I am covered from neck to navel in a lumpy, measl-ish rash. The doc says stay on the tabs unless symptoms of gastro-intestinal distress arise, because apparently this stuff can prompt your stomach to start eating itself.

Bah. Time to go and bounce off the walls of my tiny mind some more I think.

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My left shoulder is normal. Functioning away like a perfectly serviceable twenty-six-year-old joint. This from the doctor I saw last week, for all of four minutes. The surgery was running 25 minutes behind on appointment times, and he made it clear he didn't want to waste his time.

According to him, the manner in which it grinds its way through a full rotation is normal. Everybody's shoulders do it, even his - which he demonstrated, but I couldn't feel. Everyone I've gotten to feel mine has the same freakout reaction when the grind kicks in. If theirs did it, they wouldn't look so disturbed afterward, right?

And the stabbing yet curiously dull pain I intermittently get across the region when breathing - usually after lifting something heavy, or sitting in one position, standing still, sleeping or laying down for longer than about half an hour - is normal? What? I can't tell if it's real or my overactive imagination, but I think I can feel pressure on my left lung on deep in breaths, as if it's not inflating the way the right one does. I've never really paid attention to what should feel normal though...

(I should point out that the pain is a relatively new development following five painless, happy hours of stripping calendars. This involves destroying the product beyond conceivable use or benefit. Also known as "Smashey-Smashey").

I have another appointment (same surgery, different doctor) tomorrow morning. Following the first appointment, and how brushed-off I felt when leaving (not helped by the non-arrival of a physiotherapist referral cajoled out of him), I feel a second opinion is in order. I asked for the referral beacause there's nothing else I can think of to do. I can't afford the chiropractic/massage bender it inspires, not to mention the damage I might be doing. If it's like this now, what will it be like when I'm 40? 60?

Among the list of possible causes rattled off by last week's quack was partial dislocation. If this was so, it might explain why (as observed by the chiropractor) my shoulder blade is pressing on my rib cage. He had ascribed it to a birth defect with no permanent fix. Otherwise I've been told it's arthritis, stress-induced tension, appalling posture (OK, that one's true), and that my chi is wack or somesuch.

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I just noticed that Madge's wedding invite stipulates lounge suits and posh frocks.

SHIT*SHIT**SHIT***SHIT****SHIT*****.

* I don't do dresses
** I don't do posh
*** I can't afford posh
**** Primark/TK Maxx cannot be passed off as posh by any stretch of the imagination
***** Just for the hell of it

Eh. I have a beautiful floor-length skirt I bought back in Vancouver. It is, however, black. And while plain and simple in design, borderline gothy. What's the current mode for wearing black at weddings? Last summer at the two weddings I went to I noticed a few women wearing it, balanced with white garments & accessories. So it's OK to wear black then? If I bought a simple, well-fitted white shirt or light cardigan (this is a bit too close to "twinset" for my liking though)(with a white corset-style top below?)... could I? Could I make myself look classy for a day?!

Given that I look scruffy in the most immaculately tailored of suits and have the fashion sense of a colourblind cuckoo, I don't fancy my chances.

This is the furthest in advance I have EVER questioned what I would wear to an event.

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I read an article today on last night's Panorama about the global impact bottled water appears to be wreaking. The BBC summarises the programme here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/7247130.stm . There is also a response from Fiji Water here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/7231169.stm .

I find the assurances proffered by the water companies pretty hard to swallow when my Volvic bottle bears the message:

"Bottle intended exclusively for the use of Volvic Natural Mineral Water, do not refill."

(Injudiciously applied grammar & punctuation theirs).

Nowhere on the bottle is there a word of encouragement to recycle the receptacle. The word "recycle" does not even appear; the only indication that it can evade landfill is a little symbol with a blue and a white arrow arranged in a yin/yang kind of way.

Furthermore, it hadn't occurred to me that countries with limited access to safe water would ship it out at a price like that. What happened to the money gained from this enterprise? Why wasn't it ploughed straight back into domestic water management? Bottled water is nothing new.

