Frühlingsglaube

January's nearly over, and I still have a linkspam tab open in GEdit dating back from before December. (n.b. Does anyone know how to make that plug-in that lets GEdit remember your tabs work?)

Adoption
Jen Hatmaker gets real about adoption. Frankly, I think she was still softpedalling it a little, but I think she pitched it just right to reach the people who wouldn't listen to the harsher version. If you want the hard version, read Cindy Bodie for the impact on the parents and the other children (adopted or birth) Atlasien at Racialicious for the racial issues specifically, and Harriet Jacobs of Fugitivus on how sometimes adoption gets all fucked up.

How Ethiopia's adoption industry dupes families and bullies activists: if you've read the Harriet Jacobs link above, this won't surprise you.

Colonialism
The Yoga Debate: An Existentially Challenged Desi Chimes In

Preaching to the choir
Schrodinger's Rapist: a guide to approaching strange women without being maced

Anatomy
The internal clitoris: a diagram (hattip to minoanmiss)

Technology
Siri's failures, illustrated (trigger warning: rape)

Teeth
Dental floss may lower heart disease risk. I want to know how they controlled for the correlation between flossing and other healthy habits that might lower heart disease risk.

The human race
A lecture on empathy

Religion
In which I kind of want to hug David Pocock. (Also, David? By the power vested in me as a lesbian, I hereby give you permission to ditch the scare quotes when you refer to your wife. Seriously, it's great that you guys chose to postpone the legal marriage until it's available to all, but you're allowed to ditch the scare quotes just as I'm sure you wouldn't use them if you were writing about your friends who are in same sex relationships.)

Prejudice
Scorpios and Virgos need not apply. Is it just me, or does this have a flavour of "haha, those stupid backward Chinese people"? (In before: why yes, I am moody and critical.)

The female gaze
Hey girl, it's KStew.

Pseudoscience
Melanie's Marvellous Measles: a pro-measles kids' book. (Child harm warning: the author's child died. Not of measles.) I heard about this on the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast, and I thought they were a bit over the top about the bad effect this book is going to have on children. It's self-published. The only way to get it is to order it direct from the author. No one is going to buy it except anti-vax parents planning to infect their kids with measles anyway. As a piece of propaganda, it's about as effective as 'Julie Goes To The Dentist', a board book for toddlers about why dental health is important (I made that title up, because I couldn't be bothered spending half an hour googling for a real board book on that subject. I'm certain there is more than one out there.) The skeptic bloggers and podcasters are afraid that this will 'catch them early' and start children off on a lifetime of dangerous bullshit. While I agree with them that it's dangerous bullshit, what I'm seeing is that anti-vaxers become anti-vaxers in their early twenties, after exposure to other crunchy parents with a belief in natural medicine. (n.b. I don't object to 'crunchy' practices in general, just the actively harmful stuff like not vaccinating.)

Literature
Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg read poetry: includes Ginsberg reading HOWL in its entirety.

Ayn Rand's rectum exposed (note url)

Medical ethics
They Decide Who Lives, Who Dies: a famous article from the 1960s.

Economics
Mother Jones: Pity the slave elves of online shipping

Politics
Kim Jong-Un Looking At Things. Because Kim Jong-Il is no longer looking at anything.

Vids
Roxanne is not impressed (spoilers for Megamind)

Style
Goths up trees

Animals
Cats celebrate Christmas

Study finds rats would rather rescue their cagemates than eat chocolate (animal harm advisory: the rats were distressed but in no danger) I am not surprised, but I am moved.

The original popcorn kittens If you only click one of these links, make it this one. Made me smile so hard my mouth hurt.

And wrapped it to give to the Niece.
And ordered another copy to give to bookgirlwa for her birthday.
And decided that I'll have to order another copy in April for nomnivore's birthday, because she'll know why when she reads it.
It is the sort of book you want to make everyone read as soon as you've finished it.

I also got my wireless working again. Turned out I'd entered the wrong password, and my username should have been username, not username@isp.net.au.

It looks like tonight is troubleshooting night.

This morning, without so much as a warning email, TPG put through my churn request. It took about two hours, and I only knew that was what left me without internet because I got an email on my phone saying "we're done, here's your new phone number."

