The Alternative Anna

Just realised something

2009-12-09T04:24:00.000Z

Why do I start thinking people don't like me when I'm depressed?

Because I'm generally no fun - I:

Don't go out because it feels like too much effort
Don't talk much in group situations
Give the impression of constant boredom or inattention
Stop making small talk, asking people questions and generally interacting in a social way
Don't often smile, joke, tease, or flirt
Break promises
Forget I've agreed to do something or meet someone
Let other people fill the gaps in conversation (thus making talking to me hard work).

So I end up looking cold and serious and unapproachable and let's be honest, boring. Really can't blame people for not treating me in the same way they used to, because right now I'm not even the same person.

Just to let you know

2009-12-09T04:12:00.000Z

I'm still here.I haven't blogged in forever because really I don't think I have anything interesting to say.

Having depression again, you see.

Yes I'm on medication, and yes it's helping, but no I don't feel my usual self yet. I'm just supremely unimpressed by everything a lot of the time, and my sleep pattern's completely fucked despite regular attempts to de-fuck it (hence me still awake and posting at 4am).

I'm not trying to elicit sympathy, don't get me wrong. And I'm not even that bad really, mostly just like the shine's been taken off everything and nothing is fun and I can't be bothered with it all. I'm not cutting myself, or crying all the time (have only cried once actually), or in a black cloud of despair, or thinking that no-one really likes me and that they'd be happier if I wasn't around - which is a step up from my last "episode" - I'm just not really here.

We have a choir Christmas concert on Thursday, and I'm singing a solo quartet bit in one of the pieces (Britten's Hymn to the Virgin) which is a really nice piece. I really wanted to get the solo and I did. I'd expect to be happy about it, but somehow my brain thinks it's not even worth mentioning. I just want to go to sleep.

Good news

2009-06-17T21:33:00.000Z

My grandma went in to hospital last night, and had her operation today. It went well, and she's fine.

Thank goodness for that.

The scans and tests showed that the cancer hasn't spread. If they'd found it somewhere else, they wouldn't have operated on her at all, just given her chemo.

But yeah, it's as good as it could be, and she could be home at the weekend.

Thanks Royal Hallamshire Hospital.

Just a quick one

2009-05-18T21:54:00.003Z

My uncle died last Saturday, of cancer. I don't know much about it but he definitely had a tumour on his spine and cancer in other places too. I hadn't seen him for years but I remember him as a nice man, older than my dad - the type who'd do anything for you, too kind for his own good sometimes.

My grandma found out last week that she has womb cancer. And the tests she had today confirmed that she has an aggressive tumour which may spread. It may have already spread. And she's 70 and has heart disease so it might be too risky to operate - we'll find out more when she has an ECG next Tuesday. She's already said that if it's spread she doesn't want the operation.

I'm not letting myself get upset, not unless the next lot of tests/scans say that it's inoperable, or that the op would be too risky. That sounds very cold-hearted - obviously I am upset, but I can't make things any better by crying and letting it get to me so I'm choosing to deal with the potential situation as and when. Can't say I'm massively optimistic though. I don't know what to think.

And my grandad's not long since had an op to remove his prostate cancer.

Understandably I'm now somewhat concerned that a new mole has appeared on my hand.

Can it stop please?

Sorry

2009-04-27T12:06:00.000Z

I am feeling better than the last time I posted - I got a dawn simulator alarm clock which gradually turns a bright light on in the morning, and that helps.

I'm now in a pretty sensible rhythm of sleeping at 12pm and getting up between 8 and 9am. But of course now I feel better I seem to spend my time doing stuff because I can, and it just doesn't occur to me to blog.

And even though I'm busy, I don't feel I have much to blog about because it isn't very interesting. (Although saying that, we're working on the garden right now and the progress might make some good posts).

Hopefully i be inspired soon because I do like blogging and I love connecting with other bloggers.

Got a concert on Wednesday. I'm doing a small solo. Wish me luck.

Lazy

2009-02-04T20:05:00.003Z

Yeah, I really am.

I don't know where all the time goes though. I haven't done any clay/jewellery stuff for weeks, I have loads of actual work to do but I can't motivate myself to even start it. I've done a little knitting, but other than that... no idea where all that time went, or what I did with it.

I hate being in a rut like this, it's just so hard to get out of it and once I do I slip back so quickly.

Being in "nocturnal mode" as usual isn't helping.

I'm sick of it. And I'm also sick of the fact that every so often I post on here saying I'm sick of it and need to change, which serves no actual purpose because a few weeks later I'm in the same situation.

I'm really seriously thinking that I'm just never going to be able to live a "normal" life and have a proper job. I'm just not up to it, which is worrying.

At last...

2009-01-29T16:09:00.040Z

How has it been two months since I last blogged?

Guess I'm out of the habit now, which is poor.Oh well, I'll try to get back into it by posting "The Last Two Months in Brief", not necessarily in order).

Carol singing was fun.
Christmas was nice, parents spent too much on me as usual and I got some great polymer clay books. I made jewellery for my mum, grandma, and Michael's mum, and they seemed to like it.
Spent entirely too much time playing a series of great games on my DS.
Had family round for Boxing Day, then got ill afterwards (cold or 'flu or something). Ill enough to just sit around not doing much for two weeks, but not ill enough to stay in bed.
My grandad had an operation to remove his prostate cancer, and he's doing fine. Although my whole family neglected to tell me about it and the first I heard was my grandma phoning a week afterwards asking why I didn't send him a get-well card.
After neglecting my work for weeks, I had to work like a bastard to complete the software manual I was recording. My throat didn't like that much. Talking for 4 hours straight = pain. I need to develop vocal stamina.
My lovely Summerdog developed pyometra (womb infection) and had an emergency spay on Tuesday. She's doing incredibly well, and is already almost back to her usual self. Poor doggy must have felt awful with a huge swollen womb full of pus. I'm trying not to feel guilty that I didn't get her spayed when she was younger, although I was never keen on an "unnecessary" operation, especially as it's much more invasive for a bitch. But a pyo spay is a much bigger operation with higher risks. She can have lead exercise starting tomorrow, but can't free run for a couple of weeks.
Since the vet tells me that Summer is 10 kilos overweight, I'm putting her on a diet. This involves me actually cooking stuff for her - if I cook I know exactly the proportions of protein, carbs and fat she's eating - and mixing it with a little of her normal dried food. Tonight she had chicken, broccoli, carrots, courgette, egg, and brown pasta with a little garlic, which she absolutely loved. I kind of feel like we could lose weight and get fitter together. I know we could both do with more exercise when she's recovered.

Think that's probably about it. Haven't done anything very exciting really.

Sparkly pretty things

2008-12-01T01:37:00.004Z

Finally got round to adding some new jewellery to Etsy.

I have more to add, but I haven't taken pictures of them yet.

I'm actually quite pleased with the way I'm progressing as a jewellery artist. The owner of the lovely bead shop in tow n has been asking me to take some polymer clay beads in to show her for a while now, and when I actually managed to remember to do it she seemed very impressed. In fact she wants me to run a bead-making class! How exciting!

I can definitely see the improvement in my work since I started back in August.

Unfortunately I haven't sold all that much yet. I'm blaming this on my lack of business skills, having never run a business before. Anyone have any tips on marketing and such? I've been thinking about doing a jewellery blog showing each piece as I make it, the stages I go through, etc. - any other ideas?

More on the charity single

2008-11-28T12:57:00.000Z

Check us out here! There's even a video where you can see me in all my curly-brown-hair-and-glasses-standing-next-to-the-blonde-soloist glory if you're paying attention.

And now my hair is much darker, with some red though the top of it.

Right, now I'm off to finish my wings for tonight. They will look awesome.

Something interesting at last

2008-11-26T20:21:00.003Z

Spent this morning doing something pretty cool and exciting.

Recording a charity single!

I'd explain it but I can't be bothered, so just read this article instead.

Tomorrow I'm having my hair coloured (probably red, but haven't decided yet).

And Friday I'm out with some of the girls from choir. We'll all be dressed as fairies.

And I now have a new little studio/workshop as I've taken over our tiny third bedroom with my polymer clay/jewellery stuff, which means we can actually use the kitchen table again. Yay!

Well it's not as boring as last week, anyway...

Body, don't do this to me

2008-11-24T01:15:00.000Z

Been feeling rubbish the past 10 days or so.

Pretty much the usual I guess, tired, everything too much effort, not getting anything done, not feeling like doing even fun stuff, not sleeping, not taking care of myself (which I'll admit, usually means not showering/cleaning teeth as often as is necessary, and can also mean eating rubbish or not eating enough), not wanting to see people or talk to them, being very boring, and generally wandering round like a zombie.

I missed three rehearsals in as many days simply because I couldn't face the thought of dealing with public transport, being sociable, sight-reading and then more public transport. Not to mention the almost impossible tasks of showering, washing hair, removing unnecessary hair from face (what's the deal with that anyway? Hormones, what the hell did I ever do to you?), choosing what to wear, and organising the myriad of bits and pieces that I can't leave the house without nowadays (pencils, water bottle, sheet music, snack, diary (which I don't even use) notebook, and occasionally knitting).

And that's not like me, I never miss rehearsal no matter how crap I feel. It's always been like the one thing I can keep up with no matter what. But not now, apparently.

There have been a couple of times this week when I've been feeling miserable and thought, "Hey, I know this feeling... I DO NOT want to be depressed again thank you very much". It's not like wanting-to-cry-all-the-time depression, or a feeling-like-I-want-to-die-but-being-too-exhausted-to-actually-go-through-with-suicide depression (been through both and neither are fun), it's just ordinary run-of-the-mill I-can't-do-this-anymore-continually-unhappy-for-no-obvious-reason depression.

And yeah, I'm feeling sorry for myself.

And why on earth have my eyelids suddenly turned against me? I wake up every morning with sore eyes because my blepharitis is back - sometimes my eyelids are actually stuck together. And the creases of both lids have sore flakey itchy patches of what I think is seborrhoeic dermatitis. It's driving me crazy. It's been bad enough to crack and break the skin and make closing my eyes difficult (it's improved since then). You know your eyes are really sore when even baby shampoo stings (washing the eyelids with diluted baby shampoo is the usual treatment). I don't wear makeup often but since I can't right now, I want to, dammit.

Plus my ears as well as the skin behind them right into my hair, and to a lesser extent the whole of my scalp, are all flakey and horrible. If I scratch, it weeps and then crusts over. Not pretty.

Is it the weather (miserable)? Or just generally feeling run down? Or am I reacting to a load of evil chemicals in the environment or something?

Damn. I need to think of something fun to do, quick.

Ouch

2008-11-09T18:05:00.000Z

Concert went well, we sounded good.

Pete's advice about singing high notes worked, because the high Fs in Messe Basse didn't bother me (and I usually crack or squeak a bit). But working really hard in rehearsal on Thursday, singing for two hours (or something like that) at Meadowhall on Friday, then rehearsing hard all afternoon Saturday was obviously pushing it a bit when my throat hasn't been right all week, because by the time we moved onto the Requiem I was having problems.

The third movement, Dies Irae, is fairly loud and shouty and it was at that point I felt my voice going wrong. Most of my low notes were fine. The high notes were a bit strained, but okay. Middle range? Rubbish.

For those of you who aren't singers, you basically have two parts to the voice: head voice, and chest voice (there are other ones, but those two are the main ones). I'm not going to expain properly what they are, but on the higher notes you use head voice, and the lower ones you use chest voice. If you sing up or down a scale you'll find your voice "breaks" at a certain point as you change over from one voice to another (for me this is around the B above middle C, which is pretty normal for an alto - a soprano has a higher break). As you train your voice you learn how to blend the two voices together over these notes to hide the break - so as I sing upwards and approach the B I can gradually increase the proportion of head to chest so by the time I get to the D I'm pretty much completely using head voice. Make sense?

So what happened to me was, I lost the ability to blend. My sweet(ish) choirgirly high notes were fine, and my rich low notes were fine, but if I sang upwards I'd crack, and if I sang downwards I'd go all quiet and breathy. Which was pretty useless since the majority of the Requiem's in my middle range. Oh well.

And I woke up this morning with a really sore throat - hurt to talk and swallow, and my tonsils are swollen.

So I've avoided talking as much as possible, and tried to drink lots. I have a rehearsal tomorrow, and I'll probably end up sitting there and not singing because I don't want to damage my voice any more.

I'm actually scared stiff of getting vocal fold nodules and not being able to sing for a long time. Better to rest now I think, rather than lose my voice altogether. Hopefully I'll be all recovered soon.

Concert!!!

2008-11-08T10:06:00.003Z

Mozart Requiem tonight. Should be good.

And we sang carols at Meadowhall yesterday, for their turning-on-Christmas-lights thing.

And I was amused to be pretty much the only girl there who wasn't all excited to see Vernon Kay, who pushed the lights-on-button. They think he's gorgeous, and of course he's famous(ish), but I just find him a bit annoying.

And we were on the local news.

But it's still too early for Christmas carols - it's not even my birthday yet!

Typical

2008-11-04T21:15:00.000Z

I'm having unmistakable symptoms which signal the beginning of a sore throat, possibly with accompanying cold:

Difficulty swallowing
Headache
Aching eyes
More than the usual muscle pain/discomfort
"Tight" feeling in the neck/throat
Sleeping more than usual/tiredness
Difficulty concentrating/thinking/remembering anything
Pain on high notes

Which is just what I need when I have a concert on Saturday.

If you're around on Saturday evening you should come along - Mozart's Requiem and Faurés Messe Basse and Cantique de Jean Racine (all of which I like). 7.30pm, Firth Hall, Western Bank, Sheffield. Should be fun.

I must be ill. It's 9.30 and I want to go to bed - that's very much not normal.

You know, I learned something yesterday

2008-11-02T15:56:00.003Z

Went to a singing workshop yesterday, run by my conductor Pete and our accompanist Robert, both of whom are singing teachers as well as conductors.
The first half was Pete teaching us how to breathe, warm up, etc. (most of which I already knew but always useful to be reminded), how to sing with different parts of the voice, how to sing louder, and most importantly of all for me, how to sing high notes without that horrible closed up squeaky nasy-sounding effect I usually get on anything higher than a top F (and sometimes get on lower notes than that).

Sometimes I do high notes quite well. There are times in rehearsal when we're warming up by singing scales which get successively higher, and I can manage to keep up with the sopranos almost all the way. I mean it doesn't sound nice, but I can do it.

But with the tips and techniques Pete gave us, I reckon I've added a whole lot of notes to the top of my range, which still sound good - and it was easy. Apparently it's always been there, I just didn't know how to do it before. Watch out sopranos! I might test myself later and see how high I can actually get, because it's always good to know.

Oh and I added a tone to the bottom of my usual range as well, but I don't know how I did that. Now I can sing almost all the notes in the tenor range (I can sing down to a low E, and the bottom of the tenor range is a D), and I've reached my actual physical limit. Cool.

The second part was Robert teaching us sight-reading, with a lot of useful short-cut type techniques. Now when I joined SingSoc 3 years ago I was awful at it, but I've definitely improved a lot since I joined (particularly when a certain alto who always got everything perfect left and I could no longer just listen to her and sing what she was singing).

I think my main problem in the past has been over-reliance on my ear, which has always been very good. I always learned everything by ear because I could - however in a choir you often don't get anything played to you unless you get it horribly wrong.

We went thought loads of exercises yesterday, of the type you get when you take instrument/voice exams at Grade 4 and above. The first ones I didn't find too tricky because they were just pitching notes - this gave me confidence because I thought I'd struggle.

I did struggle on the next bit though, when we moved onto actual pieces of music - I had trouble with doing pitching and rhythm at the same time. I blame it on being tired after all that work though, because I usually manage better than that with more difficult music. I'll try the exercises at home and see how I do when I'm not exhaused

In general, I feel much more confident. I mostly held my own with people who had much more musical experience and knowledge than me (if not singing experience) which means I'm better than I think I am.

And I also learned something important about sight-reading - I perform much better when I relax a bit, and stop working so hard. There's a part of my brain that knows all this stuff fairly well, and I should just stop thinking so hard and let that bit do the work for me.

