I shouldn't watch Private Practice but I do and last night just reiterated why I shouldn't watch it. I was already annoyed by the abortion episode "OMG YOU LET YOUR WHORISH GIRLFRIEND PROVIDE ABORTIONS AT OUR PERFECT PRACTICE" but that one ended with ambivalence and some nice confessions by the ladies. It's all okay because upper middle class women have abortions too!

But last night, one of the plots was that the gyno lady is treating a call girl who's just doing it to save up money for med school. After some delightful coffee room chat about call girls by the rich Cali doctors -- "they all have self-esteem problems and most of them were abused as children" and don't even get me started on the armchair fucking psychology going on there that perpetuates stereotypes about sex workers -- the inevitable happens which is that the call girl gets beaten up by a John and is too scared to call the police so calls gyno lady. After much inner turmoil and lectures about how she doesn't know anything about this "dangerous world" from her cop boyfriend, gyno lady goes and tells her patient (young girl saving for med school whose face looks like hamburger) that she can't be her doctor anymore because she won't stop hooking, probably never will stop hooking and "your actions make up who you are." Yup. I can't give you pap smears because you're a dirty whore and once a dirty whore always a dirty whore. Why is it even any of her fucking business what the girl does for a living?

I guess this is the beautiful health care system that Americans are trying to preserve at all costs. Maybe they're all terrified that if the government was involved it might force doctors to treat patients even if they disagree with their lifestyles. HOLY SHIT THE WORLD WOULD FUCKING END. Not that I'm really suprised.

I watch this show to see who's sleeping with whom not to get some offensive moralising about prostitution.

Life sucks out loud right now, but I'm not going to talk about that in this post (nosirree). I'm going to discuss my new love, Twitter.

How did it take me so long to find Twitter, you ask? Well, we actually found it too soon. Weeble and Rae and Allie and Adam and I all signed up for it aaaages ago and there wasn't anybody on it. So we were all just twittering each other. And after two weeks, we figured out that we could just e-mail each other and gave up. So it took a lot of prodding from other people before I realised that people are using it to say more than just "went to work. doing laundry. bought some cheese." and went back to it. It was really the news that Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) twitters and twitters often that finally got me to go back, really.

For the North Americans, it bears mentioning that Stephen Fry is a bit of a big deal over here in the UK, not only for A Bit of Fry and Laurie (raise your hand if you knew House started in comedy -- okay, that's not really fair because half my f-list is British and the other half are internet-savvy geeks so they were probably aware) but also for QI, which as far as I know doesn't get played in the Americas. That's Alan Davies on the bottom left in the QI pic who I am delightfully in love with and also follow on Twitter: @alandavies1. He does mostly twitter about cheese, I'm afraid, but in a delightful way.

Now basically all I do is follow my twitter-prolific friends and any celebrity I can find. Because I'm a stalker like that. I am completely in love (again) with Wil Wheaton (@wilw) who is, if not the king of Twitter (I dare say Stephen has that title), then certainly king of the geeks and king of the geeks on Twitter. He is utterly adorable and down to earth and obsessed with geeky things like D&D. And I said "again" because yes I had a thing for Wesley Crusher okay, but I was 10 so can we just get over it? Thanks. I especially enjoy Wil because he represents the former child star that actually made it into a decent human being. I mean, look at the Corys, or (even worse) Kirk Cameron? *shudder*

Overall, I have to say, the most consistently entertaining and wonderful Twitter feed is Jhonen Vasquez (@JhonenV). You have to join Twitter just for his metaphysical adventures with his games consoles:

"The Wii moans feebly under the game cabinet, drowned out by the airliner whine of the reinstated 360. Its time is short.

Wii cries out that Mad World is now in stores. 360 distracts me with a "Dickensian Achievement" for watching Bleak House on Netflix.

Thought I'd take Wii for a walk as it doesn't get much air these days. Barely out the door and it got jumped by a possum.

