Avocado Thoughts

things I have been doing recently

2011-08-04T09:44:00.000+01:00

getting my hair cut at a hairdresser's for the first time ever
working on an essay comparing the Cambridge maths BA with the Greenwich (a 'new' university) maths BSc
sewing a waistcoat
working on the jumper I'm knitting (tubey)
missing blogging
staying out of the way of the builders
we're having our kitchen/bathroom redone. This is week 4. The novelty has worn off and working at home kind of sucks when you can't get to the loo or use the kitchen at all.
making the Pioneer woman's iced coffee which is super-easy and really nice
trying to shop ethically / better
spork made in Sweden rather than cutlery made in China. Wellie-ankle-boots made of natural rubber rather than plastics. Fairly traded dress from Nepal. Hat made of hemp. Trying not to buy more than I need - all of the preceding things bought for soul survivor next week. Trying not to shop gets much harder when you also want to get out of the house. And then kind of easier-but-more-angsty when you keep going "but where does this come from? Where was this made? Who am I supporting if I buy this?"
looking forward to Soul Survivor B next week!
missing Church :( it will be really good to be back on Sunday (have missed 2 weeks in a row due to a wedding 2 weeks ago and folk-dance-performing last Sunday)
spending a lot of time at the library
reading lots of books. Probably on a rate of 1 a day at the moment.

and with that, I should head off to the library and work on this essay.

Economic growth (cross-posted)

2011-04-11T15:18:00.000+01:00

Originally posted over at Thoughtful Eclecticism

“Economic growth, for so long the great engine of progress, has, in the rich countries, largely finished its work.”

The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (2010)
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

In slightly more context:

“For thousands of years the best way of improving the quality of human life was to raise material living standards. When the wolf was never far from the door, good times were simply times of plenty. But for the vast majority of people in affluent countries the difficulties of life are no longer about filling our stomachs, having clean water, and keeping warm. Most of us now wish we could eat less rather than more. And, for the first time in history, the poor are – on average – fatter than the rich. Economic growth, for so long the great engine of progress, has, in the rich countries, largely finished its work. Not only have measures of wellbeing and happiness ceased to rise with economic growth but, as affluent societies have grown richer, there have been long-term rises in rates of anxiety, depression and numerous other social problems. The populations of rich countries have got to the end of a long historical journey.”

p5, The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

Connected thoughts:

I was listening to Radio 4 a while ago, maybe about a week ago – as you do. Some guy was interviewing some other guy (that happens a lot on Radio 4). It was about the economy. And the interviewer asked the question “When can we expect to see standards of living rising again?“

This really struck me. I don’t mean to belittle the struggles that some people in the UK are facing at the moment – I am sure that there are people in the UK who need assistance to get the basics (like food, water, heating). I am also sure that there are many people in the UK who have much more than they need. I am one of them. I am not rich; I don’t make a huge amount of money; I don’t have an enormous amount of stuff – but I have food and water and clothing and shelter and access to transport and work and ways to communicate with others. Plus, I have library access, internet access, and Sky+, which between them give me access to an enormous range and depth of information on pretty much everything and anything I could think of – and an unlimited amount of entertainment. Further, I have access to social and community groups such as Church and dancing. I have an awful lot more than I need. And even if I lost a significant amount of money, I would still have almost all of these things (because I have a supportive family, and because you really can feed yourself rather cheaply if you want to base things on e.g. chickpeas, lentils and rice …).

So I find the expectation in this question – that material living standards should rise – very jarring. Raising my standard of living is definitely not high on my agenda – if anything, thinking about whether I should lower my standard of living / keep it the same but find ways to spend less money in order to be able to give more is the real issue (tangled up with questions of how to buy more ethical products, which may be more expensive than the alternatives). I find the assumptions underlying lots of media stories – that economic growth is always good, that it is the answer, that it is the thing to be looked to to fix everything – a bit odd, and slightly unsettling.
I know I am probably mixing up materialism/consumerism and stuff about the economy in my head, and I am probably getting lots of stuff wrong. Help and explanation and questions in the comments are very welcome! But I can’t get away from feeling that the general thrust of many messages seems to be that we should shop more and keep shopping and that will help fix the world – whereas I feel that we should probably shop a lot less. I guess these two might be reconciled by shopping less but spending more when you do because you’re buying a higher quality product. Maybe. What do you think of all this?

Just a quick update

2011-04-01T12:38:00.000+01:00

I've started talking to a few people about stuff and how the world is broken and all that kind of thing - and it's true that this is all stuff I already knew, it's just some of it is kind of becoming real for the first time ... I'm starting to feel more normal again though. Less emotional, less on edge, less totally frustrated. Which is a good thing - you can't live flooded with stress hormones all the time ... I hope I'm starting to calibrate to a new, more aware, more thoughtful 'normal'. And I definitely want to keep engaging with issues of humanity and exploitation and the brokenness of the world, and I hope that some of the conversations I've started over the last week or so will continue.

But I guess I just wanted to update and say that I'm moving forward, and everything's okay - I'm not about to run off and become a hermit (isolating yourself isn't the answer, anyway) - and for the moment, I'm starting slowly to feel more 'normal' again. But a new normal.

and another note

2011-03-29T21:38:00.000+01:00

I'd just like to make it clear that all this ... stuff (see previous 2 posts) isn't just about me listening to Shane Claiborne and nobody else. This is kind of the most recent tipping point, but by no means the only point ... I mean other stuff I've been reading includes the Bible, Rob Bell, McLaren, Don Miller, and some 24-7 prayer stuff; I'm also trying to work through thoughts with a vicar (CofE) at church, and in community with friends/family ... although I think I need to work on sharing with people around me and looking for community. I fall for the whole 'you can be individual and self-contained' thing that society tells us, over and over.

triggered by an ad on Spotify

2011-03-29T21:05:00.002+01:00

(and written in about 3 minutes)

dear world,
    demand more of me.

stop telling me that my spare time
    can make a difference
that my spare change
    can save a child's life

as though my time
    were more precious
        than changing the world
as though my consumerist choices
    were more important
        than saving lives

stop aiding and abetting me
in my selfish attempt to believe
    that I can do 'the right thing'
        when it suits me
            when it isn't painful
                when it isn't costly
and that's enough.

stop helping my self-centredness
    which tells me
        that I can put myself first
            and worry about the poor / starving / homeless / dying / lonely
                "when it suits me"
                    "when it's convenient"

dear church:: see above.

2011-03-29T20:53:00.000+01:00

this post is not intended to be coherent

So I've been reading a lot of Shane Claiborne recently (some of 'the irresistible revolution', although only some because I've now lent it to my parents, and more of 'Jesus for President') and I'm left rethinking my life. And it's painful, and hard, but it feels right. Lots of things. Like: oh God, how can I justify buying clothing produced in sweatshops, especially when I don't need any more clothing? I've been aware of this for ages (at least 8+ years) and have tried to do 'better' by buying less / finding fairtrade cotton every now and then - but let's be honest, I haven't tried particularly hard to find a way out of the system. I've tried to save money on clothes and give that money to good causes that will make sustainable changes to people's lives - and I think that's a good step - but that's no longer enough.

And this permeates everything ... I'm really starting to get that we're all part of the system (or at least the consumerist western world is) and the system hurts people. And that is not okay.

This isn't an instant thing, by the way - a lot of what I'm thinking / feeling / processing / deciding now has been slowly incubating over the last decade, and changing in different ways ... and will continue to incubate and change, I'm sure. But these last few weeks seem to have been a bit of a tipping point, and while it's easy to think "I'm not ready to make big changes to the way I think / live / prioritise", I have always believed (and continue to believe) that if God prompts you to do something, "I'm not ready" is not a suitable answer. We're not called to be 'ready'. We're called to be obedient.

Another thing that's been going round my head:
Q: "What is my life for?"
A: "Loving/serving God and others." (I've been reading the Bible a long time; I know that this is the right answer)
(Q: Do I live like that? A: mostly not)

I've probably rambled/ranted about this previously, but a theme that's been recurring more and more loudly - I keep hearing messages from the church about e.g. contentment, freedom, blessedness - and something within me wants to shout back "don't stop there! What is this contentment/freedom/blessedness FOR? What is the new life we get FOR? It's not for ME, MY BENEFIT, MY GAIN. It's for LOVING OTHERS". That isn't quite the right words for what I mean, but it's kind of close. A sermon about how we should be content/realise we're blessed/realise we're free by focusing on God, feels like it misses the point if it stops there. The point of my faith (/my life) is not for me to feel content / blessed / free, although those might be nice things to find along the way. The point of my faith/life ought to be to love/serve God and others, and 'others' ought to mean everybody.

One of the things that Claiborne points out (somewhere, I forget which book it's in) is that charity can help salve our consciences without really changing us. "I've donated to X, it's their job to care for the poor" "I've donated to Y, it's their job to improve the world". 'I' get to keep doing whatever 'I' want to do, because I've 'done my bit'. Which is kind of like buying indulgences, or something. 'I get to opt out of doing the right thing in all circumstances, because I did my bit'.

I think the challenge is this: to live like other people matter. Really matter. Each and every person. And that is a freakin' daunting task. Off the top of my head, trying to live like other people really matter is going to mean: not buying any food or goods made in exploitative ways. Keeping only the income I need to live on (which is, at the moment, very little) and finding good things to do with the rest of it. Looking hard for ways to connect with people on the margins - putting faces on homelessness/poverty/addiction, and offering love. Seriously thinking/praying about selling things I have / emptying savings accounts and using that money to love other people because when Jesus said to take care of the poor he probably meant it. Trying to find/start/something a community where we can make this sort of journey together. Starting to really centre my life around loving my neighbour. Starting to really try to process what it means to say that the Libyan insurgents are my neighbours and so are Gadaffi and his supporters. Starting to try and process what it means to say 'the kingdom is not of this world'. Resisting the temptation to be isolationist. Taking environmental concerns much more seriously than just recycling. And probably a thousand other things that I haven't thought of yet.

And this is scary. I know I won't be able to do it on my own. I don't know what to do about that. I'm going to try starting by talking to Chris / friends / church / family about this ... but I don't know what will happen.

Claiborne quotes Dorothy Day saying

“Love is a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, but it is the only answer.”

It will mean changing my whole way of life, changing my priorities, dealing with my ego ... and probably a lot of other painful things that I don't yet realise. But it is also exciting. As a song I've sung many-a-time goes, "There must be more than this ..." and Thank God that I'm starting to see a potential for a Christian life that is noticeably different and really does demand a cost.

Um. There's more to say. I'm not sure what it is. I'll probably come back to this. Time to publish.

A really brief life update

2011-03-18T18:21:00.000Z

Just kind of as a catchup ...

The last month or so has been pretty cool. I've had a lighter workload as I'm taking some days off to make up for the overtime I did in January. I'm picking up extra work doing some transcribing (transcribing interviews is really boring and time-consuming, but work is work) and helping out on another bit of research which is kind of looking into A-level / University transition (which I am totally into!). I've dropped one of my weekly dance commitments which has made a huge difference to how my week goes. I handed in my first essay at the end of Feb, and now don't have any academic deadlines until August 31st (second essay), which is pretty cool. I have some idea about what I want to do for my thesis, and just this week have worked out what I'm going to do for my second essay (compare a standard textbook used in 1st year undergrad in the UK with one used in the US). Church is good. Youth group is good. God is good.

2011-01-15T12:16:00.000Z

The post-Christmas period has been weird for me. There's not much routine, there's been a lot of getting up late, and a low note of simmering guilt ... not much guilt, you understand. Just an underlying drone of you should have tidied that up / you should have written that email / you should have returned those books / you should have done more laundry / you should be cooking ...

(hey, does that make it somewhat like a hurdy-gurdy?)

For work, I am traveling around interviewing people about maths - which means that things I am doing include: researching travel options to get to people, emailing people to arrange/confirm interviews, preparing for interviews (downloading audio files, making sure my notes are all in order, making sure I have the right participant's details (and only their details) with me), actually traveling, doing interviews, traveling back, writing up observations, more emails ... round and round it goes. It's been a big learning curve, and it's pretty tiring, and there's some unpredictability - there are still a couple of interviews where times haven't been confirmed, and it's the not knowing when I'll need to be out that is weirdest to live with. I'm more than halfway through now, though, which is good.

For non-work, church youth stuff has started up again :) we're doing a whole term on prayer, which I'm really stoked about. So that's awesome. University term is starting again - I think most people are probably going up today or tomorrow - and I'm not there so I'm trying to half keep in mind things that need to be done. But not feeling that I have the mental energy to sort them out.

And then I'm feeling that I should have more energy than I do, and should feel that I can do more things than I do. Fortunately I do actually know when to take it easy on myself. But my subconscious hasn't caught up yet.

And then there's blogging ... which I am about to catch up on today. And reading - I've bought some awesome new books lately which I really want to read.

And then there's housework. Chris and I are not good at housework. i.e. he very rarely does any, and I do bits but feel that we don't do anywhere near enough ... but then if I focused on getting housework done I would honestly never get anything else done, so it's trying to strike a balance and encourage him to do more ... yeah, haven't got that sorted yet. We live in clutter, I probably do the most tidying of the 3 of us, Sarah generally cooks. Maybe we can blast some stuff tomorrow.

Right. Let's go and see if I can be a bit more coherent over on the other blog ...

Goal for tomorrow: Essay writing

2011-01-11T23:38:00.000Z

Tomorrow is my deadline for the first draft of my (6000-6500 word) essay on maths education (it's a comparison of two papers on problem solving).

I have done most of it. Think I'm at about 4500 words, 4300 maybe excluding titles and contents page and things.

So tonight before I go to bed ... I am making plans:

I would like to be finished by 3pm.
I would like to have 5500 words by 12pm (that gives me 3 hours to read through, see if it all hangs together, and generally edit and add words). At that point I can print out what I've done (draft, on the backs of things ...) and have a go at editing on paper which is generally a good goal.
I want to have 5000 words by 11am. If I meet this goal, I can ... do something cool. (Possibly watch lots of Glee (after 3pm)? Have something exciting for lunch?)
By the time Chris leaves for work (about 9:20), I want to be up, dressed, and breakfasted. Possibly with tea ...

Okay. Best way to get this started is to sleeeeeep :) will update this post or comments on it tomorrow to mark how it goes ...

A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

2011-01-08T19:13:00.000Z

Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro.

Amazing book. Liturgy drawing on the history and diversity of the Church. Looking to be a liturgy that can be used by all parts of the Church - hence 'common'. And beautiful, beautiful writing.
Going to stop writing now to go read some more.

(And only £10.99, which for an almost-600 page book of prayers and songs and prose is fantastic value.)

2010: a retrospective

2011-01-01T23:15:00.000Z

Hey, world.

It's 22:20 and I'm sitting in our dimly-lit living room (which still has a Christmas tree with lights up in it :) ) and I've told myself that I need to start going to bed at a sensible time, so I will be in bed by 11pm at the LATEST which means I don't have much time for this post.

So this may not be representative, or whatever, but that's okay.

2010. Wow. A lot happened.

It's kind of funny to think that this time a year ago I would've been worrying about coursework. I find it hard to think back to before exams, actually. I remember things about that time - like immense stress and finding that I could work immensely harder and more intensely than I'd ever have thought - but I don't remember how it felt. I also remember feeling a bit fed up with maths at Cambridge (which, for the record, is not necessarily well taught or well examined and this is desperately unfair but that's life) and extremely glad that I'd done my 3 years but feeling that it was time to come to the end.

And then there was the post-exam period, and the balls and the parties (May Week! Fabulous. Also cold, and quite tiring. But still.) and graduation (which was amazing) and then starting my new job ... new Master's ... societies starting up again ... youthwork at Church ... it's been a really good second half of 2010, too. For me and for Chris - he's got more hours at his job, and has been Christmas Supervisor, plus has become closer to a bunch of his friends (I assume that sheer number of hours spent eating pizza together and playing Munchkin is some measure of closeness, right?), which is really neat.

High points of 2010: in no order:

Graduation! Lovely occasion, and a great garden party afterwards.
May week :)
Getting the phone call to say I'd got the part time research assistant job.
Getting involved with youthwork at church - the group I'm involved with are just such amazing kids. (I probably shouldn't call them kids, they're 14-18, but "young people" sounds so formal)
3rd wedding anniversary! Not that we did anything in particular, but just being married :)
Spending time visiting Hazel and Mum and Dad - now that I don't see them very often it's great when I do.
Getting through exams. They were harsh. And tough. And not fair. But we got through them.
The first meeting we had for all our group leaders in the Student Christian stuff at Uni - it was like: wow. All these amazing and talented and diverse people in one room! Also: we did it! This is working!

I'm sure there are dozens more things that were at least as important ... but I can't count on them to all rise to the surface of my mind at once.

Hey! I've just looked back at posts from last year (this is the thing about having a blog ... you should be able to see what you were up to all year pretty easily ...) - my NY's resolution last year was to eat more pain au chocolat.

That's cool.

I've totally done that.

I've probably eaten less than 20 in the whole year, but that's still more than in 2009.

There was also some resolution about jogging ... that didn't really happen. Although I did jog a bit - at various times throughout the year - and I did enjoy it and I did benefit from it. So a partial success?

Things that happened in 2010: mostly from blog posts:
January: I resolved to eat more pain au chocolat
February: I started sponsoring a child through World Vision (I'm still doing so)
March: I had a go at reducing the amount of meat in my diet. This is something I should do again.
April: I worked on jobhunting (had done some of this previously)
May: I had a job interview for a posh teaching job! Didn't get it because I didn't convince them I really really wanted it / could handle boisterous Y10-11s (totally fair, I didn't really want it and I probably couldn't), but the interview was amazing experience.
June: Exams! May Week! Graduation! New job!
July: Got contacts. Started new job! (Contacts are dailies for occasional use only - I've worn about 10 pairs between then and now)
August: Started new blog! Thoughtful Eclecticism
September: Got a new baby laptop! Started youthwork with church :)
October: Oh man. Term starts. Chaos! Good, though.
November: Started feeling like I belonged at church.
December: Wow, really failed at blogging on this blog ... made lots of mathsy Christmas cards. Started going arty collagey stuff, too, which is a fad I'm still continuing - look out for more of that over on Thoughtful Eclecticism.

Okay. It's 23:13 now, and I said I'd be in bed by 23:00 at the latest ... but I was! Honest! I've just been sitting up in bed on my laptop. That totally counts, right ... ?

(Plus, Chris isn't home yet - he's off fighting using his Warriors of Chaos army - so I probably wouldn't have gone to sleep yet anyway ...)

Okay. Time to stop writing and post this. Thanks for reading :)

Getting up and getting on with it :)

2010-12-29T16:31:00.000Z

Hey world *waves*

Blogging's on hold a bit over the festive season (both here and on Thoughtful Eclecticism), but I thought I'd jot down a few lines to say what I've been up to ...

I'm feeling like I'm beginning to be properly organised again, which is a nice feeling. Not that I was particularly disorganised, but at times over the past term it's felt like everything was just too much and getting on top of me (like here), and I'm feeling a bit more in control now.

I'm also more able to get up in the mornings. I feel like I've had 6 months of treating myself relatively softly (i.e. not pushing myself too much) since graduating, and now I know what I'm doing (in terms of work / study / church / youth / dance), I can start to gauge where and when to push, and start being a bit more active and a bit less passive. (People who know me will probably think that I haven't been at all passive over the last 6 months ... but it's all relative!). I feel like I'm waking up a bit more and reevaluating what I can really do (and what I should drop) a bit more and things like that ...

At the moment I feel good because:

I'm making progress on my essay every day
I'm moving forward with student christian organisingy stuff every day
I've posted the globes to Jenny (see previous post)
I've been doing other useful things that needed doing (like laundry)
I've been in lots of contact with Hazel, in ways that will (hopefully!) help with her work
I've been spending lots of time with family
I'm getting up and out of the house in the mornings (almost all of what I need to do needs to happen inside, but getting out to go to the post office or whatever seems to reset my brain to realise that the day has really started and I can be productive now).