More on the synesthesia thing

2008-10-31T02:10:00.004Z

So I've been thinking about this some more tonight, especially as a friend of mine told me she's read my last post and that she has coloured numbers.

I was discussing the number form/coloured numbers thing with Michael when I came home (he has a day form too, and an alphabet form) and realised that there are some numbers and letters which have an associated colour in my head. I didn't know I did this.

It isn't at all strong, and I don't "see" the colours in the way that I "see" the positions of days - I just have a "feeling" that certain colours go with certain numbers and letters. I don't feel uncomfortable if those letters/numbers are printed in the wrong colour, but if I was to choose colours for them to be printed in, I'd tend to pick the same ones every time. I can easily ignore it since it isn't that strong.

A is red. C is yellow, D is green. F is purple. G is brown. H is green. M is dark blue. Lower case n is green, but upper case N doesn't have a colour. S is white.

1 is white. 2 and 3 don't have colours. 4 is dark red, 5 is a mid blue. 6 is pinkish purple, 7 is green, 8 is blue (but a lighter blue than 5), 9 is pink. Bigger numbers don't have colours either, but the digits that make them usually do. (The colours I've used here aren't the exact shades by the way, just the closest ones I could find on the text palette).

Some musical notes have colour as well. It's not the actual pitch that gives it colour (they don't change colour if someone plays the music in a different key or whatever), just the position on the staff. Some correspond to the colours of their letter, like the yellow C. But some are different, like the D under the staff (brown).

Interestingly the E on the bottom line is blue, but the E on the top space is white. A is red like the letter, but the As above and below the staff (not shown) aren't coloured. The F way below the staff (the lowest note an alto can reasonably be asked to sing) is dark green, the F in the bottom space much lighter mint green and the top line F isn't coloured. The higher D (second line from the top) is dark purple.

Weird, isn't it?

The shape of time

2008-10-30T16:25:00.000Z

Well I said I'd draw my day and month forms, so here they are.

Apologies for the poor quality, i used my new digital pen and I haven't had chance to play with the software much yet.

The colour of my life at the moment...

2008-10-30T01:20:00.000Z

... is red.

I've been trying hard to find a particular yarn for a custom order. One of my return customers wants four knitted hedgehogs made in "Santa" colours - a bright scarlet red with white.

Now I have probably 6 or 7 hedgehog-friendly yarns in red, but all bar one tend towards crimson and more purple kinds of red. Typical. Actually it's probably that way because I prefer purple to orange, so I've picked out reds that reflect that.

I'm also making red beads at the moment, because I've sensed an opportunity to sell jewellery to the girls in Ladies' Choir. We wear black in concerts, and try to wear red jewellery. Several people have mentioned that they don't have anything red - so that's where I come in! I have three necklaces ready so far, hopefully should get a load more done over the next few days.

Bear with me - this seems irrelevant but it's not. Sometimes I look up something on Wikipedia, and while I'm reading the article I'll open up links that interest me in other tabs. When I finish the article I close the tab, and move onto the next tab, and do the same thing. It's kind of like surfing, except I end up in loads of different places at once. Often I just mean to look up a couple of subjects, and end up spending hours reading page after page - I call it "falling into a Wiki Hole" (see also Wookey Hole - nothing to do with Star Wars - and K-hole).

I fell into one when looking up the word red, just to check out if there were other good words I could use.

Somehow that lead me to the page on virginity, but that's not what I wanted to talk about.

While on the synesthesia page, I made a not-really-very-surprising discovery. I have a form of synesthesia. I'm not going to explain what synesthesia is, follow the link!

I have number form synesthesia, specifically for days of the week and months of the year - each day or month has a position on a circle for me.

Days follow this pattern: the week forms an oval shape, wider than it is tall. Wednesday is exactly at the bottom of the oval, Saturday and Sunday at the top. The days run anti-clockwise so Monday is on the left and Friday on the right, and the weekdays are closer to each other than they are to the weekend.

Strangely, the months run clockwise, unlike the days. The year is a circle, not an oval, but the months are unevenly spaced. December is at 9 o'clock, April at 12 o'clock. July is 3 o'clock and 6 o'clock sits just between October and November. And for some reason, I can't help by think of December as the start of the cycle (it's in the same position as Monday).

Maybe I'll draw my day/month forms so you can see more clearly what I mean.

If I know that Tuesday is the 13th for example, and want to count forwards so many days, I see the oval in my head as I count, and the numbers fit into the form in the right positions for the days. if that makes any sense.

I discussed this with my mum fairly recently, and was surprised to find out that she has the same thing, except her days and months both run clockwise and Monday and January are at the top. Whick is kind of logical, because she's reflecting the clock face.

Anyone else experience this? Or something similar?

The non-sexual crush

2008-10-27T02:23:00.000Z

So I sort of have a bit of a crush on someone.

Someone I'm not sexually attracted to at all.

It's a sort of wanting to impress them, being more interested in whatever they're talking about than you usually would be, being more aware of them than others in the room, caring what they think of you kind of deal, rather than wanting to sleep with them.

It's weird.

I've noticed that when this happens to me (not that it happens very often, not since my teenage years), it's usually a woman that's the recipient.

Now I am sexually attracted to women as well as men, but don't identify as bisexual mostly because I'm not interested in romantic/sexual relationships with women - in general they are just too complicated, with all that expecting you to be a mind reader and saying one thing and meaning another and insecurities that you get so often. Note that I'm not dissing women at all here, neither am I saying that all women are like that. Those that are? It's a social conditioning thing. But I digress. Plus, penis = good.

So anyway. This crush is a man. I've known him for a while, although I don't know him very well.

I've been trying to figure out what it is I like about him, and what he has in common with my previous crushes - and I've come up with a little "crush wishlist".

1) Funny. Makes me laugh, in a clever not-just-endless-fart/penis-jokes kind of way. Which also leads to...
2) Clever. But not obviously cleverer than me. Not that I've administered IQ tests - he could very well be more intelligent than me but he doesn't act it, and that's the bit that matters. Clever enough to be intellectually stimulating, but not clever enough to be threatening or make me feel stupid.
3) Slightly vulnerable. Guess that's the maternal side I haven't got coming out.

This probably explains my little list of People I Don't Fancy But Would Still Sleep With, which notably includes Alan Davies, Bill Bailey, Billy Connelly, Rich Hall, and Jennifer Saunders. Okay, so I do sort of fancy Jennifer Saunders, but not enough to discount her from this list.

What is it about funny people? I don't get it.

Well surprise, surprise. Blogger's being a twat again.

2008-10-15T21:03:00.000Z

Bastards....

I've been trying to comment, on my OWN BLOG, so I can reply to the comment's I've gotten recently.

Apparently that's just asking too much.

Despite being logged in, my blog looks like I'm not, i.e. it says "sign in" or "create blog" at the top rather than "new post" or similar. When I click to sign in, I go straight to my dashboard, which I'm signed in to. But if I try to comment, the page just refreshes and my comment vanishes.

Pippa says the she's having trouble commenting here as well, so it's not just me.

So you were going to get actual content, but instead you get yet another moan. For which you can thank fucking Blogger.

And I'm out.

You'll be pleased to hear...

2008-10-09T23:25:00.000Z

... that I've accepted the support job.

It will actually be more like 15 hours a week but as Sarah says, some weeks it will be 8, some closer to 20. Depends what she needs at the time.

So, I have basically two choices regarding uni - if I can persuade them to let me back in a part-time flexible kind of way.

Either I work part time and study part time (can possibly manage that), or I take the year off from studying and just work for Sarah, then reconsider next year.

If the job works out for both of us, I could potentially do it for 3 years (the length of Sarah's PhD) - I've told her I'm definitely available for at least one year.

Just realised that I actually have a third option - if uni insists that they can't make adjustments for me (and if it turns out that they can do that legally), I could study by myself this year. Although it wouldn't actually count for anything, then I could lie to my doctor to get them to provide me an "I'm all better" note and go back full-time next year having already got most of the material under my belt, and just spend the year revising and doing essays and exams and practical work. Much easier.

So yeah, a lot of stuff to think about.

I'm waiting to hear back from the Disabled and Dyslexic Students department anyway, see what they have to say about the uni thing.

And on a completely unrelated note, tomorrow I will finally reveal the mystery bird! So this is your last opportunity to guess...

To make things slightly more complicated...

2008-10-07T20:00:00.000Z

... I've just been offered a part-time job.

Which sounds really good.

Basically it would involve me being a PA for my friend Sarah, who's doing a PhD in speech therapy or linguistics or similar (I forget the exact details), and who's completely blind. I'd be her reader, recording printed text onto CD, and assist with things like references from printed books. Also as her guide when she goes to conferences and such (she has a guide dog but the dog doesn't help when Sarah's in an unfamiliar place - you can't ask a dog to tell you where a particular room is for example). And I'd format her written work on the computer, making sure that tables were the right size for the page, stuff like that.

I'd be trained in the International Phonetic Alphabet which is used a lot in linguistics, and how to use the recording equipment, and how to make the various vocal sounds which aren't used in English. (Very useful for singing actually, since we sing a lot in different languages.)

Hours would vary week by week, but would average maybe 6-10 with most of it being done at home, so I could work at 3am if I wanted to.

Since I have an interest in linguistics and the work's flexible and I already get on well with Sarah, it would suit me pretty well. And I should be able to cope, it's not like a massive workload or anything.

As to how this would fit in to studying, I'm not sure.

Plan at the moment is to contact the Disabled and Dyslexic Students department at university and see if they can help me at all with tackling the Psychology department. Because I still think that they have a legal requirement to give me a bit more than "sorry, we can't help".

I'm so not happy. In fact I'm downright pissed off.

2008-10-07T15:43:00.001Z

I emailed my university department today, explaining the difficulties I've been having with the fibro, and saying that I didn't think I'd be able to cope with going back to uni full time.

The reply I got was pretty much, "Sorry you're ill, unfortunately we can't offer part-time study, try Open University - you can't come back until you get a medical certificate saying you're well enough to do the course".

Now I know I'm pissed off right now and probably not thinking straight, but surely that's discrimination?

Don't they have to make "reasonable adjustments" to make sure I'm not disadvantaged compared with other students, since the problems I'm having all come from my disability*?

Which won't go away?

Would it be unreasonable for them to allow me to work at my own pace, provide me with copies of lecture notes and allow me to access actual lectures from home (via web cam or video recordings for example)? To give me extensions on essays? To give me just a little bit of fucking support?

Needless to say, I'm tired and I don't know what to do.

* I still can't quite think of myself as disabled. Although I am. Disabled to me is using a wheelchair or crutches, or having dyslexia, or being blind or partially sighted, or something of that magnitude. I don't look disabled and I don't have specific impairments that are obvious to people - maybe it's because I don't have a "traditional" disability that I have such difficulty in self-identifying as disabled. Or "person with disabilities", since I'm all for the person-centred label.

First jewellery sale!

2008-09-27T13:01:00.001Z

Michael took a couple of pieces (heart pendant and earrings) to work with him on Friday to show some of his colleagues. And he sold them!

And the lady wants a matching bracelet!

And another lady has commissioned a pendant "to wear on holiday". I'm going to be sneaky and make matching earrings and bracelet as well, because I'm pretty sure she'll buy them too. Because I'm awesome. :)

I'm off out tonight, Charlotte's 21st birthday party. Should be fun...

A house guest

2008-09-24T04:42:00.000Z

So I'm in the dining room making polyclay beads a little while ago (I know, it's really late, but my sleep is fucked up still), when I spot something out of the corner of my eye, in the kitchen. Not that my eye was in the kitchen, the thing I saw was.

Anyway, in front of the sink cupboard was a mouse. A pretty big, healthy-looking one. It had a look around. It sniffed the air. Then it disappeared, presumably under the sink cupboard.

So I got up and grabbed our multi-mouse no-kill trap from upstairs, baited it with peanut butter (that got Summer's attention), and set it on the floor by the sink. And went back to the beads.

A little while later the mouse (well could have been a different one I guess, it was a mouse anyway) strolled on past my chair, along the wall. Behind the rabbit's cage and round the other side back towards me. I tried not to move, because despite not really wanting mice in my house, I'm interested in how they behave. I often spend time watching them eat the food I put out for the birds. Cute little things, but destructive and rather unhygienic. Rather like children.

Anyway. This mouse either didn't clock me, or just didn't care that I was there - it practically ran over my foot at one point. Then it headed out into the hallway and I lost it.

Presumbably it went into the understairs cupboard.

Which is an absolute tip.

It's full of the vacuum cleaner, tools that are so essential that they don't live in the garage (like the big torch), dry dog food, dry cat food (for Basil the hedgehog), rabbit food and wild bird food. All in open bags. The little mouse must be having a field day in there!

Annoyingly this means I now have to clear out that cupboard and buy storage containers for the food and probably throw a lot of it away because it will be contaminated with mouse doings. Because mice are continuously urinating.

There must be a market for incontinance pads for mice.

Typical, when I have stuff I really need to do tomorrow, I've got to deal with the black hole under the stairs which may now be home to countless mice and spiders (not that I mind either, but still...) and possibly a small third-world country. When i should be making cute little cakes with glitter to take to the Activities Fair on Thursday, so we can bribe freshers into joining SingSoc.

That and doing something which I can't tell you about til Sunday.

Oh and while I'm here, are there any birders who want to play Guess Which Completely Unexpected Bird Turned Up In My Garden Last Week Which Isn't A Garden Bird And I Think Must Have Been Having A Rest During The Start Of Its Migration - before I post pictures of it?

Hell, non-birders can play too if the want!

You may have noticed...

2008-09-21T03:31:00.002Z

... stars! At the bottom of my posts! So you can give me feedback!

I noticed that Blogger have just made this feature available and I liked the look of it. However I've found a better one... with customisable colour and size and a widget which tells you which are your top posts (since no-one's rated me as I write this, it isn't showing up, but eventually you'll see it in my right sidebar as "Stuff you like").

Have a play! But remember that once you've rated a post, you can't change your mind or rate it again, unlike the official Blogger one.

What's annoying me today? Why, it's Blogger!

2008-09-21T01:08:00.000Z

I decided to create a blog to go with my Etsy shop, a sort of "this is how I made this" kind of deal. So I thought it would be a good idea to keep it separate from this blog, because it's probably not good for business for customers to be able to get from shop blog to here (via my profile), where I rant and swear and express opinions and generally behave unprofessionally.

I sign up for a new Blogger account for the new blog. I create a new blog, silverleafshinystuff.blogspot.com. Matches the url of the Etsy shop, yeah? Easy to remember.

All is good. But as soon as I create the blog, I realise that I'm signed in with my old account. No problem, I think. I'll just delete it, and re-create it with my new account.

But apparently things just don't work like that. Once a blog is deleted, that url becomes unavailable for other accounts, so I can't claim the address I wanted.

At this point I check out the help files, which say I should be able to recreate the blog using the original account and go through a process (which I won't bore you with) to transfer ownership to my new account - but it doesn't work. silverleafshinystuff.blogspot.com remains unavailable, whichever account I try it with.

The help forum is littered with others who have had the same sort of problem, mostly who've deleted blogs accidentally and want them back. Some seem to attract the attention of an admin-y Blogger employee type who had flicks a switch somewhere and gives them their blog back. Others get ignored. I don't know why.

And Blogger's help system is impressively frustrating and circular. You end up trying the whole process again, ticking different boxes in the hope that eventually you'll get to a form you can fill in and send off, rather than being cycled back to the forum or help files. Guess they make it difficult deliberately to stop lazy/stupid people from asking Blogger to fix their tiny little problems that they could easily deal with themselves, but it does make it very annoying for those of us who know what needs to be done but can't do it ourselves and just need to basically tell someone what the problem is.

I've now filled in three different forms, and emailed twice over the last couple of weeks. Absolutely no response. Not even a standard "We're busy and can't deal with you now, but we have your email and we'll get onto it as soon as we can" response. I have no idea if they've even got my messages.

It's just not good enough. Surely they must have enough employees for someone to compose a form email which gets sent out to everyone who mails support@blogger.com?

I want to print business cards, and promote my shop. But I can't do that until I know what url I'll be using for the blog, and I won't know that until Blogger contact me.

