Sigh..........

Well still no grandson,daughter has high blood pressure on and off,was due to deliver last Friday and is stressing me no end.They have given our Sam 3 lots of hormone gel 3 times trying to induce labour,they have done a sweep of her cervix and would have broken her waters,except a nearby specialist maternity hospital has closed its doors for some reason so a load of their ladies are at Sam's hospital.So we are playing wait for a gap in the queue for them to set Sam off properly,I have volunteered to stand her on her head and perform a variation on the Heimlich manoeuvre but it wasn't a welcome suggestion.
The old legs hurt,a lot, but aren't swelling anywhere near as much as they were before the magic socks so fingers crossed,I would cross my toes too but there isn't enough room in the socks.
If one more person stops me in the street to suggest magic hand-waving for the legs I will commit murder,the magic hand-wave must be the trendiest current woo.

My own horror film.

Sometimes I feel as though I am living a horror film,this one isn't 'the birds' though,it should be entitled killer cats.....as I have blogged previously a random strange cat broke in and ate my beautiful little zebra finches and then the other night I came in from work to find the evil Lucifer had got another random cat pinned in a corner,it having snuck in his cat flap, and was screaming in that awful way only a tom cat can,now I know better than to touch my cat when he is even slightly tetchy I certainly wasn't risking his wrath with him yowling like that,so I opened the back door and waved my arms around to no avail,then fearing for its safety I picked up the random visiting cat...........big error,a terrified cat is a dangerous critter.I have huge deep claw marks and a badly bruised forearm where the cats claw must have popped a vein...........
Not very clear,but taking pics of the back of your wrist ain't easy...........

On a much lighter note,you know how some people sneeze when they look at very bright lights or the sun,well would you believe the science bods called it 'ATCHOO ' syndrome,autosomal dominant compelling helio-ophthalmic outburst syndrome.

Back to normal moaning.

A little explanation for yesterdays post.I was very down as I had been unable to save my friends hennie when she became ill sunday,I also felt quite guilty as she had asked me several times to look at her and each time she had appeared perfectly fine to me.Still I am not a vet and I did my best for her.So instead of hennie blogging I just had a pathetic day or two.
Yup I have had my self pitying whine and now I am ready to resume my normal moaning..........You lucky readers.

I now have a really good reason not to diet,it seems my enlarged rear end is healthy !
I am busily crocheting a cardi from the book the kids got me for Christmas along with what we call a clever or IQ blankie,it is hexagons in various red,white and black combinations,our Sam has decided they are the most stimulating colours for her baby,I am also making two of these in yellow and green rounds in the way this cardi is done and a rabbit soft toy for Sarah.Talking of crochet,I made a scary toilet roll cover dress for Poppy

when she was born,just to wind my least frills possible daughter up,imagine my delight when Poppy last visited to discover that it was her fave dolls dress and can Nanny make her some smaller knickers,it seems dolls have smaller bums than babies..........
Holy shit,what must the aliens think of us,we have sent into space over one hundred thousand separate postings from craigslist.org.We have sent a doritos ad and the sound of squelching fannies I kid you not !

Ooh look what I found here..a superb example of a loo roll cover if ever I saw one.

Mumble, mumble.

In the comments on my last post people were joking about burning books to keep warm,well today I saw one worthy of pyromaniac experimentation,on the bookshelf in the house where I work on Tuesdays was a book by the awful poo lady  (sense about science weren't impressed with her either) amongst piles of self help crapola,the only self any of them help, if you ask me, are the pockets of the authors.
On the subject of stuff I find incongruous,everyone is saying that the government have stuffed up over rock salt for roads or rather lack of it,yet they are moaning that we have 'wasted millions' on swine flu vaccine,now call me daft but what would have happened if the flu turned out to be like the 1918 version,the winter were mild and we had bought salt instead of vaccine? Even if 'big pharma' have lobbied governments to buy the vaccines, buying them wasn't an error,at the beginning of the outbreak no one had any idea whether the flu would be mild or have a fifty percent mortality rate.
Tip of the day.........do not attempt to make satsuma and stem ginger marmalade whilst simultaneously colouring your hair.I will tell you that tale tomorrow !

Swine flu jabs and finger johnnies.

It started Tuesday,I had the H1N1 vaccine at 5pm,it was painless,about 7 o'clock my arm was tender when I poked it,but I was fine.
I woke at 3am Wednesday morning with the injection site screaming at me,hot,swollen solid and extremely sore,so much so I didn't even try to poke it.I eventually settled down and went back to sleep,I woke later than usual  Wednesday morning ,I was feeling a bit grotty and my arm was still extremely sore,but I got on with things and went to work,as the day progressed I got very achey,I just put it down to my psoriatic arthritis playing up.
When I got home from work at lunchtime my eyes were dry and burning and the arm and joints were still dodgy,nothing too awful just a general unwellness,which is what I expected.
By 5pm I had a temperature of  39c which is really quite hot for me,as following experimentation I know my normal temperature is roughly 36.5ish My eyes were really dry and burning which may have been down to the fact that my tears were running out my nose by then(I couldn't possibly have had a snotty nose,how undignified)every joint in my body ached,even my bum bone ached,I had a small gland between collar bone and neck that was swollen to about twice the size of a pea but I swear it hurt so much I couldn't turn my head I thought I had a bubo,my skin was tender from the fever and  my head was pounding and finally the most unusual thing for me,I really didn't want to eat,not even chocolate.Then to cap it all I was shaking and shivering so much I managed to burn a lump of skin off of my finger whilst reloading the fire with coal.
At that point I gave up and took to my bed moaning and groaning.
This morning I am a little warm but absolutely fine,the arm only hurts if I poke it,the aches and pains have dissipated nicely my bubo has shrunk and doesn't hurt any more.I have however had to buy burn dressings and finger johnnies for my burns.
Having said all that I am really glad I had the jab,can you imagine how badly I would have felt had I caught a live replicating virus? Also having conducted a straw poll amongst people who have had the vaccine,it seems I had an unusually strong reaction to it.
I think I may now be one of the roughly 70% who develop immunity after the vaccine,for the rest of you I am doing my bit towards herd immunity.

