this. Asking 'but why' and getting answers. Turning questions over and over and over in my own brain like I'm sucking on a boiled sweet.
Very nice when I get paid to do this - I am not currently getting paid to do this and yet I do it anyway.

I hope you have some picky bits and fizzy pop to celebrate.

recruited for a very specific project, on someone else's grant - tell them how you fit their person spec like it frigging shrink wraps you.

Not proud to suggest this, but I have often got somewhere if I've cried at a receptionist.

Never mind I was the only non-binary researcher in the department, being put through constant transphobic microaggressions 🙃.

I cowrote a Lancet comment piece on LGBTQ+ visibility and inclusion in STEM with some of the best co-authors I could have hoped for. It came out, and comments from my dept "what did you waste your time doing that for?" because, since it only went through editorial review, it's not REF-able.

Actually, I think I'm with you on that as well. They're just not nice?

A dish of aspic: a jellied suspension of shredded meat and vegetables, garnished with a single sad sprig of parsley.

What's the worst food from *your* cuisine? None of that "oh, one region over they eat some awful shit." Remove the beam from your own eye.

And I'm calling dibs on aspic, so you can't pick that one. My mom threatened to make it for me the other day.

you have the "can see ones own face" setting still on in Teams, don't you?

I freaking love this website.

I know you're not lying, but REALLY?!

They were doing so well until the condensed milk and raisins.
Why condensed milk and raisins?

I agree. It looks like scones, served alongside something that frankly should not be on a plate - ever.

For the UK - pork scratchings and/ or cheese and onion crisps. I can't stand the smell of either.

Yet it's only recently the EU has had an apparent mentyB over mylk.

I will also be gutted if you don't get funding tbh.

I know if I lived in London I'd exist in a permanent state of sensory overload, but why are all of my science friends cool Londoners??

There are some people, who when they know better, they do better. Like my nice supervisor, I don't think he necessarily clocked the utility of sharing his pronouns until I went "they're very useful if you have a gender neutral name"

There are some who will never do better, even if they're told.

Sarah, thank you for your service, but seriously, leave them to stew in their own hatred.

I was about to suggest metformin, because I swear I know someone who's on that, in part because massive weightgain with Q. We're talking close to having doubled her bodyweight in 2 years.

You'll get captions, not craptions!!

Re-reading code I wrote months ago, and realising that my functions are doing too much. So we'll be refactoring that one.

Flat feeling like a really spenny storage container again?

Indeed - Twinkies, but make her ✨classy✨.

Giving a friend her birthday present in May - I'd spent weeks looking, and managed to find a 1KG bag of flour and 6 sachets of fast action yeast. Handed it over social distanced and just watched her brain glitch and short circuit because she wanted to hug me, but knew she could kill me if she did.

That is exactly what they are there for. You did absolutely nothing wrong or shameful for phoning them. Honestly, I think I got through the March and April on unadulterated panic, and then started to fall apart in May.

As awful as this sounds, I now can't bare to be touched.

I went from honestly, probably Christmas 2019 to 17th July 2020. Only because my granddad had died. Then 4th Aug through to 11th June 2021 when Glasgow finally came out of enhanced restrictions.

Other than that, the only time I was touched, will have been when my CPN did my bloods.

The bits of my PhD where I chose to work from home because comfy/ I just wanted to be in my pyjamas today/ absolutely lock the fuck in and get loads written, was AMZING.

The bit where I absolutely rotted in my 17m2 studio flat for on my own for 23 hours a day, did not do me any good at all.

brioche, creme patissiere AND A BLOWTORCH. Oh do not threaten me with a good time.

I'm finding as I age, more bits have started falling apart. Today my left knee has decided it wishes to join the party...

My shoulders are also not brilliant - I can fake tan myself completely, without help.