janewilliams20

It looked like being anything but, when I was still in PJs at 10:30, but then we got a text to say we were going to get visitors. So we needed to tidy the place, and the visitors meant a delivery opportunity for something I'd been intending to make.
Quite what, and for whom, remains secret until the intended recipient gets it. But I'd had a sort of dare that it might be possible to make something, and I'd got the material, and some vague ideas, and dithered around not doing anything. It was a sewing machine job, and that meant finding the dining table, and I couldn't face doing that much.
But we'd cleared the place up, the table was visible, and clearing it right off didn't take much doing. So I sat down with fabric, and vague ideas, and some sample objects to fit, and eventually came up with a cutting diagram that fitted the fabric. There were a few arguments with topology, and a few times when I realised I needed to make a few extra cuts (but no cases of "drat, I shouldn't have cut that). A few things had to be redone, and at one point I think I was well on the way to sewing a 4D Moebius Strip. But I got there, and Dave inspected and pronounced it good.
So there I was with time to spare, and fabric to spare. A matching set of things would be nice, wouldn't it? There was something else that one of the ladies in the MIND group had said looked easy to make, and on inspection, she was right. So I did. Then I did another smaller one of those, since I quite fancied one myself.
Cleared up, took photo of items made, and Dave kindly hoovered the dining room table, dining room floor, and my jeans. That fabric sheds!

That was about 5 hours solid concentration on one thing, overcoming obstacles, and not forgetting what I was doing and wandering off. Compared to a few weeks back, massive progress!

Yesterday, by the way, I finally summoned up enough enthusiasm/nerve to fire up the very new (thank you, Santa) Portable Purple Pavilion - a tablet/netbook device that runs Windows 8. I got the setup done, I got all the installation done I wanted to, I've sorted out most of the network connections I need. Again, lots of concentration over a long period, and on the sort of "techy" things that I've been blanking on for far too long.

I have an invite to join a ukelele group, starting next year. Socialising, music together - all good stuff. I have never touched a uke, much less tried to play one, and my knowledge gets as far as "sort of like a baby guitar, so fretted strings, right?" I've never played fretted strings.

So, musician friends, please Eddicate me? The lady who invited me seems to think I'll be able to pick up enough to join in in five minutes or so, and borrow one of hers, but I'm less confident. What do I need to know? Also, if I buy one myself, what should I look out for and what should I avoid? Any recommended teach-yourself books?

We're looking at making "rounded" characters by taking a stereotype and adding a contradiction to give them depth. Several of us have pointed out that some of this is already clichéd - the woman in a  man's world who does well by being more technical and aggressive than the men, for instance, taking all their stereotypical behaviour and beating them at it. Latest exercise:
"Write a brief scene, around 300–500 words, in your notebook, in which you portray a character in a complex way, going against the usual expectations for such a character."
After a bit of thought, this is semi-autobiographical - names have been changed to protect the guilty, but this is a condensed summary of a few real conversations and situations. It's also in excess of the 500- words...

But proof if it were needed that while I've improved, I'm nowhere near right yet.
We drove up to Coventry for the HOTT GBnU tournament: theme, children's books, films, etc. I had my Ivor the Engine army, Dave took his Stingray matched pair.
Managed to forget the rule books, the cheat sheets, and the measuring sticks :( There were road works in the last mile meaning diversions, and I don't know if it was stress or blood sugar, but I had shaky hands so bad I could barely set up the figures by the time we got there.
Three games, all fun, marred by terrible dice, an army that was designed to be true to the source rather than winning ability, and severe fuzzy-headedness leading to some really stupid mistakes. I didn't get the prize for loser, Dave did (out of 16 players), but it was close.

In happier news, Sue Barker was there, and we'd been discussing me acquiring one of her armies - 6mm Amazons. I hadn't been all that bothered (don't do 6mm) until I saw them and realised that she'd painted the lot with red hair, and I was looking at about 40 points-worth of Vingans. A lot of other "spare" 6mm had red cloaks.... they'll need a few details modifying, but basically I now have a Gloranthan matched pair in 6mm, to go with the ones in 25mm, the ones in 10mm, and the almost-there ones in Lego Minifigs.