Not so much in retaliation but out of its terrible need for blood, the PS3 flew out, paralyzed the possum, desiccating it in seconds."

And that, my friends, is all I have to say about Twitter. I'm @keiraslan but I don't say much.

There's still a tiny bit of snow on the ground, but I think it'll melt away soon. My job is about to change. I'm being shuffled to another department. Well, half of me is. I'm half one thing and half another, you see. It's all a bit schizophrenic. I'm quite looking forward to having a job where I may have to actually do something during the day. I'm also looking into maybe applying for a different position in the university (yes, my boss knows about it -- it's better pay but I don't know that I'd get it and am not even sure that I want it) that would be closer to what I was doing before I left Joslin.

My mood has not been great lately, but as I'm feeling almost content today, let's not get into it, shall we? Weeble made two cakes to bring into work today for cake day. Yes, cake day. That's every Friday if you weren't aware. What a bunch of wankers. I wish I had fucking Cake Friday at my job and then had to complain that Pub Lunch Friday and Cake Friday, when combined, leave all those involved feeling a wee bit bloated when they go home to their annoyed, starving significant others who demand to know what's for dinner. Whoa. There may be some bitterness there.

I should just bake a damn cake and not let Weeble have any. Maybe that'll be my Sunday project.

Honestly, it's probably a good thing that it's Friday because I'm bordering on homocidal quite a bit lately and me sleeping in tomorrow may be the only thing that stems the potential flow of blood.

Words used to be talismans. I used to carry a poem I wrote around with me in my purse just to remind me that I was capable of creation and not just dissipation. In moments of pain or anger, I reached for a pen because it was the best way to process.

I don't know what happened to that poem that I wrote when I was fifteen -- half a lifetime ago -- but it's not in my purse anymore and it was never that good to begin with. I don't reach for my pen as often as I should, I just tell myself "I'll deal with it after I've processed it for a while." But nothing gets processed, because the pen was how I processed everything so how can I possibly work through and emerge from anything without it? Silence never did me any favours before so why am I relying on it these days?

I'm getting old and soft around the middle in more ways than one. Nothing is as sharp as it used to be and my brain doesn't dissect the world like it should. I'm complacent without reaping any happiness from it. The goal was never to be happy and stupid, but now I seem to be miserable and stupid, so how do I back this train up and find the spot where my intellectual curiosity and rigour jumped off? Even if they're dead in a ditch, it'd be nice to have some closure.

I am vacant. My words left. This is kind of a big deal when they were the only things keeping you going for twenty years. I know I have to cultivate a nice comfortable patch of ground for them if they're going to come back, because I don't think they arrive without hard work. I'm not that stupid. I'm just worried that my brain is too old and too slow to take them back with the same fierceness and joy. I'm truly worried that I've blunted forever my ability to process.

Fuck. Why do I care, you ask? Well, there's a lot going on. For instance, I'm meant to be deciding what I want to do for money for the rest of my natural life (or at least for the next little while) and that's something that could use some mulling. Up until now, the mulling has been purely hypothetical and I have done nothing but push it farther and farther back into the recesses pretending that some passive subconscious will make the decision spontaneously and alert me when it's happened. I don't think it's going to work. I may need to do some active soul-searching (which requires a pen, believe it or not) and maybe even communicate with other humans. The cat, apparently, doesn't count.

There are other things, but that's the main one. We'll get to some others later in the week. I've got to coax the words back slowly or I might scare them off for good.

Christ almighty! If you're on X-Factor or American Idol or Pop Idol or wherever the fuck you came from, you are not allowed to sing Leonard Cohen songs! I don't care if it's been covered a million fucking times, don't fucking sing Hallelujah!

I hate you Alexandra Burke. That is all.

