small miracles

In the interests of 'looking on the bright side' and trying not to drown under all the stuff in my life that remains undone, some small successes in my life:

1. I scored 82% on my last assignment, despite doing it in a mad rush and guessing some of the answers, so I might even pass at least one of this year's courses with a grade 2 pass.
   
2. On ringing the tutor on my other course in despair, I discovered everyone else feels the same way - it really is hard, not (just) me being idle.
   
3. Because 4 needles aren't enough, I have managed to juggle 5 (4 dpns and a cable needle) to start on some cabled footies for bedsocks for Gran.
4. since I took up knitting I have lost half a stone. You can't eat and knit at the same time.

badges, I love lovely badges!

O was officially invested as a Beaver Scout last week - they let him off the bit about promising to love god - so I had a handful of badges to sew onto his uniform. It made me feel like a Proper Mum, sewing on badges.

Not to be outdone, I have been invested into the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique and so far entitled to proudly display the following badges:



the Talking Science badge: yes I talk about science at the slighest provocation, particularly of the chemical or geological variety. Those close to me have learnt never to innocently remark upon some interesting looking rock or building stone, unless they really want an in-depth talk on its geology. This is good tho becuase it deters my mum and my sister (both semi-professional shoppers) from dragging me round shopping centres - vile temples to mamon but often featuring beautiful and interesting decorative stones; also R's whining about being forced to go shopping can be deflect by threats of lectures on depositional environments. R's mother still regrets idly wondering what kind of rock the Giant's Causeway is made of.

the Arts & Crafts badge: I knit nautiloids and will shortly be crocheting a dalek, I think that qualifies me for the arts and crafts it the name of science badge. Also adapting patterns to one's own reuirements invokes fairly high octane maths skills.





the I'm pretty confident around an open flame badge: awarded for proficiency around open flames in laboratory settings. My glass-melting capilliary-tube making bunsen-burner skills were legend at summer school last year.




the Destroyer of Quackery badge: as a devoted follower of The Ben, I spend a lot of time battling quackery, pseudoscience, fuzzy thinking and all forms of whoo-woo. The edge of my logic is rapier sharp (particularly after half a bottle of rioja).




the "will glady kick sexual harasser's ass" badge: well, natch






: the "inordinately fond of invertebrate" badge: oh yes. Yes yes yes. And did I mention the knitted nautiloids?





The “pharma shill” badge: yep, medicine does work.





The “I know what a tadpole is” badge






The “I’m into telescopes astro” badge (LEVEL I): we have a telescope and we look at shiny things in the sky with it. I am hoping to go to Jodrell Bank soon and qualify for Level II




The “I may look like a scientist, but I’m actually also a pirate” badge: aaaaaarh etc





and so O doesn't feel left out ...

the Special Auxiliary Child Member of the Order of the Science Scouts badge: becuase he does like science and maths and enjoys finding out more about how the world works (except the bits with rocks in)

wooly objects of desire

This is Sublime Angora Merino. It is 80% extra fine merino and 20% angora and it is the softest most gorgeous thing in the whole world. I met it in the wool shop when I realised the yarn I orignally bought for my bolero was too bulky. So I returned it to the shop and asked if they had any angora (as suggested by C). The lovely yarn shop ladies took me over to the Sublime and as soon as I touched it I had to have it. I didn't actually have to give them too much of your actual money for it, because I got a refund on the other stuff and also a bolero doesn't take too much yarn anyway. But as I crochet with it, I love it more and more. It is the colour of clotted cream and it feels like working with cream, it's so smooth and rich and decadent. I really really want to knit a jumper or top or cardigan with the clover colour; there are a couple of items in Big Girl Knits that would be perfect. But there is a lot of me which means it takes a lot of wool to cover me. The cost of the wool would be way, way more than I'd pay for a jumper. But then I'd get hours and hours of pleasure from making it, not even counting the joy of wearing it. I need this wool.

