who only by moving can balance

So I spent yesterday curled up on the chaise longue facing the river, and was at one point very startled by an Unfamiliar Birds. They were mostly black, and sort of pointy, and approximately coot-sized but rather more streamlined, and had some very dashing white patches on their flanks associated with their wings. After a bit of poking around, I am tentatively identifying them as white-winged scoters; by the time I'd scared up some photographs of same they'd vanished from sight.

Also yesterday: fun and games with uncommon suffices.

1. HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE. CONTRACT SIGNED. START DATE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER. \o/

2. kaberett continues explicitly Things That Make Me Happy, all the time, no politics. kaberabbits continues... all the rabbits, all the time. In case this is relevant to your interests. (Anything political would go on kaberants, but I just... Haven't Been.)

1. I have decided that I probably am sufficiently into the concept of Omnifocus (as mentioned some months ago by recessional) to want something Apple-ecosystem and portable to run it on. I also want it to not be new because I am absolutely vile to tech, sooooo do any of you (preferably of the semi-local variety) have old iDevices you're looking to sell? More toward the "small tablet" than the "smartphone" end ideally, I suspect.

2. In medical/internalised ableism news: ( Read more... )

3. To continue the assistive tech theme, I continue to amuse myself by referring to the SIMless smartphone I use for health-tracking and meds reminders and the like as my Auxiliary Internet Device. AID or AIDe, gettit.

4. Tiny crochet dinosaurs. Plush toys of children's drawings, by Ikea.

5. Food. Things I am vaguely intending to make over the course of the weekend, an aide memoir: sea-spicy aubergines (use the pepper, self) and egg fried rice. Lemon meringue pie, maybe. Bean chilli (pick up the sweet potatoes, & while you're at it repack your washbag). I am still stuck on what to do with the half-cabbage other than cabbage soup (suggestions welcome) but in the process of seeking inspiration I came across smitten kitchen's hazelnut brown butter cake and feel a BAKING coming on (not least because I have abruptly realised that rather than browning just the butter for the salted caramel I could brown all the butter ever when making brownies. Hmmmmmm.) [hello future self P wants you to try Norwegian porridge]

1. wyrdatlast has started writing a series about about coming to terms with diagnosis of chronic illnesses, viewed in a framing of grief, which I suspect a bunch of you will be interested in, and for which I personally am v grateful because it means I don't gotta get around to writing the wretched things. ;)

2. BECAUSE OF REASONS (do my housemate a favour by doing me a favour, folk?) if those of you in the tech/computer science industry felt like writing a couplefew paragraphs about what your job is actually like for someone with a very strong CS background but no industry experience, I'd be super grateful. Comments here or e-mail are great. Cheerssss xx

1. So I was saying that I hoped my supervisor was suitably pleased with my pile of data from this run? SHE WAS. She was, by her standards, extremely effusive; I am basking gently in the glow of having been told that I made the right judgement calls about the slightly difficult mass spec session, that I got a significant amount of good data, that the reproducibility of results was great, that I've done really well with my standard deviations given how low the concentrations I'm working with are. She was just really really nice about my dataset just being... really good work. Basking.

2. I crashed out at 9pm and woke up spontaneously at 6; I had a nice relaxed morning pottering about (packing bag for tonight, eating breakfast, making hot chocolate), got into work at 8am, had my supervisor tease me gently about it (she normally gets in around 7 but today I beat her...), faffed with some more data (including fixing the problem in my 'orrible plotting script that I identified last night after I'd put computers away to sLEEP), tidied my desk, replied to some e-mails, ... yeah, pretty pleased with myself. And I slept super well, so.

3. Help help I am seriously considering setting up a side-tumblr called "kaberants" for the sake of engaging with irritatingly wrong text posts without having them clutter up my set of nice pretty pictures??? (Today's discovery-via-tumblr of the morning: Emily Blincoe's photography.)

4. It is a source of great pleasure to me that it's now light at 7am; soon I will start getting the District line into work again (because it runs aboveground for most of the trip, whereas the Piccadilly is underground for this section). Also, I tamed my hair.

5. Indelicates gig tonight! And I have reason to believe they'll be playing lots of stuff from the upcoming album, which appears to be about SPACE SCIENCE and SPACE ROBOTS and CHOICES and consequently I cry everywhere at it every time :D :D :D :D

(and 6: facesfriend points out to me that if I think he is being ludicrously indulgent of me because he adjusts the toaster to provide me with toast slightly burnter than he prefers it, this is possibly an indication that my perception of myself as Really Difficult To Deal With and Always Making People Go Out Of Their Way is skewed.)