helen-louise's journal

Today I am feeling depressed and panicky. The problem with sleeping in hotel rooms is the damned air conditioning. Firstly, it's impossible to control the temperature of the room the way we'd do it at home by throwing open a window, since the windows are sealed. The hotel room defaults to 22 deg C, which is too hot for comfortable sleeping - especially with the two duvets they've given us! I prefer the room somewhere around 17-18 deg C while I'm trying to fall asleep.

Secondly, a single heavy duvet (we removed the second one because it was ridiculous) is improper temperature control for me. At home, I sleep with a thin duvet and a selection of thin blankets, which I throw onto or off the bed depending on my body temperature. It is entirely normal for me to go to sleep in pyjamas and socks under four layers of bedding, and wake up half-naked under two. Here, with one big duvet, I only have the choice of "clothes on" or "clothes off", which is not enough gradation.

Thirdly, the air is too dry. So I have trouble getting to sleep in the first place because my mouth is too dry (three or four of my medications all have 'dry mouth' as a side-effect), leading to a cycle of drinking water and needing to pee which goes on for a while before sleep occurs. Then while I'm asleep my nose swells up inside, and I end up breathing through my mouth, which leads to bizarre, usually horrible dreams. I have a lot of nightmares anyway, but there's nothing quite like waking up having a full-blown anxiety attack simply because of not breaking properly. Blargh.

Saline spray is wonderful, but it only works to rehydrate my nose when I'm awake enough to do the spraying. In cheap hotels, you can lay wet towels across the air conditioner, and that helps to keep the air moist, but this is a fancy-ass hotel and the air conditioning is a vent high on the wall. I remember the time I shared a room at an alt.polycon - can't remember which one - with Cally Soukup, who brought a portable humidifier to combat the air conditioning, and it was the Best Thing Ever. I wonder how she's doing? She was one of my few alt.poly friends who didn't make it over to livejournal. Say hi to her from me if you see her at a convention.

Whine whine whine.

Apart from hotel air conditioning, Montréal continues to be amazing. If papersky ever invites you to the Jean-Talon Market, and you have any interest whatsoever in food, then go. Apparently it is only a quarter of its summer size right now, since the weather means that only the indoor parts were open, but we found vegan-friendly Turkish delight, and sorbet that tasted just like the fruit it was made from, and a tea shop with some very interesting blends. I could have bought many things there, since they had at least six varieties of white tea, which is my favourite, but settled for the Peach Blossom blend which smelled the best.

I had a buckwheat crêpe which was vegan, but rather boring since the stall owner only had butter as a possible fat to fry it in, so it was extremely dry. I should have opted for an apple crêpe with maple syrup, or cinnamon, sugar and lemon, rather than getting excited by the one labelled as "végétalienne". Well, you live and learn.

There was also an entire shop of sheep butter, cheese, lanolin, yarn etc (which nitoda would love); a chocolate shop whose dark chocolate was dairy-free; a spice shop which had more dried chillis than I've ever seen together in one place, as well as an insanely large collection of different types of peppercorn; an organic hippy nonsense shop with vegan chocolate chip cookies (and vegan onion crackers?!); a great deal of charcuterie and seafood; and fruit and vegetables sold by the actual farmers who produce it. That's something which is entirely missing from my most local market in Kingston-upon-Thames: traceability. Anonymous stalls sell barely-fresh fruit and vegetables which could be from anywhere in the world. At least when I go to the supermarket, everything British-produced has a label on to tell me the name and location of the farm it came from.

I have been jealous of mongoose_bite's tales of his local farmers' market for some months now, but having experienced a market like that in person, I now really need to find something like it in or near London. There must be one.

Might go out shopping for clothes or books later if I can face moving. A lot of shops here are oddly open until 9pm Monday to Friday, but only until 5 or 6pm on Saturdays (and Sundays). I understand closing early on Sundays, but it seems odd to be open until 9pm on slow nights like Monday and Tuesday, and then closing so early on a Saturday. It's not how central London works, anyway. I was wondering if it was because a lot of Catholics go to church on Saturday night ("to get it out the way") instead of Sunday morning, but I'm not sure how religious the city still is, despite all the churches around the place.

