Anyone got a tissue?

You come into work. You feel rubbish. You sneeze over everything. You consider giving up and going home, and you’ve only been there 30 minutes, and it seems a little early to make that kind of decision.

Then a colleague wanders up and gives you chocolate and it’s all better.

Ish.

Ahhhhh Chhhooooooooooooooo.

New York Manhole steam

Now what makes you think that I'm not quite in the working mood yet....?

Steam coming from manholes in New York are not to do with subways venting, or the sewers for that matter.

Many of the high rise buildings in New York are powered by steam in a network that is 50 to 100 years old. Steam is used as this is both more cost effective and efficient than many other systems for heating tall buildings. It's also used for sterilising equipment in some hospitals. Most of the steam plumes that you see coming out of manholes are due to water touching the outside of these steam pipes and becoming vapour.

Occasionally they are due to cracks in the pipework in, or near, those locations.

http://www.coned.com/history/steam.asp

So now I have an answer, and I'm happy. But I suppose I should really do some work now.

Jetlag

So far, I have:

• Fallen out of bed – a double bed no less. No idea how I managed that one, but my housemates heard the thump, so I didn't just dream it.
• Demolished the bathroom towel rail (about 5 minutes after falling out of bed).
• shut finger in kitchen door (The nail is going purple – it’s very pretty).
• used bruised finger to press buttons, empty tumble drier and generally lots of things that might also make the thing hurt.

I'm hoping not to hurt myself in any other ways for a while.

New York

New Year 2007. I was at a party and a conversation began about clothes. The general theme was that we didn’t have anything to wear for any of the gazillion weddings we're meant to be attending this summer.

I can’t remember exactly what time the suggestion was made – I may have a little to drink.

However, the suggestion was made that we would go to New York to go shopping for wedding outfits.

Suprisingly we actually made it. We went last week. There are photos, there are credit card bills and there are good memories.

But I still have nothing to wear for the weddings.

Normality is not a vector

• Normal means perpendicular to something.
• So if I take it as relative to the ground then if I'm perpendicular to the ground then I am normal.
• But the ground is curved.
• So I'm unlikely to be normal that often, but am more likely to wobble around on either side of normal as I wander through life...
• And even if I lie down I'm unlikely to be parallel as my curves don't match the ground's curve.
• You're either normal or you're not. Apparently. Does this make it bipolar? Should normality be on medication after all bipolar disorder is generally bad.
• But that would imply that normality is a vector as it has direction.
• And that would just be silly.

I'm a little tired, I think my brain has just given up on thinking about anything that might actually do it any good. Maybe I should have had a nap this afternoon instead of paddling in the waterfall at virginia water, and I wasn't analysing the flow patterns in my head. I mean, really, would I do such a thing? ;-)

Last night was the work party to celebrate how wonderful we all are. It was very impressive, with about 800 people there, but did involve introducing the boyfriend to some of my colleagues. He seemed to cope and I'm on leave all week so the office can gossip to their hearts content and I don't actually have to listen. I'm going to New York tomorrow :-)

Me, Mum, Best Friend from school and her mum. New York. Shopping.

Please pray for New York :-)

Ting

That is the noise that my necklace made as it fell off my neck and landed on my desk, narrowly missing my mug. This is unusual as i have a reputation for spilling my drinks, and dropping things in them, so I would expect the necklace to land in the mug. It's unfortunately fairly common for me to have to ask for reprints of my drawings because they're covered in water - the guys have got used to it now.

It might help if I had a tidy desk, but somehow that doesn't seem to be a way that I can work. I know where everything is and what it's for, but no one else does. But I'm going on leave so I'm sticking post-it notes on everything and putting it on other people's desks. I know it'll all be back on my desk by the time I get back but that doesn't change the feeling right now.

Must remember to take it to the parents for mending - pliers and a soldering iron should do the trick. That's the necklace, not the mug, and definitely not the desk.

In Heaven the postit notes will be great – they won’t fall off !

So you put 6 women in a room, and ask them to look at a passage in Revelation and somehow inevitably the discussion goes crazy.

We started off talking about sheep and goats. So far so good.

The sheep and the goats will be divided. Most people would probably move on from here but after about 10 minutes of discussion we were still working out the best way to distinguish the two species. It was decided that actually checking their tails to distinguish them would be easier than making cheese from all of them and tasting it. Not to mention a whole lot quicker. We just have to hope that they wouldn’t be pegged up by their tails, because once you unpegged them they’d probably run off.

Then of course there’s purgatory to discuss – I’ve struggled for a long time to care much about whether purgatory exists – after all it shouldn’t change how I live now anyway. But finally, an analogy that makes a kind of sense – once the sheep and the goats have been divided there’s the sheep dip to pass through...

