helen-louise's journal

Yesterday, when I went to bed, it was grey and drizzling, and I thought "hooray, that's my birthday rain". I've had less than 10 dry birthdays in 36 years. There's an actual reason for it, too, but I can't share it with you because it's from an old copy of The Times and they now want a login for it - even though it's from before they started charging for online content! You'll have to make do with my summary from the time.

Today I have received the best birthday present ever, which is a drawing from stellarwind. Everything in the picture is a reference to something in my life, and I don't actually EXPECT anyone to get all of the references, unless they're me :) It's still pretty awesome to share, though. I need an emergency spoon dispenser in real life, and the "thirty-six impossible hydrogen bonds" is both a double pun AND based on an actual problem that I've been having with my work.

I don't expect to get any more birthday presents until I have time to use them, which is fine by me. Work is being awful, and doing that thing it does of expanding to more-than-fill the time available. I've spent three whole days trying to get a program to work with certain files, and if my supervisors can't come up with a magical solution today, I'm going to throw them out, because I can't afford to waste any more time on this part of the project. I'll just write about the files which did work.

I hate being under an impossible time pressure.

I have been looking online for underpants for Richard for 3.5 hours now, and still not found anything suitable.

The Safe-for-Work part:
The reason I'm looking for pants is that his current ones are all full of holes. I am generally of the opinion that everyday underpants should have three, or at most, four holes. His have more than that.

The problems are as follows:
(1) Richard likes "briefs" or "slips". He does not like Y-fronts, "boxer briefs", "trunks", or boxer shorts. He certainly doesn't like the strange underwear I've found that is "like going commando" (link only borderline safe for work).

(2) Richard likes pants with a small, comfortable waistband. Not one of the ginormous pieces of elastic, over an inch thick, which seem to be fashionable these days. It is almost impossible to find "briefs" or "slips" with what I consider to be a normal waistband!

(3) Richard doesn't want words all around his belly. Seriously, what is the deal with that? It's one thing having DIESEL or AUSSIEBUM stitched around your waistband, but quite another to have CALVIN KLEIN. I just don't get what sort of man would want another man's name on his underpants. (Who isn't his boyfriend. I could understand in a cutesy sort of way if someone walked around with his partner's name on his knickers^*). Richard is easily confused in the morning, and if I gave him pants with another man's name in large letters, he might forget his own name! So far I have found Calvin Klein, Andrew Christian, Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss, Emporio Armani, Olaf Benz, Joe Snyder, Bruno Banani, Alexander McQueen, James Tudor and - bizarrely, Björn Borg. And it seems to be the same Björn Borg who used to be a tennis player, as one of the designs is called Grand Slam. And they are really, hideously ugly, eye-melting fabric choices. (More eye-melting fabrics can be found at Ginch Gonch, but at least you wouldn't mistake that for your own name.)

I have joked about getting (making?) him pants that say WUZZIE along the waistband.

(4) You know how there are "big and tall" men's shops? I wish there were also "short and skinny" shops! Some men's underwear has a smallest size of 32". Richard has a 28" waist, bordering on 29" now he actually has some muscle.

So far I have looked in Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, Burton, Next, Muji, New Look (I didn't even know they did men's stuff), Uniqlo, TopMan, Sock Shop (!), American Apparel, and a load of online retailers. (Many of whom seem to specialise in alarming undies for wearing in "interesting" clubs or the type of gay cruise that happens on a boat, with no normal everyday knickers on offer). I have found some awesome environmentally-friendly/10% goes to charity pants, but in the wrong styles. Also Pants to Poverty, in the wrong styles.

Frustrated. Who'd've thought shopping for such an average-shaped person as Richard would be difficult?

( Less work-safe (though you don't have to follow the links) )


Terrifying male underwear, not even SLIGHTLY work-safe:( Read more... )


And a couple of irc logs: ( Why I love HoopyCat, part n in an ever-expanding series. )


^* Richard also insists that men don't wear knickers, they are only for women. I am Confused because I thought "knickers" was short for "knickerbockers", and hence any kind of ass-covering could be referred to as knickers. Especially if it doesn't have its own special name like boxer shorts. Opinions?

I think I've found what I want for my birthday: Daisy Rock Guitars - Rock Candy Bass, in Atomic Pink. I have to admit that as a chemist I am not certain that any atoms are pink, but it's so incredibly, awesomely pink that I don't mind.

