A few days ago the wind blew my parking permit off the dashboard, and I came back to find a fine on my car. After much swearing, I realized that the permit has been issued to the other car, and so I had no way to prove that I was actually parking the car legally. The permit expires at the end of May, so I have to go to the parking shop and get a new one (for less money, note), and I thought that I would do it One of This Days, Really Soon. Meanwhile I gritted my teeth and paid my 50 pounds and made damn sure the parking ticket was visible through the windshield.

Today I come home, after having been sent home from work 1 and a half hour early (this had Not Put Me In A Good Mood, because we have been working 6:30, 7 hours max for the past two months, and it is getting to the point where we have a 500 shortfall by the end of the month, even if we do NOT, like I have, get a flue and stay home for three weeks), and what do I find?

A parking ticket. I looked at the car, incredolous, and yes, the permit is clearly visible in the same place were it's always been, in the car dashboard.

I just want to cry.

Zip is sitting between monitor and keyboard, purring and insulting the birds outside.

Only this time the window is open. She has amply demonstrated that she can jump down on the roof terrace, and jump up on the windowsill again. She could go and get them if she really wanted...

As in, 773 of them, proudly assembled in three hours at the British Legion Poppy Factory in Richmond.

Well, thing is, my employer encourages employees and even temps to do these community services volunteer days. They even pay you for it (hell, they even paid for the meal we had!).

What I chose to do, mainly because it was indoor work and I picked it a couple of weeks ago when the weather was, er, inclement, was go and make and pack poppies for the British Legion Poppy Appeal. The poppies are made in a factory founded in 1922 with the aim to give gainful employ to ex-servicemen, and is now staffed mainly with disabled dependants of service personnel.

We have been told that, currently, they have decided that returning veterans have higher aspirations than assembling poppies and are therefore subsidizing their placement with other charities. Also, it seems like recruiting disabled dependants with suitable abilities has become more and more difficult, and looks to become unsustainable in the long run, which is why they are going for mechanization of the process, although the more complicated wreaths and stuff will still be made by hand.

All in all, the atmosphere at the factory was cheerful and tender, with poppy-makers of varying degrees of ability working in a nice, well-lighted, clean place, often with plush toys on the desk, and looked after with affection ("Some of our staff," the general manager told us, "are not very good at taking care of themselves, so we insist that they have an early break and sit down for breakfast.")

I don't know if they really need volunteers to make poppies - the average number of poppies made by a GS volunteer is 700 or so (with an all-time record high of 1300 and an all-time record low of 314), and there have been so far two shifts of seven people each, so about 9,800 poppies - of 35 million they make every year. I don't know - every little helps, I guess. Maybe they just like to involve external people in the factory and do outreach.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and I am very proud, and since today I was the fastest poppymaker, I even got a cool poppy mug. :-)

I am much looking forward to being accused of being a hippy pacifist communist, because I can then say, "Well, what have YOU ever done to support the troops? 'Cos I made 773 poppies for the British Legion."

The second part of the day was spent stripping little plastic pickets made of little crosses glued together of poppies, cleaning them with a wire brush, replacing the poppies and then packing the result in crates. These go to form the Field of Remembrance in Westminster Abbey, and although I didn't like the design very much, our work made a much substantial contribution to the result, so this November not only I can say "I made that!" of every poppy I see (with a probablity of about - well a probability that is left to the reader and as easy exercise to calculate - to be right) but I can rather more convincingly claim that I helped a bit with the Field of Remembrance.

The most useful I've felt in years.

On the other hand, I spent the day with some colleagues who are actual employee of my bank. They did not speak much, mostly because they were checking their blackberries pretty much continuously. Do these people sleep? I doubt it.

The day was completely glorious and Richmond is beautiful - nobody had ever mentioned Richmond to me as a tourist destination, but it really is a very pretty little town. The original plan was to go for a beer on the Thames with my fellow volunteers, but at the end of the day they just ran away checking their Blackberries, and making me feel gloriously un-addicted.

I was woken up at half past three by a dream in which somebody had left a snarky comment on my LJ - something about "what, is there not enough awfulness in your life recently?" No, I know it doesn't make sense. It still woke me up, and I haven't been able to go to sleep afterwards.

The world is full of stupid again.

London has elected mayor a guy who is not only a repulsive reactionary, but a bloody stupid one at that.

People have been arguing, apparently in earnest, that saying "Oh no I would never do that, it's so gay" is not a homophobic slur.

