kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-09-21 08:22 pm
Entry tags:

vital functions

[... sorry about the template, I hit return in the title field and IT POSTED. details to appear shortly. :-p]

Reading. Ann Leckie, Monty Lyman, Ronald Melzack & Patrick D. Wall )

Writing. ... I have actually put some more notes into The Document.

So many lost property e-mails. (And at some point I'm going to need to start replying to them, too.)

Watching. On YouTube: True Facts: Bats, The Science Of The Hunt. NSFW. Definitely... An Experience.

Cooking. ... yeah no I managed to make veg spag bol on Friday but otherwise we've mostly just been feeling faintly sorry for ourselves. Okay, no, that's not quite true, I did also achieve baked potato on Wednesday.

Eating. Misc takeaway from The Field (leftover Sunday night curry for dinner on Tuesday; leftover vegetable fried rice + Szechuan tofu for breakfast on same...). I remain mildly resentful that the Wagamama menu still does not contain any of My Favourites.

Growing. The second attempt at pineapple has NEW LEAVES. The second attempt at lemongrass is maybe Going? And other than that I have no idea because I have spectacularly failed to make it to the plot this week.

Observing. BATS. A variety of excellent dahlias and passion flowers on a Trip To Town (post office, pharmacy).

andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-09-21 10:25 am
Entry tags:

Photo cross-post


We went up the hill. There were roses. Nobody knows why. Gideon has theories involving dead people.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

bugshaw: (Default)
Bridget ([personal profile] bugshaw) wrote2025-09-21 12:15 pm

Long Covid update Day 16

Update time: I posted here on Day 2 of the new Long Covid, today is Day 16, I posted the below on Facebook on Day 9. I'll make this public for a week so I have something to share on short form social media, then make it friends only.

Since the FB post last week not a lot has changed, no trajectory of improvement, largely managing to not make it horribly worse but I am having to spend a lot of time on bed rest. I've bought a wheelchair (£200 from Argos, lovely smooth thing) and been out for a short trip with Toby, me walking 2-3 minutes then pushed for a while. It's useful to be able to get out and walk a bit. Friend C is dealing with prescriptions. Mum is visiting tomorrow to chop loads of veg for batch cook (but at 80 she's retired from wheelchair pushing). I've booked in the gardener for early-mid Oct to put the garden to bed. I've cut 8" off my hair so now it's "just" shoulder length.

I have days where the heart rate feels precarious, where anything could set it leaping; and days when it feels more solid, and I can plod a bit at washing up and things, and some of those days it stays solid and others it only realises what I did a couple of hours later and soars then while I'm resting.

Stop adding things Bridget and go and lie down.


The FB post as posted:
Hello Facebook, I don't post here often (bugshaw on Bluesky or Dreamwidth usually) but it's a good way to reach a lot of people at once to say...
I'm having a big big Long Covid relapse.
Like the old days five years ago, sometimes can't prepare food or fetch drinks, barely use stairs (where the bath and study and books and papers are), felt a bit better on Friday and sat for 30 minutes at big computer for admin, crashed badly on Saturday Sunday so I'm still getting the delayed effect after apparently overdoing things but not feeling like it at the time. I can't see myself getting out of the house in September, hopefully eventually being able to do occasional things within 10 minutes walk e.g. Co-op, Light cinema, and visiting Toby in his house of many stairs (it's like a zig zag front and back).
Had three great months in the summer, garden parties, painting the garden fence, day trips to London, 3 mile walks with Toby. Was looking forward to doing more, hatching out of the last five years to a more functional life, doing more visits.
But got Covid in late August. Just my second time, the illness was noticeable but mild (that brief sore throat like I'd swallowed sandpaper), this time I'd had all the vaccines and boosters and been on Metformin for a couple of years which has a protective effect against LC. I knew to be careful, return to activity very gently. 10 min gentle gentle walk one day was fine. 20 min the next day was fine. 25 min the next morning was fine. After lunch, BOF! puppet with strings cut energy, heart pounding, oh dear I recognise this. Got myself settled downstairs with a quick bag of essentials from the upstairs where it happened. Couple of very bad days, few slightly better days so I did tiny things and got bad again.
I have rather lost track of where I am, doing long text on a small phone.
... Argh, FB cuts it off here so I'll put the rest in comments. NOT HELPFUL FB.