I'm actually considering creating it on Wordpress or similar instead - I just don't want to do that because I'm used to Blogger and I'm lazy and I know where all the buttons are here. It's comfortable. And I'm too cheap to get a custom domain.

Come on Blogger, sort it out! I have potential customers I need to hassle!

Know what else is annoying?

2008-09-15T03:11:00.003Z

Because being annoyed is my theme at the moment...

Clichés.

Seems no-one can open their mouth recently (especially on TV) without spouting a whole load of tired old phrases that have been so over-used they've lost all meaning. They might as well have said nothing at all.

Just a few examples: I'm over the moon, it's a dream come true, I'm doing this [i.e. trying to win a competition/sporting event] for my kids/mother who brought us 12 kids up single-handedly, it means the world to me, we'll just see what happens, at the end of the day, I gave it my best, if X happened it would just change my life.

Can't people be just a little bit imaginative??

Michael's often said that if you use a word/phrase (he's referring to swearing in particular, but the point still stands) all the time it loses power. Like if everyone said "fuck" in every sentence it would stop being offensive. I don't 100% agree with him, but in general he's right. New language please.

And while I'm on the subject of 100%...

Evidently when people trot out their clichéd phrases, they also lose the ability to understand basic maths.

I'm so sick of hearing "I'm going to give it 110%!"

Er, excuse me? You mean 110% of your effort/time/strength? I think you're misunderstanding a basic fact here.

100% is EVERYTHING. All of the money in your purse is 100%. Every book in your house would be 100%. And every last drop of effort you possess is, guess what, 100%!

Perhaps people get confused when they hear that, as a made-up example, the price of oil has risen 200%. This just means that the original price has tripled - and all of the new price is still 100%. Because percentages are relative, not absolute.

All this is quite apart from the fact that if you actually managed to put 100% of your total energy into some insignificant sporting event, you'd drop dead - because you'd have used up all your body's reserves (including that stored as muscle and organs). There would be no oxygen or glucose available for your brain (if the brain had mysteriously managed to not be converted into energy, that is).

You often see people on shows like Gladiators (okay, I know, if I watch Gladiators I deserve what I get - but I kinda like it) who are understandably very tired after they've finished whatever the last big challenge is. And they say things like, "Well, I did my best, I couldn't have done any more, I gave everything", but if their baby son was trapped in a burning building and they were the only one that could save them, they'd somehow find a bit more speed, be able to run a little further.

Apparently I'm also a maths Nazi.

Tune in next time, when I rant about how people completely fail to understand probability!

Or maybe I'll post pics of my garden and a recipe or two. Vote now!!

Don't buy Spore

2008-09-12T05:39:00.003Z

Because it's eaten my life in the 3 days I've had it.

Dangerous game. It's quarter to seven in the morning, and I haven't gone to bed yet, because "I'll just finish this bit..." then "Wow, how cool! I'll just have a look at this other bit..."

Damn my lack of willpower.

Not quite so crappy

2008-09-03T20:44:00.003Z

Okay, I'm better than I was. Not so tired, and I've actually been able to make beads rather than just moping around. I'm considering a "how I made these" sort of blog. Wonder if anyone would be interested?

So anyway. I'm currently being wound up by bad English/grammar/punctuation. Not that mine's 100% perfect, but I'm pretty good generally*. It's not that difficult, surely.

Adverbs. When a descriptive word is applied to an action word (verb), almost all of the time it ends in LY. Like a person is graceful, and moves gracefully. Cold wind, wind blows coldly. Can someone please explain this simple rule to Tempest from the new Gladiators, who said on at least 4 occasions the other night, "She did amazing." By the second time I was actually talking to the television.

"LY! AmazingLY! It's an adverb, you silly woman!" or words to that effect.

Misuse of the reflexive. I'm so so sick of hearing, "I spoke to yourself last week", by people who are obviously trying to be polite and don't realise that the word you is perfectly polite, and in fact correct. Similarly, "Who's in charge of this department?" "That would be myself." You use the reflexive when someone's doing something to themselves, i.e. they are both subject and object of the sentence. Such as "I'm proud of myself" or "She accidentally hit herself with a hammer".

And for this next one I blame Facebook. Over the last few months a lot of people I used to know at school have friended* me. Fine. And like a foolish person who doesn't check out Facebook more than a couple of times a week, I subscribe to the feed of my friends' status updates and read it in Bloglines along with all the blogs I like, so I don't miss something important.

Which means I'm getting stuff like this:

"*Insert name here* is guin 2 sheff 2mrw 2 spend sum money"

Not even going to comment. But this kind of thing didn't happen when Facebook was just students, let me tell you. I was going to trawl around and fine a few others for you to enjoy/laugh at/cry over/fail to read at all, but in the end it was just too annoying.

And old school friends (in general)... aren't they DULL?

* I know my writing style isn't textbook, but that's for effect. Not sure what effect, admittedly. Like when I start a sentence with a conjunction such as but or and - I know it isn't correct but I like to do it anyway. I'm a rebel like that.

And I also miss out punctuation because i'm lazy. Like the comma that should come before a set of quotation marks in some sentences. He said, "I is crap at grammar."

*As far as I'm concerned, friend is now also a verb...

Can I have my brain back please Mister?

2008-09-01T20:20:00.004Z

You know, I haven't been feeling right for weeks now. Months, if I'm honest.

Actually scratch that. For the past maybe 12 years I haven't been completely well - sure there have been periods which can last months where I'm pretty much functional, but there have also been times where I've been in a fair bit of physical pain, exhausted, miserable, clinically depressed, unable to do anything, and (for a rather, er, interesting month or so) actually wanting to die (which I don't refer to as "suicidal", but only because I didn't have the energy to even consider how I'd go about it).

But mostly I'm not at either extreme.

I've definitely posted about this sort of thing before. I'm pretty much "out of it". I don't much care, everything's too much effort. I'm tired. I mean, really tired. I can't think about more than maybe two easy things at once - so knowing that I have to mail something today and that I haven't watered the greenhouse yet takes all my available brainpower and I can't do anything else. Anything that involves multiple steps or processes just isn't possible right now.

As an example, Michael's just come in as I was writing this. He asked how I was. It took me a good 15 seconds to work out an appropriate way to respond (and it was only "Mmmmfffh" in the end).

Feels like I'm running on fumes, when I never had a very big petrol tank to begin with. Guess my fuel economy's gone to shit. And now I have to stop with the car metaphor because I just don't have the mental capacity to follow through with it.

I really hate being stupid, because I'm not. I have an IQ of 138* and I've pretty much aced every exam I've bothered to work for (and some I haven't). I'm sick of being this pathetic shadow of myself that just sits around all day not being able to do anything fun or useful, who can't remember to shower or clean her teeth, who doesn't answer the phone in case she has to make conversation with someone or they ask her to do something.

You know what? I'm fucking sick of it.

And even worse, I have no idea what to do about it.**

There has to be some way out of this. Because if there isn't, I'm really fucked. I can't live like this.

* I don't believe that IQ is an really accurate measure of actual intelligence, but a near-genius IQ has to indicate that my brain's pretty good, if only at doing IQ test type puzzles.

** I'm even considering the doctor again, if you can believe it. Even though they are pretty much no help at all, and a doc visit invariably leaves me feeling frustrated and miserable because I need them to help me and they, well, can't. Maybe it's depression talking, but I can't see how exercising and losing weight are sensible things to suggest to me right now. Why not ask me to fly to the Moon? With a 10-ton weight strapped to my ankles? Gimme some drugs and make me better. That's your job.

I fail, at least in some ways

2008-08-21T14:04:00.005Z

Firstly, apologies for not posting about Scotland much much sooner.

I do have sort of an excuse, trust me.

Firstly, our router decided to die and wouldn't let me get online. Weirdly, wireless worked so I could get online using the Wii but that isn't really at all convenient, not having a keyboard and all. And unfortunately my desktop doesn't do wireless.

It took a couple of weeks to get a new router (actually we fitted a wireless card into my machine first, but still), and by that time I'd a) almost forgotten about blogging, b) got out of the habit of even going online and c) got very distracted by my new project (since I can only actually do one thing at once).

Which leads me nicely into....

... I now have an online shop, selling my own handmade jewellery! So I've been very busy making stuff and photographing it and getting it listed, and doing money type stuff which I'm not good at. The more observant of you will have noticed the advert in the sidebar showing some of my items for sale - please click through and have a look at the other stuff too, and let me know what you think!

I'll try to get to the Scotland stuff soon. Sorry.

Oh well

2008-07-28T21:52:00.000Z

Blogger being a twat, and I'm tired. Pics tomorrow. Bah.

Some info before I post properly about our Islay trip

2008-07-28T20:34:00.006Z

So I'll be doing a separate post for each day, and changing the post time so they publish as if I've posted on the actual day rather than now, if that makes sense. This means they won't be at the top of the blog - the easiest way to look at them will be to click on something relevant in my label cloud on the right-hand side (the bit with all the random-ish words in) such as "Scotland" or "Islay". If you're using an RSS reader (all one of you) then I guess they'll just arrive as I post them.

This map might help if you're wondering where the photos were taken, or where the hell I'm talking about. If I can be arsed I'll put together my own map, showing the places that are relevant.

I've listed the birds I saw over the entire week, starting once we got to Kennacraig. As it's a week list, if I saw the same species on several different days I've only listed it the first time I saw it. Don't go thinking that I only saw one swallow or something on a particular day. Mammals similarly.

And in case you're wondering, my parents took care of Summer and Basil. Summer's caravanning with them in Wales as we speak - they went on Wednesday and won't be back for almost 2 more weeks. I miss her. My dad made sure Basil had plenty of food and water until we got back Saturday night. And Kay bunnysat Neo for me - a good time was had by both by the sounds of things!

Right. Off to upload photos.

Right. Off to upload photos of Saturday.

On my way home

2008-07-26T16:20:00.006Z

I'm on a train somewhere not far outside Edinburgh, using free WiFi. Cool.

I did try to email using my phone but didn't seem to get a really good signal all week... enough for calls and texts but not email, apparently.

We've had a great time and didn't want to leave, but it will be nice to be home - hopefully the garden won't have suffered too much in my absence. Hopefully.

I'll do a proper holiday report later, when I'm not using an impressively slow connection and Michael's laptop which only has Internet Explorer. Hate.

Hope you didn't miss me too much!

Woo hoo! Scheduled post! I'm posting and I'm not even here!

2008-07-19T21:30:00.003Z

By now I should be on Islay, relaxing after a hard day's travelling.

If I can get to an internet connection I'll post a quick update sometime during the week, if not I'll post via email on my phone. Yay smartphone.

Sayre, recipe's on its way. Might take a week or so, but I'll definitely post it. Hope you still have eggplant left!

Kay, please don't change your name, sex, nationality and skin colour and steal my bunny.

Have fun without me!

xxx

Holiday plans!

2008-07-17T18:53:00.005Z

So as usual, something I promised to do, I haven't done (i.e. posting photos of Scotland last year).

If I have chance tomorrow I'll see what I can do, but not promising anything as I'm expecting to be busy.

Saturday we're off to Islay again, because we liked it so much when we were there last year, and thought it was a shame that we only got to spend two days on the island.

So now we're having a week - well actually 6 days and 7 nights, because travelling there takes a whole day.

Here's a rough plan of the travel arrangements for Saturday.

7.00 Taxi to train station.
7.30 Train to York.
9.00 Train to Haymarket (Edinburgh).
12.00 Train to Glasgow.
13.30 Coach to Kennacraig.
18.00 Ferry to Port Ellen.
20.30 Pick up hire car at Port Ellen, drive to accommodation.
21.30 Arrive, decide whether or not we're too tired for a quick walk, and collapse.

Sounds a bit gruelling, but it'll be an adventure. The reason we're doing the public transport option is that Michael didn't fancy driving for 12 hours in one day. Can't say I blame him.

Islay's a beautiful place, full of wildlife and whiskey. Not that I care much for whiskey but the distillery we went to last year was very interesting.

I'm planning active stuff, walking and birdwatching and pony trekking and so on, along with some whiskey-related activities for Michael.

Only problem is I'll miss Summer, as she'll be camping with my parents. We're away a week, they don't come back until we've been home two weeks! What will I do without my dog for three weeks?

Anyway, still have loads to do so I'd best be off. Wish us good weather and lots of interesting animals!

What's for dinner?

2008-07-09T22:40:00.002Z

Garden veggies!

Peas, the first few little French beans, Charlotte potatoes, beetroot, and carrots. Plus some lavender and mint.

We had salmon fillets pan fried with lavender and a little lime zest (worked well), boiled potatoes with mint and butter, and gently boiled beans, peas and carrots. Lovely fresh summer flavours.

In the process of harvesting I discovered more of Summer's weirdness.

Picture me with a wooden bowl which I'm filling with peas. I worry when I'm pulling the pods off that I'll pull off half the plant with the pod so I pick two-handed, one hand supporting the stems. I put the bowl on the floor.

So I'm reaching though the trellis (which is there so I can train the pumpkins and buttercup squash up it - didn't really think it through) to grab the peas. And the bloody dog's putting her nose into the bowl of peas and grabbing some and eating them with obvious enjoyment.

I mean, raw peas! And while I was shelling them she was sitting by me looking expectant, so I let her have a few empty pods. Typical bloody Labrador. She likes raw broccoli and carrots too.

We have an orchid in the orchard. Not on purpose, it just turned up there, looks very pretty. Michael has pics of it which I'll have to steal from him. And I saw a frog earlier, and we had a couple of nuthatches the other day (along with 20 or so regular bird species). And there are loads of common red soldier beetles which I've never seen before (they like to eat aphids and other small insects so they are good guys). Guess my somewhat laissez-faire attitude to weeding is paying off for the wildlife.

Yeah, so my motivation is a little lacking

2008-07-08T22:08:00.003Z

I've realised I never posted pics of our holiday to Scotland last year. And I really meant to.

I'll try to get them up ASAP because it would be a bit ridiculous and confusing if I posted them after our next holiday.

Just a short one

2008-07-08T14:11:00.002Z

Bah. I suck at this regular updatey thing. So bullet points, here we go.

* I've fallen into bad sleep habits - staying up til 4am then sleeping til 1pm. Doesn't agree with me, and I need to get back into a sensible routine.
* Garden is good. Pictures will come soon, hopefully.
* Michael's been less good. He's had a stomach virus since Sunday morning and still isn't feeling right. I'm feeding him bland foods and making him drink lots of water.
* We're off to Islay the weekend after next, for a week. Yay! Islay is beautiful. More details on that to follow.
* Mario Kart Wii is taking up way too much of my time. Anyone else have it and want to add me as a friend?
* I've just sourced loads of books I've wanted for ages on Green Metropolis, which is an awesome site where you can buy and sell second-hand books. Everything's £3.75 plus varying postage (standard paperbacks are free postage), with 5p from each sale going to the Woodland Trust to plant trees. Great idea, plus they have books I want!
* I'm hungry. Pasta, I think.

Because everyone else seems to be doing it

2008-07-08T03:01:00.002Z

As a 1930s wife, I am
Very Poor (Failure)

Take the test!

Can't say this comes as much of a surprise to me! Not only am I a modern liberated woman, I'm also not particularly domestic. And I'm lazy.

Poor old Michael, eh? Now he won't want to marry me!

Coming soon - A real post!

Carrot wars and rainbows

2008-06-25T20:56:00.005Z

I'm growing two types of carrot in the veg plot at the moment. I bought the seeds a few years ago to sow in pots, therefore I picked varieties that I could harvest as baby carrots.

Not knowing then of course that you can use any type of carrot as baby carrots, you just pull them up before they're fully grown. Ah well, I'm better informed now. Still with our clay soil it's a good idea to stick to the shorter ones anyway.

So I grabbed some of each for dinner today, to do a taste comparison. Boiled for just a couple of minutes, then served with a little butter and parsley.

In the blue corner... Parmex. In my stupidity I didn't get a pic of these guys, so here's one from Thompson&Morgan instead. They can afford the bandwidth.

Designed to be very stumpy and ball-shaped. Mine are slightly more traditional-carrot-shaped than that (although the smaller ones are pretty round), maybe an inch in diameter and a little bit longer than that with a pointy end.

