Category archive: Personal 
Open Thread for Refugees
Sun 15 July 2007 at 14:56 | Comments (52 - closed) | Personal
Welcome, anyone who wants to park here while Patrick and Teresa's living room is under tarps. The beer is in...Wednesday Nights Are Update Nights
Wed 11 July 2007 at 21:39 | Comments (7) | Personal
Probably because I keep them free due to the need to pack for the weekend at home, I seem to...Read the whole entry for "Wednesday Nights Are Update Nights"
3 Days of New Job
I'm afraid I've been busy with social things these past few days, which is why I haven't blogged about starting...In Amsterdam
I'm in Amsterdam. Specifically, I'm sitting in the flat I'm borrowing (and cat-feeding) from a couple of friends for the...Standing poised...
...at the edge of the high diving board, toes curled just over the edge, arms extended to their fullest length....What's that piece of spaghetti doing on the wall?
Wed 20 June 2007 at 14:00 | Comments (12) | Personal
Many people who know me know that I don't drive in the UK, though I have been a US driver...Read the whole entry for "What's that piece of spaghetti doing on the wall?"
Miranda Dreams, I wake up
One sunny autumn day in 1989, I was walking through the UC Berkeley campus. I was a sophomore in college,...Pieces falling into place
It's been some time since I've blogged. Plans have been up in the air, and sometimes I can't bring myself...RBSG: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
After nine and a half years, it's nearly over. One more week together, and that's it. It's an emotional moment....The Lady of Khazad-dûm
Someone on a website I frequent mentioned that she often gets the urge to cross The Lady of Shallot with...Akron and the Abi Field
Sun 11 March 2007 at 16:13 | Comments (7) | Personal, Testing
When the going gets tough at work (as it is now), I often wonder why I do what I do....Quotes that date the book
Sun 11 March 2007 at 13:28 | Comments (2 - closed) | Personal
Sometimes a line, or a paragraph, in a book will leap out at you. It was innocuous enough when the...5 Little-Known Things About Me
Martin tagged me with this meme, after I took the pictures for his entry. No photos in mine, I'm afraid,...The Monkey Kings
Sat 13 January 2007 at 23:57 | Comments (3) | Personal, Sonnets
This is a dark one. It came out of a conversation in mid-December, which strayed into a conflation between the...Bench in the Botanics
Wed 10 January 2007 at 21:08 | Comments (0) | Personal, Sonnets
Written today, for a picture taken yesterday. Taken 9 January 2007 Beyond the hut, the gravel path turns right To...O Take Me
Tue 9 January 2007 at 22:19 | Comments (7) | Personal, Sonnets
Some of my sonnets are not written rationally. It was not an easy autumn. O take me where the Douglas...September 11, a sonnet
Mon 8 January 2007 at 21:28 | Comments (5) | Personal, Politics, Sonnets
This was written on Bonfire Night, 2006. I watched the fireworks with the children, then came inside to warm up...Sonnets - Why and How (Long Post)
Tue 2 January 2007 at 22:56 | Comments (8 - closed) | Personal
As noted previously, I have been writing rather a lot of sonnets lately. I can name 27 that I've written...Read the whole entry for "Sonnets - Why and How (Long Post)"
Sonnets
For a number of reasons, I've been writing a lot of sonnets lately. Most of them are heavily context-dependent, and...Result!
Wed 23 August 2006 at 21:00 | Comments (1) | Personal, Testing
A couple of months ago, I took a somewhat less than fun exam on software testing. So last week I...Questions that Answer Themselves
Darn it, what am I going to do about this huge three-cornered tear in my purple linen trousers? (I didn't...Drop Spindle
One of the painkillers I'm taking for my sore shoulder contains coedine, which makes me mildly spacy. Since I'm not...Owwww
Last Friday, I woke up at 5 am with pain shooting down my left arm from the shoulder to the...How To Break Things Real Good
Sat 17 June 2006 at 20:45 | Comments (2) | Personal, Testing
Martin has been absent because he's been redesigning his side of the site. (Go check it out. It's cool.) I've...Happy Birthday to Me
Wed 15 February 2006 at 23:23 | Comments (3) | Personal, Photography
Today was my birthday, and a very good one it was, too. From the flowers the kids gave me first...Citizen Sutherland
Mon 13 February 2006 at 17:32 | Comments (4) | Personal, Politics
I have lived in the United Kingdom for 12 1/2 years now, nearly all of my adult life. I have,...Feminism again
I've been thinking further about some of the issues I touched on in Degrees of Feminism. In particular, what do...Back from Worldcon
Martin posted a blog entry from our hotel room, in the middle of our attendance at Worldcon. I agree with...Holidays and Secret Identities
Do you think Superman ever took a holiday by just pretending to be Clark Kent all the time? I'm on...Good fences make...?
