tooth soup

photo credit: Robb North

Been a bit

of a stretch since I posted anything personal-like. I had a pretty awful couple of days around Australia Day, the events of which I related in an earlier blog post. What I didn’t expand upon was the fact that the very next day, my car key mysteriously snapped in half. And I do mean mysteriously. I was heading to my brother’s house for dinner and very late Christmas present giving, so I drove my car down to the local bottle-o to grab some beer and wine since Matt and Mel were cooking for myself and Louise. Keys were working then, obviously. The events proceeded thusly:

• I got out of my car;
• I put my keys in my pocket;
• I walked into the store;
• I bought a bottle of wine, and a six-pack of beer;
• I walked out of the store;
• I took my keys out of my pocket and got in my car;
• I tried to start my car, couldn’t get anywhere with it, and pulled out my key to see that half of it was late to the party.

In that series of events, it’s conceivable that the key broke in my pocket but I didn’t put any pressure on it. I searched around my car and back up the path for a chunk of key and couldn’t find a damn thing. It’s as if exactly half of it decided it would rather stay still while Earth moved on. I expect news of the ISS being struck by a chunk of Hyundai Accent ignition key around this time next year. I started panicking since I didn’t have roadside assistance or insurance or any of that boring stuff. It took a couple of calls to the R.A.C. by my Mum while I called Matt and Louise and told them I’d be a bit late to organise a membership. Unfortunately I had to leave it there–in the car park of a liquor store, next to a public toilet and a pay phone, in Carlisle–overnight. I fully expected there to be only a half-chewed piece of rubber remaining come the morning, but surprisingly it was still fully intact. The locksmith that came out confirmed my suspicions of the Houdini key chunk and proceeded to hack together a new key from two bits of leather and a foot of wire. Well, not quite, but he may as well have for the magic of the tools that he had in the back of his van. Oh, a word on the locksmith himself; he was the exact image of a locksmith that I had in my head. That is, a short, older gentleman with a strong British accent and a methodical way of doing everything (drilling, walking, breathing) and thick glasses. He got it all sorted out while I chatted to his mate (visiting Perth with his wife for a few months, loves it here, gosh England got snowed on didn’t it?) and I was on my way again, albeit with a wallet around $350 lighter (though that included a year’s worth of R.A.C., so I guess that’s something).

That set the mood for the rest of the week. I managed to snap my house key the next day (fortunately I have a spare, drama averted) and injure my heel pretty badly playing soccer. My thesis was also being particularly resistant to my attempts to draw it out of the ether. A shit week, to be sure. This last week was a little better, as I stumbled across Brian Toby’s excellent series of video lectures on crystallography and structure determination by powder diffraction at the Advanced Photon Source website. I spent pretty much the entire week trying to unknot the tangles in my brain relating to statistical means of refinement and all that jazz. It’s really very interesting and I absolutely adore people that take the time to create this kind of resource. So big props to the B-Tizzle, er, yo?

Today was my niece’s 2nd birthday. Yes, second. Has that time flown by ridiculously quick for anybody else? Bewilderment at baby growth rate, the new S.I. unit of time measurement (in units of regret-of-time-wasted squared). Anyway, the party was really cool, and I got to talk to some of Mel’s family that I hadn’t seen since the engagement. Plus mini-quiches. Fuck yeah. After that I had quite a bit of time left over throughout the day, so I finished off a project that I will unveil here on Tuesday (which is also the date of my best friend’s birthday–coincidence?). After that I made Louise a CD, the playlist of which I may post here at some point, and started playing Mario Galaxy on the Wii, which is going to take getting used to (all the rotating makes my head spin). Tomorrow morning, Dino and I are getting up Super Early (him superer than me, since he’ll be driving to my place) to watch the Super Bowl at 7.00am WST. I should probably be wanting the Saints to grind the Colts into the ground since the Colts knocked out my beloved Vikings, but to be honest I just like the game.

Alright, signing off to go try and write something. Or maybe I’ll just watch District 9. Who knows?

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