So, another week without Jocelyn has gone past. I've missed Jos' presence a little more than the last few weeks some days. Other days I'm living up the bachelor life while it lasts. Today I did my most rebellious act yet - I cleaned Jocelyn's room. This involved buying some storage boxes and file-o-faxes and ordering the room into findable objects. Also stripped the sheets from the spare bed in there to give them a wash - I think Jocelyn will appreciate coming back to a room she can walk around in. A lot of the mess was the result of Jos' last-two-weeks of panicked work and travel organizing. Can't blame a girl for that.

I've got rugs in my lab now, I'm not sure if I had written that up here yet. The lab is finally beginning to take shape; I'm getting a much clearer idea of what I want where. The next target is the chemistry area, I think that'll be an excellent target for a Lab Building Day. Get a bunch of different gauges (thanks Scott) of PVC pipe, paint them brass and copper, create a boiler to cover up half of a concrete column and use the pipes to cover the rest. Then it's sprucing up the Ikea desk in there to make it look period and arrange the glassware tastefully! I've got two mist-ers (thanks Nel) to put in the vodka shot-glass holders and a bunch of other glassware (thanks Vicky) that will look spectacular in shelf units. Also picked up some small dinosaur skeleton skulls from a pet store that will look good on the walls on plaques. I might have to attribute their capture to Captain Adventure, or to a shrink ray that worked perfectly on calcium.

Riverfire's on tonight, saw the dump and burn from my front balcony, looked like it was flying a bit lower this year compared to previous ones. Still as spectacular as ever. Unfortunately I was pouring myself a glass of Mozart chocolate liqueur at the time and didn't get my camera out. Oh, and the first of Jocelyn's care packets arrived - Belgian chocolates, Tintin stuff, and Jos' picture with Santa Claus from Lapland. Awesome.

Work's been... issuey this week. Won't go into it, but I'm getting a lot of projects that are very important to very influential people. Thankfully I've got very good people at work backing me up, and I'm backing them up alternately; both in my direct team and in EIS in general. Always good to work somewhere you can implicitly trust your division-mates.

Tomorrow I was hoping to get some friends over to play Arkham Horror the board game I was leant (thanks Kane) but it looks like people are doing things. Unless people are up for an afternoon/ evening game? I can get all my work-prep done early if that's the case. Pizza or a fry-up is in offering.

Anyway, *raises glass* Cheers.

Today was a mostly good day.

Managed to have a brief Skype call with Jocelyn that made me both happy and sad at the same time. It's been about a week and a half since I saw her off at the airport. The first two days were bad, and then I started having fun being able to do my stuff whenever I wanted at home, and now I'm starting to really miss her again. Stupid cycles.

To help me de-mope I rang up Scott and Amy to see if they were up for breakfast, we all decided that fast-food breakfasts were a bad lot so we went to Woolies and grabbed (well, bought) bacon, eggs, pancake mix and bread and made breakfast for ourselves. By 12. Very lazy.

We all checked out the lab and agreed the paint and walls really change the feel of the area from a brick unusable space to an actual room. Cleaning up and moving furniture around made it even more livable-esque. Check out the lab results for yourself. A budget check has curtailed further lab-work until next pay packet, so we watched a few episodes of the Tick while I ironed my work clothes and then went back to their place with pizza for a dinner with Nel. All of us were pretty knackered so I left at 7:30 ish and came home. Tried to do a bit of coding on my current project but my well-spring of wakefullness has dried. Thinking about Jocelyn again isn't helping much so I'm probably just going to go to bed.

EDIT:
Oh, something wierd that started my day off and prompted the breakfast call - I found a bear in my fence this morning. One of those small bears with the red "I love you" hearts on its chest. Nobody has owned up to it...

Three posts in a month, glee!

This weekend was fun. Bit of food markets with Jos (with the obligatory German sausages for lunch), a lot of coding on one of my projects for Saturday afternoon and evening, then a bit of lab work and house work on Sunday. I've also finally repaired my BootCamp+VMWare doohickey at home, so now I can print to my Windows-only printer from OS X. In celebration, I redownloaded Portal and played that again. That game needs to be longer. Release expansion packs!

