Category Archives: personal

memes, natural history, personal, photography

[9/52] Forsythia


[9/52] Forsythia, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Week 9 entry for 52 weeks challenge.

The Forsythia in our hedge has been in flower for several days now, although there isn’t much of it as the hedge gets too regularly trimmed. This piece is in the hedge archway over our front gate, so will hopefully delight passers by. This is a bit early as it really shouldn’t be in flower for another couple of weeks. Our Fuji Cherry (Prunus incisa ‘Kojo-no-mai’; the picture below is not our tree) has it’s first few flowers open as well, and that is also early. So despite that the weather has turned cold again, it looks as if Spring might well be on the way. Yipee!!

personal, thoughts

What's in Your Drawers?

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I blame Katyboo! She started this. And even a half answer as to what’s in my drawers is too long for a comment to Katy’s post. So here goes … What is in my drawers?

Well first of all I interpret this as meaning “desk drawers”. Drawers in dressing tables or the like are boring — they contain sox and knickers. Well and detritus (like old spectacles) too, but not so much, at least in my case.

My “desk drawers” tough are numerous and full. To start with “desk” is a misnomer: I have a piece of kitchen worktop the length of one wall (8-9 feet of it!). On it is the usual desk stuff: pot of pens etc., phone, desk lamps, filing trays, jotter, Post-Its, monocular; plus my PC, screen, keyboard, printer etc. And literary society binders/work in progress. And currently a sleeping cat!

This is about half of my desktop (complete with cat) and showing one of the filing cabinets

The shelves over my “desk” have more desk and PC stuff (photo/label printers, speakers), a few teddy bears & friends, wifi router, postal scales and above that the most used reference books. Under the “desk” I have two “2-drawer” sized filing cabinets, each with one large drawer and three shallower ones. I also have a computer table (as a desk extension with another printer and scanner on it) and use the pull-out keyboard shelf as a desk drawer with A4 paper box lids as organisers. So …

Keyboard shelf
Contains standard office stationery like various sizes of envelope, compliments slips, business cards, postcards, rubber stamps, airmail stickers.

Left-hand Filing cabinet
Large bottom Drawer: various PC bits, spare wifi routers, spare analog phone, photo printer paper, multiple boxes of label sheets (a label size for everything!), PC cables.
Bottom shallow Drawer: More of the same: mostly boxes of adapters for PC and phones. And other PC odds and sods.
Middle Shallow Drawer: This is Anthony Powell Society drawer 2. Various AP Soc spares (till rolls for credit card terminal, coin bags, other banking spares). And the society’s “In Tray”.
Top Shallow Drawer: AP Soc drawer 1. Office stationery including compliments slips of various types, receipt book, supply of bookmarks, membership leaflets, postcards, etc.

Right-hand Filing Cabinet
Large Bottom Drawer: Household filing: bank statements, utility bills, tax, insurance, blah, blah, blah. Postcards and a few greetings cards. A supply of Trebor Extra Strong Mints. It’s so full that I can’t get any more in so there is a large overflow “awaiting filing” pile on th study floor along with more boxes of PC stuff, videos awaiting transcription etc.
Bottom Shallow Drawer: Pads of A4 paper, ring binder bags, coloured plastic files, odds & sods reusable envelopes.
Middle Shallow Drawer: Crammed with miscellaneous techie toot. Mobile phone chargers, camera battery chargers, earphones, dictaphone. Spare rechargeable batteries, camera spares, memory cards, memory sticks. Spare stocks of pencils, pencil leads, biros, marker pens. Several unused HP iPAQ and Palm handhelds. Spares for this and that. Boxes of business cards. Rolls of Dymo printer labels. Boxes of old keys. Spare wallet. Blah, blah, blah.
Top Shallow Drawer: Everyday desk stuff: pens, rulers, stapler, scissors, ball of elastic bands, ball of recycled string, lanyards, roller ruler, small screwdrivers and Allen keys, glue, sellotape. Spare batteries and fuses. Bank books etc. Odds and sods of foreign coinage and keys. Glasses cloth. Calculators.