And in the red corner, the catchily-named Amsterdam Forcing 3-Sprint. Looks basically like a normal carrot. I did get a pic a few days ago.

The Parmex pic makes them look really dull (since it's obviously photoshopped), but they are a lovely orange colour, with a great perfumed carrot smell when you pull them up.

My prediction before the trial was that Amsterdam Forcing would taste better, based on the intensity of fragrance.

Michael had no such preconceptions, but we both agreed on our favourite... sure enough, the Amsterdam. Tastes sweeter and more "carroty", and the texture is better too, firmer. We have a winner!

* * *

Thinking about carrots made me remember that you can get purple carrots*, and I thought I'd have a look for some kind of mixed pack of seeds of different colours. I was disappointed. All I could find was mixtures with orange, yellow and white. Almost all were F1 hybrids (bah).

So instead I bought separate packets of red, purple, yellow and white from eBay, at a total cost of about £4.50. I'm intending to mix them with the Amsterdam Forcing I already have and sow them all together to create my own rainbow carrot mix. I'll happily swap some of them if anyone's interested.

And completely randomly, here's a dish I prepared a few days ago using garden veg. It's a stir-fry with chicken, noodles, purple kale, spinach, chard, rapini and mangetout peas. Wasn't bad at all.

*Carrots also come in yellow, white, purple and as I discovered today, red! How pretty!!

Nothing very exciting

2008-06-23T20:51:00.003Z

Yesterday was very windy, and some emergency plant support measures became necessary. Luckily there was only one casualty, a courgette plant that got decapitated when the stake it was tied to blew over. Peas and potatoes and sunflowers got battered about a bit, but they'll survive.

Today the new little purple-podded pea and pole bean plants got planted out, in containers because there's literally no room in the raised beds. One of the containers is an old plastic storage box with holes in the bottom. (Gotta love recycling!)

After deciding that liqueur making sounded fun, I raided the 'net for recipes and started off 4 different liqueurs - lemon, lavender, kiwi and lemon cream. Some more will happen as soon as I buy more vodka. It really is easy, just soak fruit in vodka for however long, add sugar syrup and strain and bottle and keep for a while, then drink. The lemon cream is very quick - it's in the freezer right now and it's really good - I found the recipe here.

Next step is to start making wine again too. I've started off some ginger beer. No, it's really not all Famous Five, this is serious stuff at about 5% alcohol (10% proof). If Julian, Dick (snigger), George, Anne and Timmy had been on this ginger beer I think the books might have been a little different... something like Five go to Al-Anon or Five wait for 7 hours in A&E after some drunken snooping goes horrible wrong. Or something.

Here's what I've harvested from the garden so far...

* Salad leaves
* Mangetout peas (just a handful today)
* Carrots (finger sized baby ones, because they needed thinning, plus baby carrots = so good)
* Oriental veg mix (eaten in a stir fry today)
* Spinach/leaf beet/chard

Potatoes and dwarf beans are in flower, and tiny courgettes, pumpkins, cucumbers and French beans are appearing. Also the tomatoes have buds.

I'm tired and need to sleep.

On yumminess

2008-06-19T15:01:00.003Z

So I couldn't resist picking and eating one of the yellow pea pods the other day. It was probably half sized, not even the size of a mangetout, but I was too curious.

Straight off the plant and into my mouth.

You know what, I never knew peas were so yummy!

I've had so-called "fresh" unshelled peas from the supermarket and they were good, but this was something else.

Crunchy and quite sweet with a lovely sort of resistance when you bit it and a flavour which frozen or tinned (yuk!) peas can't even hope retain. Of course it tasted like peas, but it also tasted a lot like raw skinless peanuts, for some reason. Delicious. Can't wait to be able to pick a proper batch to stir-fry, but I have a feeling they might just end up raw in a salad, they're that good.

In completely unrelated news, I really fancy making liqueurs this year, with fruits and flowers spices and such. Looks easy and fun, and tasty.

Yesterday I had a go at making elderflower cordial (that's a non-alcoholic drink for you Americans, which we dilute with water), since I have 3 or 4 elders in the hedges around my garden. It's steeping in the kitchen. Tonight I'll strain and bottle it - hopefully it will be really good and I'll have to make loads more. I've done lavender before, but never elderflower.

I can see myself at the end of the year with a kitchen full of jams and jellies and chutneys and sauces and cordials and liqueurs... anyone fancy saving jars and bottles for me? I'll swap them for finished products!

Pea!

2008-06-11T19:37:00.001Z

First pea pod emerges. :)

And yes, it's supposed to be yellow.

Feta and tomato pasta plus

2008-06-10T15:16:00.005Z

Bout time I posted a recipe.

The title doesn't really say it, but I can't think of something more imaginative or descriptive. I used chicken but it would be equally nice without it (or with Quorn or whatever) if you fancied a veggie version.

Anyway, this serves 2.

1 chicken breast (optional), skinless and boneless, cut into small pieces.
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 green bell pepper (or whatever colour you like), in 1cm squares
1/2 courgette, in 1cm cubes
8 sun-dried or semi-dried tomatoes in olive oil, cut into small pieces
1 or 2 medium tomatoes, cubed
2 or 3 good handfuls of fresh young chard leaves or spinach, torn in half
75g feta cheese, broken into pieces
2 tbsp fresh oregano or marjoram leaves, or 2 tsp of dried (use other herbs if you like - mint, thyme, parsley or basil would all be good)
10 black olives, halved
150g dried pasta (I use a chunky sort of pasta rather than spaghetti or tagliatelle, but use what every you like)

1) Put the pasta on to boil, according to packet instructions.

2) Heat 1 tbsp of oil from the sun-dried tomatoes in a medium saucepan or frying pan and fry the chicken pieces (if using) with the garlic until mostly cooked. For the veggie version, fry the garlic for a minute then move to step 3.

3) Add the pepper, courgette and sun-dried tomatoes and fry until the veg is slightly softened and the chicken is golden. Add the fresh tomato and continue to cook until the tomato is mushy.

4) When the pasta is nearly done, add the chard or spinach and herbs to the sauce and stir until just wilted.

5) Add the feta and olives and stir, then drain the pasta.

6) Place pasta and sauce in the empty pasta pan and stir to combine.

Serve with a green salad. Should taste like summer in the Mediterranean.

How lovely!

2008-06-10T14:55:00.004Z

A nice little package arrived this morning...

Purple podded pea seeds! And climbing beans! 20 peas, 10 beans... plenty for me to sow this year so I can save the seeds and have a great crop next year. Thank you Celia!

How exciting!!

I'm going to have a go at pea breeding... should be interesting. I just fancy a play really.

Notice anything new?

2008-06-09T21:16:00.002Z

Like, my header?

Now try refreshing the page.

Hopefully you'll see a different image.

Theoretically you should see one of seven images...

...which will change randomly every time you visit the page.

Cool huh? Well I like it anyway.

Yum - and today is day 76. I counted.

2008-06-09T15:07:00.004Z

It's pretty awesome to be in the middle of cooking a meal and decide you want, say, salad leaves or spinach or some fresh herbs, and just go outside and collect them.

Yesterday we picked baby spinach, leaf beet and rainbow chard (there isn't really enough of any one of them to make a meal on their own yet) to eat with dinner. I simply washed it and wilted it in a hot saucepan (I hate overcooked spinach), squeezed out the excess water and added a little butter and some black pepper.

It tasted completely different to the stuff I buy in bags from the supermarket - very tender but with a nice crunch to the stems, a lovely earthy and slightly sharp taste. As fresh as possible, and no nasty chemicals. And weirdly none of that not-so-pleasant "furry teeth" feel I associate with spinach.

I wonder how much of my enjoyment is due to the fact that home-grown stuff does taste better, and how much is due to my pride in the fact that I grew it myself?*

*Not massive amounts of pride admittedly, because chard and leaf beet and spinach are all really really easy to grow. I just sowed the seeds and watered them and they did the rest.

Garden update, day...er... I've lost count of what day it is

2008-06-07T23:02:00.006Z

Had a nice day today, spent the afternoon in Weston Park in Sheffield with some choir people having a picnic and playing frisbee and enjoying the sun.

We took Summer, and she enjoyed meeting Pete's dog Fitz again (they met carol singing last year, although neither of them sang for some reason). Bless.

Have some garden pics. Excuse the poor quality, I used my phone - you get the idea though.

The greenhouse, which currently contains squash/courgettes (which need to go outside), tomatoes, peppers, chillies, melons and cucumbers. And spiders.

Potatoes, with sunflowers visible to the right. Completely recovered from the frost, just a few slightly browned leaves.

Carrots, beetroot, sweetcorn, salsify, spring onions, fennel, edible wild plant mix (yum), cucumber. Some lettuces and salad mix on the right.

Salad mixes, currently occupying the spaces allocated to tomatoes (in the greenhouse at the moment). The spirally poles will support the tomatoes. Not visible is the new asparagus I sowed, because it hasn't germinated yet. Fingers crossed for it.

Nasturtiums (for leaves and flowers for salads, to attract beneficial insects, and for butterflies to lay eggs on so they leave my brassicas alone), purple sprouting broccoli, red cabbage, romanesco cauliflower, calabrese, squash/courgettes.

Peas, which I think are beautiful. Just visible in front are dwarf French beans, and not at all visible behind are more dwarf beans, pole beans, pumpkins, buttercup squash and melons.

Onions, rainbow chard, garlic, spinach. Not visible is the quinoa behind the chard. You can just make out the new salad leaves seedlings top right.

We've already eaten loads and loads of helpings of salad leaves (3 different mixes), cut-and-come-again lettuce, chard, leaf beet and edible wild plants (dandelions are rather good, I have to say). I'm almost sick of leaf salad! We haven't bought any of the bagged supermarket stuff for at least a month, and we eat salad practically every day - some has also found its way to our respective parents.

Next vegetable to be harvested? See if you can guess...

.... yeah, it's a pea flower! I never realised they were such lovely flowers, looks very like a sweet pea to me. Shame I couldn't get the actual flower in focus, but it's not a bad macro for a phone really. I'll go out with Michael's camera tomorrow.

So yeah, everything's going well. I have to say I'm pleased so far with my first proper veg-growing experience.

Oh and check this out... a red-podded pea!!!

Rain

2008-06-03T23:17:00.004Z

It's late, maybe 11pm, maybe 12. My parents are still awake, and every so often I hear one of them creak upstairs to go to the bathroom. They are watching television, my brother fast asleep in his room, the cat curled up in her basket, and for all I know the whole of the rest of the world is asleep as well.

I'm not.

I'm tired but I can't sleep. It's always been like this. I always beg to stay up a bit later, or to have a half hour of reading time in bed, and when it's time for lights out I sneak the light on anyway and read some more and if I hear footsteps on the stairs I click it off fast and pretend to be asleep so I don't get in trouble.

"Turn that light off and get to sleep!"

If only it was that easy.

It's late, and I have school in the morning. I never want to get up, which isn't surprising. At weekends I sleep in until 10 when Mum wakes me up, and I spend most of the day in my pyjamas reading or watching TV with my brother - at 5 he's 5½ years younger than me so we watch kid's TV but I don't mind. On Saturday nights Dad goes to the pub and Mum usually takes us to Pizza Hut, then my brother goes to bed and I watch TV with Mum, or we play board games until Dad comes home. Sunday is roast Sunday dinner where I'm forced to eat peas and baking a fruit cake and visiting family and watching The Simpsons and egg sandwiches and pork pie and fruit salad for tea.

But tonight is Tuesday, so school tomorrow. Mum and Dad have gone to bed now. And I'm still awake. I've already been told off for reading tonight, so I don't put the light on again. Instead I lean into the window behind my bed, pulling the curtain over my head and down my back. The orange light from the streetlamps is just enough for me to make out the print of my book, so I can read at least. I have a vast collection of Enid Blyton books and I've read this one, Six Cousins Again, over and over again. It's not that I like it particularly, it's just habit. This is the book I read in the window. When I finish it, I'll start it again.

Eventually my eyes start to hurt, because arc-sodium isn't ideal for reading. I glance out into the street. It's raining steadily, tapping on the windows, water running in dirty orange rivers down the gutters.

We live on the end of a small quiet street which joins to a busy main road. I can see the main road from my window. In the daytime I'm allowed to cross it by myself because I'm sensible, but Mum prefers me to walk down the road to use the crossing. Right now it's quieter but there are still cars passing - at night the cars drive themselves, sending a plume of roadwater out behind them, headlights bouncing off the drops of rain. Inside is dark and empty.

It's cold, and I pull the quilt around myself under the curtain and wrap myself up to the chin. I should feel safe. I had to wipe the fog of condensation off the window with my hand and it feels cold and damp so I tuck the hand into my pyjama top and try to warm it on my stomach, but all that happens is that both places get cold. The smell of cold damp window is like no other smell. The clear patch will mist up again as I breathe, but now drops of water run down to meet each other at the bottom and pool on the sill. If I'm careful I can draw a track with my finger and the drops will follow my path. I write my name - backwards so you can read it from outside - but within a few minutes it is obscured by the rivulets, scribbled out and unreadable. I draw a rabbit, a horse, a flower. All disappear.

It's still orange outside. Still raining. Still late. A bus trundles past, lit up inside like an dirty old aquarium, but instead of fish and plants and rocks there's just a few people sitting wrapped up in coats and scarves, not moving. How are there people still awake? A second and the bus is gone, and I have the sudden grisly thought that the passengers could have been dead. At least, they didn't look alive.

Or maybe they were asleep. Because I'm surely the only person awake.

And I've never felt as alone as I do right now.

Animal meme

2008-05-25T15:36:00.002Z

Your Score: The Raven

You scored 44% domestic, 33% gregarious, 35% trickster, and 70% intellect!

Wild, Solitary, Serious and Intellectual: you are the Raven!

Raven is a strong symbol of both creation and destruction. Wisdom through intelligence, observation, and challenge. Raven is strongly tied to the spiritual world, living in a constant state of otherworldly awareness. Raven people tend to be very introspective and savour time spent ‘alone’.

This test categorized you based on four different axes of personality, which were then associated with a different animal. The four axes, as well as all possible results are explained below.

Wild/Domestic: This first axis categorizes you based on how much you are drawn to the outdoors, versus how much you are drawn to civilized situations. Domesticity has many shapes and forms, and varies from the joy of dolphins leaping next to a ship to the steadfast loyalty of a family dog.

Gregarious/Solitary: This axis measures how solitary you are. If you scored high, it means that you enjoy the company of other people, while a low score indicates that you prefer a more solitary lifestyle.

Trickster/Serious: This axis measures how well you line up with conventional trickster archetypes. People who fall into this archetype have a sense of humour and an excitable, highly chaotic streak. Scoring low doesn't mean that you don't have a sense of humour; it just means that you probably don't think dynamite is very funny.

Intellectual/Emotional: This last axis determines whether you are more emotional -- acting based on feelings and instinct, or rational and intellectual -- acting more on thought than on your gut feelings.

Wild	Gregarious	Trickster	Intellectual	The Hyena
Wild	Gregarious	Trickster	Emotional	The Otter
Wild	Gregarious	Serious	Intellectual	The Antelope
Wild	Gregarious	Serious	Emotional	The Wolf
Wild	Solitary	Trickster	Intellectual	The Weasel
Wild	Solitary	Trickster	Emotional	The Coyote
Wild	Solitary	Serious	Intellectual	The Raven
Wild	Solitary	Serious	Emotional	The Frog
Domestic	Gregarious	Trickster	Intellectual	The Fox
Domestic	Gregarious	Trickster	Emotional	The Dolphin
Domestic	Gregarious	Serious	Intellectual	The Horse
Domestic	Gregarious	Serious	Emotional	The Dog
Domestic	Solitary	Trickster	Intellectual	The Rat
Domestic	Solitary	Trickster	Emotional	The Ferret
Domestic	Solitary	Serious	Intellectual	The Cat
Domestic	Solitary	Serious	Emotional	The Squirrel

Link: The Animal Archetype Test written by crumpetsfortea on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test
View My Profile(crumpetsfortea)

People are pissing me off

2008-05-25T13:32:00.003Z

I've allowed myself to get into a bad mood, which is unlike me. It's just a few things that have got to me.