*puzzlies*

I have a hunch that, in the future, historians will call these "interesting times".

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Now for a caption...

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I got drawn on today:



The shot doesn't do it justice but I couldn't wait to share :o)

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I guess you're all too drunk/asleep/hung over to give a shit about this old news, but happy New Year! This one better suck less than the outgoing incumbent :o)

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For the quantity made/consumed Sunday take:

2 cups coarse-ground yellow polenta (corn meal)
2 cups self-raising flour
2 large eggs
2 cups buttermilk (single Elmlea makes a good subsitute if your supermarché is not so super)
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup corn oil (vegetable oil works but don't taste so good)

Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 (220°C). Coat a cast iron skillet or baking tin with all the corn oil and put it in the oven to heat through.

Mix together the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl mix the eggs and buttermilk. Blend with the polenta mix with a few swift strokes. The batter stuff should be thick and gloopy.

Take the pan out and swill the oil around. Spread the batter evenly (about 1/2 inch thick) and bake for about 15 minutes or until goldy-brown.

Eat lots, hot, with coronary-inducing quantities of butter. It can be microwaved if enough survives to be eaten later (hrrrmph*cough* plv), but tends to go rubbery. If you want to reheat it, fry it in a tiny bit of corn oil to preserve the crustiness of the outside edges.

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Is it possible to get 2 eggs across town intact?

Answer later folks :o)

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...posted in quite some time.

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MR. ALICE COOPER!!!

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Home :o)

Cold :o(

Yorkshire puddings with mozzarella & fresh ground pepper for dinner :o)

Still a walking goo factory :o(

Purry furry kitty attached to me like a cute leech. (not like a leech at all then, but you get the picture) :o)

It gets dark so early now with Daylight Savings in effect :o(

Guess that's an even tossup between :o)'s and :o('s. Not too a shabby reflection on how I feel today.

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Oh, almost forgot: NEW LUSH STUFF :o)

So it's a good day after all =D

This post had a very unfair smiley:word ratio.

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The Lake District was a lot of fun, though our mini-trip was little short for a first visit. Now I'm thinking about going up there for a month in the summer holidays, working a part-time seasonal job, hiring a bike and going half-assed off-grid on your asses :o)

I discovered:

- The North is a pretty place populated by pleasant people (and eerily friendly walkers who, when passing, say hello to you without fail. This is a somewhat creepy experience for someone whose knowledge of "up North" peters out very quickly after Watford Gap). It was far removed from the (admittedly unenlightened) conception of grey skies, cities populated solely by gun-and-knife-toting people removed directly from Job Centres and abandoned coal mines I had in my head. In my defense, this perception was informed by news reports (which are rarely good) and a History Channel documentary about miners' strikes. I could happily be encouraged to further explore that part of the British Isles which, on my mental map at least, was marked "Hyre bee Dragons."

- I enjoy walking up hills, but prefer coming down them - so long as the ground is at one consistent plane. At the top of a VERY large hill on Saturday night I discovered that walking along and looking out over the valley was not only foolish but also possibly dangerous, because the different depths of field and rates of movement of the ground below made me dizzy and almost vomitsy-nauseous. Weirdly, it also threw off calculating the distance to the ground directly beneath my feet. Maybe it's a bit like developing sea legs, and I just need to do more hillwalking. Maybe then I'll be able to bound down mountains with the ease and grace of a gazelle. Maybe I'll be a maladroit mountain goat forever...

- Kendal Mint Cake is quite delicious. But not cake. I had expected cake. Based on the name, who wouldn't?

- I can take some good outdoor photographs in bright light - say, midday to around 4pm at this time of year - but need to work on all other times of day/lighting conditions. The examples up on flickr now represent 1/100th of the number I actually took. More will follow when I've had time to flagellate Photoshop them into OKness.

