Two courses and a paper
06.11.06, 9:37 am

The journal on the Motor Neurone Disease stuff that I worked on during my second year summer is soon to be published, and Old Mini Boss sent me a copy the other day. I won�t bore you all with the geeky techno-babble of the paper, but the front page reads as thus (ALS is the international name for MND):

Look! My name�s there, and with letters after it! Oh, yes, my surname�s Evans for those who don�t know (Nigel the stalker, it�s your birthday!). I am so very smug. You just know that as soon as it actually gets published in Neurology I�m going to be typing my own damn name into Pubmed to see that result pop up. Man, this is the kind of thing that makes all the work and the slogging and the big hard-on for science worthwhile. It probably sounds like bugger all to anyone who�s not in research, but to me it�s a huge deal. I am oh so very pleased with myself.

I had to go to a General Risk Assessment course last Wednesday and was talked to for a good two hours by the chief Risk Assessment lecturer, Ann, who lives under a bridge. No really, there�s no other explanation. Ann the Troll is possibly the most boring person in existence, has total orgasms over CoSHH regulation forms and likes to argue over whether a hazard is medium-high, medium-high-high or high risk. Words cannot describe her repulsiveness. She was also completely patronising and disbelieving about my ME, which is where some (read: most) of my hatred stems from. She�s lucky I didn�t grind her into the floor with my heel which, given her 2 ft height, would not have been too great a problem.

The whole course was a load of toss too� endless slides defining the words �hazard� and �risk�, and all the government legislation behind health regulations. It says something that I�d rather have been at work stripping mice and breathing in formalin than sat in that room of badness. Halfway through we were offered a choice of coffee or water, and after Anne the Troll had left the room the three manual labour guys sat next to me started going, �Coffee or water, Andy, you don�t get any other choices. Tea�s deemed too high risk, HAHAHAHA� and rolling around pissing themselves. I really wish someone had stamped on Anne when her back was turned and squished her underfoot. Frankly, anyone who rolls their eyes and pats me on the arm like I�m an over imaginative toddler deserves to die.

And then Thursday I had to go to the annual fire lecture with the rest of the techs, where a Keith Lard-esque person brandished various fire extinguishers at us, talked endlessly about fire-resistant barriers and intermittent hospital zones, and showed an actually quite scary video of a burnt out hospital wing which resulted from some moron having a fag whilst holding a running oxygen mask in the other hand. Tit. People like that shouldn�t be allowed in hospital in the first place. The whole thing�s made me totally paranoid about fire, and I�m definitely over my fantasies of being a fire fighter, though I�m still convinced I�d look a treat in the hat.

Been seeing the new boy a lot over the last week, because he�s infectious like that. On Saturday the Boy and me went up to Manchester to see a Mozart concert (cultured social butterfly), and on the way dropped in at my dad�s house to pick up my acoustic guitar that I�ve been pining for and to say a general hello. Ladyfriend was there, which� blah. Anyway, so the Boy ended up meeting my dad. An impressive feat in itself, as my dad can be quite intimidating. He�s like me, only about a hundred times more so� so a hundred times drier, more cynical, and more practical. Plus there�s the whole Cannabis Central thing, if you�re not used to it. And he gets very shy, which can come off as him sounding quite rude and dismissive. I neglected to tell him how old the Boy is though. We�ll deal with that at a later date.

Have told my dad that I�ll go on holiday with him, my sister and Ladyfriend sometime next summer, although I�ll obviously be paying for my share. I do hope me and Ladyfriend get on by then, and I don�t spend the entire time comparing her to Bernie in my head and then getting miserable, which is indeed what currently happens whenever I see her.

I�m sorry it�s taken forever for me to post. I've got big monster issues going on that I'm too scared to post about. And reading about depressing badness is no one�s ideal cup of char, so I've glossed over it with a lot of nice superficial stuff. And I think I shall go have an actual cup of char now.

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