• I have sore elbows, I woke up about three nights ago with them looking like a 7yr old’s knees. They hurt. However, I’m more annoyed that I don’t know why and how they got like this.
• My eyes are sore too, but that’s contact lenses. Nothing mysterious, just thought I’d share.
• I have a job interview in the morning. As well as any good luck thoughts you may kindly wish to have, I’d like some good direction thoughts as I’ve not had chance to practice going there.
• And I’m having to wear full on heels because my only non-sk8terish flats make me look about 6.
• Oh and as well as my elbows I’m covered in little bite marks. Not impressed. I may be a fan of the loving more than one concept, but my idea of more than one does not include arm biting little bugs.
• I won a camera on eBay. I’m very proud that I did proper saving and selling of previous cameras to buy it. I am aching for it to turn up though, really badly want to get my hands on it.
• Bizarrely quite miffed that I’m missing a stats lesson tomorrow. This is not normal behaviour I’m sure.
• Desperately trying to remember what that plumbing foam that you get in tube shapes is called…it’s not sponge. I know that because I can touch it without freaking out, and I can’t touch sponge…but I want to know its name so I don’t look a complete numpty when I go to B&Q.
• I want it because I’m changing a nappy bag into a camera bag…I absolutely loathe camera bags, they’re hideous to look at…really truly fucking ugly…and I’m sure having a camera brand name plastered all over something isn’t tremendously safe with regards muggers et al.
• I have an eye test on Friday. I’m grumpy. it needs doing though if I want more contact lenses. Which I do. I like being able to see where I’m going and not getting run over. But I dislike the battle for my prescription, the attempts to sell me after care and pretty much the whole process.
• Though I hate the dentist more.

Don’t get me wrong, I like nice scenery and am plenty keen on visiting all manner off different places…but cliffs, no. Cliffs were not really in my guidebook…As far as I was aware I was wandering about a pretty, but intermittently treacherous park…The roses are pretty, but they have thorns like you wouldn’t believe…some days its been a field of orange gerberas, pink carnations, yellow roses, peach dahlias, red tulips*…and then the next nettles, bramble and flyagarics all over the bloody place…sometimes while I wasn’t looking some bastard appeared to have mown and cutback everything, and that’s much worse than the spiky, scratchy and poisonous…But a park it was, landlocked I assumed…somewhere between the East and West Midlands.

For a couple of weeks its been over-maintained…the invisible gardener has been hard at work, mowing feverishly and clippering like a man posessed…But on Wednesday morning I sighted my favourite plant, Pulsatilla vulgaris, back again. Its a slightly sad looking flower sometimes, and though not as common as its name suggests, it certainly fulfills the vulgar element at times…but there it was, which pleased me greatly…and then I spotted it again on Thursday, over the other side of the park…I was sat amongst a jolly little yellow pansy, a spiky briar rose and a bluebell when I looked up…directly in my line of site, a little obscured by a fence and a Quinine bush, there it was…and that’s when I realised my feet weren’t on the ground anymore…that somehow, somewhere along the line, without noticing, the park had moved to the coast…and I just stepped off the edge.

*slash a fucking enormous idiot…why has that become some kind of unofficial university student sport? Seriously people does not the fact that people kill themselves in that manner given you an indication that it carries a tad more risk than nicking a supermarket trolley?
*my favourite flowers…

Some of the books were in the basement clearly because they were in four humours medicine territory, and I half expected to see discussions about what kind of leeches* you need and whether the moon should be waxing or waning. However, these older books from when Britain was still holding onto the delusion of a much cherished empire were actually quite useful for photographic resources since early C20th doctors thought nothing of taking pictures of some parasite ridden dying person what ho’. Something of a human rights nightmare in printed form, but more evocative than descriptions, which is by and large what most of the modern books contain.

And of those modern books I think they’re in the basement for one of two reasons. Reason 1, is just one book, which is pages and pages of horrendously unparagraphed wittering. Scientific wittering I’ll grant you, but still wittering. Seriously research scientists of the world, people will not read your work if it is not fucking readable. Grammar is not some naff thing that only social scientists and arts people use, you don’t lose nerd points for using full stops. It is perfectly okay to have sentences that don’t run the risk of being at her majesty’s pleasure. Okay its pretty likely that when you’re writing about something in a very in depth fashion lay readers aren’t your audience, but that doesn’t mean you have to write as if it were some rambling ongoing conversation in your lab. And publishing houses-you, you are just as bloody guilty, just because people have a lot of letters after their names and have cured 6 different diseases [before lunch] doesn’t mean they don’t need editing for coherence and introducing to the concepts of full stops, commas and colons.

Reason 2 is that the central library has by and large been taken over with fiction, or how to books. Now I love fiction, I better bloody do I have enough of it on my shelves (and intermittently in my life), and I am actually rather fond of those Dummies and Idiots guides. I don’t love that it seems to be the only two things that most libraries seem to keep on the shelves. I understand that some things aren’t going to be that popular and so you want to keep minimal shelf stock, but my local library for instance has a medical section that is composed of 4 books. If you aren’t a middle aged woman there’s essentially nothing there for you. The main library of second city that I live between has a psychology section comprising 7 books. Seven books, seriously, for a main library? Personally I find psychology as dull as dishwater but 7 books is pathetic honestly, that doesn’t even allow one per type of psychology, let alone enough for someone to properly read about the subject. Not to mention the most irritating habit that libraries have gained from bookshops, my ex-employer being guilty of this, which is having stupid shitty “why does that bloke I fancy not fancy me” books in psychology. That isn’t psychology, psychology dull as it is to me,  is a proper scientific study, it is not a self-help guide about celestial bodies nor a pile of twaddle about how to lure the man of your dreams. It is proper quantitative research into behaviour. Similarly the past year’s worth of Radio Times bundled together in a folder, and a very old copy of Halliwell’s film guide does not constitute a proper media and communications studies section. I know libraries are underfunded and underused but hoofing out most of the academic content in favour of thirty separate books telling you how to crochet (if the first three don’t work you ain’t going to crochet, welcome to being me) is just daft. There doesn’t even seem to be much variety in the fiction…and of the two city libraries only one has one BS Johnson book and even that’s in the bloody basement.

I finally picked a parasite though. Or more correctly I picked a disease that interested me, and the cause followed.

For my research piece I interviewed, amongst others, the lovely Max who mentioned that she finds it easier to relate to scientific concepts if they relate to an emotional or social context. I think unless you’re exceptionally good with abstract concepts (theoretical physicists and mathematicians step forward) this is true of all of us. The main point of the assignment is supposed to be the parasite itself but frankly, to me, one protozoa looks much like another, and one nematode is fairly indistinguishable from the next. What they do though is much more interesting to me, and the response of the host against them too is more interesting than the little protozoic chap on his own. I would absolutely recommend Carl Zimmer’s Parasite Rex for being able to see not only the immediate relationship of parasites with their hosts (ie the diseases they cause), but also the evolutionary adaptations they have spurred. One example from the book is that of Sickle Cell Anaemia as a defence of cells against malaria by changing the cell shape, but the change in the cell shape also makes it tricker for them to move through the body, hence the anaemia.

But anyways the social/personal context has made it easier to get my interest levels up. I don’t think I could ever be a molecular scientist or a biochemist. Not only would the teeny tiny detail get on my nerves, but that lack of anything to hinge it onto. Yes everything is ultimately part of a bigger picture, but I couldn’t imagine spending years looking at one very specific cell function. I admire those that can, but I think the way my brain works that would be a sure fire route to leaping out of the nearest window.

