It's very pleasing when someone who knows far more than you about a subject comes to the same conclusion that you did, independently of your thoughts. It's happened to me a couple of times lately, most recently this evening when I saw my doctor and he agreed that I should increase the dose of carbamazepine that I'm on from 400 to 600mg per day. I think it's more sensible than going back onto a higher dose of Efexor (venlafaxine) because:

a) I spent the summer trying to reduce my venlafaxine dose, and got it from 225 to 75 mg before I started to experience symptoms again.

b) What's wrong now is mood lability and instability. I'm depressed on and off but I'm also hyper on and off, and having "attacks" of crying for an hour and a half with no trigger when I don't actually feel sad. A mood stabiliser seems like a more sensible option to try to level that out than an antidepressant, which will just make any hypomania worse.

Unfortunately as usual he was running excessively late (my appointment time was 6.50pm and I got seen at 7.35pm), and so I completely forgot to tell him about all the possible thyroid issues that I'm still having. Tired all the time, cold a lot of the time, even worse temperature regulation than usual, hair falling out so much more than usual (I'm actually alarmed by the amount of hair that's on my pillow in the mornings), putting on weight despite eating less than usual. I meant to ask whether I should have another blood test, not least of all because carbamazepine is known to affect the results of thyroid hormone screening, and it could be useful to see the results pre- and post- changing the dose. Damn. And looking at this list of possible hypothyroidism symptoms - yep, definitely having a lot more joint problems than is usual for me, and ( TMI ). I suppose I should phone him, as he's only doing physical appointments on Tuesdays now, and I only need to talk about it. Bah!

Tags: better living with modern pharmacology

I'm still reading livejournal very sporadically, and can't see this changing for a while. I've been hideously busy with work-for-money to the point of neglecting work-for-college, and now that my job isn't eating my life quite so much I need to make more time for college work.

I've thought about reducing my Default View further, but I can't easily rank people in order of importance. People are on that list because I enjoy reading their posts. And there is the possibility, as nitoda said last night, that if I trimmed people from that list based on the fact their lives were going okay, that something bad could happen to them and I wouldn't know.

So please bear in mind that I'm not "here" as much as usual, and if I haven't commented on something that's happened that's important to you, please drop the link into whichever of my posts is currently top of my journal. I don't get comments emailed to me, so commenting on an older post isn't much use - even if said post is a good deal more relevant to the subject. You could also email my baratron at livejournal address - that goes to my primary email account which I do check almost every day.

Hope everyone is mostly okay.

Current Mood: okay

Back from Berlin now. Well, actually, we got back very late on Tuesday night but I've been too hideously busy to write about it online. Currently we are having a power cut which means no Xbox, internet or lights, so there isn't much else to do other than sit in front of a laptop on battery power. Bah!

The overriding impression I have of the Festival of Freedom is that it was interesting and I'm glad I went, but I can't say that I "enjoyed" it as such. My mother kept bouncing up and down saying "Do you like Berlin? You don't seem to be enjoying yourself!", which didn't help. The main reason I'm not sure that I enjoyed it was because the history is rather grim and upsetting. It's not very pleasant to see how a government utterly oppressed its people for several decades. Seeing things like the parts of the Berlin Wall that still exist and realising the scope of the thing is incredible. You can read about it and see photos, but it doesn't convey the size. (It really was colossally wide - now there are several streets with buildings in what used to be no-man's-land between the two halves of the wall). And it's all very well to have a celebration because it's 20 years since East Germans became able to vote and travel freely - but what of all the countries in the world that still have dictatorships and totalitarian governments?

It's also rather thought-provoking to imagine oneself in that situation. What kind of person would I have been in East Germany? Would I have been one of the rebels, writing the underground newspapers and risking imprisonment or death on a daily basis? Or would I have been one of the rule-abiders, sticking to the law even though it meant repression of spirit? Could I even have been one of the Stasi (secret police), spying on my fellow citizens? It's impossible to know because I wasn't there and didn't grow up in that environment. Certainly I was incredibly rule-abiding when I was at school. (I've always liked to think that in the Harry Potter universe I'd be Hermione Granger or Luna Lovegood - very smart and willing to risk trouble if it was necessary, but really I was more like a Percy Weasley - unquestioning of the rules and determined to follow them because It Was The Right Thing To Do, even if they didn't make sense).

