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Return of the end-of-term squee.
Dec. 18th, 2005 02:34 pmTerm is over! I have officially survived my first term of grad school. We all celebrated this fact at the party on Thursday, where there was much drunken and semi-drunken revelry (well, not including myself, as I am poor and thus only had one lemonade throughout the entire night, heh). Many, many pictures were taken - I've put some up at the usual photobucket account, where you can see me with some of my classmates, some of the costumed silliness, and two of the best costumes - a pineapple and Christmas dinner.
My batteries were dying, so most of the pics were taken by other people. I'll post some of those when I get them.
You may have noticed that I've gotten my hair cut recently, this time shorter than usual. I went to a different place than before, and I think I'll stick with this one as I'm totally in love with the new cut. It spikes up all nifty like when I sleep on it, and with the gel I can finally make it behave the way I want it to do. Mum will prolly hate it, but I <3 it anyway.
Ooh yes, must mention Friday! While at the party I sat and chatted with the same PhD guy who had been at the earlier meeting about my project - Panos, from Greece, who's been in Menai Bridge for a while and received both his master's and PhD here. He does most of the work with the cephalopods, so we talked about the project again, plus the usual get-to-know-someone jazz. He's really rather cute, but he's a smoker, and if there's one thing that puts me off immediately, that's it. Oh well. Anyway, he was nice enough to set up a meeting Friday morning for me to come to the lab so he could show me the facilities and talk about experimental design and what would be feasible come project time.
Best of all? I got to watch two of the cuttlefish mate. So cool. At first we didn't think they were going to do anything, but when Panos tried to put the divider back in and separate them once again, he distracted the female enough so that the male could make his move. It was really neat to see the mechanisms involved, the colorations during the whole process, and the mate guarding behaviour afterwards. The male even tried again a few minutes later when the female was distracted again, and this time there was quite a struggle, as she obviously didn't want any part of another round. They thrashed about, inked up the water terribly, and splashed water all over one wall. It was quite a show. *g* We had to drain most of the tank, though, then refill it b/c they messed up the water so badly. Still, it was a good learning session, and now I have a lot of things to think about over the break, and a TON of reading to do. Most of my classmates don't even know what their projects are going to be yet, but b/c of the nature of what I want to do, I'm going to have to start earlier than most. As soon as next term starts, I'm going to have to start going into the lab every day to help feed the small animals so they'll be big enough to mate by summertime. I'm also inexperienced compared to many of the other students, b/c I didn't get to do any sort of project during undergrad, so that's an additional concern. I just want to have a really good project. They say it doesn't mean much at the master's level, but I would love to get a distinction with my degree.
The weather is rainy and totally blah today, so I'm staying in and vegging out. I've got the house entirely to myself, as Christina is now in France and Loserboy left an hour or so ago for Germany. Finally. I'm going to enjoy the peace and quiet, not to mention the ability to use the bathroom whenever I want without Loserboy hogging it and using up more toilet paper than is natural, the weirdo. Some of my Starsky and Hutch DVDs came, too, and I'm already halfway through the 2nd season. It's so awesome to finally see the complete episodes, w/o them being chopped to bits by modern tv stations. I was, however, disappointed with the quality of the picture on some eps, especially Murder at Sea (some absolutely *terrible* resolution in that one).
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cimmerianwillow, want to set up a time to chat soon? I miiiiisss you. */whine*
My batteries were dying, so most of the pics were taken by other people. I'll post some of those when I get them.
You may have noticed that I've gotten my hair cut recently, this time shorter than usual. I went to a different place than before, and I think I'll stick with this one as I'm totally in love with the new cut. It spikes up all nifty like when I sleep on it, and with the gel I can finally make it behave the way I want it to do. Mum will prolly hate it, but I <3 it anyway.
Ooh yes, must mention Friday! While at the party I sat and chatted with the same PhD guy who had been at the earlier meeting about my project - Panos, from Greece, who's been in Menai Bridge for a while and received both his master's and PhD here. He does most of the work with the cephalopods, so we talked about the project again, plus the usual get-to-know-someone jazz. He's really rather cute, but he's a smoker, and if there's one thing that puts me off immediately, that's it. Oh well. Anyway, he was nice enough to set up a meeting Friday morning for me to come to the lab so he could show me the facilities and talk about experimental design and what would be feasible come project time.
Best of all? I got to watch two of the cuttlefish mate. So cool. At first we didn't think they were going to do anything, but when Panos tried to put the divider back in and separate them once again, he distracted the female enough so that the male could make his move. It was really neat to see the mechanisms involved, the colorations during the whole process, and the mate guarding behaviour afterwards. The male even tried again a few minutes later when the female was distracted again, and this time there was quite a struggle, as she obviously didn't want any part of another round. They thrashed about, inked up the water terribly, and splashed water all over one wall. It was quite a show. *g* We had to drain most of the tank, though, then refill it b/c they messed up the water so badly. Still, it was a good learning session, and now I have a lot of things to think about over the break, and a TON of reading to do. Most of my classmates don't even know what their projects are going to be yet, but b/c of the nature of what I want to do, I'm going to have to start earlier than most. As soon as next term starts, I'm going to have to start going into the lab every day to help feed the small animals so they'll be big enough to mate by summertime. I'm also inexperienced compared to many of the other students, b/c I didn't get to do any sort of project during undergrad, so that's an additional concern. I just want to have a really good project. They say it doesn't mean much at the master's level, but I would love to get a distinction with my degree.
The weather is rainy and totally blah today, so I'm staying in and vegging out. I've got the house entirely to myself, as Christina is now in France and Loserboy left an hour or so ago for Germany. Finally. I'm going to enjoy the peace and quiet, not to mention the ability to use the bathroom whenever I want without Loserboy hogging it and using up more toilet paper than is natural, the weirdo. Some of my Starsky and Hutch DVDs came, too, and I'm already halfway through the 2nd season. It's so awesome to finally see the complete episodes, w/o them being chopped to bits by modern tv stations. I was, however, disappointed with the quality of the picture on some eps, especially Murder at Sea (some absolutely *terrible* resolution in that one).
cimmerianwillow, want to set up a time to chat soon? I miiiiisss you. */whine*