Parliament passed a law that makes it a criminal offence to look at images of violent or potentially dangerous acts BUT ONLY IF THEY ARE IN A SEXUAL CONTEXT. (E.g., "Saw" is not criminal, but possession of photographs ore videos of acts, not criminal in themselves, between consenting adults, is a crime IF SOMEBODY GETS OFF THEM.)

I have just had a class of my counselling course about existential philosophy which is, in itself, enough to depress me. At least I seem to have gotten over the Flu From Hell.

Spurred by a couple of friends who were freaked out by a particularly homophobic thread, I dipped into RASFC again.

Now, I hadn't used googlegroups in a while and I was annoyed by the new interface, which basically doesn't allow me to follow a thread back in time.

But more than that, I was surprised to see, after so much time, The Usual Suspect doing their usual thing. Very few of the people I liked in RASFC are left, and the most shocking thing is that those who are left ARE ENGAGING THE IDIOTS IN DISCUSSION. No wonder they get freaked out regularly. It's like spending your time arguing with Orson Scott Card, only to take a break by discussing things with Michelle Malkin.

People, I admire deeply your bravery, you passion, and god knows I miss the discussions we had, but what are you gaining by actually answering posts by DF and JAD? For the love of anything sane, get out of there. Leave the trolls and the idiots and the loonies to stew on their own. You are just enabling them.

I am so tired that I can't even find the energy to be depressed at having Boris Johnson as mayor.

Unfortunately tomorrow I won't be tired any longer and he will (most probably) still be mayor.

To point people to this post about the egregious OSBP thingie. I have been tracking it and the comments are particularly interesting.

Damn, it's difficult to type whilw hooked up to the sleep recorder!

So the day comes for my long-awaited sleep clinic appointment. Me and my GP have been trying to secure this for months.

I arrive at St. Mary's, and find that the sleep center is housed in the allergy and respiratory center. Well, ok. Sleep apnea is obviously a bid part of sleep problems and it makes sense that a sleep clinic grew out of the respiratory function wing...

Only it quickly emerges that this is not a "sleep clinic". This is a center that diagnoses and treats sleep apnea. Period.

I go to the room I am directed to, talk with a pleasant blond girl half my age, who takes my name, weighs me (dressed and in my Doc Martens) measures my height (still with the Docs on), then makes me sit down for a little while and, without taking my medical history and interviewing me about my sleep problems, gives me a recording machine and explains to me how to put it on tonight.

It is obvious that the machine only records data relating to the respiratory function - movement of belly and chest, oxygen flow, airflow from my nose.

It is also obvious that the center can only afford to record ONE night. Tonight. If I want to reschedule, it will be another six weeks - even though at the moment I have the flu.

When I mention that I am taking modafinil, the blond student asks "What?". Modafinil is a medication used in narcolepsy, resistant sleepiness connected with depression, and shift worker's sleep disturbances. Which she doesn't know - and why should she? She obviously is a respiratory tract expert.

So I can be diagnosed sleep disturbances rooted in respiratory disfunction (which I most probably do not have - nobody who has slept with me has ever heard me snore, and I have asked) based on one recording of one night's sleep during an upper respiratory tract infection.

Fantastic.

Yesterday i went back to work, but it took me four sachets of Cold&Flu direct to get to the end of the day. The fact that it rained buckets when I got out to go to the movies with alexmc didn't help. We had a very nice evening out and I'll be damned if I would have given it up.

This morning though I woke up full of headache and feeling dizzy. If we had been busy at the office and it hadn't been February outside I would have kicked myself in the butt and gone to work, but as it was, it seemed stupid, and I really didn't fancy another day propelled forward by paracetamol.

So I stayed in bed, and in the end it was a good choice because I slept the sleep of the miserably sick all day, and when it came time to go to the writing group I got vertical, dressed, and realized that there was no way I was going to be able to drive around town with my head spinning like that.

So I am officially Still Sick, since I haven't missed a writing group session since it started, and I am incredibly pissed off at this stupid virus who has exceeded all reasoned welcome in my system.

All suggestions for the ongoing conflict with Fucking Rotavirus welcome. Grrrr.

Jay Wiseman is astounded to learn that men are mostly lying pricks:

http://jay-wiseman.livejournal.com/12634.html

I went out for the first time in daytime since last I fell ill, and London is glorious. The sun is warm and the air smells of flowers and there are cherry petals everywhere and people are stunned by spring. Portobello Road manages to look authentic, of failing that, happy.

I love this city. I wish all my friends where here today.