So Thursday was nice, with a very chilled-out rehearsal with nibbles and cake and a good time at the pub afterwards. A bit sad that I won't see a lot of SingSoc people again until October though.

Friday was the committee/helpful people night out, and it was really nice to have the chance to chat to people without the pressure of having to do anything else, like sing, or organise a concert!

Usually my nights out with choir people involve me drinking too much and making unwise choices, like deciding to stay out later than I intended and so ending up really really tired, or deciding to drink more when I've definitely had enough. But I managed okay - one bottle of beer and 4 glasses of wine, and I was home around 1am.

But before I got home...

...I was outside Bar One (student union bar), calling a taxi. In the middle of the call, I felt something hit my left shoulder (it actually hurt), and a male voice shouted from a passing car, "That's for being fat!". I didn't react, being distracted by telling the taxi company where I was. When I'd finished the call, I saw a broken egg on the pavement just in front of me. And my jacket was all wet and sticky with raw egg.

I'm amazed that anyone could find throwing an egg at a random person funny. And deliberately trying to upset someone? Hilarious.

Not that I was upset. I was pissed off. It would be easy to feel bad, but actually it's made me more confident - anyone who'd judge me for my size is obviously the kind of prejudiced egg-lobbing fuckwit that thinks kicking a hedgehog to death is funny, would steal money from their own mother, who considers a MacDonald's Extra Value Meal followed by 10 pints of Stella and a fight a classy night out, and who will probably impregnate an emaciated 13-year-old, or several. So obviously not someone whose opinion I'd value.

The thing that bothers me is that they almost certainly continued their sad little rampage, and
probably actually hurt someone, either emotionally or physically.

However, just a couple of minutes later I met a really nice taxi driver with the coolest accent - his parents are Iranian, but he was born in Moscow. So I tested out my few words of Russian on him (I know the words for such useful things as man, woman, dog, car, boy, horse... stuff like that), he taught me hello and hi and shop and magazine (except I've forgotten the first two which I blame alcohol for), and he asked me to give him the English for someone who can speak two languages, and a few other phrases. And I explained the alternative meaning for the verb to pull. Lovely man.

Michael's pissing me off though. Not going into details, but he's doing stuff that he must know will annoy me, the going into a really irritating innocent "What? What am I doing wrong? Why are you getting so aggressive?" routine, when I'm simply telling him he's pissing me off.

So yeah. In general, not in the best of moods. Someone pass the chocolate.

Can't be bothered

2008-05-23T15:56:00.004Z

Bah, again I have a few things I want to talk about but it's not going to happen because there's actually too much and it's over-facing me, and if I did everything in the one post you'd all (well all like three of you) die of boredom. I know, that last sentence is grammatically suspect, but I don't care.

Anyway. Garden. There was a bit of a surprise frost earlier in the week, which has somewhat upset my poor squash and potato plants. The potatoes range from no damage at all to almost all leaves dried up and black, and every squash plant except one has lost all its mature leaves in the same way. Baby leaves and flowers are okay, strangely - maybe the big leaves provided some sort of protection. Either way, they'll get over it. Half of the sweetcorn plants have snuffed it, but there's still plenty of time to sow some more, they'll catch up. Strangely, the bean plants are fine, with one plant showing a tiny amount of superficial damage to its seed leaves.

On the plus side, I can see 4 tiny baby courgettes forming. And we've eaten loads of baby leaf salad. All other plants are doing well too.

SingSoc's now over for the (academic) year, which is rather sad. I'll miss the guys, and I'll miss singing. And our concert last week was great - best I've ever heard us sing. Some mistakes, but nothing too awful, and the sound we made was excellent. I'm proud of us! My family unanimously agreed that we sounded great but they hated African Sanctus. Fair comment really.

We're planning another trip to Islay in July, probably for three reasons.
1) We really liked the place when we went last year as part of our Scotland birding trip, even if we did only have 2 days there.
2) Great place for wildlife. I'm hoping for choughs, grey and common seals, oystercatchers, curlews, gannets (as seen from the ferry last year), golden eagles (not much chance), hen harriers (maybe), corncrakes (umpossible to see but might hear them) and otters (might get lucky).
3) Michael likes the whisky. And we both really enjoyed the distillery tour of Ardbeg last year, even though I hate whisky. Seeing how it's made is fascinating.

Right. Now I'm off to make curry.

Anyone want plants?

2008-05-16T11:54:00.002Z

So I have spare plants up for grabs!

Here's what's available.

1x pumpkin "Invincible" (dark blue/grey, with orange flesh)
2x courgette "Lebanese" (pale green)
2x courgette "Golden Zucchini" (yellow)
2x summer squash "Patty Pan" (pale green, flat shape)
2x summer squash "Yellow Scallop" (similar to Patty Pan but yellow)
1x cucumber "Mini White" (one person sized fruits, outdoor cuke)
1x melon "Minnesota Midget" (early, cricket ball sized)
1x sweet pepper "Sunnybrook" (early, 1/2 sized fruits)
1x sweet pepper "Orange Bell" (early and er, orange)
5x chilli pepper "Jalapeño"
3x chilli pepper "Cayenne"
2x tomato "Cream Sorbet" (long pale yellow fruits)
2x tomato "Amish Paste" (huge, good for sauces or salads)
2x tomato "Latah" (early bush type)
2x tomato "Costoluto Fiorento" (ribbed)

Kay, you've got first dibs if you want anything!

The pumpkin/squash/courgette plants can go outside now and should be fruiting soon, everything else can go out once it's bigger - can stay here in my greenhouse if necessary. Chillis will grow outside, but would probably be better inside on a kitchen windowsill or similar.

I can also provide growing instructions for everything.

If I don't get rid of them I'll end up having to spend a fortune on more pots and compost, and then I'll have more veggies than is humanly possible to eat.

Miss me?

2008-05-16T11:23:00.002Z

It's like Kay said to me the other week, when you're busy enough to have stuff to blog about, you're too busy to, well, blog.

So, I guess, bullet points or something. And I'll try really hard to catch up with all your blogs too. Especially you Sayre! Probably Sunday, when I don't have anything I desperately need to do.

* Did Dido and Aeneas the other week in Sheffield cathedral. Went well, witchy voices and cassocks and everything, and when we went wrong we did it confidently so the audience didn't notice.
* African Sanctus/Carmina Burana (our huge mad £10,000 concert) is tomorrow. I really need to do some work on both pieces. But on the plus side, David Fanshawe (composer of Sanctus) is coming to work with us tonight, and we sold out, over 500 tickets, in three days. Exciting.
* I stood for the committee again - as Administrative Assistant. And as no-one stood against me, I got it. Now I'm in charge of pencils and milk and tea-making rotas. And here's the proof.
* Garden is good. Things are growing - I'll do a proper post about it later with photos once things are not so mad. We've already had three salads of baby leaves, yum.
* I ripped the skin off the back of my heels last week, hurrying in silly shoes. It hurt. I have scabs, and can't wear trainers again yet. That'll learn me.
* I also got myself sunburned last week, and I was only outside for a couple of hours. Trust me to forget the sunscreen. My shoulders went red and were quite sore, made sleeping difficult. Until I remembered a little tip we heard from a Greek bloke once while on holiday, and rubbed half a cold fresh tomato onto the affected skin. Scarily, it works really well, and the next day the burn had faded to pink. Now it's just tanned and for some reason it itches. It's driving me mad.
* Baby robins. In our garden. Cute. One of the parents has taken to flying into the house through the open back door and stealing mealworms from the container I keep by the door. Photos will happen at some point.
* We sorted out and painted our bedroom, bought and assembled new wardrobes, cleaned the carpet and put everything that doesn't fit or we don't wear in a box for eBay/charity shops.
* I got Wii Fit. I've lost 3lb.

Doesn't sound like I've been up to much, but I have.

What's happening

2008-04-19T16:44:00.002Z

Didn't go to rehearsal - and typically I found out that we'd tackled the hardest bit of the African Sanctus. Sigh.

So I got up early yesterday and trundled into Sheffield for the final rehearsal of Gloria before the concert at 1pm - and ended up late due to stupid public transport.

Still wasn't feeling well, but on the plus side my nerves about the solo evaporated, and I killed off the last of them with two cups of chamomile tea at lunchtime, so by the time the concert started I was completely calm.

And the solo went fine, I didn't mess it up. I've done it better, especially as I had a very dry mouth, but it was okay. Harriet seemed pleased, and everyone was complimentary - mostly about the power I somehow have. I'd be happy to sing solo again.

Today I woke with a sore throat, cough, and blocked nose, and the dodgy stomach's still here, and I genenrally feel very tired and drained. So I cried off singing at AltoSarah's wedding, which I feel horribly guilty about as she's my friend, and just helped Michael finish off the second veg bed. Topsoil dug in, compost added, string dividing the plot into 1' squares stapled. Also onions and garlic planted. I meant to sort out some kind of support for the peas and put them in because they are practically exploding out of their pots right now, but it's too cold and I'm tired.

The robin has been a constant companion out there, getting quite bold and feeding just a few feet away from us. There's actually two males visiting, whenever they see each other they get quite aggressive and chase each other - luckily one of them always gives up and flies away, so it doesn't escalate into a full-on fight.

I've been watching our resident blackbird (yes I can recognise him) flying into the beech hedge which separates the orchard from the main garden with a great beakfuls of worms for maybe a week now, and yesterday I decided to see if I could find the nest. And I found it - because the hedge doesn't have new leaves on it yet (only the old dead ones from last year) it's really obvious when you know where to look. Such a neat little thing, made with twigs and bits of plastic(!) lined with mud and grass. As we worked today I kept hearing chicks getting fed, and actually saw them a couple of times by sneaking up. There's two of them, cute little brown feathery things, and they probably won't be much longer before they fledge. First baby birds this year!

Saw the first swallows and house martins of the year on Tuesday too, swooping over Linacre Reservoir. We're definitely well into spring - if only the sun would come out, because it's really cold at the moment.

Not feeling well

2008-04-17T16:34:00.002Z

Dilemma time.

I have an upset stomach - nothing explosive or anything, just achy and bloated and slightly nauseous with accompanying "runny bottom". Nice. Consequently, I don't feel so great.

If I want to be on time for rehearsal tonight, I need to head out in 25 minutes or so.

I really want to go to rehearsal, last week was awesome and I don't want to miss anything.

On the other hand, I'd actually quite like to go to bed. Especially as I don't want to be ill for the concert tomorrow.

I hate decisions like this. And I'm not in a fit state to make sensible choices.

My official debut...

2008-04-15T01:00:00.003Z

... is on Friday 18th April, 1.15pm, at Sheffield Cathedral. Come see me if you're somewhere near!

I worked with Harriet on my solo tonight after rehearsal, and it now sounds a lot better. Once I relax and remember to breathe I actually sound okay, because suddenly this rich, deep voice which is not at all like my normal "choir" voice comes out. It's sort of cool. Now all I need to do is stop being so damned scared about it, really.

Weird that I can get up on a stage and sing in front of hundreds of people in my "pop/karaoke" voice without a trace of nerves, but as soon as I have to sing something a bit out of my comfort zone, I actually physically shake. Bah. And nervous does NOT do good things for my voice, or anyone's voice.

Kay, that "pretending to be an opera singer" thing does kind of help.

Annoyingly, practically everyone I know won't be able to be there. My parents are in the Canaries, my grandparents can't/won't drive to Sheffield, and Michael might not be able to get the afternoon off work. No-one cares, sob. Gits, having better things to do!!

I have to say, the Gloria's sounding pretty damn good - I rather like Vivaldi. And Harriet's doing a cracking job of persuading us to actually think about what we're doing so we become more musical and expressive, rather than just singing everything accurately as written. That's the difference between a good choir and a great one I think - being technically perfect isn't enough - and it's great that Harriet believes in our ability to take our performances to the next level.

Ah well. Time for bed.

Another only vaguely veg-plot-related post

2008-04-15T00:08:00.002Z

Garden news - second bed is dug and now needs the frame putting together and the topsoil and compost putting in, and stuff planting. The first seedlings are up in the first bed, little salad leaves. All the indoor stuff is doing well, and the peas are desperate to be planted outside with some support! I can't believe how fast they grow.

I've spotted two bumble bee nests in the garden, and we have a pair of robins making a nest in one of the small conifers - strangely the same one as last year, but on the other side. Different robins though I think. They've been taking advantage of the worms uncovered by the digging, and are getting quite bold. In other bird news, we were thrilled to see a pair of bullfinches in the orchard yesterday, such gorgeous birds which aren't seen all that often as they're pretty shy. I'll post a pic once they're uploaded. The garden's full of birds now, with about 20 different species regularly visiting and singing away like mad. I'm spending a fortune on sunflower hearts, but it's worth it.

Pictures soon, I promise!

Sorry Sayre, been far too busy to tidy my closet/wardrobe this last week - but as I don't have a linen/laundry cupboard maybe I can try to do it this week some time? Told you I'd end up doing this - in my defence I did have a wedding to sing at on Saturday which I had to rehearse for!

Not a proper veg post update really

2008-04-07T14:21:00.003Z

Because there's not so much to tell.

Work's begun on the second bed, well we've marked it out and started removing the grass. All the topsoil has now been shifted. No seeds coming up outside yet, which isn't a surprise as the weather's been, shall we say, less that consistent (sun, rain, hail and even snow). In April! Only other news is I bought and planted a morello cherry tree in the orchard.

In completely unrelated news, remember how I didn't audition? Well I still haven't, as Harriet didn't contact me. And to be honest, I'd forgotten about it, until I found an email in my spam folder (stupid Yahoo mail) from Harriet from weeks ago saying she'd like me to sing one of the alto solos from Vivaldi Gloria. The one I like best, Domine Deus, Agnus Dei. Yay!

Well I say yay... I'm obviously nervous about it, especially as it'll be my first ever classical solo and I'm not exactly trained. I've made myself feel worse by listening to several recordings of it, all with altos who have very different voices to me.

Take vibrato, for example. (For you non-musicky types, vibrato is that sort of up-and-down wobble most singers do towards the end of a note.) I do have vibrato, but it's quite subtle and natural, fine for choral stuff, but sounds rather pathetic when compared with the solo recordings. Saying that though, I personally don't like that whole overdone vibrato thing - I prefer to hear the actual note rather than it being obscured by ornamentation, but I'm in the minority there I think.

Anyway, I'm gonna need a fair bit of practice to sound right. Thankfully the piece is quite simple and I already sort of know it so I can concentrate on getting the vocal quality sorted.

Here's a vid of the piece.

I'm sure we'll take it faster than this.

Now I'm off to shower. Rehearsal again tonight, first time in weeks.

Veg plot - day 11

2008-04-02T20:34:00.003Z

Nothing much today really. I know, I lied, and didn't post anything yesterday. Mostly because I forgot about taking pics until it was too dark.

I meant to move soil today, but Emma came round and didn't fancy anything heavy - she's stressed about work stuff and not sleeping well - so we just put in some lettuce seeds and transplanted some sweet peas instead.

So here's what's happening inside, and in the greenhouse.

Aubergines.

Beetroot.

Broccoli.

Cauliflowers.

Carrots (sown maybe a month ago).

Dwarf French beans, which have shot up really fast.

Huckleberries.

Lettuce, also from a month ago. It'll grow much quicker now it's warmer.

Melon.

Peas - also grow very fast.

Peppers and chillies.

Pumpkin.

Spinach.

Squash. There's 28 of these, in 6 varieties. I was hoping that maybe 2 of each would survive, but all except two are still with us (the two never germinated). Looks like some might be given away...

Tomatillos - the second attempt. Fungus killed the last lot.

Tomatoes, which just came through the other day.

Watercress.

So there you are, some green stuff for a change!

I'm hoping to be able to harvest the first crop (mixed lettuce/salad leaves) in 3-4 weeks. Won't that be fun?

Veg plot - day 10, where I actually get to plant stuff!!

2008-03-31T22:33:00.002Z

Another beautiful day - and I did get up earlier than I thought I might. Still not actually early, but never mind.