It's a nice feeling :) and it's even nicer that I'm starting to take hold of myself again and not take "but I don't feel like it right now ..." as a blanket reason not to do something.

Spreading love on the internet

2010-12-23T16:55:00.000Z

I've been making chocolates today, which has left me feeling pretty creatively drained, so I won't be posting much ... but I wanted to pass on some information about my new friend Jenny, whose brand-new blog you can read here: http://mennobytes.blogspot.com/.

She showed up on Momastery to tell us about what she'd been up to, and why.
We jumped in and became part of the story.

The stories we tell ourselves shape our lives profoundly ... this is a concept that I play with again and again, trying to puzzle out how it is true and why it is true and when it is true ... and so now I'm part of a story that involves sending inflatable globes to Afghanistan.

Which is a small part of telling much bigger stories, like telling Jenny's friend D and the kids out there you are not forgotten.

Mostly Organised

2010-11-29T21:19:00.000Z

Today I have done organising-y type things ... although I haven't made any progress on my MEd essay :( which I need to work on ...

Having said that, I have:

- bought stamps
- bought a new jumper to wear whilst dancing outside
- tried on dancing kit
- ordered Chris's Christmas present
- ordered Sarah's Christmas present
- ordered chocolate to make other people's Christmas presents
- sent out emails re things this week
- started chasing up business cards for work
- done some laundry (and felted my hat! exciting times. It's now hat-sized rather than far too big!)
- bought a book for advent
- visited Chris at work
and the one that has taken up the most time: read through Gifted Children Grown Up (Joan Freeman) and created a presentation about it for Wednesday (my student-led seminar).

I'm currently revising dances using cribs and youtube ... and then after that I need to sort out the readings for this week, and pack. (Boo, packing. I hate packing.)

Still ... not a bad day.
Wish I'd managed to get some of the essay done though.

Scattered thoughts

2010-11-28T15:55:00.000Z

It's almost the end of November ... and I doubt I've averaged a blog post a day although I feel like I've blogged quite a lot this month.

I've just been writing a letter to Mike Pilavachi about jokes and why they matter (in response to being a bit ... not quite put out, but a bit something by some of his jokes recently) ... a curiously draining exercise.

Think I will have some tea (green tea with mint - which I'm going to review over on Thoughtful Eclecticism later today) and mull things over and rejuvenate ...

The next couple of weeks are going to be great :) next week includes a Christmas party, all night board games, and dancing out; the following week I'm going to go and visit Hazel for a couple of days.

Also: I have squirty cream and marshmallows. This makes hot chocolate the best ever.

Yay, Harry Potter!

2010-11-20T21:38:00.000Z

Hazel and I went to see the new Harry Potter film today :) it was really cool. And I'd totally forgotten everything from the books (well apart from the broad strokes like: the world is not safe / the ministry goes evil / Lord Voldemort is around a lot) so I wasn't spotting any niggles.

*yawns* very tired now ... before we went to see the film we spent hours in the V&A and in the National Portrait Gallery. I love the V&A - such a fabulous museum. I especially like the jewellery exhibit - not just because it's full of pretty, shiny things, but also because it's fascinating to look at the evolution of jewellery throughout the ages ...

I've also found that I really like looking at history / art from the last 50 years or so. I generally feel like I ought to know more about history so feel a kind of sense of ... obligation? to take everything in, when I'm looking at stuff. But for the more recent past, I feel like I have a bit more of a grasp of things, so I can relax a bit and just enjoy it. Which is fab :) and a bit less exhausting!

One thing I found really interesting was seeing a portrait of Princes William and Harry - not in particular because of who they are, but because this is the first time that I've seen a portrait of someone where I've also seen video footage of them, and it suddenly brought portraiture to life for me - there was also a bust (waist-up - is that still a bust?) of Nelson Mandela, which was similarly interesting.

It's been a good day :) although possibly now it's time for sleeeeeping ... good night world

back to basics

2010-11-17T12:41:00.000Z

lots of water
proper food
sleep
friends
time to oneself
hugs
teas

mini-meltdown

2010-11-16T23:34:00.000Z

aaaaaaarg.

Not going to put all the details down here, but had a bit of a mini-crisis in dance practice this evening and am now just feeling stressed out and like I need to sit here and cry (I'm sure there are chemical reasons for this).

I've put two and two together on one thing ... from 8:30 am on a Tuesday until ~11pm on a Thursday, I don't have more than an hour to myself at once.

(and it's not usually an hour, taking off travel time it's more like 30-45 minutes I ever have to myself)

this does not appear to be working.

I'm not sure what to do.

To some degree, I need to stop feeling responsible for everything. There are a bunch of things I am responsible for. Then there's a superset of those, forming the things I feel (to some degree or another) responsible for.

I also maybe need to cut back on things I'm doing. I'm not sure how that will work (or fail to work). I think starting to alternate dance practices might be a good thing. I don't know. Maybe it's just that it's this time in term, though? There are only 2 weeks of practices left. Maybe I should just keep going? But then - won't this just happen again next term? and I wouldn't want to plan a mini-meltdown in, as it were ...

I need to start writing lists more.
And trying to plan in some downtime where I don't have to be "on good behavior" (not leading anything / not at work / not at a seminar where I have to contribute / not having to learn a bunch of new things)

Thinking

2010-11-13T16:21:00.000Z

Hmmm ... the only way this blogging in November thing is going to work is if I count posts on both blogs ... I think. We'll see. I feel like I'm posting rubbish on here (which I probably am!) or at least sort of blathering ramble, which was fine when I was 14 but by this point I'd like to think I can write something worth reading ...

... but at the moment the writing things worth reading mostly happens on eudoxiafriday.wordpress.com, if I'm honest!

Recommendation of the week: 'A Very Potter Musical' on youtube ... it's awesome. See http://eudoxiafriday.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/share-an-awesome-youtube-video/ for a link to the first part :) and leave a comment over there recommending a youtube video of your own! (well ... your own recommending. It doesn't have to be you ...)

also ... I love Draco's song in the part below:

... totally awesome :)

... and closing down ...

2010-11-11T00:09:00.000Z

*happy face*

It's been a good day. Meetings this morning were useful, seminars were pretty full-on but really good, meeting up with Billy was great - haven't seen him in far too long - and then had a really good meeting this evening. Yay! Also Theo gave me a lift back so instead of a 40+ minute walk I had a car ride.

:) happy. Good things. Probably sleep time now.

Waking up ...

2010-11-10T08:33:00.000Z

It's 8:30 am and this is a bit of time to sit still ... I start the work day with a meeting at 9:00, and then have assorted things happening until 10:00pm ... it's not all that bad, I should have a couple of hours for lunch , and one hour's break between 4 and 5, plus a lot of it will be fun. Probably still hard work though.

Right. Time to take a deep breath and go face the day ...

What maths is is different from how it is taught ...

2010-11-09T19:28:00.000Z

A brief rant.

Currently I am rather annoyed by a paper I've been reading (Lerman, S. (1990) Alternative perspectives of the nature of mathematics and their influence on the teaching of mathematics. British Educational Research Journal, 16 (1), 53-61)

3/4 of it is completely true and somewhat useful and I absolutely agree. I just violently disagree with the remaining 1/4 ... my main problem is this: he conflates having an absolutist/Euclidean/Platonic* view of what maths is with a particular view about how it should be taught (in a 'I am the teacher, I know all the rules, I dictate to you the rules, you practice the rules' sort of way). There is no good reason to identify these two things!

And just because you reject that way of teaching (which I think is rather limited and certainly has many problems), that shouldn't mean you need to reject an absolutist view of what maths is ... I am a Platonist for all practical purposes. So are virtually all practicing mathematicians, I'm told. There is a reason why people hold this view. So why are the maths education papers on the nature of mathematics so against it?

Discussion on this (tomorrow evening) will be lively ...

*essentially, the idea that maths is somehow there, that it is somehow very true, that it is necessarily true.

Another day, another blog post

2010-11-08T18:28:00.000Z

The moral of the day today is that sorting things out takes a very long time ...

I spent 2 hours this morning dealing with emails - this is what happens when you say you'll do weekly newsletters and keep people up to date with things. Then spent about 20 minutes doing blog stuff over on eudoxiafriday.wordpress.com (the press person from Tea Palace commented on my review of their Covent Garden tea :) apparently they do think about ethics after all ... they just hide this fact completely on their website and didn't respond to my queries on the submit-your-queries thing on the site).

... okay, then I went and played Fable for 3 hours. I've become king! So I won't claim to have been working all day ...

But then I've just spent a couple of hours playing with maths problem solving stuff - we have our second session on problem solving on Wednesday and have to bring a problem. I've chosen the second bit of http://nrich.maths.org/6896, plus extending it with a few comments of my own. And it just took so much longer than I expected it would ... mostly because I got seriously stuck on the first bit of that link (which I'm not using) due to missing a reasonably obvious solution. You're given 9 points and have to construct a triangle such that the shortest distance from any point to the triangle is at most 1 - so there's more freedom than if the triangle had to go through each point. Do go play if you're interested ...

So I haven't achieved all my aims for the day - I wanted to do some more independent study for my first assignment (due end of Feb). But on the other hand I am now well prepared for lectures this week, which is more imminently important. So not doing so badly.

What have you been up to today?

Starting to fit in :)

2010-11-07T18:40:00.000Z

I'm finally starting to feel like I fit in and know people at church :) which is really nice. I guess it's probably about 4 months now that I've been going every Sunday (plus youth group midweek plus a few other things like gospel singing workshop day), and I'm finally starting to feel that I know a bunch of people (rather than just a very scattered few), and there are quite a few more who I sort of know of, or I recognise that they're someone's parent, or I know they're involved with such-and-such a group/project ... it's nice.

Also: we had a baptism in church today ... and the baby was wearing a kilt! He had a tiny sporran and everything. It was amazing (his Dad was also wearing a kilt, and I think their surname was Stuart/Stewart). Anglican infant baptism services make me cry ... which is a bit odd considering I don't think I believe in infant baptism (well obviously it happens, but I'm not sure I see why it should happen). It's this bit:

"There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism:
N, by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body
We welcome you into the fellowship of faith;
we are children of the same heavenly Father;
we welcome you."

... which I wouldn't have thought was a particularly emotional bit of the service either. I don't know why it gets me ... maybe it's something about community. Everything's something about community. (Maybe not everything, but almost everything in my life over the past 2 years, anyway).

Blogging from an iPad

2010-11-06T22:06:00.000Z

...it's weird. Tricky to get the hang of the keyboard, but seems to work :)

It's been a pretty good day :) just got back from a church bonfire and BBQ thing, which was neat. It involved some toasting of marshmallows at the end, which is always fun - although they were fruit flavoured which was a bit strange. I'm a fan of normal marshmallows for toasting ... Funny ones for chocolate dipping might be okay though. There's a little chocolate shop I know of that does long strips of marshmallow in flavours like violet, which I'd really like to try :).

Also: fireworks :) they're quite cool. The thing about fireworks, I think, is that you need to decide beforehand that you're going to enjoy them ... No doubt most years the fireworks you see will be less impressive than some you've seen in other years. (indeed, having been to Trinity May Ball, I suspect this will have surpassed any I will see in person for quite some time, if not for the rest of my life ...) But that's not the point, the point is to hang around with people and have a good evening :)

Anyway. That's not very deep, but that's what happens when you decide to blog daily. Night, world.

the prince who dances with beggars

2010-11-05T21:33:00.000Z

So it's day 5 and I've already missed a day ... I could blame the fact that my train was delayed on the way home yesterday, and so my whole routine was put out. But that would be ... disingenuous. Because my train was only delayed by half an hour, and my plan had been to get home and use that half hour to possibly have a super-quick shower and then write a bible study message thing based on Philippians. So I wouldn't have been blogging anyway.

The real reason ... is Fable III. Chris bought this game a little while ago, and I've started playing it in the last week or so and it is AWESOME.

It's an exploratory quest-based RPG sort of a thing - you are the second child of the old Hero (that being the player-character from Fable II, I believe).

(NB nothing below is spoilery, it's all pretty obviously laid out in the gameplay from the beginning)

Your older brother Logan, who has inherited the Kingdom, is essentially an arse / tyrant / cruel and horrible / etc - lots of starving peasants, discontent, stupid decisions, etc. You run away from the castle as he's clearly going somewhat mad, and spend the first half of the game traversing the land, learning about it and forming alliances with various groups of people. You then become king / queen (I haven't got there yet) and then spend the second half of the game fulfilling all of the promises you made to the various groups (e.g. you promise to reopen the academy that was once a great seat of learning but Logan has closed, you promise that the mountains that a tribe live on will really be theirs and they won't be driven off them again etc).

What I love about it is that it's a game in which you can be good. Really, truly good, not just given a quick good/evil decision every now and then.

My character is a Prince (I actually started the game as a Princess the first time round, but her disconcertingly large bust was ... disconcerting. I restarted because Chris and I worked out that if I had my own Xbox live account things would work better). He's a prince who has time for ordinary people. He walked down the street in a slum area lined with beggars, and stopped to talk to, and dance with, each one (and then gave them a little money to help them out). He keeps making friends with people, listening to them. He's starting to buy up run-down properties, fix them, and rent them out on low rents to make them accessible. He also makes a mean pie.

It's not all do-gooding, of course, I've also killed a lot of mercenaries / hobbes / hollow men / wolves / bats. But this game ... it has heart, or at least it does if you want it to. That makes me happy. It's about working together and winning people's trust and hanging in there and saving the day. And really ... how cool is that?

Staying on top of everything :)

2010-11-03T22:33:00.000Z

It's really nice.
It's really nice to have enough time to stay on top of everything without being totally pushed and pressured :). I'm really grateful for my undergrad experience, and really really pleased that I now know that I can do an awful lot under tremendous pressure ... but it's rather nice not to be under all that pressure all the same. At the moment I appear to be on top of (or mostly on top of) dancing, work, study, youth group, and family (not in any particular order, I hasten to add). This is nice.

----------------------------

And now for something completely different ... we had an interesting discussion about the foundations of mathematics today. A little bit each on platonism / intuitionism / formalism / probably a couple of other -isms. And a little bit about Godel's incompleteness theorem - it's nice than in the group of 12 of us doing mathematics education things there are lots of us with maths degrees, and at least 3 of us are actually conversant with Godel's incompleteness theorem (that is, in any system which can do arithmetic (i.e. can have the natural numbers), there exist some statements that are undecidable (i.e. you cannot prove those statements to be true or false within the system)). A lot of tosh gets talked about Godel, and it's good to put things on a solid footing.

There also appears to be this guy called Lakatos who I don't think much of ... but I'm not sure if that's his fault or if that's because of what the person leading the seminar told us about Lakatos, and the way in which his ideas were presented / understood.
The idea seems to be that mathematical knowledge is something like scientific knowledge in that it's vulnerable to revision / counterexample / etc. He has some concept of informal mathematics which I don't fully subscribe to. Wikipedia says this:

"What Lakatos tried to establish was that no theorem of informal mathematics is final or perfect. This means that we should not think that a theorem is ultimately true, only that no counterexample has yet been found. Once a counterexample, i.e. an entity contradicting/not explained by the theorem is found, we adjust the theorem, possibly extending the domain of its validity. This is a continuous way our knowledge accumulates, through the logic and process of proofs and refutations. (If axioms are given for a branch of mathematics, however, Lakatos claimed that proofs from those axioms were tautological, i.e. logically true.)"

I think there's over-emphasis on counterexamples - this was raised during the session (what about existence proofs? You can't create a counterexample to an existence proof). And generally ... I'm not convinced that he's saying much. I think some of it is tosh, and I think that the bits that aren't tosh are "people talk about maths, and they work out which bits are wrong and make it better" which I think is totally true but also totally obvious and he shouldn't get to 'claim' that as 'Lakatosian theory' or something. Humans, they interact, and give each other feedback on things. We were given some examples of things to do which it was claimed were tasks that got us to do Lakatosian interaction - one was an 'experimental' type proof of V - E + F = 2 (Euler characteristic of polyhedra) which I'll admit I didn't take to (sat around working out how to prove the graph theory idea anyway - i.e. for a connected planar graph, V - E + F = 2 remembering the infinite face). The 'experimental' type proof involved cutting a face out and then saying that V - E + F = 1 and then saying let's triangulate and then remove triangles ... it seemed a very messy and flawed way of investigating this idea. Maybe that was the point (so that we'd come up with criticisms) but I'm not sure ...

Ahem. If anyone has a profound understanding of Lakatos, feel free to lecture me ... it sounds like his views might be crap, or they might just be badly expressed by other people. But I think I fundamentally disagree with him about what mathematics is - which is probably the crux of the matter.

For the record, I'm a platonist for all practical purposes. I think if you asked me to choose a philosophy of maths I'd pick formalism (and say that I'm happy that there are some undecidables - via Godel - I don't see that as a huge failing of formalism) but pragmatically, I'm a platonist. Or maybe I'm a religious platonist - if you force me to say where the ideal triangle exists, if it exists anywhere, I would say "... well ... in the mind of God, why not, that's a perfectly reasonable place for it to exist" (indeed it would seem odd to claim that God exists and the ideal triangle exists but the ideal triangle is not in God's mind). But I don't think you need to invoke God for platonism, and I don't really tie religion to maths generally.

Okay. Now I'm off to have dessert :)

Tuesday 2nd November

2010-11-02T18:26:00.000Z

So I guess blogging every day includes today ...

Today's been an okay day so far. Had a bit of a crap time whilst packing for work this morning (for anyone who hasn't noted this yet - I leave home on a tuesday, go away for a couple of days for work (staying in a friend's spare room) in another city, then come back on thursday). I think it's because the house is a bit of the mess (this is its default state), and I was rushing around sorting stuff out knowing that when I get back on Thursday it will be in just as much of a mess ... and that makes me sad.

So I've planned a marathon clean-up: Friday / Saturday / Sunday, I've only got plans for about 3 hours across the 3 days (plus sleep, of course). So I'm just going to go and try to blitz things and get loads of stuff clean and take a trip to the dump to get rid of random electrical bits and all sorts of things ... it needs to be done. It really needs to be done.

Anyway. Got to work. Work good. Now home. Have just been sending emails, and reading Philippians (biblegateway.com doesn't have the NRSV ... what is the world coming to? May have to put a travel-size NRSV on my Christmas list ...) in preparation for youth group on Thursday evening. Currently sitting here thinking about whether to go to the pub for dinner or not before dance practice ... think I'll go.

Okay. Off we go then!

/ rambling

Instead of Nano ...

2010-11-01T21:32:00.000Z

It's November again :)

And November means ... NaNoWriMo! (http://www.nanowrimo.org/)

I'd kind of like to do it this year ... even though I think it's a bad idea. So in an attempt to /not/ do this, I'm going to be blogging on here every day instead (famous last words). It might spark me into a rhythm that'll work for updating this blog and the other blog (www.eudoxiafriday.wordpress.com). Who knows ...

So ... I guess that means I need to have something to talk about! Term is going on well. I'm starting to actually do some work for my master's, which is a good thing - spent this afternoon doing the readings for this week's sessions, which are on 'the nature of mathematics' and 'problem solving'. The problem solving stuff is kind of interesting - there's some stuff about metacognition which is something I'm really interested in. Although having said that, that paper is for an assignment, not for this week's discussion ...

The paper that we did have to read for this week's problem solving discussion is basically an exploration of a problem that the author received via email, solved over a 24 hour period (as in, he was doing other things and then thinking about the problem whilst out for a walk / in other spare moments - not that this is a problem that takes a mathematician 24 hours to solve!) and then shared with some of his students and got them to solve. As an exercise, we had to stop when we read the statement of the problem and solve it ourselves - making notes about how we went about solving it.