My parasite of choice incidentally is Trypanosoma cruzi…google and then count yourself lucky you’re not exceedingly poor and living in S.America (as if there weren’t already very many enough reasons to be happy you’re not living in a Brazilian shanty town…). It’s bothered me this, properly, if you’ll excuse the phrasing, got under my skin. I’m angry at my own niaevty for never having heard all about this before, and really trying not to be cynical think that perhaps I’ve not heard about it because the 14,000 people who die every year are 14,000 poor people. I’m really trying not to be cynical, but the right this minute I’m failing at that a bit…

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*On which point can I just say how much I fucking hate out of office replies. a) I know its half term already ‘kay, b) I wouldn’t expect a bloody reply on a Saturday night anyway I just send my emails when I remember, and c) am I the only one who reads out of office replies with a “ner-ner look at me I’m on holiday and you’re not” voice in their head?
* Yes I know. And my thoughts on the resurgence are largely unprintable (which is saying a lot considering my language use)…for now I’ll just *sigh*.

One of the bits that interested me (enough to blather on to Max about it) was the new section on Non-Suicidal Self Injury, for cutting (etc) in teenagers. Which I am quite pleased to see, I know quite a wadge of the MH community in the UK seems to find the current DSM laughably/terrifyingly old fashioned in some respects, so I think acknowledging that not everyone who self harms does so as a precursor to suicide attempts is helpful*. Though obviously for many it is the initial practice stage toward, but assuming it is for everyone, is unfair on those for whom that is release enough.

I’ve been reading it too with two heads on. Head one is the head that’s applying for a part time job that relates to all this. Head two is the head that’s struggling to come up with ideas because my friend (whom we will call Jemima for anonymity) that I’ve mentioned to some, if not all of you, seems to have reached a slightly odd place in her usual cycle and I’m not sure what. If anything. To do.

Jemima is a self harmer. She’s not a release only cutting teenager though, she’s a long time practicing mid twenties teacher. Often she has spoken to me about her desire to kill herself, but her inability to go through with it. She sees this as a massive failure on her part. To me it’s one of the few things that makes me feel it is probably okay to not set up camp outside her house.
She doesn’t appear on any radar anywhere because she’s never been to the doctors about it (she has been self-harming and suicidal since she was early teens). I’ve encouraged her endlessly, but though I can reassure her about things from the perspective of the MHA83 I can’t entirely reassure her on one of her fears which prevents her going to her GP. Her parents finding out.
She lives not far from the main site of my college, as do her parents. Her GP is the same one she, and they have always used. It is the local practice. Everyone at the practice knows the patients, that kind of place. Her parents are friendly with said GP, and it isn’t wholly inconceivable from he, or even his receptionist, might say in passing “Jemima was in yesterday”. Which would leave her in an uncomfortable position. She is petrified of changing doctors for fear her parents may find out that too.
She is a talented and clever woman, but she wouldn’t agree. Despite the fact that she has a good degree from a very well respected university, a PGCE, is studying for a masters and is the head of a subject she isn’t good enough. Sadly not only from her own perspective. She has the unfortunate circumstance of being the younger sibling of a phenomenally successful woman. I’m not exaggerating to say that Jemima’s sister is paid a lot of money to do one of the most prestigious jobs in the country. She has very impressive credentials-Oxbridge. Oh and happens to be model like aesthetically too. All in all perhaps not the big sister you need when you’re feeling kind of shit about your own abilities. Especially when your mother is a comparer, one of those parents who insists on telling child a why child b is better than them. Or opts for the technique, that one of the mothers of my childhood friends chose, which involves repeatedly saying  to other adults “oh but Sarah is so much more academic than Pippa” whilst Pippa is stood there.
Jemima isn’t successful enough by not only her own standards, but her mother’s standards.

