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December 10th, 2009
yonmei
 | 12:00 pm - International Human Rights Day
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of sisterhood."
When you see this in your friendslist, quote from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Sexual Minorities Uganda asked for people all over the world to make today an international day of protest against the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill: You Cannot Tell Me You Will Kill Me Because I’m Gay. Today at noon in London activists will gather in front of the Ugandan High Commission in Trafalgar Square.
The original text says "in a spirit of brotherhood", and to note again how often human rights for women are regarded as optional.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://yonmei.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif) contemplative
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yonmei
 | 08:56 am - Vote Doodle 4 Google!
British schoolchildren doodle for Google...
(And consider, if you will, how very few of them have any idea there are women in British history. ...bah.)
Current Mood: awake
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December 9th, 2009
yonmei
| 11:34 pm - Imaginary friend meetup
Managed to miss two work-related events that I'd wanted to go to, but in compensation, I met ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) threeoranges, who is lovely. (Both in personality, which I knew about, and gorgeous, which I didn't.)
I bought her a coffee. She bought me a beer.
Just for a change, I caught the 24 all the way to the Infirmary. (It's 35 minutes, give or take, from Lothian Road: quite quick, compared to the 21.)
My dad was doing well (though his cheerfulness may have been because they forgot about his evening torture session physiotherapy) and I had found him a couple of Stephen King books to read. Which is slightly unique, really, my dad is so not the horror novel type.
I have run myself a hot bath. That's nice, too.
Current Mood: pleased
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December 8th, 2009
yonmei
 | 05:14 pm - Stoopid NHS Trust...
Edinburgh used to have a Royal Infimary in the city centre, and lots of small specialist hospitals and clinics built decades or even a century or more ago, all usefully accessible to the people who used them.
Then we got an NHS Trust that looked at this spread of healthcare and said OOH PRIME CITY CENTRE BUILDING SITES, and sold all the land off to property developers and used the money to fund a Public-Private Partnership (ie, a big con) to build a giant hospital an hour's bus ride out from the city centre. Miles and miles from anywhere.
So while I love my dad and want to see him, I am getting really increasingly pissed off with the decision that means my evenings are occupied from 5:30-9:00 by travelling out to the Royal Infirmary, having visiting time with my dad, and travelling back again. There is nowhere to buy a cup of tea or coffee - the only cafe closes (I assume) at 6pm, since I've never seen it open. There is a sort of mini-mall in the main entrance, but the only shop open when I get there is WHSmiths, which closes at 8pm, which has tail-end sandwiches left by the time I get there.
(My first time, I thought to buy one of the meal bargains - you get a sandwich, a bottle of water/soft drink, a packet of crisps - but they'd run out of water the size that went with the meal bargain, I don't do soft drinks, and the sandwich / crisps were both being sold at the kind of inflated prices you see when a shop has (a) a captive market (b) a hefty ground rent.)
I'm feeling kind of lost and isolated at work right now because my colleagues are all frantic about other things and I'm feeling mostly "OMG DAD!" which of course no one else is. And I can see why they're frantic and would be sharing that franticness except that I don't have room for it past "OMG DAD!"
Off for my long bus ride now...
Current Mood: tired
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December 7th, 2009
yonmei
| 03:34 pm - Sleeping dad
Composing a note to my dad, I realised I was actually not sure how to address it. I have for years avoided it because one simply doesn't write letters these days. E-mails begin with "hi". Cards and presents are formally addressed.
How do I think of him? He's his name, of course: he's Father, which is how I speak to him more often than not: he is "my dad", which is how I reference him to others more often than not: he is "Pops" or "Granpops" to my siblings and to my nephews, respectively, but I've never thought of him as either one, though I can and do switch to their terminology when speaking with them. I addressed the note, in the end, to "Dear Name", on the basis that the nurses would realise more easily who it belonged to if it got cleared off the over-the-bed table at night. He is also half of the collective referent "the parents" which is how me and my brother and sister discuss them as a joint problem. Er, yes.
He was asleep when I arrived (late: bus breakdown) last night, and I sat watching/listening to him sleep, feeling that it would be a mistake to wake him up. He woke about quarter to eight, and concurred. We sat together till about ten past eight, or shortly after the trolley came in with the evening tea, and then I went home, because visiting hours officially end at 8pm and I thought it better to leave before being formally asked to go.
Sleeping did him good, though he is clearly getting better: he suffers pain now (he says) only in the broken bone, not all over. He was out of bed for an hour, and while it exhausted and hurt him, he didn't actually feel he was going to collapse, as on Saturday: and he is off the oxygen which was cleaning out his system after the anaesthetic. He rang my mum Sunday morning to remind her about the newsletters for the Quaker Meeting he had meant to deliver on Thursday, and was about to call her again after I'd left to let her know that the publisher of his book should know he is in hospital and not available to respond to e-mails. (Fortunately, he won't receive the proofs till 13th January - "your birthday", he said with a grin - and they don't have to go back to the publishers till February.) So. But, he is still not well enough to focus - to read/listen to radio. Though I brought him a new set of earphones, the sort that actually fit inside your ears (you don't know until you've tried them how much better the sound quality is) and a travel radio as an early Christmas present.