I've seen a couple of shops which claim to be for "sizes 14+", Addition-Elle and another one I've forgotten the name of which looked like mostly office wear. I wonder if either of them have jeans I can wear? Torrid in the US is great for finding me jeans, but they don't have branches here.

Urgh. I feel so ill. Felt like I might be going down with something on Thursday and have progressed through the various stages of a cold ever since. Made the mistake of going out for dinner on Sunday evening, and since then have also had a raging fever and severe aching as well. Not happy.

Also, my laptop charger is now so broken that it only charges if it's in one very precise orientation. (The laptop and battery are both fine, I had them checked over by the Apple Store a couple of months ago, when this first started). Since a new one costs £60, I have emailed my university Disability Office to ask whether I can just buy it from the Apple Store (10 minutes away!) and claim the cost back, or if Student Finance England are going to be wankers and expect me to wait until one of their official Disabled Students' Allowance suppliers can get one to me. I rather suspect that the latter will be the case, and it's anyone's guess whether I will actually achieve an 85W MagSafe power supply for 15" MacBook Pro made before 2010, or whether I'll be sent one of the other wattages, or an 85W MagSafe 2 power supply, or... Who knows. (Also, I think I might need to fill in a DSA form for next academic year. I can't remember if I've done one yet).

Also also, I put in a repeat prescription yesterday with a request for 5 items, and only 4 of them were dispensed. There is no indication as to why the fifth one wasn't, it hasn't run out of repeats yet, and I even wrote in large, bright blue letters on the first page "5 items on form". It's megadose folic acid, which every so often I think I don't need, stop taking for a couple of days, and then have a horrible mood crash and end up crying my eyes out for several hours whilst wishing I was dead. I have 2 days supply left, so I need to ring the doctor's surgery and say "Oy", but I have no spoons left at all.

Also cubed, one of the Important Drugs on my repeat prescription is going to run out within the next 8 days. Therefore I need to make a doctor's appointment. Currently I am too sick to leave the house, and certainly too sick to sit in a room full of other sick people and swap germs. Urgh.

Also to the power of 4, I need to talk to my next-door neighbours about smoking right outside the front door, rather than passive-aggressively closing the window whenever smoke blows in :/ That definitely requires spoons :(

In happier news, I watched Dara O Briain's Science Club on BBC iPlayer yesterday and it's amazing. They report science news in a reasonably non-patronising way, and do lots of little experiments during the programme itself, in all areas of science. I'm mildly amused because one of the presenters is someone I knew at Imperial, a guy called Alok Jha. He looks absolutely the same as he did then, which isn't bad considering he's claiming to be 37. (I don't think he can be, since I'm sure he was a third year when I was a first year, and I don't think he would have gone to uni aged 16... But maybe I'm misremembering).

Everyone say "Happy birthday" to my dear ex-girlfriend artremis tomorrow, because she's awesome, and I have failed to get a card to her due to the aforementioned sickness and blergh. She likes bunnies, knitting, coffee, and plushies, so if you can find pictures of knitted bunny plushies drinking coffee, that might work well.

Also, I have been up for 2 hours longer than I meant to be, trying to extract information from the London 2012 website - which is a complete failure. The Olympics have happened, and yet there's STILL no information about what sort of food exists inside the various venues. Apart from McDonalds. Which I generally avoid for ethical reasons, such as the fact that most of what they sell isn't actually food.

Although I notice that the Deli Spicy Veggie Sandwich might well be vegan if served without the repulsive mayonnaise. The allergen information says it contains eggs, but the only egg I can find is in the "Cool Mayo". I might well email McDonalds and check, because there's avoiding McDonalds for ethical reasons on the one hand, and starving because Olympics officials didn't bother to consider vegans on the other. Oh, you can take in food as long as it's not an "excessive amount", but you're also only allowed to bring in "one soft-sided bag" (see here), so there's a limit to the amount of food that is feasible to carry. Given the number of extra layers I need to stay warm in the evenings, I'll be left with emergency protein bars and fruit...

