Sunday, February 27, 2005
Grumpy, sorry for myself and feeling ripped-offWell, for the last couple of days I have been feeling generally grumpy and sorry for myself. Thursday evening, I came down with the Flu. After staying up all night with a bad chest, temperature and aching all over I decided to ring in sick Friday morning. Unfortunately, the only paracetemol I had in the house to lower my fever and stop the aches was in Beechams cold remedies - which also contain mild stimulants to combat drowsiness. Great for keeping you on the go in work, but no use if you want to try and get a good night's sleep. I've since bought 2 types of Tesco paracetemol.One is a Paracetemol/Aspirin/Decongestant mix with caffeine - great for daytime. The other is just Paracetemol that should let me sleep.
Of course, Friday was due to be a busy day for me. My "Progress" meeting on Wednesday resulted in my being told to redesign some of my experimental approaches, meaning that I have to choose new enymes to cut my DNA before my southern blot and design new PCR primers to amplify a different section of DNA for my probe. Unfortunately, when I take into account all of the different criteria required for this, it becomes a classic case of trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. It simply can't be done. Mother nature rather annoyingly didn't design the genome with SaneScientist's Southernblots in mind (the bitch!), so I had to come with an almost as good compromise. Ideally I wanted to discuss this in lab meeting. However, walking to the bathroom on Friday morning left my legs wobbly and me needing a sit-down, so there was no way in hell I was going out in sub-zero temperatures and walking to work.
So I sent a proposal to my boss from my sick bed (gotta love Wi-Fi), to which he hasn't replied. Oh well, I'm going to go ahead Sunday evening anyway since I want them to be ordered Monday AM. With my next meeting potentially 2 weeks away, and it taking up to a week for new custom designed PCR primers to be synthesised and despatched, I want the order processed ASAP.
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My mood wasn't improved any by the extortionate amount the trainline.co.uk want to charge me for a train ticket to London. My best mate has landed the lead role in a play in our mighty capital and I'm going along as head cheerleader. It's in 3 weeks and I've decided to make a weekend of it and stay with some other friends whom I haven't seen for months. Despite booking 3 weeks in advance, all of the apocryphal £12 tickets are gone. I wonder if under the new Freedom of Information Act I can get Virgin to tell me just how many of these alleged Value tickets exist? The cheapest option is £54. WTF? For a 2 1/2 hour journey? Are they taking the piss? The only alternative is to fly, unnecesarily environmentally damaging and requiring a taxi journey at each end that will negate any cost savings, or a bus journey. The problem is that the bus journey is almost 6 hours each way and I suffer from mild travel sickness. The sickness itself won't be an issue - unless I try and read a book. I can't travel 6 hours without reading or something. At least on the train I can read or even plug my laptop in and watch a DVD (or even work!). And I really don't fancy a 6 hour journey if I have partaken of el vino the night before, that would be really bad...
So in conclusion - I am grumpy and pissed off. Probably the perfect time to start composing this week's Twat.
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PS What has happened to this year's Oscar coverage? I can't find it any where. I'm not a fan of award ceremonies as a whole, except that this year Chris Rock is presenting and I want to see it live and unedited, rather than chopped up piece-meal. The Beeb never seem to understand that nobody really gives a toss who wins - we just want to see Billy Crystal/Steve Martin/Chris Rock take the piss out of Tinseltown Royalty. Billy Crystal sitting on Clint Eastwood's knee singing "Old Man Eastwood" to the tune of "Old man river" was priceless. Lets hope Rock ignores "Concerned Mothers for America" or whoever the Fuck they are and says exactly what he wants.
# posted by SaneScientist @ 5:03 am
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