I thought I'd show you what the different seeds I planted look like, because there isn't much else to see really. So here are the seeds...

Asparagus.

Potatoes (I know they aren't seeds).

Beetroot.

Parsnip.

Carrot.

Salsify.

Spring onion.

Lettuce.

I also sowed a mix of wild edible plants, which I couldn't help including in one of my seed orders. And some companion plants - flax, marigolds and marjoram.

Sayre asked if I'm going to sow direct, or sow indoors then transplant. The answer is, both. Some seeds won't germinate at low temperatures, so can't be sown outside, like tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, squash/pumpkins, aubergines (eggplants) and tomatillos. Sweetcorn will germinate outside once it's warmer, but will grow better if I germinate it indoors. I've also sown leeks, peas, beans and cauliflowers indoors (but without heat), mostly because I wanted to start them but didn't have the beds ready, but also to stop slugs, mice and/or birds getting at the seedlings. Everything else goes straight in the soil.

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of the "indoor" plants - currently squash, pumpkins, melons, beans, peas, tomatillo, huckleberries, aubergines, peppers and chillies. The leeks and cauliflowers might be visible by then too.

Veg plot - day 9, where things really start moving

2008-03-30T20:08:00.003Z

We couldn't have asked for better weather today - it's been really warm, gorgeous blue sky, and birds singing away like mad. My face has actually tanned a little which is annoying because now I'm pink, but much better than being soaked to the skin like yesterday.

Michael shovelling the last few bits of topsoil. Well, at least the soil for this bed anyway. There's still a ton and a half on the drive. But...

Bed #1 is finished!!

Well, except that we need another bag of compost.

Frame is done, all the topsoil's in there, and a layer of compost on top. And we've used string to mark it out into square feet, leaving narrow strips between the three sections of the bed where I'll grow herbs and companion plants to attract beneficial insects and deter the nasty ones, and generally help the plants grow better.

The bricks are there to hold the compost in, and will be moved as soon as the beds get filled completely. I'm not adding compost to the potato section (the end furthest away) now, I'll use that compost to earth up the plants as they grow. And I know that the bed isn't square, but I don't much care, especially as the ground isn't level anyway. It looks, er, rustic!

I'm now desperate to get some seeds sown in it... perhaps not desperate enough to get up early, but I'm looking forward to getting out there.

Oh I forgot to mention that yesterday we had a couple of helpers. A pair of magpies were wandering around the bed while we were inside drilling, I thought at first they were looking for insects but once I got the binoculars on them I realised that they were collecting weed roots from the soil! Must have been nest-building. Now mags get a bad press, because of silly superstitions and ideas about them being unlucky (obviously not) and stealing shiny things (maybe) and being responsible for the decline in songbird numbers (definitely not, blame pesticides and habitat loss and monoculture), but I've never heard of them gardening! Have to say I do like them, very attractive birds even if they do have a horrible voice.

Anyway, I think that having a project agrees with me, because I've felt pretty good the last week or so, despite not sleeping well. Tonight I'm really tired because we've worked hard today - arms and legs and back and shoulders are all a bit achy, but strangely not in a bad way. Just in an exercised kind of way. I can live with that.

Veg plot - day 8, which was considerably more productive

2008-03-29T22:33:00.002Z

Well we had fun today. In the rain.

I decided we really needed to get cracking with the sides of the bed, so we called the local timber merchants to get a price on some, er, timber. The price sounded fine.

So I sent Michael off with a list of what we needed, i.e. 6 bits of wood 200cm x 30cm x 25mm to make up the long sides, and 2 bits 120cm x 30cm x 25mm for the short sides.

Apparently that's just too complicated for the timber people. Michael phoned me while I was busy putting soil onto the bed to tell me that the wood comes in 4.8m lengths, 15cm wide. So of course, I then had to work out in my head how to make up the frames from that.

Now normally my spacial awareness is not great, which is why I have to make little drawings of everything when I plan. But since I was outside in the rain with half the garden stuck to my boots (I took shelter in the greenhouse) I was forced to visualise, and use (gasp!) mental arithmetic.

The answer of course, is to buy 6 pieces, and get 2 of them cut into 4 x 1.2m lengths each. But then the four 4.8m bits had to be cut in half to fit in the car.

So finally he got the bits home and I marked out holes for drilling pilot holes for the screws. Michael drilled, and I screwed. No jokes please.

We got a few bits fastened together before the light dropped and the cordless screwdriver battery died and we had to stop. But we got a lot done today.
By the looks of things we should get bed #1 done tomorrow, soil in and everything, then I can plant asparagus and potatoes and roots! Fennel and carrots and parsnips and beetroot and salsify, along with spring onions to deter carrot flies, and sweetcorn. Yay!!

Summer's worked hard too. It's hard work sniffing everything and walking in my topsoil and chewing stray sticks.

Veg plot - day 7, where nothing at all happens

2008-03-29T00:10:00.004Z

Weather's been too unpredictable today to do anything outside. I didn't fancy tearing up the lawn with the wheelbarrow, since the ground's really soft with the rain. Bah.

On the plus side, the siskin came back.

Having trouble getting the onion sets I want, I may have to order like 300 of them when I actually want 100. Maybe I could sell the surplus, or keep them for next year, or something.

Hopefully we'll get lots done tomorrow.

Veg plot - day 6, and a pleasant visitor

2008-03-28T00:05:00.003Z

More seeds arrived today. Beans, peas, winter squash, cabbage, cauliflower, rapini, peppers, cucumber, tomatoes, leeks, corn. Yay! All open-pollinated types so I can save the seed, with instructions on how to save said seeds.

So I was in the utility room this afternoon sowing peas in a module tray and vaguely watching the bird feeders through the window and thinking about moving more topsoil, when I spotted this pretty little chap.

It's a male siskin, small finch, likes coniferous woods. Apparently also likes sunflower seeds, judging by the amount of them it got through.

I've never seen one in my garden before. In fact I've only seen them in Scotland, at RSPB Loch Garten - although they aren't uncommon, they just don't visit gardens much. I remember chatting to the girl on reception and saying I hadn't seen siskins before and she replied, "Oh I like siskins, they're like little highlighter pens." I can see what she meant, although to me they look more like a little brownish-grey streaky bird that someone's used a highlighter on. They are almost fluorescent in the sun. The females are duller.

I hope he sticks around, because then Michael might be able to get something better than my crappy record shots. Especially as the sisk isn't timid. It sat in the apple tree for ages as I trundled backward and forwards with wheelbarrows full of soil, singing a pretty little scratchy wheezy twittery song. I liked him.

And yeah, I shifted more soil. Half a ton, because the muscles still feel rather used, I'll do at least another half ton tomorrow. It's cheaper than going to the gym anyway!

And I'm getting more and more excited about growing stuff. I've drawn out plans of my beds and I know exactly what I'm planting where, because I need to organise myself. Needless to say, it's all colour coded.

And now I need to order onion sets.

Veg plot - day 5

2008-03-26T16:08:00.003Z

I didn't get to sleep until gone 5am this morning, so didn't get up til a delivery bloke woke me at 1pm.

He delivered... seed potatoes! And garlic! And two wildflower mixes, one for birds/butterflies, the other a woodland mix.

I was a bit worried yesterday that I might have overdone it with the soil - it's so hard to tell with the fibromyalgia because you can feel fine, when in actual fact you've done too much and it'll bite you on the ass a couple of days later. Today I feel okay, some tired and tight muscles in my arms, shoulders and back which are a bit achy, and I decided to have a rest day.

So all I've done is easy stuff. I set out the seed potatoes in trays to "chit" (or "sprut" as my dad would say) - for the uninitiated that means leaving them in the light so they grow little shoots about 4cm long, that way they grow better once you plant them.

There's 1kg each of five different varieties which mature at different times. In order of harvesting - Charlotte, Orla, Ambo, Desiree and Arran Victory. There's probably more there than I want to plant, to be honest, so I might give some away.

Maybe later I'll start off some lettuce in fibre pots.

Veg beds - day 4

2008-03-26T02:43:00.002Z

Michael went back to work today, and 3 tons of topsoil was delivered, at a total cost of £37.50-ish.
Now the topsoil's rubbish, very sandy with some pebbles, but it was very cheap and will improve the clay no end. And it saves us buying gravel.

Unfortunately though, moving three tons of soil from the front of the house to the bed area round the back is no mean feat.

I'd asked my friend Emma if she fancied helping me - we exercise together (well we're supposed to, but we've let it slide a lot recently with one thing or another) and she's going to help with the gardening. But she texted me in the morning to say her car wouldn't start, and her dad was going to see if he could fix it, so I was on my own. The logical next step? Go back to sleep of course!

Anyway, later I set to with the shovel and wheelbarrow, moving the soil something like 30m (maybe 100ft). It took 19 trips with the wheelbarrow, and maybe 3.5 hours including breaks, but I managed to move whole ton of soil! That's 1016kg (2240lb).

Doesn't look like much there, does it? Well you try telling that to my back... which certainly knows I've been working. And in fact aches a fair bit now.

I'm aiming for half a ton tomorrow. Then I'll start building the sides of the bed.

No rest for the wicked...

And I'm intrigued by the idea of square foot gardening. Looks very cool, and shockingly similar to the idea I had of planing in blacks rather than rows to make better use of space.

Veg beds - day 3

2008-03-26T02:30:00.004Z

We were a little tired after the previous days' exertions, especially me. I was worried about overdoing things and suffering the inevitable fibro backlash, so I took things a little steadier.

But once we got into the rhythm of digging it got easier (I dug out slices of soil with the fork, and Michael broke them up with one of those twisty fork things), and we finished the whole of the first bed.

Summer however, didn't help very much.

Summer just about to bark, after insisting that we get her in the picture.

Veg beds - day 2

2008-03-26T02:18:00.004Z

And onwards. With slightly better weather and less achy muscles than anticipated, we press on with the digging.
And we finish removing the grass from the whole bed. Which is another afternoon's work, believe it or not.

You can see one of the problems with the clay soil - it doesn't drain. The melted snow from the day before has pooled a little in the bottom of the bed.

Because of this drainage issue, I planned to add gravel to the bottom of the bed before we put the soil back in, then add compost over the top of the soil to make it more fertile.

Veg beds - day 1

2008-03-26T01:20:00.005Z

First, I planned where the new beds will be - near the greenhouse, on the main lawn.

Then I spent a while scribbling, working out how big an area to cover, how many sections I'd need for a sensible crop rotation system, how high to raise the beds, what to use to build the sides, and so on.

I decided on two long beds, 6m (about 20ft) long and 1.2m (4ft) wide. Each one will be split into 3 sections (one each for the 5 parts of my rotation and a permanent bed for asparagus). My rotation is basically brassicas/legumes/alliums/potatoes/roots. Other crops will fit in wherever they can.

We invested in a new spade and fork, because the cheapo ones we have are really heavy and make digging twice as hard as it needs to be.

And onto the actual physical work.

Typically, the Easter weekend has been somewhat inconsistent weather-wise. We've had everything - cold wind, warm(ish) sunshine, hail, actual rain, and snow. We decided to push on with the prep work anyway, because the beds really need to be done soon so I can start planting.

I marked out the sides of the bed with string and bits of stick. Unfortunately it's hard to see as I used green string, but I actually used trigonometry to create the right angle (using lengths of string in the ratio 3:4:5, because a triangle with sides of those lengths is always right-angled). When I learned it at school I never thought I'd actually use it for anything other than passing exams.

We start removing the grass, which is hard work, and dig 15-20cm (6-8") down, breaking up the soil. The digging's just as hard for several reasons - the soil's heavy clay, it's full of dandelion roots that need to be removed, and if I can see a worm in the soil I have to remove it rather than risk injuring it (if I accidentally kill one because I didn't see it that's okay though) and there are a lot of worms.

I refused to let Michael take a picture of me in my work clothes, but he isn't as vain as me.

Now worms are good, but clay.... isn't.

Being unfit and cold and losing the light a little, we decide to call it a day after measuring and digging over that small area.

Good job really, because this happened as soon as we got inside.

Some garden pics

2008-03-26T00:13:00.005Z

Right, well I'm trying to post some pics, despite the fact that my computer is being an twat.

This is my garden. It comprises three main areas - the bit directly behind the house, the orchard to the side of the house, and the bigger lawn area which kind of joins up the two other areas. Very hard to describe what I mean, but the pics might help.

Satellite pic which I blatently stole from Google Maps, on which I've marked our boundaries in light green. It's pretty big, and weirdly shaped.

Views from the back of the house. There's a small decked area and a square lawn, with a patio, barbeque and another decked area beyond that which has become rather overgrown. You'll notice that the whole garden is a bit of a mess, needing some serious tidying and weeding.

The overgrown area, and the walled patio. I think the patio's silly, and I want to convert the thing into a raised pond. The barbeque can move somewhere else.

The main lawn. The green cage is Basil's pen.

Taken from the far end of the big lawn.

The awful spar-dashed structure is the garage, which true to English tradition houses everything but the car. The awful black thing is Summer. This will eventually be my wildflower area, with plants that will attract bees and butterflies and birds.

The orchard, with its three apple trees, two pear trees, one plum and one greenage. I'm always amused by the leaning trees, which are probably 50 years old and obviously never staked. Guess which way the prevailing wind is around here? ;) I'll be sowing woodland-type plants here, to brighten the place up a bit.

Oh yeah, and the rhubarb's coming up. It'll be small and pathetic, like the last four years, but it's growing.

So that's the garden. We've got a bit of a challenge this year to get it looking good, I think.

First stage is my raised veg beds - more on that later!

This is what happens...

2008-03-25T21:51:00.003Z

...when you take one batch of choc chip marzipan cookie dough, one set of alphabet cookie cutters, and two very immature adults.

Stuff I've done meme

2008-03-20T03:21:00.002Z

Another meme from Sayre! The ones I've done are in bold.

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36.Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Gotten flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

So I score 59. Which of these have you done?

Mould...

2008-03-19T02:55:00.003Z

I'd forgotten, I'm having a mould problem in the propagator.

I sowed seeds in there Monday, and already today there was some unpleasant pale grey filamenty stuff on the surface of the compost. I guess the warm damp environment is exactly right for fungus. Bastards.

It will kill off the seedlings pretty quick if I don't sort it out. But I don't want to use nasty chemicals, as that's kind of against my organic ideals.

So the thought stuck me, that when Rosey and Basil (hedgehogs) had ringworm, which is a fungal infection, I used neem oil which worked impressively well. So can I use it on plants?

The internet says yes. Especially the many sites I found about growing marijuana.

So that's what I've used, just watered the compost with a dilute solution. I figure it can't hurt anyway, and might save me from having to resort to sulphur compounds.

I do NOT need my seedlings dying on me before I've even got the garden started!

Enough negative stuff, let's talk gardens!

2008-03-19T01:49:00.003Z

I haven't got garden pics yet, sorry. It's on my list for tomorrow, which means there's half a chance it'll get done.

The heated prop's currently full to bursting with seeds, and I have some little plants already. So here's what's happening in Embryo Veg Patch Central (otherwise known as my utility room) at the moment.

Black pumpkins (they look funky), little plants about 3 inches high, just getting their first true leaves.
Yellow patty pan squash, little plants about the same as the pumpkins.
Sweet peppers, two varieties. We probably get through 10 peppers a week, so I figured it was worth growing a few plants.
Chilli peppers, cayenne and jalepeno. I haven't grown them before. I intend to dry some of them for winter use.
Various mixed lettuces, in the greenhouse, which will be harvested for baby leaves or used as "cut-and-come-again" types.
Purple sprouting broccoli, since we love broccoli too.
Watercress, which sounds like fun.
Nasturtiums, as companion plants for cabbages/lettuces - the idea is that the butterflies prefer them so my veg are safe from caterpillars.
Sunflowers, for the birds, and also to attract beneficial insects as companions to the squash.
Marigolds, companions for tomatoes/chillis/peppers as they repel nasty bugs.
Other flowers, such as violas, candytuft, swan river daisies, black-eyed susan, virginia stock, pansies, sweet peas. Will be joined by others as soon as I have room.

