Comic Sunday

Today's comic is one that may make you lose your will to live.

I can't put it any better than the 'creators':

Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.

May it brighten up your Sunday.


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Health and execise and all that junk

So you may have seen some people posting about their exercise/health regimes and stories on Science Blogs lately. I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and tell you my story (yes, yes I know it's overdue but isn't everything I do?).

So exercise and I have never had the healthiest of relationships. The same could be said for things like vegetables too. When I was growing up, I hated sports, couldn't run for shit and didn't like healthy food (although to be fair, no one ever really taught me about nutrition other than telling me to 'eat my greens'). I lived off white bread, whole milk and chocolate. I would occasionally go to aerobics with my Mum. I tried pilates a couple of times. But otherwise I had no exercise regime whatsoever. This was fine when I was growing up because I was naturally scrawny and had a fast metabolism and stuff.

I think I carried on this way until I was well into my second year of Uni, when my now-adult metabolism finally caught up with me. I got some curves, then a little more curves, without seemingly changing a thing about my lifestyle. I'm sure this happens to a lot of women as they are leaving their teens, although men seem to get a few extra years grace. So I started exercising a little more - I would go to the Uni gym 3 times a week. I started running (without instruction, which turned out to be a mistake). I went from being just a little bigger than I'd have ideally liked to be to being almost where I wanted to be over the course of my second and third year. Throughout this time, I put a bit more effort into eating properly and felt better for it. I found my body practically craving healthy food once I had a) gotten used to it and b) had a body that I was actually working hard that was demanding proper food. I still allowed myself a small(ish) treat each day - usually chocolate. Man, I love chocolate.

The thing about exercise, especially unsupervised exercise, is that it's too freakin' easy to injure yourself. So OF COURSE I injured my knee running. This would be about 3 years ago now, and I still can't run because of the damn knee, although now at least it doesn't stop me doing anything else (most of the time). After the injury, I piled on weight alarmingly fast - within a couple of months, I was heavier than I'd ever been. I tried to rein it in, but the knee and the fact that we'd moved far away from a convenient gym were hindrances.

So things got worse in my fourth and final year when I was ill for a whole term (meaning no exercise) and then in the second semester I was put on a lovely pill that made me pile on weight like I was preggers or something (just in time for graduation!). I came off that pill in the summer before I started the PhD, but the damage had been done and it's been incredibly hard to shift the weight. It caused an upwards shift in my appetite that I'm still trying to reign in - and being hungry a lot is a big, big barrier to weight loss.

If you're still paying attention, well done. I'm sure I don't deserve you as a reader.

Since I started the PhD, I've been walking to and from work (an hour a day, and uphill both ways. Well ok, only uphill one way). I've also been tap dancing for the past year, which makes me so damn happy I want to do it all the freakin' time! However beginner's lessons aren't too energetic and they're only once a week, so I'm not sure how useful it's been in terms of fitness so far. I've ramped things up some this term though, as I've arranged to have private lessons on top of my weekly class AND I've started jazz dancing too, bumping me up to 3 hours per week. It's also getting to be more of a workout now I'm more of an intermediate.

I still haven't lost that weight though. I'm not huge - a size 14 - but could definitely stand to lose a stone. I've given up hope of ever having my 17-year-old size 8 figure, but maybe I can get back down to a 10/12. Someday soon. I hope.


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To Sunny

I know some people will think that this post is soppy and unnecessary, but frankly I couldn't give a shit .

We had to have Sunny put to sleep on Saturday. He was 2 and a half, so he didn't do badly (to put that in perspective, the average rat lives 2 years). He had severe hind leg degeneration (where the rat loses feeling in their back ends due to nerve degeneration) and had trouble getting around. His lungs were packing in, meaning he got exhausted easily. He had started to struggle to wash himself and even to eat without choking.

He's been getting steadily worse for a good 4 months or so, but I was really surprised by how much he deteriorated while I was away for a fortnight observing. I could be all gooey and say that it's because he missed me, but that would be wishful anthropomorphising.

