On Saturday Mum drove over. We chatted and I showed off my new shoebox… um, room. I filled up two milk crates with a mixture of books I don't need and clothes and shoes I don't wear. We dropped by Burt St to see Heather and to pick up the stuff from the green car which had been in Bridget's room for several months. Since we were going down to Woden Plaza, Heather asked us to pick up her new suit from Guava. We wandered around Woden Plaza for a fair while and it was nice to catch up in person. We dropped into Big W to see if there were any cheap shoes, and I wandered out with some size 11 sandals. They had a slightly higher heel than I'm used to, but that wasn't a problem. I had some Sushi, we did some grocery shopping and we picked up Heather's suit and then after a bit of relaxing Mum headed off. It was really nice to see her again, and I was very glad to have something to do. I also gave her copies of my diary from #250-411 which will help her catch up on the last 10 months or so of my life.
However, for some reason that evening I got very, very bored. There wasn't anything much to do, but I did chat with Peta (B) on ICQ and we agreed to meet up on Sunday to see an exhibition on Sunday.
On Sunday morning I stopped by the lab to check email and then conveniently locked myself out. I called security but they weren't able to open the door. This was endlessly frustrating, but I was running late and had to go meet Peta at the exhibition. Thankfully the Film and Sound archive is only a two minute bike-ride from Toad hall or the Lab, so I wasn't too late. I was a bit flustered, but settled down fairly quickly. My frustration disappeared completely when I got to see the small but very interesting exhibition entitled "Atomic Sushi" a collection of frames, merchandise, story-cards and lots more from various popular Manga. I was drooling over the Neon Genesis Evangelion stuff, and was reciting lines out short clips of "Ghost in the Shell" which was playing on a TV. They had a frame from "Gigantor", some Astro-Boy memorabilia, Kimba the White Lion, and the original paper-back Akira books (they were enormous, like telephone books). After that we saw the triumph of the "righteous" over Ned Kelly, some old Movie-tone newsreels and another exhibition on the second floor. We also stopped by the souvenir shop which had a lot of cool stuff too. After that we dropped by Essen for lunch (does vegetarian Nachos count as a serving of green vegetables?) and a quick trawl of a nearby bookshop and then Peta dropped me off back at my bike. I went home and got the caretaker to let me into my room, and then I called the lab on the unlikely chance that someone might have been there. Imagine my surprise when Clem answered the phone! He'd only just gotten there, but that was fine by me and soon I had my keys back and Steph was all happy again. :) The afternoon was spent trying to do some work, reading another book on the history of alchemy and napping.
I dropped by the lab this evening and sent a general email to the other people in my research group requesting that "they use pronouns of she/her in reference to me." I concluded the brief email with "I realise some people may have trouble with this, but I would not have sent this email unless this was very important to me." I expect that nobody will say anything directly to me, I just hope that this will be a timely reminder and that they will GET IT RIGHT!
OK, time for bed. I'm hoping to have a nice quiet, unexciting time tomorrow hopefully getting some writing done. My throat is still sore (which I seriously believe is due to sleep-talking on a dry mouth) but otherwise I'm doing Ok.