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Families
Nov 24, 2002

My great aunt died the week before last and on Friday I went to her funeral. It wasn't that I missed her or was grieving for her - I hadn't seen her in years and we didn't keep in touch. She was invited to my wedding in May but didn't come (along with a significant proportion of my much younger relatives).

I went because my dad was upset and I wanted to be with him. And he was pleased to see me, so that was good.

What wasn't good is that there is a major rift down the middle of my dad's family. Acutally it's pretty much the girls v the boys for some reason - my aunts are on one side and my dad and my uncle on the other. There's too much history involved to figure it all out, but it was a miracle that there wasn't a bun fight at the wake. The bitching started later and will no doubt get worse when they have to sort out the will.

Why do families do this? If they don't like each other, why not stay away? Is is so hard to be civil for an entire day? I don't like most of them very much myself (we have nothing in common expect the chromosomes) but it doesn't get to me to the point where I'm always bad-mouthing them.

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Update
Nov 17, 2002

I've now been married for 6 months and I can safely say (without wanting to make anyone sick) that it's been the happiest time of my life. Not least because the major stress of my life last year was planning a wedding....

The major stress of my life this year has been my job but it seems to be OK at the moment.

I've started an OU degree course in Environmental Science which, if I stick to it, will no doubt be the major cause of stress in my life next year

Today, for example, I've been learning about the origins of life in the oceans and now I'm trying to keep phytoplankton, zooplankton, picoplankton and eukaryotes all straight in my mind. Definitely a work in progress

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Greenfly
Jun 22, 2001

What makes greenfly green? Are they intrinsically green, or do they take their colour from what they eat? Only there are some little things on one of my coriander plants that look like greenfly. But they're red. And some of the leaves of the plant turned red a little while back. So I wondered whether they are greenfly which have turned red coz they've eaten the red bits of the plant.

Hmmm...will we ever know?

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Gah!
Jun 19, 2001

I have just had the weekend from hell. I hurt my back, I spent all morning on Sunday cleaning the house and then watched my parents tramp grass all over it, and I spent 7 hours with my parents which led me to take yesterday off with a migraine.

I would look on the bright side if I knew which one it was

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Blog
Jun 14, 2001

Well, I haven't said much here lately because I've been playing with my new Blog (link supplied somewhere over to the left...) which has been a lot of fun.

Work continues much the same. The Muppetteer is much bothered by hayfever. I bought my dad a Hedgehog House for his birthday, in the hope he can entice a hedgehog into his garden to control the slug population.

I'm going to Prague for a conference in September, too. Just for a couple of days, but I should have a little bit of time to take in the sights. Woo hoo!

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