Sorry for all the radio silence. NeuJob is keeping me very busy indeed (which I love), and my social life seems to involve two or three events per night right now. It's a good thing I've taken up running, because that's what I feel like I'm doing all the time.
I'm trying to keep up where I can, but I will probably miss important things. And I am slowly making my way through that meme about two or three responses at a time (well, I managed two yesterday, so I'm assuming that will be the pattern).
There have been no major tales of commuting woe except for yesterday, when a man accidentally stepped on my toe--hardly a threat of fatal stabbing, I'm sure you'll agree.
“I went climbing and I'm not used to being actually any good at anything like sporty at all. And of my team of 4, I was the fastest up and down the wall. And I feel like all strong and fast and stuff, even though I know it was all the easy holes and stuff that we were directed to do. It was really cool and I would do it again, and I was completely scared to death, and then it was totally euphoric and it was awesome. So I would recommend climbing. The end.”
I try my best not to waste food. However, as ruudboy can attest, I have thrown out many things, mostly vegetables and bread (which is in line with what the report states).
One problem is that when you're just one or two people, you can't really get small enough packages of bread. You can get half loaves, but they're always rubbish. You can also go to your local bakery if you are home when they're open, but you're still not going to eat a whole loaf.
There's less excuse for wasting fruits and vegetables, but what generally happens with me is that I buy some tomatoes or some broccoli or whatever expecting to make dinner at some point in the next few days, but then I'm out every night for a week, and then it's all gone off, and then I spend the next week at home eating tinned soup because I'm too tired from being out every night in the previous week that I don't want to go out and I certainly don't want to go food shopping.
Obviously I should pick up fresh fruit and vegetables on the night itself (and now that there's a Co-op open until 10 p.m. 1 minute's walk away, that's what I've been doing).
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BUT. All of that seems to be a separate issue from other sorts of food waste, which they were discussing on the radio this morning. A woman was complaining that people throw out half a packet of biscuits once they've gone stale.
Now. Biscuits are one of those things that come in fairly generous packages, and either you eat them all or you don't. If they came in packets that were smaller (to ensure that people ate them all before they went stale) there would be *more* manufacturing effort and *more* packaging in landfills.
Similarly, someone on the radio was going through her refrigerator to find that some cream had gone out of date. She said that she was going to have a sniff to see if it was ok later (but someone else right afterward said that dates on food were important). Again, cream tends to come in fairly generous packaging--getting it in smaller packages creates more plastic manufacturing and more waste.
I don't see a solution to that sort of thing: biscuits, cream, etc., are all things that you use in whatever quantities you need, from the generous packet provided. And YET the woman on the radio was saying, "ensure that you eat all of your food that you buy."
Surely that's not the answer. Eating all of the food that you buy (in the case of biscuits and cream) doesn't affect anyone but you. The shipping, manufacturing, and landfill costs are EXACTLY the same whether you eat the package of biscuits or half the package of biscuits. And I'd rather have some biscuits biodegrading in a landfill over a couple of weeks than a lot of plastic wrapping from smaller packages where I ate all the biscuits.
The answer should be to *buy fewer biscuits* or *buy less cream*. But, as I've discussed, buying less of that sort of thing results in MORE manufacturing effort and MORE packaging in landfills.
So the REAL answer is either (a) to stop having luxury goods like cream/biscuits altogether, or (b) for food shops to have big vats of cream where you dip out what you need for that day or that week into a recycled container of some sort, and big bins of fresh cookies, and their own olive trees, and so on and so forth. And that's not workable.
So essentially there's nothing that we can do except continue to buy our cream/biscuits/etc. in bulk, eat what we can, and throw out or recycle the smaller amount of packaging that comes with that. Do you see what I'm saying? Where am I wrong here?
I have my own style, which wavers between "classic" and "baglady." Today I'm rocking the baglady look (flowery shirt that doesn't quite go with my long brown skirt, and birkenstocks), but it's so worth it to watch the sneering faces of the City folk I encounter in the mornings. "Ssshe isss not one of ussssss!"
YESSSSS The Apprentice, in real time, for the first time practically ever. I'll be sure to post spoilers everyone who is recording it and who wants to watch it later, as that seems to be the popular thing to do when I do the same.
(To be fair, I am not talking about any of you in particular--more the bloody BBC.)
EDIT: ooer, they appear to be possibly in possibly the same hotel I was in when I went to Marrakech.
I've never done one of these LJ Writers Block things, so let's see if I'm doing it right. Do I just type here like normal after the template thing? I'll try.
