Hunger!

What I feel, and also the name of the second book in a YA series I'm going to buy sometime. Why did I agree to meet my adviser's PhD student at 12 noon? I had no choice but to eat an early lunch and now I'm hungry again... nowhere near dinner time...

I'm supposed to be working on MATLAB now but I don't feel like it... my brain's not on it today. I dragged myself through one chapter (chapter 7-- halfway through!) but the solutions to the problems in the back cut off at the second question and there were 5, and what's the use in doing them if you don't know whether you're right or not... And from my limited skills, it's more likely that I'm not going to be right, although I did a pretty good job of solving question one by myself... sometimes there's a lot of code they ask you to type out, and I'm so lazy I don't want to go through all that for one question.

I met the PhD student so I could solve the MATLAB problems my adviser gave to me, but the code calls functions from something called 'psychtoolbox' which uses shortcut code to bring up a video screen or whatnot, and the school computers don't have psychtoolbox downloaded on them.

Woooow I'm even boring myself with this post...

So my accomplishments so far today? Sent the intro to my thesis to my adviser for editing, got my adviser's PhD student to agree to participate in my study and one more person lined up to participate on Monday, got a technician lined up to download psychtoolbox on a school computer, filled a prescription, got through one more chapter of MATLAB for Behavioral Scientists... I'm so booooring.

OK but you know what isn't boring? Two things that happened this week: 1) Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe theatre in London, and 2) International Book Club.

1--> On tuesday, Jana, Hannah and I took a coach with Museum Studies to see us some Shakespeare at the famous Globe. We got the cheap student tickets (£5!) which allowed us to stand right next to the stage. Granted, after 3 hours of standing there I was getting pretty achy, but it was worth it since I was so close to the action I got shoved by the actors coming up and down the stairs a few times.

It was a really nice day... the Globe is right next to the Millennium Bridge that leads across the water to St Paul's. It's a really nice area with lots of restaurants around, and we went to this Greek place that served meze mostly. We each had souvlaki, which is a really yummy grilled flatbread wrap. Mine was made with halloumi, which tastes good enough but the texture (it squeaks against your teeth when you chew) is not something I care for. Jana and Hannah had chicken, and I was jealous.

I've been thinking about going back to meat. I know I've said this a few times before with no real conviction, but really... I have no reason to be a vegetarian, and I have no idea why I decided to just stop eating meat in the first place. Supposedly because I heard it was 'good for you' but a nutrition documentary I watched a few months ago said otherwise. But I don't cook... and it's just so much easier to stick grapes in my mouth than grill a chicken.

2---> Yesterday, Stephen, Laura and I had our first ever international book club meeting! We talked about The Knife of Never Letting Go and other YA novels, and then basically just chatted about life, all of us wishing, I'm sure, that we could be sitting around a table at Yours Truly eating sweet potato fries and tango sauce. I miss my book club.

Er... yeah... who am I kidding? I'm not doing any more work today... I'm gonna get out of this computer lab and wander around town, perhaps bug Jana.

Later!