The joy of self-deception

Hurrah! It's New Year! My favourite time of year. I get to drink champagne and kid myself that I can do better. Cheers!

So in recent years I have experimented with Non-Resolution Resolutions. I have been all about "goal setting" and such. Last year, you may recollect, I decided that it could all be wrapped up in the simple mission statement: Get My Shit Together. Well, there's really only one word for my progress on that front.

But I'm a lady and I don't use words like that.

Taking kadekraan's advice, therefore, for 2008 I am subdividing my main goal ("Get My Shit Together") into smaller goals. ("Get My Shit Together Just a Little Bit", "Get My Shit Together a Bit More", "Get My Shit Together I Really Mean It This Time" and so on. Thanks for that, k. Very helpful.) As it happens, the result looks surprisingly like traditional resolutions: Get Healthy. Manage Stress. Do More Stuff.

Manage Stress and Get Healthy are quite closely interlinked; really I'd be hard pressed to say where one ends and the other begins, especially as I have vowed to never again make any stupid commitments like "get skinny". Instead, I have a selection of Noble Principles I shall be experimenting with, which I believe have the potential to Make Me Well, and also Happy. For instance:

Breakfast. It might not be the enemy after all.
Consider the possibility of actually consuming all the produce that arrives in your weekly organic box, rather than simply photographing it for supposedly humorous blogging purposes.*
Toast with humus: not actually bad for you, but not recommended for every meal.

I have my doubts about all of the above, but we'll give this whole Breakfast and Vitamins thing a fair chance.

Happy new arbitrary calendar demarcation! Huzzah!

_____
* We had the world's longest parsnip this week. Glad you were spared?

Organisation, lack thereof

This is my desk at the start of a standard week. It don't look like much, but you can at least see the surface.
This is my desk at the end of the week.


The theory goes that by spending more time working at home, and less going to an office, I'll be able to keep things closer to picture A, with all the implicit productivity that entails. (Since every piece of crud on the table in picture B represents Something Not Yet Done.)

What are the chances?

Christmas lights are rubbish

Seen behind the Royal Festival Hall, a couple of weeks ago. Around the corner:


It's not terribly easy to see, but those are all coloured plastic bottles. Clever!

And then there is this:


This space is normally used for public sculpture of some sort - recently, a collection of fountains, all of which were human forms spewing water from somewhere unpleasantly anatomical. So presumably these bits and pieces are being used in the making of a new exhibit, but then again they could actually be the latest exhibit. I honestly have no idea.

Anybody remember the story, a few years ago, of some German janitors working in an art museum, who had to be sent on an "art appreciation" course after accidentally throwing away one of the installations (a pile of rubbish on the floor)? The best bit of that story was the comment I heard from, er, I forget: "If a pile of rubbish is a valid piece of art, then clearing it away is a valid piece of art criticism."

The Giant Swede of Doom

Not celeriac this time, but an actual swede. An actual mutant giant swede of doom.


I posed it with a lemon, for scale, and a rather oddly shaped pear, for humour. But the pear's weird potato shape doesn't come across at all, and it sort of detracts from the giantness of the swede. So just mentally erase that pear, okay? It is a GIANT SWEDE. It is as big as my head. Well, my head's quite big, but probably as big as Beloved's head. It is, in any case, HUGE.

And yet still counts as only one vegetable. We're getting good value from our organic box. Oh yes.

Hello world! I love everybody!

Happy Christmas! Happy Boxing Day! Happy almost New Year! Ummm... happy! Happy happy! Woo yay!

Apparently spending two days at home, with the computer switched off and just one's Beloved for company, with a large quantity of fattening food and assorted alcohol* and a large pile of DVDs (Lord of the Rings for preference), can do wonders for the stress levels.

Yay Christmas! Can I have another one just like it?

_____
* Meet the Brother William: equal parts pear liqueur, Frangelico and Southern Comfort, served in a martini glass with a cherry and topped up with Peartiser. Don't say I never give you anything.

I think I accidentally swallowed a manatee*

The Scrivener reports: Yes, it is possible to eat three Christmas dinners within 40 hours.

Some survival tips:

1. Breakfast is not your friend.
2. Coke is.
3. You will only be able to face Christmas pudding once, and better make that time the first dinner. At later events, you will be starting to see the point of trifle.
4. If one or more of the events takes place in a restaurant, and if you dawdle enough over your food, the waiters might offer to clear your plate (or even your drinks) before you've quite finished. This is possibly the only occasion when you'll be really happy for them to do so.
5. If you've drunk (more than) enough, you may find yourself happily indulging in seconds, the alcohol having blunted your senses sufficiently that you are not aware of just how uncomfortable your gut is becoming. Beware! The booze will wear off long before the stuffed feeling.
6. The above notwithstanding, there is never anything wrong with another glass of gluhwein. Possibly the spices aid digestion. Or something.
7. You may find sleepiness overwhelming you at some point, as your body attempts to digest the large sea mammal in your gut. It helps to take out your knitting (though possibly not in a restaurant). Hand movement keeps you at least partly awake. Yet another reason to take up knitting.

_____
* In an incident entirely unrelated to sexual favours of the aquatic sort.

Feelin' festive

So it would appear to be Christmas, complete with magical, mythical mist and frost. I've been to see Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker!, I've been ice skating at Kew, and I've kicked off the Christmas dinners (three in two days) with a very enjoyable affair indeed at Pippa's tonight.* I've been given perfume and a polar bear, I've wrapped the few presents I'm giving,** I have posted almost the last of the knitterly rush orders (with two more tomorrow).


We don't have a tree (sacrilege!), but we do have spangly red tulips, which is surely at least as good?


We have stocked up on festive food... possibly more than we are capable of eating this year. I'll get back to you on that. We have also decided on our plan of action for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (it involves Lord of the Rings, all of it,*** and pyjamas, and resolutely unplugged computers).

Everything is looking pretty good.

It's just a shame that the heating's broken again.

_____
* Parties with fun people are even more fun with more fun people. It's so great having Vivaldifan in London.
** Or possibly, I have inveigled Beloved into wrapping them for me.
*** Apart from the extras. That's just crazy.

Tis the season

2007 in first lines; or, the Mundane Meme.

January:
Anna Little Red Boat, investigative journalist extraordinaire, started quite the conversation while I was away.

February:
Alive, yes, Anything interesting to tell you, no.

March:
I have led such a protected, not to say wilfully deluded, life.

April:
Everybody knows Italy already — even if you've never been anywhere further than your neighbourhood pizzeria.

May:
But clearly a mismatch.

June:
The problem with lolcats is that, well, they're generally not so much lol.

July:
Two and a half weeks of visit later, matricide has been averted.

August:
Blah blahblah blahblah.

September:
Vivaldifan has just arrived from SA to start his new life here in Londonville.

October:
Holiday disasters (little ones):
Forgetting my work permit and changing my ticket.

November:
He did it again.

December:
Which of the following statements about my past week is/are untrue?

Conclusion:
Today I ate a cheese sandwich.

And should give you something at least as seasonal, and far more entertaining.

Overheard

Unusually, I really enjoy hearing people talk loudly in public places. You know, when someone's having a high-volume run-down of last night's escapades on a mobile on the bus, and everyone rolls their eyes and looks huffy... well, I just sit there and grin. It's the joy of eavesdropping, without the guilt. (Come on. You can't help hearing!) It's like that Guardian Weekend column, the tiny plays about Britain. (Which, if the letters column is anything to go by, isn't liked by anyone but me either... but I love it. So much story crammed into so few words.)

Anyway, eavesdropping on public transport isn't, I have to admit, terribly rewarding. Most of the conversations are very like each other. But then there are the others.

[EXT. A station platform, mid-afternoon. A small group is hailed by a passing man who recognises them. Small talk ensues; it becomes apparent that they are all train company staff, who haven't worked together for a while. The usual catch-up: who's retired, who's moved away... personal news of any kind is pretty much lacking. Eventually the newcomer gets tired of generalities and makes an abrupt bid for attention.]

