We decided to get some Russian dwarf hamsters, since that’s one of the types we haven’t had before. But we decided this a couple weeks before Christmas, and we were planning to spend Christmas in Wigan with husband’s family. So we didn’t want to get hamsters and then leave them in our house with hamster-sitters right away.

We went to Wigan and it was really nice. We both got titled estates in the highlands for Christmas, and I got some books and fluffy blankets and stuff. I got to spend time with my nieces and nephew. One of the days we were there we went out to the market and it was nice and I had a lovely time until I started having agoraphobic panic attacks in the grocery store from the crowds.

The other thing that happened at some time when we were out is that my hypermobility started acting up and my pelvis got all dislocated. I was in quite a bit of pain for about a week.

We got home and my pelvis was feeling better and we planned to go out on the 3rd of January to get hamsters. Then there was another hurricane-level wind storm on that day so we waited until Saturday.

The store was crowded and we had to stand around for a long time in the shop waiting for someone who could box up the 2 hamsters that they had and sign all the requisite forms. We ended up with two male Russian dwarf hamsters. We named them Leonard and Sheldon.

Leonard is brown and very curious. If we pick up their little hiding house, he is likely to climb out and straight up your arm. And then poop on your shoulder.

Sheldon is silvery-gray and very shy. He hasn’t been aggressive at all, but he is shy and more likely to hide in a pile of bedding.

I hope to post pictures of them soon, if not here then definitely on my Tumblr.

The night after we went out to get the hamsters, my pelvis fell apart again. I didn’t sleep the whole night because of the pain. So the hypermobility/Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is apparently becoming less of an occasional inconvenience and more of a full-blown disability.

So, to sum up: new hamsters, painful disability.

A few years back John Green wrote a book called Looking For Alaska. In that book, he had a quote from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Edna’s family still owns the copyright to her poems, and John’s publisher told him the quote was too long to count as “fair use” so he either had to shorten the quote or pay Edna’s family. He shortened the quote because he didn’t have money.

In real life, that was the end of it. But let’s say that John Green published his book, and several years later Edna St. Vincent Millay’s family got mad and wanted money for the quote, even though he had shortened it. As copyright law works now, John would go to court and argue that his quote was fair use. Edna’s family would argue that they wanted money and the judge would decide whether John owed them money or not.

Here’s how it would go under SOPA: Edna’s family says that John Green violated their copyright. Because of that, they track down every copy of Looking For Alaska, and every copy of An Abundance of Katherines and every copy of Paper Towns and they halt the printing of The Fault In Our Stars and every copy of every book that John Green ever wrote is piled up and burned. And after that, John can take Edna’s family to court, if he has the money for a lawyer now that his livelihood has been destroyed.

Notice how they didn’t go to court until after John’s life was destroyed? Notice how John Green was presumed guilty and punished without trial? Also notice how everything he ever wrote was destroyed, not just the one thing with potential copyright infringement? This is what congress wants to do to the internet. This is why you should be calling your congressperson and telling the president that if it goes through congress, he needs to Veto it. SOPA is unconstitutional and wrong.

• I have a fantastic husband who handles my roller coaster of moods better than I deserve.
• I have a house that, while lacking storage space, a real refrigerator, and a shower, is at least a place to keep all my books.
• The tea-mostat totally works.
• I live in a country where I can speak my mind without fear of losing my job, getting beaten, or getting pepper sprayed.
• I can go to the doctor whenever I am sick, without wondering whether I can afford it.
• I can get all of my prescription medications for free or very very cheap.
• I can afford to be a full time writer, at least for a little while.

I’m less certain than ever about moving back to the US. I’m watching the government of America treat people in ways that I formerly would have associated with fascist regimes. I see a former democracy. I see a country that was formed on the values of free speech and equal rights for all people devolve into a country where an oligarchy of the wealthy rules, and everyone else is reduced to a feudal peasant working for a corporate lord.

I can’t say with any certainty that I can return to the US. I’m not sure that I’m willing to give up that much of my rights. I’m just thankful that I have the option to stay in another country.

It holds a liter of coffee, or tea. The problem is that you can’t put tea bags into the flask because the hole in the top is too small, and if they sink you can never get them out. So I thought about it for a while and came up with many ideas involving filters and clamps and all kinds of things. In the end, I settled on this:

This is a hemostatic forceps, or hemostat. It looks like scissors, but it is actually a clampy thing used to clamp blood vessels during surgery. My plan is to clamp the teabags in the hemostat and then drop it in the flask, with the finger hole bits at the top stopping it from dropping all the way in. Then the tea can steep and I can easily remove and dispose of the teabags. Brilliant, no?

I don’t actually have the hemostat yet (I ordered one on eBay) so I’ll update and let you know if it doesn’t work. If it does work, I call my invention the tea-mostat.

Actually, I’m working on 3 different books, but the one I’m furthest along on, and the one I’m enjoying the most is a book written for Americans to explain the things they will find in Great Britain that will annoy, confuse or surprise them. I’m covering basic things like words that are different (like pavement instead of sidewalk), to how the government is structured, to which celebrities the British talk about that the Americans have never heard of. I’m trying to make most of it funny and light, a bit like my British Food web site.

I’m also planning to intersperse my text with famous quotes about Britain, and maybe some original illustrations. I don’t have a publisher. If there are any interested, let me know. If need be, I will self-publish. (The actual publication could still be a few years off, realistically.)

Also, I don’t have a title. If you come up with a title for me and I use it, I’ll make sure you get a free copy and a mention in the “thank you” section. If you can think of anything about the British that annoyed, surprised, delighted, or confused you, feel free to post it in the comments, or hit me up on Twitter or Tumblr. I’ve already done about 160 topics, but there’s always a chance I’ve missed something.

So that’s what I’ve been working on that has kept me from posting here and on my book review tumblr as much as I should. With the help of a netbook I can use while I’m still in bed, and my patron saint of writing, Neil Gaiman, I’m actually properly determined to finish this book and see it in print.

“There is another way we’re getting behind business – by sorting out the banks. Taxpayers bailed you out. Now it’s time for you to repay the favour and start lending to Britain’s small businesses.” – David Cameron (Prime Minister and leader of the British conservative party)

This is the core of why we’re angry at banks. We, as taxpayers, bailed them out and kept them from collapsing. In return, the government and the people expected that the banks would be grateful and invest back in the people who helped them.

Instead of investing in the people, the banks took the money and ran with it. They raised interest rates, and started denying more loans and mortgages, using their new favorite phrase “credit crunch”. Instead of using the bail-out money to rebuild the economy from the base, which was the intention of the bail-out in the first place, they used the bail-out money to pay huge bonuses to their executives. Then they started adding more fees to people’s accounts, claiming that they “had a right to make a profit.”

But do they really have a right to make a profit, when they have done nothing to pay back the huge pile of taxpayer money that they eagerly gobbled up?

Basically, what the American people are saying is, “We want our bail-out money back.” Whether it is in the form of the banks actually paying the money back to the government from their now multiplying profits, or in the form of making banking more affordable to the people who paid that tax money — one way or another, we want our money back.