Argh. I Be Back

I'm back. I promise.

And as an added inducement I have all sorts of news including:

• PARIS. I got there, I made it, and I loved it.
  
• The wilderness years are over!
  
• I have a sneaking suspicion that I am slowly turning into Martha Stewart.. minus the jail time for insider trading though.

And for a small joke to end your Friday, most apt for our current times, and where I work:

Definition of an optimist :

An investment banker who irons five shirts on a Sunday evening.

I swear it's not another holiday

I know, I know, it sounds like a holiday, but it isn't.

Today, in about 11 hours time, I am off to Phoenix Arizona for 10 days. But it's not for a holiday. I am going to Phoenix, as is my mum, so we can visit my aunt, who is very sick. I don't really fancy going into the details (which is I suppose a violation of a theory that Freud had- if you mention something then it means you want to talk about it, or else you won't have mentioned it in the first place. Dr D and I used to scream whenever someone did that "ah-ha-HAAA! You're breaking the T&D law!! SAY IT! SAY IT YOU BASTARDS!" but unfortunately I found out that we didn't invent that theory. Freud did. Or he'd pinched it from someone else).

Anyway, I'm off to Phoenix, which I believe I have already been to. Well, I say "been to" but that's only if you count stopping between El Paso and the Grand Canyon on our US road trip a few years ago to have a lovely dinner of greasy pizza in Phoenix. If this counts, then yes I've been to Phoenix.. Personally I don't think this counts as having "been to Phoenix" somehow.. surely there is more to this city than a strip of fast food joints in car park... Though I am tempted to see if I can find the place again, just for old time sake - you know, check out the old haunts, the places we knew and loved so well, all that pizza, all that coke, all that... car park space.

So what am I doing up still at 1.45am? Trying to encode my sodding dvds into a format that my sodding ipod (not encased in beef) can play. I've had no end of annoyance with this stupid procedure. Every single thing that could go wrong with this has gone wrong, and I am about to give up and go to bed. All I want is to be able to watch a couple of Studio 60s and maybe some Battlestar Galactica (or as Calv fondly calls it "Battlestar Gay-Lactica") whilst I'm away.. is that too much to sodding ask for? Apparently YES.

I'll try to post whilst I am away, but if I don't then you know why... it's because after years of becoming acclimatised to the crap English weather, I've disintegrated in 35 degree Arizonian heat... I just pray to god that my suitcase turns up....


*** UPDATE *** 2:19AM
Yes, yes YESSSSS!!! I knew my honours degree in Computing Science wasn't for nothing!! Am not hopeless sado still up at 2.20 AM swearing at her sodding pc!! Finally I have managed to get disk 3 of Studio 60 all encoded/decoded/whatever and on iTunes ready to go, but I have also decoded disk 4 and am converting it as we speak. YES!!! Am slowly joining the ranks of nerds who actually know how to use their computers for things other than blogging, web surfing, and java development. Get in!!!

7.15 am

After 17 days of holidays (well, in fact it's been almost 20 odd days since my last week at work I was sick for 2 days) I have had to set my alarm again for 7.15. Argh, the idea of work after such a long (not necessarily restful) break is such a, well, drag. Tomorrow I have to go back to work. Workin' for da man. Puttin on my figurative suit and tie. Back to the grindstone. Ya di ya di ya da.

For the last 17 days C, my parents (from Australia!) and I have been to Naples, Rome, the Southern Italian Tirol Alps (were they don't speak Italian!), St Moritz, Innsbruck, Cortina and almost to San Peligrino. We've seen Pompeii, almost every clothes store in Naples (you know they don't have a big department store in Naples?), been accosted by a crazy old guy at a train station, had Christmas lunch of bread, parma ham and cheese in the car at a rest stop, fondue in one of the richest towns in Switzerland, seen an awful lot of rich bad taste in name of fasion, crazy cheese dreams and New Years Eve in London. All in all it's been a really, well, interesting holiday. But now it's back to work. Again. For another year. 2008.

Any resolutions? A couple:

1) I want to do a mini triathalon
2) I want to do the London to Brighton cycle
3) I want to start regularly brushing my teeth at night, not just when I remember. I've listened to too many nightmare tales of root canal, infected gums, painful wisdom tooth removal. Not for me thankyou very much.
4) I'm going to blog more. I've been slack. It annoys me.
5) I'm going to learn to actually enjoy porridge.

All my other resolutions are the usual lose weight, exercise more, save money, blah blah blah boring boring boring yawn type resolutions that I will say I want to do, but more than likely won't do.

