Nettles in acetone

I feel ridiculous talking about the weather when so many friends are still recovering from Isabel, but I feel like I ought to mention it. I've given up speculating on when winter will really make its presence felt, because every time I think it's close, the heatwave re-surfaces. Not today, though; today it has rained solidly for hours, do everything is slick and and wet and green. The sort of day where you want to stay inside and re-paint your nails. I'd have had to do that anyway, though; the black nail varnish is coming off in huge chunks. I would say it was because it's old and crappy nail varnish, but it's actually because of yesterday's Biology experiment du jour. It involved chromatography and trying to prove chlorophyll is not green, and the chlorophyll in question came from nettles smushed and crushed and pulverised and made into solution using acetone, of all things. The resulting green liquid was decanted into tiny 5ml beakers. The peardrops-and-greenery smell was sending the entire class loopy when someone eventually remembered we could open the lab windows. I had to use a capilary tube full of it for the chromotography, in the process dying everything green, and the moment it touched my nails, the acetone started eating away at them. The green was tinged with black and purple by the time it reached the boiling tubes.

In conlclusion, I need to do my nails again. And I've done some homework and written a bit, but haven't really done very much. It feels like Sunday. If it weren't raining, I would have gone on a walk up to the beach, but somehow the prospect of water dripping down my neck doesn't appeal as much as it would have done in summer. And it isn't summer any more - the equinox is tomorrow. I remember writing in here about the summer solstice, and that doesn't feel like three months ago at all. It was just before I left for the States, if I've got the dates right. I went out to the rabbit fields to avoid packing. Can't imagine going to the rabbit fields today. They must be ankle-deep in mud. The National Trust are planning to put a couple of fell ponies on them to keep the grass down, which should be nice. I pity them in this weather, though.

At least I ought not to have a cold again in the winter. This one has been the worst I've had in years.