It'll be fine

So after a week of being incredibly good and planning my meals and having basically no sugar, I've lost half a pound. I was hoping for more, but I'm also being realistic and realising that this probably on show on the scale next week. So I'm still feeling motivated. I know Weightwatchers meetings get a lot of stick, but I actually quite enjoy them. They really feel like a support group, and my leader is really great. So all in all, half a pound, yay!

I officially got "the crate" at work, to pack my desk stuff up in. I start in my new team on 1 August. I had a quick chat with one of my new managers, and she had really nice things to say about me (flattery will get you everywhere) and it sounds like she's really wanting me to go into this role with energy and enthusiasm and try to infect other people with it. This faculty has a bad reputation as far as new and innovative goes. They really don't want to embrace online learning, which unfortunately is where our students want to learn. So this is going to be tough.

I had a really good one-to-one with my current boss today. We both got a bit upset about the move yesterday, and kind of infected each other with negativity. I was really brooding about it last night, and I thought, no, we can't have this. I emailed her last night asking if we could have a coffee and a talk today, and we both apparantly had the same thoughts overnight, and had a decent meeting today. We decided to put our personal upset about the move to the side, and just work with the changes, so I can go down with a clear mind, throw myself into learning a new job (God, ack) and not be worrying about the fact that I've left the team with basically no resources and no time to find anyone else.

She's been an amazing boss, and she's without a doubt my mentor, and she says, we're mates. So it'll be fine!

Three cheers for therapy

I got some nice compliments on my people skills at work today, and now I'm being all grateful like a sap. It's so ironic being thanked for people skills because I find it quite hard work to interact with people. I have to put effort in. I don't mean that I'm faking it, just that I'm thinking about my interactions a lot? It's not sort of natural I guess. But I know that's probably true for the vast majority of people, although some people have an enviable skill for interaction.

There are some days when I use all the skills that Michael the Therapist taught me nine years ago, and I'm so grateful for them. It's hard sometimes to remember them and put them into practice, and it's also hard work to be open, pragmatic, positive, non-judgemental and...what's the opposite of paranoid? The skills he taught me for interacting with people are the ones that I use most though.

I know a lot of who I am now is just due to getting older, but two years of therapy was worth it. Everybody should do it at least once.

Free-floating hopes

And then, a piece of good news, wrapped up in sad, as all good news inevitably is. So now I'm happy and afraid and hopeful. I can live with that. Sorry to be coy, but more news later.

Free-floating fears

I feel like all my anxieties and fears are leaving my body and settling around me like a cloak. It's heavy and thick.

Things I have achieved today

• Not changing out of my pyjamas.
• Finishing my latest book.
• Brushing the dog.
• Drinking a lot of Diet Coke.
• Annoying the hamsters.
• Untying some washing line for my mother.
• Eating grilled cheese and onion sandwiches.
• Not thought about work. Much. Although I checked my email a bit.

Not my problem

At which point is it ok to say, ok, that's not my problem? I'm thinking of work in particular. I feel so responsible when things go wrong, as they often do. Where is the line between my job and what I'm in control of, and getting overly involved?

Worlds within worlds

I've been rewatching Lord of the Rings, and so I've also been rediscovering the incredible lore Tolkein created as part of his writing on Middle-Earth.

I find the idea of whole worlds, cultures and languages being created by authors completely fascinating. It's so easy to get involved in a new world like that - I almost wish that I had discovered Lord of the Rings before Star Trek, because I spent so much time absorbing the world of the United Federation of Planets, and I could have been memorising all the kings of Gondor instead.

Oh well, it's not too late!

A week from hell

What a truly shitty, horrible, stressful week. My stomach has been in knots. I've expected the sky to fall in at any moment.

And then, thank goodness, today emails flew around that cut people down to size, and offered actual solutions to problems, instead of petty slaps. And I got a lot done.

I feel better. Still no certainty. But I feel better.

Little Phoetus Philemon

Not to be confused with Curtis the Foetus.

Boy oh boy

So The Sister and The Brother-in-Law and The Nephew found out today that it's another little boy on the way to be a part of their family.

So excited to meet this little person who is going to be joining us (and this time I won't have to wait a whole year before meeting him for the first time). And at least I know how boys work. But it's also going to be very strange, that there will be two instead of one. Strange, and expensive.

Why not?

I think I'm going to set myself a little task, to read all the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners. Some I have already read, and I've marked those. As I read them I'll update this post.