And the seeds I sowed the other day:
More summer squash - green and gold courgettes/zucchini, green patty pans, little round ones, and very pale ones. Because they're pretty and tasty and I bought a pack of six different varieties pretty cheap.
Melons - watermelon and honeydew. Because they taste a million times better than supermarket ones.
Tomatillos, an experiment, because they sound cool.
Huckleberries, as above.
Basil, companion for tomatoes both in the greenhouse and the kitchen!

And on order, or yet to be sown:
Tomatoes, cordon and bush types. Some will go in the greenhouse, some outside in pots.
Sugarsnap peas, which I've never grown either.
Sweetcorn, a type which copes well with our awful summers.
Strawberries - I've only just started liking them again after being put off by eating too many as a kid. These will go in hanging baskets.
Garlic, essential in my kitchen.
Onions, all three colours. My dad used to grow them on his allotment, and prided himself on growing HUGE ones. I never saw the point, as they didn't taste of much. But he enjoyed it.
Carrots and parsnips, if I can get the soil sorted out enough for a decent crop. If not I'll probably just grow baby ones.
Salsify, which I've never even tasted but keep hearing about on food programmes.
Cabbages - what's a veg garden without cabbages?
Cauliflowers, some pretty spirally green romanesco ones.
Rhubarb, as the stuff already in the garden's exhausted. I'll add loads of manure this year and dig it up and separate it next spring if it isn't any better, and use the new stuff if not.
Various types of beans, including kidney, dwarf french, Cherokee.
Asparagus, which I've been meaning to grow for ages. It will be a few years before I can harvest though.
Asparagus peas, another thing which looked cool.
Potatoes, five different types, cropping at different times. Should help with the nasty clay soil.
Artichokes, never tried them but they look so funky, and therefore must taste good!
Leeks, as they're tasty. My surname would suggest that I have some Welsh ancestry somewhere.
More melons, very early ripening small ones, in case we have a really dodgy sumer and the normal ones don't ripen.
Two other peppers, also early ripening.
Herbs, too many to list.
Fruits, which I won't list either.
Wildflowers, for my wildlife area.

And of course more flowers. And I'd like at least one type of winter squash, either acorn or butternut probably.

Looks like I'd better get on with the digging...

Difficult not to feel a little bit disappointed, and passed over

2008-03-18T02:46:00.005Z

Sometimes I see a side of people that I don't like.

Bitching. Taking the piss out of someone who isn't there to defend themselves. Not supporting friends who need their help. Neglecting other friends who simply aren't as obvious. Thinking they know best when actually they know nothing.

I'm aware that often when these things happen, I'm not aware of the full story - maybe their actions are justified. Maybe not.

It still disappoints me.

I used to pride myself on being a good judge of character. Either people change for the worse, or I'm not as good a judge as I thought I was.

And before anyone assumes, I'm not having a dig at anyone - I'm not that petty. But if you think I am, that means you're probably guilty anyway, even though I'm not talking about you. Have a think about it.

Probably I should sleep, because I'm not convinced that this makes much sense. Who's still with me?

Oh, and the post title's from an APC song. Here you are.

Feeling better now

2008-03-17T21:25:00.002Z

I usually see feeling/being depressed as my brain's way to telling me I need to to make some changes.

So Thursday night I made the decision to get my life sorted out.

True to form, I haven't worked out how I'm going to do it yet, or what I need to do, but just making that decision has made me feel better.

Probably a good way to start is to be healthier. More fruit and veg (I already eat loads but more can't hurt, right?) and less cake/biscuits/sweets, more exercise, more "quick reward" type tasks that don't require too much mental energy to get my brain back into work mode.

And in that vein, the garden is my big project this year. I want a pond, a wildflower meadow/wildlife area, and an organic veg plot/herb garden. I've bought a healted propagator, in which seeds are germinating, and I've ordered a shedload more seeds. I've concentrated on non-hybrid varieties so I can collect the seeds to sow for next year, because I hate the idea of paying a vast amout to seed companies every single year.

There's a fair bit of room for me to play with - for an English suburban garden mine is pretty big (something like 1/4 of an acre), with an orchard (three full-sized apples and two full-sized pears, one young plum and one young greengage). Unfortunately we do have heavy clay soil which isn't ideal, but just means I need to only grow certain veggies, or buy loads of manure.

I'd love to keep ducks and/or ex-battery chickens for eggs, but Michael isn't keen. I'll have to persuade him, they don't seem to need much looking after - I'd fence off the whole orchard for them and build them a house (and a paddling-pool pond for ducks), and they'd just need feeding and shutting in at night and cleaning every so often. Easy.

Anyway, apart from the fact that I actually like gardening, I like the idea of knowing exactly where my food has come from, what chemicals have been used on it, whatever. I'd rather get my hands dirty and produce my own food than pay silly prices for tasteless, uniform veg that's been flown halfway across the world, which the poor farmer has been paid a pittance for so that supermarkets can make vast profits.

I'll take some pictures so you can see what the garden is like now.

Not having fun

2008-03-13T16:16:00.004Z

So I felt like shit all yesterday.

Tired, mopey, couldn't persuade myself to do anything, couldn't think of anything I actually wanted to do. Couldn't concentrate. Got pissed off at little things.

I didn't even feel like cooking or eating, which means I must have been bad.

And after a less-than-satisfactory conversation with Michael in the phone last night (he's coming back tonight), I ended up in tears because I felt so fucking miserable.

Haven't been there for a while.

And although I don't feel quite as bad today, I'm definitely not well, and the old fibro pain's kicked in. I guess it's the weekend catching up with me - bastard fibromyalgia can do that. That's why I'm depressed and "out of it".

So I texted Harriet to ask if I can audition another time. Sounds pathetic, but I can't cope with it today. In this mood I won't sing as well as I can, and if I do that I'll cry. I'm not auditioning if I can't be me.

Not sleeping again

2008-03-12T03:06:00.004Z

Mostly because I slept in disgracefully late, but possibly also because I'm nervous about tomorrow.

Because I'm auditioning for a solo part.

Horror.

It's kind of a generic audition for one of the many solo parts in Dido and Aeneas, or the Vivaldi Gloria that we're doing with Socii. I'll have to sing the Sorceress's "Wayward Sisters" bit, and one of the alto solos from Gloria.

I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with the whole thing - I haven't done an audition since I was 16, and this will be only my second singing audition. Nervous would be the word.

Realistically, I won't get the Sorceress - even if I was better than I actually am, there's another alto who has the perfect voice for it, in my not-at-all-knowing-anything-about-it-opinion. In fact I can't see myself with any of the Dido parts - I could do some of them, but not as well as some of the other auditionees. Neither am I very hopeful about the Gloria solos -I'm only slightly encouraged by the fact that there are two alto solos in it, and only three altos auditioning, which makes the odds a little better.

Not that I mind if I don't get anything. It's just as usual, I'm so scared of looking stupid. Even worse, of looking stupid but also looking like I don't realise how bad I am. You know like those people we all laugh at on Pop Idol or whatever, the one who are convinced they are the next Whitney or whoever, but are so awful that even the kind judges just say "No!" without hesitation? The ones who cry or shout or tell the judges they don't know what they're talking about. The ones we all pity.

It's a bad character flaw, but I'd rather not try at all than look like I think I'm good enough to do something when I'm not. Better to not try than to fail - but it really isn't the failing that I fear so much.

It's aiming for the lead if it's painfully obvious to everyone but me that I'm forever destined to just be a member of the chorus.

Please describe me

2008-03-11T22:55:00.001Z

Something reminded me of this, so I'd like you all to go here and tell me what you think!!

Because it's interesting to find out how people see you.

I need your input, oh culinary people

2008-03-11T21:57:00.004Z

I'm tired now. And lonely, because Michael's away for two nights with work. Generally feeling a bit sorry for myself.

Due to kitchen panicking, I ended up with some food left over from the formal. Like 4kg of onions, which should have gone in the fennel/orange salad and saffron rice. I made the executive decision that they'd be fine without onions (and they were). Similar decisions were made with other dishes.

So now I have...

2 big bunches of flat-leafed parsley, 1 small bunch of chives, a little coriander/cilantro
900g of mild cheese
3kg onions
20 oranges
15+ limes
5 bulbs of garlic
4 fennel bulbs
1 litre + of olive oil
Other stuff in more manageable amounts, such as chillies, various spices, butter, soured cream, sugar, eggs, concentrated vegetable stock.

.. which of course I'd rather not waste.

I've already made orange cake for Ladies' Choir (which dealt with some oranges, eggs, sugar and butter), and tonight a big pot of onion soup (which used, well, onions) which I'll eat some of and freeze the rest.

Any ideas what else I could make?? Assume I have common ingredients, including pretty much every type of herbs and spices it's possible to buy in Sainsbury's, and usual store cupboard stuff. Preferably something I can freeze.

Oh yeah, I'll be adding some of the formal recipes soon as well. Starting with the salmon in Canary Island green sauce, which Kim requested.

Just two things, because I'm off to make cake

2008-03-10T13:26:00.004Z

A selection of us at the formal - I think this was all the Small Groups girlies that were there... I stole the picture from Harriet. I'm at the back in red, with straight hair and glasses.

1) Formal was AWESOME last night. Had people telling me I was wonderful all night, that the food was better (and cheaper, lol) than a proper tapas place, and a couple of people even told me that I should open a restaurant myself! Made all the hard work worth it - and it was hard work. At least I remained mostly calm. But couldn't have done it without all the lovely people who helped.

I might post in a bit more detail about it later.

2) I'm not needing a second pregnancy test. Yes, I have finally been visited by the period fairy. After making me worry all week (especially after I spoke to my friend Emma on Friday who told me that my last period was 5 weeks ago - she remembers because it was the week before hers), my little "friend" decides to show up the weekend of the formal. Thanks for that.

And yet again, on that note, I'm touting the Mooncup. I love my 'cup. I love not having to worry about whether I have enough tampons or towels, and the tell-tale carrying my bag to the loo with me. No more dilemma time with tampons - you know that thing where you're not sure if you need to change it yet, you don't want to wait too long in case you leak but if you take it out too soon it's rather uncomfortable? And definitely no more sleeping with a small mattress between my legs which invariably ends up out of place by morning - I generally sleep more than 8 hours so tampons at night are not an option. And I've saved money already, even with my actually-I-can't-be-bothered-this-month cycle.

Sorry, but the cup is so awesome that I feel compelled to tell everyone how great it is! There are a couple of negatives - you have to wash it out which isn't terribly convenient in a public loo but you can just wipe it out and wash it the next time, you do have to look at your own blood, and there's a certain amount of "bodily contact" required to insert and remove it but nowhere near as much as with a non-applicator tampon. But I can't say I mind any of that.

So yeah. Now I'm off to make some sort of orange cake because I have maybe 20 oranges left from the formal.

What if...?

2008-03-06T15:27:00.003Z

Okay, so after the negative test, it's pretty damn likely that I'm not "otherwise occupied" as my friend Kaz so eloquently put it.

Of course I'd thought about the options if the result was positive - but hadn't come to any sort of conclusion. Michael and I had decided not to discuss it until we knew what was going on, and now there doesn't seem to be any point in discussing it. I firmly believe that you can't know how you'll feel until event actually happens, especially as you may well be in a different situation by the time it happens.

But here are my thoughts from yesterday, when I didn't know. Otherwise entitled, "What the hell do I do if I am actually pregnant?"

In general
I'm not maternal particularly. I'm not the sort that gets broody if they see a baby - I've never had a real desire to have babies of my own. They just don't interest me.

However I do like kids. Kids are fun once they can talk and are potty trained and you can sort of reason with them and teach them and do fun stuff. Hours of peek-a-boo and smelly nappies is not my idea of a fun afternoon, but a trip to the park, or even just watching kids TV sounds pretty cool.

I also have worries about my ability to cope with a child, when I'm not even very good at looking after myself.

Plus, Michael doesn't want kids. Doesn't want the change his lifestyle and be responsible for something, and I'm with him on that.

But I would love to experience a pregnancy. And yeah, even giving birth. And in a sort of related and entirely selfish way, I'd love the attention that pregnant women and new mothers get.

So here are the options, should I get pregnant in the future. Or if I am actually pregnant now, in defiance of the test.

Keep the baby
Not sure I want children. Michael definitely doesn't, but I do think he'd feel differently if his child was a reality. Still, it's a massive life change. Don't know how it would affect uni. Although we're relatively financially stable, we'd have to make sacrifices with money, as kids are expensive. Plus the health issues, with my fibromyalgia and high blood pressure and diabetes/insulin resistance/whatever the hell I've got.

Termination
Now I'm a bit weird about killing things. In general I'm for abortion, because in some situations having the baby would ruin both the baby and the mother's life. 5 years ago I believe I would have had an abortion and not felt too guilty about it, but now I'm pretty sure I couldn't go through with it. Kill a person that could have a perfectly happy life just because their arrival would be inconvenient? How would I live with myself? I feel guilty if I step on a snail in the garden, for God's sake (not guilty enough to stop eating meat, but that's another issue).

Adoption
Sounds idea. All the experience of pregnancy and birth, but none of the expense, and no responsibility afterwards. But I'm not convinced that I could give up a baby after carrying it for nine months. How can you help thinking of it as "your baby", especially if you're in a situation where you could perfectly well raise it yourself? And also, hearing the experiences of adoptees like Attila and my ex-boyfriend (who was devastated when he found at the age of 16, and I don't think ever really got over it) - I wouldn't want to do that to a child.

And my family wouldn't understand and would never forgive me. I'd be taking the baby away from them too. With termination, I wouldn't even have to tell them, but how can you hide a pregnancy? (My aunt Liz did, but that's also another issue.)

So yeah. I don't see that any of them are good options. Fingers crossed that I don't have to make that decision anytime soon.

Just had a test done...

2008-03-05T20:38:00.002Z

...

Negative.

So plan now is to see if this breast thing goes away, and if not I'll make an appointment to see the doc.

How do I feel about the result? Don't feel very much really, which is kind of weird. Just tired, and slightly relieved that there's only maybe a 5% chance I need to make a massive life-changing decision.

Girl stuff, bit worrying

2008-03-02T22:58:00.005Z

So last night when I went to bed I noticed some discomfort when I turned over onto my right side (I usually settle down on my side, almost on my tummy, leaning on my opposite arm). My right breast hurt.

Now as I'm bigger than average (DD cup), sometimes if I lay on them wrong my breasts can hurt, but I'd only just turned over.

An bit of an experimental prod revealed that both breasts are swollen (especially the right one, which is bigger anyway). They feel firmer, bigger, and quite tender. They ache, like I've been hit with something. They hurt more if I touch them.

Also my stomach is bloated and a little crampy. Like a cross between mild period pain and wind really.

I've never had tender breasts before. I'm not sure when my period is due, because I'm not in the slightest bit regular, but it's been at least a month. And I don't usually get stomach cramps until I actually start bleeding.

So this has lead me to the obvious worry.

Could me and my dodgy hormones be pregnant?

We had sex 12 or 13 days ago. With a condom. And nothing for months before that, because I'm always tired and not feeling in the least bit sexy, so if I am pregnant it's from then.

Is 12 days too early to start showing symptoms? Do I need to get a test?

And more importantly, what if I am?? How the hell does that fit in to my "don't really want kids right now, if ever" lifeplan?

New toys, and birds

2008-02-27T20:31:00.003Z

So both Magimix and waffle iron arrived yesterday.

I immediately set to making waffles, naturally, using a recipe from Allrecipes.

Not quite what I was expecting - not at all like the Belgian waffles I've had before, but pretty good.

Definitely want to test more recipes though. Anyone have a favourite waffle recipe I can try?

And I made pizza for dinner, using the processor to make the dough and chop everything up. One pizza with spicy sausage, chicken, peppers and olives (using up stuff from the fridge), and one with just peppers and olives. Both were pretty good except I used a little too much tomato sauce on the bases - I was quite pleased in general as I haven't made pizza from scratch since I was in school, and the one I made then wasn't very impressive.

Today's lunch was a savoury waffle sandwich, which was intriguing. My waffle maker makes a round-ish waffle which you can cut into 5 heart shapes - I made one cheesy waffle and cut it in half. Then used the waffle iron to cook an egg, leaving the yolk a little soft. Inserted egg between bits of waffle, along with a slice of processed cheese, the type I refer to as "plastic cheese" - you know the stuff where each slice comes wrapped in plastic, the sort you'd use on a cheeseburger. A little black pepper. Yum!! Will definitely make that again at the weekend, maybe with bacon or sausage as well.

