Duxford Air Show

This Sunday, I went to an Air Show. *insert 5 minutes of excited squeeing and bouncing here*
Not a normal Air Show, but a Historical Air Show. Spitfires! Mustangs! Yaks! B-25s! A Lancaster! It was amazing. I'm probably getting a bit too excited here, but really, it was good aero pr0n.

As well as pretty aircraft, there were a bunch of vendors, including aero books. A lot of them were of the pretty-picture variety, but some of them were crunchy, and I love those. I couldn't really afford the 50s 7 volume full aircraft design set, which made me infinitely sad, but I shall save up my pennies and buy it (or something similar) when there is something celebratory work-related.
I did buy, for a pound, a Jane's. I did kind of scream "Jane's'" and dived into to the box of them. Even for a pound, Jane's are still enormous fuckers, but this one is fairly small; It is a compilation Jane's from the 70s, with aircraft from 1902 to 1916, and I really like early aeroplanes, they have a special elegance about them (and their pilots), and it's amazing to see how fast it was all evolving at the time.
There was a small stand with frames of pictures of aircraft with bits of metal from those aircraft (all from non-fatal accidents), which was awesome, and several aircraft paintings. We didn't buy any, but took their cards for the future.

But really, you came here for the pictures, and not for excited and mostly incoherent ramblings about pretty planes, so here I leave you with a small selection of them.

     

Hehe, more than one Spitfire
     

If you have seen the Aviator, you will remember how Howard Hughes hires a meteorologist to find out when there will be clouds. Clouds make an amazing difference. (Do watch Hell's Angels if you have the change; the movie is alright, but the flying scenes are great)

     
     

After my attempts at pictures, I should refer to you actual professional photographers.
One
Two
Three
I was clearly an amateur there (both in terms of photography and preparation), but I enjoyed with my full enthusiasm.

Now excuse me while I go bounce some more. I did get a nasty sunburn, and it was a long journey to Duxford, but now that is gone, and I can bounce pain-free again on the memories.

Of computer bits and shawls

Several things have conspired against me in this past week. For starters, my computer decided to start making funny noises. It sounded like something was stuck on one of the fans, but when I peaked at it, I couldn't see anything, so I decided to leave any investigation for the weekend, when I wasn't tired and there was plenty of daylight.
Then I got a bad tooth. One of my wisdom teeth has decided to start hurting (and I mean really hurting, triggering migraines and all that jazz), so until I got my diet of painkillers sorted, nothing besides curling up in a dark room with a hot-water bottle on my cheek was appealing.

The good news are that I have a dentist appointment for tomorrow, and I have fixed my computer. Alex and I spent a while playing with it, unplugging different fans until we established that the problem was on the graphics fan. Conveniently, we had a spare graphics card lying around (as one does), and now my computer is quiet again, so I can be here more than the bare minimum.

Alex also decided to get the cleaning on, so we've spent part of the day taking the sink appart and resealing. Yep, it's as exciting as it sounds, and even worse. Thankfully we are done now (it's not actually that long a job), and I got some pictures taken of Ishbel. I wore it to work on Friday a loved it! It's an amazing shawl. I'm planning to make a bigger one, because it's just beautiful.
   

Also, I can use it for my next career as a highway robber!



My shawl was made using the Ishbel pattern, with 3 balls of Rowan Cotton Glace and 4.5 needles. It's a wonderful and very easy shawl, and I will recommended to everybody

Depression and Control Theory, part 1

For a while now I have been thinking about explaining depressive behaviour using control theory. I only have a rough idea for now, and it will never be a very good model, but I think it can help me explain what I go through. Given that most of my friends are scientists or engineers, it will give them better understanding than me just saying "but I can't".

However, because not all of my readers are, and to help myself along, I'm going to start by talking about control theory. This is mainly so the idea is out, rather than just bouncing in my head, and that will mean I have an extra motivation to keep thinking about it.


Everybody ready? No need for those calculators, don't worry. If you know about the basics of control theory, you can skip this, or you can keep reading and point out my glaring mistakes :)

Control theory is all about achieving a desired output. So you have a control "box" that takes an input, processes it, and spews an output. That is, however, very unexciting. The cool bit is feedback, so that, for your next input, the previous output is also an input. The output of your system plays a role. Let's say you are driving: you step on the accelerator to go faster. However, the faster you go, the harder you have to push to go any faster, because the state your output is in (your speed) also affects the input (the force on the accelerator).

