kaberett | Entries tagged with small victory hiss

FINALLY after a Saga including three separate refunds (one of which hasn't yet processed) from eBay sellers who had promised they definitely had two of the IKEA PS 2014 copper-and-white 35cm lampshades in stock and definitely weren't reckoning they could just pop into IKEA, buy it, and sell it at a massive mark-up to suckers on the internet, having not yet cottoned on to the part where that specific iteration of it had been discontinued--

-- plus a purchase made last week with "one-day delivery" that didn't get actually put into the post until Monday and then Hermes didn't get it to me til earlier today--

-- I have the thing my mother originally wanted, for less than it would have been from IKEA new (probably), in the correct size, in its box with all of its instructions, even though I was mildly concerned the seller might have Misled me about the diameter, and now I get to never think about this again (at least until I construct this one for her, and flatten the larger one back out for possible eventual installation in the mouldering ancestral pile).

(Also today: lots more paper, lengthy digression on the topic of my supervisor's ~~hat~~cat,

cesy dragging me out to the allotment, Infinite Pyjamas.)

Today was our first lab meeting with the new students, and we ended up going around the room doing brief introductions: name, years through degree, rough thesis area. So I gave my pronouns like it was no big deal and moved calmly on to making the room laugh by giving a deadpan explanation of being in my sixth year of PhD (three to four years is normal). Nobody else followed my lead on that, alas, but I did it and the world didn't end.
I've dealt with all the necessary paperwork (bar actually showing up with proof of address) to regain Reader status at the BL, in order to place a request for a 1966 paper published in the Journal of the Faculty of Science, University of Tokyo, Section II, which has not at all been digitised and exists online only as a citation. The BL, bless them, apparently have a copy in their off-site stacks, so on Thursday I get to go in and find out how little of it I can read. (It's almost certainly almost entirely in, well, Japanese, but I am mildly hopeful that table headings will be in Roman script such that I can extract the two bits of data I want with minimal additional screeching.) I feel Awfully Grown Up to be requesting materials delivered to SCIENCE - 2.
Rather to my own astonishment, I am impatiently looking forward to my supervisor meeting on Thursday. I've not Finished All The Prep For It, even, and yet I want to Talk Science instead of mostly experiencing a creeping sense of dread. (It's a sense of dread that's much reduced since 2011, which is a victory in itself.)
I have, in the past week, experienced two buses breaking, of which one went entirely out of service, during "normal" operation of the ramp. I managed, at least outwardly, to behave as though this was not in any sense my fault, and as though I was at least as inconvenienced by the failure of the bus company to adequately maintain their fleet as everybody else who was taking the bus. I am particularly proud of myself for this one. (I didn't apologise to anybody.)
I did a small social during the tea break at orchestra on Monday night. I! Chatted to people! And enjoyed it! I've been being standoffish and withdrawn and Defensively Reads A Book with two Very Small exceptions basically since I started going, but all of a sudden this week I... socialised??? WELL DONE ME.

Sad and insomniac? Focus difficult? Feeling useless? Give it a couple of kilos of loose change in a range of currencies and it'll be happy for hours.

(Reasons to keep facesfriend around: I erupted into a small victory hiss at him as he was saying goodnight on IM, because having earlier found obsolete English shillings I had finally finally a little over an hour later found obsolete Austrian Schilling to go with them, and he appeared to find this hilarious and adorable because he understood exactly why I found it so satisfying.)

Gave presentation to supervisor (which, because I am an incompetent, was in fact my first run-through verbally as opposed to just sitting and staring at it). She liked it and thinks I am going to be fine. I get on Really Well with people whose attitude to praise is that a dismissive "you'll be fine" means "I am impressed and pleased", heh. I'm bang on the permitted time, and I was talking a little fast but we've rejigged flow so that I'll need to repeat myself less, and aaaaaaaaaaahhh she liked it. She thinks it flows! She thinks I am clear and talk at my audience sufficiently! She has suggested a joke I can tell! (It is a relevant joke.)

(what I am actually doing in person is going "ssssssss" very quietly; it is a small victory hiss)

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who only by moving can balance

only by balancing move

small victory hiss

tiny braveries: a miscellany

Facts about Alex

\o/

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May 2025

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