Part 2
But yes, probably housebound for a month except essential appointments, no London trips till at least February. Any thoughts of returning to work are right off the radar. My plan for a September full of craft and sewing projects for Christmas is off. I don't know when I'll be up to it again. This is only Day 8 of the relapse but it feels precarious and there's nothing that looks like an improvement trajectory. Ask me again in 3 months.
Good things: I know what's happening and how to manage it. Still no treatment I'm aware of but I'll let the GP know. Almost everything important is on the ground floor - bedroom, loo, basin, washer and dryer, kitchen. I've got plenty of healthy food in store. I'm ok for cash flow with the two lodgers, who also help with small things. Supportive friends and family. It's the time of year where the garden stops being desperately needy. Lots of music, podcasts, streaming video, ebooks, physical books according to energy levels. I just need to wait it out again. Sometimes I'm patient, sometimes I'm frustrated and miserable.
But that's where I am at the moment.

Part 3.
Oh you poor thing! Is there anything I can do to help?
Well actually I have given that some thought! Friends could help me:
Accompany in taxi to appointments eg GP, blood test.
Drive to appointments.
Help me buy an entry level manual folding wheelchair for occasional use (Cambridge Mobility in Sawston?) and tiny displacement rearrange furniture to store it.
Collect prescriptions from Mill Road.
Batch cook for freezer.
Veg prep for salad grab nibbles.
Visit for brief socialising.
Take masses of fresh growing basil before the season turns, there's loads and loads in the garden trough.
Check if garden needs watering.
Tiny grocery shop if delivery services let me down.
Take a ukulele - bought it last year thinking I'd learn. Not going to happen.
Bring your clippers and give me a 1-2" haircut - I've got two months of root growth and not going to get to a hairdresser for a more sensitive and gradual dyed black to natural grey transition. Bit nervous about this one but it will take away the difficult task of hair washing for months and months, gives me back a day per week it's so strenuous. I think I'd prefer a friend to a professional mobile hairdresser I don't already know, as I have very little energy for the getting to know you, discussing prettiness objectives, no I don't also want it washed etc etc. It seems like it might exhaust me before it's begun. I might be wrong. That got long. Like my hair.

Part 4 the last part.
Lodgers are fully on top of the bins and regularly refilling my 2 litre water bottles.
I know a cleaning company if I need it, and a gardener who made it a lot lower maintenance and nicer who I hope will put the garden to bed for the winter.
Best contact is email, WhatsApp, signal, text, phone. FB is very difficult on my phone and messaging is unreliable, don't know why, I have the app, it prefers the big upstairs computer.

TL;DR Bridget can't come out to play till spring, she's got to bed.
Bridget Ken from the Barbie movie: My job is bed!
mtbc: maze J (red-white)
Mark T. B. Carroll ([personal profile] mtbc) wrote2025-09-21 10:44 am
Entry tags:

Health and jobs

My weight remains much higher than it should be, indeed much higher than it was when I lived in Eastern Tennessee, but I am grateful that it at least seems to be remaining stable. In time, as I improve my diet and exercise, it may thus drift back downward. Also, on a health note, we just got our influenza vaccinations, paid for by the family medical coverage from my employer, Addepar. Somebody from Spire Global reached out to me to see if I'd like to work on a project there but, while I'd love to be working locally in Rust on space systems, they pay less and don't appear from the outside to be as pleasant a place to work at this time. With Addepar, at least I am getting to learn a little of complex financial instruments which is differently interesting.

My work is sometimes entertaining in further overloading the acronyms in my head. Recent examples include:
acronymwhat I first thoughtwhat it meant
AMAagainst medical adviceask me anything
PTSDpost-traumatic stress disorderposition time-series data
UVFUlster Volunteer Force*unit verification failure
*I was born into 1970s Britain, the Troubles were in the news
for instance, how much stock someone owns today should be what they owned yesterday plus buys less sells, we check that's so
mtbc: maze L (green-white)
Mark T. B. Carroll ([personal profile] mtbc) wrote2025-09-21 10:07 am
Entry tags:

The cost of family immigration to the UK

I had mentioned our family visa fees. To give a clearer idea of how much the process costs to bring a family member to settle here in the UK, the full route from initial application to citizenship costs well over £8k in fees and well over £5k for NHS access during that period. That's per person, so tripled for R. and two kids. We get a bit of a discount because R.'s youngest is under eighteen but we're still looking on the order of £40k in total, and that's without legal fees which, if we were using a solicitor's team for the process, would probably increase it by half again. Of course, it doesn't cost the government anything like that much to process the applications, the equivalent process in the US is very much cheaper. Still, it strikes me that ability to pay the fees at all should be sufficient evidence of ability to support ourselves without resorting to public funds.
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
yuletidemods ([personal profile] yuletidemods) wrote in [community profile] yuletide_admin2025-09-20 11:40 pm
Entry tags:

Mid-Nominations Notes

Thanks for all your nominations so far! 2732 fandom choices have been submitted so far (note that if two people nominate the same fandom, that counts twice towards that total).