1910s

• 1918: His Family by Ernest Poole
• 1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

1920s

• 1920: no award given
• 1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• 1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington
• 1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather
• 1924: The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson
• 1925: So Big by Edna Ferber
• 1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (declined prize)
• 1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield
• 1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
• 1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin

1930s

• 1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge
• 1931: Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes
• 1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• 1933: The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling
• 1934: Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller
• 1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson
• 1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis
• 1937: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• 1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand
• 1939: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

1940s

• 1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• 1941: no award given ^[2]
• 1942: In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow
• 1943: Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair
• 1944: Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin
• 1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey
• 1946: no award given
• 1947: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
• 1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
• 1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens

1950s

• 1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.
• 1951: The Town by Conrad Richter
• 1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
• 1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• 1954: No award given
• 1955: A Fable by William Faulkner
• 1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
• 1957: No award given^[3]
• 1958: A Death in the Family by James Agee
• 1959: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor

1960s

• 1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
• 1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• 1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor
• 1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner
• 1964: No award given
• 1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
• 1966: The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter
• 1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
• 1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
• 1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

1970s

• 1970: The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford
• 1971: No award given^[4]
• 1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
• 1973: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
• 1974: No award given ^[5]
• 1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
• 1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
• 1977: No award given ^[6]
• 1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson
• 1979: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

1980s

Entries from this point on include the finalists listed after the winner for each year.

• 1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
• 1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (posthumous win)
• 1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
• 1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• 1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy
• 1985: Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
• 1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
• 1987: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
• 1988: Beloved by Toni Morrison
• 1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

1990s

• 1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
• 1991: Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
• 1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
• 1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
• 1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
• 1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
• 1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford
• 1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
• 1998: American Pastoral by Philip Roth
• 1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham

2000s

• 2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• 2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
• 2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo
• 2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• 2004: The Known World by Edward P. Jones
• 2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• 2006: March by Geraldine Brooks
• 2007: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• 2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
• 2009: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

2010s

• 2010: Tinkers by Paul Harding
• 2011: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Music meme

1. Put Your MP3 player on Shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write down the name of the song no matter how silly it sounds!

In the week to come:


1. What will you achieve?
Fall at your feet (Crowded House)

2. What should your motto be?
Mockingbird (Eminem)

3. What’s going to be on your mind?
Lucy in the sky with diamonds (The Beatles)

4. What’ll your best friend be like?
Make your own kind of music (Mama Cass)

5. What’ll happen with the person you like?
Feel (Robbie Williams)

6. What’ll your job be like?
Summer Nights (John Travolta and Olivia Newton John)

7. What will you do with the person you like?
Streets of London (Ralph McTell)

8. What will happen with your hobby/interest?
The kids don't stand a chance (Vampire Weekend)

9. What’ll happen with your friends?
Welcome Home (Radical Face)

10. What’s your goal for the end of the week?
Golden Slumbers (Will Young)

11. How will you feel?
Nightingale (Laura Veirs)

12. What's your outlook on the week to come?
Caramel (Suzanne Vega)

13.What will family relations be like?
Yellow Submarine (The Beatles)

14. What’ll strangers think of you?
Torn (Natalie Imbruglia)

15. What’ll happen with your exes?
Horchata (Vampire Weekend)

16. How will your love life be?
Somethin' Stupid (Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman)

17. What’ll happen with your kids (if you have any)?
Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs (The Original Haughton Weavers)

18.What’ll your employers treat you like?
Don't Panic (Coldplay)

19. What occasions will happen?
Unwell (Matchbox 20)

20. THE SOUNDTRACK OF THIS WEEK:
A boy named Sue (Johnny Cash)

21. If you get drunk, you should get drunk to:
I melt (Rascall Flats)

22. If you have a party, its theme should be:
Sweet Disposition (The Temper Trap)

23. If you’re depressed, you’ll be depro too:
You're the top (Cole Porter)

24. What should you say if things go bad?
Caring is creepy (The Shins)

25. What's the first thing you’ll do?
The last day of the melting snow (The Leisure Society)

26. What will you post this as?
I am a man of constant sorrow (Alison Krauss + Union Station)

Being fiction

I'm having a pretty ok day over here, feeling all right, working, doing my job. And then I went on lunch. I had a Spanish omelette with garlic green beans, a diet coke, two biscuits and a latte. For the first half of my lunch I had to talk to a co-worker who discovered me in the cafeteria and ignored my do not disturb signal. But for the other half I read a book called Suspect, by Jennifer Rowe. It's pretty good.

And then I went back to my office and instead of feeling ok and all right and working, I feel flat and uninspired and generally malcontented.

But it's not me feeling these things, it's Tessa, the detective in Suspect. She's on the trail of a serial killer and has just been dumped by her pratty boyfriend.

I was feeling pretty blue there, until I realised why. Does anyone else experience this?

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

I wish I had been able to read this book when I was 16, or 17, or 18.

It's just a little teen novel, but I know it would have had a profound effect on the person I was then, and would have helped me identify the person I am now a little more quickly.

Why for the Shipping?

Why do we identify characters with chemistry on TV programmes and then hope they'll get together (although often we enjoy the chase more than the actual resolution)? It's as if we actively seek out these relationships - is it just because it's a recognisable and cliched "trope", or is it a natural extension of real life?
 

Online musings

While I was still at Rhodes I became really active on the university forums. I loved it, got really involved and swept away by the giddy thrill that comes with the message board medium. It's a very gratifying (but occasionally frustrating) way of communicating. Being on a forum allows you to create a sense of community that is hard to capture on sites like Facebook.

Anyway, the university got fed up with people trying to use the forums as a place to hawk their services and kicked those of us who were no longer on campus off. I said a fond farewell to Castle Creepy and thought that was the end of the online world.

