Psychoblog

it’s official now, i have won a 2 year project grant from the stroke association. this is impressive because it means that important people think that my phd project is good enough to receive their backing. it means that i will get some new equipment for my third year and it means that i have just secured my first post-phd research job complete with a wopping pay rise. this is all good. my supervisor is suddenly taking much more of an interest in me and my project now and in my dealings with him, since the grant was announced, i feel he has been treating me as more of a peer than a student. this is also good. must live up to his expectations by being all intellectual all the time.

i told carl yesterday that i was feeling depressed about how podgy i have become. he thought this was hilarious. i’m serious though, since i have to start dress shopping at some point soon, i don’t want to look like one of those puff balls that you always get in those bathroom sets. so i have made a calorie/fat/saturated fat counting chart on excel (all sickeningly girly i know). was doing this chart when supervisor came to see me yesterday. undermined my intellectualness a bit i think. decided against quickly changing applications so he wouldn’t see, as it would look like i was hiding something really dodgy, like midget porn or something.

oh, and bit of a rant. don’t you /hate/ stick thin people trying to force cakes down you because “they won’t hurt and diets are silly anyway”. obviously cakes will never hurt /them/ and /they/ will never need silly diets, but they should respect my metabolism.

been very busy recently with intense work weeks and people visiting at weekends. work for me is going really well at the moment, if you ignore stupid taxi company trying to take my patients to loughborough university for my scanning day (sorry, i should have emphasised that when i said “university of nottingham” i really did mean “university of nottingham”). had a munster meeting with my supervisor on friday. one of those where we review everything i have ever done and ever will do. was really dreading it, but it was an hour and a half of goodness where i felt more of a colleague to my supervisor than his student. that’s always a good sign i feel.

carl is doing well over in his building too. he has just got a considerable payrise that is being backdated to when he started the job. can’t believe how well this is working out for him. jammy bugger :)

talking of jam, my mum, dad, big big brother and sister-in-law came to visit on saturday and me and carl made a victoria sponge for the occasion. it was perfect and everyone was very impressed and it filled the house with a really nice baking smell. shame the valuer came last week and not then. oh, and i don’t care what carl says, measuring out the ingredients and washing up the mixing bowl /does/ count as being a co-cakemaker.

another busy week ahead at work and then next week is our holiday week (yey). we’re going to do all our christmas shopping in that week so i might not get the annual nightmares of it being christmas morning and me not having bought anyone anything. it’s really nice to have a stretch of being at home, but not going to work. much relaxing will be done. oh, and we really need to step up wedding things since there are only 313 days to go. next priority is to book the wedding car(s) and see about entertainment. it’s going to be so exciting.

soon be christmas.

we went to see matrix revolutions last night. i really loved it. i think it will be as divisive as the 2nd one was though. everyone has their own interpretations of things and everyone takes their own meaning from things. i felt sad after i saw it. sad at things that happened in the film and sad that the trilogy is over now. i’m not a film buff, but the matrix films were a combination of a lot of style and a lot of substance like i had never seen before. i’m impressed.

we saw the trailers to the 3rd lord of the rings film and the new british romantic comedy, love actually. they both looked reallyreally good and i’m looking forward to going to see both when they come out.

today is going to be a ridiculously busy day. i have a patient visit this morning, to go see someone i will hopefully be scanning next week. then i have to rush home and frantically tidy as much as i can before a valuator comes to…um…valuate things. then i have to drive back to uni to pick carl up from work and then rush home again in time to meet mortgage advisor to do paperworky things. in between those things i need to figure out how to reprogram my experiment for next week to include some extra features.

hmm, should find where this patient lives then really.