I have a write up of the Christmas Italian Disaster holiday almost done that will bore you to tears. Just have to, you know, finish writing it up.

Otherwise, I hope that Christmas and the New Year has treated you well. I hope Santa brought you all the lovely toys you wished for. And God bless the fucking lot of us.

Alpacas and cello strings

Argh. It’s been a bit insane at the moment. So where the bloody hell have I been for the last 10 days?

Let me start with saying that for the last 2 years we’ve been writing the new version of our software, which we'd code named "Alpaca". Why? Well, unlike Java, which codenames all it's latest versions cool sounding names like "Kestral", "Tiger", "Mustang" and other fast and interesting things, we decided that, not being anywhere near that cool, should start with the letter A, and name it the stupidest looking animal we could think of. Look at this thing:

Frankly, it's fucking pathetic.

So right this very minute, we’re now on the hairy edge of releasing Alpaca, and have got a code freeze in place for this Wednesday. So we’ve been frantically trying to bug fix for the last few months, which means I've not really been around to blog. Despite having done cool things like stay at the Hotel Li, for a fun weekend of re-aquainting myself with booze (yes, at the dinner table at a very lovely restaurant, whilst Li and C were chatting, I actually turned to the bottle of wine, looked at it sitting in it's silver wine bucked, chilling in icy water, stroked it lovingly over it's white napkin and whispered "oh Alcohol, you crazy thing. I've mised you too. You know I couldn't stay mad at you for too long"), getting my arse slightly kicked at the Sex and the City board game... (which turned from a proper game to a quiz show style affair, with C being the quiz master, and Li and I having to slam the table in lieu of a buzzer everytime we knew the answer. By this stage we'd had a few cosmos, so it was all loud, blustery, and painful for my poor hands), lots of shopping, and saving babies from death.

Tonight, C and I went to the Magic's house to play beautiful music. Well, to play some music. ELLSO starts again this Saturday, and obviously I've not picked up the cello for the last 3 months. I've been the cricket that sung for the summer and has nothing to show for it in the winter, or something random like that. So tonight we decided it would be a good idea to get together, having a drink, and a good bash at our instruments. Would have been lovely if, whilst trying to tune my cello, I hadn't thought "Oh i'll just turn the peg a bit", causing the peg to slip, the string to never get back in tune, and eventually, after much fucking about with the peg, for my A string to SNAP. So much for the practise. Instead C and I alternated between playing cello and playing the piano, and Mag held the treble end up by playing violin. It definitely was a nice way to end my day, since it had all been a bit shite up to that point.

So that's really all i've been up to. An even faster, cliff notes special:

Book I'm currently reading: "The Colditz Story" by P. R. Reid. I've been up to the bit where they attempt to escape at the end for 2 days now. You'd think I'd have finished it, but I keep falling asleep. It really is a great book, but it just makes me sleepy.

Game Currently Playing: Halo 2 on my xbox. "Arbiter, you don't know who you're shooting at cause all the grunts look the same? Arbiter, stop shooting at our ship. It's supposed to have a hull you know. Arbiter, stop fucking about in general"

Last historical thing I toured: The Royal Albert Hall, where we did a private tour, going backstage and underground, for free grâce à the London Open House festival this weekend. Ok this was a bit of a brag, rather than a cliff notes special

Thing I'm most looking forward to right now: Hmm.. sleep? Pie and Mash for lunch tomorrow? Sleep right now? Tricky..

Thing I'm least looking forward to right now: Hmmm... not being able to sleep?

If you have a cliff notes special on your life, then please by all means, post it and let me know, or just leave me a comment. I'm especially interested in the last 2 categories. Whilst I clearly dodged the answers, please leave me proper ones!

So that's it really. A fair bit on, but when our software is out the door, there will hopefully be more imputus and time to blog. Busy, busy, busy.

The point of the blog

I can't sleep. It's not that I've been tossing and turning, and have just deciede I can't sleep. No, it's 1am now, and I've only just gotten into bed. I've stayed up and watched crap tv for ages, knowing full well I'm not interested in what I was seeing, but just dreading having to go to my bed. And I have no idea why. Why is it that I have this nervous, uneasy, twitch, that is making me feel, well, scared? And the wierd things is that I have no idea what I'm scared of. It's like having the Mean Reds. I know it's not the usual fear I get before I nod off, which makes me get up and check all the doors and windows are locked at night. No, this fear is just dense, heavy, and stodgy, like a wool blanket that's too thick and oppressive and holds you down and suffocates you. And the worse thing is that I know that writing things down is supposed to help you relax and make you feel like you're surrendering your problems, but it's almost as if typing these words out gives breath and life and substantiates this fear into existence.