A: So my wife died two years ago.
B: ...I'm, er, sorry to hear that.
A: But I married again this February.
C: Ah... congratulations?
A: Oh, you know, you think you're going to be alone for the rest of your life, but... She was my daughter-in-law.
All: ...
A: Yes, my son was beating her up. She came to me for support.
All: ...
A: Yes in-deed.
B: Uh... gosh. Well.
A: Ho yes.
D: Well... um... how old is she?
A: [chortles] A fair bit younger than me, I tell you that much!
D: Thirty-something?
A: That's right. [pause] And French!
C: Gosh... And, er, I guess you don't see much of your son now?
A: Oh no, he comes round, we're all right.
C: Oh.
A: The rest of the family won't speak to me though.
B: Ah... that's your stepkids, is it?
A: Yup. They're not going to get the house any more. So they're fed up.
C: Ah...
B: Well, there's our train I think...

On greed

When I left SA, I offloaded most of my worldly goods. This included a large number of books, many of which I'd never quite gotten round to reading, and some yarn, and even a bunch of fabric and sewing supplies. Which is sort of funny, since I hate sewing. So I came to the UK fairly unburdened with possessions, and while I did (and do) suffer the occasional twinge of regret for something I once had and loved (or, um, thought I might love if I ever got round to reading it), by and large I liked this state of affairs.

This state of affairs has changed.

By now, I have acquired Some Books. I have in fact acquired enough books that I keep having to buy new bookcases. I have two shelves packed quite tight with books that I have not yet gotten round to reading. Some of these books were picked up almost at random for free, from work, which is sort of better (hey, no one else wanted them...) and sort of worse (I didn't need them, I wouldn't have bought them, yet I felt the need to take them home?). I have run out of space on my CD shelf quite a while ago. I have acquired enough yarn to keep me knitting for five to six years, I estimate, and that's after having offloaded a large quantity of it a couple of years ago. (I'm resisting the fabric, though, you'll be delighted to hear.)

I've written elsewhere about my ambivalence on the whole yarn stash issue, and let me just say very clearly that I do NOT feel bad about acquiring beautiful things that inspire me to make beautiful things. My yarn brings me joy, as do my books. Most of my stash at the moment is hand-dyed, so each purchase is a little connection between me and someone who is making a living by working with fibre, and I love that, I love that I am helping someone to support themselves with their hobby. I don't feel that anything I buy is redirecting needed resources away from people in need; resources don't really work like that. (Do I think, "hey, shall I give to charity or buy this yarn? Mmmm... yarn wins!" No. I do both.) I don't believe that acquiring "frivolous" things is a bad idea, necessarily, and for that matter I don't see my knitting habit as remotely frivolous. It's a creative pursuit, it fulfils me in ways I'm frankly embarrassed to talk about, it's really important to me. (Stop laughing, you at the back.) And I'm glad to have a stash of gorgeous materials at hand to inspire me. And I'm glad to have a collection of books that I love. And so on.

But it must be admitted... I do have enough. More than enough. And as much as I keep seeing more wonderful things out there that trigger my base acquisitive instincts... I don't need them. It's debatable how much I want them, given my fondness for decluttering.

So I'm posting this for two reasons. (Well, three; one of them is that it's 5am and I can't sleep. Possibly at 5pm this wouldn't seem such a hot topic.)

One, to remind myself in detail that I Have Enough. It's a good thing to remember.

And two, to add my voice to the growing multitude of gift-opter-outers. I love you all. I love giving gifts. But right now... I'm in a slightly financially tenuous position. I don't have time to go shopping. And I'm seriously lacking in the general sense of wanting to circulate more Stuff. I don't need or want anything; I can't think of anything that you need or want (that I'm in a position to give, anyway). I'd really like to celebrate the festive season with great company, a filthy amount of food, and as little Stuff as possible. And then when your birthday comes around, or when I see something that tells me it should be yours, I shall take great delight in giving you - or even making you - something special.

But the random gift exchange right now? I'm not feeling it. Let's not.

...

It occurs to me that all of this could sound pretty damn insulting to my friends. Like: "hey, I don't want anything, so clearly you don't either. And anyway I just can't be bothered to make the time to choose you a gift, because I'm, like, sooo busy and important." I hope you know that it's not like that. Right?

Oh dear ... I wonder if I'm going to come back and delete this in the morning. Or wish I had.

...

Edit: Well, extemp commented before I had a chance to delete, so that was that decision taken care of. But in light of, um, umbrage taken (quite reasonably and nicely) elsewhere, I'd like to clarify/amend as follows:

I love getting gifts. And if you have something you'd really like to give me, I will be sincerely delighted to receive it. It's also entirely possible that I'll give one or two gifts myself, out of sheer spontaneous wossname. (The likelihood of this happening to you is directly proportional to your interest in knitting.) But I am not planning to give gifts, nor expecting to receive any. I really don't want to come over all Scrooge, because I love the whole gifting tradition. It's just all a bit complicated right now, and I was hoping to simplify. Not sure I achieved that.

In fact now I think I just sound a bit greedy. (Oh, I'll take all right...)

Gosh. This whole clarification/amendment thing could go on for some time.

Edit 2: I take it back (partly): I really do want a Kissmoose present. I want for someone to crack my dvd player for me. So that I can get the later Gilmore Girls seasons on DVD and FINALLY know what happens after Rory drops out of Yale.

True or false?

Which of the following statements about my past week is/are untrue? Now with added answers!!

A. Met my long lost cousin, given up for adoption at birth, who is now working on the next Bond movie. Answer: true. He made contact with the family a few years ago, but this was the first time I'd met him. He's cool. And looks like his mom.
B. Acquired knitting yarn made entirely from milk. Answer: true. It's rather nice. Soft. I'll be selling it soon.
C. Went to view a house for rent which turned out to be at least twice as big as we were expecting.
Answer: astonishingly, true. Right number of rooms, but they're enormous rooms. And an enormous garden.
D. Graced review of The Golden Compass with the sparklingly apposite headline "Narnia's polar opposite". Answer: false. Because the reviewer completely failed to see the striking differences between CS Lewis and Philip Pullman. To be fair, I believe the film has rather played down the atheist angle...
E. Rediscovered the ability of alcohol, when taken in excess, to mimic the effects of caffeine, prompting random wee-hours blogging. Answer: true, obviously.

Yes, it's a bit of a cheat making the one false answer the thing that you'd think was too boring to lie about.

Soooo.... cold...

When the cats' water bowl is threatening to freeze over, and the butter is rock solid, and the cats themselves are desisting from their usual hostilities in favour of shared bodily warmth


and your fingers are so cold you can't even type properly (this post brought to you by the power of my mind!), and ain't no saying when the central heating will be fixed...

Do you:
a) brew up a giant pot of gluhwein/hot whisky toddies, time of day be damned, because regular tea/coffee just isn't doing it;
b) move in with starmadeshadow, who has espresso, heating AND SEA SILK - but who may be on the defensive after an exploratory 5-hour incursion yesterday;
c) go out for a half-hour run every hour, risking pneumonia and frostbitten fingers for the sake of the raised internal body temperature;
d) give up on the idea of getting any work done at all, and go back to bed with yarn to knit yourself handwarmers? And, for that matter, entire bodywarmers?

Vegthulhu

Being a trendy London meedja couple* and all, we do of course get a box full of organic goodness delivered on a weekly basis. And try really hard not to end up throwing it all out a week later, but never mind. Now, I've test driven a few of these schemes, and I'm rather pleased with the one we're using now. For one thing, the produce is really good stuff, and a good mix of it, and they have a very tempting catalogue full of extras like organic free range booze. Yeah! For another, the website is well designed and easy to use. They offer nifty services like being able to blacklist certain foods - either temporarily or forever - as in: I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato. Or maybe just not till next month. And for another, each box comes with a friendly newsletter that (a) identifies what's in your box choice that week, (b) provides little info-nuggets on some of the more exotic items, and (c) provides suitable seasonal recipes.

However, on occasion, these great little services sort of cancel each other out. As, for instance, this week. It's all very well being told that this week's small mixed box includes gala potatoes and white onions, but when we've said ix-nay to the spuds and onions for a while, and they substitute those with some rather more... esoteric... veg, then we don't have much clue as to what they are.

My finely honed deductive processes lead me to believe that these are probably Jerusalem artichokes. (Neither from Israel, nor anything like an artichoke; the guinea pig of the vegetable world, if you will.)



But then, what on earth is... this?


It's... it's like... an Elder Swede.

I'm sort of afraid to put it in a stoo.

_____
* rotfl etc

On to the next chapter, then, and not before time.