Dear Mr Next PrimeMinister

O is very happy that Tony Blair is fecking off at last, but is concerned about the policies of his successor, and so would like to know your position on the following:

• SATs - do you think it is a good thing for a normally happy school loving 7 year old to have tummy- and head-aches because he's so worried about his SATs and seems to think they won't let him go into class 3 if he doesn't get all the answers right?
• car seats - will you end the humiliation caused by forcing self-respecting seven year olds back into sitting in a 'baby seat'
• casinos - they look such great fun on Sonic the Hedgehog games but completely unfairly children are banned from them
• Kids' Day - it is wholly unfair and unjust that there is a Mothers' Day and a Fathers' Day but no Kids' Day
• The War - O has no position on the war as such, but would very much like it to be over so that his parents stop dragging him on demos against it¹

Of all of the above, car seats are his number one policy concern. On being told he would have to go back into one and that it was because The Government said so, he uttered the immortal lines "I wish the government would f*ck off". Whereupon he was sent to his room for as long as it took for us to stop laughing and put our serious swearing-is-very-bad faces back on.


1. Poor kid is unaware that we can and will always find plenty of things to go on demos for/against

robbing Peter to pay the wool shop

Yarn buying is a necessity of life, much like book buying. This month I am skinter even than usual, as I have had to pay Mr Branson several hundred pounds I have not yet got back from work. But I'm not letting that stop me from buying yarn, even if it means shuffling money out of the paying-bills-joint-account before going shopping. Yesterday I got some horribly expensive but gorgeous Rowan aran silk to crochet a little bolero, to wear with my posh frock to a weddin, plus some normal wool to knit the sleevless jumper with vest that O wants. Also I have some recycled sari silk yarn on order, to make a bag for a leaving present for an friend.

My current crochet project is about half way through, and I really wish I'd taken it along to the cinema this afternoon, as I sat through Spiderman3 with O. There was probably just about enough light, and it would've passed the time. O loved every minute of course (except the soppy bits). So yes I am obsessed with crochet. I am behind with my studies and in danger of developing RSI but hey it makes me happy.

Actually I think my mood is lifting a bit, and I've got my 43 things routines going again, having let them slide for a while. I am doing small bursts of studying and am on top of my work. Even better, when work was getting all a bit much a couple of weeks ago, I managed to talk to my new boss about it before things went critical. Baby steps as ever.

Sunday afternoon

It's a lovely sunny day, but I am stuck inside with my microscope while O is outside doing magic tricks for bare chested lesbians.

all by myself

R & O have gone to Ireland for Easter. I elected not to go this year, so I could stay at home and catch up on my knitting studying. 10 days on my own with just two cats, one hamster and the TMS commentary team for company. It is very weird being in the house by myself over night, very weird indeeed.

reality gap

what I should have been doing:

working hard on my coursework and getting my assignments done

what I have actually been doing:

learning to crochet, crocheting coin belt, knitting fossils and socks. Although knitting ammonites and belemnites pretty much counts as doing geology, I think.

Oh and playing with my O's new hamster

a Russian Winter White Sapphire imaginatively named Snowy

Manic Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday ...

Sometimes I wonder if there is a tinge of mania mixed in with my madness; I don't know, is it possible to be a little bit bipolar? I do go through patches full of manic energy, lots of rushing about and always needing to be doing, like now I have taken up knitting again and I have to be knitting all the time, can't sit still can't just do nothing, need to knit and read and watch tv and surf t'internt all at the same time. And I am extremely techy and irritable, so much so that I look at the calendar and am surprised to find it's not 'that time'.

Oh well at least knitting is productive, I have finished O's tank top and he wants another one in red and orange; also I am going to knit something for R and a cardigan for myself but first I am going to teach myself to knit socks while goggling at tonight's tv-fest.

here's one I made earlier

Crafting is the new black, apparantly, all the kewl kids are doing it. I have finally got around to making something with some of the sea glass I pick up on beaches, I mosaiced around a mirror with it. Getting the grout on is far easier than cleaning it off afterwards.

