I discovered last Monday that I have now passed all of the exams required to be a UK patent attorney* (technicially, I can't call myself a patent attorney until the requisite paperwork has been finished for registration, but that's just a formality).

This means I do not have to do any exams in October, and actually have my summer back from revision!

This means I can get ferrets!

There are 101 other things I have also been putting off until after exams which I am now starting to work through... sorting the garden, getting the house redecorated, visiting my sister up norf, Filkers amongst you may have noticed that I was listed in Enharmonicon's PR1 as a committee member - I may be more commit-ish depending on further exam results, but fingers crossed!

Work-wise, it also means an increase in responsibility once I'm registered, but that hasn't quite happened yet; we'll see how it goes.

For now, it is very nice to not be revising in the evenings.  Since the end of European exams the week before last and UK results on the following Monday I have used this new-found time to have an electrician and plasterer around to sort out some pre-decoration jobs, research and find the ferret hutch I intend to get, tidy the garden to make space for it, blitz my box room to remove an around 3m-high stack of revision notes and assorted now-unneeded paperwork, do silly things to my fingernails, make cake, and start to arrange seeing people whom I have not seen in far too long due to revision eating spare time...

Still haven't quite picked up the harp yet, but I'll get there!

*I'm still waiting on results for the European patent attorney qualification, so don't yet know whether or not I'll still have exams to do next February.

So, I know a fair few friends on here live, or have lived, in London.

I have been offered a job in London (starting October-ish, near Liverpool Street Station), and am trying to decide whether or not to accept.  I like having this decision/the offer, but am really not sure what to do.

My general thoughts on London can be summed up by "eww, expensive big city", but the job etc. looks good, and I know many people enjoy living there.

Any thoughts on things to consider appreciated....

So, I decided to create a Wordpress blog for crochet and cake-y stuff etc.  If you're interested, it's: http://weebleflip.wordpress.com/, you may have seen me linking to it from Facebook.

I don't plan to stop using LJ, just to put crafty stuff somewhere separate for ease (and LJ has been a bit more dodgy than usual recently, so I wanted somewhere more reliable for patterns and recipes).

Back to work tomorrow.... :S

Edit:

aiwendel added a feed for the wordpress blog, score!
http://weebleflipcraft.livejournal.com/

Just add this to your friends-list if you want pictures of cake and crocheted snow golems to appear occasionally....

...in no particular order.  As it's miserable outside, and starting to crochet before I've finished eating my slice of ginger cake would be silly.

1. A friend and colleague of mine got interviewed by Kryten from Red Dwarf (albeit not in costume) on the subject of fuel cells.

2. My (+ fhtagn's) patent application is probably going to be abandoned due to a lack of commercial interest.  Not surprising, but it still smells.

3. This coming week I'll be flying Birmingham->Hamburg [Meeting] Hamburg-> Manchester, Manchester-> Beziers [Holiday] Beziers->Manchester.  Talk about bad timing. On the plus side, nice to make the most of a bank holiday coinciding with my 25th birthday to have a long weekend in France!

4.  I'm nearly a quarter of a century old.   How did that happen?!

5. Two good friends of mine, one of whom I've known since school days, got married last weekend.  Many wishes of happiness to them both!

6.  This is a nice ginger cake recipe, although I didn't bother with the icing (it really doesn't need it).

So, I was hurrying along a river-side path, which mainly consisted of wooden plank walkways and stairs, trying desperately to get to the statue of Morgthar, God of Storms, before the daleks behind me caught up.

My aim was to present him with an offering of three eggs (just normal, raw, fragile chicken eggs I was trying not to break in my rush) in an attempt persuade him to intervene and destroy the daleks' ship.  I seemed fairly confident that this would work.


I do worry sometimes.

After three trains, one plane and a tram, I arrived at Pierrelatte station at about half six on Thursday evening. About two minutes after sitting down outside the station, wondering how I would recognise my contact for the placement, Caroline, she drove up, waved, and took me shopping, and then to the studio flat I'll be staying in for the next eight weeks.
( It's not very pretty... ) ...and about as stark inside, but it does the job. Caroline noticed at that point that they never had got around to getting any chairs! I'm perched on the sofa-bed to write this, with my laptop on the box the microwave came in.

( Other parts are much prettier... )

Having had rather a long and dull day in the lab (at least I can crochet between pressing buttons/opening a furnace door every 3.5 minutes.....) I got back to the office and found the following on my laptop keyboard...



( Cut for being a picture, perfectly safe for work etc.! )

I have this Friday off, and plan to be in Cambridge for the Beer Festival... I have floorspace/accommodation sorted for Friday night, but can anyone offer me somewhere to stay the Saturday night?

Also, who's likely to be around when for more general meeting-up purposes?

1x small section of Maelstrom attended
2x bags packed for Canada

16 hours until I head off

It'll be the furthest I've flown alone/unmet at t'other end, and the first time I've spoken at an international conference, so, arghhh!

Ahem.

I should have internet access whilst I'm t'other side of the pond!

It's a friend's birthday today, so I made ( Cake ).

(pictures under the cut, so's not to eat friends page space and bandwidth)