PS longer letter later

[kaberett]

1. Yedi Kocalı Hürmüz at the Arcola several weeks ago now, performed by the in-house Turkish-language company (Arcola Ala-Turka), with my friend D. A little rough around the edges (e.g. the surtitles frequently just sort of... didn't) but the energy & the audience engagement were fantastic, particularly in the segments that were just sort of... mini interconnected folk gigs? Lots and lots of clapping (and singing) along. I was very entertained -- there was comedy "whack people over the head with an inflatable stick and over-the-top sound effect" that worked really well -- and I even understood the occasional word and sentence fragment, go me.

2. Baby's first paper has been formally accepted. It is going into various preprint archives as we speak; I will link once it's actually usefully available. (Did I mention how good it is that I fixed the graphics driver issue with my desktop such that it's actually usable? It is SO GOOD.)

3. Off to Cornwall on Thursday, for approximately a fortnight, for the hundredth-birthday-that-isn't, coming back for the middle weekend because Reasons. I am looking forward to it. I will be bringing wild garlic back to plant out. Cornwall in early May is, in my unquestionably objective opinion, the best place in the entire world.

4. Frantically getting lab work finished up for pre-interruption-of-studies before that, so far as possible. Cocked up yesterday in a way that adds an extra week in lab (boo) but it was one I would otherwise have been anxious about not doing (yay), so that's worked out fairly well.

5. British strawberries, reduced in the supermarket. Yes. Good.

6. Started thyroxine (low-ish dose) on Friday last (the 20th). So far no conclusive changes, but excitingly the water is muddied by the part where I finished the most recent course of iron supplementation right before I started the thyroxine.

7. Have had first salad-and-cheese-and-bread dinner of the year on the PATIO. We have a PATIO. It has been WARM. I am very excited by this, and also by linens.

8. I have participated in A Bunch of research recently -- autism + the social model of disability in higher ed, intersection of trans status + disability, Being A Grumpy Tran At Market Researchers for fun and profit (and actually they were really great and give me hope), miscellaneous cognitive function for the long-term psychiatric study I'm participating in (£15 in vouchers, whoo).

9. Voucher has thus far been used on a bamboo travel mug, with a succulent pattern and duck-egg-blue silicone bits. (staranise, I keep restraining the urge to put together the succulent-themed care package you did not ask for and probably don't want because it would be silly to do the Shipping To Canada thing if you don't, but if you'd like preposterous succulent-themed tat let me know and It Will Happen.)

10. I spent a lot of the weekend making friends (at A's step-relative's Significant Birthday Thing) with both nibling S (who has, correctly, decided I am interested in them, and now greets me with enthusiasm) and -- which is what I was going to go with when I started this point -- a ridiculous ornamental cherry, which had the big-blousy-white blossoms as most of its canopy... and one branch, comprising about a third, that had been grafted on from a dark-purple-leaves and bright-pink-flowers tree. It was Good. I went and patted it on the graft and told it it was good, and made A admire it.

(The mint I rescued from the supermarket has established itself sufficiently aggressively that I'm starting to worry for the parsley it shares a tub with. I shall clearly just have to consume more of it.)

Comments

[kaberett]

(I continue v overwhelmed and short on words, but I decided a ten-good-things quick-fire update on the current state of my life would be only a little more effort in terms of words than phrasing "I'm overwhelmed but I still like you" to my satisfaction would be, so, here you go.)

[divulge]

Thank you for updating, and yay for good things! <3

[sonia]

Congratulations on all the good things!

[legionseagle]

I'd be more precise and say, "Scilly", but I see where you're coming from with "Cornwall." You lucky, lucky person.

[kaberett]

I'm afraid you're mistaken, or else you've made a spectacular typo for "the Lizard", but the devil is in the detail. ;)

(I'm spending a lot of it sorting through Papa's paperwork and designating most of it for recycling -- I'm finding tax returns from 1949, and a complete run of guidance on tax returns from the mid 70s to the mid 80s, e.g. -- but I've coaxed the patio door into opening and the weather is gorgeous and the bluetits are nesting in the gutter and now the tree at the bottom of the garden has gone mowing the lawn means you just sort of get to wander back and forth staring contemplatively at the sea.)

[worlds_of_smoke]

Yay for good things!! <3

[redsixwing]

Congratulations on all the good stuff!

Mint is an ongoing, delicious battle. :D

[sebenikela]

hoorayyyyy for all the good things but especially PAPER ACCEPTED you get 137 Science Points

(i'm not sure what you can get with Science Points, beyond...more Science Points... but maybe if you get a bunch you can trade them in for cool toys or something?)

[kaberett]

(some of the toys are VERY COOL INDEED)

[lunabee34]

Congratulations on your impending publication! That's huge. :)

[kaberett]

v excited!

[ghoti]

I think your parsley is Doomed.

[kaberett]

I just planted another one and I am Eating Mint Vigorously.

Plant frens

[ewt]

That graft with the dark leaves and pink flowers might be an edible cherryplum type of thing.

Re: Plant frens

[kaberett]

Yep! I am probably not going to slog back down to the Cotswolds come fruiting season, but I was very pleased to make its acquaintance nonetheless. :D

[oracne]

Hooray for paper acceptance!

[davidgillon]

Hoorah for publication!

Thingers crossed thor thyroxine :)

I was really pleased to find I hadn't missed the flowering cherries when I got back to Chatham, and the one in my garden, which is still quite young, has pleasingly more flowers than ever before. Nowhere near covered, like the ones on the main road, where you find yourself walking through drifts of cherry blosson, but definitely showing willing.

[jesse_the_k]

Being A Grumpy Tran At Market Researchers for fun and profit is a job custom-made for a K, especially if they really pay you.

[kaberett]

Forty quid, in this instance. :D