Christmas and my presents

I had a rather nice Christmas. The food was good, the company even better (my family) and all in all I had enough to do not to get bored and so on. I even got tons of nice presents. I guess I've been nice. The bnd even gave me two presents of which one I knew of and had in fact chosen myself and the other one was a surprise. He was like "well presents sort of have to be a surprise so I went and got you something else too". That is in addition to the snowboarding coat he got me. The other present was earrings. Rather nice earrings too. Simple rings, that is. I ended up wearing them and I think I will until I have to change them for some reason though I can't think of one. See I wore the last earrings for the past six years. I think I took them off maybe a couple of times but otherwise I always had them on. I got those earring from my twin as a birthday present. Before that I hadn't worn any for ages. So as a summary: my boyfriend got me earring that I actually like and am presently wearing until further notice.

As I am apparently discussing my presents I shall now continue. My secret Santa present (wished for it and another family member bought it with my parents money) was a Powerball. It's like this exersise apparatus for like wrist and finger muscles. Good for climbing. And it's like way difficult to figure out how to use it in the beginning. I'm getting there though. I got it working Christmas morning and that day but then yesterday as I was showing it to the bnd it just would not function. "It's broke." I tried tons of times but I just could not get it going. Today, however, (like 20 minutes ago) I did get it to work and on the first try. Even made a new speed record. And now my left hand is sort of twitching. :) I have to try again.

So ok I'm at work but it seems the network is sort of down. Or at least the printing which is what I was trying to do and need to do next so I decided to write in my blog which apparently works. They did warn me the network might be down at times today so I'm taking it easy. Tomorrow is Friday after all and I've had almost a week off and there really aren't a lot of people at work. I'm not sure I even should be but I got some things to get done and I'm in the city so why not go to work. It's sort of fun being at work when there is not much pressure to work. I'm actually getting things done. <- Explanations, explanations. (seli seli) "Get to work."

Becoming a crystallographer

I've been measuring crystals all this week and it looks like I'll have tons to measure next week too. Today I suddenly noticed that it's getting to be fun since I'm now more able to do things by myself. Mounting the crystal and measuring the unit cell are seeming more and more familiar. Collecting and then processing the actual data are getting there. I'm still not that excited about filling the liquid nitrogen since it just seems sort of scary with the liquid being like really cold and thus dangerous. But it's getting there. Soon I might not worry about it so much or become really lazy about measuring when the tanks have to be filled.

It's fun having work at work though right now I'm just waiting for one measurement to end. I would have had this dataset to solve but it ended up being really bad since the crystal was bad. Not worth solving really. I'll have to try and find a better and bigger crystal. But tomorrow I should have tons to do with me stopping these experiments and measuring crystals. I hope I get some proper results.

The weekend is coming up. I'm in need of sleep again. Actually tomorrow is the Christmas party of the chemistry department. I hope it will be fun. I haven't really been in a party mood lately but that's just a lack of partying I think. I'm just thinking about getting a good night's sleep and the Christmas party is sort of getting in the way of that. Weird way of thinking, I know. But at least there should be good food and some wine and if it turns out to be boring I can just go home. It's not such a big deal anyways. I'm not in the mood to get disasterously drunk and make a fool of myself. Not that that's something I've ever done anyways. It just seems like that's what is expected at Christmas parties. I don't like drinking when it is the expected thing to do. It just feels forced and I'm really not into peer pressure.

Monday, London and mind-reading

Oh it is such a Monday. I totally did not want to get out of bed this morning. I didn't even sleep well since I'd been watching two episodes of Heroes before going to bed. That show just totally makes me have weird dreams. I guess that means it is effectively thought provoking. I've seen like six episodes of the first season.

I got work done after I got to work since I have like loads of crystals to measure. See I'm measuring unit cells and hoping for something new. Actually right now I have something new (at least for me personally) and thus I have to wait till after four when it is measured fully. So now I'm supposed to be reading for an exam I have tomorrow but I'm totally falling asleep. And it sucks since I really haven't studied at all and it's really embarrasing if I don't get a good grade. I'm just so not used to studying any more. It sometimes feels like I'm used to just not doing anything proper.

So I was in London. It was a really nice trip. It did feel like I hardly saw anything since it was only two days. But still I think I've been somewhere for two days and I've seen more. Weird. But I did see Big Ben and Buckingham Palace and the Tower Bridge. We didn't go inside anything so maybe I'm just sort of feeling I saw nothing since I did not see huge collections of old stuff in museums, where I'm usually interested for the first 15 minutes after which I want to have a look at the gift shop, where I buy nothing and then I want to have coffee. But at least now I have something to go back for one day.

We did use the Metro tons so the next time I go, I'll be able to handle that with no problem. Also did some shopping. I bought a coat and two t-shirts. All Esprit like usual. I just feel like I know what I'm getting with that brand. I do have to tell you about the Esprit store they have with a Starbuck's right inside it (i.e. "shopping heaven"). It was great. Didn't even have problems shopping with the bnd though my official opinion is that girls shop with girls and guys can do it alone.

Even went to a vegetarian restaurant. They had like tons of vegetarian food to choose from and only vegetarian food to choose from. It was great since usually there is just the one or two. I think if you are able to eat everything, you won't really get how lovely it is for a change. I ended up having a burger since it was so great that there was like four different vegetarian burgers to choose from. Oh and they had the best ice cream. Truly.

It's sort of beginning to feel like me and the bnd can read each other's minds. Or that one of us can anyhow. Like in London we were shopping and then suddenly we are both like "shall we go have coffee" and then just Saturday I was wondering whether the boy got tickets for this gig he was going to and just at the moment he texts me. And then one day I was thinking we should go play Badminton on Sunday and then he texts me to ask me to play on Sunday. And that's not even all. It's been going on for like a couple of weeks now. Just little things usually. It's most likely because we hang out so much. Or else "I have developed psychic abilities". :)