I've been thinking about words that are used rarely. For example, why is it that only eyes are ever referred to as hazel?
OK, eyes and nuts.
Alright: eyes, nuts and a witch.
9:41:00 PM
Friday, January 27, 2006
SK! Haven't seen you in awhile!
I stayed a bit late at work yesterday as I'd planned to go see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with SK and her ex-office-mate (and my lady boss's former temporary personal assistant) JG.
SK picked me up at the hospital and drove us out to the same complex where we saw Harry Potter in November. We met JG and had dinner at Frankie & Benny's which seems to be a transplanted American chain similar to Ruby Tuesday's. The food wasn't bad (I enjoyed the dessert most) but the service was slow and so (boo hoo) we missed all the adverts at the beginning of the film.
I enjoyed the movie. Even the four child actors weren't bad. The CGI animals were amazing, and I've been inspired to add the series of books to my "to re-read" list. I still have the set of seven books I bought in Banbury about 20 years ago.
...
I forgot to mention last time that, while waiting for the play to begin Monday night, SK and I had a drink at The Eagle and Child pub in St. Giles' road (my first visit, would you believe), where Tolkein and C.S. Lewis used to discus their respective works.
9:17:00 PM
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Let's do it
Monday after work my colleague SK and I went to see a play at the Oxford Playhouse called Mammals
An assured and inventive piece of new writing, centred on the domestic life of young couple Jane and Kev and their two small children, Mammals explores the urges and instincts that drive the drama of day to day life.
Action is confined to the kitchen, which becomes a hotbed of simmering tensions. Amid the raised voices and spilt milk, a cauldron of secrets and lies quickly boils over. The characters are revealed for the mammals that they are, whether they�re demanding sex or enthusiastically combing the nits out of one another�s hair.
It wasn't at all bad. We had great seats and cheap tickets as SK is a member of the theatre or something like that. You'd know one of the actresses --on the far right in the photo-- (Anna Chancellor) from Four Weddings and a Funeral. A visit for dinner at a (new to me) noodle bar in Gloucester Green before made for a very nice evening out.
9:36:00 PM
Monday, January 23, 2006
Ka Ching To
I just nearly swallowed my gum while reading a headline on news.bbc.co.uk:
TV licence fee to rise to £131.50
That's about $235/year, and is collected from every household that owns a television set in this country, whether you watch the BBC stations or not. It's on top of the fee you pay each month for cable or satellite if you have that too. I'd also recently read:
London is one of the most expensive places to have a meal in the world due to overpriced wine at restaurants, according to a dining guide. The Time Out London Eating and Drinking guide says the city's restaurants charge up to six times more than off-licences for the same bottle.
I've decided to list some common items with their costs and US$ equivalents, just to give you an idea of how far my pound has to stretch (today's exchange rate £1=$1.78)
A large Big Mac extra value meal - £3.79 ($6.74)
Single, one zone ticket on the Tube - £3 ($5.34)
Daily newspaper (the Times, e.g.) - 60p ($1.07)
Starbucks Cafe Latte - £2.20 ($3.91)
4-pack of toilet paper - £1.39 ($2.47)
A large Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza - £9.99 ($17.78)
One month of broadband internet access - £34.99 for 2Mb service ($62.28)
10 minute phone call to my next door neighbour - 30p ($0.53)
Movie ticket - �6.80 ($12.10)
I could list dozens of other examples. I'm just trying to make the point that when I do spend my hardly earned salary, I'm a bit more choosy.
11:27:00 PM
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Stuck
One of the manifestations of my mental unhealthfulness is that I can quite easily become paralysed into inactivity when faced with, what seems to me at the time, an overwhelming number of things to do. This sluggishness or stupor is difficult to describe to others who don't similarly suffer. Illogically, I say to myself that if I can't do X, Y, Z and A, B, C, I won't even tackle part of X.
More often, I get stuck on part of X and become obsessed about not being able to finish it to the point that I can't move on to Y or Z, and thus do nothing.
Last week for example I was trying to find a couple things in my house. I was missing the charger for the Palm that work has loaned to me, and I also was cataloguing my DVD collection and wanted return two DVDs that a colleague had borrowed and --I was sure-- had returned.
I looked everywhere. I could picture in my mind where I had seen them last (in Woodbridge and at work, respectively) but that didn't help. I tore the house apart. (My house is now a mess.) I was more annoyed because I had taken the Palm charger to Woodbridge but had forgotten an adapter for the electric plug, so it had been useless there. I was sure I'd packed it for the return trip. Or did I? And I had stuck the DVDs into my bag after talking to my colleague about how much he didn't enjoy the movies. Hadn't I?