Nominations will close at 9pm UTC 26 September. If your fandom requires evidence, please also submit it by that time. We can't give a decision on all fandoms on the Evidence Post by close of nominations, but the sooner you make your case, the better your chances of a swift answer.

We've seen some very large fandoms among the nominations! Yuletide is an exchange for rare fandoms. We will reject all of the fandoms below, so if one of them is your nomination, please choose again:
  • Baldur's Gate (Video Games) - I & II will be approved, as per evidence, but this label will be rejected

  • Actor RPF

  • Andor (TV)

  • Baldur's Gate (Video Games)

  • Black Sails (TV)

  • 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga)

  • Deltarune (Video Game)

  • Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)

  • Downton Abbey

  • Gravity Falls

  • Horizon (Video Games)

  • House M.D.

  • 전지적 독자 시점 - 싱숑 | Omniscient Reader - Sing-Shong

  • The Pitt (TV)

  • プロジェクトセカイ カラフルステージ!| Project SEKAI COLORFUL STAGE! (Video Game)

  • 斉木楠雄のΨ難 | Saiki Kusuo no Sai-nan | The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

  • Star Trek: Enterprise

  • Undertale (Video Game)

  • Warframe


We also won't approve "All Media Types" or "& Related Fandoms". If you've nominated any of the following fandoms, please either pick a specific piece of media, or argue your case on the evidence post.
  • Ender's Game - All Media Types

  • History Boys - All Media Types

  • Midsomer Murders - All Media Types


We've seen nominations for relationships, original characters, or Reader characters. Please only use the Character field to nominate specific characters who appear in a canon. For exceptions, see the eligibility post.

We've also seen many well-formatted nominations and nominations we are excited about! Please keep them coming.

We are happy to answer questions about nominations.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection [still being tweaked for this year] | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth


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jack: (Default)
jack ([personal profile] jack) wrote2025-09-20 09:59 am
Entry tags:

Green Dragon beer garden afternoon, Next Sun (28 Sept)

To catch the last possible September afternoon, next weekend we'll be in the garden of the Green Dragon down by the river from about 1pm-5pm.

The pub opens from 12pm including Lebanese street food so some people may arrive earlier.

Everyone is welcome, including partners and children if you think they'd enjoy it. If you're not in Cambridge, you're very welcome but I don't expect you, we'll make time any time you are here! :)
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-09-19 09:32 pm
Entry tags:

[pain] today's book gets so close to The Thing

... and doesn't quite make it.

On page 187 (of 218), we finally get this paragraph:

At this point we need to return to a crucial caveat. In most cases of persistent pain, whatever caused the initial injury has healed. Pain is now the primary disease. But there are a number of cases where there is continual damage that triggers nociceptive fibres; chronic inflammatory diseases are good examples. It is also important to point out that not every case of back pain is our brain's overreaction. A small -- but important -- minority of cases are caused by serious conditions -- cancer, some infections, spinal fractures and the nerve-compressing cauda equina syndrome -- but these can usually be ruled out by doctors, who will be on the lookout for 'red flag' symptoms. However, in the majority of cases of persistent pain (and over 90% of cases of back pain), there is no longer any identifiable tissue damage; our brain has become hypersensitive.

In a book that otherwise dedicates a lot of time to talking about gender and racial inequalities in healthcare access, including a solid half-paragraph on how common and how painful endometriosis (a chronic inflammatory condition!) is, the bit where "well this only applies to most people..." gets breezed past is certainly causing me more feelings. And yet it's still the closest anything I've read so far actually gets to engaging with the fact that the rest of us exist, so... no get-out-of-writing-essays-free card for me here, alas.

(The Painful Truth, Monty Lyman, mostly pretty good and definitely got me to think constructively about a few things -- like the merits of classical vs contemporary Pilates for my specific usecase via discussion of knitting -- and introduced me to some more, like open-label placebos and "safe threats" and the impact of paracetamol on empathy. It's incomplete, but not disrecommended.)