On the dangers of employment:

I had an accident at work on Wednesday which left me with a temporary limp, a rather swollen foot and some spectacular bruising (including a purple-grey-yellow line running diagonally down my left leg) that still hasn't fully developed yet. My left foot got wedged between a pallet and some plastic boxes while bringing in the delivery and dragged/squished through the narrowing gap as the delivery driver pushed the pallet into the loading bay. The force pulled off my shoe, enabling the pallet to tear through my sock and skin, embedding a couple of splinters right into the deepest part of the cut. The Soho Square walk-in (hah) clinic (who were lovely) cleaned it, removed the debris and told me it's only skin loss which will recover eventually. I'm annoyed though, because I'd only just gotten the blisters my DM's gave me on their last outing to heal properly. Now I won't be able to wear them again for ages >|:(

Furthermore, because Karma seems to be dissatisfied with the level of misery I'm presently suffering, my throat has turned to sandpaper and my sinuses are chanelling all my energy into gunk genesis. I missed everything fun I could have done yesterday, including a photography op for a band I work with and a party, because I was so cold, sore snotty and listless.

Today I plan to sit under a duvet with Madge playing Guitar Heroin and talking crazy talk like normal :o)

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Today I protested the military junta in Burma.

Yup, the most apolitical person you know went on a march, though I should declare now that my reasons were about 50% political and 50% the desire to photograph proceedings. Pictures on flickr for those who are interested.

I learned two new things today, the hard way:

1) Always, always ALWAYS go out with a fully charged battery.
2) A backup battery pack is a worthwhile investment.

Yes, my camera battery drained its last ounce of power about a third of the way through the march, gave a Gallic shrug and sighed into a temporary death. *grumbles* There were so many more pictures to be had, so many more vibrant shades of saffron & burgundy. So, the first thing I did after re-charging was log onto eBay to check out batteries. I won a new replacement for 1p (+ GBP4.49 p&p). 1p!!! The man in Jessop's on the Strand told me a new one would be about GBP25-30. Now, I'm a touch skeptical about getting something for 1/300th of its retail value, however, the seller has 98.8% positive feedback and has been registered on eBay since 2000.

Back to the protest. It felt good to be standing up in solidarity with people who, according to the world's professional and amateur media, are being so grossly mistreated. At the same time, knowing that my motives weren't entirely devotion to the cause, I felt kinda voyeuristic. Which made me feel a little dirty. Even though I don't intend to profit in any way from the images I took, and even though they were taken in the spirit of documenting the rally, some part of me still feels like I've taken advantage of a terrible situation. It's a very small part and its voice counted for naught when I was posting the photos to flickr. But it's there all the same.

This guiltish feeling struck when I stopped watching the other protesters and focused on the (legion of) photographers present. Before my battery expired I took as many pictures as I could, much like everyone else there. My shooting style was somewhat different to the more hardened shutterbugs though. I stopped, snapped a couple of shots, turned around and carried on walking/dodging children/ducking telephoto lenses. Other people were harder, brasher in their approach. One guy in particular stands out in my mind: he walked alongside us for about a minute, outside the barrier rope, with a huge lens less than a foot away from a monk's face, his finger on the shutter button, clicking through shot after shot. His tactic seemed invasive, so very dismissive of the reason for the march, without regard for the monk's dignity. I'm for photography as a form of social documentary, but I think practitioners should bear at the forefront of their minds that their subjects are human. They have reasons for their behaviour and, interesting as their actions may be, they are not props.

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My knuckles are splitting and my nails are peeling away like it's fucking February already :o(

Rainbow for the day: there are Oreos in the vending machine at work. Yummy :p

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I went out with my camera & mini tripod last night, intent on getting sunset shots from the hill behind my house. When I got up there the moon was rising above the treeline. Because it was low in the sky, its craters seemed more visible than usual, which would've made a stunning photograph. Malheureusement, this was not so: my results were terrible. Noisy, poorly exposed, and the moon was just a white daub in the sky. Maybe it was a little unfair of me to expect my camera to pick up such fine detail at so great a distance.

