Tamar Joshua Rowe

Drinking water makes it throb and doesn't help. Eating food makes me perkier, but doesn't make the pain go away. Being in a hot bath made it throb horribly (I ended up getting out for a while until the water had cooled down at bit and my skin didn't look so boiled) - I should possibly have expected that one, but eh. Walking makes it throb. Sitting still for any length of time still leaves it aching.

It's like a thick line of pain from the middle of my hairline, down diagonally to the middle of my left eyebrow, and then down behind the eye. At various points during the day the vision in that eye... well, it hasn't gone dark, exactly, but I have lost the 3D effect and had that side look fairly dim. I've got some 'pain lumps' in various other bits of my head, but that's the main one.

The resit exam timetable has been published, and the exam I'm supposed to be taking (Physics Third Year Examinations, Module Group 1: Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics) isn't on there. *gasp*

(Here's a link for anyone with a University login who wants to tell me 'Are you sure?' I checked through three times, so unless it's down under a non-Physics department, it's not there.)

I can easily see that I might be the only one taking this exam - it's a third-year module, so the people taking it (except me) either have no progression requirements (and have already graduated) or are on the Masters course and can be deemed to be awesome. And all the numbers of people resitting exams are small - except for Electronics and Management - nothing like the end of my second year, when half the year was resitting things.

And apparently the letter saying 'no, seriously, the dizzy thing that you thought must have gone away after two years? Still happening!' only got through to Physics yesterday, so they haven't actually bothered people to say 'this exam is as if for the first time!' yet, but even without that, it's still a fail of a core module that requires a resit, right? They won't have just not told anyone that the exam paper should exist (for next week), right?


*deep breaths* Worst comes to worst, I take the exam next year. It'll mean a heavier revision load then, but I'm sure I can manage? Most of my work next year will be on the project, too, so less modules + this one -> about the same as this year? Maybe?



Also, ow, panicking does physically hurt. Who'd have thought?

Or, to identify whether the guy I'm talking to realises what sort of bike he's looking at, or if he's just trying to sell me stuff.

My bike cost me fourteen pounds at the student's union bike auction, and then spent a week being drenched in WD40 until the bits moved again. I had a saddle donated to me, and I never took it very far until recently. Since then it's had the gear mech and front wheel replaced because they were horribly misshapen after the vandalism incident, and new break pads at the same time. It's also got a pannier rack and set of mudguards which cost more than it + repairs did.

The key phrase that the bad ones, the ones that think (or think that you think) that a bike needs to look and feel brand new rather than just get you to where you're going without falling apart, use is 'new outer'.

I accept that I'm going to need new brake cables at some point (I think I may have got some new second-hand ones post-vandalism, even), and given the rust, it's probably not long. But, so far, the chaps that have said so have also rattled off a list of things that my bike could 'do with'... including 'new outer'.

Now, I know that my bike does not need new outers (though yes, it may want them). The ones it has are weathered and cracked, yes, but not worn. They'll do. I am a person who doesn't know much about bikes who owns a hack, basically. It doesn't need to be shiny. The gear mech will fall apart again (as it seems half-way to doing already, sigh) before the tires need more help. It is a student bike.


I went into the shop today to get some grease-like stuff to apply to said gear mech, because it was starting to cry whenever I rode it, and the thing that helps it change gears seems to jam up on the lightest settings. I may have told the guy this in a rather too long-winded fashion, though, because he assumed that I wanted to leave it there and get them to fix it (insert list of new bits they could put on in exchange for expensive).

No, I wanted to buy something greasy that would help it happier, and for them to point at the bits that greasing would do the most good with, because I would miss an important bit due to not noticing that it moved. Also, I brought the bike into the shop because I'd used it to travel there and all available leaning-space outside the shop was covered in bikes already. For Sale bikes. Also I hoped that if something was obviously out of alignment and needed a smack, then that could be delivered, but I didn't really reckon on that because it would be making more noise in that case.




Also today I cycled nearly seven miles (according to google maps), some of which was on the ring road! Apparently Boyes closes at half five rather than six now, though (and is looking for full-time and evening staff if any people on f-list are interested in that), and I got there at twenty to six. (Thinking 'Loads of time! Aww...') So I don't get to spend my Friday and Saturday painting polystyrene balls and doing pin-art while listening to the Statistical Mechanics podcast, sadly.

