slytherinvamp

Sat, 26 Feb 2005 16:40:05 GMT

Someone has too much time on their hands ...</a>

Today, the Christmas decorations finally came down - well, I've been calling them 'winter decorations' for the past six weeks or so (they're all snowflakes, so it's plausible. Honest). Too little time at home, too much to do, etc and all the rest of it. My sister came round - we went to the opening of the new Borders here in town this morning - and decided that they just had to come down, which they duly did. I had thought it would take me another week as my knee is not co-operating with this reality at this moment in time (optimism was, this morning, defined by the fact that I bought a book on marathon training. I will be running again, and soon. Or else).

I have no willpower - or, at least, not much

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 17:34:21 GMT

Dear reader, I gave in.

I now have a shiny new 12" Powerbook - so I have just enough willpower, or common sense, or whatever to have refrained from blowing the extra for the backlit keyboard. So now I've got to transfer favourites, applications and all the rest of it over.

Tech-itching

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 08:34:53 GMT

I'm supposed to be writing a report on stamp duty so, of course, I'm looking at the Apple web site and trying not to convince myself that I need a new Powerbook.

Because, of course, I do need a new Powerbook. Everyone needs one. And mine has started to fritz - ok, not seriously. Refusing to read CDs and DVDs does not render a Powerbook entirely unworkable, although it's a bit inconvenient when you want to load new software onto it. Which is what I was trying to do on Friday when I discovered that it just doesn't want to know about them - not the end of the world, because I could shift the necessary software over from the G5, but that's not a quick process. It also doesn't deal with the fact that I use the Powerbook as a DVD player when I'm away from home.

Ok, I could buy a portable DVD player instead but ... if I'm going to spend several hundred quid, I think I'd rather put the money to buying a new Powerbook.

I feel vaguely disloyal, because the Powerbook has been brilliant. But it's also something like four years old and has been seriously used in that time - it's somewhat startling that it hasn't started to go before this, in fact. It has four years of scars (notably, the silver colouring is peeling - has peeled - badly where my wrists rest on the front of the machine; the screen is a bit battered from being jammed against the keys when it's in a bag, the keyboard surround is loose and wobbling, and the Powerbook generally does rather look like it's been hauled all over the world. Which it has).

And it's been 18 months since I last bought a computer - which, I suspect, is at the root of all this Powerbook-acquisition angst. Well, that and the fact that I have an Apple 10% off card burning a hole in my wallet. Plus I'm generally pissed off with work and my usual response to that sort of thing is to either eat or spend money (although, of course, would also I spend money on eating). On the whole, I'd rather keep the weight off, although I'd have to eat rather a lot - or a little very expensive food - to spend as much on food as I would on a Powerbook. Because, yeah, I like the 12" Powerbooks, they're beautiful. But my laptop case & sleeve are 15" and - heh, got to love the maths - I'd rather not have to spend another £100 or so on new cases. So I'll spend another £300 on getting the 15" rather than the 12". Heh. Well, that and I like the backlit keyboard on the 15", the 12" doesn't have that. And I can't quite bring myself to buy an iBook when the Powerbook isn't that much more expensive (compared to, say, the US national debt).

Sheesh, I'm so shallow. And I don't need a new Powerbook. Not really.

Early mornings and smallish cats

Fri, 18 Feb 2005 07:41:52 GMT

5am is not the time for cats to learn new tricks - but the kitten has learnt that if she bats at the light switch, hey, the lights come on! A neat trick, and one I might have admired more if she hadn't learnt it when I was still asleep - and if I didn't have glass doors.

Waiting for pizza

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 20:40:53 GMT

Think I may appoint Dominos as my personal chefs; would probably be cheaper in the long run.

Work is still insane - it's 8:30 in the evening and, before I go to sleep, I have to write a presentation to give tomorrow morning and prepapre two client reports. I'm stupidly overdue with a 3,000 article as well, although that's half written, and the other half is not going to get written until the weekend.

On the plus side, I spent a great afternoon with a friend (who is also a client, which helps) at Dukes' Hotel, having afternoon tea and putting the world to rights. Gossip is good - actually, more or less essential to keeping me sane, given the way this week/month/year has gone. Have also succeeded in sending off (at last) a fax to ensure that I don't get sued tomorrow - long story, involves an accounts department that lose letters.