Weeble: I would love to see a convincing reduction to perpetual motion, but all those I've seen so far fundamentally misunderstand what's claimed. "Oh, if it could get energy from the wind when it's going faster than the wind, well then it could go infinitely fast and get infinite energy!" I really wish I knew better how to do the maths involved, but I don't know equations for propeller behaviour. And it would be horrible to try to calculate the forces for an infinitesimal patch of propeller and then do the calculus to calculate for the whole propeller.
Keirstan: I think maths is a terribly silly word. I'm going to rebel.
Weeble: sigh
Keirstan: It's silly to say. ths. It's just too toothy.
Weeble: "We hold these truths..." ?
Keirstan: Yeah, but how often do you need to pluralise truth? It's not the default.
Weeble: But it's the default to pluralise mathematics.
Keirstan: Not in my hemisphere!!!!
Weeble: I'm not going to do a mathematic.
Keirstan: Math. Try it. It feels nice.
Weeble: I should study a math? Feh.
Keirstan: No, it's plural. It's the shortening of mathematics.
Weeble: Then it needs an "S"!
Keirstan: To math.
Weeble: Hmph.
Weeble: Anyway, what this boils down to is that somebody on the Internet is wrong.
Weeble: And I have already succeeded in transforming this from the not particularly interesting "either I am wrong or some dudes on the internet are wrong" to "either I am wrong or Iain is wrong". Which, obviously, is a matter of life and death.

I have battled the demon caffeine and come away victorious.

I went to the doctor on Tuesday for unpleasantness (I won't be telling you specifics cuz you don't want to know) and the doctor threw three prescriptions at me and then told me to cut out the caffeine among other vague dietary suggestions. So I did. He neglected to mention that caffeine withdrawal would make me wish I was dead for three days.

I thought I'd get a headache, take an aspirin and be done with it. Oh, no. My back and neck felt like they'd been beaten with a sock full of nickels, I kept getting all cramped up (although that could also be the meds) and I could not get warm for the life of me. Seriously, I was sitting in front of the heater trying to get the blood to flow back into my fingers. Of course, the caffeine withdrawal also makes your seratonin drop like a rock so I was all misery and woe and threatening violence (mostly against the doctor) yesterday. Weeble said "Are you ever going to be happy again?"

I think I may. I have no body aches and I think the chilliness I'm feeling is because it's freaking cold today. Still, the drugs haven't done what they were supposed to, so I'm back to where I was before. But at least I'm free of that horrible mistress caffeine. Shit. I want a cup of tea.

me: I want cake.
Iain: I want home
me: Well, both.
Iain: can't have both. well known saying
me: You can't eat cake at home?
Iain: that's the one

I have a lot of writing to do this weekend. I've fallen quite tragically behind on my word count and now I have to write about 2500 words a day for the next ten days in order to manage. Have I written anything yet today? Well, no. But I did have a little bit of actual work so there's not much I can do about that.

Why do I torture my characters so? I guess it's normal to have unpleasant things happen to your characters since that's what creates drama and the like, but man. These poor bastards. Every time I turn around another one has some kind of horrible childhood trauma to divulge, or one of them is saying mean things to another. I'm trying to decide if I can swoop in with the happy ending but that seems like such a copout. I figured out how to do the happy ending just in case, but I think I may leave it for now. I think I need to have in the back of my head that it all works out nicely so that I have incentive to keep writing even if the books ends dismally. You know, maybe the incentive to keep reading should be something I think about as well.

I really, really, really should have written a comedy about vampires. Why did I not think of that sooner?

No one wants another vampire book, though. Least of all me. I was stuck the other day and Weeble said "Have Santa Claus show up and give them all weapons."

I know, I know. It's been done.

I signed up for National Novel Writing Month last week and it so far hasn't sucked too hard. I was terrified that I wouldn't even be able to get past page one or that I'd pack it in and just sleep instead, but I'm actually getting the requisite 1700 words a day so far. I'm not pushing it or trying to do more than that a day because I don't want to get into the mindset of "Oh, well I'm way ahead, I can just skip a day." I'm terrified that monster will pop up and everything will go pear-shaped, as the boy would say.