Took Summer out to Linacre with Emma this afternoon, quite a nice afternoon. Loads of birds about, and I got to practice my newly acquired song/call identification skills. We heard a great spotted woodpecker drumming many times, tried to track it down but didn't see it. And got good views of three little grebes calling, two of which were duetting which was cute. And two pairs of goosanders. And Summer is now knackered.

And I've been seeing long tailed tits more often in my garden, seen at least two every day for the last week or so - hopefully it's a pair and they'll stick around and nest nearby!

Fun Monday, but late

2008-02-27T04:02:00.006Z

Okay, okay, I know it's Wednesday.... but it's still Tuesday somewhere in the world, right?

2) Not sure what my favourite dish is. I like a lot of different foods. But the one most requested is lavender cake, which is a big favourite of my fellow choirpeople.

The dish I make most often is probably the Greek stuffed peppers. Halloumi is one of the nicest things ever, and I love peppers so much that the two of us get through maybe ten a week. Not that I use them all for that dish!

On a completely different note, I experienced my first earthquake earlier.

Yeah, an earthquake in England!!

Wasn't expecting that. I was in the living room, cross-stitching a green woodpecker and watching Sex and the City. It was almost 1am. I heard a noise, a little like when there's a sudden guest of wind which makes the windows rattle. Then a rumbling, and the room shook. I was moved backwards and forwards as I sat on the sofa - the first thing that I thought was that maybe the house was falling down, or that something had hit it, but there was no impact noise. The whole thing lasted maybe 5 seconds, maybe 10, long enough for me to realise what was actually happening, then I went upstairs to the bedroom where Michael had been woken up by it.

Summer got up maybe a second before I heard or felt anything, I'm pretty sure she sensed it in some way. She didn't seem scared but she was definitely disturbed. She settled down again almost straight away afterwards.

10 minutes later and it was being reported on Sky News, with a succession of dull people phoning in to say that they'd been in bed and felt the quake and they'd felt one before in LA and that there didn't seem to be any damage and no-one was out in the street, but a lot of bedroom lights were on. Yawn.

Turns out that it was centred in Lincolnshire, about 55 miles away, and had a magnitude of 5.2 ML. Small potatoes on a worldwide scale, but pretty big for here apparently. At least one person was injured, and there's been some structural damage to chimneys near the epicentre.

Was an experience, certainly.

I'm finally doing Fun Monday again!

2008-02-25T14:31:00.002Z

Don't know why it's taken me so long.

This week hosted by Mariposa.

Fun Monday is easy, I'll only be asking TWO things -

(1) Please share to us how the NAME of your BLOG was made? I can't wait to hear interesting funny stories!

(2) Please share to us (in words or photo, though a combination of both will be a bonus!) your favorite/ most common dish!

So.

1) Back when I first started blogging, I was on LiveJournal. And technically still am, although I haven't posted for ages. And I needed a funky title, so I settled on Annie and the Spice Rack that Wasn't There.

Annie is my pet name from school, which I hated at first but grew to prefer to Anna. Now I'm happy to respond to either, but tend to refer to myself as Anna because, well, it's my name.

The spice rack bit? I was going for whimsical and a little bit random, but reflective of myself. I have about a million different herbs and spices, but no spice rack. And you know I'm obsessed with food. It just kind of worked.

When I started using my Blogger account, of course I needed a new title. This blog was designed to compliment my LJ which I used for sort of everyday, journally type stuff, while this one would be for my other stuff. Hence Alternative. As I said at the time:

I've decided that I want a second blog. My LiveJournal blog will continue as usual, documenting my day-to-day existance in all its mind-numbing glory.

This one will be reserved for "special" thoughts. Because to be honest, some of the stuff I usually blog is quite interesting and some, frankly, isn't - this way means that those of you who are interested in the more mundane can get your Annie fix over there, and those who require a little more stimulation of one kind or another can get it here.

Some posts will probably appear in both.

2) I actually want to do this, but haven't currently got time, since I need to eat and shower and drag myself off to Sheffield for choir rehearsal. Check back, I'll answer this one tomorrow.

A visitor and some new possessions

2008-02-24T22:50:00.004Z

Needing a wee earlier this evening, I saved my Pokémon Diamond game and wandered upstairs to the bathroom.

The light switch, annoyingly, is on the wall outside the bathroom, next to the door. I clicked on the light and pushed open the door.

To be confronted with a small dark fast-moving object with a tail running across the floor. A mouse! It ran behind the cupboard under the sink. It made me jump.

And having on full bladder, that can have an unfortunate effect.

Yes, I did wet myself very slightly.

Not that I mind mice. I'm in no way scared of mice. I just wasn't expecting one!

And on a completely different note, I've ordered myself a shiny food processor, on the advice of Which? magazine and several internet reviews. I've never owned one before. I think it's about time, and the formal has given me the incentive to bite the bullet - it will save me a lot of time during food prep.

The frugal part of me (the bit that channels Michael - I never had a frugal part until I started seeing him) said it was silly to spend the best part of £100 on a food processor when you can get them for £30. But the sensible part of me knows that you get what you pay for with these things. A £30 machine will either break after a while, or just won't perform well, so I'd end up buying a new one anyway. False economy.

I also ordered a waffle iron. £15. Bargain. Because I've never had a real waffle, only the supermarket ones you put in the toaster. Plus I recently found out that you can make savoury waffles! How cool is that??

Both should get here some time this week.

And then I will pig out.

Food, music, and me bitching

2008-02-22T16:03:00.005Z

So here it is, the menu produced by the lovely Pippa (who is taking me shopping for shoes and make-up for the formal, because I need all the help I can get). How cool is this??

Now I officially can't change my mind about the food I'm serving. Oh well...

While I'm on SingSoc stuff, I can't say I'm 100% happy with the music this semester. A lot of it's just not my kind of thing.

With Socii:
Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell - Bah. Opera. I hate opera. Rob keeps telling me it's not really an opera (I'm not sure why it isn't, to be honest, but I believe him). I haven't heard a single bit of it I like yet, and it isn't endearing me at all to the genre. It's kind of banal random repeated disjointed bits of sentences, hard to follow and the music doesn't seem to "follow" the lyrics at all. I'm fully expecting to yawn throughout the whole performance. Which isn't helping me to learn it, to be honest.
Gloria by Antonio Vivaldi - Yeah, this is okay. Can't say I'm keen on the whole Baroque style, but this is nice so far, and we don't really sound like the recordings I've heard, which is good. Probably we will before the actual performance, not sure how Harriet wants it yet as we're in the note-bashing stage right now.

With the main chorus:
African Sanctus by David Fanshawe - Supposedly a celebration of all faiths, a kind of traditional Latin mass type thing intertwined with traditional African music. It doesn't encompass my faith at all, but then I don't have any. This is the cornerstone of our huge £10k concert to celebrate our 10th anniversary. It jarrs me to be honest, African music's great, and Latin masses are great, but together? It just feels wrong. Plus as a second alto I'm not very happy about the horribly high top As we're expected to sing. It's hard, because I don't know what to expect from it in terms of rhythm and harmony and so am consequently struggling.
Carmina Burana by Carl Orff - I like this one, I've done it before (on no sleep), even though it's rather difficult, especially the fast bits. I especially like how it's not in the slightest bit religious. It's all sex, and drinking, and gambling and fate and not a "deus dominus" or "jesu christe" or "agnus dei" in sight. Plus, there's shouty bits and pretty slower bits and bits that are very catchy. And who doesn't love O fortuna? For those of you who think you don't know it - you do. And here's the proof.

So yeah. I'm hoping I'll grow to like them more as I learn them better. And if I don't... well it's no big deal.

Sorry no London pics yet. Because I still can't be bothered.

Oh, and I finally read the last Harry Potter book the other day. It was okay.

How exciting!!

2008-02-14T15:00:00.005Z

Pippa sent me a copy of the actual menu for the formal, which looks fantastic. I'm not sure I'm allowed to show it to you, as it hasn't been shown to SingSoc members yet! Maybe after tonight's rehearsal?

Oh, and I've added some recipes here My Recipes at i-ERM.com!, and I'll be adding them here as well at some point.

We had a great time in London at the weekend. I'm still organising photos (translation: I haven't even started yet) but I'll get them up as soon as I can ~~be bothered~~. While you wait (with baited breath, I imagine!), have a raven.

Because I haven't done a meme in ages

2008-02-07T19:36:00.000Z

You Are a Banana

You are mellow, easy going, and a total softie on the inside.

People find it really easy to get along with you. You suit most tastes.

And while you're very sweet, you're not boring or ordinary.

You have an attraction to the exotic, and you could show up anywhere... doing almost anything!

You are spirited, energetic, and a total kick to be around.

You're also quite funny. Your sense of humor is on the goofy side, and it fits you well.

What Type of Fruit Are You?

Stolen from Sayre.

Catering for 50!

2008-02-05T16:23:00.000Z

I mentioned last year that I'm in charge of the food for SingSoc's formal meal this year (it's in March).

This means, as the title suggests, that I'll be catering for 50.

Which is a bit scary and daunting, but I'm really excited.

You know me, I love cooking, and I really enjoyed cooking under Pete's direction last year, but I've never been in charge of a kitchen before, let alone had to do budgeting and portion control and menu design and all the other essential jobs that go with it. So all new experiences.

The formal will have a Spanish theme, mostly because I fancied having a crack at tapas. I've spent the last two days planning the menus and budgeting for the ingredients (mySupermarket has proved invaluable already, saving me around 15%).

Here's the provisional menu... basically each table will get enough of every dish for everyone to have some, for vegetarians I'll reduce the portions of meat/fish on the table and increase the veggie portions. Far too complicated to ask everyone to order individual dishes. Once I get all the recipes up, they'll all be linked to here. Bout time I posted more recipes anyway.

Meat
Lamb meatballs in tomato and pepper sauce
Chicken in lemon and garlic

Fish/seafood
Salmon in Canary Island green sauce
King prawns with lime

Veggie
Baked tortilla
Deep-fried manchego cheese
Stuffed garlic mushrooms

Salads
Rocket salad
Orange and fennel salad
Roasted pepper salad

Potatoes/rice
Spicy potato wedges
Saffron rice

Dessert
Orange and mint flaó (Spanish cheesecake)
Fresh fruit

Also bread and marinated olives served with sangria when the guests arrive! Marinating olives is fun and tasty. :)

Good news is that it's inspiring me to get off my arse and do something that isn't watching TV, reading, playing Pokémon or cross-stitching.

Hi everyone

2008-02-03T20:28:00.000Z

So I'm getting a bit disillusioned with blogging at the moment. I think to myself, "I really must blog about that, and catch up with my blogroll, and comment on all the blogs I love." But then I realise that there's a problem with that.

I can't be bothered.

I've got out of the habit of doing all my "internet stuff", and finding it very difficult to get back into it again. It's no reflection on you guys, simply a reflection of the battle I'm currently losing with my own inertia.

And I hate to just come on here and moan about how crap things are, so I won't do that. Just know that I am thinking about all of you and there are quite a few of you that I specifically want to address comments to and reply to, and I will do it eventually.

Just don't anyone mention anything about uni. Because I'm trying very hard not to think about almost certainly having to repeat the year again.

On a completely unrelated note, we're having a little holiday next weekend. We're off to London to see the Lord of the Rings musical, which looks truly awesome. We'll probably spend Saturday doing touristy things, and see the show. More touristy things, come home Sunday night. I want to go to the Tower of London, for one reason and one reason only - ravens! One of my favourite birds, and I'd love to see one closer up.

And I realised that after 7 months, I've still not put up the photos from Scotland last year. I'll get on it. Just give me a minute.

Oh, I forgot...

2008-01-14T14:05:00.000Z

... to wish you all a Happy *insert name of holiday as appropriate*.

I didn't buy Christmas cards this year, because I intended to donate money to charity instead. Unfortunately I failed to let people know this - so if you're thinking I forgot you, I didn't. I just forgot the telling you bit. Oh well. Sorry.

I wanted to maybe write a bit about the holiday - but essentially I can't be bothered.

Yeah, whatever

2008-01-14T13:13:00.000Z

Having not the best time health-wise at the moment. My sleep pattern's gone to shit, I'm currently getting to sleep around 6-7am and waking up maybe 3-4pm feeling more tired than when I went to bed. Forcing myself to stay awake all night (and all day) in the hope of "resetting" my body clock hasn't worked so far - maybe it will tonight. Maybe.

Anyway, this nocturnal thing has to stop, because it isn't in the slightest bit productive. You see, when it's dark, I don't want to do anything. I can't really go out for walks or look for birds or persuade myself to do anything more strenuous than watching My Greek Kitchen, playing Pokémon Diamond (got for Christmas - I don't care what anyone says, the Pokémon games rule) or reading. Saying that, I've done precisely nothing all day today either, but I guess expecting results on no sleep at all is a bit unrealistic.

I'm tired. I'm tired and bored and fed up, and I'm feeling even more disconnected than usual. Nothing engages me. I can't make decisions because I don't care either way - even deciding between tea and coffee is too much effort. I worry that this kind of thing can lead me into a bad place - the place of thinking what the hell difference does it make if I'm not even here.

It's weird. After almost 12 years of knowing there's a name for why I feel shit, I still don't see myself as ill. And people don't notice unless I tell them specifically that I have a chronic illness, quite apart from the fact that most people haven't even heard of fibromyalgia. My stock definition for "normals" is that it's like chronic fatigue syndrome but with the added bonus of pretty much constant pain or at least discomfort.* I play it down usually. Because I don't want to look like this big moaning person who blames every failure on a medical condition. I don't really want sympathy. I don't want to single myself out as different, when I'm obviously already further over the line than I'd like to be. But the problem there is that then everyone thinks that the me that's completely bent out of shape by a collection of symptoms is the real me.

And I'm not like that. I'm cheerful, energetic and enthusiastic. I'm bright, resourceful and creative. I'm fun - I make people laugh. I'm understanding and helpful and compassionate and practical and interesting. But I can't be any of that, because I'm too fucking tired.

I keep on and on using that word. Tired. I wish there was another word, because tired really doesn't cover it. I use that word so often that it doesn't have any meaning any more.

My mum told me on Boxing Day that she'd had a week of not sleeping well while her school was being inspected by OFSTED. And that it made her realise that my life must be not so nice. I think she's never had more that a single night of less-than-perfect sleep in her life before. (I on the other hand, can't actually remember the last time I had even a good night's sleep.) And my first thought was, "Good! Now you have an idea of what it's like! Now you know I'm not making it up, or exaggerating!" Not a response I'm proud of, to be honest, but it did highlight to me how isolated I feel - since I don't know many people who have sleep problems, and unless you've gone for months on end without a good night you really don't know what it's like.

But yeah. Back to the "ill" concept. I can't decide whether it's helpful to think of myself as ill or not. In my university's definition, I'm ill enough to be disabled. I dunno. Should I accept the ill label, accept that I have limitations and can't do things that I want to do, shelve my plans, and become a person who isn't anything and has no purpose? Or do I struggle on doom myself to failure?

I really don't know.

*Yeah, I know that CFS has pain as well. It's just that normals don't know that. I can't really be arsed to explain to everyone.

Fox, as promised

2007-12-15T01:37:00.000Z

It's a little later than advertised, but here's the fox.

And have a few pictures too. It was so lovely, all relaxed but alert at the same time.

I wanted to hug it.

Can't seem to shut me up!

2007-12-14T02:11:00.000Z

Suddenly, I have a lot of stuff I want to say! But I'll restrain myself for now.

I will say hi to Pippa and Rob, who are more people that I know in "real life" and have checked out my blog. Hi guys! Make yourselves at home, maybe even comment or something! Because I need the attention. ;)

Anyone else lurking, can you let me know you're reading? Just so I don't end up repeating myself when I talk to you.

Tomorrow you can have a video and some pictures of a gorgeous fox that was relaxing in the sun in my garden Thursday lunchtime.