Fast forward to the long, embarrassing tech support call, after about half an hour of which I happily remembered that sometimes my computer fails to recognise a wired connection until I've restarted it. After that, it was easy to configure. I thanked him and told him I'd be fine configuring the router by myself.

Well, I did configure the router. I entered the new username and password, ensured that it was on PPPoE, and ran the wireless setup. I loaded google.com.au, punched the air a few times, then unplugged the ethernet cable and entered the wireless password. At which point I discovered that the Google homepage was cached. Then I established that it was cached for the wired router connection too.

The modem works fine, though.

I think I'll take a break and spend some time reading The True Meaning of Smekday before I wrap it up to take to the Niece for her birthday (she's getting it and the Alanna quartet.)

Does anyone else have this problem? Every time I read a new email in my gmail account, this banner pops up telling me to update my backup email address, phone number, and security question. But they're all correct. Clicking "this is correct" makes it go away, but then the very next email, it pops up again. It's extremely annoying.

I googled it, but I couldn't find a way to kill it permanently.

I even tried changing my backup email address, since just clicking save without making any changes didn't work (in fact, it wouldn't let me save without making changes.) Not only did that not stop the pop-up, but it's still asking me if my old email address is valid. YES, IT IS. SHUT UP.

Edited to add: I found a discussion thread about it with an answer from someone from Google saying they're still investigating this bug.

I just got back from the dentist. For the first time in adulthood, I did not get scolded. She says my gums are in much, much better condition than they were last time I saw her, and that I had no new cavities (there were some old ones we hadn't gotten around to fixing yet, and they hadn't gotten worse.)

Best of all, she x-rayed the tooth I had root canal on six years ago, and compared today's x-ray with the one from just after it was filled. The old x-ray had shadows under the roots where there was bone loss from the infection. In the new one, the shadows had all gone away. The bone has healed itself over the past six years.

I have a follow-up appointment the week after next, to start on those fillings we haven't done yet, but it's all looking good!

It is really nice to have such a concrete reward for working on the habit of brushing my teeth every day.

Today I decided not to go to the new Sherlock Holmes movie with some friends, because the money would have to come out of my food budget and there'd probably be a meal to pay for too, and I've already fucked around with my budget too much in the past fortnight. I think that makes me officially a miser. D:

Instead I bought 16 cans of tomatoes and two kilos of beans.

In my own defense, there was a very good sale on tomatoes at the supermarket. The store brand is usually .69, and today they were two for $1. So instead of $11.04, I spent $8 on the tomatoes, and I still feel like I should probably go back and buy more.

I also bought 1kg of red kidney beans and 1kg of black beans. They weren't on sale, and were $4 each from the nut and dried fruit store at Footscray shopping centre. I should remember to always go there, not Coles, for lentils: brown lentils there are $3/kg, versus $4.30/kg at my local Coles. It's an extra 2.5km, which works out to 33.5 cents in petrol, and yes I did see that xkcd comic about the financial disadvantages of not working your hourly wage into the calculation when you go out of your way to save money, but that doesn't actually apply when you're unemployed. Plus, I can offset the fuel price by buying a larger quantity at a time.

If the sale on tomatoes is still there on Tuesday when I get paid, I think I will go and spend another $10 on tomatoes. It feels slightly ridiculous, but it really is something I use all the time, and I have never seen this big a discount on them before, and it's like getting 5.5 cans for free.

When I run out of brown rice (which should happen next week) I'm going to check out the Friends of the Earth food coop. My plan is to step up to quinoa, which has more protein than rice, but I want to make sure the price is roughly equivalent (3.16/kg for brown rice at Coles, if I buy the 2kg bag.) If I ate white rice, I'd just buy a great big bag from an Indian grocery store, but I prefer brown.

Here's the deal with my budget at the moment: I borrowed a bunch of money from my own savings account (which I normally don't touch) and I'm trying to repay it. Specifically, I spent some to buy zzirk's old iPhone, some for the Lifeline course, some as setup costs for switching internet and phone providers (which should save me a lot of money in the long run) and some to buy new bathers. I've nearly rebuilt the iPhone part of the savings (about $90 left to go.) The new bathers only came to $40, not the $65 I was expecting, so that's negligible. But the setup cost for the ISP switch, plus the fact that this month I'm paying both companies (I trust that will be rectified once I inform iiNet that I quit, which won't happen until my TPG account is active) wipes out this month's savings rebuilding after the Lifeline bill.