Here's the problem:
A man and his partner invite 5 other couples to a dinner party. As the guests are coming in, the two hosts shake hands with them and some of the guests shake hands with other guests, but for assorted reasons not everybody shakes everybody else's hand - and of course, nobody shakes hands with their own partner.
Later in the evening, the subject of the handshakes comes up, and the aforementioned man asks each of the other people present how many handshakes they participated in. He gets 11 distinct answers.

How many hands did the man's partner shake?

------------------------------

Answers on the back of a postcard ... or in the comments, of course :). It's a nice little problem, but more interesting is the problem solving processes that one goes through (including any blind alleys and the like) - I'm looking forward to the discussion on Wednesday and learning how other people did things. Comparing my problem solving strategy with the author's (I should cite this ... "Rowland, T. (2003) 'Mathematics as human activity: a different handshakes problem.' The Mathematics Educator, 7(2), pp. 55-70."), we approached things similarly but he abandoned his first approach while I went with it. (I'm avoiding saying what it was to try and avoid prejudicing anyone who does want to try the problem and see what methods they go through without outside influence).

On a completely different topic ... had a cool conversation with a Vicar this morning. Including potentially revolutionising my understanding of the fall ... the idea being: what are Adam and Eve supposed to do? Essentially, rule the world (have dominion over and take care of the animals, plants, etc etc). So then what happens ... this serpent shows up (as if by magic) and starts saying beguiling things. And what do they do - do they do what they're supposed to and take charge? No, they sit back and let the serpent do stuff ... and maybe that's the fall. The fruit and the temptation and things happen afterwards.

This point of view makes a lot of sense to me. E.g. it implies we don't have a God who goes "you can do anything. But don't touch this ... no really, don't touch this ..." and sets them up for failure. That would be a desirable implication. Also, it means that the fall is not primarily Eve's fault - something that's been used to oppress women. That would also be a desirable implication.

So there're two things to think about ... maths and theology. Not a bad combination, in my opinion.

:)

Reclaiming yarn :)

2010-10-23T23:39:00.000+01:00

(please forgive rather terrible photos in this post - I thought they were better than no photos)_

It's coming to the end of the month. I get paid soon (yay!) but not just yet (boo) ... and yet I'm sick of sticking to a tight budget (still paying off the netbook - as in, clearing the bit of interest-free overdraft I used to buy it). So it's reasonably fortunate that I found something fun to buy that was also cheap ...

In a British Heart Foundation charity shop, I found this jumper:

It cost me a grand total of £2.80. I definitely wasn't buying it to wear - it's several sizes to big for me and not really my style - but I rather like the colour (a dark pink leaning towards maroon or purple - it shows up reasonably well in the photo), and from the construction of it it looked like it could be unravelled to provide balls of thick 100% cotton yarn ... I thought it was worth the risk.

So out came the unpicker ...

and it seemed to work! I found the seams and ripped them out with the unpicker, then found ends and unravelled and wound into balls :) and voila! Lots and lots of rather nice yarn for very cheap. There were a few bits where I'd nicked a couple of the strands and that's a bit of a pain but shouldn't really be a problem.

Unravelling things is fun ..

Now I've got to plan what to make with it. I'm thinking a very big chunky scarf, which will possibly end up being Hazel's birthday present (depending on how it turns out).

Yay for cheap awesome yarn! I am now tempted to do this a few more times (charity shops are bringing out winter knitwear at the moment so there should be some around for a bit). (Hm, I'm sure there was a knitty article on just this, but I can't find it ...) Things to look for: that the yarn's in good condition, that it's not too felted together, and most importantly that the garment is actually seamed (i.e. not cut and sewed or you'll end up with millions of bits that are 12" long each ... which unless you want to make miles of fringing won't be very useful) so that it can be unpicked into bits and then unravelled.

raaaagh.

2010-10-15T23:50:00.000+01:00

Feeling knotty :(

I would say I'm not sure why, but truth is I can point to a couple of things it might be ... but things that I can't do much more about and probably shouldn't worry about. But worrying isn't a sort of thing that you can necessarily turn off.

Time for sleep, I think.

Blog post from yesterday (on the train)

2010-10-13T16:37:00.000+01:00

Thoughts from a train:

1) Mary Beard's "It's a don's life" is really very good. (Started it when I got on a train 2 hours ago, 75 pages in so far)

2) Maybe I should knit lots of people klein bottles for Christmas. Thoughts?

3) I can't find my cupcake :( it's somewhere in my wheely bag (I've got a smallish wheely bag and then a rucksack as well)

4) The good thing about having a hard-cased bag with you is you can use it as a footrest (in one of those bits where you've got 4 seats facing to yourself). Sounds silly, but surprisingly comfortable.

5) If I'm lucky I'll be able to meet friends for lunch :) should start sending texts and saying I'll be around ... (*sends texts*)

6) I like this whole tiny netbook thing.

7) I think I still haven't posted photos of the netbook and a review. Bother.

8) Skillet (well, really Korey Cooper - who I think is gorgeous and awesome) has started an online book club. This seems pretty cool.

9) The Book of God (Walter Wangerin) is extremely good. It's the Bible in novel form - I'd seen it in bookshops and not picked it up because I didn't know what it was like from a scholarly point of view, and I didn't want to have to read it and keep second-guessing it. But last week I was recommended it by a friend who's a vicar and said that Wangerin is a Hebrew and Greek scholar who really is extremely good and that the book is excellent.

It really immerses you in the story - and it's a slightly disturbing read (or possibly a very disturbing one). I'm pretty well acquainted with all of the gruesome stuff that happens in the Old Testament, and it really is brutal ... The Book of God, at least in the early parts (I'm up to the beginning of David's time) reads like fantasy. But of course that makes sense - it's a story of a god speaking to people in cryptic ways and sometimes being (or at least seeming) capricious but demanding that they follow him anyway. I would highly recommend this book, for drawing a coherent narrative together that doesn't shy away from the crazy and really difficult bits of the Old Testament (like the genocide and the rape and the dude who cuts his dead concubine into 12 bits and sends her around Israel). If we want to understand the Bible we need to not just cherry pick the bits of the Old Testament that talk about love and respect, we need to read all of it*.

(*Having said that, The Book of God does leave some stuff out - for a start it begins with Abraham, and I think it misses out some of the side stories along the way e.g. I'm pretty sure I'm past the time of Ruth and she hasn't been mentioned.)

10) I want my cupcake :(

11) If I were to make Sierpinski triangle shapes out of two colours of Fimo, what could I make from them? In particular, could I make interesting Christmas presents out of them? How hard would it be to make cufflinks? (I guess you buy cufflink backs and just glue them on ...) Necklaces? Earrings? That could be really cool. I think I'd need to be able to drill through baked Fimo. I suspect that a Games Workshop drill (I have one ... somewhere) might do it.

12) Think I'll go back to my book. That's all for now ...

---------------------------------

(I did find the cupcake in the end ... it was in my bag, though I thought it wasn't ... it was rather squashed.)

Looking forward to today ...

2010-09-25T12:00:00.000+01:00

... my plans for today go like this.

Make a grilled cheese and ham sandwich.
Pull out my knitting.
Catch up on all the episodes of Waterloo Road that I've been saving up on the Sky+ box (where 'saving up' means 'I haven't got round to watching them').

I've got a bit of a cold at the moment - caught from Chris. He was pretty ill on Tuesday/Wednesday (when I was away), I came home on Thursday and promptly had a sore throat on Friday ... nothing major though, just a little bit of a sore throat and a desire to sit around wrapped up in blankets not doing very much. Still feeling a little bit like I want to take it slow and sit around.

This is a good way to spend a Saturday.

Later this evening we'll be going to a church harvest dinner thing ... which should be really informal and quite funny (people are supposedly performing 'family entertainment') and I'm looking forward to it.

Right ... time to go off and make that sandwich.

Hey hey :)

2010-09-09T22:41:00.000+01:00

Hey hey world :)

A bit of an update!

1) I am still blogging over on http://www.eudoxiafriday.wordpress.com - which is why I'm blogging less frequently over here. I haven't quite got the hang of juggling the two of these yet, although I want to get there ... it's coming along slowly.

2) I have ordered a new laptop! Unfortunately I'm away at work today and they tried to deliver it ... lovely mother in law is going to phone tomorrow to get it redelivered. It's a Samsung N150 in yellow - doesn't it look gorgeous? I went in to PC World and had a look at laptops - was originally looking at ones more around the £200-£220 mark, but the salesgirl was very convincing - and the Samsungs claim to have 9 hour battery life (and according to salespeople really actually do have 9 hour battery life - most of the others have 3-4 hours). I've ended up spending £274, and I've got £100 back from a rent deposit from Uni and Chris is buying Dark Elves off me for £70, so in some sense it's cost me about £104. Which I can cope with.

I'll be really pleased once I've got this laptop - it'll mean I can work on the train (writing up stuff) and out and about in [town of working]. I can flit about between libraries or coffee shops or whatever if I feel the need to. And I'll be able to blog from more places - or just write blog posts on the train and then upload them when I next get to somewhere with wifi. I'm really looking forward to using it. I've got my laptop with me now, but as it's a big and heavy one it was a real pain to get it here and I can't take it around out and about for the day.

3) I'm in to the part time master's! Haven't technically got an offer through but the course coordinator-y people are officially recommending that I be offered a place, which is about the same thing. Hurrah! So that will be starting at the beginning of October.

4) I am getting involved with running small groups at church for the 14-18s :) need to get (yet another) CRB check done for that ... I can't start this week because I'm away, but will start by visiting next week. Exciting times! I'm really looking forward to it.

I've been away from home a lot over the last couple of weeks ... :(. Last week was work spread over 3 days, then a friend's birthday, then a sightseeing trip; this week has been interview tuesday afternoon, work wed/thurs, and then off to a conferency thingy friday and saturday ... so I won't be home until probably 10 or 11pm on Saturday (having left at about 10:30am on Tuesday). This is sad ... I'm looking forward to things settling down a bit. Being at home 5 nights a week (as is the plan) is really, really nice.

Okay, that's the life update for now ... ciao :) and don't burn books, that's bad.

(P.S.: my nails are currently bright orange. That is all.)

Asking the right questions - a rant, and a recommendation

2010-08-28T19:04:00.000+01:00

I went into a Christian bookstore today. I know the people there (have actually worked there part-time in the past), they're nice, it's a good place, it's a useful resource. I wanted to look for a devotional.

(Side-rant: my GOODNESS some of the devotionals out there on the market are ... ick. "Tender moments for a woman's heart" sort of titles, in pastel pink, probably with pictures of roses on them (I don't mean to criticise any particular book, but the trend in general). This fetishised "femininity" sort of thing. The men's ones didn't appear to be any better. It just all feels so ... packaged. I ended up buying a student devotional, despite not currently being a student (although I hope to be again in october - interview for part-time master's coming up soon :) ) which is just as packaged but because it's trying to be all 'real' and 'engaging' as it's aimed at students, it feels a little more real. And engaging.)

I haven't been in there (the bookstore, in case you lost your sense of location in that side rant) for a while, so I browsed a bit. I was wandering around the aisles looking at these titles and something inside me was just shaking its head (okay, I have a metaphorical head inside me, that's a bit creepy) and saying "No. Just no. You're asking the wrong questions."

See, one of the things that being trained as a mathematician teaches you to do*, is to ask the right questions. Before you look for an answer, you ask yourself things like: does this question actually make sense - is it meaningful? Does this question have an answer? (if not, you should probably give up now.) Does it have only one answer? Do I have enough information to have a hope of answering the question? ... can I answer the question?

And similarly, when someone makes a claim, you think: can that be true? Do they have enough information to have worked that out? What assumptions are they making? What conditions have to hold for that to work? So is it true at all? Is it true in general, or only in special cases?

(*Okay, if you're an applied mathematician you might not ask as many of these questions. But you get the idea.)

And man ... so many books' claims fall down. 28 days to a deeper relationship with God? How do you know that'll work? (hey, I suppose if it doesn't, it's probably my fault, so as well as your book not working for me I get to feel guilty?) Promises of things that will still my heart? Well, hang on, how do you know my heart needs stilling anyway? Maybe I'm too lethargic already and could use some shaking up. Besides which, even if that's what I did need, you can't possibly know that your book will work for me.

My God shall provide all my needs. But he has a pretty different idea of need than the blurb on your book does.

Oh - and the protectionism. Those books ... they make me laugh before they make me cringe and sigh. You know the ones. The 'this book tells you how to protect your precious child / spouse from the evils of a world FILLED WITH TEMPTATIONS LIKE NEVER BEFORE'. (Cue spiel on internet porn which is probably 5 years out of date. I love this xkcd - parents, teach your kids about sex. But first, teach them about popup blockers. Basics, people.)

Newsflash: the world has always been filled with temptations. And frankly, as humans, we're pretty good at thinking some temptations up if they're not there ready and waiting for us. And these books are generally really good at promoting the whole 'them and us' idea of the world. As if our family, our church, is perfect and safe and not tricky (so long as you follow the recommended program, at least!) and doesn't contain moral ambiguity and tricky bits. I thought 'them and us' was one of the things that Jesus came to break down. Mostly he seems to have done it by hanging out with them, and leaving us to our closed off ways if that's how we want to be (although the good news is we can tag along and do what he does).

Just ... when did the Christian life become an exercise in self-help? (We can even self-help it being an exercise in self-help - try my 3 week programme to complete dependence on God!)

God isn't in your 12-step programs. God isn't in your Bible reading plans. God may by His grace show up when people read your books and pray your guided prayers and that's awesome, but ... God isn't in your schedules and charts and devotionals.

God is here. With the chavs and the snobs and the employed and the unemployed and the people who've got it all pretty much sorted and the people who've got none of it sorted and with me and with the people I meet and with you and with the people you meet and with the people that you and I will never meet.

God loved the world like this: he came. And hung out with us in our stinking humanity and said 'Guys. Come do life with me. Here's how I do it.' and then he lived with us and he showed us and loved us and hung out with us even though 'we' were 'them' and we didn't get it but eventually ... we started to get it. And he told us stories about people like us, and he told us stories about God. And we started to get it a little bit more.

And I think I've worked out that that's what I'm looking to read. Stories about people like me, and stories about God. And I don't mean 'people like me' to mean 'people who have mobile phones and drive cars and have the internet' - that's where a lot of devotional stuff feels to me like it falls down, because it seems to say 'this applies to you because you have a phone / have a computer / drive a car' - but that's not who I am!

By people like me I mean people who are complicated and interesting. Who have a set of beliefs that changes and develops (side note: I used to be much more towards the evangelical fundamentalist side of things - mostly I claim indoctrination, maybe not conscious, but by exposure to only one point of view and that one in many ways naive. I am now the sort of person my 13-year-old self would have suspected of being a bleeding-heart liberal, and the sort of person who she had been told didn't /really/ believe because they didn't believe in a 6-day creation and a young earth. Plus, I now drink and swear (both quite occasionally, and both quite deliberately) which I suspect my parents might find pretty tricky (sorry Mum, if you're reading this ...). That's okay. I've made peace with that. My 13 year old self had a lot of things sorted, but she also had a lot to learn).

Where was I ... people like me - people like me aren't in boxes. They're mathematicians who like to do art, and don't like to program. They're committed to the church and cringe over the church. They want to love people but they aren't brave enough but they're starting. They've heard stories about how God uses people who feel they have nothing to give and feel ever so slightly left out - because they know they have stuff to give.

And they're starting to work out that this whole doing life thing is - at least partly - about asking the right questions. Like, here's one for you.

Did Jesus like people?

I don't want a 'Oh well, Jesus loved people, it says so, so I think he must've liked them'. I loved my sister growing up, doesn't mean I liked her (sorry darlin'. I like you now.) Straight-up question: did (does) Jesus like people?

I think so. I think there's some pretty solid evidence for that. Like, he hung out with people a whole lot. And he ate with them and chatted with them and told them stories. And people liked him, which is a pretty good indicator. I think that sounds like someone who likes people.

Do Christians like people? Sure, some of them do. And some of them - like the ones who seem to foam at the mouth at the idea that their daughter might want to date someone (rather than the guy jumping through 10 hoops her Dad lays out before he gets to talk to her) - well, they give a pretty strong impression of not liking people.

Or people who live in segregated communities, like the Amish (I watched 'Amish: World's squarest teenagers' recently, in which a group of 5 Amish teens spend 4 weeks in the UK and get to know some British teens and both sides are really tolerant and amazing and learn a lot (great program) recently) - um. I admire such people in some ways. But I feel like they're asking the wrong questions ... I think the question they should be asking is 'Did Jesus come just for us? Or did he come for other people too?'

So. Back to the bookstore. I picked up my student devotional. I also ended up buying another 4 books, spending about £50 in total (you can tell I was paid earlier in the week ... hey, this'll give me train reading for the next few weeks!). Since I'd just been walking around lamenting the lack of books that I felt got it (I should probably add somewhere - so I'll add it here - that I was wandering around the bestsellers and prayer racks - I'm sure the biographies and doctrinal books and study guides aren't anywhere near as self-help-y), when I found 4 books that really did get it and did ask the right questions, I wanted to nab them. This is the recommendation bit.

I bought 'Wired for God: the biology of spiritual experience' by Charles Foster, because I previously bought 'The Selfless Gene' (which was about evolution and Christianity) and I found that really good. And I love the way he writes. Plus, of course there's biology in spiritual experience. Fasting, for example, does funny things to you. It's supposed to. Foster - so far as I can tell - really does examine the science properly, and looks honestly at where the science bits fit in and where the faith bits fit in and how it all works. That's what I like about him.

I also bought Sex God by Rob Bell. Because I haven't read it, and I have read Velvet Elvis (although I think I've lost it ...) and Jesus Wants to Save Christians and both of those were awesome and this one looks awesome too. Chapter One is entitled 'God wears lipstick', and the epilogue 'More balloons, please'. I like it already. When I read Rob Bell, I feel like there's something in me going Yes. Yes. You get it. You're not distracted by all this other stuff, like whether I spend 2 hours or 3 hours a week in church meetings, you're talking about God. And I'm listening. And I probably don't agree with everything you say but you're cool with that. Yes.

The other two books I bought were by Donald Miller. I've never read any Donald Miller, but Glennon recommends him incredibly highly and from flicking I can see why. The titles are 'Blue like Jazz' and 'Searching for God knows what' and Blue like Jazz is subtitled 'nonreligious thoughts on christian spirituality'. I started flicking and I felt the same as when I read Rob Bell - you get it. I get it. We're telling stories about God, because that's how we start to see bits of him. And we're telling stories about us, because that's how we work out how to relate to him.

So I guess I should wrap this up. I've said almost all I wanted to say, plus I can smell chicken curry cooking which is pretty motivating.

I think ... I think a lot of the whole faith journey thing is about asking the right questions. And what the right questions are changes with where you are, because they have to be the right questions for you, right now. And I think a lot of life is about starting to get it. It's like ... I dunno. Some sort of function, which is definitely not linear, which probably has 3 axes - one of them is time (how far I am through life), one of them is how much I get it, and one of them is how much I think I get it (which is not the same thing at all). And 'it' is God and Christianity and faith and loving God and loving people and doing what I believe and believing in what I do.

Yeah.

Tiiiiired ...

2010-08-25T16:03:00.000+01:00

I keep thinking that work is less tiring than it really is. But I'm learning at a rate of knots (I now sort of know what grounded theory is! It's like making it all up as you go along, but on purpose!) and that's knackering ... and I'm travelling (3 hours door to door) and packing a lot and that's pretty knackering too.

But I'm home now. I have a bit more work to do tomorrow, which I wanted to do at home because I can use Word 2007 (it's designing questionnaires), and then I'm done for the week. Hurrah!