Also, the library venue had, as last year, a lot of books for sale at 20p each. Well, it's only right to support them, isn't it? Good job we'd taken the big car....

Dave drove both ways, and despite the event finishing at 3, I was asleep for a lot of the journey home. Tired and headachey today.

I may have a Cunning Plan for dealing with the sleepiness. My brilliant pharmacist niece suggests that if I take them at bedtime rather than during the day, the anti-depressant effect will still work, as it's long-term, but the drowsiness is shorter-term, and will simply help me sleep. So I'm trying that tonight;

One of the attempts to do something constructive today was to pull out a card-making magazine and use the freebies to make Xmas cards. But the free papers are double-sided. I can either use the paper on one side for project A, or the paper on the other side for project B. Guess how far I've got with card-making?
(sigh)

I'm doing a free on-line course in writing fiction, and they want us to post the result of one exercise in our blogs (the forum has a 2000-character limit on posts).

The idea was to take a random phrase (they suggested turning on the radio), and base a story or opening scene on it. I used a phrase that someone (Marion?) mentioned a while back: "The bananas had always wanted to be umbrellas".

This is, intentionally, a first draft. Re-reading, reviewing, and generally editing, is a later exercise. It was supposed to be 500 words, but I got a bit carried away.
 

Annette ducked through the hanging curtain into the hothouse, dodging the constant drip, drip of the irrigation system, and noting as she did so that Specimen 2b had grown another two feet overnight. "That's a good banana vine!" she said encouragingly. "Now, if you could just speed up the fruit production as well as leaf production..?"

She didn't touch it, of course, or feed it, or carry out any of the tests the hothouse was equipped for, that was someone else's job. Hers was to talk to them, and as bizarre vacation jobs went, this one was at least more interesting than the time she'd been hired to watch paint dry.

"Yes, we know it's a complete waste of time," Colin had said, sardonically, when he hired her after what had been not so much an interview as an audition. "Our Noble Sponsor wants someone to talk nicely to the plants, so we hire someone to talk nicely to the plants. We keep our funding, and you get paid to chatter about nothing all day - every teenage girl's dream, right?" In fact, her dream was to spend the break from university working at one of the most advanced botanical research establishments in the country, but since that was what she was getting, she stayed quiet - for now.

She'd found it hard, the first few days, finding anything to talk about when there was no reply, and despite his cynicism, Colin took this seriously enough to insist that all conversation had to be positive and encouraging, so using the plants to vent to about her studies or social life wasn't an option. She'd suggested to him that if she were to spend the days explaining to the plants exactly what was hoped for from them, that would be about as positive and encouraging as it could get, and as a result, he'd handed her copies of the complete project documentation. She couldn't take the papers into an area as humid as this, of course, but she could explain to the plants what she'd read the previous night, and in her lunch break, and was finding it so useful that she thought she might try the same technique the next time she had an exam to revise for.

This plant didn't seem to have quite the right idea, though. "I know, anything with Russian Vine genes can grow long stems, but the idea is to make lots of lovely fruit. Then we can make lots more lovely banana vines just like you. Won't that be wonderful?" She tactfully omitted the fact that the fruit would actually be used for food, as that probably didn't count as positive.

"Go on, let's see those wonderful malleable bud cells that can turn into any body part turn into fruit, not stems. The Lamarck name is just a joke, it's all right, but there's some truth in it - when we find a vine that produces really big fruit, really fast, then we know those cells have adapted the way we want. Then Julia can take a DNA sample, and clone it, and we get bigger and better banana vines even faster." Eventually, they'd like to make them less dependent on this much water, too, but jungle plants grew the fastest, so that would take time. Personally she'd be happy if she could just talk to the plants without constantly being dripped on.

