My address

...Not.  Actually, this post is to tell you that if you want my address, please e-mail either me or my mother and ask.  I don't want to post A&J's address on the internet because...well, it's their house in addition to being my current residence.

In reference to item #5 in my previous post, A came home yesterday with a bag full of lego ninjas for the kids he teaches (tennis).

Things that would have made my first day in lab more interesting

1.  The use of actual piranhas in the “piranha etching” step of sample preparation.

2.  If leaving the sample for 17 minutes instead of only 15 had made it explode.

3.  Meat Science magazine.

4.  A blowtorch.

5.  Ninja monkeys.  (They make everything more interesting.)

Well, now I know how much of an effect overall mood has on my blogging abilities.  The first day of my dissertation project has me feeling more energetic and purposeful than I’ve felt in weeks, and here I am writing!  First of all, here are the links to my two most recent photo albums:

Spring Break in England

Walking Tour of Heriot-Watt

You know, now that I don’t live there anymore.  There won’t be pictures of the house in St. Andrews where I live now, at least not many or for quite a while.  The couple I rent from  (I’ll call them JT and AT, as per usual with my initials thing) live here, too, and I’m not going to plaster pictures of their house all over the internet without their permission.  I’m one of four graduate students renting from them (all with our own rooms/bathrooms—it’s a big house), to be reduced to two this summer, then three in the fall.

I moved back up here the weekend before last, and spent most of the week slowly settling in and relaxing.  This weekend felt like a re-initiation of sorts into the life of the town—Saturday I attended a play written and performed by a youth club here; Sunday my church had three baptisms (in the North Sea!), followed by a big whole-church breakfast and the service; and I had dinner with my flatmates from the fall semestre that evening.  Welcome back, indeed.

And, as I mentioned at the beginning, today was my first day of work on my summer project.  Preparing sample slides for use is not the most exciting task in the world (the cool-sounding “piranha etching” procedure just means using acid to eat away the dirt on the slides; the blowtorch, however, is exactly what it sounds like, and I get to use that tomorrow :D  ), but I did meet a number of my groupmates and get all the logistical things like my computer account set up.  And like I said, I’m excited now—just having something to do again is starting to lift me out of my funk, and the projects are going to be cool.  A formidable mountain of work, but cool.   It’s going to be an exciting summer.

And so it begins...

After a month of intense training and daily meditation, honing my powers to deadly perfection, I am now prepared to undertake the impossible, the most agonizing war of attrition mankind has ever waged against computer...it is time to download a large photo album to Facebook.  We who are about to die salute you.