I, um, really should get around to telling the story of the Evil Pink Stuff, a.k.a. Why H-L Shouldn't Do Organic Synthesis for everyone who didn't know me in, er, 1996. (That'll be almost all of you). Short version: It was supposed to be o-benzoyl benzoic acid. What it actually was remains a mystery, because I only had time to run one infrared spectrum and no nmr or mass spec - but whatever it was, it was pink. O-benzoyl benzoic acid is *not* pink. Various lab demonstrators accused me of crimes such as Leaving In The Catalyst or Not Properly Recrystallising It, but the catalyst wasn't pink either, and I swear I followed the instructions to the letter. It's true that I had a weird, porridgey, pink mess instead of lovely shiny crystals, but, er... I don't know why!! Except for the adage that Good Chemists Make Good Cooks and vice versa, and at the time my level of culinary expertise amounted to cooking dry pasta in boiling water and heating up a premade sauce in a saucepan or microwave. I sometimes wonder if I'd be any better at organic synthesis now considering that I can cook pretty well, but my random allergies to random chemicals suggest it might not be a great idea to try.

I played the cello for seven years and still really like the sound of lower-pitched instruments. I tried to take it up again a few years ago, but discovered that the posture required was no longer compatible with my back. I've been playing bass in Rock Band for months now and feel really suited to it, and I want a real bass to play. If this chemistry thing doesn't work out, I'm going to go off and become a rock star. Oh yes. 

Today I got to spend a large amount of fake money on the trip to Iceland. There are four people travelling: myself, and my three partners; and considering how late we're booking it wasn't actually that expensive. Nonetheless, in conjunction with some other things that have come up lately, it's got me thinking about my priorities in life.

When I was poor (when I was a student, during the horrible 13 months when I sat around at home too ill to function, and while working at a crappy telephone market research job) I was very material possession-oriented. All the money I had left over after paying my bills would go on Things - mostly, CDs and video games. I saw spending £25 on a game that contained 40 hours-worth of amusement as an investment - because I couldn't afford to do everything I wanted to, and I needed things to do that were relatively cheap. Getting entertainment for a mere 62.5p per hour was an excellent thing.

As I've been working harder and for more money, I seem to have got to a point where I've almost gone into reverse. Now, I only seem to regularly spend money on things that I need to stay alive: food, meds, cleaning materials for self & house, toilet paper, etc. I spend very little of my disposable income on entertainment or material possessions, because I already have too many Things cluttering up my house, and I don't have enough time to play/read/listen to everything I already own. I'm rich in money but poor in time, rather than the other way round. Instead, my money gets funnelled into a savings account (that will eventually become a pension, once spoons exist to get that organised) and left there. The only things that I spend large amounts of money on are education and travel. Going to museums, visiting friends around the world, seeing new places. Experiences and memories in my head, rather than physical objects. And, y'know, I'm totally okay with that.

People keep asking me what I want for my birthday, and the truth is "Nothing, really". I have a wishlist which I need to update with books, CDs and DVDs, and I'm happy to receive any of those items. But for the most part, I'd rather get to see my friends and do something interesting with them than receive yet more $stuff. The only things I really want are the trip as far north as possible on the Solstice (which I've been waiting 11 years for) and a large, glossy photograph taken at a professional photographer's of all my local chosen family, to be framed and mounted on the blank piece of wall in the study (which I've been wanting since my 30th birthday).

I think being an integer power of 2 years old is worthy of celebration, so I'm planning to have a party sometime over the summer. Not sure when or where, and of course the summer is already packed with other people's plans, making things difficult. Though I'm sure geek social fallacy #4 is bound to apply, I'd still like to invite everyone that I know and like to come along. And I'd be happier with people's presence at the party than with anything else.

Last Thursday was my birthday. The day was spectacularly quiet, but in the evening 8 of us (me, wuzzie, alexa_robinson, artremis, meeping, gerwinium, hatter & bfo) went to 222. Dinner was perfect, and it was just the right number of people - so most of the time there were no more than two separate conversations on the table, and everyone could talk to everyone else. I did feel a bit sorry for Ludy, though, sitting between Richard & Marcus, as they've been co-conspirators since 1994 but haven't actually lived together these past 9 years. So they were getting louder and louder and louder, and Ludy had forgotten her earplugs. Oh well.

I got some nice presents, including a Wii plus the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess from Richard, and Eledees from Tim & Peter, and an octopus t-shirt from Richard's sister A. Ludy bought me Montezuma's chocolate and the foulest-smelling Lush product EVER! Fortunately, it's supposed to smell that bad, and it may turn out to be a useful natural replacement for the evil green seborrhoeic dermatitis shampoo that I'm forced to use to get my hair clean.

As is typical for my birthday, it was grey and cloudy for half the day, chucking it down with rain for a quarter, and reasonably warm and sunny for the rest of it. I always thought the fact I've only had three or four dry birthdays in my life was me being paranoid or misremembering, but apparently there's a great deal of historical precedent. Apparently there is actual scientific reasoning for why the end of June is so rotten weather-wise! You have to wonder why they insist on holding Wimbledon and Glastonbury at this time of year when the meteorologists consider it "monsoon season".