Also, while we were learning about what everyday life was like for "normal people", they were all apparently white, heterosexual and able-bodied. It's true that the Nazis made it very difficult for people who weren't white to live in the country, but we were looking at life in the 1980s. What happened to gay and bisexual people? What happened to disabled people? (Abortions were free for the first three months of pregnancy). What about the mentally ill? The communist government encouraged women to go to work by having huge state-run nurseries, in which children were potty-trained en masse. All of the toddlers would be put on the potty at the same time and they'd all have to sit there until everyone had finished. What happened to children who couldn't manage potty-training with their age peers?

So yes, lots of things to think about, and maybe some things to research when I have the time and feel up to it. I'll write more about what we actually did another time. Also, Richard has lots of photos which may go online eventually. I'll definitely go to Berlin again - it was one of the most excellent places to eat that I've found in Europe. (You think Germany's all meat and sausages? Well, there were tons of vegetarian & vegan restaurants as well!).

Tags: berlin, mum, travel
Current Mood: thoughtful

Here's an awesome set of photos that I should have posted the day I saw them: Winners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 award. Features wolfy!

Also, I should be packing right now because we're off to Berlin tomorrow. Half of the clothes I want to take are still in the wash though. Argh!

Won't be reading much. See you when we get back.

Tags: links, photos, travel, wolfy

Today's Questionable Content really is amusing. (And yes, it's work-safe).

Tags: links, queer
Current Mood: amused

Yesterday we went to see nitoda and met her cat, who has unbelievably long whiskers. As a result, I am now amused by the thought of what humans would look like if we had whiskers as wide as our shoulders. wuzzie is quite whiskery already, but that would indeed be a handlebar moustache in excess of any human currently alive!

Also, I should have posted this link yesterday. It's a collaboration between Liz Enthusiasm of Freezepop and "a local Japanese audio guy" for Loft, a big department store chain over there.

we "collaborated" on the lyrics, which basically meant constructing a loose narrative around a list of halloween characters that they provided us with (as much as i wish i could take credit for "bad smell candle" or "gecko", apparently the japanese ad agency thought they were pretty spooky characters). the result is a masterpiece of engrish.

Halloween All Stars: 2009 Loft Halloween.

I think the song is really catchy :)

Tags: engrish, freezepop, links, music, wuzzie
Current Mood: amused

Re: extreme right-wing politician on TV
What Nick Griffin said about his Question Time appearance.

What Bonnie Greer said about hers.

Re: homophobic columnist in the Daily Mail
Jan Moir continues to miss the point.

Meh.

Tags: links, politics, queer, racism

I have been working all weekend. My bank balance will be happy but my spoon balance less so. I'm feeling like I'm going down with a cold, which is entirely normal for me if I have to work 5 hours a day for two days. Yes, I know that's pathetic, but that's my health for you.

It doesn't help that on Friday I went shopping for birthday presents for Richard, which involved too much walking round central London. I seem to be "allergic" to London, in that I always have snot from hell the day after going there. It's probably pollution, and there probably isn't anything I can do about it. I bought him a new drum stool. The one he had was this piece of crap. Well, I suppose that's unfair - it was free with the drum kit and perfectly fine for free, but really uncomfortable and hard to adjust, especially for multiple users of different heights (see those notches? It can only have those 6 fixed heights). I've now bought him the top of the range Mapex "drum throne" that is basically the same as this but with a soft plushy top instead of a vinyl cover. It has a spiral like old-fashioned circular piano stools so you can get it to exactly the right height, and adjust it easily if someone else wants to play. The guy in the shop said that soft tops are better than leather or vinyl as they absorb sweat (and you sweat a lot whilst drumming). It is really rather comfortable. I did see a stupidly-expensive Yamaha drum stool (£130! You can buy an armchair for that!), but it was like the bench type of piano stool and way too big.