What's wrong with me? There is nothing to be frightened of. Nothing is going on. So why is my heart racing? Why can't I relax and sleep?

This is why I own a blog. So that I can write all these things down, and later on, much later, when this fear goes away, or the feelings that I have day to day, or little events that go to make up a life, are forgotten and surrendered to the past, I know that by writing these things, these crappy, little, stupid events and thoughts, means that I will always have some record of it. Albeit, if only in the digital universe, to be made up of 1's and 0's and little bits of electricity.

Now all I have to do is be able to sleep, to start another day.

Argh it's late and I appologise for this post. I'm going to try to get some sleep.

I'm not dead

Just insanely busy. It's been an insane almost 2 weeks of my stupid day job, (we're trying to work to the release of our software), out of work busy-ness, having a cold for almost a week, and being away.

So to update, cliff notes style I've:

1) This has been so long ago, but our little concert evening went really well! I won't bore you with the details but yes, air bowing did take place. No, I didn't fuck up so badly I thought "I'm never doing this again". Anyway, no one was really watching me, what with the other 4 fabulous cellists playing with me. Plus at the end of the night we had a giant "jam" session where we tried to sight read things like The Can Can (and then play it over and over again, each time twice as fast as the previous, until my arms felt like they were going to drop off!). I have come to the conclusion having watched some of the acts that there are some wacky, wacky people out there though.

2) Been to Brighton for 2 weekends straight, both to see my friend Li. First weekend to go see the Brighton Open Artists Festival where, as it says on the tin, artists open their houses to the public so you can look at their art. Or, as we were there really to do, take a sticky beak around their abodes. In both cases, their art work and their houses made both my art work and my house feel inferior. That and Li's damned house is so bloody nice that even things like her walls make me think "god her house is lovely. She's even picked really nice paint in every room. And wow, look how well it's plastered. Damn I wish my house looked like this". Last weekend was her birthday party, where she had a live band come and play. A live band! In her backyard.

2) C, a friend Pop and I went to the Mind, Body & Spirit Festival. (Dr D and The Magic - shurrup). All in all it was interesting I suppose. About 1/3 of the vendors there did massage, 1/3 sold books, jewellery, and other paraphernalia. And 1/3 where there to tell you your fortune and perform exorcism. Surprisingly, very few had the hag like gypsy qualities I always used to associate fortune telling with, but heck this was my first foray into this domain. Yes, in case you're wondering I did go to a clairvoyant, who said she could see me working in the health industry (programming and nursing not the same thing really) and that she could see a little girl in my future. So to all my female friends out there, this is a shout out that I am expecting, no demanding, that one of you to have a little girl that I can babysit, perhaps being the cool, slightly wacky 'aunt' figure in her life, who she goes to for sneaky glasses of kahlua when she's underage cause her own mom isn't nearly as much fun, cause dammit, I am not sprouting kids anytime soon.

The one thing she clearly said was that I was going to Vegas. And packing lightly. Jeez, I hope she wasn't meaning feet first.....

Back from everywhere

Holy crap. It's been ages since I've updated this blog.

In the last month the following has happened:

• FOP week came
• FOP week went - some brilliant meals, and more booze than I like to care to remember.... including 1/2 a bottle of some random italian liquer that Li and I polished off, after a night of wine, cocktails and dancing....
  
• I completed on my flat
• I moved into my flat, a week earlier than anticipated because I was too hungover from the Italian liquer FOP night to argue with everyone. To be fair, it was the best thing I could have done because the brilliant friends all pitched in and helped, like the fabulous people they are.
• The Flatmate fucked off back to oz.
• Any sadness I might have felt for his leaving, quickly disappeared when I realise how much crap he left in the flat for me to sort out!
• I went on an 11 day holiday in China. I would have blogged whilst away but had no internet access. I ate myself stupid, which has led to comments when I got back like "Well, there's something on the back of your coat, but you won't be able to see it because you're arse is so big now" - quote Dr D, 2007.
• C moved into my flat, and now we are living in domestic harmony. We've had our first, very domestic phone call where I asked her what time she was home, and what she wanted for dinner.

I've got entries for all these random events, which I will sort out over the weekend, and post next week. Watch this space.

Posts, posts, posts

I've been uber slack for the last week, but I do actually have a ligitimate excuse: that stupid monkey called "work" has been on my back for the last week, so I've not had much of chance to write things up. But hopefully these 4 posts will make up for a week of bludging (well blog bludging..)

Yours in slackness,
I