There's some standard advice for facing fear and indecision, which is to consider the worst that could possibly happen, and then realise that it's not so bad. There's an example in a thing going round at the moment about dealing with unhelpful thoughts that ends with "If the thought was true, what is the worst outcome? Is it as bad as you think ( Read more... )

I have recently learned that (a) leather jackets are definitely in at the moment, and (b) most "leather" jackets in the shops are not made of bits of dead cow treated with heinous chemicals but from a polymer, often polyurethane (?!). I've slightly coveted a leather jacket since I was a teenager. At the time I got a parka instead because I was a ( Read more... )

I beat a roomful of 10-year-olds at Minecraft!

It was at the very excellent National Video Game Arcade in Nottingham, which I totally recommend if you like video games and totally disrecommend if you don't.

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I took a tumble this afternoon. I had picked up the kids from school, and we took a detour to the nearby play park. **TODO was off playing on the slide, and I was talking to **FIXME about the new term’s topic. (The Aztecs. Apparently he is yet again one of the designated class experts on the topic, and is routinely called on to pronounce ‘ ( Read more... )

By "middle-aged moments" I'm not talking about presbyopia or the classic "going in to a room and forgetting why you went in". Cognitive decline doesn't usually set in until pretty late middle age, if then, and I've had that very experience since I can remember having experiences ( Read more... )