I think I might disappear and make cake now.

(Payday tomorrow. YES!)

Fortunately / unfortunately

2010-08-17T18:22:00.000+01:00

Fortunately, my MIL's best friend visited at the weekend and brought us blackberries from her garden.
Unfortunately, our oven is broken :( we're waiting for a replacement heating element, so I can't make more delicious cake.

(Fortunately, the element has been dispatched. Moar cake soon!)

Fortunately, I have a job :)
Unfortunately, I have no money ... (or rather, my remaining money = the amount I need to get the train to work and back next week).
(Fortunately, the end of the month is not too far away ...)

Fortunately, all this stuff (papers / articles / books) I'm reading about gifted children and maths for work is pretty interesting.
Unfortunately, there's about 9" of it.
Fortunately, I speed-read.
Unfortunately, there's still 9" of it.
(I think I'm now about 5.5" through, though. Of which all but 1" has been read entirely (read relevant selections from that 1"))

Fortunately, it's my birthday soon!
Unfortunately, I have no particular exciting plans for it :( and Chris is working on the day.
(But I'm sure it will be nice.)

Overall, life is pretty good. I'm cooking this week :) which is fun. Made a sausage casserole with dumplings yesterday, got to go and work on a sweet and sour stir fry with pork now. Adios!

Blackberry Crumble Cake (pics!)

2010-08-13T18:44:00.001+01:00

How to make a blackberry crumble cake.

1) Notice The Pioneer Woman's blueberry crumb cake recipe, because you follow her on Facebook.
2) Go to visit your parents and sister.
3) Go out for a walk. Notice that there are bushes and bushes full of blackberries:

4) Discover that, luckily, your mother has a bag with her that you can use for collecting them:

5) Pick lots of berries.

6) Admire the other plants, too, not just the blackberries:

7) Get home, rinse them off, be amazed at how many you picked:

8) Amass ingredients. Allow pinching of a berry or two ... it's not like they're in short supply ...

9) Make cake!

10) Start making the crumb topping ... accidentally misread the amount of butter. (Americans. Seriously. Measuring butter in 'sticks')

Try to sort of 'crumble' it anyway. (This doesn't work)

Into the oven it goes ...

11) ... and out it comes. And we sample it :)

NOM!

12) Accept the adulation of all who eat it.

It was a good day.

I'm back :)

2010-08-10T22:03:00.000+01:00

Had a fabulous time with family over the weekend. It was cool to be together again - the 4 of us. And the first time I've visited Mum and Dad's since I helped them move in a year ago - so loads of changes! Really, really good to see them all. And Hazel and I sang a lot ... I'd forgotten how much I like singing. We like a lot of the same music so it helps.

Also: Mum and Hazel and I went blackberrying (well, we went out for a walk but it turned into blackberrying - luckily Mum had a suitable bag with her), and then I made an AMAZING blackberry crumble cake. It was the pioneer woman's blueberry crumble cake (I now follow the pioneer woman on facebook. This is a wonderful thing.), only with blackberries. And it was GORGEOUS.

So. Photos of that to follow. Probably on Thursday, because tomorrow Chris and I are going out to a water park thing to play in the pool and go down slides and stuff. Because slides are IMPORTANT. Yeah :D. Head on over to the other blog for a couple of posts if you haven't read them yet - and some nice photos of tea :) - and I'll be back as soon as I can.

(Since getting back from the parents' I've also been to work and back - 3 hour commute each way - and done a solid 10 hours' work whilst there (in 2 bits, Mon afternoon and this morning). Everything's going pretty smoothly so far, although I'm still finding it tiring, partly because things are still new and I'm learning a lot all the time and partly because I'm still getting used to the commute thing. But I'm enjoying it, and it's getting easier to handle)

Going visiting!

2010-08-05T08:39:00.003+01:00

I'm going to visit my parents and sister today :) staying with them for a couple of days. Hurrah! Very much looking forward to it. I will try to blog from there with pics of what we're doing (although my laptop's SD card reader has decided not to register SD cards any more :( which is sad).

I'm hoping we can convince my parents that we want to have Steamboat ... see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_pot
(seems really odd to me to call it hot pot but I guess that's because I associate that with Lancashire Hotpot. Which is very very different.

New blog now has 5 posts on it, all is going smoothly :). So far, at least! I need to get into a rhythm of posting on both places ... I think that will get easier from here on in. Now that I've done 3 weeks at my new job, I'm starting to settle into that a little bit more, rather than just coming home and wanting to sleep for hours and hours to give my brain time to digest new things.

And to finish ... the Portal song (Still Alive), in American Sign Language! I think this is pretty cool ... do pop it out to watch it, this size doesn't do it justice.

Bah, humbug

2010-08-01T13:33:00.001+01:00

The new blog is up ... and wordpress is down (I've tried accessing other blogs hosted on there, and www.wordpress.com, and not been able to get to them). Apologies to anyone trying to get to it.

Updated at 2:04: working again! Huzzah.

Almost here ...

2010-07-31T22:48:00.000+01:00

... the new blog starts tomorrow! I'm pretty excited about that :) or at least I will be once I've done the very last finishing touches to the first post ...

I'm going to keep this one going too, although I might post a bit less frequently (as might be expected). The idea is that that one will hold more polished content, with structure and planning and all that jazz, and more off-the-cuff posts will remain here :). I don't really know how it will work out, but I think it'll work pretty well.

So ... do head on over there - okay, there aren't any proper posts up yet, but there are 2 pages (About Me and About This Blog), and you have to check out the banner, which the lovely Hazel made for me (and I then messed about adding text to). I'm pretty pleased with how it's all turned out.

Catch you soon!

Note to self: My laptop is not portable.

2010-07-29T22:09:00.000+01:00

I travelled away to work this week - I had to do 3 days, which were done by:
Monday - working from home for about 6 hours, travelling on Monday evening
Tuesday - working for about 3 hours, then a meeting with my line manager (which then meant I had enough information to be able to do the rest of the week's work, which is good), then some traipsing round the city doing things like registering with libraries and getting lost (boo for diversion bus routes ...). So I didn't get a full afternoon's work done on Tuesday, though I'd have liked to.
Wednesday - working a pretty full day.
Thursday morning - spent about 3 hours finishing things off, then freedom!

Things are going to go something like this from now on, although normally it'll only be 2 days a week. Probably staying away from home 2 nights a week, because that means I can travel late-ish which means off peak trains which means more money for me and less for the train companies. This is useful. I'm writing this from the train home on Thursday afternoon ... though of course I shan't be able to upload it until I get to somewhere with an internet connection.

So that's my little life update ... now for some things I have learned:

1) My laptop is technically portable, but I should not try to take it places.
I've got a Dell Inspiron 1501 (about 3 years old now). It wasn't bought to be small and light, it was bought to sit on a desk but be able to be packed away into a drawer. And maybe occasionally lugged to the library (bear in mind that that was a 5 minute walk). It is HEAVY (just under 3 kilos, maybe?). Not so bad on its own but when you're walking for 20 minutes from the train station and carrying other things as well ... a bad idea. I think it's been good for my fitness, though ... I walked at least 2 hours on Tuesday with laptop in bag and that was ... definitely a workout.

2) Word 2007 is really a lot better than Word 2003. I've got the former on my laptop (and have been using it for 3 years, therefore) and we've got the latter at work ... you can't even save as PDFs! It feels very odd. And of course everything is in a different place. On the bright side, at least Word 03 can open .docx documents - it converts them which can mess up formatting a little bit, I think, but it hasn't been a problem.

3) Learning new things that you're immediately supposed to put into practise is really tiring! I've been coming home each evening feeling pretty knackered. It's very different from how I felt when studying academic stuff. I think the key differences are that here I have to use information I gain immediately (rather than being able to leave things simmering at the back of my mind for a long time), and that I can switch off in the evenings. I can work the hours I'm paid to work plus maybe a little bit extra if it's necessary to bring my skills up to the level required (e.g. looking at new software a bit so I have some idea of what I'm doing) and then ... that's it! No 'you must concentrate every hour because your grade depends on this'. That's quite nice. I expect it will all be a bit less tiring once I have more of an idea of what I'm doing.

Know me, but don't know what I'm doing? Feel free to drop me an email asking what the new job is - I'd rather not talk about specifics on here because work and blogs shouldn't mix, but am happy to chat via email.

... psst, hello ...

2010-07-29T09:06:00.002+01:00

(working week almost over. Hurrah!

I say week, I mean '3 days'. But 3 days of doing stuff I've never done before, so it's been quite tiring.

Looking forward to getting home this afternoon (am staying in another city for work).

Longer post later!)

Kingsway, you've gone too far this time ...

2010-07-26T17:36:00.000+01:00

We had the following song at church on Sunday:

For people who don't want to watch the whole thing: the main lyric tells us that it's "great great brill brill wicked wicked skill skill" to have a friend like Jesus. Mmhmm. Right.

It wouldn't be so bad if the "skill skill" bit made any sense.

Religious or not, what's your favourite (or perhaps least favourite) outrageous kids' song?

On Glasses and Contact Lenses

2010-07-25T20:15:00.000+01:00

I now have contact lenses! Not for general wear, just for the odd occasion. Mostly because Boots were doing free contact lens fittings / trials, so I thought I'd try it (as this usually costs around £30). Having tried it, I've decided 'This is pretty weird, but I'd like to have the opportunity to wear them occasionally' so I've got 30 sets of dailies, which I will wear now and then if I want to be in a costume with a mask, or wear snazzy cheap sunglasses, or watch a 3D film.

The experience was a bit weird though; it made me think about how there seems to be a popular conception that contact lenses > glasses. You see it all the time on makeover programs (along with everyone having to have very expensive highlights even when their hair looked lovely before - I don't know why).

While I was having the teach lesson (first I had a checkup which involved exciting things like turning my eyes yellow, then they ordered in lenses of my prescription, then I had a teach lesson where I had to put them in and take them out myself), the woman who was teaching me said things like "You know, you've got such a high prescription, this is really going to make a big difference for you" several times. I sort of made noncommittal noises to this ... but I definitely disagree.

Above, I listed 3 things that I reckon I can do better with contact lenses than with glasses. None of those really involve everyday life. I am, frankly, perplexed as to why contacts should be better.

Admittedly, I'm a bit biased. I think I've spent the last 10 years wearing glasses, so they're definitely a big part of my self-image. And especially over the last few years - I really wouldn't mind being known as "the girl with the purple glasses". I think glasses do a lot for me ... they give me colour, and introduce some straight lines and angles into a rather round face, which all the style experts say is the right thing to do. I definitely feel ... undressed without them. And when I'm wearing contacts the world seems more glare-y and windy. Never before realised how much glasses keep the wind out of your eyes ...

Anyone else switched from glasses to contacts? Prefer contacts to glasses? Any other thoughts?

Scattered thoughts

2010-07-17T23:03:00.000+01:00

1) Hazel's gone :( left this evening. 'Twas good to have her here all week though :)

2) Shopping win! I went to the Debenhams sale today ... (ends tomorrow so there's an extra 10% off sale items) and for under £100 got:
-a suit jacket that will elevate my boring normal skirts to smart-casual for work
-2 pairs of jeans that really fit*
-3 pairs of awesome tights
-4 pairs of rather nice earrings
-2 big necklaces, and a matching bracelet for one of them

I might photograph the accessories later, if I can be bothered ...

3) *I don't think of myself as short. However, I've recently worked out that in terms of shopping for trousers, I am (I'm about 5'4" and I've seen petite ranges advertised for "for the woman 5'4" and under" so I guess I'm borderline?). The problem, I think, is that back when I was about 12 and buying clothes for myself it was the fashion (at least amongst people I knew) to have jeans that were too long and then cut off / ragged from stepping on them / etc ... and it's taken me until now to realise that I never /quite/ outgrew that. So. From now on, my trousers will end /before/ they hit the ground. This is a good aim.

4) Have had confirmation about job starting - I start this coming Friday :) which is cool. Now I can plan!

5) Contact lenses are weird. I've got 5 trial pairs (daily use), of which I've now used 3. I have an appointment on Tuesday morning to be checked up on. I may post properly about glasses / contacts in a future post (here or on the new blog)

5) Plans for the next week ...
    a) eat more healthily. There has been lots of eating out / making exciting dessert / etc with Hazel here ... time to return to normality.
    b) go swimming a couple of times! Swimming!
    c) sort out lots of content for the new blog (which will be over at http://eudoxiafriday.wordpress.com - from 1st August). I want to write the 'About' pages and plan some stuff and take some photos.
d) get up at a reasonable time, and eat porridge for breakfast. Mmm, porridge ...
    e) talk to people at Church tomorrow. This may be scary. I want to try and do the hang around afterwards and have coffee thing, and hope I can make some friends or something. I recognise a few people there (I've been going to this church most of the time when I've been home during the holidays from Uni) so I might pluck up the nerve to just ask one of them to introduce me to a few people.

And in the interests of 5d), I'd better get to bed ... goodnight, world :) speak soon.

Swimming!

2010-07-16T09:36:00.000+01:00

Hazel and I (Hazel's going home tomorrow! Oh no :( I will miss her) went swimming on Monday.
(The picture is cheating ... it's me at Centre Parcs on a holiday a couple of years ago. Sadly, our local swimming pool doesn't look like that. It would be awesome if it did)

When we were there we both went "Oh! I'd forgotten how much I like swimming! I should do this more often ..."
Hazel, having moved to a new place, isn't familiar with where there's a pool and so on ... for me, the issue is shortsightedness. Take my glasses off me and I'm ... well, not lost. But not able to read signs or anything like that. And I really don't like that - it makes me feel vulnerable.

So I don't like going to the pool on my own ... but once I'm there and in the water I really enjoy it. Great form of exercise ... and all the many, many hours spent in swimming lessons and things as a little 'un come back (there are photos somewhere of me as a toddler at mum-and-baby swim things, I think). I almost always swim breaststroke, and I started off with that, but then had a go at front crawl which I haven't done in years and it all came flooding back ... felt like I was about 8 again. This is not a bad thing. And water is very peaceful ...

Now that I've been reintroduced to the pool ... I might go back, even on my own. I have a swimming timetable now, so I know when it's open (as in, when there aren't swimming lessons or other things going on). It'll be less fun on my own (I don't know anyone else around here who'd want to come swimming with me) but still good ... and a good way to build fitness. Which is something I'm starting to enjoy doing.

Anybody else swim? Love it / hate it? Wish you could but pool's too far away? Do comment :)

When you have extremely ripe bananas ...

2010-07-13T20:30:00.001+01:00

... you could do what I did, and make Craving Cookies :D they're lovely!
(For people who aren't interested in clicking through and reading the recipe: it's basically mashed banana, peanut butter, flour, and chocolate chips.)

These were a success, although I treated the quantities more as guidelines than as rules (I wanted to use up all the banana we had, so I then fudged how much of everything else to make), so they turned out rather gooey. This, however, is not a bad thing in a peanut-butter-and-banana based biscuit. It's made me wonder whether they would make a good eggless brownie - next time we have leftover bananas I might try that.

The rest of the post is basically photos:

The ingredients:

You don't need that many kinds of sugar - we had a tiny bit left in the bottom of several packets, so I thought I'd just finish them off. In the end the demerara, light brown, and white granulated came to the right amount, so I didn't end up using any golden caster.

Begin with the banana ... turn this:

into this:

Add peanut butter ...

and mix

Add various kinds of sugar ...

After mixing in flour and baking powder:

Chocolate chips:

Dollop out, and bake.

Nom.

These really are super-simple to make, taking the photos added considerably to the amount of time needed. Adding a couple of tablespoons of cocoa powder when you add the flour gives you extra chocolateyness - but I've found I prefer this version, especially with big chunks of milk chocolate in it. These are really, really tasty - now that I've rediscovered them, I think this will be my go-to method for using up overripe bananas :)

2010-07-13T12:10:00.000+01:00

Oh man. Updating here really has gone waaaay down in frequency. I'm sorry, guys! I'm going to be doing better this week: I've got a bunch of things planned, including:

-Pics of new glasses (I'll be picking them up tomorrow ... hurrah!)
-A brief post about swimming (the sister and I went swimming yesterday)
-Lots of pictures of sketching I've been doing this month - actually, this is probably what's been stealing my blog-time.

And I'm going to head off now and make Craving Cookies (because we have a couple of bananas that really need using up), so I'll let you know how all that turns out too :) (with pictures, of course).

And now a question ... can anyone think of synonyms for motivation/inspiration that don't feel overused? I'm looking for a tag for my Monday posts over at the new blog (once it gets going - starts August 1st) and I don't want to have "Motivational Monday" although it will be that sort of thing ... the posts will probably be a saying or proverb of some sort (e.g. "Be the change you want to see in the world") and some thoughts related to that. Posted on Monday mornings.
Having briefly perused Thesaurus.com, 'Catalyst' might be a possibility, or something to do with 'Vital', 'Think' or 'Illuminate' ... any thoughts much appreciated :)

Yo, world

2010-07-07T21:38:00.000+01:00

Hey everybody :)

Apologies for the lack of updates. I can't even really claim that it's been because I've been uber-busy or anything ... I had, like, a whole week off.

Actually, restart that: Hey everybody :). Sorry it's been a wee while - I've had a week off ... for the first time in oh, 3 years?

The week went something like this:
- I've just got home. So much unpacking to do. Sleep first.
- Ooh, lots of TV to catch up on (in particular Pratchett's "Going Postal", "morris : a life with bells on" and lots of other bits and pieces like Gok's fashion fix)
- Hey, I can read! (I mean, obviously I've been capable of reading for a long time, but I have the time to!)
Several books later ...
- More sleep. And lying out in the garden reading. And then TV. Repeat.
- Hm. This lazing around thing is getting rather old. But I don't have the motivation to get up and do anything ... ah well. More sleep it is. And more reading.
- Bother. Now reaching a stage where I feel like I haven't got enough motivation to do stuff, this is disheartening. And weird. Not a problem I've faced before. Hopefully if I ignore it for a day or two it'll go away?

.... this Monday:
- Hey, motivation, welcome back! Good to see you! I like this. Let's get on with things!

Since Monday I have:
Done LOADS of unpacking and recycling and taking things to charity shops ... taught Dominion to Chris's friends and played it (and won, with a score of 39, a full 10 points clear of the next person :) ) ... taken a trip to my new place of work to sort some paperwork (it all came through a couple of days after my last post), and look around ... unpacked more stuff and shredded and recycled more stuff ... had an eye check, and ordered new glasses (x2 - yay, Specsavers BOGOF). Dentist and contact lens fitting tomorrow (I can get a free contact lens trial, so I thought why not?)

I've also had more and more ideas simmering for the new blog. It's gonna be great! And I've been taking part in a challenge to draw 100 sketches during July - I'll be posting pics of those up here soon.

Stay cool :) --Carol

Home! And thinking.

2010-06-28T21:19:00.000+01:00

Hey hey everybody :)

My my, what a lot has happened since my last post ... in chronological order:

-I got a part-time job (2 days a week), to do with maths education, starting mid-July. Paperwork hasn't come through yet but I'm pretty confident there won't be any problems - I know one of the people I'll be working under, which gives a bit of security (as in, I can pretty safely count on there not being a phone call in a couple of days that tells me the whole thing's off - although of course in theory in jobhunting you /should/ keep looking until you've actually signed and started working).

-I GRADUATED!!! I now have a degree in Mathematics!!! How awesome is that? 'Scuse the exclamation marks. It's very exciting. I might have to put a couple of pictures up (can't at the moment as none of them are on my camera - all are on friends' / family cameras).

