Soooo.... cold...

When the cats' water bowl is threatening to freeze over, and the butter is rock solid, and the cats themselves are desisting from their usual hostilities in favour of shared bodily warmth


and your fingers are so cold you can't even type properly (this post brought to you by the power of my mind!), and ain't no saying when the central heating will be fixed...

Do you:
a) brew up a giant pot of gluhwein/hot whisky toddies, time of day be damned, because regular tea/coffee just isn't doing it;
b) move in with starmadeshadow, who has espresso, heating AND SEA SILK - but who may be on the defensive after an exploratory 5-hour incursion yesterday;
c) go out for a half-hour run every hour, risking pneumonia and frostbitten fingers for the sake of the raised internal body temperature;
d) give up on the idea of getting any work done at all, and go back to bed with yarn to knit yourself handwarmers? And, for that matter, entire bodywarmers?

Vegthulhu

Being a trendy London meedja couple* and all, we do of course get a box full of organic goodness delivered on a weekly basis. And try really hard not to end up throwing it all out a week later, but never mind. Now, I've test driven a few of these schemes, and I'm rather pleased with the one we're using now. For one thing, the produce is really good stuff, and a good mix of it, and they have a very tempting catalogue full of extras like organic free range booze. Yeah! For another, the website is well designed and easy to use. They offer nifty services like being able to blacklist certain foods - either temporarily or forever - as in: I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato. Or maybe just not till next month. And for another, each box comes with a friendly newsletter that (a) identifies what's in your box choice that week, (b) provides little info-nuggets on some of the more exotic items, and (c) provides suitable seasonal recipes.

However, on occasion, these great little services sort of cancel each other out. As, for instance, this week. It's all very well being told that this week's small mixed box includes gala potatoes and white onions, but when we've said ix-nay to the spuds and onions for a while, and they substitute those with some rather more... esoteric... veg, then we don't have much clue as to what they are.

My finely honed deductive processes lead me to believe that these are probably Jerusalem artichokes. (Neither from Israel, nor anything like an artichoke; the guinea pig of the vegetable world, if you will.)



But then, what on earth is... this?


It's... it's like... an Elder Swede.

I'm sort of afraid to put it in a stoo.

_____
* rotfl etc

On to the next chapter, then, and not before time.

Having processed my initial feelings of rejection, considered my options, and inexplicably omitted to drown my sorrows in gin, it has become clear to me that that last bit might be because (a) there weren't that many sorrows, and (b) I was far too busy with business-related stuff to take time out for drinking. Conclusion: having more time to do the business stuff, and maybe even have a little fun now and then, would make me happy.

So I am turning my back on offers of replacement jobs and striding forth, once more, into Glorious Freelancedom. And entrepreneurship. Exciting! I won't be buying many new shoes any time soon, but that's okay. I'll knit myself some warm socks (from my copious yarn stash) instead.

However, I would like you all to know that I am deeply disappointed in The Blog's supportive wossname. Here's how it went in my head:

Me: Woe! I have misplaced my job!
Blog: Oh you poor thing, how awful for you. We feel just terrible.
Me: Actually you know, it's not all bad. In fact it's quite good. In fact I'm really looking forward to this much-needed change.
Blog: Goodness, you are well adjusted. We admire you so much. None the less, it must have been quite a shock. Have a cookie.
Me: Well yes, it was rather. Thanks. Don't mind if I do.

Here's how it went in reality:

Me: Woe! I have misplaced my job!
...
Blog: I'm sorry, were you talking to me?

So. It's a good thing I have real friends. This internet community thing isn't all it's cracked up to be.


[Note to self: Possibly look into more regular posting before complaining of uncaring readers. Just a thought.]

Edit: Asparagus has been cast, by well-meaning and supportive types, on my employer. No need. Despite oddities of timing and such, which possibly added a bit to the shock factor, I really haven't been ill treated, and am happy to give them the thumbs up as Good 'Uns who do genuinely try to care for their staff in a way fully in keeping with their much vaunted pro-social values. Also, the restructuring is a thing of perfect sense and a Good Move all round; also, my boss was rather more distressed than I was at the news. Awww bless.

