who only by moving can balance

1. One of the picture prompts Duolingo gives you when you're learning German and it asks you to translate "the sugar"? Is a bowl of sugar with vanilla pods in. I am charmed, and also sort of curious about whether it does that for other languages and I just... haven't noticed.

2. I am signed up to the London Business School Behavioral Research Lab, which means I sometimes get an e-mail inviting me to participate in a study in exchange for cold hard cash. This morning I got to drink a small quantity of beetroot & passionfruit juice (selected from a tray containing a variety of juices), read some feedback about it, and then give my own. It took about 15 minutes all told, I got paid a tenner for it, and I continued very gently learning to like beetroot. (It was surprisingly tasty, and paid for half my new ereader. This makes it a win all round.)

3. I've actually been managing to swap e-mails with P over the past few days! He's been responding! It's been lovely, not least because he pointed out an excellent bit of costuming that occurred in Elementary 4x17 that completely passed me by -- namely, ( Read more... ).

4. I think I have worked out why some of the creme brulee attempts have gone grainy! I'm pretty sure (I have not kept adequately detailed notes) that it happens when I pick up cheap extra-thick double cream and let it out with a little milk, as opposed to just using double cream. So that is a mystery solved, for all the mechanism remains somewhat opaque to me. (Ideas?)

5. ... A. just brought the last creme brulee through, with the last of the strawberries he picked up for me last week on top, and two spoons, and proceeded to lean companionably against me while telling me all about how en-GB-oed is his problematic fave. hashtag domestic bliss, etc etc etc.

6. I got to stick my name at the top of a file in the Dreamwidth codebase, today, because I'd written more than 10% of it (or 100 lines, whichever is smaller; in this instance, 10%). It's a tiny feature that like one person (possibly two people?) is going to (be able to) use, but I think that's still actually the first time I've got to do that, and I am Contented.

7. I had shakshuka and bagel for breakfast, and bagel and cheddar and cucumber and a strawberry for lunch, and textures and flavours and yes.

8. I was on time to (or early for!) all my appointments in spite of Tube Shenaniganry (the Piccadilly line just wasn't for much of this morning, okay), and the staff at my local station did a top-notch job of looking out for me, and then pleasant brief commiseration occurred on my way back in. (People who have had that much of a morning 100% get me explicitly thanking them and wishing that the rest of their day gets better.) (I gotta say, given what today's been like for them, I really hope they enjoy tomorrow's strike.) And then I made a phone call I really didn't want to, and removed another source of uncertainty; and then I dealt with some other stressors. Yes.

9. I am so endlessly, immensely grateful for having a warm and comfortable bed that makes me hurt less and that soothes me. (I have a memory foam topper from freecycle; memory foam pillows from my mother; a weighted blanket of my very own; soft duvet covers, and soft micofleece blankets, and stripy tulip pillow cases my mother thought I should have.)

10. Have a ridiculous song. (Oh right, what was actually going to go here was mild amusement at the intersection of interests of public transport, graphic design, zoological illustration and a specific animal species that means I've probably managed to luck into sorting A a Very Appropriate Present -- this is not spoilers, I've had a chat with him about how much effort I'm willing to go to in order to achieve the thing -- but I sort of wandered off into being distracted. So have two cheerful things for the price of one.)

An Elementary (Sherlock-focussed, probably) fanvid to Frank Turner's Get Better.

I mean. ( Read more... )

(Spoilers up to 3x19)

( Read more... )

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! )

Spoilers for the first episode of season 2!

( Read more... )

So I've had a good but very long day, and then friendperson came round and I went "actually I want to be horizontal in the dark" & abandoned friendperson & housemate to one another's company and watched last night's Elementary, and, um, wow.

( Spoilers. )

So you know the way I'm a volcanologist and I still went "NO NO NO EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS WRONG" with respect to the Elemepisode Dead Clade Walking? innerbrat has stepped up to explain seven reasons a palaeontologist might actually commit murder.

recessional has just written an entry that goes a long way towards explaining why I identify so hard with Sherlock and Spike. Not all of it, I don't think - I didn't get that sudden sense of relief, of lightness, of being suddenly much larger (of containing multitudes with grace) - but certainly a very good shove in the right direction.