feels like I'm getting somewhere
Yesterday during the day was one of those days when my emotional state was somewhat more fragile than I care to admit to. (I'm sure it had nothing whatsoever to do with hormones, nor the stresses inherent in not having finished the thesis yet ;-) Therefore, rather than sit at home whilst clovis_t went into town to do fun things like re-paint his shield, I decided to take advantage of the fact that my laptop is, in fact, portable, and I invited myself along. I spent an hour or so in my office at uni while he did things in the library, and then we met up with a friend and went to her house, where I did a bit of uni work, and they got his shield painted. Her household was kind enough to feed us a meal, for which I was extremely grateful, as I'd eaten all of the food I'd brought with me for the day, and was still hungry. Then we went to Dance Practice, which had an amazing turn out. We had up to nine couples dancing at a time, and a few non-dancers who came along just to enjoy the atmosphere. Many of them were attending for the first time, but all caught on quickly enough that we braved the partner-changing version of San Serif, and managed it successfully three times! By the end of dance practice the energy levels of the room had gone a long way towards restoring me to my normal good humour. Watching the lighting-storm off in the distance to the south of us as we drove (southwards) home was also nice. Having said storm reach our house and drop plenty of nice, wet rain on us was also delightful; the plants will be very happy about that, it has been such a dry summer (though better here than on the mainland).
Deciding that I would be better off doing a complete recovery to my normal good humour, I opted to take a mental health day. First I slept in (over nine hours of sleep!) then I caught up on reading my friend's posts (Tuesday, being Monday in the US, is usually the busiest day for LJ posts, since people are home from their weekend adventures and have stories to share) and then I cleaned the kitchen! Yay! This is the first time in ages I've dared clean it so completely. clovis_t's Dad is the main cook in this house, and he prefers his counter tops full of stuff (espresso machine, toaster, bread maker, cutting board with bread and bread knives, knife block, tea kettle, fruit bowl, garlic bowl, medicine for the older of the two dogs, cooking oil, salt, timer, glass tray holding dish soap and tea pots at a minimum) and he tends to leave whatever pots pans and other tools he's used recently out as well. But he's off on the mainland this week, having driven clovis_t's sister over for the new Uni year, which starts this week, so I felt comfortable cleaning it all. (Ok, I left some of the really big items, like the espresso machine, out, but everything got moved and cleaned under, at least, and all of the small stuff got put into the pantry. I now get to enjoy a couple of days worth of clean kitchen (clovis_t's mum is at work all day, and does less elaborate evening meals for just the few of us who are left, so it will be easy to keep clean). Once the kitchen was clean I baked a proper loaf of bread, rather than contenting myself with the little batches of unleavened bread I've been making recently. Then I treated myself to a walk around the block (~45 minutes) while reading. After all that, I felt my normal, happy self, and happily spent the evening working. I've now finished up the Thermocalc average pressure/temperature calculations for all of the Collingwood River samples and have made a graph showing all of the results on one chart. Now there are just the (much fewer) samples from the other regions and I can do the final chapter of the thesis. This part took much longer than I wanted it to, but the end is in sight, I think...
Deciding that I would be better off doing a complete recovery to my normal good humour, I opted to take a mental health day. First I slept in (over nine hours of sleep!) then I caught up on reading my friend's posts (Tuesday, being Monday in the US, is usually the busiest day for LJ posts, since people are home from their weekend adventures and have stories to share) and then I cleaned the kitchen! Yay! This is the first time in ages I've dared clean it so completely. clovis_t's Dad is the main cook in this house, and he prefers his counter tops full of stuff (espresso machine, toaster, bread maker, cutting board with bread and bread knives, knife block, tea kettle, fruit bowl, garlic bowl, medicine for the older of the two dogs, cooking oil, salt, timer, glass tray holding dish soap and tea pots at a minimum) and he tends to leave whatever pots pans and other tools he's used recently out as well. But he's off on the mainland this week, having driven clovis_t's sister over for the new Uni year, which starts this week, so I felt comfortable cleaning it all. (Ok, I left some of the really big items, like the espresso machine, out, but everything got moved and cleaned under, at least, and all of the small stuff got put into the pantry. I now get to enjoy a couple of days worth of clean kitchen (clovis_t's mum is at work all day, and does less elaborate evening meals for just the few of us who are left, so it will be easy to keep clean). Once the kitchen was clean I baked a proper loaf of bread, rather than contenting myself with the little batches of unleavened bread I've been making recently. Then I treated myself to a walk around the block (~45 minutes) while reading. After all that, I felt my normal, happy self, and happily spent the evening working. I've now finished up the Thermocalc average pressure/temperature calculations for all of the Collingwood River samples and have made a graph showing all of the results on one chart. Now there are just the (much fewer) samples from the other regions and I can do the final chapter of the thesis. This part took much longer than I wanted it to, but the end is in sight, I think...