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.

Circus farts, q-tips and pig-bottoms

After eight years of semi-anorexia, Pooch suddenly got it into her head a couple of weeks ago, that it was time to start eating like a normal dog. One of those normal dogs that not only eat their regular dog food, but also scoffs down garbage wherever she can find it. Combined inside her belly, all these elements starts to produce impressive amounts of gas. However much Pooch might eat like a normal dog, she sure doesn’t fart like one. Pooch’s farts smell like the circus, bringing back memories of popcorn, pink sugar floss and elephants.

Pooch isn’t shy about where she releases her airy creations, either, as I discovered the last time I had people over. There we were, eating muffins, drinking coffee and having very intelligent conversation, when the smell of clowns chasing each other across a floor of sawdust suddenly filled the room.

Pooch lifted her head off the floor, sniffed twice before she got up and left. Luckily, it’s summertime, so we could just open up all the windows.

Speaking of summer. I think perhaps I’m on my summer vacation. I could be wrong. The professor in charge of the project I’m on, is away this week. When he gets back, he might just pile more work on me. The last time he got a hold of me, it ended up with me having to insert huge q-tips up the bums of very large, very uncooperative pigs. As in pork. I didn’t just go down to the bar one night. Mr Professor said I had to practice, cause I’m being shipped off to Lithuania in the fall for a research trip to do the same thing to wild boars. Only they’ll be dead. You should never sneak up on a wild boar and shove a cotton stick up its ass. That would be stupid.

And finally, to celebrate my triumphant return to blogging:

Aliens, those darn indjuns, rectal examinations, my bike, laboratories and boredom

Hello people. Sorry about the long absence. I was kidnapped by aliens and then them darn indjuns ate my homework. Or maybe it was the other way around. It’s all a bit fussy.

I fear that I may be becoming boring. “Noooo,” you say. “Not you,” you say. “You have a fascinating life and an overwhelming intellect,” you say. And yes, most of that has been true up until the last month or so, but lately I’m starting to feel… well… dull.

Right now, for example, I am not out chasing down terrorists like those people on TV (just being able to fight crime and keep their teeth –that- white makes them interesting). I am not being worshipped by anyone other than The Pooch. Money is something that I mostly see on television. In stead of, say, learning a new language I am stuffing my face full of almonds, whilst inwardly whining about how I will now have to brush my teeth all over again. In fact, the most exciting thing I did this week was to have my bike repaired.

Outside of the bikeshop, near the garage across the street, a man was arguing with a mechanic about repairs that had been done on his car which he’d never asked for. I’m assuming that he did ask for some sort of repairs at some point. I don’t think they actually kidnapped his car from his driveway. He was like an alzheimer patient at a brothel: shocked that he’d been screwed and refusing to pay for it…

That’s not true. Not really. I did get to do some work in the laboratory all by my lonesome, with nobody to supervise me. If I had decided that I wanted to smear disease all over the walls, there would be no one there to stop me. Although the only disease-producing germ I have access to at the moment, is the kind that gives you explosive diarrhoea. My lab chores took less than an hour, though, so I was back home in time to watch Oprah closely followed by Dr Phil. Which brings us back to me being boring.

I did have a rather colourful murder fantasy while I tried to ignore the sounds of one of the upstairspeople shticking it to his girlfriend again, though. They started out as a light pain in my ass and have now blossomed into a three-fingered rectal examination.


I will go out and observe something screwy to tell you about later. And if I don’t, I will lie and make something up. It might even be coherrent. No promises, though.

Laboratories and a guinea pig named Crust

Oh, how the days are snailing themselves along. This is the last week of classes before Christmas. That means that if you don’t count exams and papers that need writing and all that crap, the x-mas holidays have almost begun. My only problem at the moment, is that some evil troll has apparently come up from below and magiced every hour to be twice as long as it’s supposed to. That’s just not right. I should be the only evil troll in this storybook, dammit.

