Tuna & Thesis

.I have never been a breakfast person. My stomach wakes up around noon, completely independent of when the rest of me wrangles itself out of bed. Every once in a while I do make an exception. This is mostly because I feel like I should. I've had my head piped full of “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” and stuff like that, ever since I was a kid.

The other day was a forced exception. My step-sister came over for breakfast. Technically, I suppose it was more of an early lunch, but my stomach wasn’t awake yet at any rate. I sat down at the kitchen table and started making a tuna sandwich.

“mayo…adding tuna…one, two, three slices of pickle…” I said, carefully documenting everything, not because I didn’t know how to build a tuna sandwich, but because I’m not all that accustomed to preparing breakfast and so it took a bit of concentration. I realized that I didn't have to narrate the entire birth of my sandwich, but I was on a funny sort of an auto pilot.

At some point The Step-Sister asked about The Thesis (of doom) and I gave out my standard reply, all the while intensely focused on the collection of bread, salads and whatnots on my plate. Then she and The Step-Mum chattered on for a bit, before she turned back to me and asked “are you nearing the end of it soon?”

I carefully examined my sandwich and responded: “yeah, just about done now. It just needs a bit more lettuce.”

Lesson learned: drink more coffee before breakfast.

Eggbert, Hallbert, distractions and all the serious research-stuff

My poor Eggbert is still at the hospital in Big City for sick computers. I had thought that with Eggbert being away, and therefore unable to distract me with games and such, I would get more work done. After all, Hallbert, who is Eggbert’s understudy, is getting on in years. He’s not very fast or playful. Also, being a laptop, Hallbert, with all his slow seriousness, can go with me wherever I am. So there’s no excuse not to work on my thesis.

But I can always count on the universe to assure that my plans never, ever turn out the way I thought.

Take the other day, for example. I took Hallbert and my papers with me to the park. If you can call a small path with a large puddle covered in reefs and algae a park. Actually, it’s more like a swamp with a bench in it. But I digress. The plan was to do all sorts of scientific, serious research-stuff. However, the universe immediately set out to wreak havoc on my plan.

First came the annoying bee. Bees don’t bother me, but this one was determined to crawl up my nose and would not take no for an answer. Then came the screaming children who were left to wait in the car for their parents just a few paces away. Their considerate folks had let them open up all the windows, to make sure they didn’t use up all the oxygen in the vehicle with all their jumping and howling. After a while I began to suspect that their mum and dad had abandoned them. Not that I couldn’t understand that.

“I’ll go home,” I thought. “I’ll make myself a nice cup of coffee and get tons of work done,” I thought.

Twenty minutes later, Hallbert was all set up at my desk, a large cup of coffee steaming away right next to him. I sat down, wiggled my fingers in preparation, took a deep breath… and heard drums. Then there were more drums and what sounded like trumpets, and it all seemed to be coming closer and closer.

Before I knew it, a marching band was marching up around and around in circles in the parking lot outside my house, showing no signs of leaving any time soon.

Well, you don’t have to knock me unconscious to make a point. The serious science-stuff’ll just have to wait a little while longer.