Everybody still with me?

This feedback is very important, and can be of two types: positive feedback or negative feedback. Don't get lured by what positive and negative feedback mean in normal life. In this context, if applies to whether they are added or subtracted.

A positive feedback loop amplifies the effect of your input, while a negative feedback loop dampens the effect of your input to a stable state.
For example, imagine a Trivial Pursuit drinking game. If you are playing with a positive feedback mechanism, you drink every time you get a question wrong. The more you drink, the more likely you are go get a question wrong, which leads you to drink more, etc. The effects of the input stack, and you end up in hospital.
However, if you are playing with negative feedback, you drink every time you get a question right. So you'll be drinking more at the beginning, but as you drink, you get more questions wrong, which doesn't make you drink more, and thus kind of slows down your drinking rate as you get drunker. This doesn't lead to alcohol poisoning, which is a Good Thing.

Negative feedback mechanisms are what are used in control theory, because you can get your system into a stable state. A positive feedback look will get the system out of control, and we don't want that.


People that knew about Control Theory can join us again now.

My idea is that the brain functions in a negative feedback loop. You get sad for whatever reason, but after a while your brain processes that, and you go back to your normal state. However, a depressed brain has changed to be in a positive feedback loop. You get a bit sad for whatever reason and your brain amplifies that, and can't bring you back to your normal state.

Duh, I can hear you say, we *knew* that! But I don't want to just know that, I want to detail it more. I want to model it. I want to add switches to filter the happy thoughts when depressed, and how different contributions modify the control mechanism. I want to model normal brains and see how the structure of the control loop differs from that of a depressed brain.

Of course, this has no actual use beyond explaining how my brain works, and it might not even be transferable to other brains, but I like it. If I can cajole my depression into an engineering model, it will make me feel closer to understand it. If I can obsess about the modelling instead of the depression, it will distract me with it. It appeals to my engineering mind to deal with it in this way, as I can't seem to make any sense of the emotions I feel, or why.


Feel free to tell me that I'm completely insane (now it's Zoidberg's turn to say duh!). I probably won't work on this very often, or very seriously, but it is a nice little project to have, and it might help to explain depressive behaviour to other people. Suggestions, comments, yarn welcomed!

Picocon 26: 28/02

This is your annual Picocon plug: come to Picocon! (28th Feb)

Picocon is the annual one-day Science Fiction & Fantasy convention run by the Imperial College Science Fiction society (ICSF), of which I was a member (and vice chair one year). Alex organised it once! (Picocon 24, in 2007).

This year the guests of honour are Pat Cadigan, Robert Rankin and Michael Marshall Smith.
As always, there will be talks by each of them, book sellers, LAN gaming, a pub quiz, Destruction of Dodgy Merchandise (with sledge hammers and liquid nitrogen) and the (in)famous Not-a-fish-duel (honest). Silliness and like-minded people are a given.

It takes place at Imperial College Union, in South Kensington (London), 10 am to 6-ish pm. If you go by tube, there should be signs taking you there.

Come! It's awesome. Just look at how much fun we had last year.

In chronological order...

• I spent Xmas at my not-in-laws, which was very lovely. I even got presents, including more Bill Bailey (Tinselworm) and the Spore Cute & Creepy parts pack from Alex, a lovely necklace from Alex's sister, and a couple of beautiful scarfs and a knitting book (Heartfelt - rav) from his parents. I was happy.
  
• Walked with my boot and one crutch to the centre of town, where I got new glasses. One of my eyes is now worse, but the other is better. Alex was quite shocked at the price of glasses but, with my prescription, you need them that high quality if you don't want them to be bottle bottoms.
  
• I can now walk at home without the boot.
  
• Knitted and finished a dice bag for my upcoming Shadowrun campaign.
  
• Worked on Alex's socks. At time of printing, I'm only missing the ribbing on the second one, and weaving in all ends. I might pass on the blocking; after all, they are going to go on feet!
  
• Saw the New Year's fireworks from the comfort of my own balcony. This is particularly nice because I could go back inside where it was warmer. Bristol is very cold at the moment.
  