-I came home :) at the weekend. The house is currently full of boxes. I'm not under much pressure to unpack quickly so I'm taking it slow ... it's a very nice feeling. My family - particularly my parents and sister - were stars at helping pack and load stuff. My Dad's definition of what is possible is pretty big (as in, when others were going 'um, we're not going to fit this in 2 cars given that each car must carry 3 people ... someone will have to take the train back ...' he was saying 'it'll be fine' - which was my opinion too - and indeed it was). It was really cool to hang out with them all again - I've talked to them lots individually on the phone, but it's not the same, you don't have the same interplay of personalities and stuff. We're going to go and visit them for Christmas, which I'm really looking forward to.

I've also been thinking more about this new-blog thing ... I came up with a full title today: "Eudoxia Friday : Thoughtful Eclecticism". What do you all think?

I wanted to incorporate the idea of a diverse set of ideas and topics, hence eclectic, but I didn't want to just be sort of "My Random Musings" - mostly because I already did that, when I was about 14, and don't see the need to do it again. And I wanted to communicate that that blog /isn't/ just going to be 'random ravings', it /is/ going to have work done on it and - I hope - each piece will be well-thought-out and well-written. Hence the 'Thoughtful'. Also, I googled 'eclecticism' (partly to check it was a word) and found:

Wikipedia page on Eclecticism: this says it's a school of philosophy (or an approach in other areas) that seeks to take what it sees as best or true, from various sources, and combine it.

The following definition of 'Eclectic':

"1 : selecting what appears to be best in various doctrines, methods, or styles
2 : composed of elements drawn from various sources"

And those really do describe what I want to do with the blog - to draw together elements from different areas, but always trying to take the best of what I can from those areas.

Still to do on the blog-planning front: Read the "Writing Well" book (I've just unpacked it, which is a good start!). Write a good 'About' page. Sort out a colour scheme - I've got lots of ideas (lots of silvery grey and white, and light green, and dashes of dark purple, I'm thinking) but need to hammer those into a banner, at least, if not a whole template. Need to chat with the sister about this one.

How's everyone else? Please do comment and chat :)

Thoughts on Blogging - brainstorming

2010-06-21T18:26:00.001+01:00

Today I've been thinking about blogging, and about writing generally.

I want to take blogging more seriously in future - I think that building a blog that regularly has interesting things to say, has a good balance of content, and that is full of the things that matter to me would be a really worthwhile and satisfying task. And now that my exams are out of the way and I'm going to be turning into a Real Person rather than a super-highly-pressured student, I think I'm much more likely to have the time to work on a really good blog.

So I just went away and decided to get something down on paper because I think better on paper than I think when typing, and this is what I came up with:

rough ideas

Some big decisions I need to make:

1) Do I stick with the attempt at anonymity, or do I come clean about who I am and where I am? The rationale for changing would be: personal information has become much, much more prevalent over the last 6 years (plus, I've become a fully-fledged adult, rather than a minor). And this can become part of how I market myself to the world; would that be a good thing?

Maybe I come clean about the University I've been a part of for the last 3 years. This has been a pretty formative time, and being able to talk about details more openly would be cool. On the other hand, it might make me pretty easy to stalk - I'm not sure what info is publicly available (but say you got hold of the list of all the people in my year, well, then you've got my first name and subject, that's probably a unique identifier).

2) On a related note, do I start using identifiable photos of myself?

I haven't done so in the past, but I think I will do in the future.

3) What do I call myself?

I have an answer to this; my facebook name (which I fondly like to think of as my superhero name), Eudoxia Friday. Jingle Bella is a name that feels like it fits me less well now. And I have really, really grown to like Eudoxia. I'm secretly tempted to change my name by deed poll so I can add it as a middle name.

4) How do I structure and balance the blog?

I want this blog to be a rounded expression of myself. I want to talk about my husband / family / friends a little more. I want to talk about intellectual / academic / geeky stuff a little more. I want to talk about creative stuff regularly.

5) How often do I update?

Having regular updating days will be important, to give myself structure. I don't think I can update every day; not unless someone starts paying me to do this! Fewer than 3 times a week seems too infrequent. 3 or 4 times a week? Which days? What times on those days? I haven't generally taken advantage of the function that lets you queue up posts to be published in the future at a specific time; in the future I intend to.

6) How much time do I spend on this?

An hour per post will be an absolute minimum, I should think. Do I have that kind of time? This obviously feeds into the above. I think I have time for 3 or 4 updates a week.

7) Do I have regular features?

I think this could be a good idea. Probably with categories that are pretty vague, though, so as to make it manageable. Like posting something that made me smile each Monday, or an article each Thursday.

8) How do I label posts and make them searchable?

The answer to this is probably to think of labels sensibly beforehand, like "how-to" "article" "cookery" etc, and then apply them consistently.

9) How do I improve my writing?

I think the main answer to this is 'by doing it, and critiquing it'. At the moment I don't generally reread or edit posts before they go live; this has been a personal off-the-cuff blog. But if I want to do things more seriously, and now that I have a bit more time, I can start paying more attention to writing techniques and the like. I'm going to start by reading this:

I picked it up in a bookshop about a week ago. It was calling to me. I haven't had time to start it yet, but will do soon.

10) How do I attract and encourage comments and discussion?

Much as I'd like to pretend that I'm doing this for the sheer art of it and because it is a worthwhile goal in and of itself (which I do think it is), of course I like it when people read and comment. And one of the coolest things about some blogs I read like Already Pretty and Momastery is the comments, because of the great diversity of opinions and conversation that goes on there. The first step is to explicitly ask for and invite comments, apart from that, what do I do? We'll see.

On that note: Any comments on these ideas very much appreciated! Some questions: do you blog? If so, why? If you used to but don't now, why did you give it up? What do you think makes a successful and enjoyable blog?

Stopping to Breathe

2010-06-17T00:54:00.001+01:00

Aaaaand the really really busy part of post-exam celebration is coming to an end. Seriously, the last week has been pretty much: sleep. Get up. Get dressed up and go out somewhere. Eat and drink lots of party food (cake, strawberries and cream, pimms). Come home. Sleep. Repeat.
Or the bits that don't go like that are full of phoning Chris, or realising that I don't have something sorted to wear to the next event and therefore sorting that out, or organising future events and sending organisational emails.

But I'm now pretty much finished on this ... I've still got lots on on the next few days, but now I have lots of time to sleep, and I mostly just have to show up to stuff (as opposed to being involved in organising it / needing to bring complicated things).

Here's a sneak peek of what I've been doing:

Making tiny dark chocolate cookies with rose icing

Making a great big orange necklace

Playing mathematical Pictionary (this one says: "proof by hand-waving")

Eating peanut butter brownies (which I also made) at a maths party.

Playing bananagrams

Glitterizing shoes

Working on a petticoat

Eating strawberries and cream

Ferris wheel!

And lots of seeing friends, drinking Pimms, reading books, and so on.

It's been a great week. (Especially as I now have my results - I've got a 2.1. Thank God. (At the moment I am too busy being relieved to be happy - it's what I expected, but I was starting to get worried about well what if it all went wrong somehow etc etc.))

But it will be nice to have a bit more time to sleep (I've been to 3 all-night events in the last week). Unwinding.

Upcoming Posts ...

2010-06-08T00:10:00.000+01:00

Now that I'm finished with exams I have lots of time to do exciting and/or crafty things! This is fun.
Hence: posts to look forward to:
-DIY Flower Necklace (inspired by lovemaegan)
-DIY glitter shoes (inspired by a couple of blogs)
-DIY petticoat (inspired by not wanting to pay £30 for one ...)
-Peanut butter chocolate chip brownies
-Mystery Baking (it's exciting and slightly unusual; not saying what it is as it's for a party tomorrow afternoon and I want it to be a surprise then)

I've done the baking in both cases, and haven't done the fashion stuff yet although I've purchased most of the necessary materials. The necklace is for a party on thursday night, so that will have to be done soon.

Yay, time to make things! :)

I'm Finished!

2010-06-04T21:15:00.000+01:00

Last exam this morning :). My four exams were: really bad, really good, good, really good. So pretty decent.

I am tired.

Here are some of my plans for the nearish future:

And a lot of hanging out with friends and enjoying the sunshine. And a lot of shopping.

*tired smiley*

Brief Hello

2010-05-27T23:59:00.000+01:00

Hello, world!

Revision is almost done (partly because I'm coming towards having revised everything, and partly because the exams start on Monday ...). Whooh.

Hence I've not been doing all that much that's interesting ... making a lot of colourful revision notes, and discussing things (like the decomposition of the Klein bottle into spaces so as to use Seifert Van Kampen (to calculate the fundamental group) or Mayer-Vietoris (to calculate the homology groups) on it) with people. And breaking my good habit of going to bed at 11; it's nearer 12. I'll get back on track tomorrow ...

I've also been watching a fair amount of Roswell (in the background, I hasten to add). It's definitely different this time round - I'm going to post properly sometime later about why. Sufficient for the moment to say that Alex and Kyle are way cooler than I initially thought they were, and the way they all treat other people (with the lying and the hiding etc etc ...) bothers me a lot more than it did first time round.

Right. Midnight. Bed!

Happy Feet

2010-05-25T21:59:00.000+01:00

So today, alongside a HEAP of revision, I painted my toenails.

It's much easier to deal with than fingernails ... because it's a lot easier to sit around for 10 minutes doing something useful and not smudging my toes than it is to do something useful for 10 minutes without smudging fingernails.

And a photo without flash ... the colours are basically an average of how they appear in these two photos:

Great comic - MMR Vaccine story ...

2010-05-22T19:46:00.002+01:00

... so we all know the big scare and how the study was totally a) bogus in the first place and b) not backed up by future findings; but now you can read it all in awesome comic form! And this includes lots of stuff I didn't know before about financial motives ...

http://tallguywrites.livejournal.com/148012.html

Excogitation #06 - life's not that easy

2010-05-13T22:44:00.000+01:00

(Subtitle: mixing work and the rest of life)
Closely related to the semi-coherent thoughts about deadlines and fear ...

In a robotic world, one would have work commitments, and nothing else. Then you could prioritise everything according to work priorities, and then do things in that order, and that would be that. This is a very neat and tidy and well-defined concept (assuming that you can rank your work priorities), and there's a part of my mind that is very attracted to it.

But life doesn't work that way. And I think we are the richer for it, although it undoubtedly makes things more complicated. C.S.Lewis is quoted as having said (or written, I'm not sure which) "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art ... it has no survival value, rather, it is one of those things that give value to survival". I thought that was true once, and I get that of course he's not doing friendship down, on the contrary he valued it very much. But I now think that friendship absolutely has survival value.

So. You are not a machine. You have friendships, and other non-work commitments (Church, societies, family, that sort of thing). Sometimes these things may feel like they use up all your time and energy and you can't afford to socialise because it costs too much time / money / effort ... and then sometimes you fall into conversation with a good friend (or even an acquaintance) and somehow the world is brighter and you remember that it's all worth it, or you go to a Church service you weren't going to bother to turn up to and realise it's precisely what you needed. Or I do, anyway.

That sounds a bit Hallmark, doesn't it? But I think it's true. I think the thing about interacting with people is: you gotta hang in there. Something that's pissing you off now may be totally blown over in a week's time. And you may well be annoying someone else, but maybe they're being gracious and ignoring your annoying habits. Gracious is a good thing to be.

I'm not sure I actually have much that's terribly good to say here, except, well, the obvious ... or what I think is obvious: get to know yourself. You will learn when you need company, when you need to stay away and be on your own (either to regenerate or to avoid blowing up at people). But do, do hang in there with people. Make time. It's worth it. By all means disappear to study for hours, but leave a message on facebook or pop round to say hello for 10 minutes when you're near their room (this is easier from a Uni perspective than from a most-of-life perspective, I imagine), or send a text asking how such-and-such worked out. Sometimes you need to work for hours on end all alone, but even in the middle of weeks like that you need some human contact, even if it's just a brief chat whilst you gulp down your dinner before heading back to the work.

I suppose my advice (do I have the right to advise anyone? Well, I guess I've navigated 3 years of a really tough university course whilst making some great friends and being involved in lots of societies, and done it all pretty successfully, so there you go) would be: in the good (i.e. relatively relaxed and relatively panic-free) times, work out a sensible level of commitment and stick with it (what you put into something is what you get out, and all that). And in the bad (like ... the 3 weeks before your exams) by all means cut things out, but keep some thread of contact going, keep in touch with people. Everyone will understand, and 15 minutes spent talking about ice cream may keep you sane and therefore be of positive benefit to your work - i.e. it's not just 15 minutes that you could've spent working.

(Endnote: I've had a resolution this term that I will hug somebody every day. I have not broken it yet - and it's been about 5 weeks, I think. It's a really, really good resolution - it means I make myself get some positive human face-to-face contact every day, and also - HUGS!)

Job news (lack thereof)

2010-05-12T22:41:00.000+01:00

Wooh, it's Wednesday. When did that happen?

So I didn't get the job. I found out yesterday morning, which wasn't really a surprise because I'd guessed by Monday evening that I didn't have it. They said nice things about me though - including that they liked me very much and I'd interviewed well. Then got a separate email today from the Head of Maths which had a bit more detail, and it mostly boils down to "you were a very strong candidate, but ultimately didn't convince the Head and Deputy Heads that you were passionate about a long-term career in teaching". This is completely fair; I'm not passionate about a long-term career in teaching and was not trying to pretend I was. His email also contained some encouraging words about things I'd done well / my passion for mathematics / excellent communication skills, which was really lovely.

See, thing is, I've worked out that I like working with young people (say 11-18, especially the sort of 14+ end of that). And I'm passionate about maths. And about communication and spreading ideas and making the world a better place. And sure, going in to teaching is one way to combine those three things. But it's not the only way ... and I think I might like some other ways better, or want to try them first.

In some ways I'm kind of glad I didn't get the job now, which seems like a funny thing to say. But had I got it, it would've been something I'd have stuck with for let's say at least 5 years - and at that point if I'd left it would probably be into a teaching job somewhere else. I'm not sure I want to do that. I think maybe in 5 years' time I'll want to train to be a teacher, maybe.

The whole experience of submitting a super-fast application and being interviewed and running a lesson and all that though - it was totally worth it, and a wonderful experience. It proved to me that I could do it. And that is no small thing. I also get the impression reading between the lines of the feedback I've got, that if I *had* really wanted it - if teaching really *was* something I was passionate about and had decided I wanted to dedicate my life (or a large part of my life) to - then I would've been a formidable candidate indeed. And that makes me happy.

By the way, if anybody has any ideas of careers that combine 2, 3, or all 4 of the following: working with 11-18s (esp 14-18s), communicating ideas, maths, making the world a better place - please email me, or leave notes in comments. That would be awesome. Because I think this is what I want to spend my life doing. I'm not sure what form it'll take yet, but it'll get there, and I'm actually kind of excited to see how it turns out.

Hey hey - a week's catch-up

2010-05-09T22:13:00.000+01:00

Hey, internet. I've missed you.
I've been kept crazy-busy this past week - found out about a job on Monday, sent in application on Tuesday, was phoned on Wednesday and asked to come to interview on Thursday (so spent Wed shopping for appropriate interview wear), was interviewed on Thursday (which actually swallowed about 9.5 hours of the day once travel time was taken into account - the interview process and so on lasted abour 3.5 hours), then voted and it was the election, then Friday I slept and gave a 1.5-hour lecture (with a friend) on "A History of Women in Mathematics".

And now I have a lot of revision to do. Yikes! (It's 10pm on a Sunday evening, and I reckon I've worked for about 9 hours so far today. I'm getting there. I hope it's fast enough.)

So, comments on things that've happened this week:

1) The job - it's a maths teaching job in a school that's on the posh side. I rather hope I get it, because it looks awesome - great, friendly kids, good atmosphere, largeish department, good facilities. Unfortunately I was uncontactable late Friday afternoon (they were definitely deciding on Friday afternoon, because they said so and asked whether they'd be able to phone my mobile) due to the lecture we were giving - was hoping for a phone call on Saturday morning, but nothing happened. So I'm half wondering whether they won't have been willing to phone on the weekend at all, hence no conclusion to draw, or whether they would've phoned on Saturday had I got it but ... in which case the conclusion would be that I didn't get it. Hope I'll get a phone call tomorrow morning - if I don't, I'll probably send an email in the evening asking when I can expect to hear.

2) The election - I'm pretty pleased with the result. I'd much rather that Labour had got about 20 fewer seats and the Lib Dems had had those seats instead, but I think that Labour needed to get out and I'm pleased with the overall vote share of the Lib Dems despite the lack of seats. Shows how bloody unrepresentative the current FPP system with the current division of seats is. Also pleased that there's a Green MP - was astonished to realise that that had never happened before. To someone raised in MMP-using NZ, the idea that a party that is so significant had never had an MP - well, it just feels like something from the Dark Ages.

3) Our lecture went really well, I think :) it generated some good discussion afterwards about gender differences in maths (i.e. the fact that they are cultural/socialised, not biological - on the grounds that there's no causation mechanism for a biological difference, and we know there are socialised reasons for the disparity, *and* even if there were some biological difference it would be swamped by cultural differences by several orders of magnitude, hence unprovable, hence you shouldn't claim it). I found it a really, really positive thing to do - it's so, so lovely to be in the same room as other people (including male people) who are arguing that women are just as competent as men and it's not the women's ****ing fault if they're ****ing socialised to act differently in a way that disadvantages them (my mental *s, not ones that were actually used).

(Possible favourite quotation: "Of COURSE confidence matters! It's ALL ABOUT ****ING CONFIDENCE!" from the usual lecturer. I think being a girl and being confident about maths is bloody hard work, and I'm generally a reasonably confident person in most areas)

Also: it's Christian Aid week this week! They really are a super charity. Take a look at this:

Cool, no? Check them out.

The Log Cabin Blanket

2010-05-02T18:06:00.000+01:00

I started work on a Log Cabin knitted quilt rather a long time ago - see this post. At that stage, I bought 3 skeins of wool, and knitted two very respectable squares, before putting it on hold because I didn't think I could afford any more wool at the time. I'm knitting using Mirasol K'acha (£6.95 for 50g/90m), which is an ethically traded yarn from Peru, which I first noticed at a big John Lewis and have since found elsewhere, too. It's 60% Merino, 25% Alpaca, and 15% Silk, and it's lovely. I'm using 3 colours - Cinnamon, Royal Purple, and Sunshine.

Yesterday, I finally got a whole load more of the yarn - 2 more skeins of each colour. And now to explain progress by pictures:

Sitting down last night, with the 2 squares I'd completed, the new yarn in the background, a big cup of tea, and some colouring in.

For the first 2 squares, I just made it up as I went along - starting with 18 stitches on a 4.5mm circular needle, the middle square being 16 garter ridge rows, and each stripe being 5 garter ridge rows (which is just what happened when I cast on and started the first one) - but I'd made up the colours as I went along. For the whole blanket, though, I wanted to have some sort of pattern, so I started planning:

First, I coloured in the two I'd already knitted in the top left hand corner, and then started extrapolating.

I've made it very nearly rotationally symmetric (if you consider each stripe to be a dot at its centre, it is rotationally symmetric, but because the stripes spiral clockwise outwards from the middle in each square, that breaks the symmetry), and sorted out a pattern of centre colours that I like.

The Master Plan. There's quite a lot of symmetry in it and also quite a lot of almost-symmetry in it, and you can find all sorts of patterns within it by focusing on different colours or stripe sizes ... I'm happy with it.

Then I cast on and started knitting the next square (coordinate position (2,6) assuming the bottom left is the origin).

This is a photo showing what I got out of the original 3 skeins of yarn - I think it's approx. 2.5 squares ... which means the whole blanket will cost something like £200. Well, that's better than the £240 I thought it would be last night ... a long term project, methinks. But when it's done it will be awesome.

Chocolate & Whisky Cheesecake Brownies!

