemistry right, there's certainly no reason why I can't shop around for electrolysis.

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