• Got a gremlin. My old phone got bust, my new phone is not yet active, my camera is not working and my webcam is temperamental and crap. Now I wonder where I have put the rest of the points.

Tachikoma and light lamp!

Alex got me a Tachikoma! On the same day, my full spectrum light arrived (yesterday). Was best day.

Aero Pr0n Monday

While not all of it has happened today, the news are full of aero pr0n today!
So, in the last bunch of days, China have successfully launched a manned capsule, the Falcon 1 has successfully reached orbital flight and two different research teams seem to have solved the unsteady 3D boundary layer problem, and can now predict the separation point.

Isn't this all full of awesome?

(Also, Alex and I now have a Wii.)

Don't anthropomorphise the tomatoes

My camera card died on Tuesday after I was taking pictures of all my stash. I have a little stash, mainly leftovers, but it still bust my camera. Hence the lack of pictures, especially of the finished Green Tea (although that is not helped by the fact that I haven't finished weaving in all the ends, when I finished knitting it on Sunday). I am going to buy a new one on Saturday, before I head over to my local Knit in Public meeting. However, I can show you my stash. I am in the process of putting it all in Ravelry so that I know what I have, but you can check it in Flickr in the meantime.

However, I can tell you that, on this same Tuesday, after the stash photo session, and after I decided not to go to Tai Chi because my allergies were making me feel really unwell, teh boyfriend and I kept cracking at Lego Indiana Jones. And we finished it!
A whooping 100%, it was great. I tried to take a picture of the screen with the 100, but that's when I discovered my camera was dead (funeral arrangements to be confirmed at a later time).

<small review>
Lego Indy is really fun. Because the engine is developed from the Lego Star Wars games, they really could work on the details. The backgrounds look a lot better, and there is actual character definition! For example, Indy is afraid of snakes, so he starts shaking and gets scared if he gets near snakes. You need to use the other characters to get some fire and draw the snakes out of the path for Indy to cross. Most of the characters start without weapons, although you can pick them up when your enemies drop them. The awesome thing is that, unless your character is meant to have a gun, all the guns you pick up have limited ammo!
I have been playing with Sallah. Sallah has a shovel as his default "weapon", so he can dig on the grond, but it is also the Shovel Of DOOM, and can kill enemies. I love the shovel.
I think I still prefer Lego Star Wars 2, but this is not bad at all!
</small review>

I have finally decided to name my computer Argos.
I arrived to this name via "argent", the latin/greek name for silver. There have been many people (mostly mythological) called Argos, but my favourite is Argos Panoptes, the all seeing. I think Argos likes his name so far, although I haven't got as far as changing it in the computer itself, I've just been calling him Argos, and he hasn't complained yet.

Related to calling my computer "him", I was commenting on the baby tomatoes yesterday dinner, saying
"Aww, look at the baby tomatoes, they are so cute".
To which teh boyfriend answered,
"Don't anthropomorphise the tomatoes. They hate that".
It cracked me up.

New computer!

We interrupt the normal schedule of posts to announce to the world that I have a new computer! I have a new computer! *happy dance*

I like meat!

The knit

My Green Tea is nearly done. I knitted a lot on my trip to my parents' (door to door it's about 9 hours, plus the 3 hour round trip to visit my grandparents). I have finished the 5th ball of Luxury Cotton, and it does feel luxurious. On a side note, the word luxury is very similar to the Spanish word for lust (lujuria), which amuses my father no end.
I did the increases at the hips today while waiting for the doctor but, when I got home and tried it on, it was way too baggy at the back. I looks like I started the increases too early, so I have to undo a good chuck of it!


The geek
I'm going to the cinema on Saturday, to watch Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I can't wait! Teh boyfriend has already seen it, and liked it enough to be willing to come with me again to the cinema. He actually said it was good, better than Temple of Doom. To top it all up, Lego Indiana Jones is being released on the 6^th of June, next Friday. Guess what I'm going to do on the weekend of the 7th and 8th :)

And the therapy
I went to my doctor today. He says that I might not see it because I'm in the middle of it, but I look like a completely different person from when he met me; like Spiderman and Peter Parker (his actual words). I have to say, I don't really feel much better, but I don't have the luxury (giggles) of perspective. When I presented my list of problems to him today, he turned them around and showed how they were still there a while ago, but are only now becoming worse problems because I want more. My next steps are decreasing further my propanoLOL, in the hopes that it'll let me sleep better and therefore make everything better, and work on my "I can't", "I'm too tired", "I don't have the energy" barriers. While some of the barriers make sense and are there to protect me, sometimes they overprotect me, and don't let me push the edge towards getting better. I really like me doctor, he is so nice and helpful!