I've booked a head MOT for Saturday afternoon - external, not internal. A month-overdue haircut and colour (because the grey is awfully obvious now), plus a facial and eyebrow shape. I can do (and do in fact do) basic maintenance but once in a while, someone needs to do it all properly - and it's 3 hours of doing nothing, in a middle of the first weekend at home in far too long, and a schedule that involves a lot of cleaning.

Weekend also involves rehearsal - last night's rehearsal went well, with the director having little to comment on/complain about, which is good. Scene changes went surprisingly smoothly, considering we hadn't rehearsed those at all, and I'm now free until Sunday afternoon when we do it all over again - tomorrow night is a tech rehearsal which I don't have to attend and I have to miss tomorrow evening's rehearsal in favour of a works dinner. Fun, fun, fun.

Now, where's that pizza got to ...?

All time is unredeemable

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 20:33:33 GMT

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable

Hadn't realised it was quite such a long time since I last updated. I went to the States - and drove across them - and cheered on my marathon-running friend; a year later, I ran the marathon myself. Not something I could, or would, have contemplated at the time I wrote that last entry. I'm going to run the Edinburgh marathon in June, with training just beginning again now.

Right now, I'm procrastinating. I have a report to write, promised to the client for today. He will get it today, but it may be 23:59 before it's sent at this rate. Work seems to be taking over my life, and not necessarily the way I might like it to. I'm trying to schedule treats, but they're proving elusive ...

... and, just to complicate matters, I'm assistant stage manager for a play. Shyeah, right, I don't have enough to do so - hey! - why not spend 15 hours a week at the theatre in the evenings after work. Ho hum, some lessons really shouldn't need to be learnt!

All join in the chorus - I need to remember to update more often

Sun, 26 Oct 2003 22:21:53 GMT

... although, in reality, I would need to have more of a life to have more entries.

House redecoration is basically done - a couple of lights need to be put up, but I need to be able to clear a path to the back of the garage to be able to switch off the electricity at the mains and, so far, that hasn't happened. So it won't happen just yet, and likely not until Christmas - I'm off to the USA on Thursday, driving from New York to San Francisco (just because). The trip will be blogged - and rather more frequently updated than this journal is - at http://www.apple2apple.com (which isn't up and running, although it is registered, at the time of writing).

NY - to see friends, to watch a friend run the marathon (and I need to eat my words, because I was skeptical about his committment to this and he is actually doing it - in fact, he's on a plane out to NYC at the moment, somewhere just off the coast of Maine at the moment. So, apologies for doubting you, Andrew).

Nothing much to say

Wed, 03 Sep 2003 07:51:56 GMT

Still working on the house - a good collection of bruises gathered & 14 buckets of tiles removed from the bathroom and carried down 2 flights of stairs to the skip.

Tired

Sat, 30 Aug 2003 21:20:09 GMT

.. knees protesting, back protesting, but the floor's finished. And the curtain's almost finished (ok, there's another one to do, but halfway is good).

Too tired for anything else.

Thu, 28 Aug 2003 12:50:19 GMT

It's wet - finally raining. It's that time of year again; I want to see autumn, to curl into sweaters on crisply cold mornings.

Yawn

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 21:23:35 GMT

Feels like I've been up forever - which is probably not entirely surprising, given the *eep* hour at which I woke up to go to the airport this morning.

Rest of the day was spent trying to wake up - not helped by a business lunch - and resuming work on the sewing epic: the curtains for the bedroom. I was clearly having some sort of out-of-body experience when I decided to make them myself - certainly wasn't in my right mind, anyway. No-one, but no-one, in their right mind decides that making full-drop curtains for a 4m wide window (and French pleated curtains at that) is a good idea. Stepped on a pin whilst working as well - that was ... painful.

Idly watched tv (or rather, listened to tv) whilst working. Why do people volunteer to be abused on 'reality' shows? Not Jerry Springer - that's some form of psychosis that's no doubt feeding the theses of a myriad doctoral students - but things like home makeover shows. Tonight's offering (I forget the name) followed a couple redecorating their modern (new-build) house in "traditional English styles". Ok, they had hideous taste and clearly couldn't recognise traditional English style if it sat up and bit them on the arse but why volunteer to have it filmed and dissected - rather cattily and without much depth - on television??

Most baffling part - a gathered fabric covering on the wall next to the bath. Have these people ever actually tried to clean the area around a bath? They're definitely out of their minds. But I'm fairly certain they're harmless and should be left to their insanity, not have it broadcast to the world.

