music for working and living

I've rediscovered music, which has been just lovely. I used to be a bit of a music nerd, and there was a time when I would go and see a band more or less every weekend. But since I started listening to podcasts on my way to work my interest in music has dropped off a bit.

Over the last few days at work I've spent a lot of time basically just filling in spread sheets and other mindless bits and bobs, and to help pass the time I've been listening to my iPod set on shuffle. And the change to my state of mind has been amazing. I mean, I still hate my job, but since I've reintroduced music into my life I feel much less miserable about it. I never realised how emotionally important it was to me. It doesn't have to be the highest-falutinest stuff, just something that connects for whatever reason. 

...and you're next!

The dreaded cankles (now including graphic illustration!)

I've been hanging around on the internets even more than usual lately because I have a cankle.

This isn't a great photo (I say that as if there's such a thing as a good photo of a swollen limb), and it doesn't convey quite how repellent it actually is, but you get the gist.

Apparently I have a cyst in my knee sack (that's how it was described to me) and aside from being massively uncomfortable if not outright painful, it has made my whole leg puff up and makes me walk slightly lurchily. And I'm not even allowed to complain about it at work because my work friend had leg cancer a few years ago and she's permanently lost all sensation in her foot which makes her limp all the time, and so I feel sort of as if I don't really have anything to complain about. Until I come here, where I let it all out. (I am also not allowed to mention my husband in any context because my other work friend is going through a soul destroying divorce. I'm starting to run out of socially acceptable things to discuss.)

There's no treatment for my cankle except rest, so I've been sitting still even more than I usually would over the last few days. And I've been looking back over my journal from the last week, which where I found this list of things that I've found interesting or just that I've found, and which I haven't really got  any idea of how for how I could share them any other way. Stick around, I did a bunch of interesting stuff last week and I'm going to tell you all about it later. But first these things.

Here we go;

1. I've been typing web addresses into the search bar lately because an environmentally friendly Finnish person told me that every time you google something it uses as much energy as making a cup of tea (the fact that I have had my laptop on for two straight days does not figure in this calculation). And I've noticed that when I'm at work I commit a Freudian slip when I type in Australian addresses, usually rendering them as www.sitename.coma.u. 
2. Did you know that there is a nun doll museum? Or that there's a thriving market for nun dolls? I didn't, but now I feel the strange urge to own a nun doll. Or just to say it over and over again; nundollnundollnundoll...  
3. Why is that that the sweets in chemists' shops are always the kinds of sweets you don't see anywhere else, but which are incredibly soothing and make you all nostalgic and moony? Black jellybeans! Wagon Wheels (I didn't even know they made them any more!). Eucalyptus drops! Diazepam! No, wait, they keep that one locked up in their pharmacopoeia and I have to endure suspicious looks and pointed warnings about not mixing it with booze before they'll give it to me. But I reckon that if Wagon Wheels required a prescription they would work just as well.
4. I go past this ad every day on my way to work (it takes up the entire window of the optician), and it makes me laugh every day. It looks like the most massively uncomfortable social gathering you'd ever be unlucky enough to attend. The kid is hiding behind his grandma, but it's no good, the creepy uncle has reached behind her back to rub him on the shoulder anyway while grandma prattles on unrelentingly about her childhood. The couple in the middle have clearly fallen nastily out of love but are putting on a show for the family. And the girl on the left is obviously butting into the conversation with a poorly timed 'what are you taking about?' just as the couple are exchanging muttered profanities through brittle smiles.

The other notes in my journal say 'cuthbert', 'edible dormouse' and 'which book', for reasons that I'm not really  sure I remember, so you've earned a reprieve until I can remember why.

I'm not sure if this is brilliant or a reflection of the decadence of our society

but this is my new favourite thing to look at. It's a tumblr called Things Organised Neatly, and it's pictures of (can you guess yet?) things that have been organised neatly. 

Have you had a stressful day? Feel as if your life is spinning out of control as you hurtle headlong into a quarter-life crisis (oh sweet Jesus, I'm another year older and I still don't speak French, or have a drivers license, or understand how to use Facebook)? 

Take the time to peruse some pictures of carrots that have been lined up symmetrically, or at the contents of someone's handbag that have been soothingly arranged by size.

Breathe in. Breathe out. It will all be OK.

That fucking moon!

Over on The Awl they've been covering the supermoon in a series highly scientific and brilliantly written pieces. Only suitable if you are not easily offended by gratuitous foul language or unhinged rants, and if your sense of humour stalled somewhere around prepubescence.