... ... ...

Wait, it's not over! The random!
My boyfriend remarked the other day that my blog title actually said "knit meat herapy". He is not sure what herapy means, but he is fairly amused by knit meat. Mmmm, meat. I was the Queen Carnivore (Chair) of the Meat Appreciation Society (MeatSoc) at uni. It was a lot of fun, and very tasty. The Chair the year after me was a vegetarian. It used to confuse people no end.

Silence online

Laptop died this morning. Got wiped clean, but the copy I have of windows is legal.honest and can't get updates for it (like the SP2). Currently running Ubuntu of the cd Alex burned for me with it. Struggling to get it installed, as the harddrive is damaged. Looking forward to getting a new computer soon.

PS.- Back up your data!

Edit: Hooray, it works! I am now running Ubuntu. I have a working computer! I will still buy one soon, but I can get by for the time being.

Revenge of the Nerds

Let me tell you, Revenge of the Nerds is one of the best movies ever made. It is simply made of pure awesome.

I am a geek, and I'm proud of it. I was incredibly lucky to go to a university where nearly everybody was a geek (many of them were still in the closet, but that's ok), but I remember when I was in high school and everybody mocked me because I was a geek.

Watching Revenge of the Nerds makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and it's great. I love how they stick it up to the jocks. Go watch it!

Eastercon!

Eastercon was fun. I wore my Jayne hat and everybody complimented it.

Alex and I got there after a train journey that was mercifully not really affected by the Engineering works. I believe it might have made one of our train legs slightly longer, but not a lot more than 15 minutes or so. We got there at about 11.30 or so, having set out at 9. We registered at the con (OMG they gave us mugs!) and then I checked us into the hotel while Alex waited for our badges to be printed. The hotel room was really nice, with a hiauge bed. The bathroom could have also been nice, if it wasn't because the shower was too low for Alex to stand under it, and, most importantly, it didn't have hot water. At least the bath did, so we got to have a brief bath on Sunday morning.

As expected, the vendors room was full of books and stuff and the hotel was fool of geeks (I do feel sorry for the "normal" people staying in the hotel those days, although it was just an airport hotel, so who stays on those over the weekend? People with funky connection flights? people whose flights got delayed? Someone with business that can't go back home for the weekend? Anyway, I digress, let us go back to Eastercon).

I went to "Fandom: hobby or way of living?" talk. Basically we endded up differentiating between fan (which is a private affair) and Fan (someone more public who, for example goes to cons), and talked about the fan nature. A very good point raised was "what do normal people do during Easter?". Apparently most people do DIY. I think I enjoyed my Eastercon experience as to think of turning it into a regular event.

I went to a talk by the Director of Science at ESA on fictional vs factual space programs, and how what we considered fiction and fact in space changes over time, and not that long ago. So, while I have always known that Venus has sulphuric acid clouds, he grew up thinking that the clouds hid vegetation, some sort of paradise. He mentioned the COBE mission, and I dare you to guess what T-shirt I was wearing. Yes, you've got it right, the Science T-shirt! xkcd has *always* the answer. Has anybody founded an xkcd church?

I also went to a pannel on last year's SF movies. Apparently some crazy people don't like 300. Go figure. However, some movies were recommended, like Enchanted (which will also unleash the girly girl inside me). I have downloaded it already, and will watch in on Sunday when Alex is away.

We didn't do much more on Saturday, except buy some more books and fill out the quiz, with the help of some nice passers-by. One of my coworkers, Sean, was helping a friend sell his collection, and said hi and bought 3 books from them, at their recommendation. We went to a pub recommended by a friend for dinner (walking to it the roundabout way, 3 sides of a square). We were planning to go to the night quiz, but we were so exhausted (remember our crazy time to go to bed on Tuesday at 4 am) and were in bed really early. Appropriately, we read in bed before going to sleep, and that was really nice.

