Saturday, December 24, 2005

Oh wait

It turns out one of those half-hearted invitations wasn't so half-hearted after all, and he really wants me to go home with him, 'cause then he wouldn't be so bored the whole time. And since he quit grad school, I don't see him very much anymore, so I'm going to wonderful Co. Offaly for an Irish country Christmas. Woo!

It's especially interesting to go 'cause my friend is gay, and his parents, of the old-school religious variety, don't know and have many times expressed disapproval of "those people." It's a teeny town, and he really is the only gay in the village. So my mission is not to drink too much and start harassing his parents on their views on homosexuality. Wish me luck.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Poor little me

I am spending Christmas alone.

Actually, this is not especially tragic, as I care very little for the whole Christmas thing, except for the sparkly lights part. That I like. But anyway, I have a couple of half-hearted invitations to spend Christmas with the families of some of the lab guys ('cause for them, it is an unthinkable tragedy to spend Christmas alone), but I'm not really feeling up to faking Christmas cheer, y'know?

So here I am. Housemate A has gone home, and housemate B has yet to move in. Other people with whom I am friendly have also buggered off home for the holiday, so I've got a few days to myself. I've got a few fake logs ("Crackles like real wood!") for the fireplace, I've got booze (although, you know what they say about drinking alone...), I braved town today so that I have enough food to last me through the days when the shops are closed. I've got a couple of knitting projects I want to at least get started on, I checked out some DVDs from the library (they had Porgy and Bess! I was so excited). Those plus the books I've already got, not to mention internet surfing, should probably keep me more than busy.

I'm kind of looking forward to sleeping in and being able to hang out all day in my robe and not have to worry about anything or anyone except for the cat. And if I get really bored, I can always clean the house; but really, how likely is that?

Reading: Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and flipping through Nigella Lawson's How to Eat, usually while I'm eating. If that woman's prose was any more purple, I'd have to bleach the volume before the type could be read.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Hah!

The department's Christmas party was last night, and a full half of the lab isn't in today. They really should have learned by now and schedule these things for a Friday. I left at a reasonably decent hour, and, more suprisingly, had stopped drinking at a thoroughly decent hour, but I heard that a good number of the hardest partyers only left when campus security came to clear out the room. We seem to have done a pretty good job, actually- all the wine was gone, there were only a few cans of beer left, and plenty of Coke and orange soda still there this morning when we went to help clean up.

The only disappointing bit was that the dude doing the music didn't have any Bangles songs- I requested Walk Like an Egyptian, 'cause it would annoy the grad student who'd had it stuck in her head all day, but he didn't have it. And he didn't have Eternal Flame, either, which would have annoyed the whole room. Darn.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Damn you, Murphy!

So. One housemate has moved out and her replacement won't be here for another few days and the other housemate is in Australia for two weeks. The cat and I have had the place all to ourselves for nearly a week now, so it's the perfect time for - you guessed it- locking myself out of the house.

I had pretty much assumed this would happen at some point, and had even been vaguely thinking to myself that I should make a copy of my key and keep it at work, but for it to happen just when both housemates are gone? That's cheeky. Two things conspired to make me forget my key this morning: the Boy had used my key earlier last night and then put it back just far enough away from my wallet and mobile (where it normally lives) so that I didn't see it this morning; and I had chosen to ignore the fact that it was pissing it down and decided to wear a skirt, so no suspiciously empty pockets to remind me. I didn't even notice that I didn't have my keys until lunchtime.

When I discovered the key's absence, I thought, damn, well, how much do locksmiths cost? Looked them up and called a few (by the way, totally off-topically, why the hell are there pages and pages of locksmiths in the Dublin phone book, but barely half a page of veterinarians? Isn't that totally backwards?) and apparently they charge €75-90 to come and possibly break your lock and/or door to get you back inside your house. So, fine, plan B: break into my own house.

The Boy, who is inherently dodgy, was delighted with this plan and immediately started modifying lab tools to be used as lock picks. We had two approaches: a) pick the lock and b) get a stick of the correct size and shape to put through the letter slot and work the latch from inside. As you can probably guess, neither worked. As a last resort, we looked at the window above the sink that had always been kinda loose. After a bit of prying, you could just about insert a thin lab spatula under it and unlatch it, which we, surprisingly successfully, did. So this window is a slit of a thing, maybe 10 inches tall and high off the ground. Took off the boots and got a boost up to the ledge and figured I'd maybe just be able to squeeze through (in the skirt! a bad decision for the day for several reasons, apparently), but it turned out not to be too tight of a fit at all. In no time, I was in my kitchen, with the cat staring at me wondering what the hell I thought I was doing.

I took the spare key with me into work, which is its new home.