Trinny & Susannah - ok, so I'm the last person on the planet to have watched this program. It's a bit dull - tonight's featured past-it "celebrities" clearly in search of exposure. A little too much exposure in some cases.

Television baffles me.

Waiting for Abby (& trying not to be too envious that she's flying out but l'm not

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 07:04:32 GMT

Unearthly hour - but Gatwick South Terminal is already busy.

A woman is standing, staring at the screens with check-in info. If she's waiting for her flight info to appear, then she's insanely early - the boards are already showing flights 5 hours ahead.

Tue, 26 Aug 2003 21:06:43 GMT

OK, done for the evening.

Tonight's movie, by way of reward, is Boogie Nights - I'm in the mood for some seriously cheesy 70's retro stuff. God alone knows what they packed Mark Wahlberg's underwear with, though.

Long day doing nothing

Tue, 26 Aug 2003 19:29:16 GMT

Perhaps I should have LJ'd my house refurb. It would have filled more space in here than I have managed in months - not difficult, admittedly.

The refurb is almost over - everything that stood still long enough is now painted white, new windows are in, the electrics are safe, and the new floor is mostly down. I'm attacking the bathroom tiles - the original plan was to remove the grout and re-grout, but that's proving not possible so I'm redoing the tiling entirely. Still the kitchen to finish, but that's not going to take long. I should get my furniture back from storage on September 9th. Yay! I get my bed back <insert Snoopy happy dance>

Definition of torture: taking someone to the airport when you know it's going to be a long few months before you get away on holiday (mind you, it'll be the holiday to end all holidays - thank you, Andrew - 6 weeks in the US, with time in NYC and San Francisco, and driving from one to the other. The route planning is amusing me in my spare time at the moment).

Childhood memory attack: the smell of tomato sauce cooking. The someone I took to the airport is my mother; I'm house-sitting for her, and she has a glut of tomatoes (of near-bibilical proportions. If they have gluts of tomatoes in the Bible) which I'm reducing to tomato sauce because I'm already sick of tomato salad. Never thought I'd say that; I love tomato salad.

Now I need to go write, as I promised Abby ...

Fri, 25 Apr 2003 08:36:36 GMT

Today's film is Zazie Dans Le Metro - just because. Like Run Lola Run with fewer drugs, and in Paris.

Apple, bless' em, are 99.9% wonderful. The remaining 0.1% is usually something to do with my wanting to push the tech beyond that which the nerds have managed to accomplish - hence last night's 3 hour hiatus from the Internet. Not that I was planning to be online for 3 hours but the mere fact that I couldn't get online (long and complicatedly tedious story involving two Airport Extreme Base Stations and an attempt to get them to network in a way that would enable me to access both of them from one computer at the same time. Can't be done. Well, it can be done but when it works, my cable modem connection doesn't. If anyone has managed to get it to work, please let me know how you did it!) was enough to ensure that I was desperate to get online. Of course.

Still burning CDs.

Thu, 24 Apr 2003 07:33:09 GMT

Alex Ferguson: "Both teams produced football of incredible imagination that people will talk about for a long time to come."

Yep. But Man Utd still lost ... roll on the FC Porto/Lazio match tonight

10:58pm is clearly not a good time for me

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 22:02:15 GMT

Bizarre - and unplanned - that both my last posts went off at the same time.

And this is all too boring for words. Life's not quite that tedious - I'm heading for San Francisco next week (an ocean and a continent away) - and maybe it's just the waiting that's getting to me ...

Null day

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 21:58:39 GMT

Recording CDs - it's the minutiae of break-ups that take so much time and energy.

Major accomplishment of the day - trapping my finger between two desks. It's bright red right now.

February is late this year

Mon, 21 Apr 2003 21:58:33 GMT

... in the middle of the February blues, just a couple of months too late. Tedious.

... insomnia strikes ...

Tue, 09 Oct 2001 00:47:10 GMT

An insane bout of insomnia - and I so wanted to sleep, damnit.

Updating my blog, so I thought I'd update this as well. Trawling through the web for images, words, anything that strikes a chord. The makings of a collection of my mind, my fascinations, my obsessions.

Real. Unreal. The soft sibilant chill of a voice, caressing. Silk. I want to hear more; the wind dips and dies and with it decays the memory.