kaberett | Entries tagged with in which i am photosynthetic

It's very odd to find myself welcoming the autumn equinox, instead of yearning for the light, but, well, my migraines are mostly afternoon-onset and come with deeply unpleasant photosensitivity, and it is something of a relief to know that that symptom at least will be less work to manage for a little while now.

It's definitely felt suddenly, markedly autumnal for the past couple of days -- I've added another blanket to the pile on the bed; the air is noticeably chilly and damp when we get up. If I want to watch the bats while I'm doing music practice, the proper time has been creeping slowly forward and is now much closer to 7pm than 9pm. The plants need putting to bed.

And, simultaneously, the new academic year is getting underway, and I'm no longer a student. All change please.

Circular bed of interplanted tulips and primroses. The primroses are Primula 'Stella Snow White' (white) and Primula 'Stella Lunar Gold' (yellow); the tulip is Tulipa 'Gavota', with tall pointed petals that are a very deep rich red on their body, with brilliant yellow edges.

( +3 )

Yesterday, after doing a lot of tedious and stressful administrivia, I dragged myself over to Kew on the grounds that it was sunny and I should take the opportunity while it existed. (Today has been drizzle interspersed with hail; I made the right choice to drag myself out there yesterday.) The various Prunus are doing excellently; the camellias are gorgeous, though I'm still working out which white double cultivar I'm after; the rhododendron are not quite there yet; and the tulips are magnificent.
I am enjoying SL Huang's Russell's Attic series immensely. Huang is an MIT maths graduate; the eponymous Cas Russell is very, very good at maths, and uses this to work decidedly illegal job markets very competently. I'm not in a position to judge how good the mathematics is, but I will say that the villainous supervolcano lair subplot in book 2 only made me pull a face very briefly, and one of the principal characters is a wheelchair user who's done competently. They're fun; I'm tearing through them; if you have issues with mind or memory control, or gore, or violence, these are probably not for you, but perhaps go read Huang's short stories instead?
This afternoon's foray into capitalism involved the acquisition of Mad Max: Fury Road and some ceramic baking beans that were substantially reduced. (This evening's plans involve "curling up in bed with hot chocolate and MM:FR".)
( Food! )
( Food! )
( Food! )
My xkcd Garden contains a tortoise! And, bafflingly, two humans, and some things that are possibly pet rocks. A. informs me that his contains an octopus, and I am deeply envious; on the whole I am finding this comic strip a much more soothing implementation of the general idea of Mountain, and to be perfectly frank if anyone gets around to writing an Android app I will be all over that.
It is seven twenty pee em and it is still properly light. I came back from a brief shopping trip at eight forty-five last night and the sky wasn't completely dark yet. You had better believe I am basking in this.
I have some (slightly unexpected) clarity on health misc, which involved less of a fight than I expected it to (I am so, so tempted by the noncompliance is a social skill t-shirt), and I'm doing a good job of sorting through brain misc as well.
I have outline notes for all the sections of the job app; I'm going to turn them into first-pass sentences, because apparently this iterative work thing is good for me, and then I'm going to curl up with a film, I think. Yes. Good.

(The Word, Tony Hoagland.)

This morning I have been Making A Contribution To Medical Science, and consequently I have a plaster with a dinosaur on it. The ?nurse was very apologetic about it being paediatrics plasters, until I went DOES IT HAVE A DINOSAUR ON, at which point we were excitable at each other about Sophie the stegosaurus. As we were getting to finishing up paperwork, having spotted the quearring also, I tentatively enquired as to whether I might ask an intrusively personal question. "... yes," he said, warily. "You've been very carefully saying partner..." I said, and he ducked his head and looked at his ring and said "yeah, husband, we've been together for ten years and married for five", and then we had a cheerful little discussion about queers and how his husband's one of very few male midwives in the country, and they've just bought a house together and are looking forward to the long weekend, and CATS and PAINTING THE HALLWAY and in general domestic bliss, and it was lovely.

