helen-louise's journal

I fly home tomorrow. These trips to the US seem to go quicker every time. Of course, it doesn't help that this time I spent a week either in bed or lying around on the sofa complaining about how ill I was.

Grant didn't have a lot of time off work because he's saving his vacation days for visiting me at Christmas (12th December to 1st January - well, arriving on 13th and flying back the morning of 1st). So we've mostly been travelling at weekends. We went to a zoo a couple of hours east of here, which made us a little unhappy and uncomfortable because the animals really didn't have enough space and some of them were displaying stress behaviours. The grizzly bears were okay, the North American black bear cubs were okay, but the black bear adults and the wolves were definitely very unhappy. We've also been to the Corning Museum of Glass - which does have some science as well as art, and to the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse. Tonight we were supposed to be going to the Rochester Contemporary Art Center but Grant is asleep. Also I am supposed to be doing some paperwork and getting myself ready to go home tomorrow, and instead I am involved in two fairly weighty conversations on Discord :(

Grant has a new psychologist who specialises in treating adults with autism. This is a good thing. However, as part of the assessment she's given me a Repetitive Behaviors Scale – Revised (RBS-R) form to fill in and it's really fucking offensive. ( Content warning: Discusses stupid neurotypicals' idea of autistic behaviour. )

My web browser is lagged to hell and back, so it's once again time to clear out the links that are cluttering up my tabs.

Warning: Do not click while eating. THIS is literally just round the corner from where I live. It explains A LOT about why there are suddenly humungous traffic jams in Kingston. It's because there's a "bus-sized" "fatberg" blocking the drains, and Thames Water is doing emergency engineering work to try to get it out. EWWWW.

xoJane: My Starbucks name is Rebecca. As someone who has a deep-seated phobia of telling strangers her name, I really empathise with this article. And the comments. Oh my.

Worst Album Covers of All Time. Okay, one of these is clearly female body-hair shaming, and one of the others is non-conventionally attractive woman shaming, but most of the rest? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Having said that, there's nothing wrong with that Orleans album cover apart from the fact that one of the men does not have a beard, and one of the others has a hairless chest.

BBC Nature News: Wolf howl identification technology excites experts. ARROOOO!

Pervocracy: I just figured out why I get patted down every time I fly! Anger-making, but also funny: like all the best rants.

More about how I am some other time.

Those of you who were watching my journal last week would be forgiven for worrying that I had been horribly maimed or murdered by my research report, since I never got back to livejournal to tell you that I'd survived. Actually, no death or serious injury occurred, except to my stack of spoons, which went so badly into overdraft that it took almost a week of sitting on my arse on the sofa playing Oblivion before I could think about work again. (Yes, I'm going backwards - having spent something like 300 hours on Skyrim, and nowhere near finishing it, I decided to try Oblivion, the previous Elder Scrolls game. Which turned out to be a good thing, since it's much less immersive than Skyrim (the UI in particular sucks on Xbox 360), you can't ever forget you're playing a game, and it's easier to STOP playing and get on with something else).

I am now basically fine, apart from being extra-prone to nightmares. They've been ranging from so realistic that I wake up having an anxiety attack and am useless all day, to so over-the-top that they're obviously "just dreams". Like the one I had last night about BiCon, which featured such delights as the days in the programme book being in the wrong order, so the workshop I was running which I thought was at 12pm on Friday was actually at 12pm on Thursday, and us using many tiny classrooms in a huge university block, around others which were still being used for classes. (None of which would ever happen in real life). And someone giving a talk about protein science, which I went along to out of interest, discovered that a lot of it was wrong and wondered if I was supposed to pull the "I'm a PhD student in this discipline and you're talking bollocks" tag. (Why would someone give a talk about protein science at BiCon anyway?). If the tenses in this paragraph are bizarre, you can blame the fact I'm talking about a dream.

What else? We finally went to Whipsnade, and Saw The Bears. Photos exist, but are unlikely to be online unless I can persuade Richard (the perfectionist) to spend an evening sorting them out and posting them. The sloth bears (Melursus ursinus) were small and cute and not hugely interesting. The brown bears (Ursus arctos arctos) were awesome and snuffly! We spent ages watching them since when we got there, they were mostly sleeping. Or at least, dozing - all bears have multiple stages of activity and rest during the day. So we had to wait for them to wake up.

