Snooze button, Explants, and Mid-Semester Break!

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore: Hyundai = Hee-un-day

I'm tired. I'd blame on the fact that my alarm went off just before 7 this morning, but it always does that on days when I have a 9am class. Instead, I'll blame it on the fact that instead of hitting the snooze button several times, I actually listened to it. But how could I resist the noble cause of spreading birthday cheer? Several minutes later, after staring at the little numbered buttons on the phone trying to wake myself up enough to remember how to use them, and then staring for several more minutes at the phone number trying to figure out how much of it I'd dialled while still half asleep, I managed to deliver a rather groggy "Happy Birthday" to Aaron. I'm making it official: anyone with a birthday between now and when I return to Canada is required to be home and available at a REASONABLE hour, as defined by me here on Aussie EST. I WAS awake by the end of the conversation though. Which got me to class on time.

If I never have to do another explant of rat lens epithelial cells, it will be too soon. Frank showed us how to do them, and then said that for someone experienced, it takes about 1.5 minutes per eye. "Two eyes per plate, three plates per person... Ten minutes of work. I'm giving you two days." Two days later and the class will be lucky if we have enough usuable explants for our future experiments. Give me my it-may-as-well-be-neurosurgery Helix (garden snail) dissection any day. You'd THINK this would be easy after that.

Triona, Vikki, Ching and I went to see Betrayal this evening. It's a play by Harold Pinter, and was put on by SUDS, a campus theatre group. Derek had a lead role (in a four person cast...). The play was quite good and well worth seeing. Even sitting on plastic chairs that very quickly became uncomfortable, in the cosy Cellar Theatre.

Tomorrow I have one class before the start of mid-semester break. Ching, Vikki and I are going to Melbourne and area, stopping over in Canberra for a day. And I must make it clear that we are not going to Canberra, we are only passing through on the way to Melbourne. Why must I make this clear? Because if you say to anyone that you're going to Canberra, they stare at you mystified and go "why???" But come on, we're four hours from the the capital of the country, we can hardly go home and say we didn't see it. So we're taking an afternoon to swing by the Parliament Houses, the Museum, the Art Gallery, the War Memorial, and the Botanic Gardens. And then, because there's no overnight train to Melbourne, we're stuck spending money to stay overnight in Canberra, twidling our thumbs for an evening, because according to everyone there's zip to do there at night. And then we get to spend a full day (~10hrs) on a train to Melbourne. We're flying back to Sydney. Same price as the train, over 10 hours less travel time. Whoo-hoo!!!