I was still at The Southern Cross when I found Table Talk, the forum attached to the Salon site. I was really put out that you had to pay to play, but that didn't stop me from lurking like a big lurky thing. I lurked for about three years until I came to the UK and then I paid and started to post.

And it was only then that I discovered a few pockets of community in this mass of discussion (Otters, we call ourselves, don't ask). And I feel as intensely about these online friends as I do about any of my real life friends. Some of these "invisible friends" have become real life friends - we've been on holidays together, visited each other, shared dinner and too much red wine, and really good martinis).

So I was bereft last night when the message went out that Table Talk was being shut down (even The Mother and The Sister were horrified for me: "Oh noes! Now you will have no friends at all!"). We're moving into a new forum, and I'm hoping the tight little community will stay tight. Because it is it's own culture, in a way, with its own myths and lore and beliefs and taboos. Community is about people, not place, so we should be all right.

The Otters will live on!

Oh, Groupon

Wow, Groupon! £25 for a colonic irrigation? Bargain! Sign me up.

Best movie synopsis ever

A warrior priest tracks down vampires in a post-apocalypse sci-fi thriller.

Puzzles

He knows she enjoys crosswords – she annoys Robert by downloading them from the internet and printing them off. She does all the across clues before her first cup of coffee, and then moves onto the down clues. Sometimes he times her for his own amusement. Last Tuesday it took her 10 minutes, but only because she couldn't remember the synonym for “isotherm”. This morning the printer malfunctioned, and she was forced to drink her coffee while staring at the ceiling.

He doesn't know if it's the routine she likes: scribble, sip, scribble; her mind racing along a few minutes ahead of her pencil. Perhaps she just finds it comforting, faithfully filling out blank squares, knowing that each answer leads to another, and that in the end a solution is sure to reveal itself. He could ask her why she enjoys her crossword, but he prefers to observe her murmuring to herself, observe her slight smirk on a Monday (apparently Monday's cruciverbalist is a pushover, preferring clues about dogs), and smiles at her frustration on Sunday (Sunday's cruciverbalist is a sadist, she says, and she is usually only saved by her esoteric knowledge of 18th century furniture).

She doesn't always finish her crosswords. She doesn't throw the unfinished ones away though. He's pretty sure he saw her dig last Wednesday's out of her bag when she went to the bar to get a round of drinks. He wondered what the clue was. Casting his thoughts back to the ribald and inane conversation junior sailors tend to have on shore leave, he's at a loss. Sharks, motorcycles and the cheapest hotels in Bangkok don't tend to make an appearance on a crossword. She likes British crosswords over the ones in the local papers. She doesn't do cryptics. He's not sure why.

And he doesn't quite understand. He likes a pub quiz himself, although it's been a while since he's allowed himself to indulge in one. His strengths are cricket players of the 1950s, Queen's greatest hits, and Humphrey Bogart movies. He doesn't like picture rounds – the sweet young things all look alike to him, and he was never much cop at identifying foreign world leaders.

He's tried his hand at sudoku, but the logic infuriates him. He would prefer to calculate the numbers, like a brainteaser, to manipulating them into place. Occasionally he teases out the chess problems in the Post's letter pages, but strategy is for real life, not a game board. The Rubik's cube on his desk he appreciates. He likes the ongoing thought process of it all, that with a few quick random twists he could be on the path to even colours and peaceful order.

Crosswords are a known and unknown entity. Last Saturday he got to spend a rare day at home. His plans for the day included catching up on the Ashes highlights package and running to earth his other hat. He last saw it in the garage. He thinks. His plans for the day did not include printing off The Guardian's daily quick crossword and making a cup of coffee. He lasted 5 minutes before carefully placing the printed paper down on the table and deciding to search for the hat instead.

It was too hard not to imagine her there: scribble, sip, scribble. Chewing the end of her pencil as she works out the angles. “Lead poisoning,” he imagines himself warning her. “Graphite,” his imagination answers him swiftly, smiling at him as only his imagination allows. It's why he doesn't ask questions about her crossword, tease her about her morning ritual, or tell her how long it took her to untangle 6 down yesterday (2 minutes, 9 letters, the scientific name for a llama). He can't ask her a question, because once he starts he won't be able to stop, and there are questions that demand answers that can't be resolved here.

So he keeps his questions to himself, but finds out from Robert if the printer is working again. He quietly passes her the printed sheet with her mid-morning cuppa. She chuckles and reaches for a pencil. He stares straight ahead at the turbulent grey ocean, and starts the timer on his watch.

The things you learn in Devon

- It's never cold, it's just windy.
- Miss Molly's daughter has succumbed to prostitution and taken the name Westward Ho!
- Religions revolving around arses opens up a world of bum-related humour, which never gets old.
- The National Trust is just a front. In fact, this fine and upstanding organisation is a cover up for a network of hitmen. The victims are turned into compost, to help those lovely gardens grow.
- Gnomes are scary.
- Gnomes are extremely scary.
- Gnomes really are quite terrifying.
- The answer to Twenty Questions rarely involves someone involved in shipping.
- Kites are harder to fly than you think.