Statistics

On Wednesday I'll be having a full duct excision. Apparently only about 4% of these result in finding cancer but that's still a lot higher than the percentage of Lasik treatments that result in stuff growing inside your eyeball and I managed to score gold on that.

I think I'll be asking for a refund on this body. It's been rather crap really.

Irritatingly, I'll be straight out of hospital and back to the fricking dissertation. I can't even take time off to be ill. One only hopes it won't end up like my first Masters where the health problems I developed on that left me too ill to work for 3 years afterwards and permanently disabled thereafter.

How quickly on oublie

I am mystified by the continuing references in the press to socialist presidential hopeful Francois Hollande as meek, ineffectual and 'decent'. While I have nothing against his policies (indeed I'm quite enthused by them), people seem to forget that if it hadn't been for his duplicitous backstabbing of and refusal to support the previous Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royale, not uncoincidentally his ex-wife, Sarkozy would never have been president in the first place.

Something I regret

Providing the surgery doesn't turn up anything life derailing, I'll be starting job hunting in about 6 weeks time and back to wearing things like suits. I've spent most of the past year and a bit looking unkempt in jeans apart from the brief period of craziness last year when I was wearing very short skirts and too much makeup. Suits, jeans or slapper outfits though, it's all very conventional and I'm starting to regret not doing something interesting as a minimum with my hair like Grace London has while I was a student. I don't know what she does for a living but I'm going to bet it doesn't have much to do with the banking sector.

One thing that has held me back is the question of colour. Lilac looks fabulous on her because she has dark hair and pale skin, as would most unconventional colours, but anything pink, red, purple or orange based is going to look more like a regular dyeing mishap on me given I have reddish hair and I don't much fancy blue or green. If I am to make the most of the next 6 weeks and do something like this, what colour stripe should I go for? Black? White?

Just chop my whole body off

Take my head while you're at it too. This will be my 9th general anaesthetic - please can someone beat this?

ssshhh, do not speak of it

I get the point of brand protection, I really do, but this is utterly ludicrous. However I am very happy not to further mention or in any way promote this utterly idiotic and wasteful fiesta of self frottage which should have been cancelled the moment the nation went into recession and should certainly have been axed before the government started cutting disability benefits.

Fountain of youth

The more hours a day I spend on this accursed project, the worse my diet gets. In need of a boost at 9pm I went out with the intention of procuring a cream egg. I came home with something I haven't eaten since I was about 11. A sherbet fountain.

For non-British or younger readers this is as close to a chemistry set as you can get in confectionary form. It's basically a stick of liquorice stuck into sweetened bicarbonate of soda. It used to come in yellow paper wrapping with the liquorice sticking out of the top, which, come to think of it, wasn't awfully hygienic although there's precious little in there for bugs to feed on. It used to look like a firework or tiny bomb. These days it's a sealed plastic tube with the liquorice safely inside. It is also, incidentally, halal and vegetarian although I'm not entirely sure how it wouldn't be. I wasn't big into reading ingredients labels when I was 11 but maybe there was bone meal in there or something.

As for taste, it seems lemonier than I recall. The liquorice is as pointless and unpleasant as ever (does any child, except Just William, actually like liquorice?). I suppose you are meant to use it to dip into the sherbet but I always used to pull it out and eat it first to get rid of it. That was harder this time - the sherbet had set into a hard lump and was all set to come out in solid lolly form, stuck to the liquorice. It took some vigorous banging on the desk to break it up. Then I tipped the sherbet into my mouth where as I remember it went simultaneously claggy and fizzy.

One thing hadn't changed though - the volume of gas it creates in the upper digestive tract. To think I used to consume this on the bus.

Given that it is bicarbonate of soda, I wonder if it would cure cystitis?

The mugfin

Other foodstuffs I've learnt of from the Internet. The cake in a mug. I've been messing around with a few recipes recently and think this works quite well:
Mix up:
2oz melted butter
2 tbspn full fat greek yoghurt
1 large egg
2 level tbspn sugar
1/2 tbspn maple syrup
2 level tbspn cocoa
2 tbspn self raising flour
1 tbspn oat bran
Pour into 2 mugs and nuke for 4 minutes. It rises much higher than any other recipe I've tried - must be the acid in the yogurt reacting with something. You could probably add more cocoa if you like it very chocolatey. This also contains less sugar than other recipes I've seen. You could also replace the bran with another spoon of flour. A lot of online recipes use oil rather than butter, which is, I believe, the American way with cakes but butter makes it taste better.

Mmmmm bacon

I've just had some bacon for lunch and as a result got to reflecting on the power of the Internet. The thing is, I don't like bacon very much but nonetheless whenever bacon is mentioned, I immediately think, 'mmm bacon'. And I buy it regularly and eat it regularly too, despite not especially liking it and it being extraordinarily bad for you, and actually not even wanting to eat pork, just because, you know, 'mmm bacon.' I put this down to pretty much everyone else on the Internet loving bacon and saying so repeatedly. One place I hang out, there's a user with the screen name 'baconwithasideofbacon'. This seems to sum up its bizarre power.

Now the flat smells of congealing bacon fat.

Update: as if to prove my point, Wikipedia has a bacon portal. This is the only portal I have come across on Wikipedia.

Things I really object to spending money on

Especially when I am not earning:


Moth control products. Expenditure this year so far is heading for over £100 and the little bastards aren't letting up. They've started on the rugs, most recently.

Light bulbs etc. Both fluorescent tubes in the kitchen have gone. Eating in the dark is impacting my happiness severely but so is the idea of paying an electrician to replace them.

Cleaning products. I'd get a cleaner if I was earning more money than I'd have to pay one. Wait, no I wouldn't because I don't trust anyone enough to leave them unsupervised in the flat. My one and only previous cleaner used to follow me around the flat asking if she could have certain items 'if I decided I didn't want them'. In the end she just took some of them anyhow.

Mobile phone charges. A minor fuck up on my part followed by total assitude by T-Mobile means my phone bill has gone right up this year.

Utilities (1) - I've posted about the screw up with EDF already. Still not resolved and I'm currently waiting on my credit report to see what damage it has done to that.

Utilities (2) - someone is going to have to pay the block electricity bill for the entry phone system soon but it is not going to be me.

New glasses. I bought new glasses 3 months ago. My eyesight has changed considerably in the past 3 months, thanks to the last Lasik cock up. So I need more glasses. I'm not supposed to need glasses at all after Lasik.

Vegetables.

Cattitude

If ever anything more clearly said, 'Piss off and die", I'd prefer not to see it.

Four weeks to go till the dissertation hand in date

Time to really up your game and get your head down, said my supervisor.

Great. I've had 3 days off since January and 2 of those were spent at a conference. I'm exhausted and all I want to do is spend the next month sleeping.