I don't understand, I don't understand
Nov. 20th, 2012 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaInexplicable things from my life...
1. At the beginning of the year, out of curiosity, I started weighing myself every day to see how much my weight fluctuates. I have electronic scales which weigh to a quarter of a pound[*] and I put the results on a little graph. The line is surprisingly wiggly, showing localised ups and downs (fairly spurious) and overall ups and downs (probably at least representative of some change).
However, between Saturday morning and Sunday morning this weekend I gained nearly a stone. I don't remember eating lead butties, or anything. I did try resetting the scales and moving them to a different patch of floor a few times, but they were (and still are) adamant. I am assuming that scale malfunction is the most likely explanation - although of course I have no way of knowing if they've been underweighing for a while and have just corrected, or are now suddenly overweighing[**]. Or indeed if very sudden weight gain is in fact a perfectly normal thing to happen but that I've never noticed before. Or if I am now in possession of a slightly-awkward-to-use random number generator.
It's playing hell with my nice graph, though :(
2. Flashback to Christmas 1980: some friends of my parents give me an enormous present. The enormous box, when unwrapped, turns out to contain an enormous teddy bear[***]. A few months earlier, the papers had been full of stories of a trained bear, Hercules, who escaped in the Outer Hebrides during filming. I call my bear Hercules. He and another enormous bear, Charlie, given to me a few years later by my aunt and uncle, sit either side of my bed as I am growing up.
A year or so ago I realised that my parents' attempts to shuffle all the possessions I'd hidden in their house onto me were doomed to failure: I owned far, far too many cuddly animals. They were pre EU-regulations, so charity shops wouldn't take them as they're not considered safe. I didn't have space to keep them all, but the only option seemed to be landfill which - even for a relentlessly practical person like me - was unthinkable. I eventually located a charity which was willing to take my toxic teddies and re-home them in Africa, and thus shipped off all but a few favourites. Both Herc and Charlie survived the cull.
Mum asked a few weeks ago: should they bring Charlie down when they came to visit, or send him to the jumble? Bring him, I said, and Herc. Oh no, they replied, Herc isn't here. He's not in my old bedroom, he's not anywhere in their house or attic. Well, he's not in my flat in London. And I personally delivered the bears who were taking ship for Africa, I know he wasn't with them. He has, it would seem, escaped again. I hope he's having adventures.
In presumably independent incidents, my leather jacket and my sleeping bag have also vanished in the past few months.
3. Around mid-September, I had a cold. Then it rumbled on, and broke out into hideous proportions while I was in Whitby. Then it more or less went away, and came back horrendously again the following weekend.
Now, this summer wasn't much of a summer as far as these things go, and I got through it largely without taking much in the way of the prescription hayfever medication I usually motor through. However, it seems that this ongoing cold is in fact allergies - I am now, in November, firmly back on the allergy drugs and much better for it. Who the hell gets hayfever in November? What am I allergic to? Bonfire and firework pollen? Fog?
This also means that all the people blaming me for the Whitby lurgy: it wasn't my fault!
4. Yesterday, our office acquired a mysterious black cube (which shows that my boss doesn't watch Doctor Who). No one actually seemed to be sure really what it was, as it didn't seem to do much even when plugged in.
I suggested that it would probably go zip when it moved and bop when it stopped and thus far no one has had the least idea what I'm talking about. Honestly, what are they all playing at? Does no one remember The Marvellous Toy?
Actually, our black cube is now working, and is rather boringly a TV set-top box.
[*] Actually, I'm pretty confident they do nothing of the sort, but they give readings which claim to be accurate to a quarter of a pound.
[**] Yes, this could of course be resolved by visiting some sort of reputable scales somewhere. I think a state of mystery is more exciting.
[***] Enormous if you're four years old, anyway.
1. At the beginning of the year, out of curiosity, I started weighing myself every day to see how much my weight fluctuates. I have electronic scales which weigh to a quarter of a pound[*] and I put the results on a little graph. The line is surprisingly wiggly, showing localised ups and downs (fairly spurious) and overall ups and downs (probably at least representative of some change).
However, between Saturday morning and Sunday morning this weekend I gained nearly a stone. I don't remember eating lead butties, or anything. I did try resetting the scales and moving them to a different patch of floor a few times, but they were (and still are) adamant. I am assuming that scale malfunction is the most likely explanation - although of course I have no way of knowing if they've been underweighing for a while and have just corrected, or are now suddenly overweighing[**]. Or indeed if very sudden weight gain is in fact a perfectly normal thing to happen but that I've never noticed before. Or if I am now in possession of a slightly-awkward-to-use random number generator.