At the moment we’re doing our very last intensive lab course in microbiology. They let us mess around with DNA. I have come to the conclusion that I’ve really got the makings of a mad/evil scientist, seeing how I would luuuuve to muck around with my own DNA. That’s the first sign: willingness to be your own guinea pig.

I used to have a guinea pig when I was a kid. I named it Skorpa, which is Hellholish for Crust. Crust was…well…psychotic, to be completely hones. She had her own outdoor area, from which she would try to launch attacks on the neighbour’s cat. It’s a good thing Crusty spent most of her time behind bars.

Memory lane is an interesting place. Jupp-jupp.

Momma's got a brand new bag! Or something...

Guess what I’m doing! No, that’s not it. You’re sick in the head, you are. Guess again! That’s it, you ought to be publicly flogged, you demented weirdo.

I’ll just tell you, shall I?

I’m surfing the world wide web with by brand new computer. It’s got a widescreen and everything. Even smells like new plastic, it does. I luves my new baby, and have decided to name it muffin. I like muffins. Wish I had one.

Moving right along…

I have an assignment do, and the work process has become complicated by the fact that I can now play The Sims on a big screen. Very distracting, it is. I mean, who has time to ponder the principal thoughts behind statistical differences in the means between two samples when you’ve got a little man giving birth to the alien-baby he got stuck with after being kidnapped by a UFO in another window? It’s hopeless.

But I’m trying my very best. Apart from right now, of course. Right now I’m doing this.

Who missed me?

I’m sitting at my new kitchen table in my new apartment in an old house on an ex-farm in a far bigger hellhole than the one I lived in a few weeks ago. It’s nowhere near big enough to justify fear of terrorism or those little signs warning you to beware of pickpockets and thieves, but it is big enough to have more than one mall.

I can theoretically go shopping whenever I feel like it. That can’t be good for me, considering that when it comes to shopping, I have the self restraint of a psychotic monkey.

There are people living on my roof. Four of them. Well, they’re not actually on my roof, but on the floor above mine. I can hear every little noise they make. I know that one of them whinnies like an overexcited horse on regular intervals, and I wonder if he’s the same one who sounds like a cow with some horrible disease when he’s having sex. I suppose I shouldn’t ask.

Classes on scientific research methods have started, and it turns out that I’m a geek. I shudder at the thought of how my courses in microbiology and genetics might leave my social life in ruing once they begin, seeing how I’m utterly engrossed by models of dispersions and project design. Not to mention completely riveted, wrapped up, fascinated, captivated and engaged.

I have a thesaurus, I do.

And Pooch has a boyfriend. He lives across the yard, and she goes to play with him three times a day. Morning, afternoon and night. They’ve become quite close, but not yet to the point where she’ll let him sniff her bottom. But now he’s made the mistake of going camping with his family. Pooch looked for him every day for the first week and then she noticed that golden retriever next door…

So I guess Pooch has two boyfriends. But I have a thesaurus, I do.

Mucho mojo

I wasn’t much of a fashionista when I was in junior high. Not even close, really. To tell you the truth, I was a bit of a dork. A big bit. That didn’t stop me from trying to look hot, mind you.

All the cool girls in my class had really big hair of the kind that went straight up and then straight down, like a plane crash, and I did my very best to imitate them. Not well, but still. Hairspray was of course an important part of the process. I remember using the kind that turned into a greyish sticky dust after a while. I looked as if I had the worst case of dandruff since… well, since ever, really. Either that or an attack of lice to rival those of a person from the Middle Ages who bathed in cold water only for Christmas and slept on hay alongside of livestock.

One day I’d run out of the stuff. If I had taken the time to develop a sense of style, I would probably have considered that to be a blessing.

But I hadn’t.

So I started searching high and low for a replacement. Anything would do. I tried out every cream and sticky concoction I could find until I discovered one that worked somewhat. It didn’t make my hair stand up much, but it did make it paste nicely to my head, which made it a satisfactory replacement. After applying it, I took a moment to read the tube.

