spring

Well, I think it's safe to say that it's spring now. L took these today...

Things are blooming, the sky is blue, the sun was out... We got very dirty at the allotment... Well. Very dirty is relative. I have no doubt it will be much worse later on, but there was mud in abundance. And I strained the top of my foot somehow getting my boot off later. That's unrelated to the allotment. Probably.

Reg suggested to Sherlock that he make a scarecrow to keep the birds away from the new plants. He doesn't know what's he's wrought. I remember one of you being worried you'd started something here a few nights ago -- never worry about that. Honestly, it is impossible not to start something with Sherlock. His enthusiasms are enormous and often overwhelming, and always entertaining. We will have the most terrifying scarecrow of all time.

The running is...going. Well, the running itself is fine. Finding time for it is going to become increasingly difficult as the runs get longer, I think. And of course one has to schedule in all that time lying pathetically on the floor afterward...

back at work

I am ostensibly working, but actually sitting in a corner until they have some use for me. Mrs Hudson picked up Sherlock from school, and he's been texting me. I finished looking at a sergeant's bite wound and checked my phone to find this series:

S: there is a planet called GJ 1214b
S: it has clouds
S: i read a quote from a man who is a scientist and he said it had loads of water on it
S: also i read that people are going to be able to take holidays in space soon
S: so i would like to go to GJ 1214b please
S: maybe for easter or next christmas

S: mycroft says it's 40 light years away, i thought it was closer :(
S: he also says it's impossible to go faster than the speed of light but i don't think anyone's tried properly
S: they can't even go the speed of light yet so they can't be working at it that hard

I assume he's now building a faster than light rocket ship out of his mum's old Meccano set. 

day off

Yesterday the boys went off with their mum, and Greg and I took a bike ride. We saw floods...

And more floods...

And cows. Not pictured. Mainly they're not pictured because I (completely understandably!) mistook some mooing for my phone vibrating, and L was laughing too hard to take any photos. And I was too busy trying to look stern and then watching him actually have to sit down and wheeze slightly to take any. I still maintain it wasn't that funny. 

I've had seven texts from him today. 

1. moo

2. bananas? [this was in response to mine about did he want anything from the shops]

3. moooooo

4. moooooooooo

5. you love me really

6. what do ghost cows sound like?

7. moooOOOOooOOOOOoooo

I do love him really, and it's a good thing... 

Here are some pictures Mycroft took last night and this morning at his mum's. The first one is the fire Sherlock lit mainly by himself with help from Mycroft (according to Sherlock's report, that is):

And the second is from a walk they took. Lovely, isn't it? Looks like a painting.

And now we're all back together once more, and we've had pizza, and the Christmas tree is lit up. Sherlock and Mycroft are fiddling with Sherlock's microscope, and L and I are semi-conscious on the sofa with dogs drooling on our feet. 

adopt a skull

I'm at an unpleasantly damp crime scene. Someone's just shown me this link where you can adopt a skull. They all have info about them written right on them and you can pick which one you want from a catalogue. My first thought was a Christmas present for Sherlock, but, well, it's a lot of money, and we've already got him...a few things. Possibly more than we should. But if you're shopping for anyone who would like a skull, this is your lucky day.

Contrary to L's advice, I have now been vomited on, punched (only a bit, I'm fine), and felt up, but I think I get to go home soon. At least unless I get another call before that happens. It's been an intense night so far. Very glad I got to go home and get the medal Sherlock made for me though. Several people asked me if I know I've got glitter on my shirt. Obviously the answer was yes (medal is at home for safe keeping).

klein

Klein bottles:

From the website:

This is one of a series of glass Klein bottles made by Alan Bennett in 1995 for the Science Museum, London. It consists of three Klein bottles, one inside another. A Klein bottle is a surface which has no edges, no outside or inside and cannot properly be constructed in three dimensions. In the series Alan Bennett made Klein bottles analogous to Mobius strips with odd numbers of twists greater than one.

I've always liked Klein bottles, and I like these particularly.  The more you look at them, the more confusing they get.

We have been swimming. Sherlock worked on his diving for a while and then worked on hurling himself into the water and making as big a splash as possible. He's now decided he wants to go kayaking, preferably on the Thames, but he says the ocean would do. Just like that. 'I suppose the ocean would do.' I said I'd consider it, but definitely not on the Thames. You would think he's heard enough stories from L by now to not want any chance of getting that water in his mouth.

