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?

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* 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".

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* 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.

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* 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.

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* 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.

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* 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.

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* 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.)


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* 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.

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* 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.)

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* 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?

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* 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!

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* 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.