Many Appologies for not having posted in a while. I've suddenly become very busy since working and although have plenty to post about have not a moment to spare!

I'm visiting Josephina/Jadethe2nd/Sir Squishy Brain and her sprog Dinah/Bump at the moment and having a lovely time. It's been wonderful seeing Squishy again, I've missed her a lot and am very glad she's back in England and visitable again. Dinah becomes ever more charming and entertaining each day and she's so big now I can hardly believe it! Squishy is being such a good mum, I'm very proud of her for looking after Dinah so well and being so very organised with Dinah and her studies at Leicester. Good luck Squishy, I'm very confident that you'll do well with your masters, you're very clever and I think can do pretty much anything you put your mind to.

Today we made some brownies (or rather blackies) which ended up very burnt indeed but still tasted good. I've had a very relaxing time here playing with Dinah and to my delight being accepted as a non-scary stranger, chatting and catching up with Squishy (who's company I've sorely missed) and going for a walk in the park.

Looking forward to visiting again in a couple of months. Anyway, going to finish watching Love Actually now with Squishy and perhaps nibble another "blackie".

I has job! W00t!

So I managed an all nighter, fitfully fighting with jobsites and the fickle behavior of my laptop, Sparky. I'm very pleased that I've now updated and re-written my CV to something which actually looks readable (though probably still needs a re-draft) and have sent it off in the futile hope that someone might actually give me money for doing something.

I really hope that this work pays off and people will actually e-mail me their rejections for a change.

So far I've applied for a couple of junior laboratory positions, an office administration role and a receptionist job. I'm thinking that it would be worth applying for a few jobs I've seen at some science museums in London as tour guides and in one case a (planetarium assistant which I'm almost certainly not going to get). I'm going to write to the Greenwich observatory asking to volunteer which I hope will improve the look of my CV. What I could really do with at the moment is signing onto a temp agency, but between Newham being focused on Social Workers/Care Workers and Builders and any of the office Temp agencies not replying to my e-mails I'm a bit stuck.

Does anyone have any other ideas as to what I can be doing here? I really need the money...

This looks interesting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8458971.stm

Martin and I found the most ENORMOUS potatoes to jacket in the shops coming back from seeing Goblin. Seriously, one of these babies could feed a family of four (and is incidentally the size of a small baby). I wonder how big potatoes used to be before people started messing around with breeding better varieties.

It's a worrying thing when your hands are so cold that items from the fridge feel warm...

I have a cold. If you visit our flat anytime soon and it looks like something from the set of Aliens please don't kill me with a flamethrower while I'm trying to lay my eggs... er, sorry if I've given you the lurgy. A chest burster event will take place so I recommend laying down lots of newspaper to help loved ones with the cleaning bills.

I received a parcel the other day. I skipped around it gleefully thinking "Is this a late Christmas present?" and "Maybe it's an early birthday gift!". Only when I opened it did I find it was the sodding NHS sending me a home STD testing kit. When will they learn that despite being in the demographic most likely to be carrying these diseases personally I'm not going to be so they don't have to ask me every 6 months (grumble grumble moan)...

In other news I think I found the Ctrl+Alt+Del button equivalent for my brain-meats. this makes me happy :o) Also, successfully been badgered into playing my violin. Once I have reclaimed this piece of me I shall work on Science! and then it'll be like I'm a real person again (cynicism abounds).

I'm in a bit of an odd head-space at the moment about playing my violin and could do with some helpful advice.

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It amazes me how much pleasure is gained by the stickers on my laptop, the changing oriental fox background on my gmail and drinking a hot mug of tea.

This is what life ought to be. Something good, shared with friends. What are everyone's plans for this Christmas?

OhmygodOhmygodOhmyGOD!

http://www.vivienofholloway.com/1950s-Halterneck-Prints/1950s-Halterneck-Crossbones-Dress.html

My new found embraced girly-ness is scaring me... whatever happened to my masculine side? Finally, something I actually want to wear and might actually suite me... lets hope it fits too when I can afford one. Want want want!

OK, I visited him today and now I'm a little confused. Apparently he had a small heart attack last night but today the doctor says he can go home next Monday... So on the one hand it's a relief and it looks like he'll still be here for Christmas, but on the other hand they say this the morning after a minor heart attack? Sometimes it's really stressful having a granddad who's convinced he's going to die every time he goes into hospital. I do feel sorry for him though, he's only been in for a week and already three people on his ward have passed away, that's not a great survival rate.