Sunday morning saw us tired, and with a disappointing breakfast. We shopped a bit more for books, and then Alex went to a talk about the death of RPGs. I had a bit of a panic, and decided that I could not possibly go into Charlie Stross' talk late, so I sat in a corner crocheting and feeling a bit sad. I think I was just really tired, and there were lots of people. Although I didn't know them, the numbers didn't bother me, because they were also geeks, but having gone to a party had made me a bit too tired. Talking of geeks, they were lots of little geeks. Lots of babies and toddlers, some of them dressed up too, and they were soooooo cute. Ooooohhhh, the little geeks. And so very well behaved as well, you could barely tell they were babies about. Several people were dressed up as well, including two Kaylee's dresses!

We then went to the "not Clarke's awards" panel, which was rather fun. Our main conclusion from it was that we should get Brasyl, by Ian MacDonald, because it is apparently awesome, although it was not in the Clarke's short list. We left early and went to one of the proper hotel bars (as opposed to the convention bars) and got nice sandwhiches (not that you care about what I ate, but never mind).

Then it was Gaiman's talk. I sadly was not lucky enough to go to his Kaffeklatchs (basically, have coffee with him), but I really enjoyed his talk. He read us a short story and the first chapter of his latest book, and talked about stuff. I got very excited when he was talking about the community, and how if suddenly SF were to disappear, we'd all... take up knitting, and keep coming and meeting. Yey, knitting! There were several other ladies knitting about, including people I've previously seen at cons knitting. Talking of ladies, there were lots of us. I mean, it was still majority male, but there was a healthy number of women, and that was very nice to see. It was rather disturbing, however, how lightly people talked about their first cons in 1984 (Gaiman's first con). That is the year I was born.

What else? I went to a presentation on Greek and Roman mythology in the Sandman, and to another about Physics mistakes in SF movies, which was rather entertaining and fun! Sound in space, etc.

After that, there was not much we wanted to do before it was time to leave, and, as the vendors room was closed and we were really tired, we made an exit an hour earlier than our train tickets. We didn't get home too late, and it was nice.


Oh! I bought a badge that says "I gave my books their own room, now they want the whole house". It amused me. However, on Monday Alex and I realised that we are starting to run out of shelve space! We thought about it, and we think we can fit without too much rearranging 3 more full size Billys and 2 small ones. We can fit smaller bookshelves in other places as well, but if that is the case maybe it might be time to look for a bigger place. What do older people that have more books than we do do with theirs?

Anyway, Eastercon was fun. I've rambled, haven't I?

Easter

I'm going to Eastercon!

I wasn't really planning on going, it hadn't really occurred to me. But two days ago at night, Alex and I had a look at places to go for Easter. Because it was so late, and because we weren't sure what we wanted to do, we couldn't really find anything we liked, and it was all rather expensive, especially for something we were not sure about. Alex got rather sad and a bit upset, because he wanted to do something nice with me, but nothing was happening.

Something clicked inside me. Seeing him so sad about it was like a good kick in the butt, and the organiser Cristina came out. I calmed him down and then found us a pln¹ (play, restaurant; zoo, forest).
Then yesterday at work one of my friends mentioned online Eastercon, and that clicked to. After confirming with Alex an interest, I found dates, hotels, prices and other information, and phoned the theatre anyway to check if they'd still had tickets that evening rather than book them then (it turned out that they were already sold out). I even secured a temporary booking (until today) of a hotel room, just in case we wanted to book tickets for the con.

In the evening, when both of us went home, we discussed it, and suddenly Alex found himself with a plan I had made, including with emails and phone calls to strange people, something I hate dread hate dread doing. I then booked the con tickets and the hotel, and he booked the trains. I had a bit of a shake prior to booking, but I had managed got get an idea all the way to a plan without panicking!

So now Alex and I will be at Eastercon Saturday and Sunday, staying Saturday night at the con hotel! I feel very proud of having dealt with and planned things. I also want Alex to know that I can step up to the challenge if it's needed, that he doesn't need to help me be up all the time.


