MAY 2001
Bricks and mortar - or - planes, trains and automobiles
So it looks like I'm going to be out of circulation for a little while. My house move is almost upon me. Of course I'm nowhere near ready, but I will be by the time Friday morning comes along. My parents are coming down to help and one of the lads at work is helping too. Sunday I'm going to Cardiff with a couple of the boys from work to shout for Reading in the Second Division Playoff Final. I'm flying to Düsseldorf Tuesday morning as I'm working in our German NOC in Duisburg for four days, then back at the weekend.
The following Monday I'm going to see Mark Knopfler at the Royal Albert Hall in London and the next morning it's another flight to Düsseldorf for four more days' work in Duisburg. I'm staying over that weekend though and taking the train down to stay with a couple of friends in Kaiserslautern for a few days' R & R and to see a couple Peter Maffay concerts in St. Goarshausen and Mannheim, and then I'm back home on the Wednesday from Frankfurt, thanks to our very helpful PA, Miriam. Which is actually very cool, because it means I don't have to pay for a flight to Germany for the shows.
So it's going to be a while before I get to settle in, but there'll be plenty of time for that when I get back. And plenty to do. There's quite a bit of decorating that needs doing. I want to replace the carpets too and I need to figure out how to put a kind of extra-wide baby gate between the kitchen and the living room so that the bunny stays in the kitchen during the day like she's supposed to. It's easy here; there's a proper door, but not in the new place. Oh well. Life is full of little challenges, domestic and otherwise.
May 24, 2001
Fashion for penguins
This has got to be just about the coolest, cutest and strangest story I've ever heard involving human interaction with the animal kingdom. Obviously it had to involve the coolest creatures on earth.
Link from Swallowing Tacks.
May 22, 2001
Moving on, at last
So, the last remnants of my life of the last six years are torn up this week. I have a completion date for the sale of this house and the purchase of my new one. I'd like to be happy about my new house, and I guess I should be. It's a great little house in pretty much exactly the street I would have chosen in the town where I want to live. It's got a lovely little back garden, southerly-facing, plenty of room and green for the menagerie to run around in. Well, Curtis, Edward, Gus, Carly and Jacques anyway. The hamsters stay inside. It's going to be all mine so if I want to decorate the living room with nude posters of Italian porn stars and let the dirty dishes pile up in the sink I damn well can. I won't of course (for God's sake, I have more taste than that), but I could.
But it's hard to be enthusiastic about moving. I bought this house two years with Tasha. We chose this house carefully. We had fairly specific requirements and everything we wanted we found here. This village is a nice place and we have the brook running along the bottom of our front garden. Things were good. However things stopped being good six months ago when she decided she'd had enough of me. It got a whole lot worse real quick and has not really improved but I'm not going to go into that right now. I'm having a hard time trying to pack up this whole house that I never planned on moving from and putting it into boxes. Partly this is simple logistics: I'm a relentless pack-rat at the best of times and, having no intention of moving, I allowed myself to acquire even more crap than usual. But of course it's also the emotional task of tearing apart the remaining pieces of the life we spent over five years building.
However, I still have to get on with it. My completion date is next Friday, May 25. So I need to get my skinny cracked ass in gear. Things are not aided by a two-week trip to Germany four days later. Normally I'd be delighted to be going to Germany. It is after all my favourite country, for various reasons. This jaunt is all work though - well, not all work, I'm going to see Peter Maffay in St. Goarshausen and Mannheim during the last weekend - and exceptionally ill-timed given the house move, meaning that I'm not going to get the time I wanted to settle in and decorate. But there's nothing I can do about that. It can wait, I guess. But boy oh boy is Curtis going to be pissed off about living in a hutch for two weeks when she's used to being free to roam as she pleases. Still, Jon will make a fuss of her when he comes around to feed her, especially if he brings Brenna with him.
May 18, 2001
Your going to learn something
The proliferation of email and personal web-publishing has ever more frequently caused me to turn into an incoherent gibbering psychopath due to the sort of basic errors which have annoyed me for 25 years, long before I studied languages (French, German, Russian and Latin) and became even more acutely aware of the value of correct syntax. Therefore I could kiss Sars for posting this rant. Please read it. It's not a trivial matter, honestly.
May 13, 2001
You told me to write "click" on the screen
Those of you who have never worked in tech support probably think it's not like this. You are sooooooooooooo wrong.
May 13, 2001
This mom is your mom
I know I shouldn't be mean to my mother, especially as it's Mother's Day (in the US anyway, it was two months ago this side of the pond). But Allison's words strike a resounding chord with me, to say the least, and I bet they do with you, too :-)
"Well, ring out the bells, I got paid today. I immediately sent off my rent and now I'm broke again. Thank God Mother is here to make sure I don't die of starvation or exposure. Of course, I may throw myself under a bus because of her constant advice-giving...but that is unlikely to happen, as she would not let me stand close enough to the curb."
May 13, 2001
The silence and the lambs
I work in Reading. For those of you who have the good fortune never to have been there, it's a large busy town on the M4 corridor, about 35 miles west of London. It's hot, ugly, stuffy, choked with traffic during the day and full of drunken morons in the evenings, to name but a few drawbacks. I live 16 miles away in Benson, a small village in south Oxfordshire. I should have thought that sentence was explanation enough. Nonetheless people, most recently my solicitor, keep asking me why I don't live in Reading.
I walked out into my back garden late tonight to see what my rabbit was up to. It was dark, the air was clear and fresh and it was almost silent. So quiet that I was able to stand and listen to lambs bleating in nearby fields. Not to mention the burble of the village brook as it scurries by at the bottom of my front garden. That's why I don't live in Reading.
May 13, 2001
And the worms ate into his brain
I've waited 18 years for a reason to use that Pink Floyd line from "Hey You" on The Wall. And now I've found one. I know this is a truly grim story, but you really have do to read it. This sort of thing never happens on this side of the Atlantic.
May 13, 2001
Split ends
It has to be said that there are few pleasures in life that give you quite as warm a feeling as a gorgeous girl responding to your having done her a trivial favour by smiling a big smile and telling you you're her saviour. :-)
