Dusty Old Blog
No, I have not died, nor been so assimilated by America that I can no longer communicate with the outside world. I can't say my life has been that interesting lately, however. You'd think that I'd have more to write about, having moved abroad and all, but it's only America. It's just like Britain really, except it's hotter where we are, and they drive on the other side of the road and stuff. Working from home, and having a small child to look after, means that I don't get out much. I can feel what few social skills I ever had slowly atrophying. Hopefully I can do something about that before too much time passes and I become a weird shut-in.
I think I might start blogging again though. All I seem to do at the moment, other that work and change nappies (they call them "diapers" here - weird!) is consume movies and music and video games, so I might as well write about those.
Tomorrow.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Settling
I suppose I'm coping ok in my new environment, though I have only been here for a month, and so am still in that 'holiday' period. The novelty is keeping homesickness at bay, though I do wish that Google Street View hadn't chosen this week to launch in the UK, resulting in a slighly tipsy and maudlin hour spent clicking through my old hood.
Working from home hasn't been the minimum-productivity skivefest I feared it might, though I've had a few unpleasant episodes of cabin fever, and I do miss the peace of my morning train journey, cold and rain notwithstanding. For someone used to being able to nip across the road to Tesco at a moments notice, living in a place where driving is not optional is hard going.
So yeah, I'm here. Now what?
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Moved
Well, would you look at that? I appear to have emigrated, and am now a resident of them there United States! Goodness, how did that happen? I am a legal alien, which is quite cool and makes me feel like I'm David Bowie's character in The Man Who Fell To Earth, but then remember that song by Sting, which is substantially less cool, even though I'm not an Englishman. Nor am I in New York, but Allen, Texas.
I could bore you with the messy details of the move, but shant. It's probably much as you imagine, anyway. I've already blogged about the visa process, which is the most complicated part of the whole affair. The rest was just a matter of sorting out what to send off on a slow boat (clothes, DVDs, music, books), what to pack for the period until the slow boat arrives (five suitcases worth), and what to get rid of (everything else, either sold or given to charity). Oh, and saying goodbye to family and friends. That was no fun at all.
For now it feels like we are just visiting, and it hasn't quite sunk in that we can NEVER GO HOME AGAIN!
Friday, January 16, 2009
A Day In The Life
Recent travels and travails have left my Google Reader account straining at the gills with unglanced-at posts. Catching up on my lunch break, I see that Moosh has nominated today as a day-in-the-life day. I haven't done one of those in ages, so let's have a crack. I may end up not bothering to publish this if the rest of the day is deeply dull.
6.30am - The alarm goes off. Yesterday I received notification that my passport and visa would arrive today by courier some time between 8am and 6pm, so I set my alarm super early so I could get into work for 8. Fumbling to silence it before it woke the baby, I almost allowed myself to sink back into sleep, but managed to force myself out of bed for 6.45.
I fed and watered the cat, brushed my teeth, had a shower, got dressed and took the bin out, all without waking Rebecca and Aidan, woke R up briefly to say bye, and got out the door in time to see the 7.26 pull into the station. Tantalisingly close, I knew there was no chance of getting it, but thought there might be a 7.38, so sauntered over to look at the timetable and discover that there was, in fact, not such train. Rather than wait until 8 o'clock, I chose to take the bus. There was one already at the stop, and I had change, so I hopped on and asked for a "one-thirty" from the driver who looked at me like I was from Mars.
I hadn't had time to make lunch, and was paranoid about leaving the office in case the courier came while I was away, so after getting off the bus I popped into Marks and Sparks to buy a sandwich. I've been feeling a bit "meat-off" these past few days, so bought a cheapo egg mayonnaise sarnie before going into work. I was the first person in and got to turn on all the lights. I quite enjoy that, and the quiet of the place when I'm the only one in. Not enough to make me get up early unless I have to, though. I got myself some cereal from my stash in the kitchen, and went to my machine. I'd left a lengthy defrag and shrink process running on a VMWare image when I left the night before, and it had failed due to lack of disk space, so I deleted an old, unneeded image and kicked it off again while reading email and news, and started unreportably dull worky stuff once it had finished.
At about 9.30 a colleague brought over a large, black, plastic envelope and said that there was a guy at reception who needed to see my ID. Once authenticated, I tore it open, and as expected it contained my passport, containing a new visa sticker, and a large, heavy brown envelope, with instructions printed on it in large black letters indicating that it should not be opened or tampered with under any circumstances, and must be presented to the immigration officer when I enter the US. This attracted a bit of attention from various workmates who didn't know of my moving plans, so the cat is very definitely out of the bag now, even though it wasn't really a secret any more.
At about 11.00 the Friday cakes arrived, though as usual there were a fair number of savoury items from Greggs, and I consumed a sausage roll, thus making a mockery of my earlier advances towards vegetarianism. In my defense I suspect its actual meat content to have been pretty low. Now lunchtime is here, I am regretting having bothered to buy a sandwich, such, along with my usual monster bowl of Alpen, I'm really not hungry. I shall save it for later.
***
Around 3.20pm R phoned. She had been in town meeting some of the other mums from our NCT class earlier in the year, and was now heading over to Mono. Since I'd gotten into work early, I said I would come and meet her just after 4. At Mono I found her with Aidan sitting on her lap, looking quite happy. We split a veggie curry and strange carbonated elderflower drink. In the toilet I noticed a bit of graffiti that made me smile. Someone had written "This place would be better if... it wasn't so shite," but a second person had scored out the last part and replaced it with "it had a bouncy castle and the girl behind the bar with no smiles would kiss me." I'll miss that sweet, silly, and, yes, twee side of Glasgow, I think. It's not all neds and jakies. Just mostly.
I read for a bit while R took Aidan into Monorail to show our friend Russell who works in there, and then we bundled up and went back out into the damp evening. We had waited a bit too long, however, and rush-hour was in full swing, so on the way to the station we went into Tinderbox for coffee and Portuguese custard tarts. A, by now, was sound asleep, as is normal for him if he's outside and moving. When we were done we finished walking to Central Station, but it was still packed and the next train was not for another half hour. I was a bit nervous about A waking up and being pissed off, since he hadn't been fed in a while, and the taxi queue wasn't too bad, so we took one of those instead of struggling to get his stroller on a busy commuter train.
Back home, R folded up the stroller while I took Aidan upstairs. When I got in I sat down on the sofa to take his jacket off, but as I did so I felt a bolt of pain in my right knee, sufficient to make me yelp and use some choice language. I've been having trouble with that knee for a while now. It's ok while standing or walking, but if I sit with it bent for too long it stiffens up and gets sore, at which point it emits a loud "click" when straightened. Putting weight on it when bending down or getting up also hurts a fair bit. My doctor diagnosed inflammation behind the kneecap, though was at a loss to explain why I should be experiencing such a thing, and prescribed anti-inflammatories. They ease the symptoms a bit, but can't quite knock them out. In any case, it's never hurt as much as it did at that point, and for a while I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to walk on it. I handed Aidan off to Rebecca when she came in, and sat for a little while. The pain faded after about five minutes and I was able to get up without difficulty, but it definitely doesn't feel quite right, and putting weight on it hurts more than it ever did. If it still feels this way by Monday I am definitely going back to my doctor, even though I am convinced he fills himself full of Valium at the start of the working day, such is his distant, laissez-faire attitude to his patients.
I messed around on the internets for a while, and played with Aidan on the floor (getting down gingerly, but I was ok once I was there). At about eight-ish I took him into the bedroom and put his pyjamas on him. Then R came in, and gave him a feed in the dark in an effort to get him off to sleep. Sated, he dozed off in her lap. We didn't want to move him into his cot straight away, hoping that he would ultimately fall into a deep sleep that would see him through the night, or at least a few hours. His sleep patterns have been chaotic ever since we got back from the US. This is partly jet-lag, and partly because we allowed him to sleep in the bed with us while we were away. We knew we were fostering a bad habit, but when you're so tired you want to die and you know it will help him sleep through, it seems worth it. I crept out and fetched my laptop, and we had a look at flights for our move. We found a good deal on KLM, but are loathe to actually book anything until the missives are concluded on the flat and we can definitely put a date on it.
After a short time we put Aidan down in his cot and tip-toed away. In the living room I played with my DS for about half an hour, before I heard Aidan wake up and start crying over the baby monitor. Normally it takes several attempts to get him into a proper sleep. He will doze off for a while, then wake and start crying, or at least making a fuss. I can usually send him back off by picking him up and rocking him for a few minutes, as in this case.
Once back down, I went into the spare room/office and started writing the second part of this post, but I was interrupted by half-a-dozen restless-baby moments, and reading about the forthcoming remake of The Prisoner. I'm a massive fan of the original show, and was saddened to hear of Patrick McGoohan's death the other day. From first appearances, I fear that this remake will be... how can I put this?... a load of arse. I do like Ian McKellan (Though it appears that he will be Number 2 for the duration of the show, unlike the 1960's series where a different actor took the role each week.) but casting James Caviezel - Hollywood's most generic looking actor - as Number 6, a character who is supposed to represent personal individuality , is surely a mistake. I'll try to watch it with an open mind when it comes on, however.
Now, to bed. Hopefully that'll be Aidan down for a while. Or not. Every day is different.
Look at that - no posts for months, then three 1000-worders in a row. I suppose I've been keeping mum on certain things and it's caused a bit of a backlog that's now overflowing. Sorry about that. I expect the torrent will slow soon enough.
Labels: diary
link | 1 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, January 12, 2009
Washing Up
Some years ago, I registered my real name as a .com domain, under which I wrote a personal blog. Nowadays this would be considered a spectacularly silly thing to do. Unless you are a celeb, or at least someone who is using a site to promote themselves and their ideas, it's always better to blog at least semi-anonymously. It's ok to point friends and family to it, but you never know when a prospective boss, say, might search for your name and find a foaming-mouthed rant about your current workplace, or even just evidence that your personal tastes or politics are at odds with their own.
The Internet was younger and more innocent back then, of course. Something of a niche hobby. Even mentioning that you had an email address would be enough for most people to scoff and call you a geek. But as time went on everyone and their granny got on the net, and having my name plastered all over an online journal, no matter how innocent its content, began to seem less and less like a good idea. In addition to which, the blog at myrealname.com had attracted a number of trolls who liked to hang out in the comments and post abuse. A change of domain was therefore required.
I didn't really spend an awful lot of time coming up with washing-up.co.uk. I could probably have thought of something better, but my criteria were less than exacting. It was semi-abstract, available, and didn't contain my real name. In addition to which, it was a sly dig at my other half, who steadfastly refuses to take a turn at a particular household chore.
There was another reason for choosing it. We were also thinking, at the time, of moving to another country, and I thought that if anyone asked me what the domain meant, I could explain that it was because I didn't know where I would "wash up", and feel very smug and clever.
Except nobody did. And I never blogged about moving.
Part of the reason for not blogging about it was because, for all of my best intentions, this blog was never really anonymous. Oh, I was careful to scrub every mention of my real name from it, but Google pagerank is too smart for that, and washing-up.co.uk is now the #1 hit for my name. At least I shook off the trolls for a while. But in any case, I didn't much want to accidentally tip-off work that I was planning on upping-sticks and leaving, nor go into detail about something that looked from time-to-time that it wouldn't happen at all.
But now, it looks like it really is. The three of us are planning on hopping the pond and setting up home in Texas. And soon. Scarily soon.
We began the process of applying for my visa about two years ago. This is never rapid, but it was hindered by a combination of laziness and uncertainty on our part, and plain old bad timing. The final task that has to be performed in order for me to get a visa to live and work in the US, is for me to attend an interview at the US Embassy in London, accompanied only by a thick bundle of complex paperwork. I was initially given an appointment for last April, but the visa, once issued, has to be used within six months, and with R heavily pregnant we really didn't think we could orchestrate a move in that time. After informing the embassy of this, we were told that we would receive an alternative appointment. When it finally arrived, it was for a date on which we would be in the States for Christmas. Appointment number three came, and is on Wednesday.
Our original plan was to sell our flat before R had the baby, and move to rented accommodation that we could drop as soon as my visa was ready. Thanks to the knackered economy and dead housing market, this never happened. However, just before Christmas we were made an offer on the flat, approximately the same time as my visa appointment letter arrived. Ahead of us, then, is a mad scramble to move out of the country at the same time as moving out of our home. Providing the god of bureaucracy smiles upon me and grants my visa, of course. (Which is, worryingly, not guaranteed. Although I think we have everything in order, I have heard horror stories.) Even though we started planning this two years ago, it seems like it's all happening very quickly, as though we've been on that first part of a roller-coaster where you are winched slowly to the top of a steep hill before being nudged over the edge.
There is much I will miss about Glasgow, and Scotland in general (including many friends), and the pros and cons of moving have been chewed over again and again. The clincher is, simply, that I have lived here for 33 years and I have the opportunity to have a go at living in a foreign country - and easy as it is to forget, America really is a foreign country - so why the hell not? If I don't, I'll always wonder "what if?" Fortunately the nature of the work I do means that I can do it anywhere there's an internet connection, so I will be keeping my job when we move and working from home. I think this scares me more than anything - will I go completely batshit insane without all those other faces around every day and a commute to ensure that I get out of the house? Fortunately, the interwebs really do make the world a smaller place and there's no longer any good excuse to lose contact with a friend no matter where you live. In addition to which, I may well be back in Glasgow on business once in a while. (Or with my tail between my legs if I cannae hack it.)
Progress will be blogged and Twittered of course. Wish us luck!
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
New Year
It's cold. We're sitting on the sofa under blankets with mugs of hot coffee, and the heating is on full blast, but it's still two-pairs-of-socks cold, since the flat's been unoccupied for three weeks. Presumably there's a lot of residual warmth that sticks around for a while even when the heating is turned off, allowing it to quickly warm up most mornings. Still, it seems appropriate that we have to fire-up the house at the start of the new year.
I shant bother with a retrospective of 2008, since it's it's all been about the lead up and aftermath of a single life-changing event that everyone who might read this is sick of hearing about by now. I certainly didn't bother making any resolutions, knowing that just staying afloat and dealing with the new arrival would be occupation enough. Nor shall I make any for 2009, since I expect this year to be just as mental as the last. But I shall write more on that at a later date.
We came home to two piles of Christmas cards. One from various friends, many of whom we've hardly seen this year. Having a baby does that to you - you don't get out like you used to, and your conversation becomes somewhat limited. The other, an unopened box that we meant to write and send before going away, but never got around to. Having a baby does that to you also. Alternatively, maybe we just suck. Sorry guys. If you sent us a card and didn't get one back, then it's nothing personal. Even our own mothers went cardless this year.
I fear tonight. I've been awake and travelling for an unreasonable number of hours, but don't feel too bad just now. Aidan has, however, slept a great deal this morning. It's hard to explain the concept of jet-lag to a six-month-old, you know? I'm only too glad that I don't have to go back to work until Monday.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postTuesday, October 21, 2008
Recovery of Faculties
Oh dear. Over a month since my last post, and my development blog which I had such plans for hasn't really gotten off the ground either. (Though I do have a post or two in draft for that one.) Of course, being a relatively new dad means that time is at a premium, but also to blame is that my development build of Poster has acquired a nasty crashing bug that I must get around to killing. As a result, I don't really trust it since it lost a rather large post the other week. It's not good when you don't want to use your own software because of defects in it. Once that issue is beaten I should be able to get another release out, which would be nice, even though nobody actually uses it.
I did find time to pick up a guitar for the first time in many months. R was at choir, and I was able to get A off to sleep by about 9.15, so had a wee bit of free time. I've never been a very good guitar player, but my skills have atrophied shockingly, and even a fairly simple song sounded dreadful as my wayward fingers struggled to find their places. An hour and a half later and my fingertips, having lost the protective calluses that all guitar players develop, were in agony, but I felt the practice had been worthwhile and I'm encouraged enough to try and play a bit more often when I can.
A is doing grand, and growing so fast you can actually see it if you stare at him long enough. Every day his personality develops a little bit more, and he's turning into a really delightful wee fella. I never thought of myself as being particularly paternal, but, sleepless nights, nasty nappies and lack of free time aside, we're really enjoying being parents, especially now that those difficult first couple of months are over and he is aware of us and can interact somewhat. In addition to this, he's mostly sleeping through the night now (though usually waking up earlier than we'd chose to), and we're getting into something of a routine.
For that period immediately after the birth of a child you feel rather like someone who is recovering from a nasty head injury. You are effectively housebound, dizzy, forgetful and prone to falling asleep in the middle of conversations. It feels like you will never lead any kind of "normal" life again. Thankfully this feeling eventually fades, and though you might experience permanent changes in personality, a full recovery is, indeed, possible, as your brain re-wires itself to cope with its new circumstances.
I could still be doing with a bit more kip, though. For Christmas this year I would like either more hours in the day, or a large "never have to work again" lottery win, please. Thanks.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Frankenbaby
Babies skulls aren't one piece of bone but consist of a number of plates that can slide and shift, primarily to allow them to squeeze through a particularly narrow exit on day one. Unfortunately, since babies tend to lie on their backs a lot, this can cause the rear of their heads to go a little bit... flat. Aidan's been going that way, and while it does normally go away on its own, but we thought we'd try one of those special cot pillows that are specially shaped to the curvature of the skull, in the hope that it would make him a bit more comfortable in his cot. Lo and behold, he went down with much less fussing last night, and we actually got a bit of sleep. He's still in growth-spurt mode, and he needed feeding twice in the night, but being able to put him back in his cot afterwards without half an hour of rocking is a godsend.
This morning he was keeping eye contact with me as I moved from side to side, and smiling when I pulled faces, so his wee brain's developing right enough. Getting a bit of feedback from him makes it all worthwhile.
Labels: diary
link | 3 comment(s) | links to this postTuesday, August 19, 2008
ZOMG
Exceptionally tired today. The wee man's going through a growth spurt, and has been since Friday. This is, apparently, normal at six weeks, and involves him demanding to be fed continually. He eats, falls asleep, wakes up, and screams to be fed again. It should only last for a few days, but it's exceptionally stressful, especially for his mum who has to actually feed him. Once fed he sleeps on her lap, but using these periods of respite to catch up on our own sleep is problematic since any attempt to move him into his cot wakes him up and the crying starts again.
Allegedly this happens just before a major phase in his development, and is him fuelling up for a few days where he will sleep a lot more while his body and brain make use of all the nutrients he's stuffed himself with. I. Can't. Wait.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postSunday, July 20, 2008
The Normality Illusion
So, day 11 of parenthood, and while we can't be described as feeling "normal", there is the sense that we're beginning to adapt to our new life-with-child and that we can cope after all. Today has, in fact, been much like any other Sunday, plus nappies. We popped the wee fella into his pram and went down the street for a massive fry-up, and then round to Tchai-Ovna for tea and chat. I was concerned that at this stage we wouldn't want to leave the house due to the hassle of moving him around, but it's really not so bad, and he's quite relaxed once secured in his pram.
It's really only getting up in the morning after too little sleep that I'm finding hard, and going back to work will be an effort, but so far things are going fairly well. I had a couple of nappy disasters early in the week, but I'm getting better at those, as well as learning how to get him calmed down when he's screaming bloody murder. Thankfully, this isn't too often, and in general he's a pretty chilled out kid. At least, for the time being. He's still at the stage of sleeping most of the day, and only has short periods of open-eyed alertness. In the first couple of weeks there's not a whole lot of interaction you can have with a baby, but their brains are sooking in information from the world around them the whole time and building the foundations of language and motor skills, even if it seems like all they are doing is stare into space. I am looking forward to being able to play with him a bit more though.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
At Home
I don't want to give the impression that anyone is still in the hospital, so I'd just like to note that mum & baby were released from jail on Sunday. Thus, we're in that sleepless new parent stage that must be a bit like recovering from a head injury, I would imagine. Everything is a bit fuzzy, and we're not sure what day it is, but we are enjoying having him, even though he doesn't do much yet.
We are very gradually getting into a routine, so hopefully we'll be feeling a bit more human soon.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Baby Jail
So another day has passed without a release from the Southern General. Aidan was finally allowed to go back upstairs to be with his mum, but they want him to spend 24 continuous hours with her to ensure that everything is ok before they will let them go. Hopefully this time tomorrow they should be home. And not a minute too soon.
Now the staff at the Southern Gen have, on the whole, been wonderful, being full of good advice and caring magnificently for the new mum and her boy. However, if there's one complaint to be had about the place, it is the food. Now, NHS food is legendarily bad, and I'm sure there's nothing original in bemoaning the fact, but honestly... you know what R was given for her first proper meal after giving birth (tea and toast in the delivery room notwithstanding?
A cheese sandwich.
Now, I quite like a cheese sandwich now and then. My favourite is to grate the cheese and mix it with mayonnaise and chopped up Pimento peppers. Yum. Onion is also good - the celebrated "cheese savoury" of many a Glasgow sandwich shop. Hell, even just cheese and a blob of Branston Pickle makes for a fine snack. I'm not a snob about the humble cheese sandwich, but the one served to R that morning consisted of cheese, bread and... well... cheese and bread, basically. The archetypal cheese sandwich, perhaps, but not what you want to see after a day-and-a-half of pushing a baby out of you.
The staff are endlessly apologetic about the quality of the fare, and it's really not their fault. They just don't have the funding to provide anything better. We are, of course, immensely grateful that the NHS exists, it's just a shame that it has to struggle in so many areas.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Aidan Update
Aidan and his mum are spending another night in the hospital. Yesterday evening he started puking up green goo. Newborn babies are generally a bit pukey anyway, but for it to be green is not good, since this could potentially indicate the presence of an intestinal blockage. He was taken out of the postnatal recovery ward and brought downstairs to the neonatal unit where he can be continually observed. This has been quite hard on R, since until then he had not left her side, and I must admit the sight of an empty cot beside her bed wasn't especially pleasant for me when I arrived at the hospital this morning, either. She can, however, go down and see him at any time, and if he awakens and cries a midwife will fetch her at any time. It's still hard for her to have to go back upstairs afterwards, however.
Fortunately, other than a tiny blob this morning, he has been mostly free of green vom and is feeding and pooping like a star. Providing he can hold off on the Exorcist act for 24 hours he should be released into the wild tomorrow. Fingers are crossed.
Thanks everyone who has sent messages of congratulations in the last few days. Sorry I haven't been too good at getting back to folk, but things have been a bit hectic, as I'm sure you can imagine, and most of my time has been spent at the hospital.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Waiting Over
Introducing Aidan Allen McChesney.
Born today at about 1840 (so much for expecting him in the early hours), he weighed 9lbs 11oz and is doing well.
I know I'm a cynical, moany old bugger at times, but nothing can turn a man into a blubbering mess like seeing his son being born. link | 6 comment(s) | links to this post
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
The Waiting Game: Part Deux
You know the scene. It's been in a million movies and television shows. The parents-to-be are sitting at home, when the woman clutches her tummy, turns to the man and goes "honey, it's time." Cue panic, running around the house to gather everything they need for the hospital, before a red-light jumping race to the hospital while she lies in the back seat moaning in agony.
This is bollocks.
R's been in labour since about 12.30 am this morning. It's now about 10.30pm and we're at home watching telly. Which is not to say that labour is a breeze, just that it's not the sudden cataclysmic event one tends to imagine. Early labour is a very gradual process that can, potentially, last for days, and consists of contractions with ever-decreasing periods of calm in between. The prevailing philosophy in this country is that the mum-to-be should spend as much time at home as possible. Really, there's not much that they can do until close to the end, and it's infinitely preferable to wait in the comfort of your own home than in an NHS hospital ward. Apart from the contractions, which are painful, you could be forgiven for mistaking it for any other Tuesday night. During the quiet periods we've time to watch telly, put our feet up and write blog posts. Sleep, however, is out of the question.
We have been over to the hospital twice already today, in order for them to keep an eye on things, and the best guess is that this baby's going to make an appearance some time tomorrow morning.
That's when the panicking begins.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
The Waiting Game
Blogging is a bit like exercising for me. I'm always glad when I do it, and if I get into the habit I find it easy to do so fairly regularly, but one little blip and I lost momentum, making it awful hard to start up again. See that last little run of posts which suddenly fizzled out.
We've been in something of a pre-baby limbo of late. R is getting mighty sick of being pregnant and I cannot say that I blame her. Late pregnancy is a pretty miserable time full of indignities that nobody really mentions until you bring them up yourself, when they go "oh yeah, I had that." The good news is that her passenger is in the correct position and "engaged", meaning that he's ready to go as soon as the time is right, which could be any minute now.
I expect to have loads to write about in the near future, then. I also expect to be too knackered to bother, but you never know.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Almost-Father's Day
Neither of us have gotten much sleep this past week. The latter stages of pregnancy are often less than fun for the mother, with the baby pushing on the stomach causing acid reflux. During the day she's mostly been able to keep it under control with heroic doses of Gaviscon, but she was only able to lie down for a couple of hours before it flared up again. One site I discovered suggested raising the top of the bed by about ten centimeters, which is how I found myself measuring out two piles of paperbacks at 3am on Saturday morning.
Thankfully, it seems to have worked, and we now sleep with Lewis Carroll under one leg, and Hunter S. Thompson under the other. The dreams are a bit disturbing, but at least we're sleeping.
Four weeks to go, then, until the estimated due date, and the likelihood of his arrival increases with each passing day. We've been trying to keep the flat relatively clutter-free in case we have viewers, (Though after three weeks on the market we've had a grand total of one viewer. What recession?) so most of the baby's things are in my parent's loft for the time being. Since his birth is drawing near, we're feeling the need to be more prepared than we are, so this afternoon we went over there and picked up the car seat. The cot and things can come home while R is in the hospital, if necessary, but the car seat is something I'll need practice with, and don't want to be dicking around with for two hours in a hospital car park. It can live in the boot of the car until then.
On the way back, and I'm slightly ashamed to admit this, we went to XScape at Braehead. For dinner. And kinda enjoyed it.
Chain restaurants, neon, teenagers, I should have hated it. I'm going to get kicked of the curmudgeon's union for this, but it was actually surprisingly fun. We watched some skiers on the real slope inside, ate some ribs, wandered around the world's most depressingly sane crazy-golf course, and were gratified by the fact that, even though most amusement arcades are populated either by ranks of fruit machines or the same ubiquitous racing/shooting coin-ops, the unique clatter of an air-hockey table is still never far away.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Steamy Knees
Some time ago I wrote about a certain den of vice, iniquity and hand-jobs that stood at the end of the street I used to work on.
Four years on, and the most hits I get on this blog are from searches on the name of that very same establishment.
On an entirely unrelated note, tonight we're going to visit my mum in hospital. She's just had one of her knees replaced with an artificial one. Whether it will enable her to sprint at super-speeds and leap thirty feet into the air remains to be seen.
Labels: blog, diary, glasgow, site
link | 2 comment(s) | links to this postWednesday, June 04, 2008
Doom
So there's approximately five weeks to go until we have this baby. Here are some of the things that some of our nearest and dearest have said in response to R's ongoing pregnancy ...
- "Look forward to never getting any sleep then."
- "I hope he pisses in your face."
- "So you'll be stuck at home for the rest of your days, a slave to a mewling infant who will howl for attention every minute, penniless, never having a moment to yourself, completely and utterly friendless, OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE YOU DONE YOU HAVE RUINED YOUR LIFE!!
... and these are just from my mother, who has gone on continuously about us having children since the day we got married, but only, apparently, out of revenge for the nightmare that was giving birth to and raising her only son. Every time we go over to visit, she delights in recounting horror stories from 32-and-a-half years ago.
We do have a few friends who have been positive and excited for us, however, and this means a lot. On top of which, we've been going to weekly antenatal classes. Up until tonight, these have been led by a midwife called Susan. Susan is very good at her job. She is approachable, friendly, honest about the child-bearing experience, but positive without sugar-coating anything. She tells it like it is, not sparing gory or unpleasant details, but you still come away feeling like this is something that you can deal with. Something that is worth doing.
Tonight, however, Susan couldn't make it. Susan's replacement had, I suspect, been talking to my mum immediately before the class. She was pregnant herself, with child number three apparently, though hearing her talk about the experience of becoming a new parent one wonders why she would go through that more than once. Like all the doom-mongers of the last eight months rolled into one, she told us about how we'll be tired, about how the baby's nappy will need changing constantly, about how there's a good chance of post-natal depression. On and on with barely a chink of light to be had while the rest of us in the class gave each other worried looks that said "is it too late to back out?"
I know that having a baby isn't easy. I know there will be late night crying, nappies that smell like they came from the arse of satan himself, trying times, sleepless nights and stress. Everyone in that room knew it. None of us in that class is a teenager knocked up by her ned boyfriend. We're all about the same age, we're all grown-ups, and we've all been living with the knowledge that we're going to have a baby for some months now. We don't need told how much it's going to suck because we're all worrying about it already. What we need is a reminder that there will be good things, that we haven't made a huge fucking mistake. I don't care if you believe it or not. Even if you think we're hastening the starvation of the world by selfishly reproducing, it's a bit late for us to change our minds now. If you see us in the next five weeks, do us a favour and don't go on about how shit it is to have kids. R might be getting big, but she can still cause severe testicular injury when provoked. link | 2 comment(s) | links to this post
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Salesman
So our first viewer did turn up today, though he was an hour and a half late. I won't curse him too vehemently, however, since he did seem really keen on the flat. We've always had an image of the sort of person who would be keen to buy our flat: someone fairly young who would be keen on living close to the pubs and restaurants of Shawlands, and who would be looking to rent out one of the rooms to a flatmate. The guy that came round today fitted that template perfectly. The fact that we've got a bathroom and a wee shower room makes it ideal for a pair of flatmates, and it's a great location. I realise the chances of selling to the first person to walk in through the door after only a few fays of it being on the market are pretty slim, especially with the housing market being what it is, but you never know.
R had her baby shower today. She was pretty despondant at the thought of not having one, and we were both so chuffed when Victoria from the choir offered to put it on. She seemed to have a grand time, and we got a good haul of cute baby items. Thanks so much to all involved for pressies, but, most of all, for being there for Becca.
While she was out, and after our visitor was gone, I got to have a rare Sunday afternoon on my own. Got to put my feet up, play some of Mario Galaxy, and do a spot of writing, something I haven't done for far too long.
Labels: diary
link | 1 comment(s) | links to this postScrubber
So other than the usual sleeping, eating and working, and getting Poster 0.2 out of the door, most of my time lately has been spent cleaning, tidying and moving furniture around, in an attempt to get our flat into the sort of condition that might entice someone else to buy it. With expert timing we have, of course, put it on a market that is the slowest it has been in a decade. It is nice to have it tidy and clutter-free at last, so at least we have a nicer place to live even if it takes us a while to sell, and we aren't in too great a hurry.
Today we had our first visitor. Well, we were supposed to. Although it's in a pretty decent state, you can't really keep your grubby fingerprints off of the place you live, and we spent all morning in cleaning mode, only for the guy to fail to turn up. Apparently he forgot and is coming tomorrow. Well, that's today now. These light summer nights make the evenings just disappear, fooling you into thinking that it's earlier than it is. It was a glorious, sunny day, of which we were glad, since I think our flat looks its best with plenty of light coming in, but never mind.
Only six weeks until the baby's due date. R is uncomfortable and wishes it was over with, but other than the inevitable hearburn and back-ache is basically fine. Fortunately the estate agent will let us take the flat off the market for a couple of weeks when the baby arrives if it hasn't sold. I don't think we'll be in any state to clean and show visitors around for a while.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postFriday, May 02, 2008
Shoes of Evil
I went shoe shopping last night. I hate clothes shopping in all its forms, and shoe shopping especially. Shoe shops are especially grim and unpleasant places for me. Overbright, over loud and staffed by unhelpful aliens, it's all I can do to get in and out as quickly as possible with the minimum of damage to dignity and wallet, and with a pair that will keep my feet dry for another six months before they fall apart. I usually only have about three pairs of shoes: one formal pair for weddings, funerals, job interviews, etc; one pair of good walking boots; and a regular casual pair that I wear 99% of the time. The latter were on their last legs (as it were), and so it was necessary for me to brave a local branch of Schuh. Pretty much every pair in their men's section was either hideous to look at, hideously expensive, or both. I suppose I could have shopped around (other listings magazines are available) but that would just have prolonged the experience, so I settled for a relatively un-hideous and fairly reasonable pair of plain-black Converse all-star wotsits. I was feeling pretty good about achieving my mission without spending too much cash, until at home R reminded me that Converse are owned by Nike nowadays and are therefore teh evilz. Not that my wardrobe, such as it is, can be said to be otherwise sweatshop-free, but I can't honestly claim ignorance in this case. Just panic.
She also pointed out that they'll probably last me about ten minutes before exploding, and are therefore something of a false economy. They are fucking comfy, though.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postThursday, May 01, 2008
Floated
When we're in the West End. we often pass by Willow Trading on Great Western Road. I'm not really a fan of that kind of shop. They're often pushers of expensive placebo, snake-oil and new-age bullshit, a perception that was cemented the time they tried to sell R a session on a Vega Machine. But a couple of months ago I was struggling to think of an unusual present for her birthday and remembered that they had a flotation tank. She had expressed some interest in trying it, and a bit of research on the web suggested that they genuinely helped relieve stress, and were especially theraputic for pregnant women who may be experiencing back problems, so I popped in and bought her a gift certificate, good for a single "float".
It took her a while to get around to using it, but when she finally did last week she came back absolutely raving about the experience, and had returned the favour by buying me one as well. I know I come across as a miserable old cynic, but I prefer to think of myself as just being quick to spot a scam, and I can understand that there might be some benefit to being alone with just your thooughts and no other outside stimulation for a while. Given that R came back clearly more relaxed, I was keen to give it a go, so after work last night I went over there and redeemed my coupon for one float.
I was shown into a pleasant, private room with various toiletries, a shower, and a hatch set into one wall. As explained, I locked the door behind me, stripped off, took a quick shower and inserted the provided earplugs, before opening the hatch. Although if you Google "flotation tank" or "isolation tank" you'll most likely find images of a free-standing pod, this was more like a small room the size of a walk-in closet, filled with about ten inches of water heated to body temperature and loaded with Epsom salts. Climbing in and lying on my back, I found sinking, or even touching my bum to the floor, quite impossible, the salt in the water providing enough buoyancy to keep me floating gently on the surface at all times. Closing the hatch left only a thin outline of the door from the light in the room, which soon turned itself off leaving me in complete darkness, unable to tell if my eyes were open or shut, and with no sound but my own breathing and the odd watery gurgle.
Physically it was very pleasant and comfortable, though I could see how someone of a claustrophobic bent might feel a little panicked at first until they settled in. In keeping with the spirit of it, I tried to relax as much as possible, which took some time. Every time I thought I was as relaxed as I could be, I would notice some other muscle group that was still tensed in some way and would have to turn it off. Finally I achieved this as best as I could and started to enjoy the feeling of warm weightlessness. Relaxing my mind was a whole different matter. The leaflet I had read upon arrival suggested that the floatee shouldn't try to suppress his or her thoughts, but just let them come and go. All the same, I found it difficult to get out of my natural cycle whereby I'm usually fretting about something, and worries about whether I was getting enough out of the experience and how much time I had left and whether I was "doing it right" just self-perpetuated. Eventually, however, some of the negative "brain chatter" went away and I got into a state similar to that which occurs before sleep - though I was in no danger of actually nodding off and could appreciate it in a more "conscious" way. Scraps of voices floated through my head, as well as thoughts about my life as it is at the moment, but most noticable was the music that seems to be endlessly playing in the background of my mind. It didn't seem to be anything I had heard before, but wasn't consciously being created. It was enjoyable to "listen to" for a while, but difficult to actually silence. I've "dreamt" music in the past and never been able to recreate it in the "real world" due to an inability to recall it (not to mention lack of talent). I suspect that what I heard while in the tank is no exception, but it's interesting that it's in there.
I was brought out of this meditative state by ambient tinkling which are played into the tank to announce the end of the session, and was quite surprised to find that an hour had passed. Once out of the tank, and feeling a little wobbly, I showered thoroughly to get the salt off my skin, dressed, and left. Once back in the outside world I actually felt a sort of giddy euphoria, and had to fight to stop myself from giggling at nothing. At the same time I felt extremely relaxed, and my head felt clearer and more focussed, an effect that has continued, if slightly diminished, today.
I suppose what I experienced was really just a form of meditation, made easier by the tank removing all external stimuli and makiing that level of introspection easier. Really you could just go to some classes and learn to do meditate at home without having to fork out thirty notes to float in a cupboard full of salty water, but in any case it was an enjoyable experience and something I'd be happy to try again.
Or maybe I've just been suckered in by a lot of hippy-drippy nonsense. If I start blogging about the benefits of aromatherapy, you have permission to come round and slap me.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, April 28, 2008
We Got The Love
It feels like summer is actually starting at last. Yesterday was warm enough to dispense with a jacket, even in the evening when coming back from the Arches. We were at the "last-ever" Triptych party performing with the choir. What an odd, but amazing evening it was. Originally we were supposed to be the first act on. This would have seen us performing to about five people, probably, but we were still excited to be playing such a high-profile gig, and The Arches is one of my favourite venues - favourite places, even - in Glasgow. For whatever reason, however, the organizers decided to shuffle us to a much later slot, and we found ourselves sandwiched between Four Tet and Candi Staton. How cool is that! It also meant that we had a large crowd to sing to, whose drugs of choice (mostly alcohol I'm sure, but the lass with the saucer-pupils who lunged at me and wanted to scratch my beard because "it looked itchy" sure wasn't in the grip of Tennants lager) made them pretty appreciative. At one point a guy down the front loudly announced that he wanted to shag the entire choir. This was nice of him to say so and I look forward to my turn. Sound-checking at 4 and playing at 10 made for a long day, but what an exciting one.
We got home exhausted, but pretty happy. Unfortunately, some time during the night I managed to get my head into a bad place, woke up, and couldn't settle down again. We recently bought Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii, which is a delight on a par with SM64 so far, so a bit of time spent running around tiny planets and collecting stars helped sort me out, but I'm absolutely knackered today.
Wiggles, and by extension his mum, is getting pretty big now, and kicking really hard. The other night I was resting my hand on R's belly when he gave me quite a whack. Hope this isn't the beginning of a lifetime of parent-son conflict.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Twittering
I signed up for Twitter aages ago, but only because I had a vague notion of writing a Poster plugin for it. I never really got the point of it, oddly enough, until I started using Facebook, and enjoyed watching my friend's status updates and wished that I had a little app that would let me see them all at once and update my own. Which is basically what Twitter is. D'oh. And I only made that connection today after mar-c basically said the same thing. I'll probably get bored with it within a week, but at least I can sort-of see the point of it now. I've added a widget to the left sidebar there to show my latest updates. Well, it's quicker than actually blogging.
Baby-wise, R is getting pretty big and the little fella is kicking harder and harder, which is uncomfortable for her, but does allow those of us out here to feel him sometimes. It really brings home the fact that there's a little person in there, and we really can't wait to see him, even though we're both stressed out of our minds. We really need to get out of this flat, but we still haven't put it on the market, though we're getting close to having it in a sellable state, I think.
Flat-improvement will be put on hold this weekend, however, since we're going to a friend's wedding. I will be kilted and everythink. Not as some statement of nationalistic pride, but because it's a bit of a laugh, to be honest.
I haven't abandonded Poster, though updates have slowed due the inevitable encroachment of real life and responsibility and that. Version 0.2 will see the light of day soon, however.
Anyway, just dashing this off in a few stolen minutes before I go back and finish the dishes. Such excitement!
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postWednesday, March 26, 2008
This Weekend We Were Mostly Being... Tourists
One of R's friends from Americaland is staying with us at the moment. Actually, that's a lie, since she's off on a three day coach trip of the highlands and islands while we're working, but you know what I mean. It's always fun to play tourist when we have guests, though I am an appalling tour guide, and even the simplest questions about places I have been many times completely stump me. On Saturday and Sunday we "did" Edinburgh, though it was bitterly cold and windy, the highlight of which being, of course, a trip to Monster Mash. Yeah, there was a castle and stuff as well, but I've seen that plenty of times before, and it pales into insignificance next to the sausagey goodness. I wish their Glasgow branch hadn't closed, though I see from their website that they now have a restaurant in Singapore, of all places!
I had Monday off, so we spent that in Glasgow, toddling around Pollok Park and attempting to attract the miserable-looking highland cows, but they were having none of it and stayed put in the center of their field, after which we went into town and took in the GOMA and Necropolis. The weather remained the same as the weekend - biting cold wind and flurries of snow, which quickly gave way to blue skies and sunshine, which quickly gave way to more snow. Actually, it was quite pretty when the snow started, and it was far preferable to being rained on.
Labels: diary, edinburgh, food, glasgow, scotland
link | 1 comment(s) | links to this postTuesday, March 18, 2008
What's Goin' On
This weekend was a very relaxed one, in which we did a lot of sitting about and eating food. A good thing for our gradually cracking sanities, yes, but not one for getting things done, which needs to happen at a faster rate than it is. A friend of R's from the states is coming over on Friday and staying with us for a week, and the flat is, as usual, a tip. We did buy a futon for the spare room the other week, but it's still unbuilt. The rest of this week's evenings will likely be spent cleaning and making habitable our home. As we're planning on selling it soon anyway, having guests is actually quite a good motivator.
The car is with the car doctor today having its exhaust replaced. With a bit of luck, once that's done it'll be fit to take us out of town so we can see a bit of the countryside while our visitor is here. Glasgow is, frankly, getting on my tits.
To the person that found this blog by searching for "feeling poorly as fuck" recently: Sorry to hear that. Have you seen your GP?
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, March 10, 2008
BrrmBrrrmScreeech!
Man, I hate driving. Partly because I'm not very good at it, and partly because I find it exceptionally stressful. Admittedly both of those things reinforce one another. Also: I know bugger all about cars, lacking as I do many of the manly genes that promote skill at DIY, interest in football, and a love of the automobile.
Why, then, did I go and buy one the other week?
Well, obviously when Wiggles comes, he (and he is a he, we discovered last week) is likely to have little short stumpy legs and will lack the skills necessary to use them for locomotion. In order for the little fella to get from A to B he's gonna need some wheels, and while we do have a pram on order, they are somewhat limited in range and speed.
So, I picked up a cheap third-hand Renault Laguna from a bloke that lives nearby. And, y'know, it's fine. I think. It's a wee bit noisy so I'm going to have someone take a look at that. But it goes and has lots of room in the back for a child and associated accessories.
And I am quite excited about being able to get out of town at the weekends. Though I am not remotely excited about trying to navigate around the city with only a vague set of instructions from Google Maps to point me in the right direction, given that someone seems to have gone before me and removed all the street signs. To compensate, and for the sake of my blood pressure, I have ordered one of those magic boxes with the lady inside who tells you where to go, leaving me free to concentrate on not crashing.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postTuesday, February 19, 2008
I'm Not Dead ...
... but you wouldn't have noticed until quite recently. Since the start of the year I've been in a sort of horrible funk, just sleep-walking through life. I'm not very good at this time of year. The dark really gets to me, and this has been compounded by weeks of horrible rain. February has been quite crisp and sunny so far, the days are getting a little longer, and I'm beginning to feel a little better. I do have a bit of a cold, but it's nothing compared to the one that has been plagueing R since before Christmas. Apparently it's common for pregnancy to slow down your immune system, making it harder to shift colds and the like, and of course she can't take anything for it. All I can do is make her steamy bowls and keep going out for tissues. It shouldn't be affecting her passenger, though, and everything seems a-ok on her part. We are almost exactly half-way there, and are going for our final scan in a couple of weeks.
In preparation for impending parenthood (and utilising the services of the cathode-ray babysitter), we thought we'd put on CBeebies the other night and have a look at what televisual fare is on offer to the younger viewer. We ended up watching an episode of In The Night Garden, a frankly terrifying programme for toddlers from the makers of Tellytubbies. In common with that show, it features oversized fabric characters larking around in a rural setting and talking gibberish. The most unsettling character is Iggle Piggle, a sort of blue teddy-bear and nominal star of the show whose continual lopsided grin can only be described as deeply sinister. Its only saving grace is Makka Pakka, whose endearing catchphrase ("Makka Pakka!") and altruistic demeanour (he wanders the wood washing other character's faces with his oversized sponge and soap) have charmed us suffiently to overcome the unease provoked by his colleagues and has gone to make "In The Night Garden" a regular teatime fixture in our house. Sadly, he is much under-utilised, and more often than not an episode will focus on the nightmarish antics of the Tomliboos, or a tale involving the Pontipine family going for a walk and losing their children along the way (Mr and Mrs Pontipine are surely some of the most negligent parents on our screens and set a terrible example for those parents who may be watching along with their kids.), rather than our undersized cave-dwelling hero. I intend to write to the makers of In The Night Garden and insist that more exposure be given to Makka Pakka forthwith. Nothing less than his own spinoff series will suffice.
In the meantime, if anyone would like to buy one of these and send it our way, it would be greatly appreciated. For the baby. Yes. The baby.
Labels: diary, pregnancy, television
link | 2 comment(s) | links to this postThursday, January 10, 2008
Back...
... in Scotland. I've been awake for far too long but I'm trying to stay up for as long as possible to avoid that horrible feeling when jet-lag leaves you completely out-of-sync with the rest of the world. Coffee has helped a little so far, but R has already fallen by the wayside and I'm fading fast.
As is traditional, we left blue skies and warm sunshine in Texas and came home to cold grey rain. The cats have been well looked after but gave us the usual "where have you been?" bollocking when we got in. The place is ankle-deep in cat hair, and a major cleanup operation is going to be required this weekend.
Fading... fast.... resolve.... weakening..... must....... nap.....
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, January 07, 2008
Happy New Year
I know it's a little bit late in coming, but we are still on holiday in Texas, staying with Rebecca's sister and her husband. Today is a quiet one. R is out shopping with her mum, and I'm taking the opportunity to stay home and be tremendously geeky by firing in to version 0.2 of Poster, which will have all sorts of snazzy new features, and provide a more adaptable platform for the even snazzier features I have planned for version 0.3 and above.
I'm not making any resolutions this year, since the arrival of the baby is likely to have a similar effect to taking my old life and putting it in a blender, and free time will be at a premium. Anyway, I'm terrible at keeping them. Let's take a trip in the backintimeotron and look at my resolutions from last year...
Resolution: Make more music.
Outcome: Bugger all. In 2007 I did even less musically that I did in 2006.
Resolution: Lose some weight.
Outcome: Cancelling my gym membership as part of a pre-baby belt-tightening operation, plus two trips to the USA involving a lot of sitting in cars and eating large breakfasts have resulted in me being the heaviest I've ever been. Attempts to take up running seemed initially promising, but shitty horrible weather has limited that somewhat.
Resolution: Procrastinate less.
Outcome: Bit of a general one that, but despite my failure to achieve the resolutions listed above, I feel that I did achieve that to a certain degree. Completing NaNoWriMo in November gave me a nice sense of being able to see a large project through, and I'm pleased to have gotten out a version of Poster which is farily usable, if currently feature-poor.
Resolution: Blog more.
Outcome: Hard to tell without actually counting all the posts I made in 2006 and 2007, but I think I achieved this one.
Anyway, resolutions or no, things are gonna change in 2008 whether I want them to or not.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
I've Seen This Happen In Other People's Lives
Today we took a trip to the Dallas Museum of Art, primarily to see a piece by Phil Collins. Not the baldy chocolate-salesman but the Turner-nominated artist-type fella, who happens to be based in Glasgow. For The World Won't Listen he travelled to Colombia, Turkey and Indonesia, and filmed Smiths fans singing karaoke versions of the songs from the titular album. The installation consists of three screens, each showing a performance from one of the three locations, synchronized such that each one is singing the same song at the same time. There are barriers between them, so that you can concentrate on a single performance if you want to without the others bleeding through, or you can wander along the back and experience bits of all free. There are some great performances, some rabid Morrissey wannabes, some who are obviously having a lot of fun, some who seem genuinely moved by the songs that they are singing, and some that are just comically bad, but all are engaging with songs written in rain-sodden Manchester, thousands of miles away from their home, but which have a universality that's carried them around the world.
The DMA is hosting the piece in its completed form for the first time, but I dare say it will turn up elsewhere, and Glasgow seems like a likely candidate since it's where the artist makes his home. If it should turn up near you, I'd highly recommend it, particularly if you are now or ever have been a Smiths fan. You'll leave with a smile on your face, at least.
Boxing Day
Or, as they call it in America, "the day after Christmas." Snappy, huh? We are in Texas over Christmas and New Year. I promised to write, in detail, about my Boxing Day as part of the Day In The Life meme that's going around my friends who blog. I should have really done it "live" yesterday, however much of it was spent driving around, so I will attempt to reconstruct it from memory. However, I cannot do so without first announcing something that I haven't discussed on here.
After suffering a miscarriage earlier in the year, R is now pregnant again. The first six weeks or so were pretty nerve-wracking, since the last pregnancy had failed at about that time, but she's now about twelve weeks along, and we have seen a healthy little passenger on the ultrasound screen. We are both elated and terrified, which is, of course, totally normal, and having to adjust to the idea of becoming parents in the new year. Anyway, that somewhat influenced our decision to come back to Texas for Christmas, even though we were here last Christmas and in the summer, since after this holiday we are going nowhere for quite a while.
Jet lag and the remains of the cough that a nasty cold has left her with woke R up at about four, but she managed to come back to bed and doze off again for a little while until about eight, when her hunger alarm went off and she announced that she had to have breakfast asap, so we got dressed quickly and went out. The previous couple of days had been sunny and relatively warm, but now it had turned grey, dreich and cold, and felt almost exactly like Glasgow had before we left. We got in the car, and drove to a nearby branch of Corner Bakery, where we had coffee (decaffinated for R), scrambled eggs, potatoes and the crispy bacon that Americans miss so much when they come to the UK. The debate between American bacon and our pink, fleshy kind is not one into which I will be drawn. I like them both for different purposes. I wouldn't put American bacon on a roll, though, as it's likely to shatter and send lethal shards of hard bacon into the head of an innocent passer-by. And nobody wants that.
Fed and satisfied, but feeling a little unhealthy from our fatty breakfasts, we went to Whole Foods, an absolutely massive grocery store by our standards but fairly normal here, and bought some fruit, before heading over to R's mum's house and picking her up. Whever we come over to Texas we always go and buy clothes at Old Navy, since they are dirt cheap to begin with, and even cheaper with the exchange rate being what it is. And, of course, Christmas being over, the sales have started, and a lot of stuff has half-off again. They aren't the greatest clothes in the world, but I'm someone who's happy so long as his body is covered, warm enough, and comfortable, so they do me fine. R needed some maternity clothes, since although her bump isn't particularly obvious yet, it is making itself felt and her regular jeans are becoming too tight to wear. She got some preggie pants, and I a few pairs of boxers and a couple of jumpers.
After clothes shopping, R felt it was time to eat again, so she got some drive-through chicken nuggets (I'm done dropping company names. Don't want this blog to sound like a long ad for all the shops and services in the Plano area.) which she ate in the car. I was still stuffed from breakfast so didn't order anything of my own, but she has a passenger to feed, of course. Once sated, we drove back to her sister's house.
Between the eleventh and fourteenth week of a pregnancy, there is an ultrasound scan that can be performed which can detect an elevated risk of Down's Syndrome in the developing foetus. It's called Nuchal Translucency Screening, and cannot be done outside of that window of opportunity. We could have it done in the UK, but by the time we get back we will be just on the cusp of fourteen weeks, so we decided to pay to have it done while we were in the US. R's sister-in-law works as a nursing assistant, and was able to get us an appointment for that afternoon, so after a quick stop we headed over to the hospital. I had never been in an American hospital before, and the experience was a surreal one. Yes, I had expected something a little bit more modern than the tatty cash-starved NHS can provided, given that they are basically businesses that can set their own prices, but this place felt more like a hotel, and a posh one at that. No unpleasant, plastic bucket seats for this waiting room. Instead we sink into plush sofas and watch the time on a pseudo-antique grandfather clock. It is certainly comfortable, but there's something obscene about such opulence in a country where those without insurance are left crippled by unmanagable debt for the crime of falling ill, and I'd take the scuffed lino of the NHS any day. Anyway, we're soon called into the scanning room, and the sonographer is a pleasant enough lady who asks lots of questions about Scotland. "What do they think of George Bush over there?" she asks. When we tell her that he's not too popular, she seems relieved, and tells us that a lot of her co-workers are hard-core Republicans and that she feels she can't express her own viewpoint without getting shouted down, which seems like a shame.
We had a scan just the other week, but it's easy for the idea of R being pregnant to become vague and abstract again without direct evidence. It's all brought home again when we see the little fella/lass on the screen. Everything seems fine, and the sonographer lets us hear the heart hammering away, but it's not lying in the correct position for her to take the measurements she needs, so there is a fair bit of faffing around until she is able to do so. Fortunately, when she does so it looks like everything is fine, which is, of course, a relief.
Elated, both by the good news and by seeing the wee yin again and knowing that, as far as can be told, he or she is doing well, we headed home. We thought about going out to see a movie, but R felt too tired and a bit nauseous so we decided to skip it and stay home for the evening. I played a bit of Zelda on the DS, getting stuck on the Isle of the Dead, ate some chicken soup that R's sister made, took her mum home, watched the Snuff Box DVDs that I'd burned to bring over, then went to bed. I read for a little while (The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.), before turning out the light and going to sleep.
And that was Boxing Day 2007. Both banal and quite exciting.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Fog
Last night we went out after work to do a bit of late Christmas shopping. Fog had descended over Glasgow, and gave the lights a soft halo. The air sparkled, implying snow, and we actually felt a little bit of seasonal cheer for the first time.
But fuck me, it was cold!
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Christmas
When I was a boy, Christmas was a big cart full of exciting magical surprises, shackled to a tiny, geriatric snail. Nowadays it feels more like a lorry full of concrete with an annoying siren on top, that you can hear and be mildly irritated by from a long way off, but then comes roaring over the hill when you least expect it, giving you only a fraction of a second to leap out of the way, and every year that lorry gets upgraded with a bigger, faster engine and even more concrete.
I used to be such a fan of Christmas as well, even well into my adulthood. I am worried that my growing Scrooginess may be an early symptom of turning into my dad.
We are going back to Texas this year, and even though the date is approaching quite rapidly and causing a little last-minute panic, I am looking forward to it. Even the actual travel isn't too bad. It's a long flight, but sitting about reading, playing my DS, and having food brought to me - even if it is some of the worst food known to man - sounds like a good way to spend a day to me, though the inevitable airport security faff I could live without. Rest assured, I shall be nailing my passport to my forehead. We wouldn't want a repeat of the Munich incident, would we?
Don't try robbing our flat when we're away, as we have a cat-sitter keeping our little furry brats company, who is an expert in the deadly arts. Possibly.
Labels: christmas, diary, travel
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, December 17, 2007
Parp!
Not the sound of my bottom, you will be relieved to hear, but my nose, as my body as been colonized by an unwelcome cold virus and converted into a snot factory. R has it as well, and worse than I do, so at its height on Saturday I just about managed to do some half-hearted flat tidying before spending the rest of the day slobbing about on the sofa. My head started to clear a bit on Sunday, just in time for an appalling gig with the band-I'm-in-what-is-not-the-choir, but much of today has been spent blowing my nose and annoying my workmates.
Christmas is just around the corner, and I have only bought a couple of things so far, so I must get my finger out. The work Xmas party was on Saturday, and while it was, as you'll be sick of hearing me moan, exactly the same as every other work Xmas party ever, I did quite enjoy myself. I think because it was in a reasonably small venue and so felt more like our party, rather than one set in a huge hotel function room shared with twenty other companies. And while the DJ played the standard work Xmas party set, he at least kept the cheesy banter to a minimum.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postSunday, December 09, 2007
Mixed Successes
Well, for all my claims of busy-ness, this weekend has been a bit of a mixed bag. We didn't go to the movies on Thursday after all, since R was feeling characteristically green. Instead I spent most of that evening going through an iTunes library that suddenly seemed to be entirely populated by the unlistenable and unpopular and picking out tunes that people might like to hear at Friday's choir Christmas party.
Said part went pretty well in the end. I had the easy job, DJ-wise, since I went on relatively near the end when everybody was already pissed and dancing. No warming-up required, I just put on lots of dancefloor-friendly crowd pleasers that I thought would go down well, and people kept on dancing, so I feel justified in calling my first attempt as a DJ a success. Havng a sympathetic audience made up of pissed-up friends with broadly similar musical tastes helped a lot, I have no doubt, but watching folk shake their asses to Can was a definite highlight, and I got home pretty drunk and elated.
Saturday and Sunday have, so far, been mince, and I have failed to finish the story I wanted to get in for Tuesday's writing class. It's already too late, since they have to be submitted in time for them to be emailed out to the rest of the class so they can read them in advance. Oh well. I can churn out a 50,000 word novel in a month, but having to write a story that other people are going to read and critique has re-awakened my inner editor, and he demands more quality than I have in me to give, I fear.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postThursday, December 06, 2007
Dear Santa, please bring me more hours in the day.
Well, November, and the task I had set myself during that month, may be over but I am no less busy. The choir we're in has gigs coming up, a reactivated and reconfigured version of the on-again-off-again band I'm in also has a gig next week, my writing class ends next week and there's a short story that I'd like to get finished and critiqued, I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet, nor signed a single card, there are two Christmas parties coming up, I volunteered to DJ at one of them, the flat is a tip, we're going to see The Darjeeling Limited tonight, we're going through to Edinburgh at the weekend to check out mar-c's exhibition at the National Museum, and I've started work in earnest on the next version of Poster. Phew. It's nice to be active, but I'm feeling a wee bit overwhelmed at the moment.
On the subject of DJ'ing at a Xmas party, it's the choir who are having it, and I won't be the only one playing records (or queueing up songs in iTunes more like) so it should be quite informal and fun and with no need to resort to the standard Xmas-party playlist that I get to hear every. bloody. year. at our work do. Having said that, I volunteered in an overcaffeinated rush of self-confidence, and now I'm feeling a bit nervous about it. Any advice you can give someone whose closest experience to DJing a party is bring a mix-tape to play on a long car journey?
Friday, November 30, 2007
I am an novellist!
To clarify, then, since when I posted it was very late and I just wanted to have one celebratory "woohoo!" before going to bed: Since shortly after midnight on November 1st I have been participating in National Novel Writing Month, the ill-named international event whereby participants attempt to write a novel of 50,000 words or more by midnight on November 30th. Last night I liimped over the finish line with 50,021 words, uploaded it to the official site for validation and the link to a "well-done" page and a printable certificate, and turned in, elated.
The novel itself is an awful mash of ill-formed characters, clunky prose, bad dialogue, heavy-handed cod-philosophy, and plot strands that look meaningful for a few pages then wither away to nothingness and are never mentioned again. It is, in short, a mess, but it's my mess, and while I won't be thrusting copies into the hands of whoever I come across (and I certainly won't be posting it here), I am quite proud of it, and of myself for making it to the end. I've always been one for taking on big projects then getting bored a little while later and letting them die. On every computer I have ever owned, including my current MacBook, there have been fragments of stories, novels, video games and applications, and if I still had my ZX Spectrum and assorted tapes you would find the same. I no longer trust myself to finish any project, so I am pleased to have proven myself wrong, if you like, by taking on a task that actually required some discipline and getting through it, despite the inevitable distractions of movies, video games, and personal hygene.
Although the finished product isn't what you'd call a great work of literature, I think the process of writing it has been very useful and will benefit my writing in future. If there's one thing it has brought home, it is that if you are stuck with a piece of fiction and aren't sure where it should go next (usually the point at which I put it away thinking that inspiration will just strike when I'm not thinking about it, which it never does), just write through it. Don't be afraid to be silly or to write bad prose or (as I did) add a talking cat. So long as your story is moving it will get somewhere, and you can go back and choose a better route once you know where it's going.
If was to do NaNoWriMo again, and if I have time in November 2008 I'd like to, I'd maybe go into it with a bit of a plan, rather than the very vague idea I had when I set off this time. It's not cheating to make notes about your novel before Nov. 1st, so long as no actual content gets written. But at least I got there in the end, and if I can write a bad novel, that's one step closer to writing maybe a good one someday.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
A Day In The Life
MooshiMooshiSan, frustrated at her friends not updating their blogs, has suggested that all and sundry document today, Wednesday the 7th of November, as completely as possible.
I was woken up at about six by Lucy, the largest and pushiest of our two cats, miaowing over and over again in the way she does when she wants fed. Lucy's breakfast alarm seems hard-wired to go off in the early hours of morning to matter what. God knows why. Rather than stagger out of bed at 4am to feed her, we have one of those cat bowls that have a lid, which springs open on a timer. Normally this is enough to get her to shut up and let us sleep through the night, but not this morning. I figured that I'd forgot to set the timer, but when I got up the lid was open and there was still food in it. I tried giving her a bit more, but nothing seemed to shut her up. I also tried going back to bed and closing the bedroom door on her, but predictably that just resulted in a combination of miaowing and scratching, so in the end I just gave up, wide awake and with no chance of getting back to sleep.
It did give me the opportunity to go out for a run, though. I hadn't been out at all last week, and felt that I had lost a bit of momentum. Sure enough, I didn't manage to go as far as I had been able a couple of weeks ago before falling into the run/walk/run pattern, but it was good to get back into it and get my heart rate up. At home, I took a shower, got dressed, and make myself a bowl of muesli and a glass of orange juice, and a bowl of microwave porridge for R. Once I'd eaten I still had some time before my train, so I checked my mail and RSS feeds, and played a turn on Facebook Scrabulous (to which I am incurably addicted) before heading out the door.
At work I put on a pot of coffee, and got fired into finishing off a job that would have been done weeks ago had it not been for various other issues popping up and taking priority. It felt good to finally knock it on the head, but I am only cautiously relieved, since it's entirely possible that I'll be revisiting it once it goes into the product and testing get their claws on it.
At lunchtime I nipped out and bought a pasta-salad thing from M+S, then back at my desk checked my RSS feeds again and did some work on my NaNoWriMo novel. I'm doing fairly well, having passed the 10,000 word mark, but the last couple of days have seen me slow down. Yesterday I managed to hammer out approx. 700 words on my lunch break, but no more later in the day due to attending my writing class, and a gig immediately afterwards. At lunch today I only managed about 400, but every little helps. I'm generally aiming to reach 2000 each day, which should get me comfortably past the 50,000 word mark by November 30th. The novel itself is, of course, complete bollocks, but it's an enjoyable experience and I'll be pleased if I make it past the finish line.
The afternoon in work was mostly spent tidying up some annoying little issues. At home R and I hummed-and-hawed over what to have for dinner, and whether to go out or not. In the end we settled for spinach quesidillas, which R made, and which were, naturally, awesome. We needed a few items so I went out to Tesco. The lady in front of me in the queue bought a bottle of vodka and a packet of cigarettes, and paid from a Hello Kitty purse.
After dinner we watched TV for a little bit. R intends to go with one of her friends to Ikea tomorrow, so we spent some time looking through the catalogue at chairs and bathroom cabinets. Then I did the washing up, and sat down to do a bit more on the terrible untitled novel. Current word-count: 12,688.
Finally, I updated this blog, and went to bed. Probably. I expect there might be time for a little Zelda:Phantom Hourglass before I turn out the light, however.
And that, dear reader, was my boring Wednesday.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postThursday, November 01, 2007
NaNoWriMo
Like an eejit, and as if I didn't have enough projects on the go already, I've decided to give NaNiWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) a crack this year. This means attempting to write a novel of 50,000 words or more between 00:00:00 on the first of November and 23:59:59 on the 30th. To achieve this, authors will have to produce a minimum of 1667 words every day in November. And, before you say it, of course the finished product will be a load of mince. First drafts of novels usually are. First drafts dashed off in a month certainly will be. There's no time to edit, to go back and fix things, to finely craft your prose. All of those things can be done in December. For now it's enough just to write and keep writing.
The task is pretty daunting, but might not be as hard as I had worried it might be. I managed to spit out about 660 words last night in half an hour before turning in. It's quite liberating to no longer have the luxury of going back and tinkering, and to just keep pressing on, so long as you're writing something. I did have a couple of pints earlier in the evening, which may have helped oil the gears somewhat.
Anyway, if I update this place even less in the coming month, that'll be why. If you are also giving it a pop, or just want to be nosy and take a look at how I'm doing, my profile on the official website is here.
I do plan on getting a first release of Poster out in the next few days, however... watch this space!
Labels: diary, poster, writing
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postSaturday, October 20, 2007
Guy Fawkes' Month
When I was young, I would hear of calls to have fireworks banned, and thought that they came from miserable old killjoys.
Back then, however, I don't remember there being armies of neds firing rockets down the street in the middle of October.
I am an unrepentant, card-carrying killjoy. And what of it?
Labels: diary
link | 1 comment(s) | links to this postFriday, October 19, 2007
Music Hall Star
Have I ever mentioned the choir that me & the missus are in? I can't remember. Anyway, I won't name names because I don't want to be Googled, but earlier in the year we both joined a non-religious choir that specialises in reinterpreting country and rock songs in a choral stylee. It's good fun and we've played numerous shows, from wee gigs where all 40-odd of us are crammed into a corner of a pub, to big festivals.
Anyway, last night we took part in a fundraising event in aid of the Britannia Panopticon. Opened in 1859 as a music hall on the top floor of a Merchant City warehouse building, it entertained the masses of Glasgow, saw both the young Stan Laurel and Cary Grant tread its boards before they became famous, played host to freak shows and a zoo (!), served as cinema for a short time, and finally closed in 1938. Surprisingly, rather than be repurposed as offices or flats, as most buildings in the city center, it seems that the Panopticon was simply boarded up and forgotten about. The ground floor is currently occupied by a rather tatty amusement arcade, and from the street you would never know it was there. Go up the dusty flight of stairs at the back of the amusements, however, and it's like taking a trip back in time.
The Panopticon was "rediscovered" in the late 90's, and efforts are afoot to restore it to something like its formal glory. Or, at the very least, keep it from falling down. Time has not been kind, naturally. Paint and plaster is flaking from the ceiling, the balconies are very much out of bounds to visitors, and a cold draught blows through it. The dilapitated state of the place does, however, give you a sense of how old it really is, and you can easily imagine how it must have looked in its prime. To think that it lay dormant and unseen for so long.
The Panopticon is not generally open to the public, but if you want to see the inside then various art and fundraising events take place on a regular basis, and there are a couple of videos on the Youtubes. It's well worth visiting in person if possible, but dress warm.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
The Running Man
Or rather, the Running, Walking For A Bit, Running A Little More, Then Returning Home Gasping For Breath And Clutching His Side After Only Fifteen Minutes Man.
For various reasons, all of them financial, I cancelled my gym membership a few months ago. I was never a religious five-times-a-week attendee, but I have been missing it, and a general feeling of unhealthiness has been growing lately. As has my belly, since I've put on about half a stone in the intervening time.
Yesterday we got a card through the door to tell us that the water to the flat would be turned off for a few hours starting at 8am. This, plus the truely awful DiMaggio's pizza I ate for dinner last night, gave me enough motivation to force myself out of bed a bit earlier this morning and do something I'd been talking about for a while, but never managed - to go for a run before work. I got my shorts and trainers on, and slipped out into the cold, dark, and thankfully deserted October morning.
When I left the flat and started to run it felt great. I was young and healthy and free. For about three blocks or so. Then I started to die, and fell into a run-a little, walk-a-little pattern. I was back in the house after about a quarter of an hour, absolutely knackered.
Not a great start, but a start nonetheless, and I'm sure I could build it up if I can get into a routine. Oh, I do love my bed, though.
Labels: diary, exercise, running
link | 1 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, October 15, 2007
Expensive
That's what yesterday was, after pointless taxi rides to and from the airport, and checking into a hotel so we could have little luxuries like running water. The blackout curtains and lack of nocturnal feline disturbance were also appreciated, however.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postTo cap it all...
... a burst main has left us without running water.
Man, today has sucked boaby!
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postSunday, October 14, 2007
Stupid, Stupid Day
Right now I'm supposed to be on a 'plane flying to Munich. For dull, worky purposes, yes, but I was looking forward to visiting a new city I had never been to before, and getting a change of scenery for a few days. This day has been, however, not mine. The shower breaking down for the nth time was irritating enough, and the taxi driver deciding that the heavy-but-moving traffic on the motorway was too busy and choosing a heavily-clogged back-road instead made me nervous that I was going to miss my flight. I got there without too much time to spare, paid the man, jammed my passport and ticket into my back pocket, and high-tailed it through the car-park to the terminal entrance, only to find when I got there that my passport was no longer with me. I retraced my steps three or four times, asked around, went to the lost-property office, but to no avail, and had to slink off home, defeated.
I had assumed that someone had lifted it from my back pocket. It seemed to be in there quite securely, when I headed to the terminal, and there were a lot of people around. Surely, if it had just fallen out, someone would have spotted it and caught up with me. But no - I got a phone call this evening from the airport to say that it had been handed in. Where it had been in the intervening hours, I cannot say. But man, do I feel like a tube, and I'm not particularly looking forward going into work tomorrow and telling the whole embaressing story over and over again.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Radioooo
So, last night we went to see Ian Curtis biopic Control at the GFT. I've written a full review for diskant, but if you want the short version: it was alright, I suppose, but pretty disappointing.
Also disappointing was the discovery that David Lynch is making an appearance at the GFT next month; an appearance that has, of course, entirely sold out. And why did nobody tell me? The GFT website has been down for a redesign for a while, and we haven't been in the cinema itself lately, so we had no idea. Bah.
My writing class starts again tomorrow, and I've been asked to submit something for critique on the first night. I agreed to do so, but the only thing I've finished lately I'm not that happy about. It's very very "told" narration. (Something about "Control" that bugged me - "Show, don't tell." I am a hypocrite, but at least I'm honest about it.) I am, therefore, "bricking it".
I have Zelda:Phantom Hourglass on my DS, but have only played the first few minutes so far. It looks gorgeous, though - like proper 2D Zelda given a lovely cel-shaded 3D makeover. Naturally, the story is the usual complete tosh - Princess Zelda's been kidnapped, you have to rescue her, and you start without a sword or shield and with only three heart points, even though this is a direct sequel to Wind Waker, and presumably Link should still be all tooled up from that earlier adventure. Still, anything else wouldn't be Zelda.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Drunken Blogging is Never a Good Idea
Especially at this ridiculous time of the morning. Suffice to say we have been at Claire and Lee's flatwarming party, sampling foul-tasting spirits, Singstar, and one-too-many sausage rolls. And a good time it was too, though I do not envy their neighbours under the circumstances. Nobody needs to hear me butchering The Power of Love at 2am, no matter how distantly, for which I humbly apologise.
G'night!
Labels: diary, drunk, food, games
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postWednesday, October 03, 2007
Moaning Zombie
It was dark when I got up this morning, and it's a cold and rainy grey day. That would be summer 2007 well and truly dead, then, compounding the general feeling of malaise I've had for the past few days, not helped by a low-level cold I've been nursing. All I want to do is go back to bed, and no amount of coffee is making that go away.
Sorry to be an old misery-guts, but, y'know, if I moan on here it keeps me from moaning to, and pissing off, people in the real world.
Oh, my life's not terrible at all, and I don't mean to suggest it is or wallow in self-pity. Just feeling in a bit of a funk, that's all.
One of the many things I should be thankful for is that I have a lifestyle that allows me to waste time sitting about playing video games, and at the moment Resident Evil 4 on the Wii has been the focus of my attention. I've played all the "main" Resident Evil games except for number 2, but I've never been a massive fan of them. I normally start out enjoying them, but inevitably get stuck on some ludicrously powerful boss with only a handful of bullets to my name, or have to get through a swathe of zombies with same, and give up, cursing the useless controls. Resi 4, however, has taken the focus away from careful rationing of ammo and objects, and in the process has turned into something like a cross between traditional Resident Evil and an FPS. In fact, the game that it reminds of most of all is the original Doom, in a way that no game since has done, since there is a similar fearful atmosphere tempered by the gory fun to be had in fighting large swarms of enemies at once.
This is something that Id got very, very wrong in the making of Doom 3. By designing it to be a fancy graphics demo which pushed the host machine as far as it would go, they wound up with a graphics engine that couldn't handle too many enemies on screen at once. Half the joy of the original game, and I apologise if this whole rant is making me sound like a sad adolescent, was the large-scale carnage you lay down. Take that away and you're left with a series of dull waltzes with a couple of baddies at a time. Still, at least they gave us interesting environments to play in. Oh, wait...
Anyway, if the Wiimote can be prised from my fingers, this Friday we are going to see Ian Curtis biopic Control, and I think there's a housewarming party to be going to on Saturday. So, mustn't grumble, really.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Deep
"That Billie Piper - she's the same character in every role."
"What? A time-travelling prostitute? Actually - I'd probably watch that."
In the future, the conversations we have in this house will be mentioned in the same breath as the Platonic Dialogues.
Labels: diary, television
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postSaturday, September 22, 2007
Nothing
Today is almost at an end, and I have achieved approximately bugger-all. If this were a Sunday I'd be depressed about that, but Saturdays are easier to let slide when you know you still have another day in which to make your weekend worthwhile.
I have, however, shot a lot of (not-)zombies in the face in Resident Evil 4, so it hasn't been a total loss.
Oh, and Poster now supports labels on Blogger. Woo.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Bah
My first full week back in the office since returning from holiday is stretching out in front of me, and I just feel like crawling under a rock, I'm so low.
On Friday night I went out for my ex-boss's leaving do, which was a boozy good time and the first work night out I've been on in a while. Saturday was largely spent recovering, which cake and copious orange juice in Mono with Marceline assisted. A day spent getting over the after-effects of a good night out never seems wasted, but Sunday was (mostly) dull wet splat of a day about which I have nothing to say, except that I slept only fitfully and now feel like crap.
Labels: diary
link | 2 comment(s) | links to this postWednesday, September 05, 2007
Yawn
Went to bed at about one a.m. last night, suffering from an evil headache. I managed to drop off at around two but only for an hour or so, then lay in a sort-of numb-but-conscious state for a couple of hours before falling back into a fitful sleep until half-six. Could have been a lot worse, I suppose, but today is going to be a long one, I think.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postTuesday, September 04, 2007
Fishies
My body may be back in Scotland but my brain isn't yet. The 10 o'clock alarm I set for myself in an attempt to get back on a normal sleeping schedule was quickly slapped into silence, and I didn't manage to drag myself from my pit for another two hours. I'm feeling pretty knackered this evening, so hopefully I'll be able to get to sleep at something close to a normal time tonight, since I've got to get up and go to work tomorrow.
This evening we went to The Chippy Doon The Lane in town for some dinner. They deal in nostalgic grub in a similar fashion to Monster Mash (Oh why did the Glasgow branch have to close?), but in more fashionable surroundings and specialising in the old-fashioned "fish tea" - battered fish of your choice (from traditional haddock or cod to salmon or their catch of the today, sea breen in this case) with chunky chips, bread & butter and tea or coffee - served, somewhat incongruously given the surroundings, on a cardboard tray. It was pretty good, but I couldn't help thinking that we could have had the same thing from Guido's round the corner for about a quarter of the price and we were just paying for the ambiance, though it did seem a lot less greasy than the usual chippy fish supper you get round here, which is probably a good thing given the amount of fatty fried food we ate on holiday.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Back...
... on chilly Scottish soil. Actually, we arrived at the flat just before 9am, then foolishly allowed ourselves to be taken in by the self-lie that we could go to bed for just a little nap and get up again before lunchtime. Six hours later...
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postSunday, August 05, 2007
Wet
Another miserable, dreich day in this long cold non-summer, so we decided to make peace with the H2O and head down to the local leisure centre to go swimming. Unfortunately, everybody else in Glasgow had the same idea. Little kids dive-bombed the shallow-end, big kids dive-bombed the deep end, and a gang of pasty neds colonized the hot-tub. Not even the a strategically deposited Mars bar could guarantee enough room to actually swim, Glaswegian children being made of stronger stuff. We bobbed about for a bit, spotting little gaps of calm and grabbing them when we could, but in the end we just gave up and headed home.
Scotland isn't renowned for its hot summers, but this is ridiculous. We've barely had a handful of nice days in three months. Fortunately, we're due to visit the land of crippling, punishing heat soon enough. We cannot wait.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postSunday, July 22, 2007
Simple Pleasures
- Take a box of six eggs.
- Use them all at once, and put the empty shells back in the box.
- Close the lid of the box, and squeeze it until the shells break into hundreds of pieces with a lovely crackling sound.
- Experience near-orgasmic delight.
Disclaimer: May not work if you're not me. link | 0 comment(s) | links to this post
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Currently...
(So much is happening and so little is bloggable. For now, anyway. But in order to breath some kind of life into this thing I'll take memetic inspiration from Marceline on the Diskant weblog and do a quick "catchup" post.)
Listening:
The last record I bought was the debut by Bracken, which was purchased from Monorail purely on the basis that it was on the Anticon label, and they can seemingly do no wrong. This is no exception and may be my favourite album this year so far. I guess I should probably review it properly some time.
My iPod, however, is largely playing host to old episodes of In Our Time, the Radio 4 programme in which Merlvyn Bragg chats to three academic types about history, science and philosophy. The site only allows you to download the last episode, but a workmate has been archiving them for the past year or so, and I've set myself the marathon task of listening to each one, as well as the new ones when they come out.
Imagine a world in which, in order to listen to a radio programme or watch TV, you had to sit in front of a little box at exactly the right time! Apparently people used to do that! Madness.
Reading:
The lecturer who took the writing course I've just finished repeatedly recommended Raymond Carver as a master of the short story, so I'm finally getting round to reading his collection "Cathedral". His style is very clipped and minimal, which is refreshing if a little dry at times, but they are all expertly constructed. Like Bukowski but without the rage.
Watching:
Nothing on TV, since Doctor Who finished. Well, ok, and the odd episode of Big Brother, which has caught me more this year than the last few, but not in the same obsessive way as the first few years.
Last night we watched The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada which was fabulous. Tommy Lee Jones is, as they say, "the man."
Anticipating:
Supersonic this weekend. Also, NYC in August. And other stuff I can't talk about yet.
Working on:
Poster is still in progress, and will see a beta release one of these days. Just to prove it really exists, here's a wee screenshot...
Plus occasional tunes, occasional writing, and occasional paralysing panic when I realise that I've got a million more important things I should be doing, like getting the flat cleaned up and on the market.
Labels: books, diary, games, movies, music, poster
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postWednesday, June 13, 2007
Not feeling like crap. Suspiciously.
I've been feeling pretty good about life lately. Barring a couple of slightly wobbly days I haven't had a bout of depression in a couple of months now. That's not to say I've been wandering around with a big grin on my face the whole time; I've got the same worries as always, and I've been pissed-off, angry and sad at various times, but that's not the same thing as being depressed. A couple of slightly-wobbly days aside, that sluggish, useless, hopeless feeling that comes when I'm at low-tide hasn't troubled me in a wee while, for which I'm thankful.
I hope I'm not tempting fate by talking about it. Maybe it's just saving itself for a massive all-out attack that will leave me swinging from the rafters. I do wonder what's changed, however. Possibly it's nothing more than a chance combination of chemicals that could not have been predicted, and have simply caused a longer-than-usual "up" that will run out of steam soon. Possibly it's just because I've been keeping busy lately, with a couple of musical projects on the go and my writing class helping to keep my brain active. (Not to mention a recently-acquired addiction to the Sudoku mode in Brain Training.) It's certainly not down to exercise - it's a great antidepressant, but until yesterday I hadn't been to the gym in ages.
Alternatively, it could have something to do with the cod-liver oil capsules I've been taking. Every couple of months some new study comes out trumpeting the mental-health benefits of Omega-3 fatty acids, as found in fish oils and, increasingly, in everything from yogurt to bread as food manufacturers fall over themselves to cash in on the latest health fad. There is some evidence for it, mind you, but the majority is anecdotal, and there has been very little in the way of genuinely scientific study on the matter. The claims of the Omega-3 camp are a favourite target of Ben Goldacre's excellent Bad Science blog, which I would encourage anyone with even a passing interest in science and who wishes to see beyond the "boffins prove <something really obvious&gr;" style of science reporting we get in most of the papers to add to their RSS readers post-haste. I started taking them "just to see if it would make a difference", after watching that excellent Stephen Fry documentary about depression in which one of his interviewees made similar claims, and am prepared to admit that maybe, just maybe, it has.
Anyway, I don't know why I'm feeling better than usual, but I'm pleased that I am and am not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. I just hope it lasts.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Default Apology Post Template
Yes yes, sorry for lack of updates and all that. I have been quite insanely busy, but mostly with stuff involving other people who might not like me blathering about it on the interwebs, and I like to keep this site relatively anonymous except for those who know me. This is a bit frustrating, because this week has been terrifically exciting but completely non-bloggable. I haven't had a night at home all week, and tonight will be no different, since I'm off to the pictures to see Jindabyne, which has been getting superb reviews. I also haven't been out for a Friday post-work pint with my workmates in ages, and I promised myself that I would do so tomorrow, but the temptation just to stay at home and tackle the teetering piles of laundry and washing-up is pretty strong.
Anyway, progress on Poster, my desktop blogging-tool, is continuing, but not as quickly as I had foreseen. The basic functionality came together pretty quickly, but I want even the first version to be a pleasant user-experience, and it's that which is taking the time. It's getting there, though, and I hope it will be worth the wait.
Expect a return to more frequent posting soon...
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Sniff, etc.
I've had this cold for about two weeks now. At its height I had a couple of days off work, feeling like hammered dog shit and able to do nothing but sit on the couch watching TV and feeling sorry for myself. On the plus side, it did let me catch up on some movies that I couldn't convince R to watch. Nothing like a big dumb blockbuster when you're feeling poorly. Thank you, Superman Returns. Anyway, once that stage passed I reckoned the cold would be gone completely in a day or two, but it's a tenacious little bugger and just won't die. In fact, last night I started feeling significantly worse, going through the best part of a box of tissues in just a few hours and sneezing my head clean off. R made some awesome chilli and nuclear-strength salsa which might have contributed to the sniffles in the short-term, but this was an all-night snotfest. Maybe it was hayfever interacting with the last vestiges of the cold itself. Either way, the least fun part of my evening was balancing precariously on top of a wobbly stepladder while attempting to put the smoke alarm back up and trying hard not to explosively sneeze myself into the "90% of accidents happen in the home" statistical bracket. It took far longer than it should have to get the thing to stay up, and I'm hoping that I don't come home tonight and find that it's fallen off and brained the cat. Somehow I never fail to turn even the simplest DIY task into an epic, sweary, struggle.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postTuesday, May 08, 2007
Um... hello
Sorry for not posting of late, but I have been stupidly busy, and continue to be so. My "to-do" list is literally overflowing and spilling all over the floor. Remember The Milk is a superb tool, and being able to sync it with iCal and then onto my phone by Bluetooth gets the geek in me all excited in a slightly disturbing way, but man it's depressing when your "overdue" list gets that big. You'd think that being busy would give me stuff to blog about, but I don't much like posting details of my real life. It's only when I'm bored and navel-gazing that I feel the urge to write about it.
I am pretty tired this morning, having been woken up at 3.45am by the incessant chirp of the smoke alarm, telling me that it's battery was running out. Cue much swearing and clattering while I dragged out the stepladder with a bleary-eyed lack of grace then wrestled with the alarm itself, virtually ripping it from the ceiling.
I had hoped to have a first beta release of Poster out by now, but a persistant and pernicious bug, seemingly in the Windows implementation of the Java GUI library I am using, is holding things up. It won't kill the project, but it is slowing me down while I bang my head against it. Frustratingly, I can't even replicate it in a persistant manner, so can't report it. Grr.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Birthdays, Two: Yesterday
It seems as though the majority of my friends (not to mention my wife) have birthdays in March, making it an expensive and boozy time of the year. Maybe it's the June heat that causes mass rutting and a corresponding swarm of babies nine months later. I dunno. Yesterday it was the turn of both mar-c and John to get older. We met up with the former in Mono for drinks and cake, which was duly photographed for Cake Tourism purposes, then went round to the latter's flat for continued festivities. We were horribly aware of time marching on and work looming in the morning, but all life's pleasures must be paid for and we were having fun, so we stayed up past our bedtimes. Yes, we were paying for it this morning, but without regret. It was a good night and worth a fuzzy head.
The last few days have been noticeably warmer, and it feels as though spring has finally begun in earnest. The platform was swarming with midges this morning, but they were almost welcome since they came with warming sunshine.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postSaturday, March 17, 2007
Saw-watch. The thrilling conclusion!
Click the pictures for larger versions with comments.
I had a very brief shot when it arrived, and can make some lovely noises come from it, though having enough control over the tone to make a recognizable tune seems some time off. It's R's present, though, so I've put it away for when she gets home. link | 0 comment(s) | links to this post
Friday, March 16, 2007
Saw-watch. Day Four
Still no saw.
Though there was a letter confirming my place on a writing course at Glasgow Uni starting in April. That's Glasgow Uni who told me to bugger off when I applied there in 1994. WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?
Oh... it's you, isn't it? Laughing while you count the money I just gave you for the privilege of being lectured at your institution for a couple of hours a week? Thought so.
This weekend I shall be attending a German-themed birthday party where, I am assured, there will be much bratwurst for the eating.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Missing Choir
R had a gig with the choir at the GOMA as part of an opening last night. I went along with her after work, but because of the nature of the place it didn't feel right to hang around during sound-check, since I'm not a member and it was a formal event in an art gallery rather than a gig in a pub, so I scurried off to try and waste some time before the doors opened officially. I didn't much fancy sitting in a noisy, crowded pub, so loitered in Borders for a while, heroically spending nothing, before wandering down to Mono. Thankfully there wasn't a band on and it wasn't busy, so I spent a fairly relaxed half hour or so reading on a sofa before getting a text from R saying "That's us, come on down." Unfortunately I thought that meant "that's us finished sound check, and the doors are now open", rather than "that's us about to do our thing", so stayed to finish my drink and ended up missing them. Ah well. Remember kids: to ASSUME makes an ASS out of U and ME.
Saw-watch. Day Three: When we got home there was a card in the mailbox telling me that I owed Parcelforce twenty quid for VAT on an imported item. They didn't say what is was, but I sense the saw's presence drawing near. Paid on the website and await delivery of mystery item with bated breath.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Japanese Lynch Saw
I really must make a start on that desktop Blogging tool, since, although the "new" Blogger's interface is much improved, it's still a pain in the arse to fire up a browser and navigate to the page when you just want to knock up a quick post. At least, more of a pain in the arse than starting w.bloggar used to be. If they'd just get round to supporting nu-Blogger they could save me the effort.
Last night we were supposed to go and see David Lynch's new film Inland Empire, which is generating both excellent reviews and awful interviews in the press lately. Though he's too mild-mannered to be bolshy, you can sense the exasperation whenever some lazy hack asks "So, David, what's your new film actually about?" However, after some dodgy Japanese fast food in Oko-Express on Queen Street, R started to feel a little green, so we went home instead. We got her an acoustic guitar for her birthday, so we started working through her "Learn guitar in eight weeks book". I'm doing it with her since, although I know a few chords, my guitar playing is embaressingly bad, and forcing me to practice the basics can't hurt. Later chapters go into scales and things that I've never learned also, so it's all good.
Saw-watch. Day Two: Thought for a moment that the saw had come when we found a "You were out, so we've taken your parcel away to an impossible-to-reach location, and no, we won't redeliver it anywhere that's in any way convenient to you" card in the mailbox last night. It was addressed to Rebecca, however, and I had the saw sent to me in the hope that would arrive pre-birthday. Drat.
Labels: diary, movies, music, software
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, March 12, 2007
Ice Cream and Jelly
A big run of posts and then two weeks of nothing. Blogging and exercising have more in common than you might think. Both are largely dependant on maintaining momentum and fall by the wayside as soon as I'm remotely busy.
In the last couple of weeks I've been involved in moving offices at work (to a smaller, but far prettier and even more central location), signed up for a creative writing class at Glasgow uni (starting next month), saw LCD Soundsystem at the Barras (excellent as ever, despite Moog malfunctions), bought Excite Truck for the Wii (looks like an early PS2 game but plays like Stunt Car Racer, so I'm enjoying it.) and, last night, attended an "old-school" 80's-style birthday party, winning pass-the-parcel, musical statues and the weird Mars-bar eating game, the rules of which are too long winded to go into here. I am the kids party-game king!
Right, maybe with the backlog of events cleared with extreme brevity I can get back into the habit of writing a little every day. Wish me luck.
Today is R's birthday. She is somethingty-something years old. She has to work today, which is sucky, but we're going out for a meal tonight with some friends. Unfortunately, the musical saw I ordered for her has been delayed. No, seriously.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Wii Moany Valentine
A contender for worst blog post title of all time? I think so!
Anyway, this past week has been almost entirely mince, until about 8pm last night when it started to pick up a bit. We had a stupid, stupid weekend, which I won't go into but I suspect that we owe grovelling apologies to a number of friends we blew off, and we are probably now pariahs in this town. Since then work has been a complete bastard, a sandwich of crisp stress and fresh rage between two big slices of wholemeal overtime.
Of course, yesterday was Valentine's day, for men one of the stressiest days of the year anyway. Fortunately I managed to duck out of work at a reasonable hour. We booked a nice restaurant that we had been to before and which had always been really good. Of course, they were blaring "romantic" hits off of what I assume was one of those "Greatest Love Songs Ever" CDs - the type of thing more likely to be bought in a service station that in an actual record store - and the table was covered in rose petals, but we assumed that the high cheese factor was a necessary evil of the occasion and the service and food would be good. Dead wrong. I don't know if it was because it was a special "Valentine's menu", but it slow in coming and deeply rubbish, giving the impression that the regular owners had turned the place over to a bunch of catering students for the evening and buggered off home. Even the heart-shaped choccies that came with the bill.
But, like I said, things got better - we went to see Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright's new film Hot Fuzz, which, despite pretty much taking Shaun of the Dead, removing the references to zombie movies and replacing them with references to American cops-n-gunplay flicks, was immense fun. I haven't laughed so much ages, and never, in recent memory, in the cinema, and playing "spot the British TV comedian" is always a joy. It's not often you go to see a reasonably high-budget movie featuring the likes of Bill Bailey or Adam Buxton, and it kinda makes you hope that the transatlantic success of Shaun can be reproduced for Hot Fuzz, if just because it tickles me to think of such quixotic british-born talent (or to put it another way - a bunch of blokes whose late-night twatting about on Channel 4 I've enjoyed), getting that sort of exposure.
That said, fingers crossed that Pegg's recent Hollywood success doesn't see him exclusively trading these sodden shores and partnership with Nick Frost for sunny LA and David Schwimmer.
Ironically, Friends was always the show I contrasted Pegg/Frost/Wright's Spaced with when raving about it to people. Where Friends was about beautiful, glamorous, rich people living in New York, Spaced centered around a bunch of listless British 20-somethings who played video games, enjoyed the odd smoke, went out on the piss, and didn't really know what they wanted to do with their lives. In short, it was a sitcom about me and my friends.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not about to knock anyone else's success. I think it's great that Simon Pegg is getting offers left and right from over the pond, just so long as it doesn't stop him making the likes of Shaun and Hot Fuzz as well.
Anyway, after the film we wandered home with big grins on our faces to find a Parcelforce card through the door. I was dreading a trip out to the depot, which isn't in the handiest of places to get to if you don't have a car, but fortunately they had left it with the neighbours. My Wii had arrived! Yay! Didn't get much time to play with it though, since it was late and I had to get up the next morning, though we did enjoy setting up our Miis and fiddling with the Weather and News channels. Should have more time to play with it this weekend, I hope.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Late For Work And Useless
I didn't go to bed particularly late last night, but I was still awake and fizzing with energy with no outlet at 4am. The opposite was the case at 6.30 when the alarm went off, and was slapped into silence. Then again at 6.39, 6.48, 6.57...
It's going to take a lot of coffee to see me through the rest of today.
On a tangent... can anyone recommend a good desktop blogging tool? I used to use w.bloggar (sic), which was pretty good, but it doesn't seem to support nu-Blogger and is updated at a fairly glacial pace. Windows and/or OS X please, though if I can't find one that suits, I'm thinking of just downloading the Google-provided libraries and writing one myself in Java. So as an alternative question, what features would your perfect desktop-based blogging tool have, assuming you're not using it already?
Edit - I should probably have added the caveat that it should be free. There seems to be loads of blog editors out there that cost actual cash money, which seems daft to me for something relatively simple, used largely by hobbyists, and which simply replaces an existing interface.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Sleep and Nelson
We slept pretty late today, since for the first time in a couple of weeks we've got nothing on that demands we get up. I'm now paying for it with a headache and the feeling that I've wasted half the day, but I'm grateful for the opportunity just to put my feet up, though.
We would probably have gone to bed earlier last night if we weren't kept awake by the drunk neds outside who kicked in the close door for the nth time. When we moved in it was a relatively quiet part of the street, and the shop downstairs was one that sold cards and smelly candles and the like. Now it's been replaced by a 24-hour store. Apparently, the most popular in Glasgow, especially after the pubs get out, and every weekend there's some disturbance down there. It's making us want to sell the place and get out, which is a shame because we love the flat. We've got a tiler coming next week to do the kitchen and sort out the wee bathroom, then I think we're going to tidy up what's here and get the hell out of Dodge.
Tonight, however, we are going to see Willie Nelson - which, being married to a proud Texan, is somewhat obligatory. He's always great, though, and has an energy that belies his 73 years. Unfortunately, he's playing the SECC in Glasgow. Hopefully he's in one of the smaller halls, because I've seen many an act swallowed up by one of its huge, soulless caverns. We went to see Eddie Izzard in there a couple of years ago, assuming that, and he was such a tiny, distant blob that it was almost exactly like watching a video with bad, echoey sound. So at the interval we went home and did exactly that, except from the comfort of our sofa and without 20,000 other people in attendance.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Decomputerisation
As part of the eternal war against kipple, yesterday I sold my SNES and N64 consoles to Dave in work. I'm sure he'll give them a good home. They simply weren't getting used often enough, and my life is cluttered enough as it is. I seem to vacillate between a pack-rat mentality which drives me to collect stuff I really don't need, and a more minimalistic personality that just wants to chuck out everything and have a life that can be easily packed in one suitcase. Right now, I'm in the latter stage. It's not that there weren't games for those two consoles that I enjoy, but I've got most of them on GBA, DS or Gamecube now, and Goldeneye just makes me feel ill when I try to play it nowadays.
I have too much crap cluttering up this house. I threw away all my old Edge magazines the other day, which was quite liberating. I still have a wardrobe full of old computers and consoles, some of which I owned at the time they were "current", and some bought on a whim from eBay, hooked up once or twice, then banished into the darkness to gather dust. These need selling, but for most that's a lengthy project in itself. My Atari ST and Amiga in particular were well used, and need a proper cleaning before they can be sold. And a thorough testing to make sure they still work, of course...
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Cat Scratch Fever
Well, this week hasn't been too bad work-wise. (So far, touch wood, etc etc.) This is mainly due to schedule-juggling, however, so there's a sense of deferred, rather than relieved, stress, but it meant that I was able to get away and take Lucy, our eldest cat, to the vet last night. She's been coughing a lot, in a manner that sounds as though she's about to bring up a hairball, but she never does. Naturally, getting her to the vet was a struggle. She hates being put in her carrier, and getting her in there is a two-person operation. One of us must quietly get the box down, stand it on its end, and open it, without Lucy seeing, while the other picks her up and quickly drops her in it. As soon as she sees it, however, she starts to struggle, and we both ended up with multiple scratches. From that point on she won't stop miaowing until she's actually in front of the vet, when butter wouldn't melt in her mouth and she goes back in the box without any hassle, only to start kicking up a fuss as soon as she is outside again.
The vet reckons that it's not hairball-related, and that she's either allergic to something in the house (we've been told not to light any incense or scented candles for a while), or she has a minor infection. He gave her antibiotic and anti-inflammatory shots, so hopefully it'll clear up soon.
Just to perfect the evening, on the way back she decided to have a pee in the box, requiring that she have a bath when she got back. Cue more howling and scratching.
She's not a badly-behaved cat in general, just a wee brat when she has to do something she doesn't want to.
It's Burns Night tonight. We were thinking of going to Oran Mor, since we enjoyed last year's so much, but we're suffering from a bout of end-of-month skintitude coupled with a packed weekend ahead, so I think we're just going to give it a miss and have a quiet night in.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Mr Peanut Head
So, it's a Monday at the start of a week that's likely to be pretty stressy, but I'm actually not feeling too bad. Maybe it's because it's likely to be less stressy than last week, by comparison, and maybe it's because the sun's out and there isn't a cloud in the sky. Cold I don't mind so much. A crisp, frosty morning can be quite pleasant when it's bright and sunny. It's the darkness and rain that depress me.
Going to get my hair cut later. R said "don't come back looking like Mr Peanut Head", meaning that my normal utilitarian number-2 all over is out of bounds. She says it makes me look like a criminal. I like it because I hate getting my hair cut, and having it shaved maximizes the amount of time I can leave until haircuts. I've been putting this one off since before Xmas, but my sideburns are getting out of control and I'd better get seen to before I start looking like Kim Newman, god among men though he may be.
I read a great article the other day about the music of the Sami people of Northern Scandinavia. It's the oldest extant musical tradition in Europe don'tchewknow, and reads like something I'd love to hear. I've had a bit of search for some recordings to download, but it's slim pickings so far. I'll keep looking though. I've never been one for hunting out "world" music, but the descriptions I've read of the "Yoik" are fascinating.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Losing My Wiiginity
Last night we went round to Simon's for a shot of his Wii, and while it's hard to shake the perception that it's just a Gamecube with a nifty controller, I enjoyed myself immensely, and will be getting one as soon as our financial situation is more stable. Wii Sports, Rayman and Warioware all got hammered, with the frenetic minigame madness of the latter providing the most giggles as well as the clearest indication of just how versatile the Wiimote can be, having you use it like a pen one minute, hold it over your head the next, before making you flap your arms frenetically or hold it at your hips and hula. You will, of course, look like a twat, but you'll be having so much fun you won't care.
Today was pretty quiet. We got up late, then got fired into giving the kitchen a proper clean, going through our cupboards, taking everything out, and chucking anything that was past its date. And believe me, there was a lot that went in the bin, the oldest item having a use-by date from 2003. Also dumped was a lot of stuff we knew we'd never use. Actually, it was pretty cathartic - I quite enjoy chucking stuff out. It's pretty liberating to be free of stuff that's just cluttering up your life.
Next step: the spare room/office/junk pile. But not today.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
After-Party
We had our celebration for R gaining dual-nationality last night. I think everyone had a good time - I certainly did. Not too hung-over today, either - just that slightly fuzzy feeling which is actually quite pleasant. I'm pleased to report that nobody embarrassed themselves too badly. Just some good tunes and a good laugh with friends. Perfect.
I'm quite glad it's over, mind you. I have been feeling pretty stressed about the whole thing since coming back from the US, and on returning to work last week we all got one of those "there's a big release due in a fortnight so we expect you to work late until then." I don't mind that too much - it doesn't happen all that often and it's pretty much par for the course. I doubt that there's a software company in the world that doesn't require its developers to put in some extra hours near release time, but it did put a crimp on the time I had available for party-related planning, and I am a dreadful one for leaving things until the last minute.
Tonight I think we're going over to a friend's house to play with his Wii. (Fnarr, etc.) This will be my first shot of one, so I'm quite looking forward to it. We were planning on getting one after returning from the US, but after spending a lot of cash on a new computer I can't really justify a new console as well right now. Though I can see that position changing depending on how much fun we have tonight.
In the meantime, however, the house is an absolute tip and I need to be cleaning, not blogging...
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Crunch
Today, after jumping through many hoops, and having to take a test that 99.9% of the British public (myself included) would have failed, my wife Rebecca became a British citizen! The ceremony was quite low-key, but pleasant, and took place in the former Italian embassy building at Park Circus - the place where we got married almost four years ago. Even though there was the necessary swearing of allegiance to the Queen*, the registrar went to great lengths to emphasise that those present were becoming citizens of Scotland as well as the larger United Kingdom, which I think was sensitive and went down well.
This doesn't mean that she has renounced her American citizenship, of course. She now holds dual nationality, and is champing at the bit to apply for her British passport. We'll have to look for a cheap trip to somewhere on the continent when she gets it so that she can break it in, and swan past immigration control as an EU citizen!
Afterwards my parents took us out for a nice lunch in a restaurant outside the town, and, as Moosh has pointed out, the snow had returned that morning and had kept up, so I got to crunch through a little bit of fresh powder after all. The waiter, coincidentally, was a kid that I had been friends with in school, but hadn't seen in about fifteen years, which was nice but a little odd. On the drive back to Glasgow the sun came out, and the snow-covered fields looked Christmas-card pretty.
Tomorrow we're having a party to celebrate. I've been a bit stressed this past week or two while trying to get stuff organised, but it's all come together at the last minute and I think it should be fun, providing everyone turns up who says they will!
* - R had planned to quietly forget to say the "the", and pledge allegiance to the rock band fronted by the late Freddie Mercury, but the phrasing didn't allow it, so I guess she has to do whatever Liz says after all.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postWednesday, January 17, 2007
Snow
Last night, leaving work quite late, it started to snow. Big, wet flakes that disappeared as soon as they hit the ground, but were nevertheless quite pretty. That's the only snow we seem to get nowadays. Just as childhood summers were perpetually sunny and warm, my winter memories are all of icicles hanging off the roof of our house, crunching through deep, thick snow, and risking life and limb hurtling down hills on a sledge. Even if it was cold enough for it to lie, living in the city means that it would last long before turning, at least, into a treacherous brown sludge. Growing up I lived at the end of a suburban street, in a house with a garden, and when it snowed a plentiful supply of white, virgin powder was mine to tramp through. The crunch of powdery snow underfoot is one of my favourite sounds to this day.
Labels: diary
link | 1 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, January 15, 2007
Spelunking Monkeys
Back at work today, about which, I'm sure you can imagine, I am over the moon, oh yes. I've only been away for a couple of weeks, but it seems much longer, and naturally I have no idea what I was doing before I left. 300 unread emails took up a good chunk of the morning, however, though most of them got immediately deleted after one glance at the subject line.
Last night we went over to Marceline's for some dinner, accompanied with plum wine. I'd never had the latter before and found it a little sweet for my tastes, but not unpleasant, and dinner itself was ace. Afterwards we headed out to see Joanna Newsom, who was wonderful, though I didn't quite realise how close to the stage "Row B" actually was. Not being able to fidget in your seat or yawn (even though the place is over-heated and you're tired) because the act you're watching is literally right in front of you is slightly unnerving. It was a great show, however, and it was nice to see so many big grins on the faces of people shuffling out into the cold, rainy night.
Lissa gave us a lift back to the South Side, and in the car we riffed on the "little pixie" image that J. Newsom has been granted by the press, coming up with ever more outlandish claims ("She drinks strawberry tea with fairies.", "She is the spirit of a unicorn that takes human form once every hundred years."), though if you scratch the surface of her lyrics and put aside prejudices regarding her voice, there's a dark heart to her songs that suggests that she is anything but the blushing innocent she is made out to be.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Wet
It is, as they say, pishing it down outside, which is making us feel particularly glad to be home after two weeks of near-unbroken sunshine, let me tell you. Actually, I'm feeling a lot more positive today than I have since I got back. The last couple of days have been spent in a weird funk of random napping and feeling sorry for ourselves, but last night I slept in the way that people do in movies. As soon as my head hit the pillow I was out, and as soon as the alarm went off this morning, I was awake and ready to get up. Weird. Normally my nights are bookended by at least an hour of restlessness and the same length of time again spent slapping the "snooze" button and going back to sleep every nine minutes.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, January 08, 2007
Happy New Year
Back on British soil after a very good Christmas and New Year, unfortunately topped by me contracting food poisoning on the last day. That was an enjoyable 7-hour transatlantic flight, let me tell you. So now I'm sitting here glugging lucozade and feeling sorry for myself, but it's maybe fair payment for the ace time I had on holiday, so I shouldn't get too upset.
Pictures will be Flickred in due course.
As well as the first post of 2007, this is also the first post on my new computer. The exchange rate is ridiculously good just now, and my old PC has taken to randomly resetting itself (and was never much cop to begin with), so I splashed out on a new MacBook. Yay.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Feliz Navidad
Hello. Remember me? I used to blog here once upon a time. Anyway, Merry Christmas to you. Right now we should be 30,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean on our way to spend the holiday season in Texas with R's family, but the thick blanket of fog that has shrouded London for last couple of days has delayed our departure until tomorrow. It's a bit irritating, but I'm not too wound-up about it. There's not much that anybody can be expected to do about it, other than book us on the next available flight. We're just trying to have a nice, chilled Saturday. It looks like the weather is improving, so we're not anticipating any further trouble, and we should get there for Christmas day.
R and I have already exchanged presents, since there's no point in flying them to the US just to fly them back again. Amongst other things, she got me the excellent documentary about the Pixies "Loud Quiet Loud", which we watched last night. We haven't bothered with a tree this year, since we're going to be away, but we did put the fairly lights back up in the window, and for the first time I started to feel quite festive. I think I've been a bit stressed out about the million-and-one things I had to do before we went away, and the extra day's delay has helped me relax a little.
I've started thinking about New Year's resolutions already. I wasn't going to make any, since they are largely the same every year and are never honoured, but being in an unusually "glass-half-full" mood, I suppose that if you make them, at least there's a CHANCE they'll be kept, and my documenting them the embarrassment of not doing so might inspire action. Or depression. But anyway... in 2007 I shall endeavour to:
- Make more music.
- Lose some weight.
- Procrastinate less.
- Blog more.
Do wish me luck.
Despite resolution #4, it may well be the New Year before I blog again, so have a good one and see you then... link | 0 comment(s) | links to this post
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Scrum
I've been eating like a pig lately. I'm blaming the dark and cold for switching my body into "fat-accumulation" mode in a bid to prevent me from freezing to death as I huddle with my tribe in a cave until the sun-god can be appeased. You may choose to blame the fact that I'm a greedy bastard who can't stop shoving chocolate biscuits in his face for two minutes, as is your right. (Damn you, mini-mint-Viscounts! Damn you to hell!)
For sake of conscience-salving as much as any real attempt to take the pounds off, I'm planning on visiting the gym on my way home tonight, for the first time in a couple of weeks. I much prefer going at weekends, since it's normally packed by about 6 o'clock on a weekday, but needs must. Particularly since we're off to Texas in the not-too-distant future, a trip which always leaves us a bit heavier. Not, I hasten to add, because of stereotype of the obese burger-munching American is accurate and in some way contagious, but because it's our annual opportunity to have some decent Mexican food, and we never waste it, the spectre of the fluorescent-green guacamole served at most British Mexican restaurants hanging over our heads the whole time.
We still win the curry war though.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Boring Cyclical Crises
I should have had plenty to blog about recently. It hasn't been the most remarkable time, but I've at least been fairly busy. I don't know if it was a consequence of the clocks changing, or just the arrival of long, dark, wintery nights, but much of the last couple of weeks has been spent in a deep unshakable fug of horrid depression of the kind that saps all motivation or will to do anything more complex than making a cup of tea, and even that you'll probably fuck it up because you're a useless, disgusting turd of a man who should just do everyone a favour and throw himself under a bus. Certainly not a state of mind conducive to blogging. I'm quite aware of my brain's tides and know that it's simply a matter of sitting it out and waiting for the upswing, but normally it only takes a day or two. Two weeks of feeling totally fucking useless is really no fun.
Anyway, I'm now feeling much more together. If I was a "proper" manic-depressive I'd probably be running around annoying the tits off of everyone with my boundless energy and self-confidence. As it is, I just feel somewhat capable, and that's absolutely fine. At least the washing-up gets done.
The turning point came on Monday night, when I managed to sit down and record some music for the first time in months. For this, I must reluctantly thank the little bastards who set fire to a dustbin and the neighbouring NTL junction box just along the road at the weekend. Losing the television and phone didn't affect me much, but pissing about on the internet is one of my worst procrastinatory habits. Being disconnected for a couple of nights meant that my good intentions when sitting down at the computer weren't frittered away by reading forums or endless "just one more" refreshes of the Toothpaste For Dinner Livejournal Image Generator page, and I actually got something done. Albeit something unspectacular, which I later realised was partly, subconsciously, plagiarising a Mogwai tune. Something from an early album, I think, but I can't remember exactly what. I might have a bit of a trawl later on to try and figure it out, and decide whether it's worth changing or just leaving as is. The line between reference and ripoff is a fine one, and I'm not entirely sure how similar the two tunes are.
Our cable services have now been restored. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing, but if the experience has taught me anything other than how easily distracted I am (and I already knew that, really), it's that all the stuff I've read about NTL's customer service being shockingly bad has been right on the money. They have support agents for tv, broadband and telephone, who will put you through the "Unplug your modem/telephone/tv receiver and plug it back in. Did that fix it?" script every time you call, but getting them to register a larger, more general problem like being completely cut off from all services is like pulling teeth. The best I could get is a promise that they'd send an engineer out sometime on Wednesday afternoon. I wasn't particularly happy with this, since the problem clearly wasn't within the flat, but at least it would move the problem along. Eventually, they called on Tuesday afternoon (three days after getting disconnected) to say "Oh yeah, we've just noticed that the whole of your postcode is out, so we'll look into that and you can cancel the engineer."
I just kept the day off, though, since we also had a plumber coming round, but that's a whole other moan to be had, and spent most of it pottering around doing wee jobs around the house and making cups of tea for my sickly missus, who is still trying to shake off the cold that's been bothering her for the last couple of weeks.
Anyway, with luck I can take advantage of being in credit at the seratonin bank and channel it into some more creative endeavours, or at least get a couple of CD reviews done for Diskant. I've got three on the review pile, all from Fat Cat. They are (with accompanying first impression based on a single listen each):
Mum - The Peel Session (Wonderful.)
Songs of Green Pheasant - Aerial Days (Very good, but not remarkably different from the last one.)
Amandine - Waiting For The Light To Find Us (A bit "meh", but might be a grower.)
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
That's Your Mum, That Is
History Matters is encouraging people around the UK to keep a diary, in as much detail as they please, of how they spend today, Tuesday 17th of October 2006. The entries will be stored in the British Library's archives of a record of this day in history. I might post my entry here tomorrow, though it's likely to be pretty dull, even by the standards of this blog. Still, todays trivia is tomorrow's historical detail. You might not care that I had a tuna sandwich for lunch, but it might be of some comfort to a future historian living in a hellish distopia under the iron fin of super-evolved megatuna.
Having a surfeit of holidays, I took Friday/Monday off work, with many good intentions. While I didn't do as much as I had hoped, I did at least manage to get up early both days and go to the gym, which is better than the "staying in bed until noon then get up and play videogames for the rest of the day" schedule that I had feared I would fall into.
Last night we went to see Shirley Collins give a talk about her time spent travelling around the deep south making field-recordings with Alan Lomax. Fascinating stuff - she's led an incredible life - and while I'd heard a lot of the recordings before, placing them in context, with accompanying photographs and Collins' recollections, gave them a whole new power. It's remarkable how well-preserved those recordings are. The Sacred Harp Singers proving especially impressive.
Came back to work this morning to find my inbox stuffed full of defects and support calls. That's what I get for taking time off, I s'pose. Baws.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
What's big, black and hard and makes Alex happy?
My new desk, of course!
It might seem pretty sad to be so excited about a something as prosaic as a desk, but when I sit at it, in my new comfy chair, I feel quite... well... empowered, I suppose. Not that there is anything I can do at it that I couldn't at my old desk, but it was rickety and tiny, impossible to declutter, impossible to clean, shoved in a corner behind the sort of chair that looks reasonably comfortable - all padded and adjustable - but actually numbs both cheeks in a matter of minutes. My new chair has a straight back, no padding, and the only adjustment you can make to it is to pick it up and move it somewhere else, but it's a million times more pleasant to sit on. At first I thought I had made a bit of a mistake with the chair, having tried it only in front of a completely different desk at the shop. At home it seemed a bit too low initially, but in fact it's working out quite well, and has the added bonus of forcing me to sit up straight for once. The desk itself is just a big slab of laminated wood on a pair of trestles. No drawers, no cd-rack, no slidey-out keyboard shelf, no nonsense. Perfect.
With the exception of that ill-advised year of hell in which I moved back into my parent's house in order to save up cash to buy a place (my advice to anyone considering a similar move: nooooooooooo!) I've always had a desk at home, ever since my dad mounted a blue-painted piece of wood to a corner of my bedroom for me to stick my portable telly and ZX Spectrum on, and as a result I don't see it as one of the shackles of working life. It's a place to both be creative and have fun, to tinker with programs and write stories and make music. The desk has been my garden shed and the cockpit of my Cobra Mk III, so it's important that I be comfortable there.
The other night I dragged my old chair, a knackered bookcase and the old desk out onto the pavement for the bulk refuse collection. In the morning they were all gone, except the desk, which they apparently don't want, and is just getting rained on. I don't feel particularly sorry for it.
Labels: diary, games, memories
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, October 09, 2006
It gets earlier every year.
No, not Christmas.
(Though it does.)
I just heard my first wheeeeeee... BANG! outside.
Looks like Guy Fawkes' month has started, then.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postThursday, October 05, 2006
Curry Pain
Spanish class went ok last night. The first couple of weeks were spent in a constant state of terror at the thought of being asked a question and having no clue, but I'm feeling a bit more confident now. I'm still at the "I have cat" stage, and I struggle to follow spoken Spanish unless it's quite slow, but I feel like I can gain more understanding now, without it being a horrible mountain to climb. Having someone else to learn with is invaluable, if just to be able to practice simple phrases around the house.
After class we went to Dhabba for an absolutely fantastic curry, that was, perhaps, taken a bit late in the evening, since I still felt all bloated this morning. Worth it, though.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
¿Que Blog Es?
After another all-too-brief flurry of blogging activity, I've gone quiet again. When life's kinda boring I feel like I don't have anything to write about, and when it's interesting, like when we went to Iceland, it feels like too much to tackle and do justice to. And anyway, the pictures do a better job than my rather dry prose.
Here's what I've been doing lately...
Learning Spanish - Every Wednesday night R and I have a Spanish night class. It started a bit shakily - the teacher immediately strolled in and started talking to us in Spanish, and neither of us had much to begin with. Glancing around the room revealed, however, that most of the other folk in the class were in the same boat, and looking nervous. The college's website made it sound like it was suitable for near-beginners, and I think the teacher just likes to set the bar a wee bit higher than you can manage in order to motivate you. It's hard work, but I am enjoying it, though I'm not doing as much mid-week revision as I'd like.
Buying furniture - Ok, so I was briefly tempted by the Daft Punk coffee table and the opportunity to make the flat look like the set of a 1970's science-fiction movie, but the £999 price tag was a bit offputting. I do have a new computer desk coming this weekend, though, which I'm actually quite excited about, given that my current one is tiny, falling apart, and shoved in a cluttered wee corner of the spare room. There's also a comfier chair to accompany it. One side-effect of this could be more regular posting both here and on the noisecast, since being at my desk should no longer be an open invitation to orthopedic pain.
Growing a beard - What started out as laziness has developed into full-blown facial fungus. I'm quite enjoying having something to stroke while thinking, now that it's grown out of the itchy phase and has gotten quite soft. I'm going to have to buy a beard trimmer soon, though.
Playing Lego Star Wars II on the PS2 - Massive free-wheeling fun, and the first non-DS game I've picked up in month.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Pointless Nostalgia
Last night I was in a pub to play a gig with the band wot I am in. Like many establishments that like to position themselves as a cozy Sunday afternoon hangout as much as a place to get blind drunk, they had a selection of board games lying around for patrons to use. Other pubs choose the likes of Scrabble. This one has Mouse Trap and Buckaroo, surely the two games most likely to suffer from fatal piece-loss. But spurred by nostalgia we got Mouse Trap down and found it pretty complete and in good condition. We didn't actually play it, of course. Has anyone actually played a round of Mouse Trap? I suspect not. I had it as a kid, but all I ever did was put together the elaborate Heath Robinson contraption and set it off. It was a constant joy to turn that little plastic crank and watch the chain of causes-and-effect that it kicked off. I hardly noticed that there was an actual game attached to it.
Sadly, however, it seems that Mouse Trap has recently been modified beyond all recognition. There is still a complex contraption to put together, and it's probably about the same size in terms of individual components, but in an effort to introduce some exciting randomness, the makers have chosen to split it into three sections, each about a third of the size of the original trap. Dropping a ball-bearing down the toilet in the middle of the board causes it to rattle around for a moment before being spat out to trigger one of the three traps. It might make for a more entertaining board game, but as a ridiculous device it's a bit disappointing. It doesn't have the little diver on the end of the see-saw who gets flipped into a bucket when a heavy weight gets dropped on the other end. Tsk.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Kitson and Films
His show was more of a one-man comic play, but otherwise met and exceeded my expectations by being both very very funny, and very bearded. Titled "C90", it was a warm, witty thng about a man whose job it was to index and file discarded mix tapes, though never to listen to them. Once faced with huge piles of the things every morning, the obsolescence of the humble compact cassette had left him with less and less work to do, until he was finally forced into early retirement, and on his last day someone sent him a mix tape of his own...
Kitson is an engaging and eloquent speaker who can be both poignent and laugh-out-loud funny in a single breath, and has a voice which remains in your head the next day and is welcome, and after "C90", I'd really like to hear more by him.
That I didn't realise that the show was in play form could be marked down to laziness, but I rather like not having expectations. As I said before, I remember reading positive things, possibly related to this particular show and possibly not, but I came to it rather short on details. One of life's rarest but greatest pleasures is seeing, for example, a really good film that you know nothing about. Usually it's on late at night and has subtitles, because if it was on general release in this country you would no doubt have seen a trailer for it that condensed the entire film into one super-dense thirty-second plot gulp. Even reviews, written with the best of intentions, usually feed you the setup of the story, so that the only surprise is in the resolution. Sight and Sound is particularly bad for this. It's editorial stance seems to be that its analysis of a film is of greater importance than the reader's enjoyment of it. Or, at least, enjoyment of its narrative. It will gleefully give away every little detail because, to its reviewers, plot is of negligable worth. It's fine to enjoy both the craft and artistic intent of a film, but Site and Sound appears to look down its nose at anyone who dares to take pleasure from something as vulgar as storytelling.
If I had my way all trailers would be banned, and reviews limited to a single sentence - "if you liked these films you'll like this." - and a star rating.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Festival
Tonight we're going through to Edinburgh to see a stand-up comedian called Daniel Kitson. I don't know a whole lot about him, to be honest. I know he gets mentioned in The List quite a lot, and it's usually positive. And I know he has a beard. Other than that, I'm at a loss. R is a bit of a fan of his, though, so the choice of show is really hers, but that we're going at all is a symptom of an annual sense of guilt that usually sets in around mid-August for myself, and probably quite a few other Glaswegians. That sense that there's a lot going on over there and, inter-city rivalry aside, you should probably go and see some of it before it's done. Naturally, we've left it a bit late, and most of Kitson's shows are long sold-out, but I guess Tuesday night is as quiet a night as the center of the 'burgh gets this time of year, so we managed to get a pair of tickets.
I'm quite looking forward to having a the night-out. (On a school night too! What rebels!) And the bustle of Festival-period Edinburgh can be quite fun. When you can go home afterwards.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Hello... ?
I don't seem to have anything to say any more. I should probably just stick to noises, then.
We're going to Iceland next month, though. I'm looking forward to that.
I've just ordered a DS Flash Cart that will allow me to run emulators and homebrew apps on my favourite console ever. I've even been browsing some tutorials on developing for the thing, and it looks slightly less impossible than I had imagined.
Labels: diary, games, iceland, travel
link | 1 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, July 10, 2006
Oh Yeah...
... and I think there was some kind of football on last night as well. I completely forgot until I went down to the wee shop along from the flat, which is owned by an Italian family, to find them all jumping up and down ecstatically. As much as I'm irritated by football, it's hard not to smile on the rare occasion that it makes someone that happy.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postSunday, July 09, 2006
Hnery Henry Rollins is a Fibber
Good Saturday. Too much coffee with J&L, then super secret surprise birthday party in Sleazys spent drinking booze, shaking my ass to many metallic tunes, and, er, talking about Animal Crossing with mar-c. Afterwards we headed to the ABC, but my fuel tank was almost empty and I slipped into curmungeon mode, so didn't stay long.
More noise soon...
Update - Yes, yes, Henry Rollins, not Hnery, good name though it might be. And no, it wasn't my birthday. I was hungover, ok?
Friday, June 30, 2006
"This is a blog. It has a range of zero units."
Jesus I'm tired. Got to bed before midnight last night, but it wasn't enough to counteract the accumulative effect of too many late nights. In a suprisingly decent mood all the same, though. Caffeine, how I love thee, but you do make me feel rather odd when you wake up some parts of me and not others.
Advance Wars:Dual Strike turned up in the post the other day. Only three weeks after ordering it from Tesco online, but it was a bargaintastic £12.99 so I won't grumble too much. The original Advance Wars was, without question, my most played game on the GBA, and I've still got a couple of games running of the home-brew web version, so I'm expecting to enjoy it quite a bit. I've only played the first couple of missions so far. The touch-screen interface is perfect for what's basically a point-and-click game anyway, and it's nicely presented, but what's frustrating is that the optional tutorial that was included in the first game has now been unskipably rolled into the campaign, so I'm having to plow through missions in which, every time I select a unit, a couple of characters pop up and have a lengthy conversation along the lines of: "Hey, what's this?" "It's a tank. It can move like this." "Cool." Yeah, they're skippable by hitting the fiddly little "start" button, but it's still a pain in the tits. I expect that once I'm past the tutorial missions that I'll start enjoying the game a lot more, but it's baffling that they didn't think to make the tutorials skippable for those of us who have played an Advance Wars title before (not to mention the lengthy series of Japan-only games that preceeded them.)
We watched The Brothers Grimm the other night, Terry Gilliam's first film after the Don Quixote debacle. Grimm got pretty horrible reviews, but, it being Gilliam, we knew that it would be enjoyable to some degree. And it was on pay-per-view so we wouldn't have to go down the video shop.
The Brothers Grimm is frustratingly ok. It feels like a great film trapped within a mediocre one. Moments are pure Gilliam, visually lush and imaginative, while others are hobbled by some extremely clunky dialog and awful CGI that wouldn't look out of place on TV. One more draft of the script and a slightly bigger budget would have worked wonders, but presumably his post-Quixote reputation is such that coming up with the cash required to adequately realise his grand designs isn't so easy nowadays. A shame, that.
I still haven't seen Tideland, however.
Labels: diary, games, links, music
link | 1 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, June 12, 2006
Hot Brain
Pissing it down today, but it seems only appropriate for a Monday spent at work after a lovely, hot, sunny weekend. One in which - shock! - we actually left the house and did stuff, even if it was just within the confines of Glasgow. Adding to the weekend's series of unlikely events, on Saturday night I actually went to a club, and didn't complain about it and even had a bit of a dance.
It's the sun - it does weird things to me.
Today I have been listening to "Animamima", an album by Japanese guitar-noisenik Keiji Haino and 20-piece sitaar orchestra Sitaar Tah!, which I bought on a whim in Monorail based on some nice packaging and a breathlessly excited blurb that someone who works there had slipped into the front of the cover. Not particularly great reasons to buy an album, I know, and I pretty much expected it to be two hours of unlistenable noise that I'd play once and stick on eBay, or, worse still, egregiously keep around solely for "my record collection is better than your record collection"-type bragging rights.
Man, was I wrong.
It's not particularly tuneful, but nor is it the straight-up unstructured guitar-noise that I had come to expect, and realise that I didn't much enjoy listening to, having seen Haino perform at the Instal festival a couple of years ago. Instead, it is an unexpectedly beautiful thing which builds slowly from a bare tickling of the ears to a powerful meditative thrum that made me feel quite peculiar. Listening to it in work was something of a problem, as I tended to stop an stare into space for extended periods, but I felt oddly refreshed after taking off my headphones, as though I had just undergone the aural equivalent of being driven through a car-wash.
Speaking of cleaning my head, the second part of my DS order arrived today - Brain Training. I'm not sure how much truth there is in its claims to be able to improve your memory and mental agility with just a ten-minute session each day, but I'm willing to give it a go. My memory is absolutely shocking, and getting worse (dates in particular never seem to stick), so anything that might improve the situation has to be worth a shot.
Still two weeks to go before I can actually play the thing, of course. In fact, Brain Age was something of a test of Play.com's delivery practices. It was released on Friday, but I was hopeful that they would send it out in advance so that it would arrive on the release date. Sure enough, checking my account the day before showed me that they had posted it early, but it didn't actually arrive until this morning. Since I don't trust our postman to even bother putting a card through the door, I tend to have mail-order items delivered to work instead of the flat. It looks like the weekend of the 24th is going to be an odd one, then, where I sort-of want to go back to work on Monday, if just to pick up my new toy.
(Update - just posted a re-tooled version of my Kaiji Haino/Sitaar Tah enthusings on Diskant.)
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
666
You know, if this is the apocalypse, it's a lot more pleasant than I'd imagined. It's a lovely, warm, sunny day, and it seems like summer has finally got it's arse out of bed and started work for the year. It's been a long time coming, too, after a long, cold, wet, miserable winter and, well, I hesitate to use the word "spring". "After-winter" maybe? "Winter 2"?
Oddly, it's so nice it makes me want to leave the country. I've been sort-of resisting the idea of going on holiday this year. Not that I wouldn't want to go somewhere, but we could be doing with saving up some cash just now. However, I've been given a wee taste of nice weather and now I'm hungry for more. Hopefully the weather will stay nice this weekend and we can get away for a wee trip somewhere close, but the thought of going away on a proper holday is getting more and more appealing, and, hey, it's more fun than paying bills, certainly.
Of course, my desire to save hasn't prevented me from pre-ordering one of these:
I've kinda fancied a DS for a while but was able to hold off until they announced the Lite. Frustratingly, I ordered it and a few games from play.com, who ship each part of an order as soon as it becomes available. I say frustratingly, because it means that I've got Animal Crossing sitting at home (and more to come), but I can do nothing more than read the manual and marvel at how small DS carts are until the end of the month, when the DS Lite gets officially released in the UK.
Off to see The Wicker Man tonight, which is getting a showing at the GFT because of the date. Hopefully it's the full "director's cut" version, and not the hacked-up original release. It's pretty unique among horror movies, I reckon, in that by the end of the film you find yourself siding with the "bad guys". Edward Woodward's god-fearing policeman, sent to Summer Isle to uncover the mystery of a girl who has disappeared, is such a self-righteous prick that you don't really mind when bad things start happening.
I was talking about the Wicker Man with one of my colleagues earlier today, and he pointed out something that I'd never noticed before. Without wanting to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't seen it, Edward Woodward's character is set up for an unpleasant fate right from, or, in fact, before, the beginning of the film, but is effectively offered a way out well before the end. If he'd just shagged Britt Eckland when he had the chance, it could have all been so different. Hard to have much sympathy for someone who turns down that sort of opportunity. link | 0 comment(s) | links to this post
Friday, May 05, 2006
After The Storm
Last night it rained and rained and rained and rained. And then it rained a bit more. I honestly have never seen a thunderstorm of that magnitude over Glasgow before. It was quite exciting. Today, the sun has come out, and is gradually drying the massive puddles. Appropriately, my head feels a bit clearer, also, and I'm not feeling quite as gloomy as I was yesterday. Whether I stay that way depends on how the weekend goes. Weekends without distracting plans of the going-out variety are dangerous places for me. I could either get lots done and feel good about it, or, as is common, spend it paralyzed on the sofa hating myself until Sunday night, then hate myself some more for pissing away a perfectly good weekend.
Labels: diary
link | 1 comment(s) | links to this post