Today I find morons wherever I turn, and I am starting to feel really cranky.

Sometimes I am honestly proud of my people. Not only cats are protected by Italian law, they are regularly counted by the city of Rome, who considers feline settlements part of its historical and cultural heritage and provides a free sterilization service. They are cared for and fed by cat-lovers, usually old ladies, and they have several organized shelters, the most famous among the ruins in Torre Argentina.

http://www.romecentral.com/article_list_singleeventpage.php?id=89&title=Gatti%20di%20Roma%20(Cats%20of%20Rome)

After the whole mountain of win from large parts of my LJ friendlist yesterday, I am still getting:

- That a whole lot of women have decided not to go to conventions
- That the original meme is apparently being talked about in connection to Dragon*Con (as in, people think of exporting the concept there)
- That apparently there have been exchanges with the DC concomm that have been Not Reassuring.

I'm sad. Women are being pushed away from fandom, and all the efforts and energy and thought and goodwill spent towards creating safe spaces and increasing female participation in fandom... puff. Blown away.

I am more sad than angry, which believe me, is saying something.

Came across this purely by chance - it seems very intersting

http://www.criticalsexology.org.uk/forthcoming.html#nonmonogamies

(mostly for my own reference)

It was my ex partner's birthday last Saturday, and I vaguely thought of emailing him my good wishes. He hasn't answered my last few emails - at Christmas and for his birthday - but I have no idea if it was because his email address has changed or because he doesn't want to answer me.

So I googled him, and, well - there is no trace of him on the net since about 2004. All his registered domains are till there but apparently nothing has been added or updated.

I felt strangely spooked by this. It's like he has passed into some other dimension, where he is invisible (yes, I am a geek, and a net addict). It is also unusual, if one bears in mind that he is an IT professional. In the end I didn't email him.

I also wrote a letter, a couple of weeks ago, to another of my ex-lovers, with whom I parted in somewhat fraught terms and of whom I have had no news since apart from a brief conversation with his gran around Christmas two years ago, which reassured me he was still alive, if anything.

The letter was cheerful and friendly and tried not to demand a response, just to ask for it gently. Got no answer so far, and I am a little disappointed.

On the other hand, I have been cautiously started to pick up the strands of our friendship with my last lover, and that has been, on the whole, good. I had been thinking about calling him for a while, but every time I did, I felt like crying, and I told myself that is wasn't quite time yet. But then he popped up in chat and so we talked of this and that, and he gave me some good news about his life, and I am happy for him, and glad that we are still friends, even if it will take a while yet for the scab to fall off and reveal healed skin.

I miss the people that I have left behind in my life, because of grief or because I moved away and didn't have the energy to keep up. There are a few friends back in Italy I didn't even manage to properly say goodbye to when I moved here, it was so sudden.

In comments on Scalzi's Blog:

I’ve read your posts and the linked posts and I still don’t see any downloads, code or other options for installing boobs on the Kubuntu Linux laptop I have at home. Nor has anything appeared in the Canonical libraries when I run Adept, or in any of the extended libraries I’ve authorized Adept to check. If I had any idea what I should type into APT-GET, I’d be willing to try installing open source boobs on my machine from the command line, but I’m starting to suspect that boobs continue to be proprietary software (except in the case of older implants, which I’m told are sometimes develop into a hardware solution).

I wouldn’t mind having boobs on at least one of my machines at home (heck, if there’s an open source boobs solution for my Windows machine, I’d be willing to give that a try). But the fact that it appears somebody is trying to use “open source” to describe something that is in actuality a closed-source or restricted option is confusing or frustrating. If I have to pay for boobs, just tell me. Don’t leave me groping for alternatives, and don’t sow FUD in the open source community, we have enough already.

From vito_excalibur LJ:

This is not a joke. This is not satire. This is not a test.
While the Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Program is easy and fun to read and write about -

I'm not really going to go around asking anyone if I can kick them in the crotch.

There is a difference between the internet and the real world.

That is an internet solution to a real world problem.

I would like to propose a little real world help for a real world problem.

If you're tech-savvy enough to know about the benefits of open source, then you also know how crucial it is to back your shit up frequently. If you don't back it up, you know, you're going to lose it.

I would like to start the Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Program. Here's my pledge: if I see somebody groping you in public, and you're not moaning Yes! Yes! Yes!, I will break through your Somebody Else's Problem invisibility field and come over and ask if you're okay.