Bear number 1 spent the whole time lying down, so she was quite beautiful but not very interesting. Bear number 2 spent most of the time doing bear yoga - sitting on her big bear bottom stretching out one back leg, then stretching out her front leg on the same side to touch it. Then she got up and started foraging for carrots and apples which the keepers toss into the grounds. Bear number 3 was way back in the forested part of the enclosure so we couldn't see what she was doing - but then she came forward and foraged too.

We also saw Very Squeaky otters, parts of red pandas (the rest hidden by foliage), a herd of wild boars, a wolverine, many penguins, Moosen In The Woodsen, and wolves. Which were very far away, and mostly doing impressions of wolfskin rugs. Also some obscure relative of donkeys, the name of which I've forgotten, unicorn rhinos, and giraffes. We did not see elephants because I was running out of wheelchair battery.

Unrelated to the above, I saw Rock of Ages at the cinema. It was immensely silly. I loved it, but then I am also the person who saw Blades of Glory on an aeroplane and went out & bought the DVD. If you love naff 80s hair metal/cock rock, watch Rock of Ages. If you hate it, don't bother.

Now I need to find someone to go to the musical with, since Richard hates all musicals.

"Tomorrow" (i.e. later today by the time you read this), we'll be off to Brussels on Eurostar in our quest to escape the Royal Wedding. We're spending a lot of the time with Tim & Peter, although they are also going to see Peter's parents.

We are planning to go to Rotterdam Zoo to see the baby polar bear, and Ouwehands Zoo to see brown bears and wolves. We are hoping to meet up with rhialto at some point (probably Sunday). If any other Dutch people want to meet then leave a comment - we'll be in the Netherlands from Friday to Sunday, and then in Brussels again on Monday.

And yes, we do know it's Queen's Day on Saturday!

Also, this little guy is too adorable for words. He looks just like our plushie Mookiee - only he's a real, living creature!

And critically endangered. Bum.

I like this little guy too - not a pygmy sloth, but some other kind. Possibly a two-toed sloth, and certainly a live ewok. As is the three-toed sloth, who is pretty much the living image of Wicket. Hmm, I'm spotting a theme.

You've probably seen this linked by someone else already, but if not: George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, But It’s Okay. And here is Chewbacca the dog, or another live ewok.

I like ewoks, okay?

wuzzie reports in email: "The cute! It burns! Want!!" at the following baaaaby polar bear. I think picture 5 is the cutest. Baaaaby bear paws! Five little baaaaby bear toesies on each back paw, four baaaaby bear fingies and a thumb on each front paw. Awww.

Today I am insanely, ridiculously, sleepy. It took me AN AGE to crawl out of bed, and I haven't woken up properly all day despite application of light box, nasal spray, nutrition, vitamin pills, shower, chocolate and hot herbal tea (any two of which would normally be enough to do it). I'm in the sort of sleepiness state where I regret my extreme overreaction to most forms of caffeine, because coffee would seem like a good idea today. Perhaps I should get some jasmine or green tea and keep it in the house for emergencies. (I can handle the amount of caffeine in a large mug of hot chocolate, a small mug of green tea, or in many small cups of jasmine tea. I can't handle the amount of caffeine in half a small mug of normal British "cuppa" tea, or in coffee, or in more than 2 mouthfuls of Coke or Dr Pepper. I also detest the taste of coffee.)

I have, however, achieved a haircut. It's the sort of haircut I specialise in, whereby most people external to me can see no difference. My hair has had about 6-8 inches cut off the bottom, but this merely changes it from so long I was lying on it in bed and getting caught up in it to, er, long. It feels lighter, looks neater, and I'm sure it'll be much easier to wear in ponytails or bunches. But unless you knew that my hair was most of the way down my back, you're unlikely to notice any difference.

Sometimes I like extreme haircuts. I like the look of me with short hair that curls around my face. But Richard and my mum both have a strong preference for me with long hair (and tell me so on a regular basis), and my other partners don't much mind either way. So long hair it is... unless I think of something better to do with thick so-dark-it-looks-black (but isn't really) wavy/curly hair.