And all that is without four printer paper boxes of stationery/office spares, and a lot more spare PC stuff in crates under my desk; and the old spare hifi stack; and boxes of printer paper, AP books for disposal/sale, paper recycling bin, shredder. No room for feet under the desk!!

OMG.

Dare you tell us what’s in your (desk) drawers?

memes, natural history, personal, photography

[7/52] Crocuses


[7/52] Crocuses, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Week 7 entry for 52 weeks challenge.

Our lawn and fruit border are full of crocuses, mostly in shades of purple. I know we’ve planted some, but they must be spreading as I’m sure (like these in the fruit border) they’re in places we wouldn’t have planted them. And they seem to be doing well despite the waterlogged clay soil of the lawn.

memes, personal, photography

[6/52] Hospital Cruise?


[6/52] Hospital Cruise?, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Week 6 entry for 52 weeks challenge.

These sails are “decoration” in the atrium waiting area at our local BMI (private) hospital (Clementine Churchill Hospital, Harrow). I’ve been meaning to photograph them for years and remembered to take my camera today! I suspect they’re a fancy way to try to provide some share for the reception desk which is underneath them and right below what is a huge “conservatory” roof. They must need some shade because it is over-heated in there at the best of times and unbearable in the summer.

memes, personal

Ten Things – February

The second in a monthly series of “Ten Things” for 2011. Each month I list one thing from each of ten categories which will remain the same for each month of 2011. So at the end of the year you have ten lists of twelve things.

  1. Something I Like: Cats
  2. Something I Won’t Do: Sailing
  3. Something I Want To Do: Take a Trip on Orient Express
  4. A Blog I Like: Emily Nagoski :: Sex Nerd
  5. A Book I Like: Brad Warner; Sex, Sin & Zen
  6. Some Music I Like: Beatles, Abbey Road
  7. A Food I Like: Pasta
  8. A Food or Drink I Dislike: Carrots
  9. A Word I Like: Crenellate
  10. A Quote I Like: When we talk about settling the world’s problems, we’re barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It’s a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives. [Joseph Campbell]
beliefs, medical, personal, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

Quite a lot of quotes, and slightly early, this week as I missed last week’s post. And lot’s of zen type quotes too as I’m getting to the end of several zen books. So here goes …

There is no optimal state of consciousness. Optimal is just an idea, another manifestation of the Great Somewhere Else. Consciousness is just an idea.
[Brad Warner; Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality]

What is true during dreamless sleep is true no matter whether you can recall the experience and write about it or not. What is true in a whorehouse in Bangkok is true whether you visit it and take Polaroids or not. What is true for six-legged aliens on the fifth planet circling Epsilon Centauri is true whether you go there and talk to them or not. You may never know the life your toothbrush leads when you’re not around but it’s certainly real.
[Brad Warner; Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality]

Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.
[Jane Wagner]

After all, it is no more surprising to be born twice than it is to be born once.
[Seagal Rinpoche; comment at http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/2011/01/literal-rebirth.html]

Reincarnation is a fun subject. I do like the concept ‘how can you return if you never leave?’ I think that sums it up nicely. From the perspective of our experience, it’s easy to find examples of how this might actually work. Consider this: when you were five, playing in your yard, you suddenly thought a strange thought – I wonder who I will be when I grow up? Will I still be me? And of course, you did grow up, and you are still you – but you are not the child who asked that question so long ago. Did the child ‘die’? No,it didn’t. But the child is not there any more – so how can that be? Maybe reincarnation is a little like that?
[Mr Reee; comment at http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/2011/01/literal-rebirth.html]

The pen is mightier than the sword but a vagina beats anything you’ve ever seen.
[Bizarro Seagal; comment at http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/2011/01/literal-rebirth.html]