This is/was an epic thunderstorm. Blocks of hail so big that they bounced stones off of my neighbour's roofs. The cul-de-sac is flooded. Forked lightning and very loud thunder.

I was in the shower when it started, and I have no idea whether being in a shower during a thunderstorm is more dangerous than not, so I rinsed very quickly and got out.

Why is it always bigger hailstones in summer than winter?

Now it's stopped raining and left us with that weird peri-storm witchlight, and I feel very strange having watched that.

Lolsob: This chronicillnesscat macro.



But today, I did do things!

Up until about half four this afternoon, it looked like there wasn't anything happening today. I'd breakfasted, had a late lunch and read some fanfic (okay, a lot of fanfic). However, this morning I had decided that I wanted baked beans on toast for breakfast, and there were no baked beans.

And so, a quest was decided - I would cycle to Morrisons, along the osbaldwick/fifth av/st. nicolas fields cycle trail (because the detour down the hill to osbaldwick was worth it to not having to cycle along 'real' roads), and buy some damned baked beans. And all those other things which you get from Morrisons but don't need to buy very often, like Rington's tea. And cheap cleaning fluid. And gluten-free frozen pizza. And a small casserole dish, as opposed to the HUGE one that I have and takes a lot to wash. And-

I did it! I got on my bike with my larp backpack, and cycled along in the sun along the cycle path, dodging dogs and small children, until I got to Morrisons to do my shopping.

And then I got distracted by all the hair stuff and makeup in the 'reduced to clear' section. I like 'reduced' makeup - I feel less guilty buying it than full price, and I do like owning things to doll myself up with.

But I did do my shopping, and it fit into my rucksack (except for one bulky light thing, which I slung around the handlebars), and cycling back the bottom of the rusksack was resting on the pannier rack, so didn't feel very heavy (except that it was a significant enough change in mass that F=ma became more relevent than usual, and the front of my shoulders).

And now I am making a one-person amount of beef stroganoff in my new casserole dish! Okay, it'll be a 'hungry one person' amount, but it won't require two people to eat. It will contain beef and all the spices (in the oven already) and there are chopped a parsnip, two carrots, half a green pepper, and three chestnut mushrooms. Also half a brocolli, but that's not going in the main thing - I think I shall boil a few potatoes and steam the brocolli above them. In an hour or so.

I went for a walk. :)

I'm having to re-learn being functional again after the last couple of weeks, and I may as well try to start now. Next on the list will be 'making a phone call to a utility company', but I think that that might have to wait until next week, now.

I should cook some rice.

You know something I really love about Alex?

Whenever I'm in a whirl of 'wah, I have to make a decision about something?!' (which involves panicking, wahhing, and appealing to anything that might look like an authority - if you squint - to make the descision for me) he smiles, listens to me wah about my options, and then shrugs and says something along the lines of 'It's your decision' or 'you're the only one who can decide'.

It's wonderfully freeing.


(Occassionally he'll point out logical inconsistancies and circular arguments when I'm being actually crazy in my wahhing, and I'm glad of that, too.)

Not for the first time, I wonder:

Why do my landlords think that complete strangers who happen to live together should do each other's washing up just in case the landlords want to pop by (illigally)?

Why do various housemates use my cutlery instead of the communal, and then put the communal in my box and mine in the communal? ...I suspect that the answer to this may be 'I need better labels'. Maybe I'll get Alex to translate 'These are my things; Hands Off' into French...


*

I just washed the saucepan that had been mouldering since Christmas. Yuck. I have no idea whether it was Neringa or Hannah that left it like that, but Burcu gave the 'I did not use it; I am not washing it!' declaration a few days before she left, and no-one who didn't even live here when it started mouldering is going to clean the damn thing.

...I now have the suspicion that Ms. Landlord is going to count that as a victory and keep being a dick, because it's proved to have worked. -_-;;

I'm just too tired for arguments.

This chronic illness cat, so much

I am so glad for the rain last night, and really really hope that it doesn't heat up again later. I might even be able to have some tea this morning...