Mycroft's gone to walk the dogs and invited Sherlock along. When last seen, Mycroft had said he knew more of pi than Sherlock did, Sherlock declared he didn't, but even if he did, pi was pointless...and so on. I'm just going to enjoy the peace and quiet for a bit. 

glowing trees

This will be short, because I'm tired, and L is already in bed. Sensibly, given the time. 

Someone in California is making glowing trees. 

I can't remember now where I heard about this - was it one of you? But it looks pretty amazing. They did a Kickstarter for it, asking for $65,000 and got over $400,000. Which I can understand, because they're offering seeds for their glowing trees to people who gave over a certain amount.

Right, I can't think of anything else to say that isn't about the horrors of the potential misuse of genetic engineering, so I'll stop at glowing trees and go to sleep. Goodnight, everyone. 

pitch drop part 2 and invitations

Remember this post, where I talked about the pitch drop experiment? Well, it's dropped. Thanks to Pip for pointing it out in the comments, and you can read about it here or just stare at the gif below for far too long.

And wedding invitations! Time and place blacked out for obvious reasons, but we will tell you when it's going to happen. Just...not yet. 

They were both red initially and I was concerned it looked to much like blood. Sherlock thinks they don't look nearly enough like blood and at once point suggested they should actually be blood (no). They are our actual fingerprints though. I really like how they came out. And they've got magnets on the back so you can stick them to the fridge. Or anything else metal you would like to stick them to. 

The t-shirt making went well, and we watched Sherlock get his platinum award for...well, this is his comment from L's blog; I'll let him describe it:

I've done better than I even had to in everything like reading and maths and writing and also I was helpful and also I didn't have to go to the thinking corner more than three times all year.

He really has done amazingly well this year, and I'm so proud of him. 

did you know

Did you know there used to be a tradition of medical students posing with their cadavers? This is one of the more serious ones. I saw one with the students and cadaver playing cards...and another that had been made into a Christmas card to send to friends and family. 

And another 'did you know'...that some idiots are leaving their dogs locked in their cars with this heat? And that the police are allowed to break their windows to rescue the dogs? A broken window's the least of what they deserve, really. 

Since Sherlock learned that little fact, he's been on the lookout for dogs to rescue, and today... 

It was some sort of vastly unhappy terrier mix. Poor thing. Mycroft had some very strong words for the owner when he came out to complain about his window.

And lastly, L tells me I need to complain about the heat more and stop acting like I'm made of asbestos, so: it's hot. 

mycroft, tennis, and turtles

Mycroft's coming home today! We're leaving to pick him up in a bit, although not as soon as Sherlock would like. He set all the clocks in the flat forward. I wondered why I was so tired when I got up at seven...it was actually five.

Here, have a baby two-headed turtle. Her name is Thelma and Louise, and apparently she's healthy and 'eating with both heads', which I imagine is a good thing? Sherlock wants one, needless to say.

I read this article the other day, Where Are Tennis's Young Guns?, and while I don't agree with it entirely, it does mesh with some thoughts I've been having. Maybe it's just me getting old, but I find myself wondering who I'll watch when the current crop of players retires - and by 'current', I don't mean those coming up now, because there doesn't seem to be anyone coming up now. I know you can't expect a Federer or Nadal in every generation, but there's no one who really stands out to me.

I don't know if it's the baseline play or slower courts or different equipment, but the play itself seems significantly less interesting than it did even ten years ago, and that's sad. 

frasassi caves

Today, we went to the Frasassi Caves. This is on the way there: 

And these are the caves:

You're not supposed to take pictures, so we didn't, but there are plenty online if you want to see more. It was... I don't know. Beautiful, of course. Astonishing, fascinating. But more than that, too. There's a feeling of stillness and age and time there that I've only rarely experienced before. 

On a sillier note, Harry sent me this picture:

We might need one... 

i got the job

I was expecting to be told thank you and we'll let you know in a week or two. Instead it was thank you and when can you start. Bit of a shock. I told her after 2 June, and she looked harried, but I don't see how I can start sooner. We leave for Italy at the end of this week. Which is very, very soon I suddenly realise.

She said she'd email me some information, and I have things to sign, and I should know my first shift date before we get back, assuming we have wifi there, not sure about that.

Meanwhile, I have laundry. And packing. And cleaning. And...something to confirm for tomorrow. But for now, I get to meet L and tell him the good news in person. :)

PS: telepathic rats

pitch drop

From this site:

In 1927 Professor Parnell heated a sample of pitch and poured it into a glass funnel with a sealed stem. Three years were allowed for the pitch to settle, and in 1930 the sealed stem was cut. From that date on the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel - so slowly that now, 83 years later, the ninth drop is only just forming.