I'm off to Alex's siblings birthday party this evening, and probably will be out of contact for a couple of days afterwards at his parents. I'm a bit scared about the birthday party, because it involves 90-odd people I don't know, so hopefully I will be ok. Alex has volunteered to help me and, if I feel bad, I can go back early wit Alex's parents, who are not staying for the full party until 3 am (it's a rented venue).

Have a good Easter if I don't see you earlier!



¹A pln is a plan that is not fully developed yet. Even below a pln is a pl. You don't want to carry out those.

My house has more geek now

Yesterday Alex and I had to rearrange the DVD bookshelves because we had finally more than 4 shelves. Behold and be jealous!

This included tidying up my knitting supplies, which you can see here:


In the topic of tidying (or maybe not), here is the forces that defence my house. I'm slowly getting tempted by the idea of painting one.


Also, I'm happy. I've been all weekend ecstatically happy, and it's fantastic. I haven't been so unconditionally happy for quite a while. I don't know how to make it last, but I really don't care at the moment.

Oh noes, the pictures are clogging the tubes

Picocon. Picocon was awesome, and here are some pictures of the DoDM (destruction of dodgy merchandise).
Here is Alex about to golf a frozen snitch, and then me with the golden snitch wings in my Jayne hat (which everybody loved).

Some more general DoDM: the enjoying audience, Owain destroying a Darth Vader mecha-TIE fighter, the abomination that is Highlander 2 (sorry for the profane language), and Peter making sure that the abomination doesn't survive.

And Miranda!



Draconic mittens!


And, as said, I finished the tummy piece, and redid the neckline of the Blue Tomato. Now it's 4 rounds rather than 8, and I think it looks better, and doesn't buldge so much at the shoulder pieces.




Jonathan was here this weekend. Alex has just left to drive him home, and then he is off to a course on rockets (lucky him). I was a bit sad yesterday, and I realised it was jealousy-based, because Alex had spent a lot of the day with JJ, while I just was on the side. But he paid a bit more attention to me today, and I was a lot better. On the other hand, I think that he passed me his cold. While he won't be here this week to take care of me, it is nice to be alone sometimes, and I can just lounge around being ill. And knitting!

This time you will have to imagine the pictures

The knit.

• Dragony glove is awesome. You see, it was going to be a spring mitten, but the green turned into dragon-green, and the lacy diamond turned into scales, so they mittens turned out to be dragons. The lace has been moderately easy, for being my first lace project (yes, it doesn't have much lace, I know), although I still had to undo a couple of rows when I lost yarn overs. But I'm very happy with how they are turning out. I finished the body of one, but I need to undo the cast off edge and redo it with bigger needles, as otherwise is too tight and it barely lets me move my fingers. There are pictures but, as the post says, you'll just have to imagine them.
  
• Yesterday I finished the tummy piece of my Healing Cardigan. It's been fairly dull, because there wasn't much to it, but now I have almost half the cardi done! I picked up the body stitches and took some pictures. But you have to imagine those too.
  
• I bought some yarn yesterday to finally knit the teddy balaclava for Jonathan (who, incidentally, will be coming home this weekend). I measured his teddy last weekend and noted his requests, so I can start any time soon. I also bought some Anchor cotton in variegated red, to knit some dragony or snakey bracelets.
  

The geek

• It was Picocon, and it was awesome. There was a new finished Dalek, there was DoDM, in which Alex destroyed a snitch, and then put the wings on my hat (there are pictures of these, but...). Paul Cornell was full of random and awesome, and the silly games were fun. The turkey reading was horrible, as it should be, and the quiz was difficult, even for the beardies. And we bought books!
  Shockingly and surprisingly, a fish duel happened. Again. I mean, people... ;) And to that I can provide a link!
  There were two other girls knitting during Picocon, and we all knitted during the talks. I chatted to one of them, and we geeked about patterns and yarn for a while.
  Alex got rather drunk and was a bit unwieldy, but still manageable. We had dinner with Oli and some of his friends, until Alex fell asleep during Space Munchkin and we went back to the hotel.
  

The therapy

• Alex and I had some arguments on Thursday and Friday about my inability to contact people, etc. So, on Friday, before leaving for London, I sent an email to Elena, whose emails and phone calls for my birthday I had been ignoring. He helped me write it, and then I translated it to Spanish. Alex spent Saturday still upset, but he was fine on Sunday, and we were cute again.
  
