Hey?!

Ok. For some reason, the new post turned up underneath the old one. It's below the blond posting!

Life as a blond

I have had a perfect whopper of a week. Happy, grumpy, exhausted, and above all, blond. Very very blond. I have just finished working for the uni. today. And I have been alternatively exhausted and hyper. At work and home. By the way guys. You haven't heard form me? Sorry!

I am a natural blond, and I'm usually fairly bubbly and cheerful to go with it. unfortunately, I can also be as ditsy as they come when I have occasion to be. a couple of nights ago was a case in point.

I realise that the flat has run out of bread. Now, I love baking. Bread, cakes, you name it. I just really enjoy it. However, unless I really concentrate, I make silly mistake, and end up with more of the recipe on me than where ever the recipe was meant to go. I have inherited an ABC of cookery from my father, and I think he got it from his mother. So it is an old and wonderful book. full of knowledge that was accepted wisdom back then. (early fifties if I remember rightly) Like: Chop carrots, and other veg, put in the pan and boil for fifteen minutes or until soft. The thought makes me cringe. Because, talking to my grandmother, soft meant mush. Personally, I LIKE a bit of crunch in my veg. But each to their own. Whatever floats your boat, as my uncle would say always wistfully, looking at the miles of land that surrounds his house without a trace of water in sight.

Anyway. So, the bread recipe in the book needs three and a half pounds of flour. Three and a half. Well, I have maybe two thirds of that. So I weigh out one and three quarters of a pound of flour and then get distracted. By what, I don't know. Maybe it was my friend I bake with telling my flatmates how I have just managed to disconnect my mouth from my brain brake when she told me she was finding grey hairs and how she was pulling them out. I turned around and said: Don't do that! you'll go bald. Meaning, of course, if you keep doing that you'll go bald. Anyway. Distraction happened (as it did just now actually. Tea is a wonderful thing. Especially when a lack of caffeine doesn't keep me up at night.) and I forgot to half the rest of the ingredients. So I turn around again, and half everything. INCLUDING the flour and put it in a separate pot, and all over my skirt. Not to mention that I forgot I only had a salt grinder, not table salt. and in grinding it managed to unscrew the top and spill it everywhere. So, weighing it out I realise what has happened and then correct it, kneed the dough, and put it in the grill to prove, as I don't have an airing cupboard.
However much time it was later, I take the bowl out of the grill and think hmm odd. this is flexible. And then promptly think nothing off it until a flatmate gasps and says, "but! that's a plastic bowl Hanna! What are you doing!" Cue recognition dawning in my eyes and a feeling of oops creeping up my back.

This is a feeling I am well used to. I was so blond that night that I ended up not cooking dinner. most everyone else did it for me. Especially after the sausages nearly caught the oven on fire...

On reflection, being blond is usually fairly harmless. occasionally something lethal happens, but something lethal happens randomly anyway to a whole host of people. But usually it is a cause for mild ribbing and laughter on the part of those observing said blond. Laughter and occasional winces. In my opinion, both as a blond and an observer of blond, I hope the breed never dies out.

Bubbles.

We are an infinite set of bubbles. There is how we feel, and how we pretend we feel. What we say, and what we actually think. How we are when we are stressed, relaxed, or having fun. These bubbles vary in size and consistency. For most people, bubbles mean safety. Protection, a way to hide from the world.

All sorts of people have bubbles; happy people, sad people, sea people, country people, people who use deckchairs...

These bubbles can cause us to become closer or can force us apart. But what makes a bubble compatible? Is it like the blood group ABO system, with antibodies and antigens, or is it like a lock and key fit, like enzymes? Because there is something in the way we perceive other people's bubbles that make us think hey. That person is actually pretty cool. I wouldn't mind getting to know them. Usually this happens in the first thirty seconds to a minute.

This means that there must be something quite big in people's bubbles that we recognise, like, I don't know, some people have a hexagon shape in their bubble, and others an octagon. but equally, on top of that, there has to be smaller things, like a fractal, bits getting ever smaller, ever more intricate that we pick up on. If we're really lucky, we can find someone who's bubble meshes with ours perfectly, a soul mate if you will, but equally, that is fairly rare - has to be fairly rare because of all the variety inherent in living things.

And all of this comes from four iddy-bitty little chemicals which come together to form DNA. The fact that all of the diversity from the smallest single celled organism, or bacterium to us, via ants, and elephants and dolphins is frankly amazing. Four little chemicals creates almost the entirety of the world we live in and all those different bubbles we interact with every day of our lives.

I could wax eloquent for hours about how amazing DNA and genetics is. but I won't. Some things you have to find out for yourself. Saying that, I'm sure sooner or later there will be a post about genetics. I think about it a fair bit. It fascinates me, and yet, not the bloke who lives in the flat below. He has a different bubble. Because he has a different upbringing, and also a different genome. See what I mean?

The time gnomes

Ever left something and gone back to it to find it not there? Turned around, looked again and realised it was there? Blame the Time Gnomes. Found it after in a really odd place after losing it? Say, keys in the bathroom cupboard? Blame the Time Gnomes.

