It's Friday

this is actually Freyja the saxon goddess after whom Friday was named...but still...

...it is Friday once more. I am still as tired as yesterday but slightly more motivated to work, probably because I have all excuses not to. Computers are shut down due to maintenance and I am running stuff on my laptop while blogging, no stress, no strings attached, no one to be waiting for results or custom track updates (poor Julien, behind me is busting his eyeballs in front of a browser page...)

While listening to some early Divine Comedy that remind me of my innocent youth and waiting for my yeast chromosome 4 data, I can only think about how life would be so much more beautiful if it was full of Friday afternoons like this one, when you would only work out of strict scientific curiosity, you would not feel obliged to communicate your results with anybody and most importantly you would be safe in the knowledge that tomorrow is Saturday!

I don't know if it is the holiday getting closer, or a spring spirit that blends in the belated freezing air but somehow I think I am re-finding my good old self these last weeks. Seriously, it is not the feeling of laziness that redefines me, but mostly the fact that no matter how tired I feel I still find time for things I really like, as reading, watching films or discovering new music, things I have missed a bit since the beginning of the year.

All this makes me really happy (Friday and the Divine Comedy are also helping). And since there's no one around with whom to share my interesting results on a boring problem I decided to share my "things I like" for this week in case anyone is even slightly interested. Here are my main "tracks" for the upcoming weekend:

sound-track (top 5 in my mp3 player):
1. Arcade Fire - No Cars go
2. Kasabian - Test Transmission
3. Elis Regina - Maria, Maria
4. Rolling Stones - Torn and Frayed
5. Motorspycho - Triggerman

word-track (books I am reading):
1. Sigmund Freud "Moises y la religion monoteista", just finished this, a very interesting essay on the origins of monotheism based on some solid assumptions combined with psychoanalytic argumentation. along the lines of "Totem and Tabu" which I liked better.
2. Jean-Pierre Vernant "Mythe et pensee chez les Grecs". Just started this mostly motivated by the previous one and the fact that I am going back to Greece next week. It is a bit hard in french but seems as interesting as it sounds plus it helps me practice. More about it soon

film-track (films I saw lately):
1. "A brief encounter": An all-time romantic classic, with great acting and great soundtrack (Rach 2), which I was not able to appreciate, probably because I had to see it with spanish dubbing and portuguese subtitles, with italian people talking all the time...
2. "Blood diamonds": boring and dissapointing, went to see it mostly for Jennifer Connelly and she was the only thing worth in it.

waiting-for-track(things I am anticipating):
1. the weekend
2. Greece-Turkey for the Euro2008 qualifying round

Until Monday wakes us up from this pleasant "trip", I hope you all try and make your own "custom tracks" for this weekend.

Lay-Z boy!

It is Murphy's law, pure natural anticipation, the boss being absent, tireness combined with boredom or all of the above but the bottom line is this: The closer I get to holidays the less I am eager to work.

The joke in the lab has been that I am an ace in "pretending to work", having a PhD in "slacking off" and similar euphemisms but the truth is that I have been working far off my limits over the last weeks. On top of that I had to deal with a series of my famous (to the ones that know me that is) psycho-somatic seizures, which brought about a number of consequent panic attacks, according to which my teeth were all to be rotten and fall off, my ears would remain plugged until the end of time, my recently injected for tetanus arm would gradually lose all consciousness and end up paralyzed etc. etc. During this highly neurotic, frenetic month I managed to carry on working in three or four different projects, producing results that at least kept my boss satisfied plus give a decent seminar in front of my colleagues, some of which had a first chance to fall under the spell of my fully-convincing-pretending-to -work-hard line of arguments, before waking out of their limbo and start making fun of me again!

Nonetheless, even pretending to give a seminar about pretentious work, with pretentious results and over-pretentious conclusions can make you tired (in fact sometimes it can tire you more than actual work!)
I am now looking more and more forward to getting on that plane and head to Greece where the sun will be shining, ouzo will be on the rocks and nucleosomes will once again become a n interesting topic to philosophize about. Until next Friday when this will happen, I only want to lie on the couch and read my book, which this time is Freud's "Moses and Monotheism" that I bought last week from a second hand bench in Plaza del Tripi. A very interesting read, (if you are into anthropology, the structure of myths and deconstruction techniques in the style of Levi-Strauss).

All I would really want right now is the armchair of the picture and my book. And since it is late Thursday evening I think I ll call it a day and head home to my couch and my dear Freud.