I also want to learn to crochet. I can't quite believe I just said that, but I do, because the cardi I want to knit will need to be edged in crochet if it's going to look how I want. I'm two-thirds of the way up the back of O's tanktop already. Maybe knitting will keep me from eating, who knows?

None of which is getting my course work studied. My bad.

briefly

• Lost a bit last week and got back to my pre-London weight
• I need to give more priority to getting my exercise it, apart from the belly dancing it's slipping already
  
• Have decided to move my GTD weekly review day to Monday, I think it will work better for me
• I am at last doing my 29th thing - at the moment I have a sleeveless jumper (for O, black with white star on front) and a scarf (for me, thick wool in peaty colours) on the go

fat end of the wedge

All of the meedja are up in arms at this story, that a child could be taken into care because he weighs 14 stone¹. He's lost weight since Christmas so it doesn't seem to be Praeder-Willi syndrome. I do feel for the kid's mum but I also want to shout at her. The child is 8. He only gets to eat what adults give him to eat.

Ms McKeown, 35, told the BBC: "Connor had a mouthful of apple once and he didn't like it. a mouth full? once? he's hardly been encouraged to give them a go

"He refuses to eat fruit, vegetables and salads - he has I buy, prepare and give him processed foods.

"When Connor won't eat anything else, I've got to give him the foods he likes let him understand that that's all that's on offer and he can chose it eat it or not. Perhaps then he will try more than one mouthful of apple."

I know I'm not much of a one to lecture on healthy eating, but I have taken a strong "don't do as I do do as I tell you to" line with O. He doesn't have to clear his plate (urgh I hated that when I was a kid) but he does have to try a mouthful of everything and stay at the table till everyone's finished (it's amazing how often a plate pushed away as being disgusting ends up getting eaten), and he knows we're not going to make him something else if he doesn't eat it. Oh and there are apples in our house most days, also oranges pears bananas grapes persimmons plums apricots pomegranates etc etc, so eating them is not some exotic new experience, it's part of normal life. Now I know I've had it quite easy with O (a child who loves cabbage and brussel sprouts!²) and other parents with similar regimes struggle to get their kids to eat healthily, but that doesn't mean you have to indulge their every whim.

I suspect there's a lot more to this situation than we are being told, and that the child's weight may be a symptom of the reasons why social services are concerned, rather than the cause itself. The mum has free reign to present her side of things but social services are not so free to publish the detail of their concerns. Social workers are not all the pc witchhunt brigade they get painted as - although I might be biased as my mum was one. I'd like to discuss this case with her actually but her and me dad have galivanted off on a 5 week round the world ski-ing trip.



1. 14 stone = 196 lb = 98.9kg
2. Another reason to hate SunnyD is there 'no child is like Max Wild' ad campaign, based on the premise that normal kids don't like fresh fruit and veg so caring parents have to give them vitamins laced with sugar instead.

study Sunday (not)

Gah the weekend's nearly over and I still haven't done any studying yet. I am having one of those omg I can't do it gaaaah days or 3. The fact it's that time and that I've been forgetting to take my anti-loonie pills (unisex) and my anti-loonie pills (gurls only) won't be helping much. Or perhaps it is the my just desserts for failing to observe the sabbath.

Talking of dessert, there is a good chance we will be enjoying a delicious edible Devonian marine ecosystem in the near future (seen over on Pharyngula).






Ooh look, molecules

ging gang gooley

It seems to be deeply unhip to admit to liking scouts/guides. Most blogs I read or people I talk to, if the subject comes up they take delight in recounting how short a time they were members for, how much they hated it and, for bonus points, what heinous crime they got expelled for.

