the weather is hot, and it is muggy inside the lab. there will be thunderstorms soon. i cannot think that well in the heat, and although i should be writing my thesis, i have not really done much of it over the last 5 days. i house sat for two days over the weekend, as my parents and brother are in france, and whom i will go out to see this friday courtesy of eurostar. due to the nature of the holiday (they're driving around in a big winnebago caravan) i thought i would be adventurous and only book my flight back to england when i got out there, so that should be wild.

i have done so much since i last posted, which were rather satisfying to my soul, but perhaps may not seem that interesting in type. I treated my mum, brother and his friend to a movie, minority report. i trained (relatively) hard for my kung fu grading, and learned that Mark, the second degree black belt whom i have been harbouring secret fantasies about and whom i haven't seen for ages is moving out to australia, so i am crushed. but i'll get over him. sniff. maybe. i went to a garden party and drank maybe four small cups of red wine which stained my teeth, but had a good time as we sat out in the garden right until midnight. some of us from the department tried to get last minute tickets to the shakespears globe theatre, but when we got there all the tickets were sold out, so we ended up sitting outside a pub until almost midnight. I went to a part-time friend's birthday thing, in a bar in Soho, with my new blue dress. the bar had really big square leather covered furniture, and the drinks cost £7, and there was a waitress who walked around taking your order, and brought you the bill later. i never go to places like that. i had one drink, but i had a nice time, there were a couple of nice people i could chat to, and a girl that i knew but hadn't seen for ages was there. she brought her new fiancee along as well, who looked like really steady marriage material, and said they were engaged. i asked her to show me her ring, but the diamond on it was miniscule. i'm not even entirely certain that there was a diamond there, now that i think about it. she was a bit embarrassed about it, bless. everybody left the bar at the same time, just before midnight. and yesterday, i graded, and am now officially a red belt. i was very nervous, which was annoying, as i didn't want to be, and it stopped me from performing to the best of my abilities. and i was also paired with a 13 year old girl, so sparring with her was not so fulfilling. she did kick me in the ass a few times, though, with that slapping noise that sounds quite humiliating. my kung fu pal tracy sparred against a young boy, but he was rough, and he hurt her arm, and the pain made her cry. but that is what sparring is all about, it is a controlled fight, and you can get hurt if you're not careful. we watched a girl grade to get a black belt. she was smaller than me, and i was worried, because she got very tired when she was sparring, it was also very hot in the hall. she had to spar three times, and after the second spar she looked on the verge of collapse. then she had to break three things, a stack of tiles, a plank of wood, and a freeze block. but she did those exceptionally well, she hit the freeze block so hard that her hand went through it and hit the floor underneath it.

So last week i found out that my supervisor, and the new girl (who's actually a mature lady) in the lab whom i get on quite well and am going to barcelona with are both cancerians (like myself)! I'm quite an open-minded girl when it comes to superstition and all that jazz, and i'm not prone to analysing the latest astrological predictions, but that now brings the total of cancerian friends / people that i've met / colleagues that i like to 5, in the last three years. which doesn't sound much, but considering the number of people i've met, and the much fewer people i've connected with, it's just remarkeable.

i saw spider-man (notice how i put the hyphen in there) (but yet i can't be arsed to use my capital letters properly) last friday. eee-yeah, s'ok. yes there were special effects, yes, they were kind of impressive, ok it was a little dark, i suppose. i was, to be honest, expecting something better though. so there you have it.

Flights and hotel in barcelona have been booked!

as to my last entry, i think i was depressed because i was at (my family) home. so now you see why i have to go to australia when i finish my PhD.

there was a meeting of weblog geeks in some park last friday, i found out from looking at notsosoft.com. i've had a look at all their blogs, and i have to say, that i think i write better than a lot of them. (hey, its not like anybody's going to read this)

i hate it when people mentally put me in a box and expect me to behave in a certain way. especially when that way is 'boring'. that's why you see, people dye their hair.

everybody gets depressed sometimes i suppose. even zannah, (you can't tell from what she's posted today, i'm just naming her as an example) i mean, she's pretty, she's got loads of friends, she's got a fairly good looking husband, and she still gets depressed. and there's me, people look at me and think, well they feel sorry for me. they think i'm sad. they think i don't have any friends. why do they think that? why. why indeed. because if it weren't true, then the comments wouldn't bother me.

don't worry about what they think. at the end of the day, its not them you have to impress, its yourself.

at the end of the day impressing them is not going to get you a boyfriend.

this bloggin thing isn't as cool as I thought it would be. could it be that (gasp) its not hip anymore? people are becoming disillusioned, verbally attacked by anonymous people drifting out there in the intangeable tangles of the world wide web. There was a time not so long ago when every weblog had a commenting system, but now its a novelty when I find one that still has one. It hurts, when you spell out your heart and soul, only to have it heavily criticized and be called abusive names. we're just talking talking talking, millions of us.

Dican's back. I thought she was dead, and I couldn't even ask where she went because she'd taken her guestbook down. I'd even taken her off the list of links i've got on the left side of the screen. Here she is, a mere 18 years old ladies and gents, studying like there's no tomorrow at Harvard, or some such college. Thing is, i used to study all the time too, but the difference with her is that she can design a really imaginative website, and she's got a lovelife. at the moment i'm just wasting my life away looking for inspiration from the www. and dreaming for a date. any date.
Confessionalism.com is back (kind of) as well. here's another teenager with growing up angst. He wanted to close his site, but its clear even to me that he can't quite let go.

Went to Wimbledon on Friday. Got a sun tan on my nose. Saw Monica Seles, Martina Navratilova, Todd Woodbridge, that Nalbadian bloke and that Danilidou girl. You know I was thinking what is the female equivilant of bloke? and the only one i could come up with was bird! not that I was about to use it ofcourse. Must think of a word. saw the guy who beat pete Sampras play. Man oh man was he crap. I spent the day there with this 24 year old Italian guy - which i know sounds quite impressive, but it wasn't like that. he was sweet, a real gent and all, but a touch too gimpy for my liking. Plus he kept leaning into me and poking my arm whenever he wanted to say something to me, which was often, and i'm not too good with people invading my personal space. Plus he had bad breath, which to be fair wasn't his fault, but it still wasn't a pleasant experience. Still, I learned some Italian. per que? Per favore, piccolo gato, carne, tea con latte freddo, or something.