I have been up since six and in the office since half seven.

Owch!

You can at least sit on the couch drinking tea and watching Daignosis Murder.

True, dat.

o_a, I too am without knitting expertise. Every time I tried to knit something when I was a kid it was always a strange amorphous blob of a thing, and oddly I always used to gain stitches. Like I'd start out with 20 stitches, and then somehow it would end up with 37 stitches. Weird. So I'm cheering you on from the sidelines, in a Knitting Deficient kind of way.

Went shopping today! I bought 4 blouses, 2 for £7 each and 2 for £8 each. I also bought one bra, for £9.50 (Marks and Sparks). All of these will be jolly handy for life in Bangkok, and all of them were in the sales.

So far so good.

...but then I bought a sort of coat/jackety thing for....£39.

A velvet jackety thing.

And I live in Bangkok, where it is STILL BLOODY STINKING HOT right now, and that's what passes for winter, so I have no use for a velvet jackety thing at this point.

But...purple! Velvet! Swingy! Long! Jackety thing! All swirly swishy lovely!

Laura, I agree about the no carb thing being the devil. But oatmeal is okay - you can still do yourself the world of good if you just cut back on refined flour type things, like bread and pasta and cookies. Oatmeal + banana = healthy goodness.

We're back!

Fay, the velvety coaty thing is actually a sound investment. This way you won't wear it in Thailand, but eventually and occasionally you will be in places chilly enough to wear it, by which time inflation will mean that the price you paid for it is much less than the prices you might conceivably have to pay for it in the future. So you're actuallysaving money by buying things you don't really need now.

Long sentences can justify anything, yay!

((((Karl and family))))

((((Sean and S))))

Coming in a little late on how the deceased doesn't look as in real life. My grandmother died when I was about 13, about a month after her sister Ruth. We got to the visitation and grandma had been made up to look like her sister Margaret. It also did not help that the funeral itself was held on my brother's birthday.

I've often wondered since how Aunt Margaret got through February and March that year.

I went to Catholic schools and they didn't teach creationism. Apparently a newfangled notion.

For all its old-school attitudes, the Catholic Church has been pretty consistently cool with science. Props to the RC, yo.

My funeral? I want you all in black and sobbing. Hats! Veils! Gloves! Stand at my graveside and look like an old movie for me. Don't go saying "she wouldn't want us to be sad..." because I DO want you to be sad.

Don't embalm me, that's too creepy. Or cremate me -- too creepy.

Dress me in something nice and anyone who wants to say bye-bye to my corpse can do so before the nice non-embalming non-cremating funeral people come pick me up and put me in my nice pine box.

Then after the funeral drink and sing old songs and tell nice stories about me, but keep the dressy clothes on -- we have so few formal occasions nowadays and if I can be the cause of one that's a nice little present when I go.

{{{Sean and S}}} I hope S is feeling better soon and can enjoy some time with her family.

My funeral? I want you all in black and sobbing. Hats! Veils! Gloves! Stand at my graveside and look like an old movie for me. Don't go saying "she wouldn't want us to be sad..." because I DO want you to be sad.

Shall we fling ourselves on your casket after it's been lowered into the ground? Because I need to know whether I should do yoga and other stretches before your funeral.

t edit I *totally* want people sad and wailing and devastated at my funeral. And then all y'all can go drink.

Don't embalm me, that's too creepy.

I'm not sure you get a choice about this. Isn't there a law or something?

Is there a form you can fill out to donate your body to the Soylent Green company?

Ooh! I know you can donate it to the body farm. Or at least to Medical Science, which quite often sends it to the body farm. In fact, I think my father has put that in his will. We're actually not allowed to have him buried. We may not be allowed to have any kind of service.