I'm not going to get into the ins and outs of it, but I'm enmeshed in a neighbourhood dispute about...The Inevitable September 11 Post
Sat 11 September 2004 at 10:57 | Comments (3 - closed) | Personal
Like most bloggers, I find the events of September 11 an almost irresistible topic. I'd like to write about some of them now: the factors that led up to the events of the day, some of its consequences. I'm going to touch on people, religion, life and death. It's a story that spans continents and decades.
How to be a Houseguest
Mon 30 August 2004 at 20:24 | Comments (1 - closed) | Personal
Staying in someone's house is not the same as living in your own place. The entire process is governed by a set of conventions and rules to try and cushion the inherent intrusiveness of bringing a new and temporary factor into a settled household.
As a guest, you should have two overriding goals. First, you must demonstrate in all of your actions that you know the difference between your host's household and a hotel. And second, you must strive to make a net contribution to the quality of life in the household. You may not succeed - it is very difficult to counterbalance the amount of work your stay imposes on your host - but a combination of helpfulness and good cheer will show that you are trying.
Tidy?
Wed 12 May 2004 at 13:54 | Comments (4 - closed) | Personal
Alex wanted to go to our local play park today. Usually, we take the bus to play parks further in town, where there's rather less broken glass and rather more takeaway coffee.
And rather less grafitti. Our local playpark is a hangout for teenagers after the little kids go away. I have some sympathy - there really isn't a lot else to do in Gilmerton - but I do wish they'd leave the permanent markers at home. (Not to mention not wrapping the swings over the top bar of the swing set .)
As Alex was playing, I was idly reading the grafitti.
Unlikely friends
Thu 22 April 2004 at 15:15 | Comments off | Personal
I was mowing the lawn this morning when a survey-taker came by. He caught me at a good moment -...One Flu over the Rooster's Nest
Mon 9 February 2004 at 11:28 | Comments (2 - closed) | Personal
So I woke up yesterday morning feeling a bit warm. Pleasantly warm, like my old "heat vampire" days when I used to snuggle under the duvet until I was red-hot. And I was feeling a bit sore, (I thought) because I had been putting shelves up in our new shed the day before. I was maybe a bit tired, but you can't really tell that until you're up, and of course I often wake with a headache.
It wasn't until Alex touched me and said "Ow!" that I realised that I was maybe a bit on the excessively warm side. And it wasn't until I got up and started shivering uncontrollably that I realised that I was sick.
Up or down?
Sun 7 December 2003 at 20:28 | Comments (1 - closed) | Personal
"Most folks think you're supposed to tell the lift where you want to go. But that's daft, you see, because the lift doesn't know how to take you there. It'll be on the third floor - like this one - and know you want to go up. But it doesn't know that it has to go down to fetch you first. How could it? It's like driving a car - you tell the lift where you want it to go. We're on the ground floor, and it's on the third floor. So we want it to come down to fetch us. We'll tell it which floors to go to when we get on. Like a car."
Ouchy Head
Tue 19 August 2003 at 13:57 | Comments (3 - closed) | Personal
Well, if Martin's recent sufferings weren't enough, I appear to have developed the capacity for migraines. Imagine my delight.
It is apparently not uncommon for women's migraine status to change in pregnancy - sufferers may experience some relief, and non-sufferers may start getting them. This ties into the theories that migraines are hormonally based.
I don't know if the two killer headaches I've experienced in the last month are true migraines.
10 Years
Thu 24 July 2003 at 17:47 | Comments (1 - closed) | Personal
A decade ago yesterday, I woke up in my parents' house. It was my last morning as a Foley. The...Virtual Identity
Fri 27 June 2003 at 17:07 | Comments (1 - closed) | Personal
A few weeks ago, Martin was musing on what these blogs are, really, and why we maintain them. He, like the blogger who prompted his article, used a number of real-world analogies to make his points.
I'm not so sure how far analogies can take me in describing why I do what I do on the web. (Come to that, I'm not sure I know why I do all that I do on the web.)
On Craftsmanship
Wed 23 April 2003 at 13:17 | Comments (2 - closed) | Personal, Testing
I went through a pretty bad patch at work last month. I was feeling annoyed at the people I work with, stressed out by a developing problem that I couldn't seem to solve, and frustrated with myself for getting into the situation at all. I was having work stress dreams (coming into the office naked from the waist up, that sort of thing).
Cults and Putters (Atkins, Day 3)
Tue 15 April 2003 at 09:59 | Comments (5 - closed) | Personal
I'm finally over my early, extremely negative reaction to the Atkins book. It took a few days, but I'm now able to view it with the sense of humour that it requires (not to say invites).
Read the whole entry for "Cults and Putters (Atkins, Day 3)"
The Prisoners Problem
Sat 15 February 2003 at 21:22 | Comments off | Personal, Testing
Martin has got me involved in the Prisoner Problem. As a software tester by vocation as well as profession, I've...I'm Rich
Mon 30 December 2002 at 15:12 | Comments off | Personal
Rich, I tell you! No, no, I didn't win the lottery. Last night (Sunday, December 29) was the annual Almost...Monsters, Inc.