Self tanning lotion.

You know how your scalp, underneath the hair is usually paler than the rest of your face? Mine wasn’t. My face was quite pale – the kinda pale that teenage nerds who spend all summer inside with a book wind up sporting – and my scalp was a dark coconut brown.

Fancy.

A lovely day for the wiggling of the toes

I’m starting to get that vacation-feeling deep inside my tummy, right underneath the ice cream, watermelons and fizzy drinks. In a couple of days it’ll probably have spread to my brain, from which it will have to be surgically removed once classes start up again, like some malignant tumour.

I’m going to grad school in the fall, you see. To Hellhole U, to be specific. The thing is that I didn’t really want to go there. I wanted to move back to the city, to where you can have food brought to you and where there is a big enough population to form a good-sized cult. But the universe had different ideas. It always does. First, I started thinking about all the stuff I’d have to haul halfway across the country, which put me off a little bit. This goes back to the lazy-thing I’ve mentioned earlier. I’m lazy. I’m also lethargic, sluggish and slothful, and I don’t like moving furniture over large distances.

Then I received my letter from Hellhole U, offering me a spot which I would have to accept by the 16th. Which is two whole days before the other schools I’ve applied to send out their letters. The thing is that I’m a sissy. The universe knows this, and tends to use it against me. The universe is very well aware that if I were to turn down Hellhole U, then not get accepted anywhere else, and have to postpone my masters for another year, I’d be forced to have a mental meltdown. I’ve seen meltdowns on movies and have always thought that they look like a lot of work. Which brings us back to me being lazy. I mentioned that, yes? So I’m going to Hellhole U.

But until then, I’m sitting outside in my garden chair with my laptop, wiggling my little toes in the air. I left the TV on inside and the sound is a bit annoying, but I’m too lazy to get off my ass to turn it off.

Some guy sounds waaay too happy as he says: “Before, we had to go to the doctor in order to remove my warts. Now we can do it at home with just one treatment.”

Idjit.

Meet Mr. Green!

For those of you who have been paying attention, you might recall that last year I mentioned that my lawn mower was the devil. Whenever you turned it on, thick clouds of smoke would well from it, oil would spatter everywhere and it would make a sound like a hundred mice being slowly squeezed to death. For this reason, I was now ready to mow my lawn for the first time this season with a brand new, hopefully non-demonic, and very orange mower, which I decided to name Mr. Green.

So there I was, in the middle of my garden with Mr. Green, surrounded by far too tall grass. I pulled the starter-thingy and the engine roared to life. Or…well…“roared” might be an overstatement, it was more like an enthusiastic fart. Still, it was a nice change from the usual 20min battle it had been with the old devil spawn.

Thus far everything was terrific, but there was one itty, bitty little detail for which I was completely unprepared – the back wheels that moved all by themselves.

So the engine came to life with a loud fart and all of a sudden, Mr. Green blasted forwards, clumps of grass flying in all directions. I hung on for dear life, while the little voice in my head (Toots) yelled “GHOST! It’s a GHOST!”

Luckily the rational part of my brain, which is called Bergerac, decided to join us. “Perhaps you should let go of the handle,” it suggested. I did, and the mower's enraged attack of the garden seized immediately.

Now I have a freshly mowed lawn, although it is a bit funny looking, seeing how I haven’t quite worked out the aim just yet.


In further news, I had an exam on Friday. There are two things in this world that make me incredibly grumpy, if not straight out malevolent, and those two things are 1) gardening and 2) exams. This means that this past weekend I was so grouchy, I just wanted to rip someone’s head off and then make my way through town and beat people to death with it.

I didn’t, though… I wasn’t me, and you can’t prove it.

I'm a grown-up, I am!

I’m waiting impatiently to hear back from the universities where I’ve applied to my masters’ degree, including Hellhole U.