2010-04-29T21:30:00.001+01:00

I have made them! On Tuesday evening, I went round to Ed's, and we made brownies - actually we made two batches, one with whisky in and one without. The recipe I use is essentially the same as this one. For the whisky, I added about 30ml, and then also added about 2T of flour to try to balance it out. Looking at how the mixture marbled, I think that was actually a bit too much flour to add (consider that the recipe only has 1/2 cup of flour in it at all to start off with) and think that you might be okay without adding any additional flour at all. I'll try it next time*.

Ingredients. Note the fair trade chocolate and sugar, and the happy eggs :)

Chocolate and butter - melted these in the microwave.

Chocolate batter mixture ... mmmmmm.

... aaand cheesecake mixture. That's my hand, and Ed's foot in the background ...

Preparing to marble the mixture

Yaaaay brownie! The one on the left is the chocolate only one, the one on the right is the chocolate and whisky. You can see that it hasn't marbled as well - the flour I added changed the consistency of the chocolate brownie mix a little bit too much. But it did taste delicious.

Mmmmmm brownie!

*I don't think I'm likely to make the version with whisky again - it was very nice, and a good balance of chocolate and whisky, but I didn't prefer it to the chocolate-only version. I'd be interested in trying a Baileys version and a Tia Maria version, though. No doubt people will tell me this is because I have awful taste in drinks (I like very, very sweet things).

In Praise of Saturday Mornings*

2010-04-24T14:47:00.005+01:00

*This was going to be called 'An Ode to Saturday Mornings' but I decided that that would be abuse, since I'm not going to make an effort with stanzas.

Oh Saturday morning, how I have missed you ...

sunlight on seedlings

Radio 4

novels for reading

... laid-back revision

phoning my parents

it's a good day.

... and now for something completely different: chocolate and whiskey

2010-04-22T22:19:00.000+01:00

Hey hey people :)

Things have been pretty heavy around here lately so I figured it was time for a light and fluffy post ... following on from recent facebook exchanges, I ask you: what is the best way to combine chocolate and whiskey?

My suggestions:

Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies with added Whiskey:
I've made these brownies before (or at least a recipe which looks almost identical, I haven't dug out my recipe book to check, but the quantities and method all seem right) and although they don't quite engender offers of marriage (mind you, those have dropped off now I'm actually married ... chocolate-cake-inspired proposals did figure multiple times in my single life) they are always very very much appreciated. I'm thinking that you could add some whiskey to the brownie mixture, possibly taking out the egg whites (to balance out the liquid), or else adding some flour. I'm thinking that I'm going to try this sometime in the next week.
Profiteroles topped with chocolate and filled with whiskey cream:
I've been planning to make profiteroles for ages and it hasn't quite happened - again, sometime next week perhaps. This would work really well, I feel. This should happen. I've made profiteroles before and they worked really well and were very lovely, and whiskey cream can't really go far wrong.
Whiskey truffles:
This is bound to be a good idea. I haven't made precisely these before but I've made Baileys truffles / Tia Maria truffles before.

Anybody got any other suggestions? Clamorous applause and/or comments encouraged. I'd be interested in making all 3 of these this term sometime, and if people around me talk about how lovely it would be if I did and how much they want me to do so I might do it more quickly ...

For Tricia

2010-04-19T23:45:00.000+01:00

This is for Tricia.
Now I just need to find out where she lives so I can post it to her. If she's okay about giving her address to a random stranger from the internet.

(Pattern here)

Consume Me

2010-04-19T11:44:00.001+01:00

Yesterday, during the Eucharist, this song unfolded in my head.
(Full lyrics here)

It's another one of the songs that I remember strongly - almost viscerally - from my early teens, when I was continuing to appropriate faith in Jesus as my own, not just as a familial/upbringing thing.

And it contains images that stick, that grow with me ... the Spirit as fire. Being consumed. Devotion.

I'm praying that I can live up to those this exam term.

Women in Mathematics (a complaint, and then some data)

2010-04-18T00:38:00.000+01:00

(Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I'll try to do better this week.)

Later this term, I and a friend are going to be giving a lecure on the History of Women in Mathematics. I am, as a starting point, scouring the internet for useful sources.

Unfortunately (and this is the complaint): reasonable sources are really, really hard to find. The vast majority of them are completely uncritical of women mathematicians, and drool all over the merest hint of intelligence.

(In particular: Ada Lovelace was not a genius, but unreasonable flattery of her started even during her own lifetime (hey, she was a noble lady to suck up to, I guess (citation: 'Ada: a life and legacy' by Dorothy Stein)) and so it's not surprising that it's continued ... similarly we don't know enough about Hypatia to claim that she was a genius ...)

Ugh. Hyping early women mathematicians doesn't do us any favours - as though it were astonishing that a woman could do any mathematics at all, so she should be praised to the heavens for taking a course in calculus (Ada Lovelace again, I'm thinking of).

Most of the first women mathematicians probably weren't amazing mathematicians; after all, a lot of their training was very haphazard and they had all sorts of other barriers to fight against, they certainly weren't able to give their studies free rein. This is fine and expected and not their fault. They were successful enough that it became clear that women were capable of doing mathematics, which has gradually led to where we are today, when equality has come a long way (although still has a long way to go). This is good. We should not expect to have come across enormous numbers of amazing women mathematicians given that mathematical education wasn't really open to women prior to the last 100 years, and given that there is still widespread residual "girls can't do maths".

So it's not in any way dishonouring to women if I say I doubt that there have yet been many truly 'great' female mathematicians (although quite how I'd define 'great' I'm not sure). Emmy Noether I have heard about enough in non-sycophantic ways that maybe she was one.

Another really annoying thing is that most sources of women in mathematics don't attempt to take a proper account of the sociological circumstances these women were in. If it's mentioned at all, it's in a "OMG we've, like, IGNORED women for SO MANY YEARS but they were FAB and contributed LOTS, JUST LIKE MEN" way, and nothing more is said (okay, yeah, I'm paraphrasing there). This is not just unhelpful, but also patently untrue: women did not contribute 'just like men', women when they did manage to contribute usually contributed in spite of a system that was set up to believe their only value was in their womb and not in their brain.

I have found one excellent article: Women communicating mathematics: The historical role of women. I recommend it. It's pretty short, but actually does genuinely reasonable things with the data.

Basically, having looked at the lives of many female mathematicians, they tended to be in rich, scientific families (hence having access to books and such, or maybe being able to listen in on their brothers' education - tutoring at home, of course). This doesn't mean that their families were supportive, often there were not (Sophie Germain's parents apparently stole her clothes so that she would be too cold to study - she was sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to do maths, tsk tsk). They tended to be women who really pursued maths (not surprising that those are the only ones that made it far enough that we hear about them) - e.g. again Sophie Germain going against her parents, who forbade her to do maths.

Later, they tended to gain an alliance with a male mathematician who helped to direct their career; a few of them managed to lecture sort of under the name of a male mathematician (standing in for a husband / father for a few lectures, for example, or Emmy Noether being able to lecture under Hilbert's name, as his assistant). They tended to be submissive to this person, but it meant that they had access to mathematical papers and so on, and had someone to advise them (and for the guy, he had someone to pass work he didn't think was very interesting on to ...). This seemed to be generally symbiotic.

There's also a good paper here: it's called "Why So Few?" and is about women in the US in STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Maths) subjects. You can download it for free if you give them your email address. Again a good, scholarly report. I think I'll be coming back to AAUW to look at more of their resources.

(But for now, bed.)

Recently I have been reading ...

2010-04-13T22:44:00.002+01:00

http://disabledfeminists.com/

I'm not going to try to sum them up, because I won't be able to do it. But I have been spending quite a lot of time on this site, and learning so, so, so much.

Here's the beginning of their mission statement:

"FWD/Forward: Feminists With Disabilities For A Way Forward Mission Statement:
FWD/Forward is a group blog written by feminists with disabilities. It is a place to discuss disability issues and the intersection between feminism and disability rights activism. The content here ranges from basic information which is designed to introduce people who are new to disability issues or feminism to some core concepts, to more advanced topics, with the goal of promoting discussion, conversation, fellowship, and education."

I don't identify as disabled, but this place really makes me think, and in particular makes me start to realise where I am unconsciously being ablist or heterosexist. (That last sentence feels grammatically wrong, but I'm not sure how to fix it ...)

If you have a bit of time to spend, check them out. It's a wonderful place, full of fascinating people with so much to say, and they say it articulately and rationally. It's brilliant.

So, I'm back

2010-04-12T22:36:00.000+01:00

It feels a little odd. But manageably so.

Had a good last-day-with-Chris today. Drove up, unpacked things, went to the supermarket to stock up on essentials like ice cream and fried chicken (well, and frozen peas and milk and bread), came back and bunged things into the fridge/freezer and had lunch, then went off and watched Alice in Wonderland in the afternoon. I know, I'm so behind ... everybody else saw Alice weeks and weeks ago. But at least we got round to it :) it was a very well-done film, although I didn't really empathise with Alice at all so I didn't feel that I really got into the film as much as I'd have liked to. She seemed a bit too detached, and I didn't believe her very much. She didn't appear to actually care about anything.

Having said that, everyone else in the film was great, and she wasn't terrible. Oh, though Anne Hathaway as the white queen was really anaemic - I get that she was supposed to be like that and was playing up to it, but it was a shame, because I usually love Anne Hathaway, and here I quite liked her but I didn't love her. Loved the Cheshire Cat, though.

So. I'm here again. The work has begun.

Excogitation #05 - dealing with deadlines

2010-04-11T15:13:00.000+01:00

In all of my life before University, I was very organised. I was never working on a piece the day before it was due - unless it was something completely routine (like maths homework - A level and below maths homework usually essentially being recipe-following). Essays were started when they were handed out, and usually finished a couple of days early - plenty of time to look them over before handing in. So I never had any trouble with deadlines; I was always given reasonable deadlines, I always finished work early.

Oh, how that has changed. My deadlines are still reasonable ... although 'reasonable' has been completely redefined, to require a LOT more work in a much shorter space of time. But still you know, physically doable, and not only that - doable even once you've factored in time to sleep and eat and exercise and go to lectures (mind, this is not everyone's experience - I've been lucky enough to be able to schedule things spaced out by a day or two between each deadline, some people haven't been able to do that). But finishing things two days in advange? Hah.

Anyway. I was going to try to say something useful about deadlines. One measure that I've seen used and that I think is quite useful is assessing things based on urgency and importance (at this point I should draw a little graph thing, but I'm not going to bother).

The idea is that if something is urgent and important, you should do it immediately. If something is important but not urgent, you should get on with it anyway (these are often the things that get pushed to the end of the queue, and then come back to bite you in the ass, because they were important). If something is urgent but not important, do it if you have time / try to pass it on to someone else ... and if something is neither urgent nor important, put it very bottom of your list. Doing this ought to keep you on top of your deadlines.

This is a pretty good way to organise things ... when all your items don't fall into the same category. At the moment, I need to do revision and past papers, plus some more routine work left over from last term (for 'routine' read 'not exam questions, just bloody hard tricky ones'). I guess the latter are more urgent as I'll have to have them done in about 2 weeks' time. All are very important.

The other main issues, as I see them, are motivation and fear. Motivation isn't usually a problem for me, so I don't have much to say about that I guess, except that the fear of missing deadlines is motivation enough, usually. Sometimes I'll want to do questions because they seem interesting - sadly, nowhere near often enough. This term I won't have lectures, so I'm hoping that that might help me to have a bit more freedom to do maths that I enjoy and want to revise, not just the next thing that has to be on the list. Also, there's been complete course choice this term, so the maths I'm doing is more of the maths I enjoy.

Fear ... fear I can talk about. Doing maths at a top university has forced me to confront myself, my fear of failing, and my fear of risk, sometimes it seems on a daily basis. Certainly on a weekly one.

I wish that wasn't the case. I wish I didn't fear failing anywhere near as much as I do, and I wish I didn't fear risk, because risk is often necessary. I tend to listen to too many people and not to trust myself or push for my own way enough. These are things I've learnt about myself, and that I've become better at over the past few years, but they are very much here (come for tea, you can meet them ...).

Advice for dealing with fear, especially over deadlines ... well, the only thing I find actually has a chance of dealing with semi-paralysing fear is just to get on and do the thing you're dreading. Note 'only thing ... has a chance' - it doesn't cure it. It doesn't stop it. Sometimes I end up working through everything, still feeling the same as before I started ... but at least in those cases sure, I feel awful, but it's done. And that's something, right? And sometimes I get absorbed in what I'm doing, and half an hour later, I realise that it has gone away, and can breathe a sigh of relief.

This stuff. It's hard. And it's really easy to come down on myself because everybody around me is working really hard at their degrees too, and I should stop whining because it can't be that hard, surely? And I'll be fine, and I'm just being silly (see number 2 for related thoughts). But that's not actually true. It is actually hard. I need to remember that one. And they ask us hard things on near-impossible deadlines and somehow we do it. That's pretty impressive. We can do hard things.*

*that's a bit of a catchphrase from Momastery. And I love Glennon for it. But I do always want to add "that's what she said".

Preparing for the term ahead

2010-04-10T15:06:00.000+01:00

It's funny ... over the last couple of days, I've started feeling like I'm getting ready to go into battle.
This is it. This time, everything counts. The exam term of my last year; the exams that everything rides on, no lectures ... just me and the maths*.

At the moment, I'm feeling brave.

I'm preparing to enter the fray, as it were ... and I have more photos for you :)

Yesterday, I realised that my sniffles over the last couple of days weren't because of a cold coming on, they were the start of hayfever season ... so I went into Boots to pick up some hayfever meds, and then got distracted by their 3-for-2 on vitamins and herbal remedies.Now, I've always believed that with a proper balanced diet you don't need any supplements, but I've also had to face the fact over the past couple of weeks that I'm getting worse at this proper diet thing - well, my diet's fine, I'm just bad at getting round to eating properly. I keep thinking "It's only 12:45, I'll just finish this and have lunch later ..." and then an hour and a half later I'm starving and irritable and finding it hard to concentrate ... guess why?

So. I was looking for a multivitamin, and the teen one looked approachable somehow (besides which, I don't think my body's requirements have changed compared to being in my teens). So then I was looking for another 2 things, possibly ... looked at extra B vitamins for energy, and omega-3 for braininess, but I really don't like popping lots of pills ... so when I walked round the end of the aisle and found more herbal and aromatherapy things, I was happy. Rescue Remedy, because rescue may be needed at moments when other methods (like phone-a-friend) are unavailable ... and Tisserand's 'Concentrate' essential oil blend because it looks like it'll be useful. I've just opened it up and it does smell lovely and energising.

Today I went and bought another of these hair-comb thingies - this one for rather more everyday wear (the enormous bits of plastic on the ends of the combs preclude it from fancy-wear, I feel). These things are brilliant - perfect for times when you really should wash your hair but have another 17 things to do that are more important ...

(Also, it is really quite difficult to take a picture of the back of your own head)

Lastly - baby herbs! Or a baby herb factory, anyway. I have enormous sunny windowsills, and so I'm going to take advantage of that to try and grow my own herbs ... I'm not sure whether I'll actually get much out of it in the way of supplying herbs for cooking, although it'll be brilliant if I do, but the main point of it is to have some green, growing, hopeful things in my room.

So from this post I guess my defense against this term consists of multivitamins, good hair, and growing things ... hm. Not a terrible summary :) and of course things like exercise, sleep, and so on will also be deployed ... it should be a good term. I'm looking forward to it. I think.

*(Actually, okay, "just me and the maths" isn't at all true. I'm surrounded by other people doing the same thing, which is sometimes the most amazing blessing in the world - because you can just be understood and not have to explain - and sometimes really hard, because I can panic and respond to other people doing things differently by second-guessing myself and worrying and losing confidence, because they seem to have it all together and should I emulate them? (Of course, sometimes I should. But sometimes I shouldn't. Keeping a clear head is the important thing ...))

Finished!

2010-04-09T15:12:00.000+01:00

At about lunchtime today, I FINALLY finished my last piece of coursework. There are 4 projects I've been doing, and I've been working 9-10 hour days with some regularity since Monday the 22nd of March. Not actually every day, but ... a large proportion of them.

This is good. I reckon I've finished just in the nick of time - the projects aren't actually due until the end of the month, but if it had taken longer, I would've started to feel awful about spending time just working on them and not revising - I've been only doing coursework and not revision (except that of course doing the coursework involves maths so does revise a few things), deciding that it's better to do one thing and get it Done and Finished and Done Properly than to try to balance both. If I'd decided to try and balance them I'm pretty sure I would've ended up going "there's no end in sight ..." and collapsing, whereas this way round although the end was "only a couple of hours away" for about 20 hours' worth of work (that's the trouble with programming, you can't predict when things will break - or at least I can't yet), at least it was in sight.

A Picture Post

2010-04-07T23:03:00.000+01:00

Things that have been going on ... mostly coursework, which is taking longer than I thought it would, and generally being a pain. I think I've just sorted out the last actual problem with my programming/maths, though. Now I just have to process lots of data and write up - hah, 'just' ... well, it should go okay from here on in. Fingers crossed.

There's been lots I want to blog about or feel I should blog about, but I should be programming, so I'm going to let the pictures do the talking. Here goes:

I've had this on my desk for the last few days. It helps.

My new laptop battery arrived today ... I'd been putting off buying one for ages, but last week, after about a year of saying 'Your battery is getting near the end of its life, and needs replacing soon' the message changed to 'Your battery is dead. Please buy a new one' so I did. Pricey stuff, but necessary, and nice to have it sorted.

Also today, I bought a new hair-combs-thingy. Pretty, isn't it?

I've been reading 4 Maccabees. It's a bit odd. I mean, it's a perfectly normal, reasonable, philosophical text ... which feels odd for a book of the Bible. (I should clarify that this is in the Apocrypha, not the 66-book Bible).

And last but not least ...

Ladybird Kitteh looks after my coursework.

More thoughts on jobhunting

2010-04-05T14:20:00.000+01:00

Situation: I graduate this summer. If I get a first, I may do a one-year master's course (staying at the same University). But I'm certainly not counting on that. So far I have submitted one job application and done some work on a second one (by 'work' I mean things like 'organised volunteering opportunities to gain relevant experience' and 'went to visit them' and things), and I've collected information on other places I might want to work, mostly through Careers' service events and things. It's a start, but I need to keep going.

Current thoughts:

It's still scary.
But it's not the end of the world (although if it was, I wouldn't have to look for a job. But I feel causing the world to end is not the answer.)
Baby steps.
I should probably try to network a bit more - talk to family and friends for advice, see if people I know can help me find out what jobs are out there, that sort of thing.

I'm going to try to set aside X amount of time every few days to work on things. At the moment I can't really focus on more than picking one task (e.g. "I'll look on the Uni Careers website to see whether I can go in and talk to someone for advice, and then I might email them for an appointment") and getting that done, then peeking out from behind my hands to pick another task, and going for that. I'm finding this tough. And that's okay. But that's not a reason not to do it.

2010-04-04T11:12:00.000+01:00

Alleluia - Christ is risen!

Wishing you all a happy and blessed Easter.

(He wins. At life.)

Holy Saturday

2010-04-03T13:42:00.002+01:00

I seem to have left my copy of God on Mute: Engaging the silence of Unanswered Prayer (Pete Grieg) at Uni, which is a shame. Pete gives a really good treatment of Holy Saturday (the whole book is great, and I would really recommend it) ... luckily for me, the internet can stand in for the book a little bit - see links below, and this quotation:

"I guess it’s the one day in the entire year when the Church has nothing to say. And yet, although we know so little about it, Holy Saturday seems to me to describe the place in which many of us live our lives: waiting for God to speak. We know that Jesus died for us yesterday. We trust that there may be miracles tomorrow. But what of today – this eternal Sabbath when heaven is silent? Where, we wonder, is God now?"