Tue 3 December 2002 at 18:42 | Comments off | Personal
Alex has been watching Monsters, Inc., and I perforce have been watching it with him. And it got me thinking....Ah, autumn...
Wed 2 October 2002 at 18:55 | Comments off | Personal
The days are growing perceptibly shorter now, for all that the temperature has stayed relatively warm. And the quality of...Serious Thoughts 2: Suffering
Thu 19 September 2002 at 00:08 | Comments (1 - closed) | Personal
In the days immediately after September 11, 2001, the US appealed to the world to side with it against terrorism,...Serious Thoughts 1: Rights
Fri 13 September 2002 at 10:16 | Comments off | Personal
I am an American, and proud of that fact. My nation was founded on a set of philisophical principles which...One Year On...
Wed 11 September 2002 at 09:07 | Comments off | Personal
...and we have failed. The world is not a safer place, as our politicians promised at the time. It's, if...Do we LOOK like Batman and Robin?
Mon 22 July 2002 at 21:24 | Comments off | Personal
Lindsay (one of my colleagues) and I went off to do some cache maintenance at lunchtime. We wanted to find...Read the whole entry for "Do we LOOK like Batman and Robin?"
"Bye"
Sun 21 July 2002 at 21:06 | Comments off | Personal
Originally entered as a daylog on E2 on July 18, 2002. He left me today. We were hanging out the...Signs and Secrets
Sun 21 July 2002 at 21:03 | Comments off | Personal
Originally entered as a daylog on everything2 for July 8, 2002 Spent lunchtime today double checking the GPS co-ordinates for...June and lovin' it
Mon 24 June 2002 at 23:23 | Comments off | Personal
I'm aware that I don't blog enough. Martin's always got something new up, and my last log is from March....All change
Sun 3 March 2002 at 00:54 | Comments off | Personal
It's the beginning of March, and life looks so different than it did in December. Not the politics. Don't even...Time flies; we fly
Thu 13 December 2001 at 16:30 | Comments off | Personal
Sheesh. It's been over a month since I've written anything. A busy month. We've been to the Marott AGM in...Sutherlands Hit London; London Survives
Tue 6 November 2001 at 20:40 | Comments off | Personal
So here we are in London. M, as he has indicated in his daylog, is here for a web usability...Read the whole entry for "Sutherlands Hit London; London Survives"
The Advance of the Darkness
Sun 14 October 2001 at 22:07 | Comments off | Personal
Ah, Seasonal Affective Disorder. City Time (the time zone calculator on my Palm, which also gives sunrise and sunset times)...A date! A date!
Wed 3 October 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
Night out last night, without B for once. We took Scott and Angela up on their standing offer to babysit...Daylog on Everything2
Wed 12 September 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
Daylog on Everything2: My great-uncle /msged me last night...part of the exercise of contacting all the family (an exercise I...Death and more death.
Tue 11 September 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
Death and more death. Destruction. Despair. When I woke up this morning, I thought, "My mom and dad have been...Breastfeeding thoughts
Mon 25 June 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
Breastfeeding thoughts at 6:30am: musing on my mother's visit... She's a really good houseguest. Eats what's served, even if it's...Post matrem
Thu 21 June 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
Written as a daylog in Everything2, my on-line community: Sigh Feeling pretty flat right now. My mother, who has been...For the last day of
Wed 20 June 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
For the last day of the visit, we went to Craigmillar Castle, one of Edinburgh's undiscovered treasures. And a good...Are we crazy, or what?
Wed 13 June 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
Are we crazy, or what? A day trip to Amsterdam with a baby Click on the pictures below for larger...New parenting...hmmm...
Tue 1 May 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
New parenting...hmmm. Half the days I'm on top of the world. The other half, I feel like I've been run...It's been one week since you looked at me...
Wed 18 April 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
9:30 am, Wednesday April 18, 2001 What a week. I'm just waiting for 10:11 today to give B a happy...Read the whole entry for "It's been one week since you looked at me..."
Here it comes
Wed 4 April 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
The baby's birtday will be April 11, 2001. How strange to know it already. We just went into the doctor's...B's Profile
Sun 1 April 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
So here it is, by popular request: B's profile. You can see the forehead, the nose, and the mouth (the...So we had the scan.
Fri 30 March 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
So we had the scan. It was wonderful to see B again, after all these months. It was way too...Baby Baby Baby
Wed 28 March 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
Coming right up It occurs to me that there's nothing on this website that covers the pregnancy in a...Dream Log
Sun 25 March 2001 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
Pregnancy has brought any number of odd dreams. Last night's was particularly vivid. I posted it on Everything2 as...Seven Years and Seven Days
Sun 30 July 2000 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
30 July 2000 Anniversary Thomas the Rhymer lay on the slopes of the Eildon Hills, in what would become...Memoirs of an Illustrated Woman
Tue 18 July 2000 at 00:00 | Comments off | Personal
18 July 2000 The Phoenix It's been 10 days since I got the tattoo. It's been through the scabby phase,...