Me, I loved it. I was a Brownie and then a Guide for years. I loved the badges and the camping trips. OK so I'm not a big fan of some of B-Ps views and there's the god-business, but generally I think it's A Good Thing that organisations exist where young peeps can go and learn new things, meet new kids and new grown ups, find out a bit about responsibility, and maybe even have fun and a bit of an adventure along the way. Oh and YAY for the grown ups who give up their time to run things.

So I am happy that O has joined beavers. The pack/colony was recommended by friends and their Raskha says they can accommodated atheist beavers. Took him for his first meeting last night and it turned out they were having a sleepover, O wanted to stay and had a great time. He's a joiner-inner like me, I think he's going to like it there, so yah booh sucks to the kewl kids who turn their noses up, they don't know how much fun they're missing.

another week another gain

Blurgh inspite of my good intentions, a combination of London and TOTM has given me a gain of 3 lb this week. Oh well at least I will be mainly at home for the next few weeks so can get back to trying to learn how to eat like a normal person.

And Friday wouldn't be Friday without my GTD review. In some ways I find the weekly review the hardest part (well apart from actually doing the work) and am still playing around with how I do it. At the moment I

• make a cup of tea
• process anything outstanding in my in-tray
• pull out all my @action files and my project files, open up my email folders and 43things
• get out last week's project/review list
• look at my diary for the week/s ahead
• work through my paper & email folders, checking for things done and things outstanding
• synchronise my main diary (sunbird) with my paper diary and the family calendar
• list my ongoing projects and note the 'next action', highlighting the things I really need to move on in the coming week
• make sure the reminders are put in the proper place in the system - eg putting a bill in my tickler file so it 'pops up' when I need to pay it, noting it on a post-it and sticking it to the right list (eg calls)
  
• put all my folders away again
• have another cup of tea

One thing I know I need to work on is my longer term planning. I'm getting pretty good at next actioning stuff but many projects also needs some work on planning them out. That's something I'm going to work on this week.

And because I know how fascintating all this gtdness is, here are some photos to go with it:



More stationery news: I am currently in love with the Paperchase's stripey range.

because she's worth it

This year's winners of L'Oreal Unesco awards for women in science announced. Winners include:

• Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, University of Mauritius, Reduit; organic chemistry
• Margaret Brimble (left), University of Auckland, New Zealand; organic and medicinal chemistry
• Tatiana Birshtein, Russian Academy of Science, St Petersburg; macromolecular compounds
• Ligia Gargallo, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago; physical chemistry
• Mildred Dresselhaus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, US; electrical engineering and physics

Margaret Brimble's work involves the synthesis of biologically active molecules from natural products including shellfish toxins and algal blooms. She told Chemistry World that her work synthesising these 'beautiful molecules' was enormously satisfying and that she was surprised and delighted to receive the award, adding that she hoped it would stimulate added interest in science amongst young women in her home country.

be afraid

Fisherman have landed a colossal squid in Antarctica. I am stocking up on t-shirts. His squid brethren will be angered and I want to be in their good books when they come looking for him.



Is it heresy to suggest that their tentacles remind me of His Noodly Appendage? Are squid perhaps his earthly aquatic form? Is the future invertebrate?

my bad

oh dear. Today I had to go into town on some routine errands, remembered I still hadn’t spent my Xmas money from my parents so went to look for some boots. Ended up buying two pairs, these gorgeous turquoise ones at full price and some very cute brown suede ones in the sale.

And then I bought some books. Yeah cos what this house needs is more books sfxgroaningbookshelvessfx and especially now my geology courses are underway, I really need extra works of fiction to distract me.

See more progress on: buy less

all priests over-75 five a side indoor football contest

well nearly. Two of the Arran Islands are to have a five a side soccer¹ match to decide which is the real Craggy Island. John Aldridge seems a particularly fitting choice. May the best feckers win.

1. Yes they do call it 'soccer' in Ireland, as 'football' means Gaelic football.

procrastination central

because I have so much work and study to catch up on that I get all panicked when I think about starting, here's a nice picture of the last 25 books I read