The Time Gnomes are our animators. They live in our future, only ten or so frames, and draw and colour in our surroundings. Much like the animators at Disney used to. The only thing they don't draw in is us. Now, recently, things have started getting harder for the Time Gnomes. They had to start dealing with the birds eye view. What was a major triumph for the Wright brothers and a lot of people made them sigh at the extra workload and the new techniques required. When we started to be able to pinpoint things with precision, we took them unawares. And they corrected on the fly. Everything now had to be measured. Things could no longer be put in more or less the same place, everything had to be measured against the previous frame which itself had been measured in turn. They started thinking about moving a little further into the future. One very clever young gnome by the name of Copernicus sorted out the mess that had been the stars by suggesting a seasonal shift, and things started to calm down a little. The gnomes got used to the extra workload.

When the camera was invented, they trembled slightly, but realised it was OK, they could just keep the pictures on file. Well. That in itself is a prodigious undertaking now. And then the ciné camera, and films, and home films and then that spread so fast that now the average mobile phone and digital camera can take short moving pictures. The poor Time Gnomes must have been struck with panic for this. Having to keep every FRAME on file? Ouch. Artists they can deal with. Art takes time. A small hand-held camcorder does as well, in the right hands, but not really. And then there are the security cameras. The poor gnomes. Having to draw it in Realtone™ and at varying degrees from pretty-good-picture to my-word-that's-grainy (pat. pending) at the same time and still have to remember that this tape needs this image...more and more gnomes are having to take time off work for stress, and illnesses related to stress, and is it really any surprise?

In the past, the main scenery would be done by one department, and then each individual had a gnome to watch and put in the fine details. Now more and more gnomes are having to do more than one job. And is it any surprise that they forget something? Just on occasion. I know my gnome is forever losing the little things like my keys and my purse. So I help him/her out. I call for them and usually I find them in pretty short order. Now everybody's gnome can be mischievous at times. And that is why I occasionally find my keys in odd places. Like the bathroom cupboard, or in a box of tissues or somewhere I KNOW I haven't been recently.

So just remember how much pressure the poor gnomes are under and the fact that the latest recruitment drive didn't bring in nearly as many young gnomes as was truly wanted, and stop and say hi on occasion. Who knows - the gnomes might just say hi back.

Stereotypes

Sorry for the wait folks, if, indeed there are any folks reading this. But things have been happening. There was going to be a post before this, but it got lost due to my computatorial ineptitude. Lets see... after the last post, I have had a friend coming down from up north, where I attend university, for the weekend. Luckily for me, he has a car. Unluckily for him, I'm more used to giving directions at push pedal pace. but we got around in one piece, and he got home in one piece so, there is no harm done. I think he even enjoyed it.

I also got very daring and ordered some more RAM for my slowly dying computer. I even installed it myself, and noting blew up. This pleased me, and did something for my burgeoning liking of computers and confidence in my skills. The day I got the RAM in place and it worked, I don't mind telling you, I preened. I also moved back up to university. " What?!" I hear people cry. And I do. "That's early!" They say. Well yes it is. But I moved up here for the same reason that people moved out of the dust bowl. Well, ok maybe not because my family couldn't grow any food and we would all have died. But I did go looking for a job. And I have one. A temporary job but a job none the less. So that is good. And I get to meet friends and such I have left behind up here. (it would be typical that I make friends from the extreme north in most cases, when I live in the extreme south.) According to some of the said northerners, so extremely south, I live in France.

France. Now, living on the channel I have been there a few times, and it is a nice place. In some places very nice. In others, a tip. Much like any other country. I can't usually understand all the jokes about the french until I bump into the odd, very odd usually, I might add, french tourist. Suffice to say, those few people would, until the next extremely polite and friendly tourist came along, make me inclined to agree with all of the stereotypes in spades.

Stereotypes are an interesting thing. they give you an image, an idea of a race, a place, a thing. Before you even go there or experience it for yourself. For example. The French. Rude, surly, onions, cheese, bad driving. The English. Tea, bad teeth, imperialistic (ok, not anymore.) Posh, stiff upper lip, rubbish at tennis. (come on Tim!) The thing is, maybe once these things were true. Maybe in some places they still are. Maybe they were true, but not as definite as stereotypes indicate. I mean, Oh the English, well, a few of them have very bad teeth you know. And some are even stoic in that quaint English fashion. It just doesn't come across nearly as well as the English. Oh. Those tea drinking, upper class toffs in their homosexual boarding schools. Now, which one is more likely to stick in your head if, on the spur of the moment, you thought of the English and didn't know anything about them?

Stereotypes serve their place. They give you a preconceived idea that is sometimes pretty good, always providing that you take them with a LARGE pinch of salt. A lot of them are even funny. So, have a laugh, believe them up to a limit, but don't hold to them so tightly that death-grip doesn't even come into it. And don't let it hurt other people whilst you laugh. Send it with them, not at them.

Now, reading this, it has turned out a LOT more serious that I originally anticipated, but that's the fun of writing. Find a start, and see where is takes you. If you feel that I have been giving you a sermon you don't need, then I apologise.

So, this is me, the mad, absentminded scientist signing off. Just think of the stereotypes and grin. You'll know what I'm like then.