Year ago, long before I wanted to be a brilliant scientist, I had a dream of becoming a lawyer. This dream was formed inside my tiny head way back when I was only a little horror, based on one very simple thing: the hit television show known as “LA Law”. More specifically, the power suits and briefcases worn by the women in that show. I liked the hairdos, as well.

For year and years, the idea remained there, until the time came to start applying to colleges. That was the first time I ever really asked myself why I wanted to study law. After careful consideration, I came to the conclusion that power suits and briefcases (even really, really fancy ones) probably weren’t the right foundation for a career choice.

As a kid, I had all sorts of ideas in my head about what it was to be “grown up”. Once, for example, I found a 100kr bill (a fortune for a nine year old kid like me) abandoned at the side of the road, just outside my school. I decided to be mature, so I instantly picked it up and ran back to school, where I handed it in to the principal, in case it’s owner would come looking for it, all the while hoping that nobody would so that I might get it back. Now I’m a grown-up. It says so on my birth certificate. Sort of. If I found money on the street now, I’d pick it up, put it in my pocket and be on my merry way, because that is the grown-up thing to do.

Also, when I was little, I dreamt about the day that prince charming would come climbing in through my bedroom window at night and… well, I dunno… sing me a song, or something, I guess. I was a kid, after all.
The grown-up thing to do if someone comes crawling through your window in the dark, however, is to scream, hit them on the head with something hard and call the cops.

All in all, I’m glad I’m not a kid anymore.

Neverending Friday

Last Friday was a very long day, of the seemingly neverending variety. Despite not having any classes that day, I went to the college. Being the lethargic creature that I am, this goes against everything I stand for. I did, however, have to hand in a paper.

I had the idea in my head that this would be a piece of cake. All I had to do, was find the professors office, knock-knock on the door, and hand it over, right? I should have known better. There’s no such thing as a piece of cake in Hellhole.

The finding-the-office-bit was easy enough. Knocking on the door went just as I had planned. But that was where Friday stopped following the script. There was no answer. I knocked again. Nothing. I waited. And then I waited some more. And a bit longer. Then I got fed up with waiting, and concluded that if the professor wouldn’t come to Mohammed, then Mohammed would come to the professor. So I went searching the halls for a tall, gangly man in his fifties (the professor, duh). The only problem was that the guy kept moving around. When they insist on having things handed to them, the least they can do is bloody hold still, don’t you think? All lecturers should have some sort of tracking device injected into their necks, so that their students could find them. Then they could just hang a few of those electronic gizmos that show their locations as a small, red dot on the wall. Like the ones they used in Alien.

I looked at my wristwatch. The bus would leave in less than an hour, and after that I’d have to wait two hours for the next one. I needed a plan.

Fifteen minutes later, I was standing in the checkout line at the store, clutching the key ingredient to my master plan: a roll of tape. Ten minutes after that, I was in the process of thoroughly sticking my paper to the professor’s office door with great enthusiasm.

And what did I see coming towards me at that very moment? A tall, gangly man in his fifties, that’s what.

Bloody typical.

Tape pic by deziner02 for www.sxc.hu

spinning heads

I’m so stressed out these days, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. I think the only thing that keeps my head from spinning around and around like something out of The Exorcist, is the fact that it can’t decide on which way to go first. I have a gazillion papers to write and final exams from hell looming on the horizon.

As usual this time of the year, I’m chronically behind on everything that I’m supposed to do, sleep deprived and trying very hard (very, very hard) to deny the approach of Christmas. My whole head is programmed completely wrong. When I’m studying, I want to go back to bed. When I go to bed, I can’t sleep because my brain keeps chewing formulas, equations and whatever insane theories Freud came up with.

In an attempt to somewhat lessen my workload, I decided to hit study hall for a few hours the other day. So I swung by the store and picked up one of their sorry excuses for a lunch (the kind that’ll fill you up like a peg in a hole right there and then, but makes you feel like you ate a brick a little later in the day). But the goal was not culinary delight, but to hold out at my little desk for as long as possible.