Having processed my initial feelings of rejection, considered my options, and inexplicably omitted to drown my sorrows in gin, it has become clear to me that that last bit might be because (a) there weren't that many sorrows, and (b) I was far too busy with business-related stuff to take time out for drinking. Conclusion: having more time to do the business stuff, and maybe even have a little fun now and then, would make me happy.

So I am turning my back on offers of replacement jobs and striding forth, once more, into Glorious Freelancedom. And entrepreneurship. Exciting! I won't be buying many new shoes any time soon, but that's okay. I'll knit myself some warm socks (from my copious yarn stash) instead.

However, I would like you all to know that I am deeply disappointed in The Blog's supportive wossname. Here's how it went in my head:

Me: Woe! I have misplaced my job!
Blog: Oh you poor thing, how awful for you. We feel just terrible.
Me: Actually you know, it's not all bad. In fact it's quite good. In fact I'm really looking forward to this much-needed change.
Blog: Goodness, you are well adjusted. We admire you so much. None the less, it must have been quite a shock. Have a cookie.
Me: Well yes, it was rather. Thanks. Don't mind if I do.

Here's how it went in reality:

Me: Woe! I have misplaced my job!
...
Blog: I'm sorry, were you talking to me?

So. It's a good thing I have real friends. This internet community thing isn't all it's cracked up to be.


[Note to self: Possibly look into more regular posting before complaining of uncaring readers. Just a thought.]

Edit: Asparagus has been cast, by well-meaning and supportive types, on my employer. No need. Despite oddities of timing and such, which possibly added a bit to the shock factor, I really haven't been ill treated, and am happy to give them the thumbs up as Good 'Uns who do genuinely try to care for their staff in a way fully in keeping with their much vaunted pro-social values. Also, the restructuring is a thing of perfect sense and a Good Move all round; also, my boss was rather more distressed than I was at the news. Awww bless.

Restructuring disappeared my job

Hm.

Dark (adj): devoid of light; causing dejection

The clocks going back always takes me by surprise. Or at least, the effect of it does. What?! Dark already? But it can't be, it's only 5 o'clock! That's so... so... depressing.

I seem to suffer from random attacks of seasonal affective disorder. This year is worse than most. Which quite possibly means that it's not SAD at all, but stress, or hormones, or some other unrelated thing. Whatever. It is dark and gloomy, and I am dark and gloomy.

Thing is, I sort of love this time of year. Dark and gloomy? Yay! Let us cuddle under duvets and drink hot chocolate and eat cookies and knit! I was born for this! But here's the fatal flaw: I don't have time for any of that. (Well, maybe the hot chocolate.) And maybe that's what's causing the gloom to be really gloomy, rather than fun gloomy. Conditions are perfect for doing what I most love to do, and I can't do it. So I feel all sulky about the things I do have to do, and I procrastinate, and then I have even more stress and more stuff to worry about, and less time to knit, and so it goes.

Anyway, here I am, having put off going to Tesco all day and now it's dark and gloomy, and going for a walk is so much less appealing than it would have been earlier, when it was bright and crisp and rather lovely out there. Let that be a lesson to me.

Maybe I can get some cookies while I'm there.

On divergence of register

Like everyone else, I have been striving valiantly to free the rice, and enjoying the wonderfully rococo words it throws up. (Flagitious! Rodomontade! Hebetude! Wimble?!) But what is particularly delightful is the deadpan way in which it brings up words from such vastly different contexts. I mean, there's caudate, and erythrocyte, and...

Grok.

I got grok.

Like a circus directed by Tim Burton, or possibly Terry Gilliam

Clair wants to know how the James Thierree show was. It was, as expected, marvellous. Acrobatics and mime and music, all together, sad and sinister and surreal and very funny... quite simply, if you ever get a chance to see the man (he's Charlie Chaplin's grandson by the way), do. And be prepared to walk out wondering if it's too late to run away and join the circus yourself.

In other news, today has seen acquisition of a long-desired bookcase with filing drawer (yes!), a weird contraption that will be very useful approximately once a year (or maybe just once, full stop) and the rest of the time will just get in the way, sundry small storage type devices, two desk chairs, and some interesting Swedish cake things. It has also raised one of Life's Great Unanswered Questions: why is it that after carefully testing every chair in the store, the one that is hands-down the best - and is therefore paid for and brought home - suddenly becomes an awful lot less comfortable than the chair chosen by one's partner?

Corollary to this question: does this syndrome apply only to stores with a fairly cruel refund policy?

The god of small spaces

He did it again. This time with the kitchen and bathroom cupboards. I can't tell you how exciting this is... or rather, I could try, but this would only serve as evidence for the "I am boring" hypothesis, which I really am not that keen to prove.* So we'll just take a moment to meditate on the glory of well ordered closets, and move on.

Folks, I've had a sucky week. Blame the weather, blame my hormones, blame the alignment of the planets, but it started out sucky and got worse. The most (but by no means only) suck came from the semi unexpected discovery that I had to re-interview for my own job. Because of perfectly reasonable rules and such, *not* because I'm not performing well, but naturally it does feel... not great. Officially, right now, I'm unemployed. But I'm going in on Wednesday to carry on doing my job, and presumably, I'll be told at that point that I get to stay.

It's all very odd.

However. Until then I have 5 days to mope do useful and fun things at home, and prepare for the really rather cool upcoming Stitch n Bitch Day, and I have a goodly supply of hot chocolate, and tonight I'm going to see an amazing show that I've been looking forward to for months, so frankly I have no choice but to cheer up. Am I right?

_____
* Thanks to those of you who say otherwise. I would like to emphasise however that I do *not* believe my feelings of boringness to be the result of finding my friends boring; I find them as interesting and cool as ever. Although possibly part of the problem is simply that I find clubbing boring, for the nonce, which gives us less to do together.

So tell me...

...where does one buy a (preferably not too spendy) top hat?

And a bowler?

Things I didn't say

"In the absence of blogging I have no idea of what's happening in your life."

Well, see, you do. What was happening last time I saw you? I was working a lot. What has my blog been - boringly, repeatedly - complaining about? Working a lot. What is my usual excuse for not blogging? I'm working a lot.

I say this without intended sarcasm or rancour. That's how it is. I'm working. And not on anything that gives me fodder for sparkling conversation or, indeed, blogging. Sorry.

"I feel like we're back at university - I mean, you're still wearing teal! You look just the same!"

I really hate being told I look just the same as I did 10 years ago. It's true, of course (at least if you ignore the inevitable wrinkling, sagging, expanding). I have occasionally cut my hair a bit shorter or coloured it a bit darker or redder, but I always default to the same basic, vaguely oldfashioned look. My clothes are a bit less exotic than they used to be, and a bit less battered and holey, but tend to follow the same silhouette and colours. So I can't complain about being told I look just the same - hey, if I want an image update, that's easy enough to do; but I don't actually want it.

Still, I hate the idea that I haven't progressed. It's been 10 years. That should be enough time to have completely reinvented myself. Yet I'm still just the same, only with less free time, and less conversation.

I feel boring. Really, really, really boring. I like to say I'm in touch with my inner granny, and it's true; I did after all spend most of high school knitting. (I'd like to point out that these days there are plenty of teenagers who knit *and* have a social life, but that wasn't really an option for me, for reasons I won't bore you with.) But I'm not always happy about my basic old-lady-hood. Increasingly I have nothing to say to my friends. All these lovely people, whom I've known for years, who are smart and funny and lively... and with whom I suddenly don't seem to have much in common.

Socialising has become hard work. The London factor (distance and public transport) doesn't help. I hardly ever see most of my friends; but there is another group of people I see a lot more regularly. Some of whom are clearly becoming my new friends. The knitters. There's a huge number of knitting groups around town, and I occasionally manage to make the effort to join some of them. At first I told myself that I was more motivated to join the knitters because I could chalk it up as almost work - it's a networking opportunity, it's market research. Which is true. Then I realised that there's more than that; knitting restores my energy, whereas socialising per se often depletes it. And just this week I realised there's another reason too: among these people, I don't feel boring. I can share the knitting stuff that's taking up so much of my headspace; I don't need anything else. It's enough. It's okay.

The same sort of thing is happening with blogging. I'm struggling to find time for the knitting blog too, but it's a bit more active than this one. Maybe not that much more, but some. Sorry, folks. But look on the bright side. At least I'm not boring you...