If you want a real laugh, try Ask London 2012, for vague, meaningless answers. I've already clicked on the "I still need help" thing because of the uselessness of their "Can I bring an empty water bottle through security, and if so, will there be somewhere to refill it inside your venues?" question. Great, you can bring in a plastic bottle - up to what maximum size? The Download Festival information had wording like this, and we got there to find out that only 500 ml bottles were allowed. Which is bloody annoying for the carer of a disabled person who drinks a lot of water.

Back at home, doing last-minute wedding preparations. Things that have annoyed me today:

1) The booklet on how to get married provided by Hammersmith & Fulham Council specifically says "If you would like a particular piece of music that may be 'special' to the two of you, please bring it along to the register office before the day of your marriage." The booklet on weddings, which I don't have right in front of me to quote, even says that music must be approved in advance by the Senior Registrar! So why, when I turned up with a CD today, was I told that I could have just brought it tomorrow?

2) Whole Foods in Kensington were being sucky. Last Tuesday or Wednesday, I went there to enquire about how to order cakes. I wanted to place an order for 2 x 7" vegan chocolate fudge cakes. I was told by the Bakery assistant that not only was there not a form to fill in, but they always make several of those cakes fresh every day so there is no need to order them. Well, today I went, and there was all of ONE 7" vegan chocolate fudge cake. As a result, there is Not Enough cake. Grrr.

3) Richard forgot to buy (or tell me to buy) a pocket watch. So now he's complaining that he can't fit his wristwatch under the strange sleeves of his wedding outfit, and it's too late to do anything about it. I tried looking for pocket watches online, and the cheapest ones available in shops which exist in Kingston were £150 (and quite ugly). I only know two people who might have one to borrow, and one of them lives too far away to be any help.

For people who want to know why anyone needs a watch at a wedding, Richard always needs a watch. It's a Richard-thing. He feels undressed without one and indeed, often walks around the house wearing only underpants, a watch and his ring.

4) Our menu, which looked so good on A4 paper, looks awful on A5 paper. A5 is half the size of A4 - I've gone from formatting it as a flat, double-sided sheet to a four-sided booklet. But it just looks ugly. I have to figure that out before I can go to bed.

5) I have period pain. Gah.\

12 hours to go...

Blah. I'm trying to get work done, but I'm so physically uncomfortable as to make that rather difficult. I'm tired, in pain from the cyst (or whatever), perched on a really nasty chair without sufficient back support, the air in this room is too dry, and my feet itch.

None of these things are related (except, perhaps, that I got even less sleep last night than I would have otherwise, thanks to the pain), and most of them are things I can do nothing about. Bring a more comfortable chair to College, perhaps. Bring some slippers so I don't have to sit in my shoes all day.

These really are a bunch of First World problems, aren't they? Here I am moaning about being uncomfortable when I'm in a heated office with electricity, and clean drinking water and a not completely unhygienic toilet round the corner. Ah well.

Edit: 20:15 I am now sitting cross-legged on the floor and feeling much happier.

Firefox 6.0 is pissing me off because it seems to have lost my old default setting of "please save all my tabs when I quit Firefox" - and I can't even find that setting any more in the Preferences! I generally work with a ridiculous number of windows and tabs on the screen, often more than 50 tabs open at once. Losing my entire session when I have to close Firefox for some reason such as Flash needing to update again or yet another stupid Microsoft Office update is just TOO MUCH.

Anyone know how to fix this? I'm sure one of you does :)

I also think it's stupid the way Firefox is now updating the big number every couple of weeks - going from 4.0 to 5.0 to 6.0 instead of 4.0 to 4.1 to 4.2, but that's another rant in itself, and I don't pretend to be savvy in the ways of software numbering.

An actual post with CONTENT will follow tomorrow, when I will have hopefully recovered from my minor cold-let and no longer have a brain full of snot ;)

Dear gods, I am going insane. Whose stupid idea was it to bring myself to New York even though I haven't finished my coursework, on the basis that I can do my work anywhere? ARGH!

( Moaning about my dear family, feel free to skip. )

I am so glad that we didn't try to go anywhere exciting for dinner last night and just went to Better Burger. Because anything done twice is tradition, and I'm now on my fifth trip to New York and... seventh? eighth? tenth? trip to Better Burger. Last night I had a soy burger, smashed potatoes, fruit smoothie and vegan brownie. Fast food that is actually food. Om nom nom.