And then there are the gates of heaven to provide a photo opportunity.

And all that was interspersed with singing the theme tune from the Poddington peas. (Heaven is perfect, Eden was perfect. There are peas in gardens. Honestly, there's logic in there somewhere.)

Down at the bottom of the garden,
Among the birds and the bees,
A little lot of little people,
They call the Poddington Peas.

There’s Creepy, Black Eye Pea and Dumpy.
Keep it a secret now please.
There’s Zippy, Happy and there’s Sweepy.
And all the Poddington Peas!

The Poddington Peas!

How on earth we’re going to turn any of this into a sensible session for the young people next week is a problem for Friday when we try to plan it before spending all evening watching Red Dwarf. This isn't going to get any more sensible is it...?

Rock Paper Scissors - the ultimate decision making tool.

I'm not that good at making decisions that affect myself. YouthNet leaders have been known to make decisions about which pub to visit based on the game Rock, Paper, Scissors when we can't come to an agreement any other way.

It turns out the game itself it's less uncommon than I thought. There's a league in the states, with referees and prize money.

So I'm taking part in a global sport. Not just putting off decisions. :-)

Go me.

Times Online Article - All together now . . . rock, paper, scissors

The Weekend

I spent the weekend in Birmingham again. It’s quite nice up there you know – lots of interesting attractions, lots of people to keep you entertained, and one particular person who manages to be both an attraction and to entertain me all at once. I shall be in Birmingham more often in future :-)

So I was up there to see the certain someone, to go to a birthday party (for which I forgot the present – must remember to post it sometime) and to meet someone else for lunch (I’m developing quite a circle of annual lunch dates – really must get better at meeting up with these people). In between all that managed to watch Eurovision (I wonder who they’ll vote for – oh Quelle Surprise. For an account of the entries... take a look at troubled diva's post), some of the Grand Prix (well, dozed through it whilst making confused comments) and went to a cheesy Christian Musical (where I was asked, of all things, what would happen if a terrorist bomb bit a sewage works).

So i'm not sure what to blog about. Sorry.

I also saw a marmite tanker on the motorway. I've never seen a marmite tanker before :-)

Doodle Analysis

Tonight in a meeting I was complimented on the intricacy of my doodling. Apparently the scale and complexity was impressive.

So I decided to analyse it. This is a picture of some of my doodle:


According to the BBC H2G2 I am a quiet individual who doesn't like to stand out in a crowd. This is because I start drawing at the edge of the page (it just expands to cover the whole page).

It also says that very detailed doodles are often drawn by people who have an obsessive nature, and who simply will not let go of their ambitions or loved ones. They are also likely to be jottings of highly introverted people.

However, according to this site the geometric shapes indicate an organised and efficient mind, possible even with a sense of direction and purpose. Now this sounds more like it. All the squares apparently represent the formal, mathematical, scientific order of the universe. I'm not sure what that actually says about me though.

So I'm quiet, introverted, efficient, organised and obsessive. Oh Good. That doesn't sound like me at all.

:-s

Gardening.

They let me have a saw. It had a curved blade and I ‘may’ have pretended it was a pirate sword once or twice. I didn’t chop down a whole tree though, just a little bit of one, but it was fun. The fact that I cut my finger while putting the sheath back on the saw was unfortunate, and did seem to worry some of the family. Whereas I was trying to decide what sort of bleed it was – I decided on arterial.

This weekend was the Gardening weekend when the whole family (or perhaps more accurately, those in the country at the time) descend on Gran’s house and ‘do’ the garden. This year there were 8 of us, and about 50 manhours later we’d finished the list. Gran kept saying I should try being constructive and plant stuff instead of just weeding and cutting branches off trees. She evidently doesn’t know me that well. Admittedly mum’s comment was fair. Whilst I weeded out long grasses that were in seed she said something along the lines of ‘it would make more sense if you took your hayfever tablet before doing that’.

The other thing that marked the weekend was the interrogation from both Mum and Gran. Starting with ‘So what’s his name’ and moving onto ‘So it’s not just lust then’. And people wonder why I’m turned out as I have. I blame the parents. :-D

Why I should probably not be allowed to drive.

• Open car door.
• Sit in driver’s seat
• Put keys in ignition.
• Put on Seat belt
• Check mirrors
• Release handbrake
• Reverse down hill

Everything was going well until I eased onto the gas to go forward up the hill and out of the car park.

These things are so much simpler when you’ve remembered to switch the engine on.

Today I became a real engineer

This is what I was told as I was handed one of these

It's a big day for me, I'd like to thank my mum, my hairdresser...