Here's the IP lawyer's reaction to this latest male-entitlement fantasy running around fandom:

Open source is a great idea, but it's always important to ask who's supposed to be providing the free stuff. As I've said elsewhere, when you start to compare fields that get intellectual property protection (software, sculpture) with fields that don’t (fashion, cooking, sewing), it becomes uncomfortably obvious that our cultural policy has expected women’s endeavors to generate surplus creativity but has assumed that men’s endeavors require compensation, just as our society has expected women to do the hard work of raising children and keeping house out of love and duty but not expected men to show up at the factory for the same reasons. We are now asked to signal our voluntary provision of sexual healing, because apparently we control a valuable resource and it would be much nicer for men if they didn't have to pay, in any economic or noneconomic ways, for access to that resource. And it's important that we do the signalling, because if men had to signal that they wanted to be asked to touch our breasts, not many women would respond to the signal! Talk about an endowment effect. (Sorry, couldn't help it. It is quite interesting to see how intuitive behavioral economics is, especially for people who have reason to know--that is, people lower in various hierarchies.)

...of being sick.

Actually, today I am somewhat better (especially after a daily dose of Thermonuclear Painkiller). I would very much like to take a couple of days off more just to be on the safe side, but I am not sure if it would be a good idea. At least the weather seems...

(looks at forecasts)

What?! You got to be kidding me! 13C? What next, snow?

Anyway - I really really need to go to my counselling course tomorrow night, but it would probably be a good idea to stay home at least tomorrow from work.

In the end, I think this was more like a flu than a cold. I just wished my immune system was less tough and flu came with more recognizable symptoms, so that I actually felt justified in staying in bed and not like I was skiving off. I only had a fever back in Italy and on Monday, when it climbed to the worrying (for me) heights of 37.5. It hovered on the brink of 37 for two other days and today I seem to be fever-free, and feeling much more cheerful and less like my brain had been turned into a cauliflower.

Others have pointed out the creepiness, implied harrassment value, and sexism of the original proposal. (And no, I am not going to link to it, because I am lazy, sick in bed, and don't think this guy deserves more exposure.)

I have my own personal observations to make.

a) I have a pair of pretty boobs. Actually, what it comes down to is I have a DD cup trying desperately to reach for E status. I may be unsure of myself in many area of my life, but I know for a fact men like my boobs, and I am not excluding gay men from this (because gay men are more likely to actually talk enthusiastically about my boobs to my face. Go figure.)

b) this is a very welcome source of reassurance about my sexual worth in times when my face, my weight, and other assorted bits of my perceived physical persona fail to meet my exacting standards. I love my boobs and am deeply grateful to them. Although I would prefer for them to stay in the damn corset and not jump out to have adventures of their own as they have tended to do lately. Perhaps a larger corset is in order.

c) I have been known to put my boobs on display. Partly this is deliberate, and partly it is due to the fact that I can either do that, or go around in shapeless turtlenecks, and shapeless turtlenecks have several disadvantages, among them making me feel miserably ugly.

d) I know all about power games in sex. I have given a lot of thought to them. I try not to engage in any kind of game of this way with non-consenting people. This means that if I go around in a corset, I am saying "You can watch but you can't touch", but I am saying it tongue in cheek, well knowing that I am coming across people who know and are ok with the game. At SF cons, for example, wearing a corset is just as sexually titillating as a woman in a bikini at the seashore.

e) No matter how promiscuous one is, there will always be people you do not wish to engage in sexual intercourse with. This is a fact of life and does not reflect on your general opinion of that person. It doesn't mean that you don't like them.

f) Breast sensitivity varies greatly, but for some people they are highly erogenous zones.

g) It is incredibly presumptuous, therefore, for somebody to come up to me and demand access to a highly erogenous bit of my body that plenty of other people would dearly like to touch. In other words, the right to fondle my breast has to be earned, and it ain't easy.

h) Any such approach would probably elicit a "who the fuck do you think you are, loser?" response. In fact, I would gently suggest that the Open Breast Bright Idea be met with a counterproposal, which I will call the Let's Measure Your Dick idea, in which aspiring breast-gropers are asked to submit to public measurement of their dicks to see if the gropee is interested in reciprocally fondling them.

j) Which takes me to the final point. My breasts are still pretty but they are starting to sag. They will, alas, become a lot less pretty with age. And even so, I know that in the boobs department I am privileged. The fact is, the Open Breast Grope Contest implies that some breasts are worthy of groping and some aren't. And frankly? We get way too much shit like that already in our lives.