i'm so depressed. I had spent alot of time and effort in resurrecting cells and planned to do two assays this weekend, but when I came into the lab this morning the incubator was beeping pathetically for help, as the CO2 had run out. So not only can I not do another assay today, it looks like the cells i resurrected are going to die as well. This bites so much. I swear, if i didn't believe in that stuff, i'd say i were jinxed.

French trip: part deux
Whilst we were camping out in the carpark of Eurodisney, I had a discussion with my parents about where we should go next. I pointed out that I wouldn't stay for more than two weeks as i had (ehem) to write up my thesis, and thus we should head for one of the european cities where I could fly back easily from via one of the internet plane companies. I wasn't terribly keen on France, to be honest, I had originally wanted to go to somewhere like Lake Garda in north Italy, or Portugal, or Provence in the South of France, I've never seen the Mediterranean. but my Dad showed high reluctance to drag the winnebago through what he considered to be very ardous journies. he didn't want to go to Italy, as the only straightforward way would have been to cut through Switzerland, and he had a few bones to pick with switzerland, as they charge you every time you drive into the country. And he didn't want to drive around Switzerland, as the journey would have taken far too long. Portugal was out of the question, it was far too far away, and besides which he was avoiding Spain at the moment, with all what is going on there at the moment (she says vaguely). And Provence was too far as well, plus he had been there before, and he complained that it was all narrow winding twisty roads over there, and some truck or van had scraped the side of the winnebago the last time he went.
So where then?
Paris? my mother suggested.
Paris? No! I've been there like three times already. And the last time I went with this asshole of a guy who kept on making fun of me in a nasty out to humiliate way (OK, I thought we were friends before i made the mistake of going out there with him), so I have no fond memories of Paris.

So where?
I then said, well lets go to the beach! i've always found cities to be boring and touristy, and I've always found the sound of the sea calming and therapeutic. I whipped out my map with all the locations in which the plane company Buzzaway.com fly from, and there, the most logical location to go to was La Rochelle. my parents naturally pass through Calais all the time, but surprisingly enough haven't travelled much further south along the coast from there, preferring instead to head north into Belgium and Holland. I didn't want to stress my dad out either, and the route to La Rochelle looked pretty straightforward.

So thus it was decided, and at the late hour of noon on the Sunday, the winnebago trundled off in a southwesterly direction.
It rained. and then it shone. and then it rained. and then it shone. and then it rained some more. My dad is one of those slow careful drivers, so it took two days to reach La Rochelle. I spent most of the time in the caravan looking out of the window and into fields. Fields of corn, fields of sunflowers, all looking up at the sun and when the sun went down all their heads drooped down. stopping for lunch in some stopping place or some nondescript village, and then spending the night in the carpark of some motorway service station.

on the first day of the journey we stopped in this small town, the name of which I cannot for the life of me remember. I do however, remember that it has a cathedral.
It was absolutely bucketing down, and I was reluctant to leave the caravan. But my dad was tired, and they went out for a meal at McDonalds, and then had a walk around the town. I was convinced there was nothing to see in this town, so I stayed in the caravan. Some time later they returned, and I asked my brother what the cathedral was like. To my surprise my brother said that it was very nice. my brother is usually very critical of things generally, being 13 and all. and as my parents looked in no hurry to make a move with it still raining, and i was now restless from sitting in the caravan, and being a sucker for big grand ol' cathedrals, I went to check it out.

i got my first 'fan' e-mail - that is to say, there may have been others, but i didn't read them. i don't really consider myself good enough to be able to draw in the masses, so i was slightly trepidatious about even attaching my e-mail address to the blog. being a paranoid and rather sensitive girl, i am extremely wary of viruses and not so nice mail, so if i don't recognise the sender i just delete straight away. But i had accidentally read this particular e-mail, because the guy's e-mail adress is btinternet.com, and so I thought it was from, y'know, british telecom. To my pleasant surprise it was a very brief message saying he liked my blog! its funny how little things like that can touch you. so thank you.

French trip: part one
So much to write, so much to say, too much to say right now, this minute. I've just come back from a two week mobile-home/caravan holiday in France with my parents and my 13 year old brother, and i had a lovely time despite all my reservations. I don't want to trivialise my account of my holiday, so I think I may serialise it over a number of posts.
I started off the holiday with a eurostar journey to eurodisney, which was luxuriously pleasant, not having to faff around with going to overrated airports with their check-in madness. and it was only from waterloo as well, so i didn't need to take some god awful back breaking hike to some god forsaken place on the outskirts of london (ie heathrow). so it was cool, the only drawback is that the whole experience relieved me of £95, but hey, the advantages of old age is that you can afford to splash out a little bit on little treats!
Eurodisney wasn't terribly exciting though, i must say. The weather was crap as well, it rained really proper, bucket drenching rain on the day I arrived, the following day when me and my brother actually went into the theme park, and the day after, when we left, and the day after that. It wasn't a complete wash out though, the days were interspersed with sunny intervals. I honestly cannot remember the last time I went to Eurodisney, but I thought it was absolutely ages ago. and yet when I went this time it seemed like nothing had changed, and me and my brother were just wandering around wondering what we could do next. my brother at 13 seems to have outgrown it as well, which made it all seem doubly poignant, sort of like cutting the last ties with my childhood.
I shall continue my whimsical reminiscencing later as Friends (so no one told you life was going to be this way dahn dada dada) is going to be on soon, and I still have to try and get some spinach from safeway.

pinchpunch, tis the first of the month. earlier on this week i got an actual letter from a kind of friend i haven't seen in 6 years. it was literally one paragraph long and had pictures of squirrels and nuts and other such gaiety on it. i'm not quite sure what to write back to her about, i suppose i could go on about my thesis again, of which i still have hardly made any further progress since I last posted. but i have kind of worked out how to isolate some yellow compound using HPLC, and have virtually completed a poster that i am going to display at a conference in barcelona this september. I have also kind of aquired a visiting student who is supposed to be devoting his time here to isolating these other compounds for me, but i haven't seen him in the last two days. i hope i don't have to get the whip out.
i went home tuesday night so i could see my sister whom i hadn't seen in a month and a half on accounts of her travelling around in south america. But i didn't see her on tuesday because she went out with her friend and didn't come back until really late, and when i saw her in the morning she didn't say much to me. little brat.
i was irked by an email i got today. a friend of mine whom i'd emailed to earlier telling her i was off to france emailed me back asking me if i was going on my own. GODDAMN why do people keep asking me that? do people really think i'm so sad that i can't find people to go on holiday with? THIS is why i have to go to australia. anyway i experienced some satisfaction when i emailed her back saying as much, plus i still didn't tell her who i was going with, let her chew on that, cheeky mare. This is how i get my satisfaction people. i have also been slipping back to my old addiction, romance novels, due to the extremely long, and dry spell i have been experiencing. i want to write a love story as well, but a really cool, unconventional one. watch this space.