I'm looking forward to the Penny Arcade game, a genre right in my style with the promise of wacky hijynx. Anyone else going to get that when it comes out?

Oh, and I'm going to the WWDC. Apple World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco. I arrive the Friday beforehand, any locals want to say hi?

With the lab work on Sunday, I've got a few more panels to stick to walls, and then a bunch of painting, and then the walls are done. That means I can get a few rugs and _FINALLY_ move on to the furniture and decorating. Heaven knows I have enough stuff thank to generous friends and good finds, are people interested in a lab day of furnituring and decoration?

This is prompting me (along with the steamfashion group) to really knuckle down and decide on the Professor's appearance — so I can finally go to a high tea and feel comfortable. The homburg is a must, I think, as are googles. I'm pondering if his current white-vest-on-black-shirt is a little too modern and if I should go white-shirt-dark-vest. It also needs more science, maybe get an old vest from somewhere I can uber-pocket with science. Anyone got any good suggestions on steampulp professor inspiration sites?

Yesterday was mixed. I gave Jocelyn her Valentine's Day Pressies, and she liked them a lot. The day at work was mixed, as it always is when the PVC knows who you are and comes to visit because of something you did. Thankfully, that turned out to be (a) something that was very important that it get discussed at a high level and (b) the PVC came back down later and told me not to be too concerned and that the high ups thought it was funny.

Dinner, Jos and I finally made it to try Fasta Pasta at Annerley. I had expected something a bit nicer in the food department, but oh well. Turns out I just don't like the fancy, thicker pastas in general. And I'm sure that's useful information for all concerned. I did get to take the Homburg out, so I enjoyed that.

Today I'm at home, sick. Couldn't talk this morning, throat is very scratchy and sore, I may be reduced to playing Smith in RP tonight via semaphore. Then again, that's probably in Smith's character so that's not too bad. I do have access to my Work email, so I can check in through the day to ensure things are still going OK. New Team Leader jitters.

Connie the kitten-cat's going nuts today I think she's excited having someone still here after go-to-work time so she's making the most of it. My toes disapprove.

It's time for another Lab Building day, and soon. I'm canvassing for times that friends will be most able to come and organising in advance for a change. So far the targets are turning the boarded-up-door into the Lab Multi-Portal, working on the Chemistry area and painting a boatload of MDF for walls and the Cupboard. Any ideas for sciency knick-knacks are also encouraged.

Short week back at work, much viva for that. I'm finding more links to my article around the internet, this makes me happy. Even if I was confusing a fellow Colin Morris when our name was popping up all over the place.

Good game on Friday night, and then Jocelyn stole me away to Kate and Alek's place for a party; as my Indian Doppleganger Colin was there. This was a Colin that Kate worked with, and claimed was my twin. We hit it off fairly well, we did seem to share veins of humour, and I drank apple schnapps so all was right in the world.

Saturday, woke up very late and painted the lab. Booya.

Sunday, visited Nan and my parents before coming back and putting on the second coat of paint. Now the lab walls are finally painted so we can start moving furniture to where they're supposed to be and work on fixing things to the walls and putting together science-y things. Should keep me in trouble for a while.

The new Mac is growing on me, slowly. I have the old HD in a cage and VMWare runs it tolerably, but there looks to be no games playing until I buy Vista and bootcamp it as the Mac refuses to boot from the drive. Very vexing, but no matter. The fact I can't use my upgrade versions of Windows to install to bootcamp is frustrating. Still, I'm sure everyone's done what they can.

Very tired now. On Kate's suggestion, via Jocelyn, I've downloaded BookSmart - a book making program that interfaces with iPhoto - to put together a photo book of Jocelyn and my trip overseas. If this works out, we'll scan in all our wedding photos and do the same there. I'd like to have a wedding book in the library. It'd be nice to just flick through.

Oh, and I finally found the poem about the Triantiwontigongalope that encouraged my Nan and I to play silly finger-puppter-creature-things. Yay!

Another weekend come and gone far too fast. So what did it encompass?

( When did I start becoming more verbose with my typitude? Darn you forum RPers who make me reconsider my writing structure! )

I do think that a wall covered in copper plates adds a certain something to a man's laboratory. Or a woman's for that matter. Or anything else you've got, really.