I love Japanese cartoons, they make me smile because they are awesome.

I love their giant eyes, and how when they get excited, angry or otherwise upset their body parts become unattached and geometric.

my kingdom for a scientific calculator

The day stated out well. I completed the difficult pre-lab for the morning microbiology lab, and made it into uni early enough to be rushed. The I realized I had left the oh so important, and due, pre-lab questions sitting on my desk at home. With no time to drive to the other side of the city, I went straight to one of the two guys who run the show, and explained my problem, and asked if I could hand it in in the afternoon. I was told this would be fine, I could take it to the office.

I went all the way home. Picked up the singular sheet of paper, and headed across town to hand it in. On the long drive, I was going over my calculations in my head, and realized I had made a mistake int eh final part of question 1. No problem, I thought, I had plenty of time, so I once I had found a park I headed not to the office, but to the library to fix the equation.

Once in the library, I found I had left my calculator at home as well.

I went to the computer lab, and searched for a computer programme, but found there was not one already on the computer, so I headed for google.

I then had a big red warning window pop up telling me I had run out of credit and had to put for money on my uni cash account to use the Internet. So, I had to go find a uni cash kiosk, and put the mere two dollars I had in my pocket on my account, and went back to the search. I found several helpful looking website offering the free use of calculator software.

The first few I tired only had the most basic of functions, and I needed something a little more flash. So, after more looking, I found that one had different calculators you could choose from, and selected the scientific option. The calculator that came up was, I suppose, a scientific calculator, but was still missing some of the vital functions I needed, and seems better suited to geometry than what I was doing. Several more attempts and I remained empty handed.

I finally found one that had the right buttons on the screen...until you clicked them, and they didn't actually work!

So, I logged off, and headed to the university book shop, source of everything a student could need to calculate, graph, sketch, down load, save , or write. I walked up and down the isles scanning for calculators, and after a fruitless search, had to ask. They were behind the counter. Sigh.

So, I followed the woman to the counter, where I was they had a simple cheap job, or the more expensive fancy ones if that's what I wanted. I told her that I needed a scientific calculator. She had none. But, instead of letting me leave and go in search of one elsewhere, the annoyingly over helpful woman started suggesting a graphics calculator, and then a something else I had never heard of calculator. So much time wasted.

I phoned a friend, who lives only half way across down form the uni, as apposed to my all the way across town, and asked if she had one at her place. I was told her husband had one.

I walked back to car park in the rain, and drove to her place. There were two people I didn't know on the couch, who claimed no one else was home... oh so handy, I thought, as my friends house is a chaotic mess, and there was no way I would be able to find it on my own. I did however find, her husband was home, and had found it for me. Bless him :)

Unfortunately, his calculator was so old that despite being a scientific one, it still didn't have all the functions I was looking for, and I had to go through a big convoluted precess to get to a point that with my one sitting at home would take bare seconds to reach.

I sat down to fix the equation. The answer I got was clearly wrong, and despite several tries, I couldn't make it better.

Oh well, I thought, I'll just hand it in, and accept that I won't be getting full marks. I dashed back outside to my car and attempted to drive back to the uni. Sadly, this was now into a high traffic time, and with the rain, the roads where busier than normal. I got to uni half an hour after the office closed.

So here I am, playing on the computers in the library and eating candy right under the no food and drink sign.


And, I am wet.

Wetland Tree Planting.

I have signed up with Waikato Conservation Volunteers, and after weeks and weeks of nothing but week day missions, they had something on a Sunday. Annoyingly this was ANZAC day, but if I'm honest, I wouldn't have attended any events anyway (don't no why I wouldn't, just that I wouldn't).

We were driven down country to a farm that has natural wet lands running through, which are a short distance from the Waikato river, and which contribute to the water shed of the river, due to the incline of the property.