The first problem with my brilliant plan reared its ugly head almost right away. Seeing how I was as sleep deprived as ever, it took almost two hours for my brain to kick into action. After that, I got about half an hour of work done before it decided that it didn’t want to perform anymore, because it had already been in study hall for two hours, and enough was enough. Then I spent another half hour trying to force it to work, before my brain finally told me to bite it and shut down completely. All in all, I might as well just have stayed in bed.

Everyone keeps telling me that when I’m out of grad school, and working full-time, I’ll miss the days when I was a student. Personally, I’m not convinced. I’m quite looking forwards to the whole not-working-my-ass-off-24/7-thing. Not to mention the living-off-of-something-other-than-cheap-pasta-thing. And I especially look forwards to the checking-my-bankaccount-and-actually-finding-something-there-thing.

Until then I guess I’ll be having my heart attack in instalments.

Meet Mr. Philosophy!

As I may or may not have mentioned, I enrolled in a class in idéa history this semester, just for the hell of it (which, after three years of studying for a degree in science, is kinda like visiting the Twilight Zone).

Our professor this semester, is a philosopher and a bit of an oddball. A very clever oddball, but an oddball nevertheless. He's... *insert drumroll here*... Mr. Philosophy.

Mr. Philosophy has managed the feat that it undoubtedly is to combine the look of a somewhat posh, upper westside (why are the fancy places always up and westwards?) professor with that of an old, english sheepdog. His head and shoulders always enter the room before the rest of him does, because he bends forwards a bit when he walks, as if he's contemplating charging through a wall like a mad rhino, or something. At least that's what he'd look like if he didn't always have the smily-little-boy-on-christmas-eve-expression in his face.

When he's made his way into an auditorium, however, the posture changes. Now, the pelvis is tilted forwards, while the torso sort of slumps backwards. The smily-christmas-face is constant, though, and, as he gets excited about what he's lecturing, his arms start to move around in circles, and he begins to jump in place, as if he had little springs in his knees. Then he actually looks a bit like a skiing-instructor I saw on TV once upon a time.

And that pretty much sums up what I got out of my class today.

Bah, humbug!

I woke up today with a major, throbbing ouch(!!!) in my left arm. I figure that it stems from either sitting by the computer for hours on end, trying to finish the first draft of my termpaper on time, or it's the longest, most drawn-out heartattack in medical history...
There's nothing like a little surge of pain to make you really, truly grumpy in the morning. But being the industrious student *cough* that I am, I puttered off to my classes, after all.

An hour into my final class, the grumpyness returned with full force. I came to the decision that I had to get out of there or projectile vomit straight across the auditorium. The last option probably would have had some sort of negative consequenses, so I opted for running away. Or at the very least, walking very quickly.

And after spending all day being babbled at, I'm going to go take a painkiller, watch TV and feel sorry for myself.

Chinese food, unconsciousness and a new discovery

There’s a Chinese restaurant in town where I like to eat. It got busted on health regulations a few years back, but then they changed owners and now you can eat there without having to worry about kidney failure.

Anyway, I was having lunch there with a friend on Monday. I’d been in classes all day, since early in the morning (the kind of early where there should be a law against getting out of bed, unless you have a cow to milk, or something), and I’d hardly had any sleep all night, so it was fair to say that I was barely conscious. After I decided on what to eat (which took forever, due to the previously mentioned lack of consciousness), the waiter asked what I wanted to drink.

“I’ll have… Uhm… Hmm,” I said. Usually I order Cola, but I had an idea in my head that I wanted to drink something else this time. However, there simply wasn’t enough juice in my brain (or whatever it is that brains run on) to both produce an alternative drink and transporting the name of it out from between my lips. Once again, I ended up with Cola. I’ll be original next time, when I have the energy for it.