Anyway, if you want to nag or harass, I'm here.

Also, thank you America for outvoting the rednecks. All he has to do now is stay alive. Seriously, they'd better have secret service on him every second of every day because I don't trust that big red blob in the middle of the country.

I had a dream last night that I was talking to Sarah Palin on the phone. For some reason I was at my parents' place in Barneveld.

Anyway, she was telling me about how her infant son (the one with down's syndrome, I guess) was very special because he had magical farts. He would fart all the time, but each time it was some different, very pleasant aroma like roses or roasted garlic. There was some specialist who was very interested in her son and was studying the phenomenon.

Then, she said something about not agreeing with "mainstream feminists" and I said "Yeah, I'm not going to be voting for you" and the conversation ended there.

Last night, I was all snuggled up in bed with the boy about to drift off to sleep and he says: "Dammit. I lost my train of thought. It was something really interesting, too." I grunted some sort of commiseration and closed my eyes again.

Silence for a few minutes. Then... "Oh, right. Triangles."

The weekend was spent playing Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door. I been tearing through that motherfucker. Weeble's little brother Martin left it for us when he went off to Japan (we may have pressured him a little to hurry up and finish it before he left). I was chatting with Martin today and told him I was an addict. He said "No. It's an awesome game. There's a difference."

Anyway, we didn't get any food shopping done, but we did manage to throw in some laundry and Weeble did some dishes. I'm glad I have such a patient boy. He amused himself on his laptop or watching me play. I think I clocked in at about 14 hours on Saturday. That's a lotta Mario, paper or otherwise.

I needed the distraction, though. Can't quite discuss it yet as I'm still processing, but stuff sorta knocked me sideways. Will get to it after the dust settles. I still have three more crystal stars to get.

In other geeky news, I need this shirt. It just looks too much like Izzy and pretty much reflects her attitude to everyone in the world except me, Josh and Weeble. She was actually sleeping on Weeble's lap this weekend even when my lap was an option! Crazy!

Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ. I am so tired. So, so, so tired. I cannot get back into Scotland time zone for some reason. I keep going to bed early but I still wake up groggy and horrid. Fucking fuck.

The world kinda went to shit while we were gone. Economy sort of decided to chuck it in and call it a day. Palin had a debate where people actually seemed to like her. McCain didn't have a heart attack and die (I was hoping). Is this shit over yet? Oh, right. I have to have my birthday first and be depressed about getting old and then wait two days to be depressed about an election in a country in which I do not reside and of which I am not a citizen. What the fuck.

There was a canadian election, but apparently no one really cared enough to show up. The biggest issues in Canada are like whether to make pot legal or something. So spoiled over there. What the hell do they talk about when no one's trying to take your health care and abortion rights away? Shit, that probably applies to me too. Fuck, the UK is pretty boring, although Weeble gets all upset about the ID card thing. If you don't know what that is... I can't be bothered finding a link. Google is your friend.

I was going to give up swearing, but then I spent two weeks with Rae. Sorry, y'all. Can't be fucking helped. I might talk about my vacation at some point. Right now, I'm just tired. Did I mention that? Also, it took me a whole week to catch up on the LJ.

I managed to go to the bank and send money to my American bank account today (to pay off student loans) and eat lunch. I'm way ahead of the game.

Been chatting via e-mail and making plans with Ottawans during the day, too. Most excellent. I'm brimming over with glee just thinking about my vacation. Weeeee! Also, Mario should be able to make it to my stupid party thing, which is good. Weeble loves Mario. Hell, everyone loves Mario.

My internet connection at work is slower than treacle. This means that I can't stay connected to G-Chat for longer than a minute. I swear I've sent messages to five people who haven't responded because they probably haven't gotten them. It's like screaming into the wind and it makes me sad. No one's listening to me!