(Unfortunately, his ward is in a transmitter shadow, so he can't use the radio in hospital, though there is a hospital radio behind his bed.)
He's better. He will be getting better. Hopefully, he will be out of the hospital for Christmas, though that only leaves the problem open for now about where my parents are going to go, for how long, and how. (My mum planned to contact the university to ask about a flat with disabled access, available on a short let, as for a visiting scholar: which would be perfect if possible. If she does. Um.)
Current Mood: calm
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December 6th, 2009
announcements
[squeaky]
 | 09:23 pm - Issues with notifiactions
There have been a lot of issues with notifications with several email providers for the past 2 weeks. Seems that a spammer has been using insanejournal.com as a landing page for their spam. This is causing some email providers to either delay or completely block mail from insanejournal.com.
There isn't anything we can do about this besides continue to be vigilant in suspending these accounts. If you own an account that gets suspended with no notification it is because your account was mistakenly identified as a spam account. Due to the shear volume of accounts being suspended we cannot review each individual account so some mistakes may be made.
Please understand we have been and will continue to do anything we can to stop this spam and therefore restore the ability to send email to a number of providers.
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yonmei
| 02:00 pm - The Christmas Wish Project
( The Rules )
1. For my dad's broken bone to heal cleanly and without complications.
2. Anything on my Amazon wish-list
3. A holiday somewhere outside Edinburgh.
4. A big glass goblet candle-holder, the sort that can hold a 30-hour candle
5. For my parents to see that the only workable solution to their current situation is for both of them to take a short let on a nice furnished ground-floor flat with a walk-in shower and let other people clear the guddle out of their duplex four-flights-up flat so that it can be sold and they can move properly.
6. 30-hour scented candles in cinnamon, vanilla, chocolate, coffee, and cardamom. (I have never seen a cardamom-scented candle.)
7. For my parents to admit that they see (5) and actually follow through.
8. Starbucks Chocolate Covered Graham Crackers
9. Time to write.
10. A Swiss Army knife
Current Mood: seasonal
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yonmei
| 01:40 pm - Le weekend
I met my mum for lunch, we had delicious vegan soup and talked in a fraught way about their home and then she went off to the hospital to see my dad while I went shopping. Afterwards I went to see my dad and he was very tired and I got the 8 back to have mulled fruit wine and other interesting fruit wines in good company. I got home late, tired, drunk, and slept irregularly till noon. It's sunny. I suppose going out would be a good idea, now I've had breakfast. And coffee.
Current Mood: tired
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December 3rd, 2009
announcements
[squeaky]
| 09:55 pm - Permanently Insane accounts
From now until January 3rd we are going to be selling Permanently Insane accounts for their regular price of $50. In addition we are selling Permanent Extra Userpics for $25. This will bring the userpic total of your Permanently Insane account to 500 for the life of your account.
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yonmei
 | 11:16 pm - Cold and rainy
The short version of the past 24 hours: I finally finished a task at work that got unconscionably delayed because I had a fit of the what'sthepoints, and a few hours later (not that I knew: this was up over at my parents flat) my dad fell over and broke his hip. My mum rang to tell me about it lunchtime. He is in the hospital. Hopefully, he will be operated on tomorrow. I saw him this evening, and he seemed fine. Aside from the broken leg.
The weather continues miserable.
Current Mood: weird
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December 2nd, 2009
yonmei
 | 10:19 pm - Today has really just not been a very good day
Not at all.
Current Mood: blah
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December 1st, 2009
yonmei
 | 11:30 am - Because abortion rights are human rights
Abortion is illegal under most circumstances in Northern Ireland. Women in NI pay the same taxes for the NHS as people in the rest of the UK, but when they need to have an abortion, they have to travel to the mainland at their own expense, find a private clinic, and pay for their own abortion. They're not allowed to access NHS services, even though they're UK taxpayers.
There's currently a petition to the Prime Minister (whoever that may be in October 2010) to demand redress for this injustice: regardless of regional law in Northern Ireland, a UK resident is justly entitled to the same NHS services as anyone else, no matter where she lives.
If you're a UK citizen, you can sign it: whether or not you're a UK citizen, please consider linking to it at your journal or blog. Because abortion rights are human rights.
SPUC recently won a nasty victory in Northern Ireland: they claimed the guidelines on termination were "ambiguous" and needed to be redrafted.
