I can speak french.  Of course I can only speak french slowly, with a bad accent and in a no pressure environment.  In any other condition I choke.  Yesterday's conference registration desk was not a no pressure environment.   

 

Conf Participant (in french):  Hello, this person will not be coming to the conference.  Can you please remove him from your list?

 

What I thought I responded:  Sure, just let me cross him out like this.

 

What I actually responded:  Bien sur!  Laisse-moi lui crosser comme ca.

 

In french the verb "se crosser" DOES NOT mean "to cross out".  The worst part was I realized as soon as I said it.

 

Look it up.

 

Note to self:

 

Self, do not eat four sandwiches, two helpings of pasta salad, two desserts squares, three cups of tea and two chocolate chip cookies unless you want to reduce your vacabulary to "Ooohhhh", "Uuuggghh", and "I shouldn't have done that."

 

Nuts to anyone who says I don't eat enough.

 

Point of Interest:  "Hey! Wanna Throw Up?" is also the name song by the electronica/punk group, Minus The Bear.

"Go home!  You don't know what you are doing!  You can't do this!"  I expect someone to jump out of my lab cabinets and shout this at me at any moment. 

 

I hate my thesis.  It's holiday Monday, 7 pm and I am commencing my crack down.  My thesis results are due on the 31st of August.  I have to have everthing done for that date.  Unless I have a definate plan you can find me in my office, possibly crying.  Then after grinding my pretty nose (a favourite feature) into an ugly stump I get to write the damn thing while searching for meaningful employment.  The trouble is I don't think I can do it.  I'm scared out of my wits.  I know I have a great support system.  In fact Friend made sure I had some dinner to eat tonite and I don't take that forgranted, but there is no one who help me when my planning fails or my computer crashes.  (Note to self, make a back-up disk)  I know the thesis will end but I just don't feel like I can do it.  Up to this point nothing has worked and I don't think it will miraculously start.  To compound the problem, this feeling of failure is setting up feeling of failure on the job hunt front.  I can only imagine the interviews, "My reasearch?  Well sir, currently it is lying on the scrap heap because I can't get it to work and I don't feel like trying anymore.  Oh, and I waste all my time writing blogs." 

 

Back to looking for the site density of Nickel that I know doesn't exist and fixing the GC that hasn't worked in 10 years.  *sigh*

 

 

I had an offical "Mad at God Day".  I'm not a religious person but I do take comfort in the idea that something is looking over us and helping us get along.  However, this Something often has a twisted sense of humor.  I guess they are supposed tests of humanity and goodness or something to keep us on the straight and narrow.  But eteranal battle between good and evil aside, on this occasion I've accepted fact (what choice have we got) while waving an angry upward fist.  He gave something to someone who didn't deserve it (I'm not trying to pass judgement, but trust me, I know) and the took the same thing away from someone who did.  I know these two occurances are only connected through me and one didn't influence the other but I can't steer my thoughts away from it.  I'm so upset for the people who didn't recieve anything but at the same time pissed off that the other got another chance to abuse his.  This is diverting my attention from those who need it and makes me feel selfish.  I suppose that this is supposed to be a test of virtue as well.  This sucks and I'm upset.  For one day I'm not going to take it.  Angry fist wave your waviest! 

 

I did forgive the Big Guy, its not prudent to stay angry at Him for too long.  Lightning stikes, plague of boils, etc,etc...    Not to mention the tragedy of growing old and cynical.

 

Actually, there was one pina colada, but it came in a tumbler with no umbrella.

 

I'm back from my vacation under the island sun.  And after our first close encounter where I was burned to a crisp in uncomfortable places the sun and I got along just fine.  In short, here is the trip.

 

Tour of Dan's Island school where high school kids have their parents pay big bucks for them to bask under the island sun, get an education and be worked down to the bone with physical exercise that includes tying a kayak to your foot and swimming for 2 miles cause just paddling was too wimpy.  Then we got a set of beach cruisers (one speed, wicked witch of the west style bicycles) to be our transportation for the week.  By the end of the week we clocked 75 km on those things.  The rest (the abbreviated version) was as follows, get up in the morning beach cruise to the beach, chill out, lotion up, get in the water, snorkel, dry off, beach cruise to the next beach, repeat. 

 

Highlights include:

Here is my master's project in a very small nutshell (keep reading, you don't need to the understand the technical to understand my pain) ...

 

Part I: determine a theoretical reaction mechanism for methane oxidation on Ni.  

 

Part II: refine the kinetic parameters of the initial mechanism. 

 

Upon reading copious amounts of boring articles I ran across this bit of useful information "[The refining of kinetic parameters of the initial mechanism] can be a time-consuming, tedious, or even impossible task to accomplish."

 

At least I can reference my initial fears with a scientifically proved and published theory.

[AIChE Journal, Vol. 46, No. 10]

I have to do a stupid press review for my french class once a week.  I hate it.  It makes me not want go to my french class.  But I'm desperate to learn french so once a week I sit and grumble.  The trouble is that I am a complete and utter fence sitter.  I don't have opinions.  Well at least not very strong ones.  I know genocide in Darfur is really bad, the environment is heating up and I don't like Stephen Harper.  But when I read the paper its to bone up on the facts or discover a new topic to be aware of and then form my own fairly straight forward ideas on the subject.  I never think myself an expert and therefore don't feel the need to discuss adnausem where I will only come out sounding stupid.  If you can't or aren't willing to go out and change it, or don't have any new and exciting ideas that will make the difference, its all just talk and babble. Merely reading the article in the first place gives me all the info I need to make my own personal change.  I recycle, I try to pay attention to foriegn policy so I can make an informed vote which is never Conservative.  That is it, end of discussion and end of french press review get on with the grammar I so desperately need! 

 

But I digress, the point is that I've come up with my own personal rebellion to this french class tryanny.  I am bringing the most ridiculously dumbed down articles.  Once I spoke about the cavier black market and vacations to the tropics, this week is spring cleaning.  HA! Take that!  Unfortunatley the whole thing backfired and now I'm fantacizing about cleaning in behind my fridge.  And getting some natural alternative to EZ-Off to clean my oven.  (See, look at me being influenced positively and making environmental changes.)  I even think I will rotate my mattress.  So read the paper, vote, invest and make personal changes accordingly and then get on with life.  And if you pick up a cause and change the world for the better then I applaude in advance.

 

Although I'm sure Freud would say otherwise, this is a random list I created of internet key words.  I'm getting all sorts of strange hits for people looking for "homemade ninja weapons", "plain clothes", or "ninja outfits", "plot outline of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" and the ever famous "lesbian short story".  (Still can't figure that one out *shrug*)  Now its a mission: dupe as many people as possible!  Let's see what I get..

 

...my guess is "naked ninja photos" is going to come up at least one....