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Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
lathany
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9:10p
Dog
Work has a rather wonderful Xmas Tree in the foyer. After the Victoria and Waterloo station disappointments (just a lot of little blue lights and nothing else), it's nice to see a good tree. White lights, red and gold decorations, it's both tasteful and glorious.
current mood:  cheerful
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mrlloyd
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9:42a
Mice
We have mice. Food in the cupboard under the stairs has been chewed upon. Said cupboard has now been emptied, and the food replaced with poison.
It may not be needed though, since the twin ferocious guardians of the living room have now racked up three kills. Tom and Jerry it isn't.
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mrlloyd
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9:39a
Forwards!
Lisa 'four tooth' Lloyd can now do that combat crawl thing babies do. The Dutch call it tijgeren (tiger crawling). I'm not sure there's a word for it in English.
Anyhow - she's tiger crawling, and it's getting faster by the day.
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(16 comments | comment on this) Monday, December 7th, 2009
cuthbertcross
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9:23p
Cheese review! Chaource and flower cheese
Thanks to an impromptu trip to London at the weekend, we have more cheese!
Chaource is French, brie-like and very creamy. It comes in mini-rounds and does that melty thing where the middle is still solid but surrounded by a soft edge so that it has some tendency to ooze over the cheeseboard. So you are compelled to finish off the runny bits. Shame. The girls both love it.
Flower cheese is raw ewe milk -cheese, again with a brie-like rind. But it's square! It's a littke chalkier than the chaorce but still fairly full flavoured. It's even runnier ( makimg me think of the Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch).
Mmmm, cheese!
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verlaine
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9:34a
Moral Effects of Tea-Tasting
The long-continued use of tea has a distinct effect upon the character. This has been too often noticed and remarked to be questioned. There are tea-sots in every great charitable institution - particularly those for the maintenance of the aged. Their symptoms are generally mental irritability, muscular tremors and sleeplessness. The following is an account of one of the cases observed. The immediate effects upon him are as follows: In about ten minutes the face becomes flushed, the whole body feels warm and heated and a sort of intellectual intoxication comes on, much the same in character, it would seem, as that which occurs in the rarefied air of a mountain. He feels elated, exhilarated, troubles and cares vanish, everything seems bright and cheerful, his body feels light and elastic, his mind clear, his ideas abundant, vivid and flowing fluently into words. At the end of an hour's tasting a slight reaction begins to set in; some headache comes on, the face feels wrinkled and shrivelled, particularly about the eyes, which also get dark under the lids. At the end of two hours this reaction becomes firmly established, the flushed warm feeling has passed off, the hands and feet are cold, a nervous tremor comes on, accompanied with great mental depression. And he is now so excitable that every noise startles him; he is in a state of complete unrest; he can neither walk nor sit down, owing to his mental condition, and he settles into complete gloom. Copious and frequent urinations are always present, as also certain dyspeptic symptoms, such as eructations of wind, sour taste, and others. His mental condition in peculiar. He lives in a state of dread that some accident may happen to him; in the omnibus fears a collision; crossing the street, fears that he will be crushed by passing teams; walking on the sidewalks, fears that a sign may falls, or watches the eaves of houses, thinking that a brick may fall down and kill him; under the apprehension that every dog he meets is going to bite the calves of his legs, he carries an umbrella in all weathers as a defence against such an attack.
- At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien
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lanfykins
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1:53p
Deep thoughts, for a Monday.
I was discussing self-harm with someone recently. It's something I've done in the past, and though everything's fine at the moment I know it's something I'll undoubtedly do again in the future. I was trying to explain why.
( Cut for triggers. )
(And it's really odd trying to remember, while you're sane and stable, how things felt when you weren't)
current mood:  thoughtful
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(1 comment | comment on this) Sunday, December 6th, 2009
lathany
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10:04p
Moon and Santa Claus
It's been a good weekend. Yesterday morning ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) chrestomancy took the duo birthday shopping and I tagged along. Ryan got a toy puppy on a lead and a plastic snake. Bea got a Rubic Cube, a Magic 8 ball and a pokemon game.
The day then become bateleur's horror game (gaining Alistair and TheHattedOne for the party) where we were jurors on a murder trial also involving black magic, a demon from the mines, some very weird house moving (literally) and identity swapping. The game rocked as it combined the murder trial and the horror plot feasibly, whilst giving the players plenty to do. Plus a bunch of rock-hard monk types turned up to rescue the situation when called. chrestomancy helped blow up the demon with explosives and TheHattedOne killed the sorcerer by running him over.
Today included putting up the tree and watching Blade II (although the film mostly sucked). I almost feel ready to face tomorrow's meeting.
current mood: calmer
current music: Shadow Hearts Near Death Arrangements
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waistcoatmark
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8:45p
Panoramic photo printing
I've got a panoramic photo (5.4k x 1.4k pixels) that I'd like printed at a fairly large size.
Can anyone recommend sites that could handle that?
Thanks
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waistcoatmark
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12:15p
Worn out, but slowly recovering
The last few weeks has seen a last sprint to get work done before the pre-Christmas lockdown (sensibly enough, our production systems are locked down in "emergency fixes only" for the few weeks around Christmas - when much of the firm is going to be unavailable and/or drunk. So when the BU says we want features X,Y and Z before Christmas, that means we have to finish writing them before December.
At the same time we had a "small family get-together" at our house to show off the extension, and celebrate a couplke of parents' birthdays. Being at the end of a rather spindly branch of a family tree with a fair number of only children, my idea of a _large_ family get-together is about 4 people. sielis's family is somewhat larger however, so we needed to sort out the logistics of 13-odd people turning up over various days and needing food, bed-space etc.
This weekend has been a lot more low-key, allowing me to get some time in on Dragon Age, or "dragonage" as it's become known in this house. After getting my arse repeatedly kicked and the bruised remains handed back to me on a plate, I was having enormous trouble progressing even with the help of the valiant Sir Savealot. Until I was told by a fellow player that I was doing the quests in the wrong order, the one I was doing was one of the harder ones and I should have started on a different quest.
So here's a tip for game designers. When you've had the initial setup section to explain what's going on, gain your initial followers etc, and then you are given a bunch of quests to gather the plot-coupons required to cash in for the end-of-game climax: if the various quests vary massively in difficulty, then NPC comments like "I'd advise going to X first, the allies there will be of much use when confronting Y and Z" or "I'd advise going to Z last, the woods there are full of most potent beasties, and we'll need to be at our full strength before entering there" would be very useful. Instead of "shrug, I don't know: we have to do them all, but I've got no strong opinions about which one is the best to start with", which is what you actually get. Stoopid game.
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mrlloyd
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9:52a
Save the covered market?
There's a facebook campaign to save the covered market. However apart from 'The liberals' and 'rising overheads' it's not very clear what it needs saving from.
Links from the facebook page suggest the council is about to sink 100k into doing the market up, which is an odd way to destroy something. Can someone enlighten me?
Update - Ah, it's the Tories. And it's about rent, rather than say, demolition. Much more information needed I think.
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heading Grinchwards
