Artemis Indeed, you are 62% erudite, 58% sensual, 70% martial, and 58% saturnine.

This Greek Goddess was patron to young girls and provided comfort to women in childbirth. She was known as the Virgin Huntress, and she chose to spend her time among a clan of toughened nymphs living in the great outdoors of a land called Arcadia.Just like her Celtic equivalent, Artio, Artemis was also called “Mistress of Beasts” and “Goddess of Wild Things.” It’s not surprising then that she was also considered a Fertility Goddess. What is surprising is that this Fertility Goddess was a perpetual virgin. The race of warrior women called the Amazons worshipped her as the Goddess of the New Moon. Strong, athletic, and temperamental, this was no Goddess to irritate. Even looking at her could kill. She was also very demanding when it came to her worship. She was known to bring down entire empires simply because a sacrifice might have been overlooked. The Fifteen Goddesses These are the 15 categories of this test. If you score above average in … …all or none of the four variables: Neit. … Erudite: Minerva. … Sensual: Aphrodite. … Martial: Artemis. … Saturnine: Persephone. … Erudite & Sensual: Isis. … Erudite & Martial: Sekhmet. … Erudite & Saturnine: Nemesis. … Sensual & Martial: Hera. … Sensual & Saturnine: Bast. … Martial & Saturnine: Ilamatecuhtli. … Erudite, Sensual & Martial: Maeve. … Erudite, Sensual & Saturnine: Freya. … Erudite, Martial & Saturnine: Sedna. … Sensual, Martial & Saturnine: Macha.

Digitize – Nick Sentience & Andy Farley

finally had enough of chewing my ‘tash: I have a face again!

Why an incomplete success? Well, the grey’s still here. However the face-fungus recontouring situation is entirely satisfactory.

Tag history query
I’m still wondering about the ease-of-use to value ratio of LJ-tags. Has anyone noticed, either in the standard LJ browser-interface or in any of the OSX apps (or even in a classic mac OS app) a list of the tags they’ve used so far?

Ryan-air news
This afternoon the atmosphere in the Ryan household was more relaxed than it has been since I arrived. Susan’s told Morrisons this morning that she is ‘minded to accept their offer’ of reinstatement and back pay, so long as it’s given in writing and Morrisons’ records either don’t show the suspicion of pilfering or do mention it but state that it was later proved to be unfounded. Morrisons are also aware that ACAS are talking to their solicitor who submitted the piece about eating some sweets and putting others into a carrier bag, with a view to getting that nonsense expunged. So the chap who ran the Grievance Hearing needs to talk to M’s solicitor and will get back to Sue. However, it still seems that they’ve accepted they were wrong to accuse her in the first place and wrong in how they dealt with the suspicion.

snap crackle pop
Also, mum’s been examined by the doctors working for the insurers of the plonker who crashed into her and wrote off her car a few months ago. They’ve accepted that she has been battered and bruised and that it’ll take her six months to recover to her state before the crash. So she’s feeling vindicated and relieved that this little indignity is over – and is looking forward to feeling less achey in a finite time.

Iconoplasty?
I like my current icons:

• a clip from me curing a leckie laptop with a hammer:
• MsInvisFem’s ‘pissed-off Bruce’ drawing:
• MsInvisFem’s impression of me flying the sexiest laptop ever:
• MsInvisFem has also drawn me a ‘cambo pig’ icon:

I’m very grateful to MsInvisFem for the latter three!
However, since my Random Bozo alter-ego is about to take over, I think I need one that celebrates my randomness. Any volunteers? Here’s a few pix that could be worked with:

• My first ever passport photo (from when I was 16)
• My mini-parents and I
• Tramping around
• Marianne, Latimer and I
• Me about 17 years ago

bigger versions of these pix are of course available.

… but I took a couple of photos of my parents while we were waiting in Morrisons’ lobby for Sue and her MENCAP advisor to come out of the Grievance Hearing. So you can see what 40 years of parenting me has done.

I phoned the Inland Revenue Tax Credits helpline on Susan’s behalf yesterday afternoon. Following that conversation and examining the documentation Susan’s retained there appear to be two problems:

• In the middle of 2005, Susan received a letter saying thank you for completing your 2003-4 Tax Credits piece. I now intend to query it: please provide evidence that you are still disabled.

Susan appears to have responded but not in the required way: there’s a further letter saying you haven’t provided the evidence I asked for. I am therefore removing the severe disability element of your tax credits.

Of course, since Susan had already received this money, the Inland Revenue wants it back. Similarly, they want back the severe disability element of her 2004-5 tax credits. They’ve just sent her ‘notices to pay’ back these sums, totalling over £1400. (I imagine they’ll also want back the severe disability element of the tax credits she’s received in 2005-6.)