The guidelines say, with regard to women who need an abortion but won't be allowed to have one in Northern Ireland because they're not actually going to die if they don't get one: Health professionals should explore the woman’s concerns and expectations to establish what kind of support she is getting or may expect to receive from her partner, family, social services, work colleagues or school/college authorities. It is important to discuss any difficulties she foresees if she continues with the pregnancy as well as any concrete measures that can be taken to help her particular situation. A woman should be offered information about alternatives to termination such as continuing with the pregnancy, adoption, etc. She should also be offered information on organisations which can offer support and advice. You may wonder, what's ambiguous about that? Well, for SPUC: the guidelines do not say, unambiguously, that health professionals are not allowed to point out to a pregnant woman that it's totally legal for her to travel to the mainland, get an abortion there, and here are contact details for organisations that can offer support and advice when she does so. What SPUC wants is a gag rule for health professionals in Northern Ireland.
And they won their court case.
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November 30th, 2009
lotr_fic_recs
[sophinisba]
 | 10:56 pm - Last call for Dom/Elijah recs
And that's the end of the Dom/Elijah recs challenge. Thanks to cara_dee on LJ for the recs and to others who commented or helped me track down links there, on Dreamwidth, and by e-mail. We never close comments on the posts at ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif) lotr_fic_recs, so if you have another Dom/Elijah fic to rec but it didn't work out for you this month, just comment on the LJ entry when you can. elanorgardner will post a new challenge in the next day or two.
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yonmei
| 12:48 pm - To do list till April
I have just been working out my To Do list till the end of March. For work, that is, though it includes such stuff as two weeks annual leave over Christmas.
One of my colleagues, USHomosamurai (who went back to the US a couple of years ago) asked me once why the British financial year runs from 1st April to 31st March. I didn't know, but was able to tell her that in Samuel Pepys time, the year's number changed on 1st April - his diary makes that clear. So the habit of changing the year's number on the 1st of January is something less than four hundred years old, but - I was able to work this out from first principles - can't be very much less, because the US cloned its calendar from the UK in the 18th century, and the US (say American friends) has financial and calendar year running concurrently.
But why (asked USHomosamurai) would the new year ever have started on 1st April? I thought about it, and shrugged: "Could be because the Roman Empire's New Year began 1st April, and you know how bureaucrats are...."
I don't care for today's XKCD. It's cruel to physics lecturers.
I did, however, love last night's House episode, even if it was rather cruel to House. Cruelty to House is what makes fanfic fun. ( light spoilers for what's either 6.8 or 6.9 depending how you're counting )
I have finished writing the skeleton of my Yuletide story.
Current Mood: amused
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November 29th, 2009
yonmei
 | 10:40 pm - Sunday
Where did it go, again?
Current Mood: tired
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November 28th, 2009
yonmei
| 05:36 pm - Same-sex handholding dragons
Today is Sssh! Saturday, which is an invention of a Londoner who wants it to become an international last-Saturday-of-the-month celebration of people holding hands in public.
I didn't hold hands with anyone today.
One of my dragons is about to die.
I have to go have dinner with my parents shortly.
None of the above statements has anything to do with each other or with this one.
As far as I know.
Current Mood: indescribable
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announcements
[squeaky]
| 12:18 am - Sales Over
All of the IJ holiday sales have ended and prices are back to normal. We will be putting Permanently Insane accounts on sale for their regular price before Christmas.
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November 27th, 2009
yonmei
| 11:24 pm - Dull week...
Monday: still at work till 10pm, till TSH#1 and I finally packed up and left.
Tuesday: Took Bob to vet: she weighs the same as she did last time, so the vet hopes she's plateau'd out. Stayed at work till 10pm, till TSH#1 and I finally packed up and left.
Wednesday: Worked at home till 3pm, went into work, stayed at work till 10pm. (TSH#1 was through in Glasgow at a work-related event.)
Thursday: Twerp and FreshStart had meeting, which - towards the end - I overheard enough (door opened) to make clear they had been talking about me. Huh. Left work at 5:30 to attend work-related event. Left at 8pm and went to non-work wine-tasting. (White Rioja is great stuff, by the way.)
Friday: Left work at 5:10 to attend work-related event. Left at 7:30pm, did shopping, got home at just after 9pm.
Am attempting to figure out where I want to go for Christmas. For the last sixteen years, with only a couple of exceptions, I've been meeting up with two friends for mince pies, wine, and midnight mass. This Christmas, one of them is dead, and the other plans - rightly, I think - to go on holiday somewhere else. (I would go with him if he were going, but I have been going to that church specifically for midnight mass on Chriatmas Eve since 1987, first with one friend, then with another, and now both of them are dead. It feels too weird to be going there on my own. I'd like to be somewhere else instead.)
Current Mood: busy
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yonmei
| 01:19 pm - To do list (dull)
( cut for dullness )
Current Mood: dull
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announcements
[squeaky]
| 08:05 am - Black Friday Sale is here
I have turned on today's special Black Friday sale.
Until 4:00pm(EST) we will be holding a sale on Permanently Insane accounts, Permanent Extra Userpics, and Insane Userpics the prices are as follows.
Permanently Insane account - $30
Insane Userpics - $70
Permanent Extra Userpics - $5
At 4:00 today all prices on IJ will go back to their normal amounts.
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