I have given him the drum throne right away because it was too exciting to wait. Also we're spending his birthday in Berlin watching giant dominoes fall because it's the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I couldn't possibly carry it to Berlin and back on the plane, it would take up all my luggage allowance! The other thing I've got for him is small enough to be carried.

Also, I "accidentally" bought this: Rock Band sheet music for Cello. I haven't played the cello in years again because it hurts my back (when I have Copious Free Time (TM), I need to figure out whether it is actually the position involved in playing the cello that's the problem, or if a different type of chair would help), but I couldn't resist. It was only £8.95, which seemed worth it even if all I do is look at the music and imagine playing it on the cello :) Seriously, since when have you been able to buy rock music scored for cello? You certainly couldn't when I was a teenager.

And we picked up Guitar Hero: Aerosmith because it was £14.99, and it turned out there were enough points on our Game Reward Card to get it for £4.99! It is based on the Harmonix Guitar Hero engine and so is awesome, unlike Guitar Hero: Metallica which is based on Neversoft's Guitar Hero World Tour engine. (Have I ranted about this before? Stupid purple lines!)

Tags: my weird medical stuff, spoon management, video games, wuzzie
Current Mood: tired

I've just been watching Nick Griffin (short BBC biography / long Wikipedia entry) on Question Time. Some thoughts: ( Long )

The "Wisdom" of Nick Griffin
"Indigenous British" people are descended from the people who were here 17,000 years ago."Skin colour is irrelevant". Nick Griffin apparently has no freaking idea of the history of this country. Being an island, we've been invaded a ridiculously large number of times - Romans, Saxons, Vikings, Normans, just in the past couple of thousand years. Our blood is so co-mingled that, even were records available, I'm not sure anyone could trace themselves back that far.

I'm pleased to know that if the BNP suddenly got into power, Nick Griffin would permit me and all the other non-white people to stay in this country. I wonder if the rest of his party agree with him on that, though? Pretty sure a lot of BNP members think that brown people should be sent back to where they came from, which is a problem if you come from here. Maybe they'd have some sort of "Britishness" test.

Nick Griffin thinks that the BBC is "ultra left-wing". This would be the same BBC that is officially impartial and allowed him, as an ultra right-wing politician onto the programme in the face of Cabinet criticism and serious protests? Riiiight.

I'm glad the programme wasn't 100% everyone pile on Nick Griffin, let's see what an idiot he is. Apparently he went to Cambridge, so he must have a brain in there somewhere. I find many of his views repugnant, but it's worth noting how he's managed to drag the BNP from being an extreme racist party with a handful of jackbooted supporters into something that ordinary people are prepared to vote for.

An audience member asked the various panelists about Jan Moir's hateful Stephen Gately article in the Daily Mail. The four panelists who were not in the BNP gave essentially identical answers in favour of free speech (unsurprising considering they were willing to appear on TV alongside the BNP), but suggesting that a person/newspaper should consider whether their opinion is in good taste. Nick Griffin however came out with some wonders:

"I'm against the teaching of homosexuality to primary school children. I'm against the teaching of any kind of sexuality in primary school, I think it's wrong." I started my periods in primary school - was I supposed to think I was bleeding to death?

"Most British people find two men kissing creepy." It's the view of most of Britain, along with all the Muslims and all the Christians. Erm... for someone who is anti-Islam because you think it treats women as second-class citizens, why are you now acting like you're all on the same side? Also, most Christians in this country are not actively against homosexuality.

"Homophobic prejudice - I don't think there's any place in a civilised society for it" - go, Chris Huhne!

I'm going to write some stuff about me sometime. Not sure when.