• Tax credits are state support for people on low earned income or with other needs. The Inland Revenue carried on paying Susan tax credits after Morrisons dismissed her. The Inland Revenue will want that back. It’s unclear whether they’ve paid her the severe disability element but from the very low amount of the 2005-6 ‘award’, I think not.

So I’ve written the bones of a letter on Sue’s behalf which

• makes it plain that we have no quarrel with the amount of tax credit the IR say she’s received in 2003-4 and 2004-5 – it’s all there on her wage slips (when tax credit was paid via her employer) or in her bank book (when paid direct by Inland Revenue)
• appeals the decision to take away the severe disability element in these two years. After all, her condition is congenital and irreversible: it won’t get better. In fact, in 2004, the Department for Work and Pensions wrote to Susan, saying ‘we accept you have disabilities and will continue to do so until at least 2009’.
• asks for a blow-by-blow account of how and when the overpayments occurred because the amounts of overpayment appear to vary from document to document
• points out that because of her disability Sue doesn’t know what to do with official letters and so asks for leniency and tolerance in her case. (She has until 27 February 2006 to appeal the amount of her 2005-6 tax credits award but I don’t know if she can still appeal about the earlier years.)
• asks that they hold off attempts to recover tax credits paid to her after Morrisons dismissed her because it’s quite likely that once the Tribunal process has finished, she’ll be reinstated and paid for the time she hasn’t been working
• asks that if she hasn’t been paid the severe disability element in 2005-6, that she should be.

I wanted to write it while the conversation with the helpline worker was still fresh in my memory and so got to sleep around 3 am. So after the grievance hearing I went to bed and slept until the early evening.

I’ve emailed the draft to dad and Sue’s mencap worker so they can add tact and take into account whatever the Inland Revenue say in the ‘how to appeal’ piece they’re sending to Susan.

Meanwhile a huge Thank you! to everyone who’s sent encouraging words and thoughts, via LiveJournal or otherwise. It’s meant a hell of a lot to me and my folks.

Almost a result! At the second part of Susan’s Grievance Hearing, the Morrisons staff were far more courteous than last week. The store manager running the meeting said, inter alia:

• What do you want to achieve out of this? (Susan’s answer was ‘Justice’.)
• Morrisons do have procedures, developed with MENCAP, for cases like hers. However they were not followed in this case.
• In this case, Susan should have been suspended while an investigation occurred.

They gave Susan a photocopy of the ‘resignation letter’. It’s plain as day that all of it apart from the signature wasn’t written by Susan: the letter uses words Susan wouldn’t and is in architect/engineer-style, very neat, capitals.

While they didn’t actually retract the theft allegations, they then offered Susan reinstatement, with back pay. Susan didn’t answer straight away – and there is a further meeting on Thursday morning. Meanwhile the MENCAP advisor is consulting with ACAS over whether Susan should accept Morrisons’ offer.

http://disturbingthecomfortable.blogspot.com/2006/02/vonnegut-on-horror-and-glory-of.html

I thought you might like to see the world’s first colour ultrasound scans.

Just now I’m crying my eyes out at footage of cute babies in a Kenya elephant orphanage: in particular one poor little bugger who was rescued after its mother died and the rest of its herd rejected it. This rejection and the baby’s screams as it woke from anaesthesia and ran from the well-meaning strangers around it were utterly heart-rending.

Last night mum was cooking tea when she started feeling nauseous: she sat on the sofa with a ‘puke bowl’, too nauseous to even drink water. We made various efforts to comfort her and I continued cooking (because mum was concerned that dad and Sue should eat). This was the first time I’ve even come close to cooking meat in over two decades but my only concern was that I cook it properly: the animal-rights issues didn’t even surface in my mind.

Mum eventually recovered enough to eat some toast so she could inject her insulin, then went to bed.

Around 3 am, I heard her waking dad up because she was feeling cramps in her legs and couldn’t move. He massaged her and eventually they went back to sleep.

This morning Susan received a letter from the Employment Tribunal. By now mum had recovered enough to start washing clothes. I saw her tremble and asked what was happening. She cried a bit and said that she ached all over* and suddenly no longer had strength, then made a visible effort to get going again. (I think she wanted to be seen to function normally so I made her some coffee and left her to carry on filing Susan’s guddle of papers.)

Susan and I scanned the Employment Tribunal letter on dad’s PC: Sue now knows how to make a ‘photocopy’ and I assembled the files into a PDF to email to her MENCAP advisor.

Mum and Sue are now shopping in town and I’m trying to decide what to do in relation to all of this. I’ve said to both mum and dad (separately, while the other was out of earshot) that I’m considering giving up my India trip. Dad told me that I must ‘live my own life’. Mum said that me not doing what I wanted so would make her feel even worse. This makes me feel even more apprehensive about going away!

*a combination of arthritis and her recent-ish car crash