PS. It's extremely likely that this feeling explains my unnatural excitement when anyone I know expresses an interest in learning The Knit. Be warned: if you so much as hint at "maybe I'd not hate trying to make a scarf", I go into full pusher mode.

PPS. I am distressed to find out how many tags I already have to suit this post. Sulks, whines and boring! And I haven't even been using tags that long! See? I really have gotten dull.

It might just be because I'm cross-eyed with tired...

...but this had me giggling like Crazy. Crazy Overload. Forget Cute. Just Nuts.




(Our regular programming will recommence, um, sometime. Probably. Just need... sleep...)

Booksbooksbooks

(I got some more free ones, by the way. Oh yes. In fact just today I picked up free audiobooks of Johnny and the Bomb and a few others (Beloved will like those)... and much more excitingly, last week I got the shiny new edition of the Dark is Rising. Yay free books! But I was forced to turnik down the chance to go to not one, but two Leicester Square premieres this week. One of which was Stardust. Gnnnnah.)

Right, em, so what I meant to say was: this is apparently a Librarything list of the most common unread books. Which is a distinctly iffy premise; I'm sure there are squillyuns of unreadable books that remain, thankfully, obscure. But I can't resist posting it because unlike the other such memes I've seen - 100 best scifi novels and the like; you will note that you've never seen such a list on this blog, and now you know why - in this list, I think there'll be a fair bit of bold type.

Bold = read, italics = started but not finished, strikethrough = couldn't stand.

# Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
# Anna Karenina
# Crime and punishment
# Catch-22
# One hundred years of solitude
# Wuthering Heights
# Life of Pi : a novel
# The name of the rose
# Don Quixote
# Moby Dick
# Ulysses
# Madame Bovary
# The Odyssey
# Pride and prejudice
# Jane Eyre
# A tale of two cities [currently sort of halfheartedly reading]
# The brothers Karamazov
# Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
# War and peace
# Vanity fair [unless you mean the magazine...?]
# The time traveler’s wife
# The Iliad
# Emma
# The Blind Assassin
# The kite runner
# Mrs. Dalloway
# Great expectations
# American gods : a novel
# A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
# Atlas shrugged
# Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
# Memoirs of a Geisha
# Middlesex
# Quicksilver
# Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West …
# The Canterbury tales [bits of, English class]
# The historian : a novel
# A portrait of the artist as a young man
# Love in the time of cholera
# Brave new world
# The Fountainhead
# Foucault’s pendulum
# Middlemarch
# Frankenstein
# The Count of Monte Cristo
# Dracula
# A clockwork orange
# Anansi boys : a novel
# The once and future king [don't ask me why I didn't finish it, I really don't know]
# The grapes of wrath
# The poisonwood Bible : a novel
# 1984
# Angels & demons [and PROUD]
# The inferno
# The satanic verses
# Sense and sensibility
# The picture of Dorian Gray
# Mansfield Park
# One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
# To the lighthouse
# Tess of the D’Urbervilles
# Oliver Twist
# Gulliver’s travels
# Les misérables
# The corrections
# The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel
# The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
# Dune
# The prince
# The sound and the fury
# Angela’s ashes : a memoir
# The god of small things
# A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
# Cryptonomicon [but it's on my shelf, awaiting its turn]
# Neverwhere
# A confederacy of dunces
# A short history of nearly everything
# Dubliners
# The unbearable lightness of being
# Beloved : a novel
# Slaughterhouse-five
# The scarlet letter
# Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
# The mists of Avalon
# Oryx and Crake : a novel
# Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
# Cloud atlas : a novel
# The confusion
# Lolita
# Persuasion
# Northanger abbey
# The catcher in the rye
# On the road
# The hunchback of Notre Dame
# Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of…
# Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into …
# The Aeneid
# Watership Down
# Gravity’s rainbow
# In cold blood [but I don't remember it At All]
# White teeth
# Treasure Island
# David Copperfield
# The three musketeers
# Cold mountain
# Robinson Crusoe
# The bell jar
# The secret life of bees
# Beowulf : a new verse translation
# The plague
# The Master and Margarita
# Atonement
# The handmaid’s tale
# Lady Chatterley’s lover
# Underworld
# Little Women
# A brief history of time : from the big bang to black holes
# Stardust
# Jude the obscure
# The chronicles of Narnia
# Possession : a romance
# Fast food nation : the dark side of the all-American meal
# Never let me go
# The trial
# Kafka on the shore
# Bleak House
# Sons and lovers
# Alias Grace
# The Arabian nights [um, the kids version or the Victorian translation or, like, which one?]
# Baudolino
# Confessions
# The great Gatsby
# To kill a mockingbird
# Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass [I think we all knew that one...]
# The alchemist
# Candide, or, Optimism
# Snow falling on cedars
# Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story
# Midnight’s children
# White Oleander
# A passage to India
# The elegant universe : superstrings, hidden dimensions, and …
# The house of the seven gables
# The lovely bones : a novel
# Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
# The amber spyglass
# The histories
# Swann’s way
# The shadow of the wind
# Fahrenheit 451
# Good omens
# Running with scissors : a memoir
# Everything is illuminated : a novel
# The divine comedy
# Paradise lost
# The English patient
# Uncle Tom’s cabin
# The Origin of Species

Cape Town in lists

Holiday disasters (little ones):
Forgetting my work permit and changing my ticket.
Realising (much, much later) that I could have travelled anyway and gotten the World's Best Housesitter to courier that damn work permit to me in Cape Town.
Attempted car theft, and subsequent locksmithery.
Completely unnecessary little prang a mere 100m from our destination, as we were ferrying the bride and groom to their hotel after the ceremony.

Random dull airport observations:
In London they make you take off your shoes, put all your liquids into a ziplock, and get patted down rather intimately. (Since their metal detectors are sensitive enough to get set off by oh, say, the button of your jeans, this is pretty much a given.)
In Madrid they do the same, but they give you little plastic foot baggies to walk in. It's rather mystifying why they bother since you've just been ferried directly from the plane from London. Where are you supposed to have picked up contraband, exactly?
In Joburg and in Cape Town, they really don't care.
Joburg international terminal is waaaaay less nice than domestic.
South African airports generally are severely lacking in food options.
Madrid airport loos are rather nice.

Wildlife spotted:
Dassies, elephantlike (not really)
Zebra, stripey
Quagga, zebralike
Squirrels, tame, handfed
Egyptian goose, tame, handfed
Tortoiseseses, crunchy (apparently)
Southern right whales, lots and lots
Some other whale, I dunno, it was grey
Dolphin, don't ask me what kind
Eland, big
Kudu, tasty
Wildebeest, also big
Springbok, bouncy
Some more bokkies
Some other bokkies
Some bigger bokkies
Some smaller bokkies
Ostriches, with babies
Guineafowl, fast
Seagulls, noisy
Bunch more birds, I dunno, the flying kind.

People spotted:
The dreaded jo&stv duo (excellent blomme-spotting, torty-crunching and picnic-eating (and, er providing) companions, btw)
Extemporanea
Phleep and Firstfallen
Wolverine Nun
Mother
Other mother
Uncle
Erich
Sister&swaer&nephew&niece
Konni&Dylan
Assorted aunts, uncles and cousins
Assorted other cousins
Oh, some more cousins
Cousin A's boyfriend
Cousin B's girlfriend
Cousin C's boyfriend
Grandparents, two
Lauren & her mother
Juleen&Chris&Jeffrey
Cara&Barry, aka THE NEWLYWEDS
Tanya&Jem&Sophia, aka THE BREEDERS
Andre&Erna&Chloe, aka THE OTHER BREEDERS
Anna Maria&lovely new man, yay, about bloody time etc (sorry, is that rude?)
Mike
Janita&Russell
Martha&Herr Dokter
A bunch of other wedding guests, lovely folk all but dear lord I'd be here all day.

People not spotted:
A surprisingly large number. Possibly you. I'm really sorry.

People in the above list who do not have animals:
Cara&Barry, who are allergic
Tanya&Jem&Sophia
Konni&Dylan (Dylan is four)
Sister&family
Possibly Wolverine Nun, I dunno, I didn't ask.

Conclusions:
a) SA is a much nicer place because there are more animals.
b) Small children are an impediment to keeping animals.
c) Don't breed.