Tags: politics, queer, racism, uk

Really not doing very wonderfully at all. To give you some idea, today involved my alarm going off at 3pm followed by me falling back to sleep multiple times until it was about 5.30pm. Then I sat in bed reading and having bursts of crying until 8ish. Feeling very tired, very sad and very "heavy" - my limbs feel like I'm in some sort of extra-strong gravity field and moving feels like far too much effort.

Not altogether certain whether it's depression or chronic fatigue or both. For the past few weeks, I seem to have been having an okay day followed by an absolutely shitty day, over and over. Probably need to go back to the doctor. And it's fucking frustrating because I spent the summer reducing the dose of my antidepressant and now what? Dire depression. Richard says "You don't remember how bad you were years ago" and he's right, but nor do I want to go back there.

My concentration span is rotten too. I can't concentrate on anything, then I hyperfocus on something. Like ranting about the stupid Daily Mail article. It's all or nothing, and it's never on the right things. Also I feel cold all the time and my hair is falling out worse than usual.

I'd quite like to crawl into a hole and hibernate for a few months until it's spring again.

Not keeping up with livejournal terribly well. If there's something you want to make sure I know, then post the link here.

Tags: mental health, sad
Current Mood: depressed

Further to my last post, please now die of shock to discover that Janet Street-Porter has written an article in today's Daily Mail which I agree with! The Daily Mail really does have some sort of multiple personality disorder going on - and I use "disorder" advisedly. Sometimes it can be a perfectly reasonable newspaper and print articles which are socially conservative but relatively tolerant, and at other times it reverts to spewing bilious hatred towards anyone who dares to be anything other than "middle England".

I've been trying to find the list of people that the Daily Mail hates (there's a checklist, and you can count up the number of points you get), but it seems to have vanished off the internet. Hrm.

BBC News reports that there have been more than 21,000 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission about the original article, which is apparently the most ever made about a single newspaper article. Good.

In other news, I am still alive, and not getting a lot done. Even Richard has SAD now (something to do with having been in Florida for a week, I think).

Update: I've just discovered that one of yesterday's Mail on Sunday columnists was even more scathing! "Let's get just one thing clear: the cause of Stephen Gately’s death was not gayness.

He was a young man. I don’t know if he had sex or alcohol on the night he died.

Many young men do drink and have sex, though, don’t they? Or is that just a gay thing?"

This is particularly awesome considering that the Mail on Sunday has historically been even worse than the Daily Mail for sheer bigoted ranting about gays/ blacks/ Muslims/ illegal immigrants/ single mothers...

Tags: queer
Current Mood: blah

I am having a lousy day today with depression. I haven't technically got out of bed yet, although I have cleaned my teeth and got dressed. However, even if I don't get round to doing any house-tidying today, I've managed to do something "useful" - which is to join the apparently 1000 other people complaining about this hateful and homophobic article in the Daily Mail about a recently-dead celebrity who hasn't even been buried yet. The original title for the article was even worse.

I think Stephen Fry's comment on Twitter sums it up best - "I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathsome and inhumane." But Charlie Brooker's article on The Guardian's website is also pretty good.

I usually live with the fact that the Daily Mail has regular rabid attacks against anyone who is "different" in any way, i.e. not white, middle-class, heterosexually monogamously married Church of England. But the timing and vitriol of this one is so awful that I thought I'd drag myself to the Press Complaints Commission website and join in the complaints. I'm rather pleased to see that the Make a Complaint page has a big link saying IF YOU ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT THE JAN MOIR PIECE IN THE DAILY MAIL PLEASE CLICK HERE.

For my reference, this is what I said: ( Read more... )

Tags: queer
Current Mood: angry

I have a mystery to solve. On 23rd August, someone in Canada whose name I don't recognise sent me a "Pocket Monica Jump-Jupm Chess". It appears to be a Chinese fake Pokemon rip-off version of Ludo. Notice the name, uh, "Pocket Monica" instead of Pocket Monsters, and the fantastic spelling involved in Jump-Jupm Chess. I get WHY this person sent it to me (because I love Engrish and Pokemon), but WHO are they? Was it a random eBay gift?