As I've mentioned many times before, the Church I grew up in didn't really do the liturgical year at all, and also kiwis don't do Lent. So one of the cool things about coming to England and attending an Anglican church has been finding the rhythm of the Church year, and it's something that has started to speak to me. In particular, today, I think of waiting. In Advent, and in Lent, we wait, and prepare for what we know is coming ... and I think that the idea of Holy Saturday as a metaphor for life (between Jesus' death and the ultimate Resurrection) is a really powerful one.

Because yeah, life is messy, and we don't have all the answers. And within faith there is a place to be unsure and scared and lost and grieving and not knowing how it will all work out, despite the fact that people might try to jump up and stick a platitude over the darkness ... sometimes God is there and tangibly present, and sometimes you have to wait. Keep the faith. (Or if you can't do that, 'Carry on, and faith will follow' as d'Alembert wrote - although he was writing about infinitesimals).

I don't understand this waiting thing very deeply, because I'm very, very blessed that in general my experience has been very much God being tangibly present, and very little God being absent, or unfindable. That doesn't make my faith any better than anyone else's (it really, really doesn't, and I would hate for anyone to read that sentence and assume it did), doesn't mean that I'm a better person that anyone else, or that I do things right, or anything like that, but for whatever reason I haven't really experienced God's silence. I'm sure I will, at some point. And I hope that thinking through things like this will help me to be more empathic towards people who've had different experiences from mine, and will help me to be more prepared when that time comes.

So. Holy Saturday. We've seen the crucifixion, in all its baffling horror. We remember glimmers of the promises that there's more to come. But today ... today reminds me that it's okay to be lost. Confused. Doubting. Afraid. Maybe questioning the existence of God, whether it's true or it was all a delusion or maybe something in between ... there is space for that. And shortcut-ing to the answers you know you're supposed to give is no substitute for grappling with the issues. Grappling is painful, but it's honest.

Another Pete Grieg quotation:

"I realize that God is present in the midst of suffering because we are present in it. We are God's presence. Holy Saturday is the day on which we wonder, where is God? Yet the answer might be that He is right there with us in the muck. When we are present in a situation--no matter how terrible it may be--He cannot be absent."

(Additional links:
Pete Grieg blogging on 24-7 gives an excerpt:
http://www.24-7prayer.com/blog/1213
Several more quotations on someone's personal blog:
http://lynnslittlelessons.blogspot.com/2008/05/another-god-on-mute-chapter.html)

Easter Thoughts

2010-04-01T13:18:00.000+01:00

I went to Church yesterday - they had modern stations of the cross - esque displays all around the room. Spent an hour or so wandering around and thinking and reading and praying. It was good.

As I've mentioned before, this year I'm trying to understand the humanity of Christ a little more. Although I've always known in an intellectual sense that of course, Christ understands all our emotions and griefs and struggles, there's always been a voice in the back of my head that whispers 'yeah, but he was the son of God so he had a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card, it was different for him'.

A similar issue is that I've never really empathised with any of the Bible characters - when people say 'The Bible, it's full of such wonderful stories, about real people and their loves and hates and lives and ...' I nod and smile but I don't feel it.

Part of the reason is you know, the fact that it's only in the last 7 or so years that I've started to actually learn about what people are like, and have emotions, and stuff. I mean, sure, I felt things when I was younger, but I was very much the detached academic kid who didn't see why you'd want emotions when you could have facts.

I think the real reason is that I don't remember a time when I didn't know all these stories - I don't even remember a time when other people were telling me these stories; as far back as I can remember I've had my own copy of the Bible (starting off with the ICB translation, which I think is the same thing as the CEV, and then the NIV) and I've been reading them for myself and thinking about them. And it's different once you know the ending, it really is. And maybe because I've known the stories since I was tiny (I honestly don't remember how young I was when I was starting to read them, I know I was reading random signs and things age 3, so maybe I had a beginner's Bible at 3 or 4? - I should ask my parents) I tend to see the people in the stories as Other. And I don't empathise with them along the way (like I do with other stories I read) because I know what happens at the end.

It's been kind of exciting reading bits of the Apocrypha because these are Bible stories (let's leave the 'how do you regard the Apocrypha' issue for a moment) and I don't know what happens next. I've only read Tobit and Judith so far (one-line summaries: Tobit: a story, but main message is 'Give Alms, no really, DO!'. Judith: Judith was a sexy sexy lady who used her sexy sexy ways to beguile and then kill the enemy leader, but it was okay - HONEST - because she didn't go all the way. I have my doubts about some of the moral messages in Judith.)

So anyway. Back to the point. This Easter - or this Holy Week, rather - I'm trying to see if I can put myself in Jesus' / the disciples' shoes, before the crucifixion. What were they thinking and feeling - the disciples, for the most part unaware of what was coming; Christ, knowing it and surely dreading it, but choosing it anyway. What would it have been like, in first-century Jerusalem? What was the atmosphere like, the scenery? I spent quite a while yesterday thinking about all this ... and I think starting to get glimpses of understanding what small bits of it might have been like. One thing's for sure: I know they weren't all feeling 'Oh, it's okay, it turns out all right in the end'.

Moving towards meatless ...

2010-03-28T17:31:00.000+01:00

I've blogged briefly before about wanting to eat a diet that's closer to vegetarian, if not actually veggie. I have made an effort to look for veggie and vegan cookbooks (both in bookshops and in the library) but haven't really found anything, which is a bit of a shame ... ah well.

I'm making some progress: for the last week and a half or so, I've cut out meat except at dinner time (i.e. in the evening). This is definitely a reduction in the amount of meat I eat, but is easy to sort out from a practical point of view because it means that Chris and Sarah don't need to change their habits.

It's been ... about the right level of stretching for me, I think. I miss meat more than I thought I would - part of this is because I don't tend to cook in the evenings, so suddenly all the thinking about food I'm doing completely excludes meat, which feels a bit weird. Also because there generally is chicken and ham and things in the fridge, so it's very tempting to want to stick them in a sandwich / in noodles / etc - I think it would be different if I didn't have bits of chicken right there whenever I open the fridge.

I've been making an effort not to just replace my meat consumption with cheese, and to try and make sure that this pushes me towards eating more vegetables, rather than towards lots and lots of toast. This is mostly working.

I think this is changing how I feel about food ... although it's also made me realise that I really don't want to give up dairy, or at least that it would take a long time and a lot of gradual adjustment for me to do so. I don't know if it's changing my appetites a bit - well, as I'm still eating meat (or fish) daily, I wouldn't expect much change. But I went out for lunch with Chris, my parents, and Hazel today (yay, they came to visit :) that was good) and found that I definitely ate / wanted much less meat than I would've done previously (it was an all-you-can-eat place that has a huge variety of different meat dishes - so I had some, and won't have meat tonight). And I think I wanted vegetables more than I previously would've done. I am definitely more a fan of huge portions of vegetables than I was previously - definitely coming round to the way of thinking that if half the volume on your plate is veg, 1/4 is something starchy, and the remaining 1/4 is anything you like, you're starting to do it correctly.

Examples of things I've been having for lunch:

toast and avocado ... mmmmmm. With chilli sauce sometimes.
mushroom filled pasta and lots of spinach
pseudo-pizza - toast, ketchup/chilli sauce/garlic paste/tomato puree, peppers and mozzarella
mushroom filled pasta and stir-fried spring onions / mushrooms / peppers
veggie curry - I made some of this last week, had one portion and stuck 3 in the freezer - it's not as good when reheated though, the cauliflower's gone all soggy rather than holding its structure, so the texture is more homogeneous.

I think this is definitely healthier - not that my previous diet was bad, but cutting out meat at lunchtime definitely cuts down the amount of processed meats I eat (because things like ham, salami and frankfurters were the sorts of meat that I'd tend to have at lunchtime, but not at dinner) and processed meat isn't great for you. So. Going to stick with this for awhile. Suggestions for recipes / books / websites / etc very welcome. Anybody else done something similar? How easy or difficult was it to change your habits?

Recovering

2010-03-25T22:20:00.000Z

I worked for over 9 hours today ... not quite 9 hours straight, I did stop and have lunch in the middle, but still. Pretty much 9am til 7:30 I was sitting at my desk, programming, working on reports, programming, wondering why the program didn't work, researching stuff online ... I don't know if this is a record for me in terms of hours working per day (and of course I'd love to say it isn't because the vain part of me wants to say that I'm so hardworking that of course I regularly put in 10 hour days, but the reality is that I don't and that I probably wouldn't work well if I did) but I think it is a record in terms of density of work (as in, I reckon if I've worked for longer in the past it's probably been all morning, then spent the afternoon doing something completely different, then late into the night).

University has certainly taught me that I can work harder than I would've thought. That's kind of a nice thing to know, even if it's not a nice thing to do. Work is hard at the moment - I don't mean in terms of content - I keep feeling anxious and knotty and stressed when I sit down to work, and so ending up just feeling slightly tense and ill a lot of the time ... but the only solution is to keep on working, and pray, I think. And probably jog - I managed to go jogging on Tuesday, but haven't been since - maybe tomorrow. Exercise is good for stress.

Chris is ill with a bit of a stomach bug (he's mostly okay, just spending a lot of time asleep on the sofa and feeling a bit icky) ... although he's still managing to be incredibly supportive and sweet, which is amazing. He's been a gem ever since I've been home (absence makes ...?) - lots of laughs and smiles and hugs and no complaints about me disappearing with the laptop to do coursework all the time. He bought me an Easter Egg today. He's a star.

For the time being, I'm snuggled up on the sofa alternating between watching episodes of the Gilmore Girls (S4) and Roswell (S1). A good way to recover.

Looking back at Roswell

2010-03-23T23:17:00.001Z

This is my 500th post on this blog. I think that means I should write something extra-happy, or extra-deep-and-meaningful, or something like that.

I'm not sure if blogging about Roswell qualifies. But hey, here goes.

Whilst away for the weekend with Hazel I finally found the complete first season on DVD. I've been kind of wanting to rewatch things for a while ... and I've been wanting to watch right from the beginning, because Season 1 was the best, and things went downhill from there I reckon ... and I want to try and get the whole thing the way it should be. From the beginning. The last time I started watching this I was ... just in my teens? It was a long time ago.

I'm up to the 4th episode now (Leaving Normal) and here are a few things I've noticed this time that I hadn't thought last time:

They're so old. Really, really old. They're supposed to be 16 year olds, and the actors are in their mid-twenties, and now that I'm past twenty (and when I look at 16 year olds I notice how young they are) it really, really stands out. Especially when you see them with their parents.
In the first two eps, Max and Liz were more gormless than I remembered, and I totally, totally did not buy it. This felt weird because I was totally drawn in the first time round, fell for the dream right from the pilot. But by the third episode ... the magic was coming back (the acting was less awful, for a start!)
Michael is amazingly cool. And Isabel is really quite nuanced. And Maria is prettier than I remembered. I suddenly see how these could be people's favourite characters (again, first time round I was too wrapped up in Max and Liz to notice them). In particular they're a lot more 3D than others (As I'm now a fairly strong Polar, I'm particularly interested in Michael's character this time round ...)
The stuff about their powers is so inconsistent. But pretty cool. (In particular Michael has more control than you see in most fanfic.)
The jokes are better than I remembered. The one-liners / strange situations ... I'd totally forgotten about most of them, and they're pretty good.
I have a lot of sympathy for Kyle. A lot. He's such a great guy. And Liz treats him so badly. Aliens are no excuse. Frankly, Liz is bloody heartless (or just completely wooden, blame it either on the character or on the acting) in the first few episodes and I am so much less sympathetic this time round than I was last time. I really hope this gets better because she was my favourite character (probably because she was the clever brunette, tbh).
Knowing a lot of what's going to happen, of course, tints the way I see everything. In particular, I can't be scared of Sheriff Valenti, knowing how he comes round. And it's kind of bittersweet and kind of especially beautiful seeing the group starting to come together knowing that it's not going to last. I haven't actually seen the end of Season 3. I don't know how much the unity comes back; I stopped watching when it was all broken. So I have some new stuff to look forward to when I get that far (Hazel bought S2 and S3 second hand, and I've borrowed them off her).

Rediscovering the characters is actually pretty exciting. I tend to read Liz-centric fic, which tends to have overly-detailed portraits of Liz/Max/Michael, and pretty 2D portrayals of other characters, so it's good to get some balance. And I've honestly forgotten huge amounts of detail from the series - so while I know important points about who dies and who knows which secrets, I get to rediscover the small stuff. That's pretty neat.

So, uh, happy 500th post, dear blog. Anybody else have stories of rediscovering childhood stories and finding them different from how you left them?

A Few Thoughts

2010-03-21T19:34:00.001Z

Hey hey, people.

I'm away for the weekend staying with my lovely sister :) this has been great. A bit of a real holiday (the rest of the vacation being full of coursework and revision, thus not a holiday). We've chatted / hung out with her friends / gone shopping / watched lots of Jonathan Creek and Roswell DVDs ... good times :). I haven't brought any work with me, which has been really really gorgeous although quite odd. But this is probably the only work-free holiday I'll have before my exams in June, so I'm making the most of it.

Several thoughts:

I've come to a decision about this moving-towards-meatless thing - for the time being, I'm going to only have meat / fish at dinner time (that's in the evening, for anyone who's confused ...). This minimises inconvenience to Chris and Sarah, but is still a significant step for me - no automatically reaching for a ham sandwich, that sort of thing. In the past I wouldn't have tended to have meat at every lunchtime, but it could well have been 5 times a week (often eating leftovers, or sandwich type things with meat in them).
I need a routine for working. I've written one which timetables my day from 7:20am til 6:30 pm and includes 7.5 hours of work in it ... if I try it for a while and it seems to work I'll post it, I think. But I'll wait til I've tested it. It includes the non-work things I think are vital (or that I want to think are vital) like: some time with Chris before he goes to work, jogging early in the morning, prayer, food!, time to do random errands (laundry, go to the library, etc) so I think it may work quite well. I am now, of course, feeling kind of guilty that I'm timetabling about 11 hours of which 3.5 are *not* work. This is slightly insane. (Somebody comment and tell me that 7.5 hours a day with the potential for a couple more hours in the evening if necessary is a perfectly reasonable workday, please?)
Stuart Townend's "Who Paints the Skies" is a really awful song. Grammar-fail to the max ... here's a snippet:

Who paints the skies into glorious day?
Only the splendour of Jesus.
Who breathes His life into fists of clay?
Only the splendour of Jesus.
He really has no excuse. Stuart Townend is far too experienced a songwriter not to understand English. 'Splendour' is not a 'who'. Neither is 'Mercy' (this comes up in the second verse). The chorus is rather odd too:

He is wonderful, He is glorious,
Clothed in righteousness,
Full of tenderness.
Come and worship Him,
He's the Prince of life,
He will cleanse our hearts
In His river of fire.
Individually, I agree with most of those statements, although I think 'Full of tenderness' is pretty misleading on its own, and I'm not quite sure what 'His river of fire' is supposed to be. But together ... do those make a coherent whole? I'm really not convinced. (This was sung at Hazel's church this morning, and we sort of looked at each other and sighed at the lack of grammar).

I think that's all for now ... hope people are enjoying Uni winding down for the term, and getting ready for a profitable Easter vacation.

Excogitation #04 - practical solutions: workspace

2010-03-17T21:40:00.001Z

Let's start with a picture.
This is what my work area at Uni looks like:

It's tidy at the moment ... had a big tidy up of my room over the weekend, which helps. In theory I would keep it in this state all of the time. In practice ... well ... let's just say I don't quite manage that.

(I haven't got a photo of my workspace at home to hand, but I will add one at some later point).

There's a lot of advice out there about organising space for study, and most of it is really good ... for example see about.com's advice (aimed at distance learners but good advice for anybody), or this article from education.com. You've probably read that sort of stuff already. I'm not going to attempt to recreate it all here ... I'm just going to say a couple of brief things about how I handle (or fail to handle) my work space.

Things I may not be so great at ...

As noted before, I don't necessarily keep my desk tidy. This is because I forget how much better having a tidy, clear desk makes me feel ... because once it's been messy for 3 weeks you forget that it's actually only about 5 minutes' work to clean it up. But if I have lots of clear workspace I feel like work is sensible and reasonable and something I'll probably enjoy doing - rather than something I've got to grit my teeth and get on with.

I'm going to try and combat this by setting aside 5 minutes at the end of each day to clear my desk - I'm also going to be trying to finish working at sensible times like 6 or 7 pm (not 11pm), which should help with this.

On a related note, when I'm surrounded by clutter, my underlying level of stress goes up ... way up*. So in addition to clearing the desk surface, I need to try and make sure that things are generally filed in the right place, and pens are accessible, and all of that sort of thing. This, I usually manage.
The internet is a wonderful place ... except when you spend 45 minutes reading blogs and forums when you really meant to be checking email and then closing the thing down. I need to get better and turning off. I think one of the underlying motivations here is feeling like I want to be available online in case anybody turns up who I want to talk to. That's perfectly understandable from a social point of view, but really bad for work. Solution = sorting out times to see / email / chat to friends, maybe? Which would reduce the motivation for hanging around online by quite a bit.

Things I am rather better at:

Making sure I have good lighting - both here and at home I have my desk near a window, for natural light, and a desk lamp for supplementary light. Natural light definitely, definitely helps my concentration and my mood.
Lots of clear space - for maths, anyway ... I usually want: a textbook, my notes, the sheet of questions I'm writing on, a pad of paper for good answers, and a pad of scrap paper for rough scribbles all out at the same time. This is why at Uni I commandeer the table in the middle of my room as well as the desk the laptop lives on when I'm working.
Pens easily to hand (pens of various colours, pencils, highlighters).
Planner - I write everything down, mostly in my planner, including daily to-do lists, so having it to hand is always useful.
Some sort of drink nearby - hydration matters.
Some sort of positive thing to look at ... inspirational quotations (in theory not too cheesy), or cards from people that make me happy, that sort of thing. Makes the space a bit more human.

Overall ... I'm not doing too badly. I have reasonably high hopes for the rest of this academic year. If only I can remember to keep stuff clean and uncluttered, I think I should be able to reduce stress a fair bit. And I need to remember not to kid myself: I can't work while there's music on, I certainly can't work to Radio 4 (far too interesting!), and I generally can't work seriously whilst on the internet (though I can get some stuff done).

Anybody else got stuff to say on the subject of physical space in which you study?

(*Do other people find the same clutter / stress correlation holds? I've read about it in lots of places but don't count that as scientific because they don't tend to cite any sample group, and so I figure that the only people who would bother to write articles about it are people who find it does hold for them)

Reviving the Study Blog

2010-03-16T11:07:00.000Z

Billy and I are going to restart using the study blog we had over Christmas. So if you were a reader/author before, you can head on over there in the next couple of days (as in, I haven't managed to post anything interesting on there yet, but intend to soon). If you weren't previously a member but would like to post to it / read it, let me know via comments here.

thankfulness

2010-03-12T19:04:00.003Z

Finally.

There is space. To stop. And reflect.
On the term just past.
On the year almost done.
On the three years quickly closing.

The learning.
The growing.
The loving.
And knowing.
And seeing.
And becoming.

The great times.
The hard times.
(The boring times)
The people who drove you crazy,
The people who kept you sane

To all of the above: Thank you.
My time would not be complete without you.
And it is not yet complete.

There are new things to do.
New people to meet.
New things to see.
But time rushes on ...
the future beckons and promises nothing.

Lord, let me walk into it a better person.
Changed by this chapter
Growing in your grace
Learning to be wise

Learning to love, without condition
(A long way to go, but I'm on the right road)
Learning to see, without judgement
Learning to be.

Being.

Not my will.
Yours.

The new skirt is lovely :)

2010-03-12T01:31:00.002Z

I wore it out today and it was great. It's quite fitted down to about the knees, but then kicks out in the back, and is slightly stretchy denim, so is comfortable for walking in properly. I can even jog in it :)

Blowing off steam

2010-03-11T01:25:00.002Z

Why are the people you want to talk (read: rant) to on the internet not online when you want them to be?