Food for thought that may or may not lead to future blog posts:
SA newspapers. Small, but full of funny names. And stories that sound bizarrely familiar... from 15 or 20 years ago. And political parties that sound like the plot ingredients of a farce set in an obscure South American republic.
Cape Town may fairly be compared to a stop on Ulysses' journey: true or false?
Families: can't be trusted to stay put. You turn around for one minute, next thing you know you've lost a busty blonde surfer chick and gained a punky vegan lesbian. Honestly.
Exile, as a concept, is intrinsic to the Cape Town experience.
As a matter of some national urgency, all decaffeinated coffee in the Cape Peninsula needs to be replaced with full-caff.
Biological clock on yellow alert: babies are starting to look cute to me. Or at least, marginally less freakish. Also, everyone is doing it, and hence starting to make breeding look normal. This is wrong and shouldn't be allowed.

Finally
I admit it's cherry, and sweet, and not as good as the Kriek bier you get in Belgo's, but really, I think "sudden death" is a bit much. There is nothing Xtreme about this beer. It's not even extreme. I fail to understand.


For actual holiday pictures, go here. Or wait till Beloved's are up. They'll be a lot better. A lot.

...

There are two schools of thought on something really bad - or worse, a series of very bad things - happening at the very start of a holiday. One is that it counts as a sort of insurance; you're predisastered, after that everything will work out great. The other is that the trip is clearly ill omened.

Beloved nearly had his car stolen on his first day in Cape Town (he went ahead of me), and did have the ignition buggered up. I, meanwhile, screwed up far more impressively. I forgot that I needed to carry my old passport (with work permit in it) as well as my new one. So I'll now be arriving on Sunday, instead of tomorrow. Hm.

We like the predisastered theory better, yes?

(I couldn't think of a title that didn't have very bad language in it. I know you're not under any illusions that I'm a lady, but even so.)

Tripartite exultation

1. Vivaldifan has just arrived from SA to start his new life here in Londonville. Yay Vivaldifan!

2. I leave for home on Thursday - almost three weeks of seeing lovely people, eating and drinking splendiferously and generally enjoying my wonderful country to the fullest.

3. DAYS OF OUR LIVES HAS COME TO BRITAIN!

*expires from happiness*

Who knew?*

You know what you find if you happen to be passing through Richmond Park in the cool of the evening?



You find deer. Lots and lots of deer. Just hanging out.



You also find a really spectacular sunset, if you're lucky. And if you've been riding all the way from Isleworth to Wimbledon** and back... well, then you get some pretty tired thighs.

Which earns you a chocolate, at least. So it's all good.

_____
* Most of London, probably. I get that. But although I knew there were deer... I didn't know quite how many, and how widely they roam, and how easy it is to get up close. A happy discovery.
** Hey, Pip! Great party!

An enclave of new age e-Movers

Ooh, I wanna work here.

Their technology affiliate looks so cool too.

7 things I've learned from watching hospital dramas*

1. Sexy doctors ride motorbikes.

2. Every hospital team includes one wisecracking, insensitive, immature jackass with a (well hidden) heart of gold. This jackass is probably the smartest doctor on the team, so if someone's unforgiveably rude to you when you're lying in ER, suck it up. He's going to save your life. Contrariwise, if nobody's mean to the patient, you should worry; the jackass might be having a good day, which means he's lost his edge and is about to make a fatal mistake. On you.

3. You will not get better until you have resolved your complicated family issues, so you may as well call your mom/ex/former best friend right away. Speed things up.

4. Diagnosing and/or treating a complicated ailment works on exactly the same principles as solving a crime. It can't be done without friction (possibly of the literal, sweaty kind) among colleagues, a series of red herrings, and a hefty dose of rebellion against the dictatorial boss who inevitably fails to see the truth of the jackass's way out theory (or alternatively, the need for radical experimental treatment by the underqualified interns).

5. Hospital visitors wear a lot of really great knitwear. In this they are superior to witnesses and to relatives of murder suspects. It's probably because of their increased need for comfort. Or maybe hospitals are just colder than police stations.

6a. Contrary to popular opinion, doctors do not shag nurses. They shag each other. All the time.

6b. It is theoretically possible for doctors to have romantic interests outside of work (we know this because they occasionally get divorced), but how this should actually develop is a mystery, because they never actually meet or date anyone except each other. Actually they don't really date each other either. They just shag in the supply closet.

6c. Terminally ill schoolgirls are remarkably adept at wheedling inappropriate kisses out of doctors who really should know better. Interns are smarter. They don't fall for that crap.

7. It's never lupus.

_____
* House, Grey's Anatomy and, er, Green Wing. Okay, it's not a drama, but same diffs. It's possible that ER would completely contradict every lesson here... but I doubt it.

Just plain wrong.

I have officially become a boring old fart.

I have suspected this for a while. Some of the clues: being asked what I've been up to, and wanting to talk about my latest knitting. Not so much because it's interesting, as because other than that it's all just work. Also, realising that sitting reading Harry Potter and (again) knitting makes me feel naughty and rebellious. (That might be because of flashbacks to how I spent study time in boarding school. Yeah, I've always been a rebel. Hardcore.) Also, wishing I had some spare time so that I could ... sit at home and knit.

But the clincher came just now, as I realised that my looming holiday fills me with more dread than anticipation - because it forms an immoveable deadline, before which I *have* to do various worky type things. (And knitting.)

So, seriously. When did I become such a worker? I'm too lazy for this shit. This is not how I expected things to turn out.

Acclimatised?

So after all this time we've finally had a week of real summer, with blue skies and everything.

I'm not sure I like it. I have no reason not to... It's not horribly hot, I haven't had to expose my wobbly bits, I haven't run out of summer clothes (yet), by all normal measures it's been quite lovely. But it's just weird. I don't trust it. I'm confused.

Which means maybe it's time I stop whingeing about the English weather. I seem to have adjusted.

Blah.

Blah blahblah blahblah.

Blah.

I just wanted to say that.

Adventures in online shopping

I've been getting a bit spendy lately. Inadvisable, but never mind. One of the lovely treats the postie brought me this week was a Top Deck flavoured dildo.



Made you look.

All right, all right, it's a nostepinde. The rest of my shopping has also been largely knitting-related, so I won't bore you with it.

*yawns*

*swings feet idly, staring into the middle distance*

Look, it's only fair to remind you, I'm not doing very much that's interesting these days. Which means I don't have much to write about either. When I do have stuff to write, and time to write it for that matter, it's generally of the woolly persuasion; so it goes on over at the cafe. But even that's been pretty dry. I'm just saying.

This five-day week thing is totally impractical, it'll never catch on.

After an extended period of houseguests and excessive work, I find myself contemplating such a very intimidatingly large mountain of catching up, I'm overwhelmed at the mere thought and want to go and have a little lie-down. The only thing keeping me at my desk right now is the presence of my cleaner. I'm sure she wouldn't care if I took a nap instead of working, but I feel ashamed. So there you go: another great reason to fork out £20 a week for clean carpets - greater productivity, less procrastination.

Meanwhile: how about that rain, eh? I've actually been rather enjoying it - at least it cuts the humidity, and plus, it sounds nice at night - but there's no denying it's getting a bit biblical. The whole notion of a rain-free day is starting to sound like a comforting fiction we tell the kiddies. There's just two big problems with this situation. One: laundry. If I hang it out, it gets rained on; if I hang it inside, it takes days to dry and ends up smelling rather mufty. Two, and obviously far more important: wardrobe. My black boots died at the end of the winter, and of course I expected not to have to replace them till autumn. So here I am with a range of footwear consisting almost exclusively of sandals and suede. Neither of which are particularly well suited to the present diluvian conditions. And you'd be amazed how one's entire outfit can be constrained by the absence of appropriate shoes. Women, let this be a lesson to you: stock up on boots and shoes at every opportunity. You never know when you'll need them.*

Hey, you know what you can do when it's raining and you're bored? Or procrastinating? You can play on The Internet! Isn't that a great idea?

_____
* Also, Irregular Choice are offering free shipping during July...

Somehow I made it through

Two and a half weeks of visit later, matricide has been averted. Always a good thing. Of course it's always possible she'll be murdered by one of the airline crew on the way back home, but for that I cannot possibly be held responsible.