• Elena answered and was very happy to have received my email. She was very impressed with my knitting, which she had never seen, and might just let me knit something for her :) Anything for my "sister".
  I then talked to her on Wednesday, which was incredibly difficult and made me panic. She had been the last person to phone me, so my phone decided to ring her. Twelve times. While I was coming back from the shop with clinking bottles. So she got worried and tried to phone me. And my handbag kept picking up the phone. I finally heard some voices coming from my handbag, so I had to pick it up. It was sooooo scary! I wasn't ready, but I managed, but I spend a couple of hours shaken after that. It was very nice to talk to her, and it was only a little chat, but it felt nice. I confirmed that I was well, but ill, and that I loved her, and she wasn't upset at me at all for not answering. Yey!
  
• I keep forgetting to do my breathing exercises, which is not good. And I should do some sport, at least some sit-ups, because my tummy is getting fat :(
  
• One of my friends is not feeling very well at all lately. If you have nothing better to do, go give morganmagic some love, she is in need in some hugs and she deserves them.
  

The random

• Someome has brought fries to the office. They smell nice and they are not sharing :(

Ooooh, look what I have

Look to the right, to the right ------->
I have Ravelry progress bars!
*happy dance*

xkcd *always* knows

Today's xkcd is very sad, and it speaks directly to me, as it is about depression (or so I make it out to be).



(full page link here)

At least the hover comment does bring a little smile to my face.¹



Yesterday I was down in the evening. I started to go down at lunchtime, and I was depressed again. At least it was not sad and crying depressed, but more apathetic, "meh", nothing matters depressed.
I might not be getting better on the depression, but I know I am getting a lot better at identifying and knowing about my depression, which I think it's very important. Know your enemy, etc.
So I left work early, went home, and made a cup of ginger, lemon and honey tea, got my blanket, my book and I curled up in the sofa. It didn't make it go away, but I think it made it stable, which sometimes is just as good.

Alex is getting better at dealing with my depression as well. He did not sound upset once, and was cute to me, being a bit silly, rather than try to reason. It made me feel a lot better and, while it might not have got me up, it certainly didn't get me further down, as there was very little guilt. I think he also saw that I was trying hard to control it to at least a stable level, and that is a lot more helpful than when I just let the depression engulf me. I don't know how long he can manage without getting upset, though, because I know it's difficult for him too.

When I got tired of reading, I watched the Matrix and knitted. I have now reknit all the mouse pieces for a hopefully not speshul mouse. Although speshul mouse is going to have a good life: at the moment it's quietly sitting on my office phone, while the rest of the mice will be given to a kitten, Alfie, to live in fear chased by him all day.
Alfie belongs to one of Alex's coworkers. Alfie and I will get to meet next week, because Alex has been arranging a kitten meeting for my birthday!
Alfie is like me and he only likes meeting new people only for a bit, because he gets nervous when he's been too long around new people, so we'll just meet for a bit, while both of us are feeling well. I've been obsessed with kittens for a while, but I've never met one in person, so I hope it all goes well.



¹ If you are using Firefox, you might not be able to see it all. Go and download the Long Titles extension. In the mean time, the text says Oh, look, the 'make everything better' button was here behind the bookshelf all along.

You can't take the sky from me

Every once in a while, when somebody asks me how I'm feeling, I answer "Still flying". While the people who used to asked me that understood exactly what I mean, I feel most people I tell it to now don't, and they think it's all going awesome. I clearly should stop saying it, because they end up thinking I am much better than I really am, but it's not my fault if they are uneducated!

So, when I say that I'm still flying, this is what I mean:

Simon, a doctor, has just been invited to form part of Mal's spaceship crew. They haven't exactly got along well so far
Simon: I'm trying to put this as delicately as I can... How do I know you won't kill me in my sleep?
Mal: You don't know me, son, so let me explain this to you once. If I ever kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed.
Simon: Are you always this sentimental?
Mal: Had a good day.
Simon: You had the Alliance on you, criminals and savages, half the people on the ship have been shot or wounded including yourself, and you're harboring known fugitives.
Mal: We're still flying.
Simon: That's not much.
Mal: It's enough.

Once more, go see Firefly. Like now.
There will be a rather silly picture later. I seemed to have knitted some kind of monster. You'll see.