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-09-18 07:19 pm

[growth] pineapple is go!

A little while ago the toddler's household told me that you could turn the top of a pineapple into a whole entire pineapple plant (with the caveat that at least 60% of the time it goes mouldy). My first attempt at this had got as far as growing a whole entire root network but then suffered a Tragic Incident from which it never recovered; the second had been sat around with partially-browned but no-longer-becoming-more-browned and definitely-still-partially-green leaves for Quite Some Time. I had more or less hit the point of "... is this actually doing anything? at all?" and then upon my return from the most recent round of Adventures I rotated it in service of watering it, to discover...

a pineapple crown, growing a whole new set of leaves

... that it's growing a WHOLE NEW SET OF LEAVES. Look at it go! I am very excited!

(My understanding is that if I manage to keep it alive that long it'll take somewhere in the region of 3 years to fruit, and then in the fashion of all bromeliads will die having produced said single fruit. Happily this is about the rate at which we eat fresh pineapple...)

ceb: (Default)
ceb ([personal profile] ceb) wrote in [community profile] qec2025-09-17 08:52 pm

Done

* booked flu + covid jabs
* organised games with S
* finished work stuff pre-holiday
* seaside holiday
* bookbinding
* assorted tidying
* assorted game/YT org
* YT nominations
* automata course intro
andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-09-17 05:36 pm

Whining about online t-shirt purchases.

Ooh, I thought, that's a really cool t-shirt! And the price is only £24, that's actually pretty reasonable!

Except no, it's £24 plus £6 tax plus £7 shipping *that takes up to 6 weeks*.

And this for an item that's print on demand. Which means, theoretically, they could print it in the UK in the first place and not have to presumably ship it to me by alpaca from Kazakhstan!

Shame, really, it's a nice t-shirt. But not £37 nice.
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
Rachel Coleman ([personal profile] rmc28) wrote2025-09-17 05:17 pm
Entry tags:

I have had the call

Or rather the text message to book my covid & flu vaccinations. "For 75+ and immunosuppressed". I just double-checked and "have had a blood cancer" is still top of the NHS list of qualifying conditions, so that's my armour when the GP surgery gatekeepers are like, you're too young and you might be DEPRIVING someone of this vaccine who NEEDS it. (This has been the conversation the last three times I got invited to get vaccinated, sigh, and then they get a manager to look at my medical record, and then they grudgingly admit that maybe I can has jabs.)

Date is the Saturday when all the Cambridge undergraduates arrive, so just in time. I'll mostly be avoiding students for the first couple weeks of term to let the freshers flu play out, but I will be playing ice hockey so not entirely. Also getting in and out of the city centre that day may be entertaining, probably best done on foot.

andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-09-17 09:43 am

Life with two kids: International Demon-Hunter Shipping

A week and a half ago I ordered a couple of K-Pop Demon Hunters hoodies for the kids from Amazon. I didn't realise quite how much of a trip they'd be making:

8th - Taken from warehouse in Shenzhen (China) and handed to massive chinese shipment company SF Express.
8th - Driven an hour up the road to Dongguan shipment centre.
11th - Transported (presumably by road) 1,100 km to Ezhou (SF Express hub airport, also China))
12th - Flown to Liège Airport (Belgium), stopping over in Almaty International Airport (Kazakhstan)
14th - Flew in to Heathrow
14th - Then arrived in Stansted for customs
15th - Then handed to Hermes in London
16th - Who got it to me in Edinburgh the next day

Total cost, including shipping: £24 (£12 per top).

I am both impressed and somewhat aghast.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-09-16 10:24 pm

tired. so tired.

Have spent most of the day asleep.

  1. Attempt #2 at pineapple-from-trimmed-top has NEW LEAVES.
  2. I am also fairly sure that attempt #2 at lemongrass is taller than it was when we set off on our terrible adventures about ten days ago.
  3. Actual bed. Favourite mattress.
  4. I got to make someone's entire day by sending an "... I think I have your object" e-mail.
  5. Leftovers for dinner: curry from the crew party on Sunday night. Didn't have to think about food. Extremely grateful for this fact.
andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-09-16 09:58 am
Entry tags:

Photo cross-post


No, daddy, it's definitely not a "pointy duck"! Have you even read the sign?
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.