who only by moving can balance

1. I do actively like getting up with dawn and being in work by 8am. If I could find a way to do that sustainably (given insomnia, fatigue, etc) then I'd be all over it. (Two days running this week; aiming to replicate tomorrow. Though, to be fair, I did come home very early this afternoon and then sleep. But -- I got labwork done before 9am, I taught for three hours, and I booked mass spec time. And I'm doing some more faff at home. Writing abstracts is haaard. I mean, actually I think formal writing is hard, but perhaps I will work out how to get past this, sigh.)

2. Facesfriend is great, though - I stayed over at theirs last night, and sometime in the wee hours they very gently woke me up enough for me to disentangle myself from the nightmare I was having (whimpery rather than screamy, thank goodness; once a year or so I wake myself up screaming, and I'm always very embarrassed about the disruption to other people) and then they coaxed me back to sleep and... gosh, that was nice.

3. Guiltknitting progresses apace. It was supposed to be done 18 months ago. I was stalled on it for all sorts of reasons, largely boiling down to "autism" (it became apparent I hadn't bought enough of the main colour; no more of that dye lot was to be had; I couldn't work out what on earth to do about this; and then for the primary gifting period largest smallcousin bought me some very tasteful yarn, some medium-tasteful yarn, and some yarn that um looks kind of like a sunset got overly excited and has a terrible hangover; the sunset yarn goes very well with the purple). I am unblocked and nearly halfway through the section I charted up. Weaving in the ends is going to be a pain and a half - why I thought learning to do intarsia with two strands no less in the context of double-knitting I have no idea but hey, it's working and legible, so.

4. I have acquired the rest of the Toby Daye books in paperback from eBay, to my immense frustration, because apparently it's impossible to buy the ebooks from anyone but Amazon in the UK, and my preferred UK booksellers aren't carrying the volumes I want, so... eBay. And in attempting to locate the short stories I have spoiled myself for something that was starting to really irritate me, so I can now read on secure in the knowledge that the characters are going to stop being so infuriatingly oblivious sometime soon (well, two books' time, but). (I am also feeling kind of guilty for spending money on books by white folk - calissa posted recently about diversity and reading; one of the ways I try to (1) ~broaden my horizons~ and (2) restrict my spending on books, in addition to "don't buy anything while the to-read pile on the ereader is greater than $number" [currently 25, previously 50], is to by-and-large avoid buying books by whitey? On the grounds that I get loaned lots of them and I can satisfy most of my desire-to-read-white-people via loans, so. AND ON THE OTHER HAND I am working super hard this month in lab terms, I'm helping teach a maths course which is a massive deal, I am a bit ill, paper books are good for reading in lab because not metal, and for all I'm finding them gently frustrating they are excellent brain-candy.)

5. I really do need to set up that review blog. Which in turn means that I need to get my act together to choose a CMS for my personal website, siiigh.

Happy housiversary: my housemate and I have been living together for a year as of today in our ridiculous flat with our ridiculous lives, and she just took the time to spend five minutes curled up on me on my sofa catching up before running out the door again. It is pretty great.


I just sent myself an e-mail containing the following:

JUST FOR FUN
Marie on Mars: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X14007262

Lunar dynamo paper: www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6214/1246753.abstract

Carbon-bearing iron phases and the carbon isotope composition of the deep earth: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/12/11/1401782112.short

LIPs and supercontinent assembly: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026437071400163X

Lower-mantle water reservoir: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n1/full/ngeo2306.html

Lunar cryptomaria: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032063314003912

I am having feelings about access to speech.


I wrote two things for Yuletide this year: At the going down of the sun, in the Vorkosiverse, an oral biography/history of Olivia Vorbarra Vorkosigan's life and how she got involved with Piotr anyway; and a treat in the Mechsverse, specifically about the Sirens in Ulysses Dies At Dawn: You'll Reign Supreme. Two things to note: (1) I now want to write Ulysses-fic about the Furies; (2) to my utter bafflement, the Vorkosigan fic has immediately become the most liked thing I've ever written??? Which I suppose is a little reassuring given that I wasn't convinced I'd done a terribly good job of it.


I have discovered that I can reliably do French and Dutch braids tolerably neatly on myself. This is excellent because it means that my hair is less of a disaster when I go a week without brushing it, which makes Dealing With It less intimidating; it's also excellent for reasons including "it does a better job of keeping my hair off my face" and "people's reactions are really funny".


I am poking at my brain quite hard and will post about it soon.