10:35 pm - Wednesday 21st February 2001

Far out…

Today has been quite up and yet quite down at the same time. I got up early and helped set up the stall for the Sexuality Department. After that was under control I went over to the lab and was greeted by the sight of a reaction mixture which had boiled dry because of a faulty piece of glassware. The day was not off to a good start on that note. I ate, corrected parts of my thesis and then decided to go back and help with the stall from about 11 am until 1 pm. It was good fun, and we signed up a lot of people. I saw a fair number of people I knew from different places, and they were all cool with everything. After that I went back to the lab and set up another two reactions, did some more computer work and then wandered about the rest of Market day looking at the other stalls and chatting. We packed up at 3:30 pm and then retired to the bar for a while for beer and potato wedges which was our reward for signing up over 200 people. Most of these people will be "ghost members", and we're only expecting about 30 for tomorrow's champagne breakfast, but no matter.

I came home had a shower to wash the sweat and grime off, then napped and went back to the lab. One of my reactions was refluxing over, and nobody had turned the heat down on it. I knew chemistry-wise that this was a bad karma day and so I spent the rest of the evening cleaning all the glassware and just generally tidying. That way I could be productive without ruining any more reactions.
The heat is starting to come back, and that doesn't help matters either. I'm feeling rather scatter-brained as I do when it's like this. I'm hoping for a cool change to come through ASAP. I know I have emails to respond to, but it's not going to happen tonight. I'm just hoping that if I get some good sleep tonight, I can spend a quiet day in the lab after the champagne breakfast and keep things low-key. I wouldn't say I've been over-extending myself, sometimes I just have a really bad day in the lab and this was one of them.

I also made someone very happy the other night (not like that!), so I feel warm and fuzzy about it.

It was also Susan's birthday yesterday, I sent her a SMS message and then tried to call her tonight. I saw her sister at Fair Day, so got to catch up on some of the general news at least.

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