The books I borrowed from plv and work feature beautiful, crisp pictures of sunset scenes that I'm determined to replicate. Regrettably, I neglected to take them or the camera manual with me last night. The absence of any guidance did prompt me to mess with buttons and dials more than I perhaps otherwise would have. I reasoned that without knowing what most of them did, I should try all of them in varying combinations until I struck the right balance. This was good; I accidentally figured out how to do a lot of things (including turning on the histogram view). Without instructions to rely on, I had to use such cunning and wits as were at my disposal. Now I have to remember how I did them and learn their practical applications for future use.

That is all for now.

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A New Person walked into my world a couple of weeks ago. He's shaping up to be pretty interesting ;o)

He's the first person in almost a year who can make me feel excited just by walking into the room. Delicious hair-prickles on the back of your neck excited.

Maybe something will happen, maybe not. Whatever, I'm not gonna jinx things by thinking too hard about it for now.

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P.S. New pictures on flickr.

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I have been taking pictures. Lots of pictures. Getting on for 4GB of pixelly goodness in fact, not counting the ones I discarded during a memory-freeing frenzy of deletion.

Most of these are no good; my hands seem to shake a lot which results in many blurred images. I think a lot of this is down to my perception of myself as an accident-prone technophobe who cannot be trusted with delicate and/or expensive equipment. Anyway, the ones I think are halfway OK are here on flickr, if you want a look. Not gonna be giving up my day job anytime soon though, that's for sure :o)

Ooh, speaking of which, it's going OK. I like the guy I'm working with (he's interesting & pleasant enough), but I don't like working with him if that makes sense. We have completely different approaches to the concept of "work", and are polar opposites when it comes to the much more important question of music. Also, it seems like the sunside staff have cornered the market in complaining. I thought I bitched a lot, but if an evil overlord took away the ability to pass negative comment, some of them would be permanently mute. So the sunny side of the coin has its dents and scratches, much like the nocturnal one. Them's the breaks, but it's not such a bad life.

In other news, my winter duvet was yesterday hoiked out of summer hiatus. It's just too damn cold now, and anyone who says otherwise either lives in a furnace (plv), doesn't get out much (yes, you, with the guilty lookin' face on), or was an Eskimo in a former existence.

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Monday: camera arrives. With American voltage & pins on the battery charger. Good. Last minute run to electrical emporium for adapter.

Tuesday: wake up late for work. Leave charger plugged in via adapter all night & day. Arrive home, begin reading manual. Learn that one must not use any adapter, and failure to select the right one for the job may result in fire, malfunction or personal injury. Unplug battery charger. Learn that camera was not accompanied by CF card.

Wednesday: fume.

Thursday: purchase CF card, venture outside with camera for first time & verbally assault some random basketcase*

Friday: afternoon wanderings & photographings around town with plv, and surreally stumbling upon the Thames Festival on the South Bank, which included a performance by a French circus/ballet group (Transe Expresse) suspended in a metal canopy, playing music with bells and drums with trapeze artists all around.

Many, many pictures taken. I'm torn between spending tomorrow sorting through tonight's pictures or acquiring more at day 2 of the festival & investing a lot of Sunday into making them flickr-ready.

I like my New Thing. I was afraid at first that I'd grown to resent it for taking so long to arrive (three weeks from winning to receipt) (with a lot of payment hassle in between), and for its *cough*teething problems. It's a lot more knowledgeable about this business of photography than me, but I think things will be OK :o)

Bedtime. I have a festival to get to tomorrow.

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Congratulations to Procter & Gamble, makers of Tampax, for the most insulting excuse for a marketing ploy ever. Unique selling points my ARSE.

Proudly emblazoned across the box is the exciting (:|) announcement that my tampon applicators are now coloured. Well, colour me impressed because that just made the whole period business much less excruciating.

Thank fuck they didn't spend time & money developing ways to make the bastards more comfortable, effective and environmentally friendly. Woo, they're pretty now so life is good.

Fucktards.

Hormonally yours,

La Fée

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