Post #200: Social experiment ahead

It's Monday. The last time I was at work was a week ago. Weird. It still feels like I worked all last week or that I didn't have any sort of break at all. The same things I have to do and such. Sort of nice in a way. I won't be at work from Wednesday on this week either but for a much nicer reason - I'm going to Italy. Bologna, Italy to be exact. There's this conference there on polymorphism - my subject. It should be really interesting. I'll get to at least see loads of people I've read articles from so it's sort of like meeting actors from a movie or something. Sort of like famous people but perhaps only to a quite small group of people. I haven't got a presentation or like a poster or anything so there's no pressure, really. I just get to hang around and listen to lectures and such. I do hope to be in a social mood so I'll actually meet some people. I should have stuff to talk with the people there since we all are interested in the same subject.

I am a bit scared that I'm not able to talk about stuff very intelligently or excitedly even though I am intelligent and excited about the topic. I also feel like I've taken a step back socially and I'm not able to really relate to people and find anything to talk about. I think it may have something to do with me having a huge ego and thinking I'm better than other people though I know it isn't true at all. (Quite problematic really.) But I'm sure it should be interesting to see how I do. Let's call it a social experiment. I'll report back some time after the conference and tell you how it went. It's really sort of exciting since it is the first real conference I'll be attending. (Truthfully I was at this nano thing at my home university but that was different.)

And yeah the article I've been working on for ages is quite almost finished and is going to be submitted soon. First conference, first article - on my way to becoming a crystallographer. :)

Writing an article and the past weeks

I've been way busy this week trying to get this one article (the article) finished. I'm way proupd of myself that I even actually worked at home one day like the whole day. It's been kind of fun having stuff to do and having like a deadline (today but I kind of finished yesterday). Of course now I still have to work on it because the introduction and conclusion need some work still. But it's no biggie. I haven't been all by myself in writing it so that's been nice. I like getting input from other people who are more experienced.

Right now I decided to have a little break since I just had lunch and all and it is a Friday after all. Might as well fill you in on the last few weeks. As you might have noticed, the year changed. for me it did so in rather nice surroundings. There was this fun party and then we went to see the city's fireworks (i.e. our tax money being changed into big bangs, different colors and smoke). After the fireworks me and the bnd just went home since we had to drive the next day and needed to get some rest. I only actually drank like half a bottle of sparkling wine all that day so I was way sober too. But now that I come to think of it I didn't drink much the year before either (on New Year's eve, that is). I'm trying to sort of boycott drinking celebrations. Fun was had by all I think. It was one of those good food - nice company sort of things where that sort of combination just can't really go wrong.

Then it was off skiing or snowboarding, that is. The trip there went nicely and the next morning we actually got into our cottage too. A bit of bad luck or something of the sort in the beginning but after everyone finally got to sleep the first night everything went just dandy. The weather was a bit too cold maybe and there wasn't enough show for my favorite slopes to be open but that didn't stop us from having fun. We had to have a hot chocolate/coffee/tea/lunch break like after every four descents since it was so cold but that also made it more sociable and relaxed. Personally I would have liked to get some more jumps and stuff done but with the cold I didn't really feel like fooling around. I even tried skies in the last night (Ok so I didn't ask permission from my sisters to use their equipment. I hope it's ok.) and after the first two wobbly slopes I sort of got the hang of it. I have to say that it was way weird the first time. Like since I had come down that slope tons of times on my snowboard it felt sort of weird not being so confident in the same place doing almost the same thing. I have to say skiing is quite fun too. The only problem was that the boots were too big for me so my ankles hurt pretty bad. But I now know that in case of an emergency where I have to ski down a hill I won't be totally at a loss on what to do. And more importantly I can laugh at people who are desperately trying to ski since I am ever so slightly better than them.

But that's almost all I've been up to. I'm way happy it's Friday and I get to have a few days off from writing the article. I'm planning on watching Dr. Who tonight and tomorrow me and the bnd are going for dinner. Sunday I'm going climbing so that should be nice. Hopefully I'll find time to clean the aquariums and my flat some. I did clean my flat yesterday but I really should start going through my cabinets since there is loads of stuff I really don't use or need. I need to get some more space for the stuff I do use. I sort of like cleaning. Like at least when the results can be clearly seen like yesterday since my place was a total mess. (Uh oh and right now I really feel like cleaning my flat rather than working on the article. "I wonder why.")

But I'll get to reading so other people's articles now.