Still to be determined is whether - as it appeared this morning - she has in fact resurrected the previously slain technojinx. The one that started all the rebooting and loss of data and bollocks that led to the inauguration of a certain whiny blog (which I'm pleased to say I've not felt driven to use since). This morning, it showed up again. She claims to have put it back in its grave at some point in the past 9 hours... but I'm not yet convinced. Note to self: do not let notoriously unreliable and creatively destructive* mothers touch your computer. Ever. *Especially* if she wants to "help".

_____
* Definitely not an oxymoron.

What I Did At The Weekend, by Scroobious Scrivener, age 31 and 1/4

This weekend my mother and my husband and me went to visit my aunt and my cousins up in Yorkshire. It was gr8. My cousins have all grown up and are looking really pretty and cool. I like them. My aunt is really nice, much more fun than my mum. She drove us all over, to a place called Robin Hood Bay and another one called Beck Hole and we got out and walked around and explored the forests and rivers and picked up stones and walked across lots of squishy seaweed, yuck, and then we drove some more and ate snacks. We ate pizza and chips for supper. Also we took my mum clothes shopping because her wardrobe is a Disaster she says, so we found lots of lovely new things to wear so she doesn't look such a Fright.

Then we wanted to come home but it was raining, oh boy oh boy, it was raining SO MUCH we got really wet while we were shopping, our train was late but we got on anyway and then the conductor told us we would have to get off at Hull and find out what to do next. But at Hull they said no trains to London today lady, oh noez! So we thought we would have to go back on the next train to Beverley to my aunt (but her name's not Beverley that's the town where she lives) but then I had this REALLY BRILLIANT IDEA and I went to the nice Hertz man but he said no way, we have no cars today, try Europcar, but Europcar had no cars also, but then the Hertz man showed how reallyreally nice he was cos he said would you like a dirty car? I thought he was maybe being funny but no he had a car after all! I don't know why he called it dirty it was reallyreally clean and also quite a nice car, it was big and solid which was gr8 bcoz we had to drive through lots of huge big puddles. We had to drive through one place where the road was TWO FEET UNDER WATER and the trucks looked like they were swimming thru lol. But we were fine cos my husband's a really good driver and after that it was easy anyway and we got to London really quickly, well sort of, and my cats were really happy to see us so yay. And then I heard that the motorway had been closed off after we came through so we were really lucky I said.

The End.

Sticking my nose where it doesn't belong

Well the breakneck pace of this blog is just going to have to ease off a bit, kids. No no, don't beg, please, it's demeaning. Look, I have commitments. Obligations. These trivialities* must take a back seat. I have... *shudder* my mother coming to stay.

Anyway, putting that behind us (would that I could) and moving on to the title subject. This is so not my thing to hijack, but for those of you in the UK who know extemporanea, and think refined pianofortes should be made to lead active and useful lives, rather than lying indisposed in a corner, maybe we could help the lovely wolverine nun to the rescue? I mention it only because the exchange rate works so very much in our favour, and if we gang up on the evil capitalist swine who run international banking, we can make the bank charges work rather less against us. So I am nominating myself Official British Collector for the Upliftment of Pianofortes in Reduced Circumstances Fund.

Not the most elegant acronym.

Anyway, again, please email me if you're feeling generous. I don't mean to pressure anyone, hence the public forum, rather than the more directed and personal email. Since I never write here any more, you can quite easily pretend you haven't seen it.

If, you know, you're cheap.

_____
* Though other trivialities still get my blogging time, yes they do. I mean, free wine, yes? There'll be a few more of those in my future. I admit it's not that interesting, but if you are really pining for scroobious verbiage, go to.

Wanted for crimes against language

In the course of just a single day, there are countless times when I read or hear something that makes me want to scream.

Well, I say countless. Today there were maybe three. (No. There were a lot more than three, but memory is mercifully short.)

Would the perpetrators of the following please hit themselves very hard over the head and get a job that doesn't involve communication:

"How can their leverage at different parts of the value chain be increased?"
(Good question.)

"Click here to continue the experience in Flash."
(Dude, it's a website. It is not an "experience". I'm just looking for your phone number. ...Actually, I think we may have a deeper problem here than just the language, but never mind.)

And most annoying of all, if only because I hear it so damn often, and somebody has clearly written this bloody sentence out as a script and none of the idiotic guards thinks to maybe paraphrase and spare themselves the embarrassment of saying something WITHOUT MEANING, the following two snippets from the South West Trains announcements...
"...should you require any help or assistance..."
and
"...at the next station or stop..."

Ooh, bonus round, from a recently watched ep of Grand Designs*: "The house has so much personality and character."

Words, words, words. Such lovely things. So abused.

_____
* Blame Beloved.

If only they could have come on a Monday. Mondays are good.

This post is coming to you Live!! from the exotic environs of... er, my dining table. Because my (shared) study has been co-opted by Sky's crime correspondent, now broadcasting Live!! to the interweb (in the form of Second Life), because for some esoteric reason the tech wasn't working in the Sky studios. So Beloved brought them home.*

Which is all well and good, but you see, it's the fag-end of the week. Our cleaner comes on Sundays. And also, I don't seem to be able to keep my desk clear during the week, it gets piled high with crud. And I cannot tell you how distressing I find it to have my home, my not greatly loved home, with its crappy rented furniture and its crowded rooms and its seriously grotty carpets, and on top of all that a week's worth of dirt**, exposed to strangers. Senior meeja type strangers, who probably live in moderately posh houses in Richmond or similar. I feel so exposed.

I want to tell them, hey! We sorted out the garden last weekend! ...but that doesn't really help.

_____
* What tech we have that Sky doesn't have, I can't imagine.
** Two very fluffy cats. Don't underestimate the effect.

Ok, I give in.

The problem with lolcats is that, well, they're generally not so much lol. Sorry. They're not.



HA HA HA HAAAAaaaa...

*ahem*

Mostly they're not.

Disconnected

1. While I am on board with the general concept of "ageing", and even "wrinkles", I fail to see how it is fair that instead of crinkly, friendly crow's feet and/or laugh lines, I — a singularly smiley person, I do believe — should be developing this rather scary tangle of frown lines radiating out from the bridge of my nose like, I dunno, a road map of London or something. If London had a selection of pretty heavy horizontal roads in the middle. Oh wait, it does.

2. I think some secret force at work is conspiring to make me feel thoroughly lost and, um, there is no word for how I feel. The apparent complete failure to learn from past lessons. In fact it is not that I am not learning, it is that each new project turns out to be radically different to the one before and the lessons previously learnt backfire in new and interesting ways. Viz: after two projects of, let us call them Type A, being dumped on me at very short notice and causing all kinds of stress and sleep deprivation and skipped Italian classes and ocular inflammation,* I felt that I had certainly learned that if another Type A project came along, I knew exactly what I needed to do to manage it; a large part of this would be immediately booking large amounts of support staff, especially if said project were to be over a certain size.

Type A project comes along. It is large. It is on a seriously short deadline. Right, say I, gimme freelances and lots of them, I Will Be Prepared.

By the end of day 1 on this third project, it has become apparent that while it is indeed large it is also very simple; there will be barely enough to keep ME busy** for the rest of the scheduled duration, let alone my minion hordes. This is embarrassing. Also, since I am still angling to get my contract transmogrified into a Real Job, and the decision to do so will be all about the money my projects bring in, it is seriously counterproductive to be spending money on freelances that are not needed.

3. This is the difference between spending £80 at Next, and spending £80 at Jigsaw:
At Next, you get 4 garments handed to you in a big plastic bag.
At Jigsaw, you get 1 garment lovingly folded in multiple layers of tissue and floral printed plastic***, then placed in a smart paper bag, and your receipts get handed to you in a neat little logo-printed envelope. Fat lot of good that'll do you since they only have a 14-day return policy anyway.****

4. I'm going to Cape Town in September! Yay!

5. I am suffering a wholly irrational wave of homesickness, which has very little to do with how wonderful Cape Town is (though it is) or how much I miss my friends (though I do) but an awful lot to do with some kind of nostalgic longing for a comfort zone that I never really inhabited.*****

6. Learning things is fun! This week I have gotten a completely ridiculous amount of entertainment out of learning: how to do a figure 8 cast-on; how to order a drink in Italian; and how to do part of my job without bothering people I previously had to bother. All fun!

7. Also fun: naked men all over the South Bank! How much fun are they? *So* much fun. Apparently they're supposed to make you feel lonely, but I find them utterly delightful.