Pitch appears solid at room temperature, the site says, or even brittle. It'll shatter if you hit it with a hammer. But it's actually flowing down...very, very slowly. What it doesn't say on the site is why Parnell decided on pitch for his experiment, which I'd be interested to know. There's a video which shows a year's worth of (non)movement:

And there's a live webcam at the site. The only thing you'll see moving is the clock and the people staring at the pitch to try to see it move. It's sort of fascinating - not watching it, that's pretty boring, but the concept and the fact that it's been going on for so long, and that no one's ever seen it drip. Apparently when it goes, it happens quite quickly, in about a tenth of a second...every ten to twelve years.

I showed this to Sherlock. He was initially interested in the solid-that's-actually-a-visco-elastic-polymer concept and watched the webcam for a few minutes.

Sherlock: What happens when the next drop falls?

Me: What do you mean what happens? It...falls.

Sherlock: But what happens? Does it explode?

Me: No...

Sherlock: Then why is everyone so excited about it? It's already happened eight times.

He may have a point there. I'll probably still check the site every now and then for video of the ninth drop though. 

hungry like the wolf

I've been ordered upstairs to bed while L prepares something for tomorrow morning, so I'll just take this opportunity to say briefly how wonderful he is and how much I love him. And how...constantly amazed I am at my good fortune.

And I'll also post this, just in case Sherlock needs something else to occupy himself with in the morning, or more to the point, in case Mycroft and Anthea need help occupying him. The youtube channel belongs to someone who works at a natural history museum in Montana and this is the first in a series of videos in which they acquire a wolf that was hit by a car and prepare it for...display, presumably, but I haven't watched that far yet.

All this one has is a dead wolf, but the subsequent episodes are more graphic, so proceed with caution. Eventually, I believe, there will be flesh-eating beetles involved. You're welcome, Sherlock.

narwhals and interviews

Narwhals:

I'm reading The Mauritius Command, and sometimes Sherlock perches on the back of the sofa and reads bits over my shoulder. The bit he read today was a scene in which a captain under Aubrey's command is convinced he has a unicorn's horn. It's really a narwhal tusk, which caused Sherlock to interrogate me for my scanty knowledge of narwhals (mid-sized whale, has an enormous tusk, lives in the Arctic), which was obviously not enough to satisfy him, so we looked on the internet for a while and found, among other things, the above picture. 

Before Sherlock got home, I called a few of the people on the list I got from the course to set up interviews for a potential...mentor? Supervisor? Both, I suppose. And instructor, since they're meant to sign off on me and attest to my general competence to do the job on my own after a few months. 

I called five people and got three interviews out of it. The first man said he was retiring soon and wasn't prepared to train anyone, and the third said he was moving to Ulan Bator in three weeks. I wish I'd thought to ask why. I really want to know now, despite it being quite obviously none of my business. I thought about going there to teach English for a while. 

Anyway, I'll let you know how the interviews go, and of course even if someone takes me on, it's no guarantee of employment. Just have to wait and see how it all turns out. Even if I don't get work right away, I might start looking at the requirements for the DMJ (diploma of medical jurisprudence). I think it'd be interesting. 

-

Aaaand apparently Sherlock is the proud owner of a giant purple sparkly bone, which we need to pick up tomorrow. The things that happen when I leave town for a week... 

city lights

A shot from the Met helicopter that L sent me: 

Our house is down there somewhere...

Beautiful, isn't it? Night shots of city lights always are. It's hard to imagine the entire planet dark the way it was really not very long ago at all. I wonder if any light source people could make prior to electricity would show up from space. Or helicopters. Alien helicopters, obviously, since we sort of needed electricity to... I'll just stop there.

The boys and I have been out enjoying the city while L slaves away at his desk, although Sherlock desperately wants to stop by in his continuing quest to get every single person on Earth to sign his cast. We might at least drag L away for coffee if he's not too busy.

One of the things we got at the end of the course was a list of names of FMEs (or FPs or FMOs or one of the other many acronyms that have been/are being used to describe this job) currently working in our home cities who are willing to supervise trainees - that would be us - for the first six months or so. The idea is that we call a few, set up interviews, and find someone we work well with. After we start working, we get to call them if we have questions, and they look over our cases, things like that, to make sure we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, and then, eventually, they sign off on us, and we're on our own.

