Motetus

The less said about my weekend visit to my parents and the drama of the new wedding dress my control-freak mother has forced me to get, the better. Let's just say it involved me loudly announcing "Yes, I have small breasts and I like them exactly as they are!" to the whole Debenhams bra-fitting dressing room. But at least it ended in a truce of sorts, and I've cheered myself up by deciding to get bright pink shoes to go with it. Pink shoes and a green dress - it's either going to be awesome, or a disaster. And completely not what I'd usually wear, but I think I need to be more adventurous.

Enough of that now. Ladies and gentlemen, the most unkempt dog in the world:



I love her though, the daft smelly old girl. But she's the reason why my little photo session in the garden didn't yield many results - "Play ball with me! Play ball with meee!" Stupid dogs, they're so good at making you feel guilty.

( Couple of flowers and bees )


My supervisor just emailed me telling me my lit review draft, the copy I sent him before cleaning up my very bad grammar and comma abuse, is "well and clearly written. " Hallucinogenic drugs on a Monday morning - I want to be a university lecturer too!

I had a dream last night that involved David Cameron, an inflatable sex doll, and the importance of wearing nice suits. Bit of a disturbing way to start my Sunday.

Literature review word count: 2,706 (out of what, I don't know. Dear supervisor, stop being so bloody vague). Not too shabby considering I have had the distraction of a shiny new PS3 for the last two weeks. See, I have self-control!

Anyway, today was too nice to be wasted at home, so we took a trip to Castleton down in Derbyshire.

( Photos, of course )

I had a lovely day today - sunny, warm (er, for April in the UK) weather, steak and ale pie in a shire horse-themed pub (even the wallpaper had horses on it) and a visit to Beeston Castle.

( A couple of photos under here )

I had a friend visit for the weekend and needed to entertain her. it was predicted rain, so we planned to brave the horde of families on their Easter outing and visit the indoors Tropical World in Leeds. Of course, the weather forecast was wrong and it was actually lovely and sunny. Oh well, at least it was warm in there, and I got some nice photos.

( Meerkats and flowers )

Eee. I am so in love with my new lens, it is a beast and worth every last one of those tens of thousands of pennies I paid for it. Every bit as sharp as my primes even wide open, and with even better colour and contrast (usually I do a bit of adjusting of these when converting to jpeg, but I hardly had to touch anything this time!). It's so good, I fear that it's going to be permanently attached to my camera and none of my other lenses will ever get used again. The only negative things about it are a) it weighs a frikking ton, and b) it was pristine when it arrived, but after 1 day of use there are already quite a few tiny little dust particles inside the lens. Guess I'm going to have to break my vow of not buying camera stuff until next year and fork out for a good filter to try and limit what's getting in. But whatever, it's awesome. Guilt has completely gone. :D

Anyway, I had plans to go to Rievaulx Abbey to test it out, but my father scuppered that by insisting on taking me gliding. So instead of pretty ruins, here are some slightly less interesting ones of ( East Yorkshire from the air. )


And moving on to a completely unrelated subject, my former supervisor in St. Andrews sent me the paper he's been working on since I left. He's only gone and made me first author on it. I know, it has to be accepted somewhere first (fingers crossed it gets into a decent journal), but wow, I love that man.

 A bee on a lavender bush I took last summer. The lavender was blowing like crazy in the wind and the lens I used is very slow to focus, but I got lucky.



( And two extra animal-related photos )

Just got back from a weekend visiting a friend in Glasgow - a very cold and foggy weekend best spent eating Korean food and buying hats. I still haven't decided whether I look like a tit in my new furry deerstalker hat, but it keeps my ears so nice and warm that I don't think I care much. I like Glasgow, it seems a much more interesting and pleasant city than Manchester - I think I might consider moving up there once my contract here is over.

My friend is doing a PhD there which involves getting zebrafinches to make babies with their siblings (they don't object to it, if you're wondering), so we stopped by her building to weigh the chicks and visit the animals in the little zoology museum.

( A couple of photos that I took there... )