_____
* That part really pisses me off. It's not a look that goes well with the aforementioned road map.
** Only a slight exaggeration.
*** It seems unfair to call it plastic, it's far too posh for that, being all matt and soft to the touch and all, but it does appear to be some sort of petrochemical-derived substance, yes.
**** Not that I have any desire to return my lovely skirt at all. I'm just saying.
***** This same longing is probably a significant driver of my periodic "I wanna go study something!" bouts, which are really more about rosy memories of student days and how much fun they were than about wanting to stretch my brain. (Yeah, being permanently broke, getting accused of laziness because I had to work so much of my non-lecture time I couldn't keep up with the research, and having absolutely no clue what I was going to do with my life... that was a blast all right.)

Help?

Evil spammer bastards seem to be "borrowing" my domain name. I know this because I'm getting bounced spam messages that, obviously, I never sent.

Anybody out there know what I can do about this?

Horse, stable, door, bolted

I can't find my pencil and to-do list to write "tidy study" on my to-do list.

(Cue misuse of technology: 1. laundry, 2. pick up passport, 3. cat food, 4. Italian homework, 5. the girly stuff I'm ashamed to admit to having to make notes on.*)

(6. Go to bed.)


_____
* Pedicure. Somehow it's less embarrassing in a footnote. Ha! Funny.**
** It is when it's late and I'm this tired.***
*** Vivaldifan: yes I know I should be emailing you and/or sleeping instead of blogging. Shhh.

"I like being bad. It makes me happy."

For a complete, unabridged and 100% accurate retelling of Spidey 3 (much more entertaining than the actual movie), see here.

My only quibble is whether she really needed to paraphrase the line that forms the title of this post (and which is also now one of my favourite movie quotes, with wide applicability to real life situations, such as chocolate). Still. Her version is more elegant.

He doesn't just do sheds, you know

So for the past six months or so, much to my personal disgust, I haven't had much chance to enjoy my husband's company. Instead of spending all his leisure hours working for me, as by rights he should, he has been staying out till all hours with another sexy redhead entirely.* A "colleague" with whom he has been working on a "special project". Sharing "ideas".

Apparently that wasn't all total fabrication, either, because the world will soon see the fruits of their labour. And this project is apparently considered "intriguing", and could even "help journalism get its soul back".

Not bad for a crazy little idea hatched late at night in my Beloved's fevered brain.

_____
* An actual adult human female, yes. I realise that I abuse the term somewhat, so I thought I'd better make that clear.

Worship and praise!

My husband is a god.

If I'd known what he was going to do, I would have taken before and after photos. But then, if I'd known what he was going to do, I would have felt guilty that I wasn't helping him.*

So you'll just have to take my word for it:
He has created order where there was chaos.
He has faced the beasts of the darkness, and destroyed them.
He has taken an imperfect world and fashioned it anew.

He has — now think hard about all this implies — he has cleaned out the shed.

There were spiders in there. And... and... and stuff. A metric shitload of stuff. And it's all still there, apparently, but magically, there is also space. Space for a lawnmower and two bicycles and at least one person! I seriously don't know how this happened.

I am in awe.

(Also, he has cut the out-of-control bush that was blocking the path to our front door waaaay back. I was really impressed with that, but that was just the entree.)

_____
* No, I wouldn't have actually done any helping. Don't be ridiculous.

Ooh! Pretty!

But clearly a mismatch. (Not to mention self-contradictory. Modest, shy, assertive and outgoing, all at the same time?) Put in your two cents please dears, and let's see what we end up with.



Interestingly, I took the test twice - the first time I changed my mind about a single answer, and there is no back button. The first daemon I got was a gibbon. Way less pretty, but the description seemed far more apt. Then I change one answer and I think two or three words of the five-word description changed. Huh.

I want to ride my bicycle

Let's share a moment of regression.

I have a hole in my jeans, a scab on my knee and a brand new bike.

The first two are because the second bike I tried totally BIT ME. It did! Probably it had heard me saying how much crapper it was than the (cheaper) first bike, the one I actually bought, so let that be a lesson to you. Watch what you say about your inanimate objects.

The last one is because Beloved wanted to buy a bike. Oddly enough, he still doesn't have one, but I do. Now, I've heard it said that women choose their cars for looks and their men for performance, and with men it's the other way around. Of course I could never endorse such a blatantly sexist generalisation, but I should point out that I found it *really hard* to deny myself the extremely cute and totally impractical Electra, or even the winsomely Victorian Pashley Provence, instead focusing on the boringly functional Trek range, that had actual gears and could get me up an actual hill if I were stupid enough to face one, and not have Beloved thumbing his nose at me and calling rude names.

Obviously, though, it gives me great pleasure that my new bike is totally the cutest out of that performance-orientated line.



(I may as well point out that as likely as not, this bike won't get ridden for, say, another two months, then we'll take it out a couple of times, then it'll hide in the shed and get rusty. It's probably a really stupid buy. But for the first time in my life, I have a brand new bike, and I am quite liking it.)

It's like exercise, only different.

So having put my running programme on hold for the past three months (for very sound and hormonal* reasons), I'm now back in the takkies** and, well, it is hard. Obviously. But still we try.

The thing is this. I quite like exercising to music; in theory it should totally beat the boredom of running the same route again and again. And I have acquired very nifty headphones for my nifty music-bearing phone, thus solving the earbud-fall-out problem. But as you probably know, exercising to music at the wrong beat is... confusing, and not very helpful. And I do seem to be struggling to find the right beat. I'm not a fast runner. But that's not the main problem. There's a few Goldfrapp tracks at about the right speed. (Look, I SAID I wasn't fast!) But still I can't quite get the rhythm. There I was, pounding the pavements (in a gentle, leisurely fashion), and I wasn't exactly hitting the groove.

Took me a while to figure out the problem. (Again: I'm not FAST. How many times must I say this?) I have a good steady breathing pattern. Three steps in, three steps out.

Any dance acts out there bringing back the waltz?

_____
* No, not as in "I was too moody to bother", thank you very much.
** Running shoes

Sulks in bulk!

So about this "not done complaining" business (below). I considered complaining in an email to a friend, but frankly none of my friends have done anything to deserve that. I considered waiting till Beloved came home and complaining to him, but that didn't seem like the loving thing to do.* I considered complaining some more over here, but I think it's about time to try raising the tone around here, before it hits scummy pond floor level.

So I did the only thing I could do.
I started a new blog.

I made it ugly so that no one will stick around to read it. It's like the anti-blog. It is not for reading, it is for dumping. And I would like you all to share in its whiny, pathetic, ranty joys. No! Not by reading, gawd, don't you listen? No, I want you to dump too. When the mood strikes. You can get signed up as a member of the miserable McWhineFace clan by leaving a comment, or emailing me. Act now to be prepared for any attack of sulks in future!

_____
* Well I mean I'm going to do that anyway, *obviously*, but it probably would be best if he didn't have the full force of my tantrumy sulks to deal with.

My un-favourite things

Screw all this fluffy cosy positivity. I'm not in the mood. Can I just talk for a minute about the things that do NOT make me happy?

Things like, say, the technojinx?

Yes yes fine, I've caught up (more or less) on six months of accounts, and mostly everything seems to still be there, and maybe I can get Photoshop back (although I don't have it *now*, and that's making me (more) grouchy), and I do appear to have sound so hooray for that. Rah technology. whatEV.

A weekend of catching up on accounts when I could/should have been doing all the many other, more interesting things I need and want to be catching up on... that makes me cross.
A computer that has (almost) everything basically there, but just a bit *wonky*, and needing yet more time investment... that makes me cross.
Being supposedly on diet, so that I can't even console myself with a large bag of cookies... that makes me cross.
Failing utterly to stick my diet (yet without sinning to the point where it gets fun), so that I don't even have anything to show for my supposed self-denial... that makes me cross.
Actually everything about diets, in practice and principle, makes me extremely cross; but knowing that I do in fact need and want to lose weight, and exercise alone just doesn't do it - that makes me GRRRRRRR.

Bollocks to it all, I say.

(You know, you should all count yourselves very lucky I haven't blogged about my previous battles with the technojinx. Normally I hold off - not so much out of wanting to spare you, as just out of embarrassment and a deeply ingrained sense that it must surely be my fault for imagining I know how to use a computer. But this is not the first encounter. Oh no.

