Motetus, Mammoth Rider

In meeting strange creepy people off the internet news, I had bauble come visit me last month and she was every bit as delightful and easy to get along with as I'd hoped, and now I miss her terribly. I took a few days off work to drive her all around Scotland (islands aside, very nearly literally - I'm not sure there's much left here for me to see now), only coming close to killing us both with my wobbly driving once or twice, doing all the touristy Scottishy things while she pronounced everything to be "adorable!" which was very charming, at least until she accused me of being adorable too because I'm aiming for scary and intimidating, dammit. Stupid dimples of mine. Alas, she managed to escape my nefarious plot to imprison her in my attic and force her to write perverted filth for my entertainment, but now I know where she lives and can track her down later this year and make her drag me around all the NYC shows that have copious amounts of male nudity.

And talking of male (semi-)nudity, on Saturday I'm going to Edinburgh to see Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake (yes, again, shut up, it was that good) with goblin_dae! I am very very excited because it was one of the most amazing things I've seen when it was on in Glasgow a few months ago, and also because this time I've got seats on the side that has the guy who gets completely naked when pretending to be a statue, yes, yes I am shallow and an embarrassment to everyone.

In PhDing news, it is continuing to be not so disastrous! \o/ I can sort of see little green sprouts of data starting to pop up and bring life to the vast wasteland that is my handful of results chapters, and so the panic over not having enough to churn out a thesis is starting to fade. In its place, however, is panic over somehow managing to juggle the vast amount of things that need to be done in this final year - holidays and free weekends/evenings are going to become scarce - but it's a panic that feels manageable so far, I think. And I like being kept busy, for now. I don't mind having to work until I'm exhausted and only have time to go home, eat dinner, shower, fall into bed and start it all again the next morning, because at least it's work that is producing something rather than the stuff where you work for weeks and months and nothing comes out of it at all. And some of it is even exciting positive stuff that can go towards a publication, hopefully! I showed my supervisor some of my lovely data this week and for the first time in a long while he seemed really pleased by my work, and dear lord it was embarrassing how internally I was all YES I HAVE BEEN A GOOD DOG, RUB MY TUMMY. :D :D :D I am so shamelessly needy.

Anyway, it's another eight days left of another epic, exhausting mouse experiment, and therefore eight days until I can stop thinking about poo so much that when I go for a bowel movement of my own I'm unable to stop picturing a giant labcoat-wearing mouse looming over me as I sit there with my trousers around my ankles, a look of mild irritation on its mousey face brought about by my inability to defecate promptly. Sometimes I wish my imagination wasn't quite so visual.

In fandom news... well, I have none, really. I'm still very much married to Inception and Sutcliff and Eagle (I rewatched Eagle a few days ago and have been re-smitten with feelings for it, and the wife summed it up very nicely with his comment of "Jesus, this film is more gay than those gay internet stories where they have buttsex"), which I suppose is a good thing given I don't really have time to be taken over by a new fandom. Though I have tried! I even reluctantly went to go see the new Captain America after the fuss about it on my LJ/tumblr feed, and... I was so bored. The only things keeping me awake were Anthony Mackie's very pretty eyes and Frank Grillo being extremely hot and bad, but I couldn't see the appeal of everything else. I don't suppose fandom is ignoring all the Bucky/Steve in favour of writing Sam and Rumlow's fight scene ending up with them making out, and then punching each other a little more, is it?

And in arting news... well, see the PhDing news for why my output this year has been so dismal. I am drawing! I'm just drawing super complicated challenging things and drawing them very, very slowly, and I think I'm maybe far more interested in improving and pushing myself as an artist this year instead of being active in fandom and churning out things that will make me popular. Right now I'm trying to focus on Sutcliff Swap and up until yesterday I thought it was a terrible idea for me to sign up, what with my current glacial rate of putting down 3 pixels a day, but I've had an Idea and managed to get it down in rough sketch form, so fingers crossed it all works out by the deadline! When that's done I've got a commission to finish, and then two stupidly complex and detailed Inception pieces to finish off. Here, have proof that I'm not lying about still working on things with this small section of the mess of scribbling that one day will be Dinoception:



Whoops, this got long and rambly. Sorry.

This is just a brief post to apologise for disappearing from LJ and ignoring you all, and for my continued disappearance for the next few weeks; I am up in Glasgow now, but it will take a while to get the internet sorted at home. Home is... rather chilly. It turns out grand high ceilings and wooden floors make the place freezing cold, even in April, and I suspect I will probably spend most of the winter refusing to leave the nice warm lab. Or crying over heating bills. I will post photos once I have everything unpacked, which considering the state of the place at the moment, will most likely be some time in November.

But oh my god, my new lab. Here is a completely inadequete representation of my feelings about my group and my supervisor and my project:

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It is like someone took my description of what would be the most perfect lab to do a PhD and then made it a hundred times more awesome than I could imagine. Really, all it is missing are kittens and ice-cream Fridays, though given how lovely my supervisor is, I'm sure I could talk him into those.

Right, off to brave the Scottish rain and take seascribe to the pub!