Bah.

Thoughts on Food

2010-03-09T22:45:00.000Z

I've been reading a lot of stuff lately about meat and dairy and how it's unnatural and bad for humans to be consuming them ... some on here: http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/ and other websites and stuff too. And starting to think ... yeah, drinking milk after you're weaned is kind of weird. And drinking the milk of another species is even weirder (I've never quite understood people being weirded out by the idea of adult humans consuming breast milk - surely it's more normal than drinking cow's milk).

So I'm starting to think about going closer to veggie ... and maybe at some point closer to vegan. Don't know if I'll ever get that far. And certainly I love pate and cheese ... although you can get veggie versions of pate. Hmmmm.

Something to think about. I think I'll try to get a hold of some good veggie / vegan cookbooks, and start cooking a greater amount of veggie food.

Fairtrade Challenge: How did it go?

2010-03-04T20:55:00.005Z

So about a week ago I posted about setting myself a fairtrade challenge: to only buy fairtrade products for one week (10pm Friday 26th, when I made the decision, til 10pm Friday 5th).

I haven't entirely succeeded, which is to say that I've bought some things that aren't fairly traded. But I have:

learnt a lot more about what fairtrade products are available in my area, and where to buy them.
spent more money on fairtrade things than on non-fairtrade things
only bought non-fairtrade things when I couldn't find a fairtrade alternative and I needed them pretty urgently (so couldn't wait until after the week was over)
spent time searching out fairtrade items where before I would've bought the non-fairtrade product because it was more convenient (e.g. juice).
sought to buy ethical things where I wasn't buying strictly-fairtrade ones, or if that wasn't possible, sought to spend as little money as possible so as to leave myself as much money as possible to buy ethical stuff with.

So here's my week's shopping:

1: Divine Dark Chocolate Fairtrade mints. These are really nice - had a friend who was delighted to learn they existed, because they're like After Eights, but made by an ethical company not an evil one! They're also vegan.

2: Assorted Fairtrade products. Namely:

-Golden Caster Sugar

-2x large bars Dairy Milk

-1 bunch bananas

-1 packet of dried apricots, 1 packet dried mango

-Sainsbury's basics hot chocolate

-1 packet double chocolate biscuits, 1 packet fruit, chocolate and nut biscuits

-1 packet apricot Geobars

Also a packet of Traidcraft tissues. These aren't technically fairtrade because they're made in the UK from 100% recycled paper. But supporting Traidcraft definitely means supporting Fairtrade. And I really needed tissues. I think they count.

3: Not fairtrade but supporting Oxfam ... I was in Oxfam looking for fairtrade products and I saw this skirt. It's really lovely. I've wanted a denim skirt like this for a while. It fits well. So I bought it.

4: Not Fairtrade but necessary ... I'm going away for the weekend, and showering facilities may be, ah, sparse, so cleansing wipes and body spray seemed like a Really Really Good Idea (the wipes were BOGOF, the body spray was about 30p off plus an extra 50p worth of Boots' points), plus plasters, and I need the rosin for Saturday. So far as I know there are no fairtrade alternatives for any of these.

5: Fairtrade juice cartons! Again bought with going away for the weekend in mind - they'll be good to have on the train. This is an example of something where I would've previously bought the non-fairtrade option, but because I was stopping to think about it, I made sure to go and find these because I knew I could get them in town somewhere.

I've also become aware of lots of new Fairtrade products that I didn't previously know about, so when I run out of things / next want to buy I will swap over to using the fairtrade product. These include:

peanut butter
honey
golden syrup
juice - I've now found where to buy large 1L boxes of Fairtrade juice from, not just the little cartons.
chocolate spread
muesli - I knew this existed but was too lazy to buy it previously, I now know precisely where to get it in the centre of town, so no excuses.
wine - this doesn't quite count, as I did previously know this existed and where to get it, but I almost never buy wine anyway. Nevertheless, as this week has made me think more about Fairtrade, I will make it a priority to buy it next time - so this week's made a difference.
ice cream - I hadn't thought of it as a priority before, but now I will!
spices - I now know you can get some spices fairtrade. I will keep looking for them.
beer and ale (made with Fairtrade sugar) - I don't drink much beer and ale, but might try these out! Especially if I'm with friends who drink beer (so I can try a bit, and then pass it round to see if other people like it).

I'll also add that I'm quite impressed by Sainsbury's, who appear to be slowly but surely switching to Fairtrade in all matters. All their bananas are now fairly traded. Their own-brand tea, coffee, and hot chocolate appears to have gone / be going the same way - I was really impressed by this, because I think that some supermarkets *cough* ASDA and Tesco *cough* would say "No, what the customer wants in a Value Hot Chocolate is the absolute minimum price possible, we will maybe provide a Fairtrade option in the mid-range of prices, but not for the basics" but Sainsbury's doesn't seem to be doing that, and appears to be switching everything, without making too much of a fuss about it.

All in all, I'm happy with how the week's gone. I don't think it's cost me any extra money particularly either - given that I haven't been eating at cafes or canteens or anything (because that = buying non-Fairtrade stuff that I didn't need to buy) I've probably spent about the same amount of money as I would've done any other week. Although I have bought some things that weren't fairly traded ... I think this has been a resounding success.

Excogitation #03 - getting on with it

2010-03-04T08:44:00.000Z

This is a really simple point (simple, not easy):
don't make excuses. When you should be working, work.

It's obvious, everybody knows it ... but actually doing it can be really quite hard.

Part of the hard bit is working out how to define 'when you should be working'. There are some obvious answers, like 'when you're in a lecture' (defining 'working' there as sitting, listening, taking notes and interacting as appropriate), or 'when you're in a class' (similarly). And then 'outside of those times, quite often, to do all the homework you need to do'. That's fine. I can mostly cope with that - those are all decisions in principle, rather than specific thoughts at a specific moment in time.

The things I struggle with are more along the lines of 'I feel really tired and drained from society stuff / an emotional conversation / etc, and I have some work that needs doing but is not yet urgent. Should I go and work?'.

It's getting easier and easier as I'm getting to know myself better - I can now, almost all of the time, work out whether I should actually go to bed / watch an episode of the Gilmore girls / do something else so as to unwind and sort myself out, or whether I am just making excuses and what I really need to do is knuckle down and get on with it (which *can* be therapeutic in and of itself, although given that most of my work is tricky and confusing I wouldn't say it's *generally* therapeutic, or at least not til you get through to the end and things click into place).

And actually, I've had some trouble definining 'work' as well. I used to feel terribly guilty about working at a slow-ish, relaxed pace - even if I had the time to do so, it felt like it shouldn't really count unless I was 100% going for it, really pushing myself, possibly into misery. Working at maybe 70% capacity (or sometimes 50) felt ... well, it felt like I was mucking about and being inefficient. THAT IS ENTIRELY FALSE. I can't work at 100% all the time, and I shouldn't try to.

All-out-going-for-it mode should be for when I'm really into it and it happens by itself, close to deadlines, and exams. I'm learning to internalise that more and more, but I've got some way to go. The other thing that helps is trying to dedicate huge amounts of time to working. If there's lots of time, then it doesn't matter if you hit a dead patch and spend a whole hour trying to understand one little thing (which actually, isn't that unusual in maths and you probably shouldn't beat yourself up about it). If you'd planned on top-speed-efficiency and your work's due in in 4 hours' time ... it's not so good. Scheduling in huge amounts of time is not always possible, but it's usually a little bit more possible than my subconscious thinks it is.

Don't make excuses. When you should be working, work.

Fairtrade Swaps

2010-03-03T15:02:00.001Z

A Spacefem Quiz Result:

2010-03-01T15:50:00.001Z

You're an intellectual and you know how you use your mind, so you'd rather not take breaks from it. You can always think out a situation and know what needs to be done. The only thing that frustrates you is not being valued.

Our Potentially Ridiculous Hobby Suggestion For You:
Radical Activism
Got some spare time? Be a radical activist! Make protest signs and stand on a corner and see who waves and smiles at you. Join a group that needs your help. Wear t-shirts with ultra-political slogans or design signs to hang in coffee shops. Just remember: give peace a chance.

Your scores:

26.22

23.32

20.98

19.58

17.1

Starting to change the world

2010-02-27T15:17:00.001Z

I've just been on the World Vision website, and have signed up to sponsor a child. Here she is:

It's pretty amazing that something like this can be set up in a couple of minutes with a little bit of typing and clicking a few buttons.The internet is an amazing tool.

I came to the decision this morning - a few things have been running through my head, namely:

Could I really look a kid like this in the eye one day and say "Sorry, going out for a meal with my friends once a month was more important than giving you an education"?
The song 'Me and Theng' by the Lads (the version from 'Whoa', not 'The Lads' - the former is reflective, the latter is ... the less said the better).
Some Bible verses ... in particular Matthew 25:34-45 and Proverbs 3:27, which says:

"Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act"

Yeah. That seems pretty relevant.

I'm confident about sponsoring through World Vision because I have complete trust in them as an organisation. They're well-established, have an extremely good reputation, and they really know what they're doing. 97% of their staff are employed in their country of origin (see here) - I think that is definitely the right way to do things so as to actually understand people and meet their needs. I also support them because they're a Christian organisation - but note that they absolutely do NOT proselytise, or discriminate between people of different faiths (see here). This also seems to me to be the right way to do things. Let people know that your faith motivates you to be compassionate and to try to make a difference, but be completely professional and non-discriminatory.

I should be getting a pack about Child Sponsorship through the post in about a week (so I'll have it in couple of weeks, since it'll go to my home address, not Uni). I'm looking forward to it :)

Fairtrade Challenge

2010-02-27T00:47:00.000Z

I know I'm a bit late getting on board - Fairtrade Fortnight started on Monday. But some stuff happened today that made me rethink my responsibility to the 1.4 billion people on this planet living in poverty, and as a first step I'm going to spend the next week (i.e. until about 10pm next Friday) only buying fairtrade products. Now I know that this isn't a sensible long-term solution (as in, if I only live on fairtrade products I will be living off muesli / bananas / chocolate / coffee / tea / mangoes, which sounds nice for a bit but ultimately unbalanced) but it's something I want to try to make myself more aware - aware of where I spend money when I don't need to, and aware of what the range of fairtrade products now available is.

I'll be supplementing this with the perishable stuff I currently own (food wastage doesn't help anybody), but not replacing that when it goes - so e.g. I'll have bread for the next couple of days. I'm going to try not to open packets of things that I have but that could keep until after next Friday, probably with the exception of vegetables, for obvious health reasons. I'll post whatever I buy on here, to keep me honest.

I'm also starting to think about sponsoring a child through World Vision. Something to ponder ... £18 a month. That's, like, one curry and one pub lunch, right? I could give that up to put a kid in the third world through school.

learning to breathe

2010-02-24T23:30:00.000Z

Recently, I think God's been teaching me about sitting back and shutting up.

It's interesting, how things fall together. Of course it could all just be coincidence and there might be no meaning to it, but I think there is some meaning ... and in a way it almost doesn't matter. If 'life' leads to a series of coincidences that teach me something, and God is the architect of life, then it's still God teaching me, even if not in a totally hands-on way ... (this position is probably only logically defensible with quite a lot of hand-waving. I'm not claiming it's rigorous)

It does feel funny, though. I feel like maybe God's got some cosmic checklist that he's leading me along - I can almost hear a pen ticking off boxes.

Last term it was learning to reach out and trust people and ask for help when I need it. Earlier this term it was learning to love people for the right reasons and with the right motives - because they are lovely and have great value and are made in his image - even if there were things I found tricky to deal with. Currently it's learning to sit back and shut up and put others' needs above my own - just because *I* am not enjoying / not getting anything out of something that's going on, that doesn't mean that it isn't a valuable activity, and I need to be able to keep my thoughts to myself and be supportive. I don't know if that lesson's finished yet.

I wonder what will be next?

the day felt long and jam-packed with riddles

2010-02-23T21:33:00.000Z

Hey guys,

Today has been a long day. Not in a bad, over-long day I want to end ... just a long one. I guess that's what happens when you get up early in the morning (well, 7:10, which is only early to a student but at least is not late) and go jogging? (Jogging is going well though :) on Sunday while I was out bits of it were starting to be great fun - rather than just something that is okay that is good for me and pleasant to have done afterwards because I feel stronger). Ah well, another hour and a half or so of work, and then I can get to bed and today will be over, a day well-executed.

Some of today's riddles:
-why, when I have previously had blood pressure readings of sort of 148-100ish (didn't see the actual numbers, it was at a nurse appt) can I not get my blood pressure above 120 - 80?*
-why is intelligent television important? (went to a talk about this)
-why is our algebraic topology lecturer setting us questions about stuff he hasn't answered properly? (answers on postcards please)

Hope other people are having similarly productive days to mine.
Take care,

--Carol

*NB obviously this is a good thing, I don't want to have silly-high blood pressure. Mine now seems normal, I think I just get nervous when I'm at the doctor's having it taken - they lent me a machine to take home for a couple of days, so I could take readings myself in normal situations and see what happened. But it's odd that I've taken my blood pressure half a dozen times today including attempts to raise it (e.g. right after exercising, not relaxing, drinking caffienated tea) and they've varied between 99 - 74 to 120 - 80. Mostly around the 110 - 70 mark.

living in tension

2010-02-22T22:54:00.000Z

there's a post brewing about this ... and it is not this post. This is, as it were, the Post that Comes Before.

I've been ruminating for a while on the idea that life isn't about balance between things, but instead about being in tension between things. The idea of balance makes me feel like I'm on a tightrope and there's an obvious correct path and that all other choices lead to bad things. The idea of tension makes me feel like I'm ... like this: http://doctorwhotoys.net/cassandra.jpg - but less of a brain in a jar and more just being pulled every which way. But also like I'm designed to be pulled every which way.

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
The tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be

Between how it is and how it should be

(Dare You to Move, Switchfoot)

Examples of such tension:
Between conservative and liberal theology (I have sympathies on both sides)
Between how it is and how it should be - wanting to change the world, but also needing to accept how it really is and work from there
Between confiding in people and not burdening them
Between the drive for unity and the very real obstacles to unity which generally deserve attention

I don't feel I'm expressing myself very well here. I guess this is part of why this isn't the post that I feel I will eventually write, this is just some of the thinking. Another thing I feel about tension is that there is no obvious choice, there are no easy answers, there are maybe no right answers - which is where I'm slightly frustrated with my answers above, because they don't exhibit that properly. For me, tension between the sort of person I am now and the sort of person I want to be doesn't count, because I don't have a good reason to stay as I am now (things like 'change is hard' are not *good* reasons), but I have much reason to change. But things like tension between elements of conservative and liberal Christianity - I wouldn't want to say that anyone is right or wrong there. And I can see good arguments for going both ways. And I don't think I personally will fully go either way. And I think that it's important to be standing there, stretching across the gap, listening and learning from both and in some ways holding things together because we have a continuum of beliefs, not a dichotomy.

I don't mean to sound like this is all about theology, either; it's not. But I had other examples and for the moment I've forgotten them. I will revisit this.

Excogitation #02 - familiarity breeds contempt?

2010-02-19T17:24:00.001Z

Today's point is: don't despise what you already know.

This is something I find really hard.

I tend to look at problems like this: if I can't do them, they're difficult, and I'll admire other people who are able to do them. If I can do them, then they're easy, so it's not at all impressive that I'm able to do them.

So there's this instanteneous jump between the moment when I can't do something and the moment when I can, and at that point I go from thinking that the problem is hard and worthy and valuable, to thinking that it can't be, because I did it.

See the problem here?
My self-image does not include the concept that I can do hard things.

Another related problem (with my perception, this is not a problem in and of itself) - there are always people who know more than I do. You'd think that as I'm in my third year, getting to the end of my degree, that actually the majority of the people I know would either know about the same amount of maths as me, or else less. But while that is probably true, that's not what my mind focuses on. Instead of noticing the vast majority of first-years who indeed, know much less maths than me, I notice the couple who are brilliant and manage to either know more maths than me (okay, I only know one of these) or who are able to blag their way through more complicated maths than I am (this being easier, and since I don't know the maths in question I don't know if they're talking rubbish or not). Instead of stopping to notice all the things I've learned, I notice the 4th years and PhD students who (obviously!) know a lot more than I do.

This really isn't very useful.

And so what I'm trying to advocate to myself ... is more focusing on the things I know. Sure, I still have a lot to learn. But pretending that everything I've learnt so far is trivial is a) unhelpful and b) completely false. I need to have more confidence in the maths I know, and to think of my accomplishments as worthwhile, not as trivial by definition because I managed to do them. Yeah.

(anybody know how to achieve this?)

The season of Lent

2010-02-18T09:35:00.001Z

(Properly, of course, I should have posted this yesterday. But yesterday was a very full day, and I didn't get a chance to.)

Lent was something that I found interesting when we moved to the UK 7-8 years ago. We don't 'do' Lent in New Zealand, really. I mean, I didn't go to an Anglican / Catholic / Orthodox Church back in NZ, so it's entirely possible (and indeed I think fairly likely) that those churches did keep up the tradition - but here it's different. It's enough of a part of popular culture that lots of things happen for pancake day, and lots of non-religious people give up stuff for lent - as an exercise in willpower, I guess (which is no bad thing).

One of the reasons yesterday was such a long day is that I got up early in the morning to get to an 8am Ash Wednesday Eucharist service. I've never been to one before, and it was a very valuable experience. I was struck by two parts of the service, and I'm going to end with those:

firstly, at the imposition of ashes:
Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin, and be faithful to Christ.

and secondly, at the end of the service:
I invite you, therefore, to observe a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.

Amen.

Avocado Thoughts

things I have been doing recently

Economic growth (cross-posted)

Just a quick update

and another note

triggered by an ad on Spotify

A really brief life update

Goal for tomorrow: Essay writing

A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

2010: a retrospective

Getting up and getting on with it :)

Spreading love on the internet

Mostly Organised

Scattered thoughts

Yay, Harry Potter!

back to basics

mini-meltdown

Thinking

... and closing down ...

Waking up ...

What maths *is* is different from how it is taught ...

Another day, another blog post

Starting to fit in :)

Blogging from an iPad

the prince who dances with beggars

Staying on top of everything :)

Tuesday 2nd November

Instead of Nano ...

Reclaiming yarn :)

raaaagh.

Blog post from yesterday (on the train)

Looking forward to today ...

Hey hey :)

Asking the right questions - a rant, and a recommendation

Tiiiiired ...

Fortunately / unfortunately

Blackberry Crumble Cake (pics!)

I'm back :)

Going visiting!

Bah, humbug

Almost here ...

Note to self: My laptop is not portable.

... psst, hello ...

Kingsway, you've gone too far this time ...

On Glasses and Contact Lenses

Scattered thoughts

Swimming!

When you have extremely ripe bananas ...

Yo, world

Home! And thinking.

Thoughts on Blogging - brainstorming

Stopping to Breathe

Upcoming Posts ...

I'm Finished!

Brief Hello

Happy Feet

Great comic - MMR Vaccine story ...

Excogitation #06 - life's not that easy

Job news (lack thereof)

Hey hey - a week's catch-up

The Log Cabin Blanket

Chocolate & Whisky Cheesecake Brownies!

In Praise of Saturday Mornings*

... and now for something completely different: chocolate and whiskey

For Tricia

Consume Me

Women in Mathematics (a complaint, and then some data)

Recently I have been reading ...

So, I'm back

Excogitation #05 - dealing with deadlines

Preparing for the term ahead

Finished!

A Picture Post

More thoughts on jobhunting

Holy Saturday

Easter Thoughts

Moving towards meatless ...

Recovering

Looking back at Roswell

A Few Thoughts

What maths is is different from how it is taught ...