Tuesday 23 July 2013

Preparing for college

  So I think tomorrow I'll be ordering a lot of textbooks. For £9 all-in I'm getting Principles of Genetics, Functional Histology, and Principles of Anatomy and Physiology. I'd best clear off a shelf in my room for all this (or build another shelf if I can't clear one), and fetch my Gray's Anatomy and Striker's Biochemistry down from the loft, though I prefer Lehninger's Biochemistry and will be getting a copy at my earliest convenience.  

  Getting Bioscience Laboratory Techniques next week, along with as many box files and as much lined paper as I can scrape together.  A friend has offered to lend me her copy of Essential Cell Biology.  

  The advance legwork I need to put in ahead of my practicals is well in hand.  So much so that Julia now has an entire folder of emails titled "Jo's crabs".  Yep, I'm looking at mitten crabs.  I'm also intending to look at bees and holly.  Two subjects of great environmental significance and one subject of personal curiosity.  If I get the green light for the holly study then I may find myself doing carpentry in the lab: the study will need a rig that I don't think we have, but that I can build for next to nowt.  

In 69 days' time I will be a biologist-in-training!

Saturday 6 July 2013

One of those hot days...

  It's a glorious Saturday morning, the sun is shining, no chance of rain, so you think right, I'm gonna go out and strim the lawn.  You throw on your DIY trousers (the ones covered in fifty shades of vinyl matt), plug in the strimmer, whack on Springsteen's greatest hits and set to work.

  First verse of Born To Run is barely done and already your armpits and boxer shorts are sodden with sweat, I'm a Celt, we do pissing rain, we do permanently overcast, what the hell am I doing out here?  You get to the end of the track, you're getting those V-shapes down your chest and back, and the bloke five doors down who spends his weekends on the xbox in his bedroom has turned off his techno and is looking out his window, raising a cider at you for working on so hot a day as this.  Shit.  You give him a wave and get back to strimming.  Shit, he's even turned the techno off, you can't go indoors now! 

  You're halfway through Hungry Heart before the lawn's done, you've had to put on boots after you strimmed your toe and now the boots are full of sweat, but no, come on, he turned the techno off.  You've gotta at least prune some shit!  So you train the Jasmine and get out the hose to water the lawn.

Damnit, I swear I've been microwaved today!

Monday 1 July 2013

On Chinese Flying Lanterns

Don't buy Chinese flying lanterns.  They look pretty, but there comes a point where the flame is no longer hot enough to sustain flight but is still hot enough to set things on fire. What you then have is a source of ignition dropping from the sky onto a random location. This one fell onto a stack of plastic and injured nine firefighters. They're also known to injure owls, cows and sheep. You cannot control where they land so please don't use them.

kthxbai