02 - 13 Feb

13 Feb 2007
evidence

2 posts in one day, this has to be some kind of record. This is a brief thought. I'm currently doing one of my less favourite tasks, preparing to give a presentation. I'm presenting at an evidence based journal club, on the topic 'what is an evidence based journal club?' Unfortunately, using my skills in evidence based healthcare, I've discovered that there's almost no evidence that journal clubs work. So, I'm presenting at an evidence based journal club about the evidence base for evidence based journal clubs when there is no evidence that evidence based journal clubs are effective. Nicely ironic I think... and I've just discovered that evidence is one of those words that starts to look funny if you write it too much.
11:11 - 4 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

Fish

Got home yesterday and noticed 2 things. Firstly my flatmate is stilll alive, despite the fact that I haven't actually seen her since last Thursday. Things in the flat had been moved, so I can be fairly confident that she hasn't died/been abducted by aliens, unless we have a very selective poltergeist. The second thing I noticed was that our house-goldfish was not still alive. This has been coming for quite some time. First he swam on his side for a while, and just when we'd given up hope he recovered enough to spend most of his time sitting on the bottom of the tank looking resentfully at us. (Or he may have been looking resentfully at the bright pink gravel he was sitting on, a kind present from a former housemate.) Recently he's been alternating periods of sitting on the bottom with swimming manically round the tank - do goldfish get dementia?
The fact that the goldfish was no more was brought to my attention by the fact that the pump and his plants had been removed from the tank. It took me longer to notice (ok, til this morning) that the fish himself hadn't been removed from the tank and was in fact still sitting on the bottom looking out resentfully. This made me wonder if I spent the weekend feeding a dead fish, not the first time that this has happened. I once spent a week cycling over to feed my sister's guinea pig and fish while she and my parents were on holiday. The guinea pig was fine (the neighbours got used to hearing me in the garden saying entreatingly 'come on piggy-wiggy, you know you want to come here now, come on guinea-winny, don't make me come in and get you' as the guinea pig cowered in the far end of her run). The fish were less fine, and at some point in the week I must have made the transition from feeding live fish to throwing food in on top of dead fish. Unfortunately I didn't notice...

08 Feb 2007
Teeth

Have been back again to my dentist to have a temporary filling put back in to a wisdom tooth. By now it would have been easier and cheaper just to put in a normal filling, not to mention the fact that v soon I'm going to be noticeably lopsided due to only using the muscles on one side of my jaw. I'm waiting to have the whole tooth taken out, but as my dentist indignantly said this morning "the hospitals give priority to life saving surgery". Couldn't work out whether she was joking, or was genuinely annoyed that troublesome wisdom teeth aren't up there with coronary by-passes.

Clearly I couldn't possibly stagger in to the office through the snow with a dodgy wisdom tooth, so am working at home today. This is proving to be a mistake - having thought 'ah, I can work til 7pm and still get to my evening meeting on time', have so far failed to make much of an impact on my to-do list. Back to it....
21:29 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

05 Feb 2007
Neighbours Current mood: sleepy

I am engaged in a long-term war of attrition with our neighbours over whether the windows in the communal staircase should be open or closed. Every time I come in or go out I close the windows and within approximately 30 seconds a person or persons unknown opens them. I thought I was the only one petty enough to be bothered, but I recently discovered my flatmate (R) does exactly the same thing.

Personally I think my reasons for closing the windows are entirely reasonable: it's winter, when the stairway is cold all your heating escapes every time you open the flat door, and when it rains the carpet gets wet. Also we live on a main road and everything gets covered in a layer of black dust when the windows are open. Other neighbour disputes in this block have resulted in hand-written notices being blu-tacked to the suspects' front doors, and then to the main door when the culprits denied all knowledge. I've always considered those kind of notices to be the last resort of the desperate, but I'm seriously considering sticking one on the windows. The fact that we only rent the flat is irrelevant, and my motivation for wanting them closed is nothing to do with pettily wanting to win an argument, no, definitely not. Ahem...

This isn't the first time we've had neighbour issues. Our last (ground floor) flat was damp, oddly decorated, and required extensive net curtains because someone parking their car and walking to the front door had a perfect view into every room in the flat. These things we could cope with. Our neighbours in that block were helpful, chatty and cared about the flats - this we could not cope with. I eventually demanded we move after Neighbour A informed me that the piece of hardboard which had mysteriously appeared next to my scooter had been left there by Neighbour B who had been inspecting the tarmac and noticed that the stand of my bike was leaving dents. I was apparently supposed to have understood the need for the hardboard by some process of mind-reading/extra sensory perception, though if he'd just asked me to do it I wouldn't have minded... much...

02 Feb 2007
Distractions Current mood: blah

I have that Friday feeling... one of those days where I find myself fitting work in between checking emails, doing internet searches and reading the BBC news instead of the other way round. It's not as though I don't have anything to do, it's just that I don't have any imminent deadlines. I finally managed to submit a project proposal yesterday - only a month late, oops - and it feels as though by rights I should be celebrating, not starting work on an update that's needed because the proposal was out of date before it was even submitted. Groan....

I can report that the major crisis of this week had nothing to do with my phd or personal life, or in fact anything very important. Unintentionally this week I've had 2 separate meetings with 2 separate bishops - one during a church service and one at dinner before a meeting. Other people worried about what to call them (Your Grace? Your most importantness?) or what the bishop might think about the service or church. My concerns were less spiritual... WHAT do you wear to meet a bishop? This was made worse by the fact that I'm known (and occasionally disapproved of) for wearing jeans to church...

Briefly considered and rejected the possibility of wearing a big wedding hat (haven't got one), a bishop fancy dress costume (to make them feel at home and make a political protest), or my 'winter' interview suit. Finally decided on my latest wedding skirt for the service and normal work clothes for the dinner. The dinner was ok, but the skirt attracted approximately 746 comments, ranging from the friendly commiseration to the 'oh you look lovely in a skirt, you should wear one more often' (subtext: you look really manky usually).
8:09 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove