Lots to say today, but I’ll probably forget it before I get to the end!
I was writing to some old friends last night, and it suddenly occurred to me that I’ve got the wrong idea about these weblogs type things. I was thinking of them in terms of newspaper columnists and fame or fortune, whereas I think a closer analogy is writing a letter to a friend, or one of those round-robin type things. The upshot of which is that I think I’m going to rename this blog “Letters from Leeds”, in homage to Alastair Cooke’s “Letter from America”. Ahhh no – just let my secret Radio 4 habit out of the bag! Actually it’s my wife who’s the R4 junkie – but then radio alarm clock is on her side of the bed, so I don’t get much say in the matter!
On the same note, I’ve been thinking about some friends who I’ve lost touch with, and scouring the Friends Reunited website. Sadly most of the people who I find there I’m already in contact with, but I did discover a old friend who I met 11 years ago while we were both working for PGL Young Adventure at Tan Troed, in Wales. She was a smelly trekker then, but I was only a KA, and so am no-one to speak! Those few months at PGL were an extremely happy time of my life though – there was such a sense of community and combined purpose.. at the end of the day we were all there to serve the ‘guests’ (ie kids), and (food and accomodation aside) got only paid beer money – but then there’s nothing else to do in the middle of Wales anyway but drink beer, unless you are interested in sheep, that is! It almost seems a bit strange to say I spent a summer sleeping in a tent and cooking for 150 kids, and then chose to spend my time off joining in the activities with them (pony trekking, sailing, walking, archery, … the list is too long!) Still it was a great time, and if you like the outdoors, don’t mind spending several months essentially living out of a backpack and slogging your guts out so that kids can enjoy themselves then I would highly recommened it. In fact, if my circumstances permitted I’d go and do another season with them next year!!
But I digress – anyway, going to drop her a line later on today, which will give her a shock if nothing else (always assuming she even remembers me!)
H’mm – well that’s probably enough for one entry – no time to mention my new job (with office!!), centre parcs, or anything else… perhaps tomorrow.
Ok, so that’s not strictly true – well actually it’s a complete lie – but this morning was the first time since January that I have had a shower at home where I’ve been able to stand up and not have to hold the shower head in my hand! I removed our old bath and fitted our new one in January, but we’ve basically not got around to tiling the bathroom since then. And of course with no tiles you can’t seal the bath in or fit a shower screen, so you have to squat in the bath and try not to spray everything.
But last week it finally got tiled, and I put up the shower screen over the weekend, and – praise the Lord and hallelujah – this morning I got stand up in the shower and wash my hair with both hands.
Our bathroom (which I started upgrading in February 2002) is now but a whisker away from being finished – there’s some minor making good jobs (fitting skirting boards, for example, and boxing in some pipes), but then it just needs lino AND THEN IT’S FINISHED!!!
I’m very happy that nothing happened yesterday – I had the BBC News ticker going on my desktop all day, dreading a gas attack in London or something like that. It would be very easy to get depressed – the Israel/Palestine situation seems to be getting worse every day, Iraq is an ongoing cause for concern, and that’s you consider all the other wars going on around the world.
But on a lighter note, I’m becoming a bigger fan of Nemi every day – she really rocks! Lise Myhre is not only a babe, but is freakishly funny, and the strip translates from Norway’s culture perfectly. It’s like the hey-day of TGI Friday’s, when Chris Evans could hit the button smack on (e.g. getting “Nicole” from the Renault adverts on). Nemi is somehow a character you end up really caring about, in all her different moods and crazy stunts.
H’mm – still no luck finding any decent info about Claudia Winkleman – the best I’ve come up with is some stuff on the BBC website, which has got a nice-ish picture.
I’m a regular reader of the Metro newspaper (mainly because it’s free and gives me something to do on the train), and they have just started carrying a new cartoon strip called Nemi (that site is actually an unofficial fan site, but it has English translations of the strip). It is a work of comic genius rivalled only by Dilbert, and the occasional Peanuts or Garfield. Particularly good ones are lord of the rings 1, and 2, tattoo, and let’s finish with studentloan, and her nipple!
Thought I’d give a quick mention to Claudia Winkleman. As I’ve mentioned before I am kind of into Fame Academy – but I think the real star of the show is the aforementioned BBC3 presenter. She’s absolutely barking mad and totally surreal, but in a cute furry animal type way. I am hugely enjoying watching the daily update shows, mainly because she is so entertaining. Anyway, I tried to find a fansite for her to link to, but Google came up with a link to pictures of her with her tits out (and you don’t want to get me started on how much it bugs me that almost any search you do ends up with porn these days.)
H’mm – there was another website I was going to mention, but once again I’ve forgotten it. Ah well. Happy Wednesday (I’m happy ‘cos I’m going out for a meal with the missus tonight).
Trying to keep up the momentum with my blog, which isn’t as hard as it sounds as the alternative is doing PhD work. I’m supposed to submit in about 3 weeks, but there’s not much danger of that happening – looks like I’ll have to register for another year. It’s much harder to be motivated when I know that I don’t have to submit for another 13 months!
Still, realistically I do need to have it all done and dusted by Christmas, as January onwards will be crazy mad with teaching and with new baby.
I’m still discovering the wonders of CSS – it really is pretty good stuff. Come October when there’ll be a little less pressure on me, I’m going to relaunch eutony.net in a blaze of CSS wonder!
Good weekend away – went camping in Appletreewick with our house group from church. I’ve not been camping for about 3 years (and my shoulder aches), but it was good fun. The only not so fun bit was waking up at 5am on Sunday dying for a pee, and having to clamber over the missus, find my wellies and coat, and walk to the shower/toilet block, which was right at the other end of the campsite. Still, it’s what camping is all about!
On a different note, I’ve been playing around with the web-site – it’s moved to a new host (hostcolor.com), where for 25 bucks a year I get 20Mb of webspace but with cgi type stuff like PHP and MySQL. This means I can finally move into the 21st century, and get some dynamic content going. I’m just in the process of moving all my reviews into the SQL database, then I’ll knock together a front-end. Then I’ll think about putting this blog type thing into the database! Then I’ll weave some CSS magic, and we’ll be rocking. Anyway, the setup was very quick and easy, and as far as I can tell they seem to be pretty good hosts. I guess time will tell…
Last thought – I’ve been playing SOCOM online on the PS2, and thought I ought to mention the Old Age Playstationers, or [OAP]s. It’s a group that was created in response to the abundence of teenagers playing SOCOM, and consists of more mature players (all members are over 27) who have more refined conversation, prefer to use the headset for tactical play (rather than shouting/swearing!), and who have other demands on their time (like jobs, familes, etc). I certainly find it a haven of calm to go into an [OAP] room after playing in a normal game! But I’m just an old fart, I guess!!!
I don’t have anything against him personally, you understand, but he has never acted or looked the part (e.g. “I don’t have to go on Top of the Pops if I’m a pop star”), and I think it’s a traversty that Louise was thrown out before him (although maybe Jensen’s performance will improve now?)