We were there pretty much all day, planting native seedlings around the boarder of a boggy patch in the middle of the pasture, which feed into a big pond, which in turn appear to feed into a another steam heading north. The area was fenced off to keep the stock out, so the area good over time return to what it was before the land was carved up and given to returning soldiers after "the" war (no idea which one exactly, just "the").

It was a really nice day, even through it was hot, and really hard work, and my back was really hurting from the effort of digging, and climbing up and down an almost vertical slope with spade and sapling in hand.

But....

There was a woman there who had signed up, wanting to meet new people, and with saving the environment as a happy extra. She seemed to head into the day on the assumption that everyone loved her, and was her very best friend. Which was nice when I first rocked up to the pick up point as a newbie, had was feeling alone and a bit intimidated. But, as the day progressed, and she told me her life story, allowing no interruptions, and touched me a couple of time (apparently strangers find me "cute", so this is common and not at all creepy, but unwelcome in her case).

"They" talked to our group about the project, and all about the watershed, and the nitrogen , and the nutrient loading and the benefits to the farmer of regenerating the wetland even when it reduced the area of his pastures, and stuff. it should have been really interesting and informative. But, I already knew it all, and frankly found the talk a little less than informative. But then, I am a scientist to be, not a grease monkey, or whatever.


Anyway...

One of the items on The List is plant 700 hundred trees. Yesterdays efforts added 30 to my total, which I think (I have packed my tally) is now at around 45. Still a long way to go, I know, but it's a big improvement!

Back to my neighbors.

All classes were canceled for Kingitagna day, so (long bitchy and boring story short) I was home on the couch. From here, I can see through the dinning area, and out the kitchen window, at an angle, so the view is of the neighbors drive way. To give privacy, I have three camellia bushes in a row along the property line.

Some time ago, my neighbor asked if he could trim the branches that crosses over the boundary line and were crapping his van when he drove past. I said this would be fine. He then started talking about prune ALL the trees and shrubs in my yard. I politely yet very clearly said, hell no, don't touch them, I like them as they are thank you. He didn't do anything that I saw for several hours. Then I went out. I came back to see every plant on my section pruned down to nothing!!! i was furious! But the real problem was, he had taken so much off my privacy hedge that it no longer works.

So, I was home in the middle of the my Wednesday, and I see movement out of the corner of my eye, I glance up, and find the guys wife standing behind what remains of my privacy hedge, looking through my window! When I got up to go yell at her she quickly turned away and headed for her mail box, and for some reason messed around with the other mail box of our other neighbor. After a another minute, she came back to stand behind my hedges and peek through my windows!!! This, of course, is all a gross invasion of my privacy. It is illegal. it is creepy, and sick and wrong.

I picked up a curtain with heavy embroidery that afternoon.

I told people at uni all ab out it, and they were likewise shocked and thought she was creepy.

M, the eternal disappointment, just laughed. She did not see it as a bad thing. She could not understand why I would thing it was creepy, and had no concern for my right to privacy. The most i got out of her was a "well it's good your moving then".... I haven't sold the house (it isn't even on the market yet) so I am not moving any time soon, so this is no consolation.

so in all... A bad day with highlights featuring a pervert and an unhelpful remark designed to belittle me. Awesome.

What is the point of poems?

I know that poetry is supposed to be cool or something, and maybe it is somehow sacrilegious for a writer to say so, but I hate poetry.

Poetry is the little brother with a speech impediment to proper stories, which have beginnings, middle and ends! A poem is a song without music. It is a the hiding place of those who love purple pros, and don't know how to use punctuation for best effect.

Perhaps I exaggerate my dislike of poems. I have a few that I do actually really like (my great uncle Len wrote beautiful poems, and a hilarious one about losing his dentures down the the long drop)... but I am not going to buy a book of poems. I am not going to read a blog dedicated to poems. And I can't understand their appeal to anyone outside of the people who write them.

Perhaps it is not that I "hate" poems, so much as I just heave no patience for them.