Thank you so very very much for all your kind words. I think I've just got to not think about this so much and see what happens. It's great knowing all you guys are here to support me. Thank you.

I think he's dying.

Am worried about granddad. He's gotten rather ill and has been admitted to hospital. I hope I still get to be with him this Christmas. Visiting tomorrow.

Please? Pretty please?

Interesting bee article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427316.800-the-truth-about-the-disappearing-honeybees.html

After seeing the bees I met up with Martin and the lovely Lady Sasha and we had a really great time eating sushi at "Yo Sushi!" in Angel. Then with the addition of Canis we went to see the film "Up" which was actually very enjoyable. I was expecting it to be more predictable, the only disappointment was that the female characters did follow the patriarchal ideas of ditzyness and child-rearing being paramount to womanhood. But pleasingly the character Elly was nevertheless a primary driving force to her relationship and being the most inspiring and adventurous character. Still, she was disproportionately thin throughout the movie and didn't look different as she got older unlike her husband. All in all if you're capable of suspending disbelief or enjoying the movie despite criticisms it was a very enjoyable film and I was surprised to see that it was shown in 3D which I wasn't expecting. It was definitely worth seeing if you like children's computer animated movies, still, not as good as Wall-e in my opinion.

We then found a really awesome coffee shop which reminded me strongly of Little Big Planet in it's design and layout. Hunkering down with tea in these little hidy-hole booths we chatted away about various randomness until the coffee shop closed and we all had to toddle home to bed. Was a lot of fun and we should do it again sometime!

So Sunday was awesome! Lokean (Martin) bought me an intorductory beekeeping course to go to in Battersea and it was 5 hours of talking about bees with experienced beekeepers and it was so much fun! I really can't wait now until I get my first hive and have somewhere to put it. I have to find out if I can keep a hive on someone elses land or as hives are so expensive I might try to share the cost with someone else until I'm doing better financially. At the end of the day, because I stayed behind chatting to one of the other prospective beekeepers we were allowed to look into the hive around the back which was amazing! Bees are so cute and the ones we looked at (Italian honey bees) were incredibly placid and nobody needed any special clothes or even a smoker. Nevertheless the course taught me that it would be a great idea to have the full suit which I was considering forgoing as it's not strikly necessary. Having one however would probably be slightly less stressful for the bees and less likely to get me stung which I'm only concerned about as I do have a tendancy towards getting allergic to things. There's a chance though that keeping bees would help me become less allergic in general which I'm somewhat hoping for. I really can't wait until I get my hive! The set I want is a National hive starters flatpack which unfortunately costs about £300 so I really need a job first. In the meantime I'm going to join the beekeeping association and ask about being mentored by an experienced apiarist.

Did you know that drones (male bees) are genetically identical to their mothers (queen bees) and only have 50% of the chromosomes as their mothers and their sister worker bees? And that the only difference between the queens and the workers are that their fed different food when their larvae and so develop differently? And it's the molecular structure of the wax that makes it form hexagons but the worker bees actually make small circles and hexagons form of their own accord? Bees are really fascinating! 1/3 of the food we eat has originally been polinated by bees and they are the worlds master pollinator, which makes them even more essential to our biosphere and it even more imperative that we all try to stop them becoming extinct as worldwide bee numbers are declining. If the bees go, we wont be far behind.

I was sad today as I got a rejection from a job I really wanted :o(

But in happy news I found I have the complete script for Monty Python's "life of Brian"! Does anyone want to do a read-thru of a few scenes?

So yesterday the police set up a metal detector outside our flat and frisked people for knives. But today I got told I was a "Very nice Whitey" so all in all I think I'm getting along with the locals and am unlikely to get stabbed... er...

Friday I've got my first job interview, a grueling 3 hour long one with computer literacy and numeracy test... Still, I'm not terribly bothered considering it'll take me 1.5 hours to get there every morning. Wish me luck anyway, I have a feeling I'll need it!

Met a very nice lady today to talk about PTSD. Yes apparently I still have it and it's still bad enough that she wants to give me intensive CBT to treat it. I'm feeling optimistic that this will actually work this time as we seem to get along and understand one another and the things she's suggested so far are actually sensible. Still, I'm cautious to let another human poke around in my already fragile brain-meats and have spent the rest of the day hiding under my blanket about this. I hope I'm actually up for full-time employment.