‘Bonsai?’
‘The Japanese art of training little trees to resemble big ones. Wouldn’t work unless there was a scale-independent structure.’
‘I knew a bloke once did bonsai mountains,’ said Olly. It took a few seconds for us to twig.
‘You mean pet rocks?’ enquired Deirdre.
‘Suitably fragmented rocks do look a lot like mountains,’ I said.
‘He didn’t just sit a rock in a bowl, you know,’ said Olly. ‘It’s lots of work making proper bonsai mountains. He had all the gear – little hosepipes with spray-action nozzles and fans stuck on special stands to weather them with miniature rainstorms, spark generators for small-scale lightning, lots of tiny mirrors to focus the Sun’s rays. Even a tiny snow machine.’
‘Really?’ Deirdre was interested in gardening and this just about counted.
‘Yeah. But he had to stop.’
‘Why?’
‘The rocks got infested with greenfly. On skis.’ Deirdre hit him.
[Ian Stewart; Cows in the Maze]

The tricky part about being human is that you have to be your own pack leader. You have to know that you can keep yourself safe, stand over your own emotional center of gravity and stay stable but responsive.
[Emily Nagoski; at ]

Let me tell you, friends, this is an amazing book. Just reading it put me into an altered state of consciousness. I entered a realm where perceptions of form and matter vanished, to be replaced by an amorphous void beyond all thought and senses, a world of peace and quiet undisturbed by the anxieties and uncertainties of the material universe. In other words, I fell right to sleep.
[Brad Warner; Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death and Dogen’s Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye]

Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.
[Indira Gandhi]

What is religion but the distillation of an individual’s perception of the truth? By that definition, even atheists have religion.
[Amelia Nagoski]

Chinese medicine calls the gut the lower dan t’ien – guess where the upper dan t’ien is? Yep, the head. My gut is a brain just like the one in my skull.
[Amelia Nagoski]

There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to
new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.
[Seagal Rinpoche; comment at http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/2011/02/reasons-to-be-cheerful.html]

medical, memes, personal, science

Thing-a-Day – FAIL!

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Well to misquote Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

I started with every intention of completing this year’s Thing-a-Day. Then everything went “castors up”!

Last Thursday I had a relatively routine medical procedure (trust me – you really don’t want to know the details!) as a day-care patient at our local private hospital. Everything appeared to go OK and I was discharged early that evening feeling surprisingly good despite the sedation.

By Friday morning I was in quite some abdominal discomfort and had a raging fever. To cut a long and tedious story short I got back to see the consultant at 2pm on Friday and he immediately re-admitted me to hospital with instructions to get a CT scan on the way. The scan showed that I had one of those 1 in 1000 complications: peritonitis. Major Gerry Bummer!

The upshot was that I spent the weekend connected up to drips (IV fluids, antibiotics and insulin), on a diet of “clear fluids” only and being disturbed every 1 hour 27 minutes (well it certainly wasn’t regular) round the clock to have everything measured. By Monday I was well on the way to recovery and was discharged, without a demob suit but with a box more antibiotics and an instruction to “take it easy for a few days”. So I am. And I’m still getting better; the discomfort has almost entirely gone; and I go back to see the surgeon on Friday for a check-up.

With a couple of notable exceptions I have to say the care I received was brilliant. My GP was on the ball, helpful and sympathetic. So was my consultant who actually came in to see me at 0830 on Sunday morning! The nursing staff were great and mostly friendly and chatty and had time for you. I did like the way when I was with him the consultant picked up his phone, asked when the Imaging Department would scan me and then told them that no, he wanted a scan now and not in 3 hours time! No-one was in any doubt who was in charge.

What wasn’t I impressed with? One of the night nurses didn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but she was the only one of the many nurses I saw who didn’t. But worse was the reception from the Endoscopy Department when I called them on the Friday morning, clearly unwell: the best they could do was “go to your GP”. My GP nearly blew a gasket and I suspect someone got an Exocet suppository when I wasn’t there.

Let’s just hope things keep rolling downhill and there are no nasty surprises in the biopsy results.

Meanwhile having missed some days of Thing-a-Day I don’t have it in me to start over. This was not the intention. MAJOR FAIL.

Time to go and take the antibiotics!

memes, personal, photography

[2/28] Calendar Photo-Mosaic

Thing-a-Day Day 2.  Today I started making a photo-mosaic calendar using appropriate photos form Flickr.  I don’t intend to post this every day, although I will keep it up to date.  The intention is for it to provide a quick fallback for Thing-a-Day contribution on days when something more original is difficult (like maybe tomorrow when I’ll be at the hospital a lot of the day).