Tags: birthday, seminar, internet, random, PhD
Date: 02 June 2006 13:32:47
I am *so* glad I have a witness for this.
Not content with embarrassing myself the other day by opening Shifty Gnome's wiblog at work and having his voice boom out unexpectedly, today I was innocently reading Romania Libera online (as I do every day - it's one of Romania's main broadsheet newspapers) when, from the depths of my computer (I promise this is true) came the sound of elephants trumpeting. Not just once, but several times, every 10 seconds or so. There weren't any popups or anything like that, just trumpeting elephants, appearing from the ether. The other student here at the time suggested they maybe wanted feeding. It was the bizarrest thing (they disappeared when I exited the internet then went straight back into it).
Yesterday's seminar was OK, I guess. I had too much stuff so got a bit flustered when I realised half way through that I was going to have to cut a few things out of my talk, and I felt very politician-like as I'm not convinced I answered the questions very well at the end. But I've had some positive feedback, which I don't think was just given out of sympathy, and a couple of the questions were actually quite useful for me to think about so that's good. And at least it's over. In a minute I'm going to have my end-of-year review with supervisors and the head of the postgrads in our department, they assure me it's just a formality so it's good that that's it all out of the way. It then gives me a week and a bit to concentrate on going away and having adventures - I'm starting to get excited about it now.
Before then though, I have this weekend. It's my birthday tomorrow! (I reckon 37 means that I have one more year when I can (just about) claim to be mid-30s rather than late-30s) (I know - just humour me). My friend from London, who now lives in Belfast, is coming to stay for the weekend, I'm really looking forward to her coming. The weather has been pretty good the last couple of days (at last), so hopefully it will hold over the weekend and we can do some exploring. Hooray!