Maybe I really shouldn't be allowed to use a computer.)

Update: Oh, now I appear to be missing most of my fonts. How did that happen, exactly? I never went about downloading lots of fonts. I had them. I was just using the fonts I already had. The ones that came with whatever programs I had. All of which I have reinstalled. So they should be there. And they're not. And you cannot conceive of how many problems this causes for me.

GRRRRRRRR.

Update 2: I am deeply unhappy.

No reason that isn't included in the above. I just don't have anyone here to complain to right now, and I'm not done complaining.

Unhappy. Booooooo. This is *so* not how my time off was supposed to go.

My favourite things: part the fifth

I can't draw. I really, really, really can't.

But these fabulous, soft, aquarelle-y pastel pencils make me imagine that I can.

My favourite things: part the fourth

My mother has always had a collection of pretty little boxes, and I've inherited that appreciation. Carved wood, mother of pearl inlays, swirly art nouveau pewter... all beautiful. I twitch acquisitively in the mere presence of such little trinkets. Partly, I suspect, this is because (unlike my mother) I really do not like ornaments that are just ornaments. Form without function? Such a turn-off. Boxes are pretty, but also useful; at least that's the theory. There is a point, alas, at which a collection of pretty boxes becomes just clutter. So I've ruthlessly pruned the smaller boxes, and moved my jewellery and such into larger, more efficient organisers.

But there's still something about pretty boxes for their own sake; maybe the mystery and potential of them. Anything could be inside there.

These two are special. Both were (ahem) appropriated from my mother. The larger, wooden one, which I call my treasure chest, once held all my loose change; now it holds a selection of aromatherapy oils, matches and so on. The little metal one is the elephant kit (named, of course, for the not-visible-here picture on the lid). It was originally my grandfather's, and it still fulfils the same function it did two generations ago: it holds headache pills, plasters and so on.

The mirrored jar was a birthday present from pinkthulhu, and I think it's almost the perfect abstract model of a present: it sparkles and it smells like dessert!* Really, what more could a girl ask for? The fact that, when the candle burns out, it will be a luscious addition to my box collection is just a bonus.

_____
* Containing, as it does, a vanilla-scented candle.

I KNEW it.

Yeah, I know, you thought I was a big fat baby for whining about the technojinx when I got off so lightly.

Only I DIDN'T. The story was not OVER.

The bloody accounts that were totally there last time I checked have been totally LOST in some weird Quickbooks updating perversion. The BASTARDS. Six whole MONTHS gone.

'Snot FAIR. Just when I was making such PROGRESS.

[Exits stage left, stamping feet and throwing toys.]

Why we love Rian Malan

'Foreigners think we're nuts coming back to a doomed city on a damned continent,' Rian Malan once wrote about Johannesburg, 'but there is something you don't understand: it's boring where you are.'

Quoted in an Observer article a few weeks ago.

My favourite things: part the third

I was hankering after a pretty teapot for the longest time. But our kitchen is small, and cluttered, and I thought it would be a good idea to avoid adding to that clutter. Then Beloved bought me a tin of organic loose-leaf Darjeeling,* so I went looking for a tea egg, but I couldn't find a tea egg so I bought an in-cup strainer, but that didn't work well *at all*, so I gave in and went shopping for a teapot.

I found this beautiful range of tea china in about five different blue and white patterns. While they were all delightful, I decided I liked them best all together. So I came home with a teapot, a milk jug, and three bowls, all different. So much for minimising clutter. But what can I say? They make me happy. And see how well they match my favourite teacup!**

Looking at this picture, I had a minor epiphany, of the blindingly-obvious-but-I-only-just-realised kind. Those bloggers who chronicle the pleasures of domesticity? Who post tightly cropped, beautifully composed pictures of cupcakes and quilts, and minor odes to the joys of lavender scented linen spray? They are SO FAKING.

No, that's not fair. I have no doubt that they have beautiful homes, and that they truly do go to the effort of, well, using lavender scented linen spray. But if you were to imagine my home life based on this picture — and I doubt you would, consciously, but I bet it's hard not to let it colour your image of me just a little, if you've never met me in person — you would be picturing something, well, girly. And... kempt.

Those who do know me, who have even been to my home, know that this is not exactly so. Which makes me feel a little bit — just a little — less intimidated by

The knitting does rather go without saying, but I include it because it matches so nicely.

_____
* I don't even drink Darjeeling. Every now and then he succumbs to a random impulse in Tesco, and this was one of them. More recently, he came home with four cans of Budweiser. I realise this might not sound odd to anyone else, but it was cold weather. He didn't have any plans to tuck in that night, or any time soon. Apart from at braais and such, we are not great beer drinkers. And... Bud? Really?
** I'm a mug girl, really, but how beautiful is this?

My favourite things: part the second

Warm, soft flannel jammies.
That remind me of sweets.

The pretty white and brown one (a nightshirt — the perfect sleeping attire) puts me in mind of expensive chocolate truffles. The kind that come in boxes decorated with prints just like that. And the pink ones — well, don't they just *smell* like jellybeans?* They do. To me they do.

Wearing lovely flannel jammies is one of the things that make winter worthwhile. But I'm not sorry to put them away now that the weather's turned gorgeous.

_____
* Not literally. I haven't been sleeping with sugary treats.

In which the Scrivener succumbs to the technojinx

Extemporanea appears to have lent me her technojinx. While I can certainly appreciate the desire to have the problem go bother somebody else for once, I did not volunteer for jinxsitting duties, and rather wish someone stronger and braver had come along to do the job.

To solve a relatively minor, but annoying problem,* I was told I had to reinstall Windows. (And who am I to argue with the support desk?) So. I was bold and brave. I copied my essential files and folders** to an external hard disk. I reinstalled Windows. I copied the damn folders back. I'm still in the process of excavating and seeing what is and isn't working, but the tally so far:

Points won
All my emails in place, OH DEAR LORD THANK YOU, I still haven't recovered from the trauma of last time.***
Documents apparently present and correct.

Points lost
For reasons far too embarrassing**** to elucidate, I have lost my totally legal and paid for and much needed copy of Photoshop Elements. Now, am I facing a £60+VAT idiot tax, or is there a way of convincing the good folk at Adobe to give me another one, I'll look after it for sure this time, I promise?

Even more distressingly - but totally mysteriously - it looks very much like my Quickbooks file has passed over to the vale of shadow. I can't for the life of me figure out how and why (considering almost everything else came through fine), but so far, no accounts. BUGGER BUGGER BUGGER. And also: SHIT.

Even this would be a little more manageable were it not for the minor - and even more mysterious - point that good ole MSN Money is unaccountably***** unable to open my perfectly good, perfectly present, perfectly up-to-date back-up file. Yes. I actually maintain two separate accounting packages. (One is better for t'business, one for personal stuff. Sometimes it's useful to have them to compare against, also. And plus, yes, I'm just that anal.) And now - very weirdly - they've both flunked out on me. BASTARDS.

*sigh*

Okay. So my accountant only actually asks for all my documents (bank statements, invoices) and those I can cough up. Bank statements are roughly enough for me to get an idea of how sales and expenses have been stacking up, so, whatever. I've got some spreadsheets that may or may not help. Okay. It's not the end of the world. And it's close enough to the beginning of the tax year that I can reconstruct the past three weeks and have a good record for this year. But, you know.

BASTARDS.

Update: OH THANK FUCK. Mysteries remain unsolved, but I have successfully located backups, so most of my Vital Financial Data is recovered. Which makes the above post mostly pointless, as well as ranty, foul-mouthed and boring. Um. Let's focus on the real issue here. Photoshop? Thoughts?

_____
* Roughly 50% of the time, on boot-up, my laptop failed to find its voice. 'Sokay, I don't need sound for my job or anything... except that trying to do some of my more brain-numbing tasks without benefit of iTunes was pretty painful. Anyway, the most recent telephone support person had managed to upgrade the problem from 50% of the time to all the time.
** I know that some of you are going to be squeaking things like "you only need to copy one folder! Why did you do it bit by bit!" etc. Trust me, I had to do what I had to do. Let's not go into it, it is Boring.
*** Remember I run a business from this machine. An online business. Pause for a second to appreciate the email implications.
**** Viz: I'm an idiot.
***** As it were.