Restructuring disappeared my job

Hm.

Dark (adj): devoid of light; causing dejection

The clocks going back always takes me by surprise. Or at least, the effect of it does. What?! Dark already? But it can't be, it's only 5 o'clock! That's so... so... depressing.

I seem to suffer from random attacks of seasonal affective disorder. This year is worse than most. Which quite possibly means that it's not SAD at all, but stress, or hormones, or some other unrelated thing. Whatever. It is dark and gloomy, and I am dark and gloomy.

Thing is, I sort of love this time of year. Dark and gloomy? Yay! Let us cuddle under duvets and drink hot chocolate and eat cookies and knit! I was born for this! But here's the fatal flaw: I don't have time for any of that. (Well, maybe the hot chocolate.) And maybe that's what's causing the gloom to be really gloomy, rather than fun gloomy. Conditions are perfect for doing what I most love to do, and I can't do it. So I feel all sulky about the things I do have to do, and I procrastinate, and then I have even more stress and more stuff to worry about, and less time to knit, and so it goes.

Anyway, here I am, having put off going to Tesco all day and now it's dark and gloomy, and going for a walk is so much less appealing than it would have been earlier, when it was bright and crisp and rather lovely out there. Let that be a lesson to me.

Maybe I can get some cookies while I'm there.

On divergence of register

Like everyone else, I have been striving valiantly to free the rice, and enjoying the wonderfully rococo words it throws up. (Flagitious! Rodomontade! Hebetude! Wimble?!) But what is particularly delightful is the deadpan way in which it brings up words from such vastly different contexts. I mean, there's caudate, and erythrocyte, and...

Grok.

I got grok.

Like a circus directed by Tim Burton, or possibly Terry Gilliam

Clair wants to know how the James Thierree show was. It was, as expected, marvellous. Acrobatics and mime and music, all together, sad and sinister and surreal and very funny... quite simply, if you ever get a chance to see the man (he's Charlie Chaplin's grandson by the way), do. And be prepared to walk out wondering if it's too late to run away and join the circus yourself.

In other news, today has seen acquisition of a long-desired bookcase with filing drawer (yes!), a weird contraption that will be very useful approximately once a year (or maybe just once, full stop) and the rest of the time will just get in the way, sundry small storage type devices, two desk chairs, and some interesting Swedish cake things. It has also raised one of Life's Great Unanswered Questions: why is it that after carefully testing every chair in the store, the one that is hands-down the best - and is therefore paid for and brought home - suddenly becomes an awful lot less comfortable than the chair chosen by one's partner?

Corollary to this question: does this syndrome apply only to stores with a fairly cruel refund policy?

The god of small spaces

He did it again. This time with the kitchen and bathroom cupboards. I can't tell you how exciting this is... or rather, I could try, but this would only serve as evidence for the "I am boring" hypothesis, which I really am not that keen to prove.* So we'll just take a moment to meditate on the glory of well ordered closets, and move on.

Folks, I've had a sucky week. Blame the weather, blame my hormones, blame the alignment of the planets, but it started out sucky and got worse. The most (but by no means only) suck came from the semi unexpected discovery that I had to re-interview for my own job. Because of perfectly reasonable rules and such, *not* because I'm not performing well, but naturally it does feel... not great. Officially, right now, I'm unemployed. But I'm going in on Wednesday to carry on doing my job, and presumably, I'll be told at that point that I get to stay.

It's all very odd.

However. Until then I have 5 days to mope do useful and fun things at home, and prepare for the really rather cool upcoming Stitch n Bitch Day, and I have a goodly supply of hot chocolate, and tonight I'm going to see an amazing show that I've been looking forward to for months, so frankly I have no choice but to cheer up. Am I right?

_____
* Thanks to those of you who say otherwise. I would like to emphasise however that I do *not* believe my feelings of boringness to be the result of finding my friends boring; I find them as interesting and cool as ever. Although possibly part of the problem is simply that I find clubbing boring, for the nonce, which gives us less to do together.