It's Like You're Always Stuck in Second Gear

SPRING. Maya and I bought drinking coconuts on a whim and then had to Youtube "how to open a drinking coconut". This was our celebratory photo. I say spring, but it really is more or less summer given that spring in Jo'burg basically lasts for September and then we jump straight ahead to summer...

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Some Happy Things

Sometimes I find things that briefly make me feel like I'll never be sad again. This isn't true, as I'll explain in another more depressing post, but never mind that. Let's look at the happy things. This sloth has big eyes and would like to hug you. This chicken is attempting to hide from its...

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Sexpo's Straight White People Problem

Contrary to popular opinion, I don't particularly enjoy arguing on the internet. Sure, sometimes I'll send hostile tweets to Mark Driscoll when I'm in a bad mood, but on the whole I find arguing tiring and stressful and I like to leave it to people who can argue much more competently than I can, and...

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Spring Rains

It's spring! Do you want to know how excited I am? I am this excited. SO EXCITED. Spring in Jo'burg is my favourite season/place combination of all the seasons and places I've experienced (and there have been quite a few). The weather warms up and everything starts to smell like jasmine...

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The Whole Point of Me

(Source) ARTHUR: Oh, come on, Douglas! It’ll be fun! We’ll make a game of it! Like, one of us could put something metal in our pocket and see if the X-ray machine can tell which one of us it is!DOUGLAS: I think the machine can tell that. That is the whole point of the machine.ARTHUR:...

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Hypnotic Penguinhead Hiatus Gif

The hypnotic penguinhead hiatus gif is back. Which means that, once again, I don't have the time or energy to write, which is a pity, because it usually makes me feel better. But right now I'm really very sad and quite tired and I'm not really having any adventures to speak of. I'm finding myself...

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Property of Work: If Found, Return to Desk

Work almost entirely owns me at the moment and it's making me unhappy. Remember how I laughed at that clause about unlimited compulsory overtime? Yeah, hilarious. Last week I worked every evening and most of the weekend, and have accordingly been hating my life and questioning my life choices.  ...

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First Week Survival Report

So my first day at work didn't go quite as I'd hoped. Owing to an unfortunate combination of circumstances, by the time I got there on Monday morning I was emotional and over-tired, which meant that after a day of a growing headache and being introduced to 150 people and learning a million new things...

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Guide Me O Thou Great Twist Mop

Well, I've managed to be away a solid month. Don't worry, I won't be offended if you didn't notice. And I certainly won't bring it up passive-aggressively in conversation indefinitely. That doesn't sound at all like the sort of thing I would do. But anyway. I come bearing GOOD NEWS! And this GOOD...

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Ghost Pops Before Bed Time

Help, internet, I'm busy and tired. I have lots of freelance work to do, my social life appears to be trying to make up for my entire adolescence all at once, and I'm having a really hard time staying awake for a normal number of hours per day. Apparently 9pm isn't bed time? I don't know. Stop telling...

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Peanut Butter Dreaming on Such an Autumn Day

I had just started to settle into a routine where I was actually managing to work full-time and still do other stuff like go to gym and buy groceries and hang out with people. And I was getting paid! Not as much as a normal salary, but much more than I had any right to expect from my one day a week...

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L'Esprit Humaniste d'Escalier

"So, do you believe in anything?" French has the lovely term "l'esprit d'escalier", which refers to that moment on your way down the stairs after an argument when you think, much too late, of the perfect comeback. Dammit. (Source) I didn't have an argument last night. It wasn't even much of a...

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So Die Well With Some Good Distractions

And somehow, two blogless weeks just whizzed past me. Apparently that happens when you have to sit at desks all day and look serious. I'm not good at looking serious. The jobs are going well, although I am really not good at sitting at a desk for eight hours a day. I strongly suspect that no one...

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Linguisticali Working

Friends! Romans! Countrypeople! You are looking at - No, wait. You are now looking at a thrice-employed researcher! That's right - from next week, I'll have five whole days a week of work to do for three different organisations. And I'll be getting paid... for just over one of those days...

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The Republic of Heaven

“He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn't live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.... We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and...

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Latin Camp Vincit Omnia

LATIN CAMP! When I was at university, I did a lot of Latin. It was cheaper than drugs, and I've never been very interested in drugs anyway. People would hear we had a Latin club and say "Oh, so you dance? ... No. That is quite a lot cooler than the Latin we did. And now some of my best friends...

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A Very Pink House Birthday

This weekend was my birthday! I like being 24, because I prefer even numbers to odd, and I really like numbers where one digit divides exactly into the other. So all in all, a good age to be. I do feel like I should be more of a grown up than I am, so one day I'm totally going to learn to iron. I'll...

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A Week 2013

It's A Week! My friend Chris has blogged about it here, but here's the general gist, according to the Facebook page: The idea of ‘A’ Week is simple - to raise awareness of how many people are ‘Good without God[s]’ and don’t need religion to influence their lives. So that's it in a nutshell. All...

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Freelancing Woes

Internet, I'm sad. And when I'm sad, I like to tell you about it. Freelancing is turning out to be not a lot like stock photos would have you believe. It's not all happy skinny white ladies in well-organised home offices. "Look at me! My room is so colour coded and I'm so fulfilled!" (Source) "I'm...

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On Body Shame

Hey, let's talk about body shame! FUN! (Warnings: This post contains maybe-triggery references to food and weight, non-wizard swears, and a picture of a cartoon naked lady.) Caveat: I am a thin-bodied person. I once had a friend say "When I hear skinny girls obsessing about their weight, all I hear...

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Game Face ON

Some of you may know that I'm a little bit competitive. I know, big shock. It's not that I can't stand losing - I really can cope with that (except when it comes to 30 Seconds). I just really really like winning. Do you want to play? Do you want to play RIGHT NOW? Which is why joining Discovery...

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Online Dating and Humourless Feminists

(TW: references to rape culture, sexualised insults.) I don't often talk about my online dating adventures. The first reason is that, as will become clear from the rest of the post, I haven't had that many adventures. The second, I suppose, is the lingering stigma. It's rare for people of my generation...

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The Great Job Hunt

It turns out that job hunting isn't much fun. Another one? Maybe it's a private school thing, or maybe it's a Gen Y thing, or maybe it's that as a white, wealthy, non-disabled, cisgendered, heterosexual, thin-bodied person I'm sitting on a shit-ton of barely-acknowledged privilege, but I've just...

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Leaving Home, Going Home

In order to avoid having pretty much every blog post in the last three months start with an apology for not posting, here is a warning about wild cheeses. I keep promising myself that I'll start blogging regularly again, when things settle down or pick up or get more interesting. Well, we're getting...

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Keep up the Good Work!

Way to go, bananas! You can do it, bananas! You're doing great, banana...

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ALLCAPS GREAT

Hey, look where I am! OH HEY DORKYFACE. Yes, I'm back in the cold and the dark, having considered graduation a good excuse to come back to England and spend time with the people I like over here. England is, of course, in chaos over the three-odd inches of snow which have fallen over the last...

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New Things and Tiny Hats

At the risk of sounding like the opening scene of The Marriage of Figaro, I made a hat! Come winter, some unfortunate child will be getting this. It's not a good hat, but as a first knitting project since my days of resentfully knitting squares in junior school, I'm pretty proud of it. I'm still...

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The Red Herring Ferret

TWIST! In a thrilling turn of events (only not really - I'm sorry, I'm really boring at the moment), it turns out Low Ferritin wasn't my nemesis after all.* The ferret was a herring. Awww. (Source) It may in fact be citalopram, which really is a shocking revelation, as I thought we were friends....

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