A bit of Googling suggests that it was THIS actual Jump-Jupm Chess that I got sent: http://community.livejournal.com/pokemon/2928629.html. It has the same sticker on it. And according to that person's eBay feedback, someone with the username of irfon bought a Jump-Jupm Chess & got given feedback on 25th August... (Worrying how easy it is to get around eBay's "anonymous user IDs" on the bidding page). I know someone called Irfon, but I've never seen him use that as a username.

It's just the whole mystery of having a parcel sent sea/surface mail and it taking 6 weeks to arrive, without being contacted by the sender to say "hey, I've sent you something random". And it is very random! I have honestly spent all my spare time today asking people if they sent it to me, and I'm extremely amused. Hehe.

Also, I'm going to have to take it on the next Pokecharms meet and inflict it on everyone else.

Tags: non-video games, pokemon
Current Mood: amused

Argh! Someone just rang the home phone. It's 11.20 pm, an unreasonable time for prospective students or businesses to be calling. It's not an unreasonable time to phone me for a chat, but most of our friends don't even have our home number. We don't give it out because you have to pay for caller display on landlines, and I don't like answering the phone without knowing who it is first. Anyone I know well would call or text my mobile. Calls this late at night on the home phone must mean death or serious injury to family...

Except whoever it was rang off by the time I got downstairs to answer it (5 rings, not THAT long). It's almost certainly a wrong number - I don't recognise it. Someone drunkenly trying to call a friend for a lift or something like that. And now my heart is thumping fit to burst and I'm trying to come down off the adrenaline jag. I'd have at least liked to know for certain that it was a wrong number and not some emergency call from a phone box.

Tags: aargh, people are stupid
Current Mood: stressed

We have hot water! Yay!!

Apparently what was wrong with the boiler was exactly what we'd thought - the device that determines that both gas and water are present was all blocked up with dirt, so it kept on thinking that one or both of those were missing, and activating the safety cutout. It was quick and easy to get fixed. However, our boiler is still 12 years old, and a cheap, nasty model from a cheap, nasty brand. So we still need to get it changed as soon as possible, because it's going to die completely, soon. Been given a quote for replacing it with a lovely, shiny, good-quality energy efficient new boiler, which seems reasonable - except they'll need physical access to all of our radiators. The house is a fecking tip right now, so this is going to require that spoons are spent in tidying up. Eurgh.

One of the things I didn't mention in my last post was that not only was it taking me 40 minutes to get enough hot water for a bath, but I was having to carry the water upstairs in buckets. Couldn't get hot water out of the upstairs taps at all, and I had to be downstairs so that I could keep hitting & resetting the boiler. Ewww. Now otterylexa & I have both had showers and feel a lot happier about the situation.

I am very grateful to Alexa for having been here helping to keep me sane, because I don't think I'd have managed to get things sorted without the support.

Tags: house, lexa

Not having much fun right now. Seasonal affective disorder is kicking my butt and I have about as much energy as an insomniac sloth. I need to get a lightbox to help, but there are too many different types for me to be happy just ordering one from the net. And I'm TOO TIRED to do research to find out which one would be best for me :/

I also need to get our boiler fixed because it doesn't work. Took me 40 minutes today and a lot of swearing and hitting the thing to get enough hot water for a bath. Richard was supposed to have sorted it out while I was away a month or so ago, but when I got back he insisted it was better. Now he's away in Florida and it's almost completely dead. Getting boilers fixed requires a) finding someone who's heard of our apparently strange and esoteric boiler and b) getting up early enough in the day to phone them. This isn't happening because I need to sleep for 12 hours a day or more.

Some interesting and fun stuff has been happening but I haven't had enough energy to enjoy it properly, let alone write about it.

Please send spoons.

Tags: house, not a morning person, sad, spoon management
Current Mood: tired

Crazy cute Japanese custom vehicles. I kinda want ALL OF THEM. I'm not even sure who the green character is, but I want him!

The side of the Pikachu car is here, in case you were wondering.