Another thing I noticed, that I hadn’t really paid any attention to before, is the fact that the bathroom sink in that place is placed really, really low. I’m a tiny, little dwarf by Scandinavian standards, and I almost had to bend over double to wash my hands. Even a really small Chinese person would find it a bit disproportionate. But, as I said, I never noticed this before. And as I’ve been in there a few times, it is possible that I was hallucination due to exhaustion. I’ll have to check again next time.

risking my life in the photobooth

As I might have mentioned, I take the bus into town every morning in order to get to my math lecture. The drive is about ten minutes or so. There aren’t that many morning buses, so I have to leave the house at seven, even though my class doesn’t start until nine. I also think that there’s a rule around here that says the busses have to be at least ten minutes late. This rule applies with one exception: if you’re not on time, it’ll turn up five minutes early and leave before it’s supposed to, so that you miss it. When that happens, you stand there forever, confused, because unless you actually see the damn thing, there’s no telling whether it’s gone already or if it’s just late again.

It’s not as light out in the morning as it used to be, only a few weeks ago (although I’m still denying the existence of fall until I see snow), so the bus had the inside lights on. None of which worked properly. They all blinked in unison every five seconds. I counted. It was a bit like riding a photobooth.

Another thing about the morning bus, is that it always drives in the middle of the road. This has nothing to do with who is actually driving, because all the drivers do the very same thing. I guess that’s just another one of those weird rules.. It will (and does) stop absolutely anywhere. There aren’t all that many actual busstops, so you just pull it over where it’s most convenient to you. Even if that happens to be in the middle of an intersection, where you can’t see a damn thing in either direction. Not that there’s any traffic to speak of. This is Hellhole, after all. Of course, the moment someone decides to take a morning drive, we might all be screwed.

Sometimes, riding the bus into town is the most exciting point of my day.

I spy with my little eye

I spent two of the longest hours of my life in study hall yesterday, trying to understand the original texts of Aristotle, which is not necessarily an easy thing to do. For some reason, that man ended every paragraph by saying something like “enough about this” or “let’s not waste any more of our precious time on this subject”. At one point I decided that I needed a coffee- and newspaper break, pulled the morning paper out of my handbag and switched my attention from big philosophical ideas to stories about stabbings, burnings, mugging and flirting.

That’s right; there was an article on how to flirt. Because, apparently, people suck at that. There were a whole lot of things to do with eyecontact. Obviously, it’s very important, seeing how people can’t read your mind. It makes perfect sense when you think about it.

At that moment a guy decided to walk past my desk. He was kinda purty too, soooo… “Let’s see if it works,” I though, staring at him. Just to underline the fact that I wasn’t some lunatic, fresh from the funnyfarm (no, I’m not), I threw in a smile, as well. Seconds later, he’s crashing straight into one of those fancy looking pillars, who’s only mission in life is probably to look fancy.

I figure that I can interpret this as either favourable, or as a sign of some kinda motor function disorder. I dunno…

(pic by Lou24860)

A special kind of stupid

Today (as well as every other day lately) I was followed around by the sound of complaining stomachs. It happened first in my math class. I sat at my desk, trying to understand a formula that might as well have been in greek (actually, I think it probably was in greek), when a deep, roaring sound made it's way towards me from somewhere on my left. The noise persisted, making it's presens known every five minutes or so, right up until recess.

Now, you might think that this would be a good time to go get something to eat, but you'd be wrong. After the break, the sound was back, more grown-up than ever. And it brought friends. Growling noises now came from every corner of the room. It was almost like something I once heard on Animal Planet.

And the phenomenon kept repeating itself throughout my day. From mathclass to the coffeebar to the lectures in philosophy. Growl, growl, growl. Why don't these people eat? Do they forget? Because it takes a very special kind of stupid to forget something like that. Once or twice is (maybe) permissible, but when it becomes a daily thing... It's the very same kind of stupid that led to the invention of such things as the motorized picnic table and the insomniac helmet (a gigantic contraption that you strap onto your head, and it gives you a head massage to help you sleep). Or maybe they can't afford food? But they don't really strike me as being poor, either.

So I guess that just leaves stupid...