I have to pick up things to feed the programmers tonight. We have most things, I just need to pick up stuff for salad and booze. I don't know where everyone's going to sit. We only have enough chairs and cutlery to feed four people at a time. One person will have to stand and eat with their fingers. And that's hard to do with chili.

It's Monday and I am super tired. We spent yesterday cleaning the apartment and this is no small task. We managed to thoroughly clean out the fridge so that it doesn't smell anymore and there's nothing growing fur in there. Many other appliances were bleached within an inch of their lives.

You can actually see the living room floor, as well. The bedroom, not so much, but hopefully nobody needs to go in there to feed the cat. We're feeding our generous catsitters (there's a tagteam of three from Weeble's work because no one wants the sole responsibility, I guess) tomorrow night. We'll probably have to feed them again after we get back to console them for whatever horrible things Izzy does to them when we're gone. Okay, that'll probably be nothing more than try to escape and puke on stuff, but still. She's incorrigible and antisocial, just like dear mama. And occasionally clingy.

She woke us up at 9am on Saturday (9 o'clock! the horror!) and I thought she was just being whiny until I finally got out of bed and saw that she had an empty food bowl. D'oh! I could've slept in with some foresight!

In ten minutes, I get to go home and then four more work days until holidays. I guess some people would go to a beach or something, but no. Canada. I have a long list of females to see while I'm there. It's going to rock so hardcore.

I have to admit, when Weeble said "did you see that you got what you asked for?" I was really secretly hoping for Iain in a dress. Oh, well. I can dream.

Only a week and a half until I get to go on hooooooliday! Yay! I'm desperately in need of females, really. And canadians. I don't know what the hell we're going to do when we get there. Probably just lounge. And eat. And chat.

That's about all I really want from vacation. To be vacant. I remember when I broke up with Josh, and was sort of a mess, I went and smoked weed with Rae for like a week and a half. It was fantastic. I don't remember any of it. I think we watched 25 movies during my stay there. I can't even tell you what happens in House of a 1000 Corpses, but there's a clown dude. And maybe some people die?

Don't worry. I think my drug days are over. Weeble does not approve and I'm getting too old for it anyway. Growing up sucks. Luckily, I can't get a mortgage until I've got indefinite leave to remain. So that part of being a grown up is put off for another few years. Either that or everything gets put in Weeble's name and I don't much like that. Makes me nervous.

This incredibly boring post is brought to you by not enough tea. I'm going to go make another cuppa.

I think this one's pretty self-explanatory.

1. Someone who seems to have a lot of close friends. das_hydra
2. Someone you've known for a long time. allie_oxen_free
3. Someone you'd like to trade places with. silas_greenback Only geographically speaking, because Edinburgh is better than Dundee.
4. Someone who seems likely to be a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. purple_witch
5. Someone who seems like a chatterbox. msdobler
6. Someone who seems to have a lot of wild ideas / fantasies. potatojunket
7. Someone who seems like they were popular at school. loreli13
8. Someone you think you would have been close to if you went to school together. treecreeper
9. Someone you want to stay up all night talking to. auqakuh
10. Someone who can look after children. wikkid_smaht
11. Someone who seems to fall in love a lot. aurora_esquire (I don't care if she did delete her journal, I'm still using her.)
12. A beauty. Too many to choose from.
13. Someone who seems like a celebrity. orange74
14. Someone who is girly / manly. fallen_fizzgig / twomonkeys Only on account of the impressive beard.
15. Someone you want to dress up as the opposite gender. _sideshow, obviously
16. Someone grown-up. lexie_jolie
17. Someone childlike. folksinger Ha!
18. Someone who is like a princess / prince. aacchh
19. Someone who seems capable. lordofthemoon
20. Someone who has a unique view on life. honeypossum
21. Someone S-type. I googled S-type and it just came up with a type of Jaguar.
22. Someone M-type. M-type is a type of asteroid, apparently.
23. Someone you think of as your boss. I don't think of any of my friends that way.
24. Someone who would kill you if you got on their bad side. smerdis I don't trust that guy.
25. Someone who seems good at seduction. sexysmeagol
26. Someone you think you could seduce. clockworksaint is really the only one I could seduce right now. I am not good at seduction.
27. Someone who loves with all their heart. dubitandum
28. Someone you want to see in cosplay. engine_unbound You know, I'm thinking I should have Martin on my friends list just for these types of occasions...
29. Someone you seriously want to go on a date with. clockworksaint Dammit, I was trying not to use anyone twice, but I don't think I can legally say anyone else.