The neighbors I've just left behind seemed very nice. I recently went over to fetch Anya when she got out and hid in their garden, and the lovely teenage girl (who appears to be doing some sort of clothing design course) let me go through their house to get to the back part of their garden. Later I popped a thank-you note through the door, and a few days after that the dad of the house came over to invite Tim and me over for dinner. He seemed sad when I said that was lovely but that we were about to move.
The neighbors I've just inherited are . . . interesting. I think it's two girls, somewhere between 17 and 21 years old, and they are LOUD. They play a lot of loud music at 4 a.m. (on the weekends, though, not the weekdays), they shriek, they have lots of boys over, they annoy all the other people on the floor. Strangely enough--and this WILL be strange to you, if you know me--they don't bother me at all. The arrangement of the flats means that I don't hear them at all during sleeping hours, but anyone else in any other flat would. I've had other neighbors stop me at the lift and say, "Those girls! So anti-social!" and I've just sort of nodded, but actually they're fine as far as I'm concerned.
Recently they were filming some a music video (?!) and invited us over for drinks after they were going to be finished (around 1 a.m.!), as a kind of apology for the noise. That's quite funny because, as I said, we're not really affected by the noise. They've painted their hallway a sort of murky green, they've got a wooden butler/drinks-holder thing in their hallway, and they have lamps covered in red scarves--occasionally I see a bit of their decor from the street, or from the hall if they have the door open. Interesting girls.
The noise I *am* affected by is the woman upstairs who puts on wooden clogs around 2 a.m. and then has marching band practice for the next four hours.
Ann Die [my university's 9th president] will always love you
[May. 4th, 2008|12:58 pm]
I am not at the cricket, as was my original plan for today. I woke up at 7 this morning--
(Gray hair, inability to sleep past 7 a.m., a fundamental inability to identify with the youth of today: I feel that there is some great change working within me, but I just can't put my finger on what it might be . . .)
--and realized that I've been out an awful lot since moving in here last week, and if I wanted to avoid the problems noted by eyekiller in the comments to this post, I should probably spend some time unpacking before G returns from his cycling trip.
So I'm beavering away, having put on the hits* (there is nothing to go with that asterisk; that's simply how the hits* brands itself), where they are playing Every Number 1 of the 90s.
The first thing to note is that the UK number ones are an awful lot different from the US number ones. There are a few similarities, but I think the UK cornered the market on transvestite Abba covers.
The second thing to note is that Anya was sauntering from the bedroom toward the living room (from where said number ones were emanating) at the exact time Whitney Houston started warbling. The cat stopped in her tracks, did a full 180, and shot back under the bed, feet skidding on the floor as she went. And that's pretty much the most eloquent thing anyone can say about Whitney Houston, as far as I'm concerned.
So the other day I noticed that one of you (I can't remember who; I thought it was barrysarll but I've had a look and it wasn't) posted something like "I'm halfway through The Amber Spyglass and whoa!--" at which point I stopped reading that entry, because I didn't want any spoilers.
Well, this isn't a spoiler: I'm halfway through The Amber Spyglass and whoa!--suddenly, this morning, out of nowhere, I was reading the saddest thing I've read in a novel in an awfully long time, and I found myself sitting on the tube sobbing.
I didn't like the first Dark Materials book at all, but the second one was really intriguing, and this third one is proving to be absolutely wonderful. I'm still not sure how anyone takes away any practical anti-religious feeling from it--it's anti-extremist, sure, and I'm sure Pullman himself probably works from an anti-religious standpoint, but nothing in these books should make any moderate Christian particularly upset, I wouldn't think.
Then again, I have half a book yet to go. We'll see what happens.
It can't be just me, right? 4:20 is the worst time of the working day. (Well, the working day that ends at 5:30, that is. I imagine that if your working day ends at 5, 3:50 is pretty bad.) I seriously flag every day starting at 4:20 and continuing through a long, dark half hour.
BLOODY Pipex. I phoned them on APRIL 9th to request that my internet service be cancelled on May 11th. That's perfectly within the 30 days notice required to cancel one's account. The pleasant man said that would be fine and that they would phone me closer to the date to ensure cancellation.
Today, since I haven't heard from them, I phoned back to ensure that I was still scheduled to have my service cancelled from May 11th. OH SURPRISE, they have "no record" of that, and they'll cancel but it'll be 30 days from now before the cancellation will happen.
FVCK THAT. There's no way I'm paying for internet access for an extra month just because they have "no record" of something I have done. WHAT AN OBVIOUS SCAM. An extra £25 from every customer every time they cancel their account? Sounds like a great business plan to me too.
*I* have a record of doing it, so I've cancelled the direct debit that's supposed to go out on May 7th (the woman on the phone today said that I pay monthly in advance) and if they'd like to pursue anything any further they can FEEL FVCKING FREE TO TRY.
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