I have no doubt that it was his time. I'm glad we did it before he really started to suffer. The thing is, I have this feeling that if I could have asked him what he wanted, he would have wanted to carry on a bit longer. Even though he was almost immobile, he was still feisty and keen and bright-eyed. He wanted cuddles (particularly head stroking). He still loved him some food, right to the bitter end. There was never a rat that relished his dinner so much as Sunny. So part of me hates what I've done to him, but that's just the way these things go down. It's always like that, right?

In a way, Sunny's death is the end of a (small) era for us. Sunny was the last of our original trio of rats. He was one third of the reason I got hooked on the little blighters. His cage-mates, Sam and Smudge died far too early almost exactly a year ago. I have no idea if Sunny was capable of remembering them after all that time. They were a lovely trio and by far the best-natured, sweetest rats I've had yet.

I miss them all.

Here's the man himself, when he was young and handsome:







And some gratuitous shots of the three of them back in the day:









Who couldn't love that fat little arse?


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I'm in Germany!

That's right, in a lovely weird castle in the Alps!

I'm at a cosmology conference and a wee bit busy. Plus, I'm having to share a room with a stranger for the first time in a long, long time. That does not make Moose happy. I will not go into details as to why. Anyway, I have a proper update I want to write soon, so when I'm done networking I'll get back to you!


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Comic Sunday...

...will now occur whenever I damn well feel like it. This time, it's a Monday.

Cyanide and Happiness was pointed out to me recently by a workmate. It's about nothing in particular. Sometimes it's very, very funny; other times I'm not so sure. See what you think!

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So, observing.

It was... different.

After my stressful travelling mishaps and increasingly bad chest I wasn't in any position to enjoy the first few days. The first night I arrived I tried my best to work through it, but ended up having a nap in the sickbay for half the night. The next day, I got up at dinner time and was sent straight back to bed by my colleagues to rest, which worked out well because it was foggy all night that night. On the third night, I just about managed to function, and after that I got about 80% better and the rest of the trip was bearable.

The telescope we were using is very much a DIY telescope compared to many modern instruments, and there is a big 60s-style computer panel for opening and closing the telescope and dome. It was actually pretty straight forward to operate and we had a good instruction manual, the only difficulty is making sure you do all the steps in the right order when you're dog-tired. The CCD camera requires liquid nitrogen as a coolant, and this is the first and last thing that needs to be done each night. It's fun - at first - but it gets pretty dull, especially in the morning when you're worn out and it seems to take a lifetime to fill up. Once the telescope is set up for the night, you switch control to the computer command line and everything is controlled with nice simple commands. This was great, except for the last two nights when we had problems reading out the CCD image to the computer. It didn't totally screw up the night for us though, although my partner was getting mighty frustrated about this (it was his data, afterall).

The best nights for observing are when it's really dry and 0% humidity (or if you believe the instrument readout, -1% humidity. I can only assume that this means the air contains a small amount of anti-water at this point). 0% humidity is not fun. You get electric shocks off EVERYTHING, including your own clothes and hair, not to mention the perpetually dry mouth and lips this gives you.

Of course, during quiet moments we could nip outside for a while, let our eyes grow accustomed to the dark and drink in the view.

Finally, the mountain. It was beautiful. See for yourself:









Seeing a sea of fluffy cumulus stretch out beneath you is pretty damn wonderful.The best part is I'm going back in April for another five nights! This will mean shorter nights and hence more time to enjoy the lovely scenery. I'm told that the night sky is EVEN PRETTIER in Spring and Summer. Yay!


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Comic Sunday!

Because it's still Sunday somewhere, right?

Yo, today it's Alien Loves Predator. Best to start at the beginning with this one, as the storylines can run on for quite a while.

It's about Abraham Alien and Preston Predator, and they share an apartment in New York. Hilarity ensues.

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