So that's the next step. I'll look into it soon, but not until after the boys are back at school probably. Hopefully I can do the interviews while Sherlock's at school so I won't need to bother Mrs Hudson. 

forensic romance

The course continues. Still interesting. Still a lot to take in, and I feel like I ought to be remembering everything, which is obviously impossible when someone's talking to you from eight in the morning till five in the afternoon. That's what notes are for, of course, and I haven't taken this many since medical school. It's like a week-long flashback. Leaves my brain a bit fried at the end of the day. 

Tonight I looked up one of the historical records the instructor mentioned on Monday:

On the Uncertainty of the Signs of Murder in the Case of Bastard Children, by William Hunter, 1818

That is, it concerns children born out of wedlock being killed, not murders done by bastards. It makes for fairly unpleasant, if interesting, reading, especially once you get past the introduction and read about the individual cases. 

birmingham

Want to help name Pluto's moons? (Who wouldn't want to help name Pluto's moons?)

Anyway, I'm in Birmingham. This is the picture I sent Sherlock and L last night of my hotel room.

Unexciting hotel room

maze

"Almost 30 years ago a Japanese custodian sat in front of a large A1 size sheet of white paper, whipped out a pen and started drawing the beginnings of a diabolically complex maze..."

More about the maze at the link in the caption. I'm resisting the urge to call it amazing. Apparently I'm not resisting it very well though. I hope they decide to do prints of it because Sherlock already wants one. As a stopgap measure, he's drawing his own. I'm pretty sure his has more traps, pools of lava, and buried treasure than the original does. 

I got in touch with a couple of people I know in Birmingham and in theory we'll get together while I'm there. One of them is married to a woman I used to date. Don't know if he plans on bringing her along or how awkward that will prove to be if he does. Hopefully not too bad. She threw a teacup when she broke up with me, but if she'd wanted to hit me with it, she probably would've. 

Sherlock and I are cooking dinner tonight. What did he pick for the vegetable? Broccoli. 

voyager

Stardust from PostPanic, a short film about Voyager I. I originally thought of Mycroft when I saw this, but I'm not sure how much he's going to like it, given it's mostly computer generated and not real footage. It is beautiful though. 

So. I am signed up for the FME course in Birmingham. It starts one week from today. I'll leave the night before, mostly because it starts early enough that I'd have to be on the road long before I prefer to even be conscious to make it in time, but also because I think saying goodbye to Sherlock before he has to leave for school would be disastrous. At least this way he'll have Sunday evening with L to get used to the idea and make biscuits or something. 

No, to make mango eggs, he's just told me. (Hope you're prepared, L...) He also says he'll be fine and he's very very grown up now and won't miss me at all and what day am I getting back? If only all it took not to miss people was being grown up. 

Seeing Birmingham again will be a bit strange. The last time I was there, I was a patient at Selly Oak, I think very shortly before they started moving it all to the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The time before that I was visiting someone there, and the time before that I worked there for a little while before I was sent to Kosovo. I gather they're turning the site of the old hospital into some sort of residential area? I'd like to see it though, if anything's still there. 

caput mortuum

Hi this is Sherlock and today I learned that there used to be a colour of paint that was made from ground up Egyptian mummies, it was called caput mortuum or mummy brown or some other things but those two make the most sense. We had a man come to our school today to talk to us about painting and they might do an extra class sometimes that people could sign up for and I think I'd like that but we didn't get to do any today because Mrs N said they didn't have all the things and it was too messy but I think I would take the class if they do it.

The painter's name was Mr Berns with an E, not like fire, and he also restores paintings for a museum but I don't remember which one, and he said there are paints no one uses anymore because they are poisonous or no one can get the things to make them now, and we said like what, and he told us a lot, but mummy brown was the best and when I got home I looked at it on the internet and I found a thing that gives a FAKE MUMMY RECIPE for if you couldn't get real mummies.

Take the carcase of a young man (some say red hair’d) not dying of a Disease but killed; let it lie 24 hours in clear water in the Air: cut the flesh in pieces, to which add Powder of Myrrh and a little Aloes, imbibe it 24 hours in the Spirit of Wine and Turpentine...

I don't see why he should have red hair though or even be young. And also this which is about what the mummies looked like before they were made into a colour.

“They gave noisome smell at all, like pitch, beinge broken; for I broke of all parts of the bodies to see howe the flesh was turned to drugge, and brought home divers heads, hands, arms, and feete for a shewe.”

And John said it sounded a bit disrespectful making dead people into paint but I don't think it's worse than putting them in museums and I think that if I could be a paint when I die that would be all right although only if I got used by a really good painter.