And then there’s her job. When I was a child I hero worshipped my school teachers. They could do no wrong. Even when they were moody or arbitrarily minded I had absolute faith that they were at the core unbelievably clever people who knew exactly what they were doing. I never had those thoughts that many children do, that their teachers live in the classroom. They were always absolutely human to me, just amazingly clever and kind humans. When the first of my friends to become a teacher qualified I found it bizarre for a good few years. But still they seemed good people. Apart maybe from that friend’s headmaster (at her old school) who frankly sounded like a bit of a tosser. Though I’ve never really been niave enough to think that management in schools would be much nicer than they were at the colleges my mum taught in, so that wasn’t a particular surprise. All that I know about Jemima’s work though has made me doubt the humanity of some teachers. Her colleagues clearly know something is not right, but ignore it. She has been out and out bullied my her line manager. She cuts herself in her classroom (when the students aren’t around) and no-one chooses to notice. They are either the most phenomenally unobservent set of teachers on the planet (and we’re talking about a group of people trained to spot note swapping at 100 yards), or a bunch of twats. I generally prefer not to think badly of people I don’t know but after all this time I find it really hard not to go there and lamp the lot of them.

None of the above is to blame for her cycle. But it doesn’t help. She’s been self harming for years as I’ve said. She has gaps, the last one being nearly a year, and I’m very proud of her. She had a very bad car accident a fortnight back on the A60 (busy and tediously long raod) and has had a setback. Which I think is understandable. The thing is though she’s got a new habit, something new to control. And its food. She’s been having weight issues for a while and when she said she was going on a diet for the new year I was pleased for her. Then last week I found out what her diet is composed of: one meal a day. This one meal is one can of tuna, or if she’s really pushing out the boat, two, and some vegetables. And a can of some hideous no sugar coke thing. Oh and some mints. Her deeply unobservent colleagues have failed to realise that she isn’t eating lunch, and have in innocence complimented her and told her to “keep it up”. That and her weightloss thus far have encouraged her, and my suggestions that perhaps it isn’t the most sensible approach is being ignored. Which I understand, but I’m frustrated. I want her to look after herself, but I’m running out of ideas. I find it quite easy to deal with all this on an abstract level, and on a practical work sort of level. But I don’t think I’m exactly equipped to deal with this as well as she needs. I am not the kind of person who would make a nurse let’s be honest, and I think that’s what she needs. I am at a loss honestly. I can’t fix it, and she’s too scared to.

*There’s also going to be the inclusion of binge eating (presumably called something else) as a separate diagnosis like ana/mia are, and the likelyhood that there will be a teenage temper control diagnosis to replace bipolar when they are young and hormonal (which has benefits and disadvantages obviously, but I think perhaps more of the former).

Quite a lot of the time I do mooch along a bit. Not in a lazy or cowardly fashion, but more in the “if I’m going to fight a battle it better be bloody worth it”.
Similarly I am fastidious about being well behaved and law abiding, mostly, since I see no point going to prison for something stupid. If I ever end up on the wrong side of the law I’d like it to be something worthy of history books not for something daft like affray or nose candy. I’m not a good girl because I’m meek. I’m just saving my bad up for something worth it.
So my determined moods aren’t always that apparent, or that common. They tend to come in cycles (though I suppose by and large most humans are cyclical), and usually start with a rather intense need for exercise. And no that’s not an euphemism, I mean I start having bouts of staying up till stupid o’clock because I need to dance/hula-hoop for 3 hours. And I really do need to, I get properly angsty and fidgety if I don’t-I become the worst person on the planet to share a bed with.
Then when real life taps me on the shoulder and points out that if I keep staying up that late on a school night I’m likely to end up putting my clothes on the wrong way round and eating toothpaste, the energy gets diverted. My energies got diverted a bit sooner than normal thanks to some delightful emotional angst (thanks to Max, Becky and Jo for ‘ear and agreement that some people are tossers’ services). So I am in kick ass mode.

I have firmed up my university choice, after deciding that I can’t stand waiting for a decision that I’m not that bothered about anyway. So that is done and dusted.

I have decided that I am not doing Chemistry (well I am technically doing one assignment but it requires no going in). I don’t dispute that an understanding of chemistry is pretty fundamental for biological sciences, however being in a room full of on Bunsen burners is quite honestly hell. Partly because I have a temperature regulation system that appears to have been fitted by my local power company (another man came today, another on his way tomorrow-for the boiler I should add). But also because I am fucky terrified of fire. That I can turn on a gas oven without a stupid amount of panicking is down only to 5 years of getting used to it, and I still do so with some considerable trepidation. It is, to me, like being Marie Antionette and having a ruddy great guillotine in your garden. It is a big poster of death. Painful, hideous, suffocating death.