It's playing hell with my nice graph, though :(
2. Flashback to Christmas 1980: some friends of my parents give me an enormous present. The enormous box, when unwrapped, turns out to contain an enormous teddy bear[***]. A few months earlier, the papers had been full of stories of a trained bear, Hercules, who escaped in the Outer Hebrides during filming. I call my bear Hercules. He and another enormous bear, Charlie, given to me a few years later by my aunt and uncle, sit either side of my bed as I am growing up.
A year or so ago I realised that my parents' attempts to shuffle all the possessions I'd hidden in their house onto me were doomed to failure: I owned far, far too many cuddly animals. They were pre EU-regulations, so charity shops wouldn't take them as they're not considered safe. I didn't have space to keep them all, but the only option seemed to be landfill which - even for a relentlessly practical person like me - was unthinkable. I eventually located a charity which was willing to take my toxic teddies and re-home them in Africa, and thus shipped off all but a few favourites. Both Herc and Charlie survived the cull.
Mum asked a few weeks ago: should they bring Charlie down when they came to visit, or send him to the jumble? Bring him, I said, and Herc. Oh no, they replied, Herc isn't here. He's not in my old bedroom, he's not anywhere in their house or attic. Well, he's not in my flat in London. And I personally delivered the bears who were taking ship for Africa, I know he wasn't with them. He has, it would seem, escaped again. I hope he's having adventures.
In presumably independent incidents, my leather jacket and my sleeping bag have also vanished in the past few months.
3. Around mid-September, I had a cold. Then it rumbled on, and broke out into hideous proportions while I was in Whitby. Then it more or less went away, and came back horrendously again the following weekend.
Now, this summer wasn't much of a summer as far as these things go, and I got through it largely without taking much in the way of the prescription hayfever medication I usually motor through. However, it seems that this ongoing cold is in fact allergies - I am now, in November, firmly back on the allergy drugs and much better for it. Who the hell gets hayfever in November? What am I allergic to? Bonfire and firework pollen? Fog?
This also means that all the people blaming me for the Whitby lurgy: it wasn't my fault!
4. Yesterday, our office acquired a mysterious black cube (which shows that my boss doesn't watch Doctor Who). No one actually seemed to be sure really what it was, as it didn't seem to do much even when plugged in.
I suggested that it would probably go zip when it moved and bop when it stopped and thus far no one has had the least idea what I'm talking about. Honestly, what are they all playing at? Does no one remember The Marvellous Toy?
Actually, our black cube is now working, and is rather boringly a TV set-top box.
[*] Actually, I'm pretty confident they do nothing of the sort, but they give readings which claim to be accurate to a quarter of a pound.
[**] Yes, this could of course be resolved by visiting some sort of reputable scales somewhere. I think a state of mystery is more exciting.
[***] Enormous if you're four years old, anyway.
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no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 11:11 am (UTC)Fungal spores and mould.
Welcome to my personal hell :)
no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 11:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 11:53 am (UTC)As it happened, this rented house was brand new and not (as far as I could tell) damp or dusty. Who knows what might have been lurking, though.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 12:18 pm (UTC)The weird thing is, I normally expect to be able to spot allergies. And I expect a house-caused allergy to get better or worse as you exit or enter. In Whitby, I thought I had a cold and seemed terminally sneezy regardless of location. Until Sunday evening when it abruptly cleared up (I left the house on Monday lunchtime).
However, it seems to be the sort of cold which goes on, and appears to respond to anti-histamines and nasal sprays. Ergo, it probably isn't a cold.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 12:40 pm (UTC)Not necessarily. If you were going from pristine-nose into allergen-house-of-doom then it might be as obvious as if you inhaled a load of pepper. But IME if you were to encounter an allergen when you already had a sub-clinical-allergy or minor lurgy, then the onset might not be anywhere near as sharply defined, and it can be hard to spot the culprit.
And as for it going away when you remove the allergen - hah, I wish! Can take days to recover. And you have to make sure you don't have any lingering in your hair/clothes etc.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 12:44 pm (UTC)However - from above: I certainly wouldn't expect to get better while I was still in the house if it was the house that was the problem (which did happen in Whitby).
no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 01:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 01:13 pm (UTC)I could blame her and
I suspect that - if it is environmental -
no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-20 12:35 pm (UTC)Doesn't have ferns on it but since it is surprisingly hard to get a spore calendar/forecast at all i'm not that surprised.