I spent hours looking, and got nothing else done. I went through my suitcases. I went through my bags. I went through the garbage. I didn't sleep well and called in to work the next day.
A few days later (after confirming with my colleague that he had, as far as he could recall, returned the DVDs), he showed up with them. They'd been at his house. Later, it suddenly came to me where I'd left the Palm's charger: in a power socket behind my bed.
Mental. Breakdown.
9:44:00 PM
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Ka Ching
I'm kind of happy that I jumped on the iPod bandwagon three years ago; I bought a 1st generation 5Gb model a few months after they first came back, because I was intrigued by the idea of carrying so much music around but also because it could be used as a portable hard drive to carry all kinds of files around.
I remember my colleagues at the time saying it would never take off; that it was too expensive; and who wanted to have all their music to choose from when out and about?
I upgraded to a third generation 30GB model just before moving to the UK, and bought a smaller iPod Shuffle last Christmas for myself.
Apple released their fifth generation models in November, and announced today record revenue and profits for the quarter that ended Dec. 31. Apple sold fourteen million iPods from Oct 1-Dec 31, which if I figure correctly is about 100 iPods every minute.
That's a boat load of music being carried around.
10:35:00 PM
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Easy Come, Easy Go
Because Royal Mail is a monopoly, I was forced to subscribe to their "Keep Safe" service to retain my mail while I was on my trip last month. Unlike in the US where the service is free, for the small fee of £10.70 I would have the pleasure of not coming back to a vestibule filled with post and package slips.
Unfortunately, for the second year in a row, and despite having received a confirmation letter before I left, my request was ignored and in fact that's just what I came back to. The customer service representative to whom I spoke was naturally very apologetic, and said they would investigate to ensure it wouldn't happen again and that a full refund would be issued.
I received the cheque in the post yesterday. Later in the day I went to Robert Dyas the Ironmongers to buy two light bulbs to replace the ones that had blown out in my kitchen.
£14.78 (~$26.00).
You tell me whether you think it's expensive to live here.
3:15:00 PM
Friday, January 13, 2006
Peanut Butter
One of my oldest friends (in more than one sense), Dave B, has lived all his life, quite contentedly I believe, in Indiana. We met when I was in seventh grade after my family moved there after an assignment in Wiesbaden, Germany. We started talking one morning while waiting for the school bus. (Though there was a middle school a mile down the road, busing had been implemented in order to provide a more integrated school system, and the kids in my housing area were bused about an hour away to a different school.)
Dave also was the paperboy in our neighbourhood. After I got to know him, I introduced him to our crowd of D&D players and we spent many late nights running through campaigns I had written.
Dave turns 40 today. My mom was in shock when I told her.
10:55:00 PM
Thursday, January 12, 2006
I'm in a competition
I was able to install Toast Titanium 7 and Ecto on my home Powerbook this evening. Ecto is a sweet application that ties directly into Blogger to allow me to create posts offline and then publish them at a later date.
It's been an important week for Apple, as at this year's MacWorld Expo on Tuesday CEO Steve as predicted announced the first of the new Macs based on Intel processors, which will run both OS X and Windows operating systems.
Now I can't imagine any reason why anyone thinking of buying a computer wouldn't choose a Mac.
I was home ill for two days this week so I could have caught the video replay of the Expo keynote, but instead I spent about 40 hours in bed. By yesterday I was just fed up and tired of being fed up and tired.
Having said all that, I've come to the conclusion that I'm spending an unhealthy amount of time around computers, and I need to take a break. While I was home ill, I finished reading a Dan Brown book CM had lent me, and if you've been following along you'll remember that's the first I've finished in a long time. I think I've only been to the pictures once in the last six months or so. Unfortunately the finances aren't very fluid but one thing I must concentrate on is getting my drivers license - which will require lessons and fees to the tune of ~�200-300. I've got until September to finish that up.
No travel planned.
P.S. The blog is four years old this month. I've been purposefully rather disconected lately and I'm afraid you won't find fascinating accounts here in the short term, but you've got the other site for that....P.P.S. First film of 2006 on my list of "want to see": X-Men 3
9:43:00 PM
I enjoyed the movie. Even the four child actors weren't bad. The CGI animals were amazing, and I've been inspired to add the series of books to my "to re-read" list. I still have the set of seven books I bought in Banbury about 20 years ago.
...
I forgot to mention last time that, while waiting for the play to begin Monday night, SK and I had a drink at 
It wasn't at all bad. We had great seats and cheap tickets as SK is a member of the theatre or something like that. You'd know one of the actresses --on the far right in the photo-- (Anna Chancellor) from Four Weddings and a Funeral. A visit for dinner at a (new to me) noodle bar in Gloucester Green before made for a very nice evening out.
