Friday 13th August

Today is my last day at 'work'.  I've been trying pretty hard to do all the last jobs that need to be done before I leave for five weeks.  To be honest, I've been a bit distracted.  By the rain outside.  By not knowing what I'm going to be doing next week.  By trying not to think about whether I might be homesick.

I have managed to: read and mark an MSc thesis, plan lots of meetings for when I get back to 'work' in September, and off-load all the jobs I haven't managed to do on other people.  I also spent about half an hour being outraged at another case of someone publishing a paper that was definitely my idea.  How do these people get in my brain, steal my research ideas and execute them, all before I've managed to find the time to coalesce my vague thoughts into a coherent plan?  Perhaps this is an important topic for a Times science feature.  It's not been a good day's work, but frankly who's checking?  Everyone else is on holiday and from about an hour ago, I'm on my adventure in London.

Tomorrow I will be super-organised and put little stickers in my A-Z for important places over the next few weeks, print out my tickets, and make lots of nice neat piles.  Today I'm still trying to be at home.