On the other thing, hmm, well I’m having me a Scissor Sisters moment…(and no I’m not actually planning murder-but this is their best song. I do not get why that ruddy I Don’t Feel Like Dancing is so popular, when they have much better stuff like this)

I am in equal parts petrified, that I have done done as much as I would really like to, and relieved that the fecking thing is not dangling over me any longer. I do get tremendously attached to assignments. I am hugely competitive, not against other people in my class if someone gets a higher mark than me it is because they are better than me, but against myself. And sometimes with the person teaching me, sometimes because I like them, sometimes because I don’t. Sometimes both at once.

But it’s weird having done something that I’m this attached to instead of something that is merely interesting. Or not, as in the case of the last two assignments of last semester. I’m going to be utterly fucked three years hence with a dissertation. I can genuinely say giving birth was bloody easy compared. Even worse though, in one of those spanking hurts but is rather good paradox things, I really enjoyed it too. Much as it hurt I fancy doing it again.
The assignment that is.
Not the giving birth. I really didn’t like that. Never doing that again.

As Facebook buddies will realise I have now met an extraordinary number of employees of a certain power company (whose predecessor I once had a mind numbingly dull job with) in an effort to have water and heat. In the 14 days since it first ceased working I have:
*Met 5 different engineers, 2 of those twice.
*Had a shower so cold that it made me cry. Properly. I was scared for my boobs, in the end it was my toes and head that caused the weeping like a baby and shaking.
*Stayed in a cheap chain hotel whose name rhymes with Pavel Kodge. Which was actually okay, although why do they have their beds so close to the floor? You wouldn’t think being low down would make you dizzy, but apparently it does.
* For the first time ever walked to college. A mere 2.8miles though. From hotel to college. At 7am it was really rather nice.

In other news (mildly stats related look away now my piscean friend) that I’ve had a couple of search engine visits on the tag jnbt. And have discovered that it stands for Java Non Binary Tag. So to save potential further irritation of Java-heads I have reinitialled him MCOT. Also I am in the mood for reinitialling anyway.

I have got to got to got to get my individual project thing in at least draft form. Preferably, as near as damn finished as possible. And then I can find someone to read it and check I’m not a total moron (JNBT said he can skim but actually reading counts as a submission, and skimming seems pointless to me). But I do have to be strict with myself or I’ll never get it done.
I also need to revise for my Maths exam resit on Monday.Boos and hisses all round. If someone can explain to me why my brain can comprehend tricky stuff like logs, but can’t get relatively simple rules that don’t change for algebra to stay in there for more than 30seconds please tell.
And I need to get some notes for the parasite thing. Preferably not from random reports in Welsh on BSE. So that I can write that. in theory I have till May/June, but frankly I want the bloody thing out of the way. It would help if a single solitary parasite I have read about in my notes so far seemed inspiring. For causes of some major diseases they are quite frankly slightly dull little chaps.
And need to do some itty bits and bobs too, that I’d like to have finished by 7th February. So all of this semester is done and dusted.