Tags: links, pokemon
Current Mood: cuted

Courtesy of Database from #pokecharms: Pokémon Menstrual Pad, Yours for Eight Bucks. The comments are particularly amusing... well, if you know about Pokemon, anyway.

In other news, I am rather behind with reading livejournal and hopelessly behind with posting to livejournal. I'm mostly okay, no need to worry - just still very jetlagged. Can't get to sleep at night then can't get up in the morning. Ugh. More content will exist here soon, really.

Tags: icky girlstuff, links, pokemon

Well, I'm home. Many thank yous to my lovely hosts, jinian & hattifattener and leback & Alexei. Also to their various cats: Dizzy, Bat & Squeak, and Jasmine, Mischa & Tofu, who did not meow all night and keep me awake, jump on me while I was fast asleep, or put all their weight unexpectedly on my bladder. In fact, I successfully shared a bed with Jasmine for an entire night, and only woke up sneezing because of the cold I already knew I had. It may be that I am no longer allergic to cats; either that, or my current allergy meds are good enough to deal with the allergy. Hooray! 

I currently feel absolutely rotten. While in the US I "accidentally" reduced my Efexor dosage from 112.5 mg to 75 mg per day without passing through 90 mg as intended (went straight from every 16 hours to every 24 hours; couldn't manage to remember every 20 hours). This was fine in Seattle which was having unusually summery weather, and especially in the Bay Area which was glorious (around 30 °C and incredibly sunny). Now I am back home, and it is grey, drizzly and disgusting - under 20 °C, and well and truly autumn. SAD is suddenly kicking my arse, bigtime. I wasn't expecting it this early, and I am completely unprepared.

Also, yes, I've had a cold. I'm pretty certain it isn't the PAX H1N1 because I really haven't been very ill at all by my standards. Didn't have a thermometer to check my temperature while I was away, but I knew I couldn't have much of a fever because I could still think. (My brain gives up entirely once my temperature reaches 37.7 °C or so.) However, I was spacing out badly enough in the airport in Friday that I refused the offer of a hotel room for the night, a business class seat on Saturday and $200 in compensation in exchange for allowing myself to be bumped off the flight, because I just wanted to get back to the land of civilised healthcare asap. Really didn't want to have to have the argument/fight with my travel insurance people about whether a chest infection following a cold would count as a "pre-existing" condition given that I have asthma and get secondary infections after every other cold.

I've had a night of bad breathing, so I'm going to pack myself off to the doctor first thing in the morning. Decided I wasn't ill enough for A&E, but I definitely need to get my lungs listened to. I'm 90% sure I have a chest infection, because my lungs feel full of goo and it's hard to breathe deeply. If I didn't have asthma meds, I'd have been a very unhappy bunny - have been taking double of everything for a week now. It's time for Moar Steroids (UGH).

And I have No Freaking Idea how to fix my jetlag. Normal people can get up early and/or go to bed early, and it fixes itself. With my sleep disorder, I could drag myself out of bed at 6 am, but I won't get tired any earlier. The only sure-fire way to fix it is to stay up later and later, and work round the clock *that* way, but... that's a method for last resort. 

Tags: disease, north america, sleep disorders, travel
Current Mood: sick

So it seems that PAX and hanging out with Freezepop ate my brain, because I've only just now got round to organising my trip to San Francisco, and I'm leaving tomorrow. Oops. Maybe if you look at the pretty pictures of the pretty Freezepop, you'll understand. Personally, I think that this is the best photo I've ever taken.

Anyway: my plans are totally up in the air, I haven't even looked at a San Francisco guidebook, I have no idea where any of the parts of the Bay Area are in relation to each other, and I don't have anywhere to stay organised yet. Woohoo. For some reason I am super-flaky this trip. I'm planning to remedy *some* of that disorganisation on the flight at least, assuming I get to a bookshop in the morning. Currently I also seem to have snot, although I'm remaining optimistic that it's "just allergies" rather than a cold, despite evidence to the contrary.

What I do know: ( Plans. Can we make some please? )

Current Mood: confused