Okay, so Steam had the first three Virtual Villagers games on for $2.50 each, so I figured I'd give them a try. So I'm playing the first game and one of my starting villagers HATES WORK. Like, that's his trait. I have nicknamed him Senor Dumbass on account of how often I have to put put him back on task. (Why Senor? Felt like it.) So anyway...

QotD

Me: Okay, Senor Dumbass, you are allowed to eat, you are allowed to drink and you are allowed to research. THAT IS IT.
Ryan: So he's a grad student?


Yep. Sounds right.

This is basically why I haven't updated much. It's sad when webcomics look this much like my life.

The rotovap BIT me today. I'm not sure HOW the piece that is broken got broken, but when I was turning it off I managed to cut myself. For the record, thumbs are awkward places for bandaids.

Oh, and I went to a conference this weekend. Dinner conversation looked much like that comic. A member of the solid state NMR group at the host university was chairing my session. The room I was in was ahead of schedule, so he decided it was time for an unscheduled break when he noticed none of his group (aka the only people who might be interested in my talk :p) were there. Which was good given that my group wasn't there yet either. (Not that I blamed them, I would have gone to the talk before mine in the other room too). I think the talk went okay. I had a couple fun days trying to get the introduction to the point that people who don't do NMR could follow it.

Laura is now Dr. Laura, go her! Apparently she had one of the cleanest theses her committee had ever seen. I guess that means if this whole chemistry thing doesn't work out for me, I can always go into proofreading, eh? :p

Yesterday I discovered the Grad Club actually has a schmancy goblet for the new PhD to have their one free drink out of called the Cup of Knowledge. It was missing last week when Paul finished. It's pretty cool. :p

I think the students were amused that I kept telling them they needed to finish the lab on time because I had drinking and nachos to get to. It's valid! They didn't quite all get out on time, but there was time needed to organize the whole "getting to the Grad Club" thing anyway, so the timing worked out well. :p

Oh, and apparently the labour dispute at LTC didn't get resolved back in September like I thought it did when we stopped hearing about it. The drivers are in a strike position as of tomorrow. I... really hope a strike doesn't happen. It's only about a half hour's walk to campus, but I've been having to bring my laptop in a lot. There's no way I can haul this thing on foot. Plus... the weather's been unpleasant. Ugh.

So, I finally got my official letter from grad school. Or, as seryan put it, the Central Bureaucracy. :p Of course, there's some confusion because the person I'd been in contact with is missing from the list of possible supervisors...

My high school chemistry teacher called today. He wanted to talk to my parents about my little brother going on a camping trip when he passed out in class today. Fogarty was very excited that I'm going to grad school in chemistry. AND he didn't call me by the wrong name, which ALWAYS impresses me. People frequently think I'm my sister on the phone. They used to think I was my brother too, before his voice changed. :p

I also played more Kingdom Hearts, which I love to itty bitty pieces. I went to Agrabah! Nostalgia ahoy! (Even if it annoys me that the female characters keep getting used as plot points for the villains to abduct...) Still, ridiculously fun game.

Though I'm already starting to hate Winnie the Pooh and his EVIL MINIGAMES OF HARD. :p

Well, I still haven't heard back from Western about whether I'm accepted, but I just got an email from someone trying to steal me. :p That was amusing. :p

None of my other grades are up yet. They should be soon though, since marks for graduating students are due today. :p

(Gee, five million new notes on my Facebook wall. Wonder why THAT could be. :p)

EDIT: I am amused that the BtVS fandom now has SW style canon wars. I feel for you, BtVS fans, it isn't going to be pretty!

And a meme from non_horation

( Cause it has pictures )

So, I think I'm coming down with something. I woke up with a headache this morning, and I'm all stuffed up. I missed my last class at Mount A EVER, and had to hop myself up on all sorts of drugs to get through the day. But my grad school application is now mailed!

I also picked up volume 8 of Fables today. Figures a few weeks after I give up and buy volume 7 elsewhere Hobbyton actually gets stuff in. :p It's so shiny!

( Cut for spoilerish squee )

I'm now briefly home for the Easter weekend. I got a pleasant surprise when I got on the bus and saw... my sister. :p I didn't realize she was coming home on that bus. :p I was right about to sit next to a random person when she got my attention.

Also, the weather was AWFUL today. Right when I was walking to the bus station, of course. :p I think the precipitation was freezing rain. Something nasty like that, anyway. :p

So the grad banquet was actually quite fun. We had a blast talking to the random person we met in the line to get in. :p

Lindsay, Bill won the Computer Science award. Yay Bill!

The Alma Mater Song has these INCREDIBLY cheesy lyrics set to lovely music. Lovely for a FUNERAL, that is. The music sounds for all the world like "Behold, Behold the Wood of the Cross"... which we sing on GOOD FRIDAY. :p

There was a collective stifled laugh at the line "on every field, her teams victorious". We just couldn't keep a straight face through THAT! Mount A. Right. :p

Other than that, I sent my thesis to Steve but the odds are very much against him being able to look at it, so I'll be sending it to my second reader soon. Tomorrow I'm ordering my transcripts and talking to Glen about a rec letter. I need one from Steve too, but I really don't want to ask him when he's this badly off.

I also totally forgot my mechanistic paper for Organic was supposed to be due this week. Hopefully Dr. Grant will let that slide if I bring up the thesis thing. He's already proven just how cool he is today. He realized that we all have a lot of work to do, so he made this really intense assignment GO AWAY. :D

Now if only the calculations for my Computational project would WORK. They keep failing after eleven hours, giving me a collection of disconnected atoms. I need to talk to Khash about it.

On the plus side, my mom's stopping by for a bit tomorrow afternoon. ANd we're celebrating Vicki's birthday tomorrow because I didn't have time to make her a cake on Tuesday. Tomorrow is also Urinetown, which should be a fantastic show considering who's involved. :D

I also started playing Kingdom Hearts today, which was SO fun and actually RELAXING!

Oh, and I finally managed to get decent ring pictures. Small sparkly objects are hard to photograph. :p

( SParkly! )

The email of DOOM has been sent. Now I'm terrified of getting a reply. WHY IS THIS ALL SO SCARY?