One weekend when we were headed to Glasgow, I snapped up a big bag of skittles for the bus ride since I hadn't had any for a while.

There I was, contentedly popping a purple one in my mouth thinking "Ooooh, grape" and WHAM. Horrible taste explosion in my mouth. Fucking blackcurrant!

Stupid British obsession with blackcurrant. Totally disgusting.

I picked out all the purple ones and gave them to Weeble.

The Wii is playing a more and more integral role in my life and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I suppose it's really just taking up the time I would've spent watching Crime at Nine shows like Taggart or Wire in the Blood. I haven't seen Taggart in ages. I should save up for that super deluxe boxset of every episode ever which is really a big lie because there are several episodes missing and the show is still on which means it stops short of the new ones. Can I put that on a wedding registry? Is that allowed? How about an engagement gift?

Speaking of which, I'm not sure if Weeble left our engagement cards from his family back in Renfrew two weeks in a row. They had checks in them. This baffled me a bit. Money? Really? Cool. I didn't think we did anything particularly worthy of payment or donation, but all right. I'll play along. Marriage I have no problem with. The wedding, however, will be interesting and strange. I am not the kind of girl that plans weddings. I've never thrown a party where I expected more than five people to show up. This is going to be very, very bizarre and more than a little terrifying.

This weekend was very relaxed. There was much Paper Mario played in Renfrew with Martin who leaves for Japan on Wednesday. He's there for a year as part of his course at uni. Asian culture or something. I don't know what the hell it is. He seems ridiculously calm about the whole thing. I'd be going out of my brain, but then again, I was not a very relaxed twenty-year-old to begin with. Moving to Boston was enough of a huge step, but even then I was still in my comfort zone (academia). I miss school. It's the lack of something telling me what I should be learning and thinking about. I need someone to force me into intellectual exercises, otherwise I atrophy like nobody's business. I'm convinced that whole portions of my brain are actively shriveling from lack of stimulation. If you peered in through my ear, you would see a little prune. Or a rusted wheel and a hamster eatin' a cheeto on a really well-worn sofa. Man, I could go for some cheetos.

What time is it? Right. Nowhere near home time. Anyway, my only real task today is to accost my boss, demand her credit card and go book her a flight to Dublin. She's still in her office talking to the statistician, though. I can't very well barge in. Maybe if I was emboldened by cheetos...

Yesterday, I went through some old archived posts to see if there was anything that maybe should be locked as opposed to just wafting out in the breeze. I managed to find a few and did the right thing.

Then, I went further on into dangerous territory: posts written while in the process of being dumped. Man. Why did I read over those? Granted, I'm a much more articulate and interesting writer when my heart is being pulverised and torn out through my chest. I craft a fairly good turn of phrase at those moments. Still, it's not a good idea to read back over these posts on a day when you're already a bit under the weather.

I have come to two conclusions: 1) Canadian balls of fire, despite all attempts to be supremely assholish, are actually kinder than passive aggressive baristas and 2) Weeble is fucking awesome.

In completely unrelated news, I have finished marking up Weeble's wee brother's opus of a sci-fi / fantasy novella and will write a summary of my thoughts and feelings on its quality by the end of the workday. Don't worry. I will be kind. It was actually really good. To a point where I told Weeble "Goddammit, it's really fucking good." That's about all I have on the workday front today.