I have a bubo,only a small one mind.

I am really glad I had the H1N1 vaccine,I will tell you all about it tomorrow if I survive the night.

Sex,drugs and politics.

I just read the funniest thing ever,they are making Mandy information minister,now bearing in mind  his oligarch friends and the Chinese yoghurt fiasco I really think his title should be disinformation minister.And fancy him making weekly speeches to the country,even the queen herself only makes us suffer yearly.
There is absolutely nothing I can say about Alan Johnson and his desire for policy based science,I want whatever drugs he is on,they obviously make one completely oblivious to any advice offered.See badscience on the Nutt sack affair.

Ok I know it is mean of me, but this report of transient global amnesia following good sex made me chuckle,until,that is, I read that it is most common in people not that much older than me
The next sex based piece I read is a bit of a poke in the eye to creationists,well I think so anyway.What sort of supreme deity arranges for bonobos,humans and bats to be the only known creatures that indulge in the odd bit of oral sex?(you are safe,I didn't link to the bat pron video page) mind, I wonder if bats would enjoy the company of slingjaw wrasse ?
ps. don't worry about fido and tiddles come the rature,I have found just the service for them.

Pectin test,the infallible method and other foody science.

After stewing your fruit for jam,jelly,marmalade etc and before adding any sugar place three tablespoons of methylated spirit in an old glass,add one tablespoon of the juice from your fruit ,wait one minute and then take a look,one firm gelatinous blob in the bottom shows you have a very high pectin content,such as you get from apples, lemons, blackcurrants or quince,two or three not quite so gelatinous blobs is a medium content,and runny fruit juice in there means either boil it up a lot more or add something to it with more pectin.Make sure to throw away the contents of your testing glass,not only is it flammable it is also extremely toxic.

Why do white fleshed quince turn that lovely lush colour anywhere from amber to red when cooked ? for the same reason autumn is full of rich ambers and reds,the colour of autumn leaves is down to production of chemicals called anthocyanins,produced in a deciduous trees leaves once chlorophyll production halts for the winter,when you cook and even more when you cook them with sugar the colourless phenolic compounds in quince turn into anthocyanins.Some wild and crab apples contain the same chemicals although not to the same degree as quince.
Did you know that in Tudor times quince paste was cut into squares and wrapped in edible gold foil in the houses of the nobility,it was also flavoured with what at the time were exotic spices from the Arab world such as rosewater,testicle juice musk or whale pukeambergris.

The quince has gathered every pleasing taste,
Thereby the queen of fruits she has been crowned.
Her taste is wine, a waft of musk her scent.
Her hue is gold, her shape, like the moon, round.”
—From The Arabian Nights,  p 130.

A quickie(the end is nigh)

Oh heavens the end is nigh,how many times in my near fifty years have I heard this crap from the g-d squad?
Which brings me onto this excellent piece on how science does and shouldn't treat a belief in the sky fairy with kid gloves.
Ooh and  look at this pretty baby cardi pattern I found on a blog,
must persuade my kids to breed again,yes I know, I know, one grandchild between my four children is the responsible thing to do in our overpopulated world,but there is nowt so grand as a grandchild.

Science can be fun.

Look what I found whilst suffering with nocturnal swamp fever.
How to produce a mathematical model for disease spread,fatality ratios ,survival and control........
consider the zombie epidemic........best linky ever This is some serious maths/science presented in the most amusing way possible.One of the co-authors on this piece is called Robert Smith? his name really does include a question mark.
They use the mathematical models applied to outbreaks of infectious diseases to show that -- without a cure or concerted eradication of large percentages of zombies simultaneously -- we are well and truly buggered . There is a good piece on it here at the Times
There is even a book due out called zombology by a science writer.

Science-ish Wednesday

So having dozed for a while yesterday evening, I found myself unable to sleep last night.I popped into the garden and sat on a chair and waited for the light show,I managed to see a whole two meteors before a very bright moon rose,before I came in and attempted sleep when the cloud cover arrived at three, I also saw one barn owl and eight bats........or maybe it was one bat eight times...
Found a fabulous clip at the beeb of some alien tadpoles feasting,their weird headline not mine linky .
I also came across a piece on ants rescuing their kin folk linky which reminds me of how upset I was the time I hosed away an ants nest only to see desperate creatures trying to rescue their young and eggs and forming bridges with their own bodies for others to climb along.
I also found a piece on just how useful science can be to people linky fancy plugging an Ipod into a hearing aid.
There is also an interesting piece up at sciblogs on sexual selection linky.