Okay, I think I've got all the moaning out of my system. Better try to get on with some work.

I'm already in a bad mood because I've registered for the Wellcome Trust Library & am supposed to be getting remote access to their journals, & it's not working. I can access the current issue of any of the journals, but not the archive - which makes it fairly pointless. (How often is the article I want going to be in the current issue?). And I've just returned to my office after using a computer in the main lobby in the hope it would behave better, to find that my officemate has stunk up the place by farting a lot! Oh joy!

Today I have dragged myself out of the house for the first time in... over a week. (I can't actually remember when I last left the house). Brought myself up to college, walking v e r y   s l o w l y, and got a taxi from Waterloo because my ability to deal with stairs on the Tube is, heh, laughable. Only to find the big shiny computer is still broken, so I can still do no more work here than I could at home (not that I've been working at home either - too ill). The main lifts are out of action until September because they are being replaced - this is probably going to be a very good thing in the long term, because I'm told by Estates that the lifts we had before were desperately under-specced, which was why they broke down all the time - but in the meantime it means walking out of my way to use the goods lift or the passenger lifts at the other end of the building. Which is hard when I'm flippin' exhausted. The library lift is broken for the umpteenth time, so I can't access the library out of hours because I have to ask a librarian/library assistant to take me upstairs via the goods lift and secret passageway. And I've just found out today that the lab stool that has been sent by my Disabled Students' Allowance supplier is the wrong one. It's a low/short lab stool, and I was supposed to be getting a tall one - so I could work at an actual chemistry lab bench like a normal person.

If you look at this web site (belongs to manufacturer rather than useless DSA supplier), what they have actually sent is the Opus Low Laboratory Chair, and they were supposed to be sending the Opus High Laboratory Chair. I don't know if this is like the laptop, yet another mistake made by the useless PA who typed up my DSA report, or if it's a mistake at the supplier's end. Certainly not very happy about it though!

And it'll take more spoons that I don't have to get it sorted out. Walking hurts like hell, I've still got my right wrist strapped up all the time except when I'm asleep, still can't write, open doors or turn taps with my right hand, carry objects of more than, say, 2 kg because of it (that's the weight of my laptop held between both hands, and it's taking considerable spoonage to move it around the house, especially if stairs are involved), and I'm sleeping for 12 hour blocks. Usually waking up panicky because that's all part of the hyperventilation occulta, which then makes me non-functional for a few more hours. And then feeling quite depressed, can't think why that could be </sarcasm>.

I need someone to come round and find/sort out all my taxi and book receipts, and shout at Student Finance England until they send me the claim forms (the normal claim form is on the internet but there is apparently a 'special' book claim form, gods only know where that one is secreted), fill in the claim forms, get a letter written from someone official at college to support the days when I have taxi receipts that aren't detailed enough for what they want, and reapply for DSA for next year. Oh yes - and get my house tidied so it's not a complete state, and get some academic work done.

Oh, and to add more fun, the door in the postgraduate office on the sixth floor has a broken lock, so you need to enter the code as you go out as well as when you go in, and hold the handle down to lock the door. I can't do this, because of aforementioned shitty weak wrists! So I don't know what I'll do if everyone else leaves before me tonight! Apparently no one has actually reported it! I'm hardly ever in this office - only here tonight because my brain was too fried for me to remember to bring my keys for the third floor office where I usually am, but some people are here every day - surely it's sensible to report a broken lock?! Am I asking way too much here?

Other things that have been eating my brain lately: trying to get access to the disabled areas at the Sonisphere festival. The thing they use to determine eligibility (apparently ALL music festivals and concerts) is whether or not you receive Disabled Living Allowance, which I've never bothered to try claiming because I know I'd only get the lowest possible rate, and the form is too depressing to fill in. So it looks like I'll have to do that, and get rejected, because that's how claiming DLA works (you apply, and even if you can't physically move without help, you get rejected, and then you appeal it). ARGH.

Oh well. I have tickets to go and see Peter Mandelson speak on Monday. That should be fun.

Haven't been writing much here lately. Been feeling quite blah for over a week now. ( Self-indulgent moaning. )