I figure that if I'm determined (and stop digging) then I'll be back to where I was in December last year by June or July this year.

And right now I have black beans on the stove.

Edited to add: I estimate that what I just made for dinner cost about $2.75. The ingredients were 2 cups (cooked) black beans, half an onion, two carrots, 400g tinned tomatoes, 1 cup (dry) brown rice, one small red capsicum, and some olive oil, cumin, garlic, salt, and chili paste. That made two large bowls, and was delicious, though a little bit too sweet. Maybe some vinegar or lime juice would take care of that?

From some_stars: Pick up the nearest book to you. Turn to page 45. The first sentence describes your sex life in 2012.

"Nor did her mother."
- Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

Could be worse, I guess. It could have been "So did her mother." This should teach me to reshelve books once I've finished reading them.

Today after therapy I got caught in a truly terrible traffic jam, and ended up going to bed for a nap when I got home. I woke up at 1am. So obviously I went for a walk, because that's what you do. And I'm glad that I did, because just as I reached my block of flats, I saw a great big possum on the power line leading to the block. Right in the middle of the street, calm as you please. I only hope he didn't nibble on it. And then I heard a noise and turned around, and saw that he had a friend on the roof. I'm only sorry I didn't have my phone with me, to take a picture.

I'm seeing a new potential personal trainer tomorrow. He emailed me some forms to fill out. One of them was just a waiver not holding him responsible for any serious illness or injury from his training, and giving a list of any relevant medications (I wrote "none relevant", because my psychiatric meds are none of his business) and a checklist of relevant things like have I had a stroke or a heart attack or epilepsy.

The other page was different. It says 'pertinent pre-exercise history', and asks me to list all of the following, by age:
- surgery
- serious infections/diseases (pneumonia, mono, TB, cancer, heart attack, chronic bronchitis, colitis, mumps, measles, chicken pox, etc)
- dental intervention (he wants to know all root canals and extractions, with the name and number of the tooth, plus age of first filling, braces, etc)
- toxic profession past or present (artist, graphic designer, dental assistant, gas station worker, painter, industry, computer cleaning, etc)
- long periods on prescription or street drugs, or alcohol, or cigarettes
- injuries/accidents without stitches
- injuries/accidents with stitches
- pregnancies/births/abortions/IUDs, BC pills, etc
- major psychological trauma
- long visits or lived in a foreign country like India, Mexico, Africa, etc
- medications/allergies (past or present)

Is it just me, or is that REALLY FUCKING UNBELIEVABLY INVASIVE? I know this guy's CHEK certified, and they're holistic and everything, but I am not going to tell a personal trainer who I haven't even met yet whether or not I had an ABORTION. Or about my major psychological trauma. Where I come from, you tell that sort of thing to people you've already built up a trust relationship with, you don't just write it on a form, what the fuck?

And for that matter, if he's so holistic and mind-and-body and all that, why make it a pre-screening form? This isn't the sort of thing any compassionate person makes you disclose on a form, you do a freaking interview and show some sensitivity.

Needless to say, I'm not filling that shit out. I will have a discussion with him about it when I get there, at which point I will determine whether he has good enough boundaries that I can work with him at all, or whether I move on to the next person on my list.

Not a good start.

Woke up at 9am, after twelve hours of sleep. Used the lightbox for half an hour. Read a bit of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Went back to sleep.

Woke up again at 5pm, head full of cotton wool. Got dinner, and went to visit my father, who is in hospital with a severed Achilles tendon. He's having surgery tomorrow.

I caught my mother leaving the hospital, and promised her I'll help walk the dogs. She looked extremely eager and relieved. I only realised this minute that she's going to need that help for quite a long time. Like four to six months.

I think I'd better think of some limits to put on that offer. Like maybe I could offer to go four days a week, not seven. Because it's 15 minutes each way, plus a 15-30 minute walk with two very badly behaved whippets, plus needing to coordinate my schedule with my mother, since walking them is a two person job. Niece has also offered to help with the dogs, so maybe she can cover the days I can't.

Went for a walk myself after I came back. It was raining softly, and the air smelled delicious.