My sting will be felt by firstly un-named power company and its repair man. Who texted at 7.30am saying “on way”, it’s now half six in the evening and still he has not emerged.
Second candidate for a big fat sting will be the student finance/support part of my college. Who have been given the money that students such as I and several of my classmates were ‘awarded’, and yet have been sat on it for weeks. The person who was dealing with it has not answered phonecalls/emails and I found out today that this is because she has changed departments (although how difficult it would be to reply to an email with “Sorry I don’t do that now, email X instead”?!) And the people who do, don’t answer their naffing ‘phones. They got the money in early December, and we were told “some point in January”. So we have till Friday then. I suspect when Monday comes N and I will indeed by going forth and kicking some ass (perfect antidote post exam). EDIT: letter today says it’ll be in tomorrow, yay. However, point still stands about it being sat on for blah weeks.
There’s a lot of things I like about the college I attend. Much of the time the apparent chaos is sort of endearing, like an elderly aunt who keeps forgetting why she went upstairs, and repeatedly buys tins of pilchards and balls of string  “just incase”.
It has some sweet little quirks, like it makes all the staff move offices yearly in some ongoing game of not very musical chairs (I gather they don’t like it so much, but I think they’re just not embracing the potential fun) and most of the telephone exchange seems to be programmed wrong (JNBT is a whole entire centre, which seems fairly unfeasable, he’s not a small bloke but a centre?)
This, however, annoys me. It’s not that they don’t have the ruddy money it’s that they’re sitting on it, without explanation. It isn’t theirs. I’m luckily to be cynical enough to assume that it wasn’t going to come in the first place, but more trusting souls, like N have budgeted on the assumption that it will. Knowing that the funding is there, but in someone else’s bank account with no reasonable explanation is tremendously frustrating.

I just searched my local library catalogue for books on parasites and this is one of the suggested [on the very short list of] titles:
“Goblygiadau adroddiad ymchwiliad Phillips (BSE) i Gymru adroddiad ar gyfer Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru gan y Pwyllgor Iechyd a Gwasanaethau Cymdeithasol ar y cyd a’r Pwyllgor Amaethyddiaeth a Materion Gwledig”
And just incase your Cymraeg is a bit rusty it is a report on BSE for the assembly. Which isn’t even a blinkin’ parasite disease, it’s a prion disease (protein) so it can’t even be that the library service is being all boolean and smart. Just frustrating.

If you’re watching my 2010 photos there’s going to be a pause for a few days, because my pro account has run out so I can’t upload any pictures until either the 31st or when I’m less skint.

After a small and deeply unscientific poll I have concluded I am the most paranoid essay planner on the planet. Well my bit of it anyway. I am utterley baffled though as to how the rest of the world manages without planning every paragraph on a reference by reference basis. I could not cope without my pages of planning, my essays would never happen.*

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*When I say detail I mean like this….
Overall plan
1. Intro
2. Why I am so anal about planning
a) planning theory and CFs b) psych theories of meticulousness and CFs
3. Why other people aren’t
a) non planning theory, b) social implications and CFs
4. What might happen
a) future predictions and CFs
5. Conclusion
Paragraph plan
2. Why I am so anal about planning
i. Smith—information about planning
ii. Jones—planning quote “that you see…”
iii CF Green—on against planning
iv. Pink et al—psych—>meticulousness
etc
for every paragraph, line by line.

Question here for my random occasional visitors. What’s going on at Sutton Scarsdale Hall that has meant my site and my Flickr pictures of the hall have had lots of vistors lately?

I’ve googled (and even yahoooooood) and I can’t find anything that suggests something exciting is going on, so can someone enlighten me? I’ve had visitors from Nottingham, Derbyshire, Manchester, University of Huddersfield, University of Leeds, random Virgin customers that all come up in Southampton (but I think that’s just because of the weird way Virgin set up IP addresses, either that or most of Southampton and Portsmouth visit me every week anyway) and more. All looking for Sutton Scarsdale Hall. So, er, why?

Thank you for the hugs and emails after my last post. All those who think that the internet is a cold place clearly haven’t come across you lot, their loss.

Anyways two things initially. First my piggy bank has gone a bit ana/mia.
Second thing I’d like to thank one of Z’s internet buddies Mr Juan for leading me to realise that I’d forgot to reset my header links. Gaud I’m dense sometimes.

I’m still a bit meh to be frank. Other than the whole being broke thing, stuff that leads me into the territory of considering getting myself and the lovely Max matching T-shirts relating to the pain in the assness of other humans.
Partly some of that old I’m not very good at making friends thing. By which I mean people I feel wholly and absolutely comfortable with knowing anything about me and can say anything to. Rather than the being chirpy chatty and “friendly” with random people, which I have strangely got quite good at as I’ve gotten older.
And partly it is summed up by the bit of chat at the top…