And I am updating you all on this from Homerton College Cambridge Cambs, where I am sat in the sunshine in a scented garden next to a sundial and a water feature gently applying desensitisation therapy and leeching eduroam, and when I am done I shall pack up my computer and head over the railway bridge to have lunch with my mum.

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.)

First Charing Cross appointment survived as of Wednesday lunchtime! Barrett did an excellent job of walking the line of the non-actionable; he was determined to tell me lots of incredibly irrelevant anecdotes about his time working with youth offenders, but fundamentally I treated him like an incompetent and irritating supervisor who considered me incompetent and irritating, and this worked well. (Case in point: I successfully rendered him temporarily speechless by telling him very politely that naturally I understood that he had to take a conservative approach...)

Outcomes: I now ~understand~ that ~gender neutrality~ is like ~anarchism~ in that it is inherently unstable and will inevitably collapse into one of democracy or dictatorship (YOU'RE WELCOME); I note that "people find it too difficult to present as gender neutral in ~~~real life~~~" is not in point of fact an argument that gender-neutral identities don't exist, and you position yourself uniquely to believe that in fact they do not; "but what if in a decade's time you don't feel comfortable taking your shirt off on a beach!!!" is not in fact an argument against giving me top surgery now; etc etc. Not dreadful, nothing I couldn't cope with, and next time I possibly get to see Lorimer.

My mental health has improved markedly since starting the vitD, which is extremely pleasant. I am so, so much better; it's a great relief - I'm back down to PHQ-9 score of 8 (from 18 when we tested my bloods). (8 is operating-within-normal-parameters for me -- I am scoring quite highly on the fatigue questions because I've had a long lab stint, and have been in work every day yes-including-weekends since sometime early last week.)

( The rest of the ten good things! )

Current Music: Vienna Teng - Never Look Away

( Ten good things )

( Things that are trying to coalesce. )

Yesterday I woke up at around 6; by 6.15 had started to worry that I was this awake without my alarm having gone off and checked the time; and at 6.20 decided I wasn't getting back to sleep and might as well go into work. So I did, and I got a lot done, and oh but it is light at six, and the air was crisp and lovely as I made my (grouchy, limping) way up Exhibition Road; I was in lab by 7.30, whereupon I started the process of drying beakers, weighing out rock powder, and faffing about with HF. That I was quite so underslept and quite so ill goes a long way towards explaining why I had a Minor Incident (but no exposure; deets in a locked post). But! I got more Science Progress done than I'd even been hoping to manage, which puts me in a really good position for next week; and then I printed off and posted some documents for

alexseanchai; and then in sunshine and relief I made my way home and ate apple cake my housemate had Produced (as if by magic!) while packing.

And then I got myself onto a train - in, still, the sunshine; you might be spotting a theme here - towards the dwelling of Those Two People; and upon arrival I took the gentle wander up the hill and smiled with delight about all the cherry blossom, and also about the fact that everything is getting ready for Holy Week: the forsythia and catkins are all exactly as they should be.

Upon arrival I was greeted by That Fucking Cat. I was, in fact, accosted at the top of the stairs, and required to scritch her. Including her belly. (She does this utterly bizarre thing of rolling over onto her back, looking appealingly at you until you scritch her belly, and then closing her eyes in bliss and not attacking your hand at all. The closest she comes is very gently bracing a back paw against your forearm, claws carefully and delicately sheathed. It is bizarre.) That One Lady ended up glancing over from the sofa to see why I was taking so long to actually make it into the house proper and say a proper hello, and then burst out laughing.

( Obligatory image of the terrible animal. )

( Read more... )

It's amazing how productive I can be when I'm avoiding sewing and hoovering.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

who only by moving can balance

only by balancing move

& the day just gone

ten good things // gotta tend the earth if you want a rose

between "green thread"/and "broccoli" you find/that you have pencilled "sunlight"

:-)

{we're gonna photosynthesize & drink up the sunrise}

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