i have adventures (sometimes)

Tuesday 22 January 2013

Monday 21 January 2013

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 few days.

It's madness.
But my plane landed on time and I've generally been able to get to the places I'm going and I have lots of soup and chocolate and waterproof boots and an Emily, so I'm free to enjoy the snow.

Or to lie around in my pyjamas and read and drink tea instead. Because now I'm in another country, so it's called "being on holiday", not "unemployment".


Sunday 13 January 2013

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 not up to much, thanks to having no energy and a touch of the sadbrain, but I'm keeping myself occupied by learning New Things. My current New Thing is knitting.

The problem with learning New Things is that, while they keep me busy, they can also make me feel even worse, because I don't like being bad at things. But my knitting no longer looks like it's been chewed, so now it makes me feel accomplished instead of useless. Progress! And learning to like things I can't do instantly is another thing I need to come to terms with anyway.*

I'm sure there's an important lesson in here about perseverance or whatever, but I don't like important lessons. I like knitting tiny hats (and then modelling them on kittens). Next, I will tackle cryptic crosswords (kittens probably not involved).

At some stage, I also need to tackle the fact that in changing my blog layout, I broke Disqus. So if you would like to comment on my scintillating tiny hat news... well, I'd be astonished.

*This does not mean that I will ever like chess.**
**I do, however, love Chess. And so should you.

Saturday 5 January 2013

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. Talk about betrayal. It's like that moment at the end of Philosopher's Stone where it turns out to be Quirrell and it blows your 9-year-old mind. My dissertation was partially dedicated to the manufacturers of citalopram for stopping me from freaking out while I wrote it. And now it may be what's messing with my sleep and making me tired all the time.

Who would have guessed?

Thursday 3 January 2013

New Year, New Nemesis

Oh hello, the internet.

Remember how in my last post, I said I hadn't accomplished much since getting home? That was a month ago, and it's still true. Or maybe even more so, given how much more time has passed and how little has been accomplished since then. The things I have not done (or stopped doing) include applying for jobs, going out, being sociable, concentrating on words, understanding numbers, reading books, having interesting things to say, going to gym, finishing lists

I can take naps, watch British crime dramas, do simple puzzles, knit, and compulsively tell the internet my feelings in 140 character bursts. Sometimes I manage short bursts of other activities, but then I get overwhelmed by difficult tasks like choosing books at the library and I have to go home and have another nap.

I knit now! The kitten is not my work.

The thing is that I'm tired all the time, and sad quite a bit of the time, although at the moment I'm mainly just sad that I'm so tired. So that's an improvement. A blood test suggests the culprit may be low ferritin, which is actually a pretty great name for an arch nemesis.

So, Low Ferritin. We meet again. (Yes, I Googled "evil ferret" to find this.) (Source)