More Work, Less Drink
Last Friday I decided that my term as drinks provider for my graduate society had run its course. I still have to inform the graduate society, and finding a replacement may take some time, but the decision felt good. I am tired of having projects interrupted by all of the little tasks that are required for the job, but more than that I am fed up with feeling like my scientific work is a sideline to my social duties. That is not how things should be.
This comes at a time when the weekly socials for my department have been (in my experience) unprecedentedly well-attended. I can take some credit for that, I think, in that the selection that we have carried has changed significantly under my watch; the introduction of free snacks has no doubt helped as well. Of course, ultimately the responsibility is just down to the people attending, which have changed over the months as they must in academia.
Last Friday I closed up shop early to go to a pub with friends from another lab, and that turned into a bit of a binge. During the course of the evening, I discovered that a friend is gay (she just happened to be there with a lot of compatriots in a "wear-plaid-to-come-out-of-the-closet" show of solidarity, and I was wearing plaid by complete coincidence), and another friend was approached by a very cute girl for personal details (he agreed to meet her in spite of being in a long-term commitment). I also learned why the professor for whom I had been TAing had abruptly pulled out of teaching midway through the term -- I had suspected the answer, and apparently others had suspected it as well, but corroborating anecdotes sealed the speculation. I was told that this same professor was (again, completely indicentally) gay, (and again with some corroboration), which I found very odd, as I am friends with her boyfriend, and have seen them together enough to know that their relationship is at least not entirely for show. Finally, I had quite a lot to drink -- all things included, eleven drinks over a nine-hour period. I may have had more in one evening, but not that I ever kept count before.
I have definitely been drunker. I remember most of last Friday evening, which I cannot say about three previous events, and throwing up was nowhere in the schedule. (I annoyed angharad with my chattiness when I got home, too.) However, I have never before been as hung over as I was on Saturday. Pretty much the whole day was spent in recovery, and the headache still threatened to return today. A similar event had put angharad off serious drinking ever afterward, and this may do the same for me. Halifax will likely make this a challenge (most social activities here revolving as they do around beer). We shall see.
Today was a very different sort of fun. I had planned on having a friend over to my place to work on questions for the upcoming Trivia Night put on by the university graduate society. Yesterday's hangover prevented me from bending over and thinking much, which in turn made cleaning and tidying difficult -- and our place was an utter mess. Amazingly, angharad and I managed to clean the kitchen (entirely) and living room (mostly) pretty well in only an hour this morning -- and then our vacuum cleaner burned itself up just as I was starting on the living room carpet! Its beater-bar stopped, and before I could turn it off to check the belt, a cloud of smoke belched out of it. We opened all of the windows right away (from which the place still has yet to warm up) but all the same my friend said that it smelled like a bad electrical fire when he got off the staircase, and that it was too much for him to hang around here. So we decided to go to a coffee shop instead. Of course, such an establishment (at least, one with free Internet access) could not be found on a Sunday morning (this damned province!), so we went to his place instead. All told, it took us about five or six hours, but I think that we are ready for the Wednesday competition.
Meanwhile, I have yet to start reading this week's chapter of the Origin of Species for the reading group that I have (not really) inexplicably founded. I have been writing my thoughts out for it on my other blog as I go, which has been a very helpful task for me, but which of course slows things down and makes the whole process that much less casual. I do not regret this in the slightest, but it does make my time at home less my own. Ah, well.
Tomorrow I have: culturing (for which I set things up on Friday -- this will have been the third week for which I have done this, and it has made things far more pleasant), sectioning (which I am eagerly looking forward to), helping a friend with electron microscopy, and a demonstration of the same for this term's Cell Biology students. Amidst all of that, I have a ton of computer work to do -- the right sort of computer work, addictive and productive and necessary. It should be a good time.
This comes at a time when the weekly socials for my department have been (in my experience) unprecedentedly well-attended. I can take some credit for that, I think, in that the selection that we have carried has changed significantly under my watch; the introduction of free snacks has no doubt helped as well. Of course, ultimately the responsibility is just down to the people attending, which have changed over the months as they must in academia.
Last Friday I closed up shop early to go to a pub with friends from another lab, and that turned into a bit of a binge. During the course of the evening, I discovered that a friend is gay (she just happened to be there with a lot of compatriots in a "wear-plaid-to-come-out-of-the-closet" show of solidarity, and I was wearing plaid by complete coincidence), and another friend was approached by a very cute girl for personal details (he agreed to meet her in spite of being in a long-term commitment). I also learned why the professor for whom I had been TAing had abruptly pulled out of teaching midway through the term -- I had suspected the answer, and apparently others had suspected it as well, but corroborating anecdotes sealed the speculation. I was told that this same professor was (again, completely indicentally) gay, (and again with some corroboration), which I found very odd, as I am friends with her boyfriend, and have seen them together enough to know that their relationship is at least not entirely for show. Finally, I had quite a lot to drink -- all things included, eleven drinks over a nine-hour period. I may have had more in one evening, but not that I ever kept count before.
I have definitely been drunker. I remember most of last Friday evening, which I cannot say about three previous events, and throwing up was nowhere in the schedule. (I annoyed angharad with my chattiness when I got home, too.) However, I have never before been as hung over as I was on Saturday. Pretty much the whole day was spent in recovery, and the headache still threatened to return today. A similar event had put angharad off serious drinking ever afterward, and this may do the same for me. Halifax will likely make this a challenge (most social activities here revolving as they do around beer). We shall see.
Today was a very different sort of fun. I had planned on having a friend over to my place to work on questions for the upcoming Trivia Night put on by the university graduate society. Yesterday's hangover prevented me from bending over and thinking much, which in turn made cleaning and tidying difficult -- and our place was an utter mess. Amazingly, angharad and I managed to clean the kitchen (entirely) and living room (mostly) pretty well in only an hour this morning -- and then our vacuum cleaner burned itself up just as I was starting on the living room carpet! Its beater-bar stopped, and before I could turn it off to check the belt, a cloud of smoke belched out of it. We opened all of the windows right away (from which the place still has yet to warm up) but all the same my friend said that it smelled like a bad electrical fire when he got off the staircase, and that it was too much for him to hang around here. So we decided to go to a coffee shop instead. Of course, such an establishment (at least, one with free Internet access) could not be found on a Sunday morning (this damned province!), so we went to his place instead. All told, it took us about five or six hours, but I think that we are ready for the Wednesday competition.
Meanwhile, I have yet to start reading this week's chapter of the Origin of Species for the reading group that I have (not really) inexplicably founded. I have been writing my thoughts out for it on my other blog as I go, which has been a very helpful task for me, but which of course slows things down and makes the whole process that much less casual. I do not regret this in the slightest, but it does make my time at home less my own. Ah, well.
Tomorrow I have: culturing (for which I set things up on Friday -- this will have been the third week for which I have done this, and it has made things far more pleasant), sectioning (which I am eagerly looking forward to), helping a friend with electron microscopy, and a demonstration of the same for this term's Cell Biology students. Amidst all of that, I have a ton of computer work to do -- the right sort of computer work, addictive and productive and necessary. It should be a good time.