She carried on explaining DNA extraction techniques for the rest of the morning, escaping into the sunshine to eat her sandwiches with relief. By the time the hour was up, her hair would have just about dried out. When the Cactus House was open, she went in there, the dry air a welcome change, but it was closed to the public at the moment, and Julia was spending most of her time there.

Both Colin and Julia went back in with her this time, Colin to measure growth and Julia to take samples. She was, as usual, in a bad mood, possibly because the humidity always made her heavy glasses mist up. Annette held the curtain aside for her, and automatically dodged the drip - which wasn't there. She looked up, surprised, to see that Specimen 2b had grown a new leaf, even bigger than normal, right underneath the outlet. "Well, that's handy," she said, amused.

Colin looked up where she was pointing. "That's more than just handy. Have you seen any more leaves that shape?"

"I don't think so...." She didn't pay much attention to leaves, only the fruit.

"Look how the stem joins the main vine. It's channelling water down its own trunk. I've seen that in bromeliads, but in a jungle plant it should be impossible, they usually drain water away from themselves. See if we can find any more, I want samples of that."

Annette checked as she walked, this time, but didn't find anything until she was at her usual seat near the centre. Here, three more large leaves blocked the water outlets she would normally have to avoid.

Colin laughed. "Looks like it has your welfare in mind, Annie. Nice of it. Julia, could you...?"

The dark-haired woman climbed up onto the seat to reach the leaves.

"If these things have our welfare in mind, I wish they'd do something about the tourists poking their noses in. That "no entry" sign where I'm working needs an addition, "yes, this means you".  Something big and spiny just inside the door would be good, maybe exploding fruit."

Colin laughed. "Don't say that where the plants can hear you - you never know!"

 

That was when the tannoy crackled into life. "First aiders to the Cactus House, please, all first aiders to the Cactus House."

 I cooked it. He ate it.

"That was nice, What was it?"
"Sausage, quinoa and fennel pilaf."
"Fennel? But I don't like fennel."
"Well you just ate half a bulb of it. Remind me, you don't like aubergine today, do you? And you never like beef sausages?"
"No..... it's different when they're all together."

I think I'll count that as a success. 

 I'd stupidly forgotten to put my password in the password safe, so clicked for a reset. This is the email I got.

Followed by two phone numbers, an email address, and the URL of their help page.

I got woken up in the middle of it by an alarm I'd forgotten to cancel, and even so, most of the memory has faded since this morning. Back in the same location (holiday camp?) as last time. Included a group of us, some IET employees, some gamers, sitting round a "canteen" table apologising to each other for being unable to work "late" tonight, where "late" meant past 20:00, from home.
No, this does not reflect reality at work. Well, not in this job - it did to some extent in the last one.

Edit: remembered a bit more. At some point, wanting to go somewhere, I discovered that while walking was still slow and painful as in reality, the motions of running were sufficiently different that it didn't hurt at all - and I was fit enough that running the odd half-mile or so was easy and fun. The town/settlement I was running through turned out to be the main town centre from the Wii Fit universe, where I've done virtual running before. In reality, I haven't run like that since years and years back, when we were camping on Skye and I was running up and down mountains for the fun of it.

Two dreams in a row about stress at work, and my (lack of) mobility. This doesn't take much interpretation, does it?

Started with devilled kidneys for breakfast. Mmmm. Other things got delayed until we'd been shopping, and then...
Put the lemon "frosting" on the Splenda carrot cake I'd made yesterday, sliced the result, froze most of it (greaseproof paper between slices).
Finally found an easy recipe for banana bread on the Good Food site (and, of course adapted it a bit). That also got sliced and frozen.
Did another jar of BBQ sauce from the same site (sub 8g Splenda for 85g brown sugar)
Given a grossly excessive amount of cabbage-like things even by my standards, tried the Abel & Cole "Magical Green Pesto" with some cavelo nero and kale. I cooked the greens for 4 min in the microwave, but it still seems a bit bitter.

( Banana bread adaptation )