Snippets

Snip·pet (noun): A bit, scrap, or morsel

I applied for a job today. The position is to be a lecturer in biological psychology at a university in the UK. It took pretty much the whole day to write the application so now I'm exhausted. Good thoughts, prayers, crossed fingers or whatever would be appreciated! 

I don't really like my hair cut now after all. It was good for a few weeks and I received some really flattering compliments (including from you guys - aww thanks). Now it's grown to an awkward mullet-esque length and I'm stuck between deciding to cut it again and just letting it grow out. 

My home laptop has died I think. It's had a good run of about 3 years and luckily I was suspicious the end was nigh so made sure to back everything up. Hopefully I will get a new one soon - my supervisor has nicely allowed me to borrow a lab laptop for a bit so that's what I'm using currently.

Shot from last year's city 2 surf.

The City-2-Surf (a 14km run) is less than 3 weeks away and I have definitely not trained sufficiently to expect to run very much. I enjoy running and I know exercise should be a priority but it is a bit difficult when I've got so much thesis-ing to do! My friend and I have decided to walk most of it, which considering it's 14km is still pretty reasonable. Hopefully we'll still dress up as sporty zombies from the 80s!

I got to be involved in one of my favourite things - a trying on clothes montage. As I mentioned a while ago my sister is getting married next year so my mum and I went with her to give opinions on about 12 wedding dresses. Although fun and some of the dresses looked really lovely on my sister, I believe that the montages on tv/movies do not adequately portray how long and exhausting the day ends up being!

Disturbing fact: foot spas at pedicure places have lots (and lots) of feet cells of previous users clogged in the jets. That certainly does not make me want a pedicure anymore, or help my foot phobia one bit.

Ahh this is so comfortable soaking in other people's feety grossness [via].

My most recent baking disaster the other day saw me ruin yet another pot attempting to make custard. It was burnt so badly we've had to throw it away. That makes three now... oops. In a recent baking success however I made banana bread muffins which were awesome. Husband and I agreed it was the best thing I've ever baked (which perhaps considering the baking disasters doesn't say much). 

I got a 'revise and resubmit' from a journal for one of my papers. That's much better than a rejection so hopefully they'll accept the revisions!

OK that's probably enough snippets for now. Sorry for a not overly coherent post but... eh.

Booked.

Plane tickets and accommodation for my trip to the UK have been sorted! I'll be in London for about a week, and then heading up to Bangor in Wales for my neuroanatomy course. I'm supposed to be organising to meet with academics from different universities for while I'm in London, however it has been quite difficult to pin people down to agree to meet with me. It is a bit hard to get a job if I can't actually talk to anyone! I still have several weeks to go though so hopefully it will get sorted. If not I will have a fair bit of time on my hands in London. Unfortunately I will probably be a bit boring and use the time to work on writing my thesis. At least I've been to London twice before so I've seen many of the attractions already. Also from what the travel agent told me yesterday, even though the olympics will be over by the time I get there a lot of the visitors will still be around so the city will still be super packed. All the more reason to avoid the really popular places! I'm sure I'll find some cool places to write though, and definitely do not plan to be cooped up in the hotel the whole time.

While I do mean to mostly write while there, the place I've booked to stay at is right near the British Museum which I haven't visited before, and I am considering one of those big day tours (if they're not all booked out).There's one that goes to the Cotswolds which looks pretty amazing.

[from here]

Then of course there's the train trip up to Bangor (which is pretty northern) so I'll get a good chance to see the countryside then as well. I'm also very nerdishly excited about the neuroanatomy stuff too. 

So here I am again, thinking of the UK instead of focusing on my thesis... oops.

Quirk.

I am afraid of feet. Thankfully it's winter here so feet are covered generally and I don't have to see or think about feet much at the moment, but seriously they freak me out. Generally I think most people's feet are pretty unattractive (no offence), but that's not what bothers me. What I really can't stand is having people's bare feet touch my skin. It actually happens more than you'd probably realise (if feet don't bother you) - under the table when eating, people sitting closely on the lounge or on the floor - it's creeping me out just thinking about it!

AAARGH they're coming right for us!!!! [via]

As someone who studies psychology, obviously I've considered that perhaps I had some sort of foot-related traumatic incident in childhood that haunts me to this day. The thing is, I really have no recollection of such an event. Maybe Freud was right and repression is real, and I'm just that good at making sure this foot memory never comes to the surface... NEVER! 

I also can not endure shoe sharing. The reason I bring this up is that yesterday my sister nicely lent my mother some of her slippers to wear since it was cold, but it really freaked me out. Other people were very shocked and confused at my reaction that I would refuse to give my poor mother some slippers to borrow if she were cold. Sorry Mum but knowing our feet skin cells would be interacting makes me want to vomit. 

Baby feet: allowed.

The problem with telling people is, they then seem to think it's highly amusing to go out of their way to TOUCH ME WITH THEIR FEET. Boy feet are definitely worse, and they are the feet that have been shoved in my face. The thing is though, if someone says they are scared of spiders, do you rush out and find a spider to dangle in their face? I hope not. So what gives? Perhaps the difference is that a spider phobia is really quite reasonable, since well the spider could bite you and you could die (or at least experience some pain). The consequence of people's feet touching me is... tinea or something I guess. Yeah I realise this is a stupid thing to be afraid of.

Ahem. Anyway, sorry about that crazy rant. I will say that for some reason I can tolerate baby human feet (not sure why) and I've forced myself to become accustomed to Husband's feet - though this has definitely not generalised to other people (even his identical twin who genetically has the same feet). 

Do you have any quirks like this that people love to tease you about? Would you try to touch me with your feet if you were to see me in person?

Switch

If you saw my previous post, I was all 'woo productivity' and 'yay thesis' (how annoying!). Well, that definitely isn't the sentiment this week. Both Monday and yesterday were complete write-offs and today has not started the best either. I'm attempting to work from home however it's almost time for me to make my overly time-consuming elaborate lunch so I can procrastinate further.

I'm not entirely sure how or why this switch occurs from going really well, to kind of crappy. Maybe I just need a break. At least I've been assured that this reaction is fairly common in PhD land!

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got this to prepare...

Just kidding, but it does actually look pretty good (from here). 

Does this sort of thing happen to you? What do you do to get back on track? I could definitely do with some tips!