Friday, June 28
Well, I have a laptop! Although when I say
I have a laptop, my brother John has it in his room. He's trying out games on it, or something. First time I've seen him tidy up in ages, even if it was only a space big enough for a laptop. :-)
So here I am with the ol' desktop. Heh.
Perhaps I'll dazzle you with the specs in a while. I think it was rather a bargain. Haven't actually paid for it yet, mind you. John paid for it - I didn't have enough money in one place. (My finances are complicated...!) It's cool. Shiny. And John's friend put several of his slightly dodgy CD's on it...
Next phase is to find a good digital camera!
Thursday, June 27
Think I'll blog early tonight.
I found a laptop that I think I'll get, if
Aldi have any left. They probably don't. The offer's been running for a while, I think. The other problem is that I don't have enough money to buy it in any one place. Why is it that when you transfer money from bank to bank it spends about four days showing up in
neither account?! Where
is the money during that time? Hmm.
I bought another
Ben Folds Five CD yesterday. It was in an alleged sale. Has anyone else noticed that all the sales have the same things in them these days? Stuff is rarely in sales because it's clearance. It gets sent into stores purely to be in the sale.
HMV used to have
excellent sales... Even the online places have the same things in their sales. *sniff*
Anyway, this CD is entitled "Whatever and Ever Amen". Whenever I get a new CD I carefully examine the insert first. I like the little books you get inside CD's. Dad goes on and on about gatefold vinyl album stuff, but the books are good enough for me. :-)
It says this:
"This recording was made with the utmost care and professionalism. Microphones were chosen and placed in the general vicinity of each instrument in order to capture the sonic characteristics of the music performed. Each instrument was tuned before and often during the recording sessions and arrangements were rehearsed or at least discussed.
"The lyrics or text were created to detract from the repetition inherent in modern instrumental pop music. Lambic pentameter was not always an option, however where possible, the last syllable of a line was manipulated in order to rhyme with the last syllable of the preceeding line. Where this technique has served to distort the meaning of the of the original text, the fuzz tone of the electric bass guitar or a virtuosic drum fill has been inserted to detract the listener temporarily from the actual song.
"Finally, the best takes were chosen and the others were culled and thrown away or erased, otherwise this record could easily have been hundreds of hours long; much longer than the generally accepted running time of a modern commercial recording. Every measure was taken to keep this record mistake free. The mixing engineer, Andy Wallace, who has mixed many top notch famous recording stars, often took the initiative and muted or "ducked" missed notes and unsavoury textures.
"The band and producer are confident that your money was well spent on an album relatively free of major sonic and musical problems."
LOL!!!
Wednesday, June 26
Drat, just closed the browser I'd written my new blog entry in.
I thought about forgetting tonight's update, but I figured I'd better write something. Otherwise I'll have a backlog!
The main part of the entry was about the Ferrari result. What the FIA did about the Austrian debacle, I mean...! Someone was
very clever. Ferrari weren't penalised because of the race fixing element. As I kept saying (you may have noticed), that isn't against the rules, so they couldn't be fined for that. No, they were fined because they broke rule 170 of the FIA regulations. They were fined 1 million dollars, in fact. Although they only have to pay half of that, unless they're naughty again!
So, what is rule 170? It's about the podium procedure. If Michael Schumacher hadn't been nice to Rubens Barrichello and pushed him onto the top step (some would say he did it because he was being booed, but hey) and given him the winner's trophy, Ferrari wouldn't have been fined. Probably. They get national representatives to present the trophies, and if you confuse them, that's not good. Hence the fine. Clever stuff.
I bet I'll read in the papers tomorrow that "Ferrari have paid the price for fixing the race" or something. (The headline would have more puns, I know.) But that's not it at all. You can tell your drivers to do whatever you like. Apart from launch missiles at other cars, and release deadly oil slicks, and project lasers at other cars chassis to cut them in half. Oh, wait, that was James Bond. Hmm.
Other news: I went out to eat food with three people from work. I am quite, quite full up. I'm regretting the extra sweet dessert. I can't eat sweet things. Probably Mum's fault. Why'd she have to be diabetic? *grin*
And also, I bought some shoes. It's news because I don't buy shoes. I was going to get some new ones I could wear at work, but
Clarks was closed for training. (It would be, the one day I'm there early so I can get them before work!). So I went to the cheap discount shoes place, where a very nice lady sold me some shoes for £10. The wedding I'm going to Saturday is now covered, shoe wise. Hooray!
I just have to get used to having heels.
Not high heels, but I only ever have flat soles, so...
I know, what sort of female am I? :-)
Tuesday, June 25
What did I do today? Well, a lot, but nothing interesting.
Today officially signalled the end of
Attack of the Clones mania. If there ever
was mania, as such. There was a skim recall (I dazzle you with my jargon!) for the novelisation of the film and the tie-in comic book set. So
we sent loads back. I wonder where they go when they're sent back? Hmm.
And the most exciting thing I've done this evening is... watch
Wormhole X-Treme! with the commentary on. Probably. Very funny, though. Most of the time they were commenting on all the cameos and in-jokes that the 100th episode of
Stargate featured. But there were those odd moments when they reflected on things like the
Six Million Dollar Man. And I made lots of screen captures for Ali's
Boringly Named Peter DeLuise website. Because there's just
not enough Peter DeLuise on the internet! Funny man... :-)
I thought I would get lots done tonight. But
Dad made me write e-mails for his
eBay pop pop boat sales. In fairness, this took a lot less time than if he'd done it himself, so I was still on track to get something done. But then Mum wanted to look at all the
Steam stuff listed. Which meant I had to sit there and scroll and click on things. Because she
refuses to use the computer.
Mind you, a while ago she wouldn't even have wanted to look at the monitor, so...
Progress, eh?
Monday, June 24
Another hot day. I know I'd be inside if I wasn't at work, but I still felt jealous of all the people outside. I sat in the garden for half an hour or so after work, reading my
Teach yourself Latin book. I think the only way I can make myself less pale is to invest in a laptop as soon as possible. It seems like such an obvious thing to do, but I can't help but think it shows what a terrible geek I am...! I really am unnaturally pale. I keep looking in the mirror and thinking I look ill.
I was annoyed when I read the papers today. They all seemed to be suggesting that Rubens wouldn't have won yesterday's Grand Prix without Michael Schumacher promising not to overtake him! What a cynical attitude. Michael was the one who made a mistake. And teams tell their drivers to back off
all the time. It's after the second pit stop, you're getting near the end of the race, one of your drivers is clearly having a better day. Do you let them keep racing flat out, running the risk of one or both of them retiring? Or do you tell them to back off and just drive to the line?
Just because Ferrari have to face that inquest tomorrow. And if they're fined or banned or anything it'll be
stupid. There are no rules saying you can't tell one of your drivers to pull over and let the other driver win. How can they say it was wrong when there isn't a rule about it? It was unpopular, yes, and that should be their punishment.
I'm off to look at laptops. :-)
Sunday, June 23
Well, here we are again. After admiring
Daisy's weather pixie, I decided to get my own. I couldn't find one that I really liked, but this one's not too bad. Heh. Anyway, it tells you the weather! Which is kind of exciting. :-)
So, today was the
European Grand Prix. It wasn't all that exciting, because Ferrari were miles ahead of everyone else. Drat. And to make things worse,
David Coulthard tried overtaking Juan-Pablo Montoya, but Montoya span and broke David's steering. Aargh! Poor David. Poor Montoya too, I suppose. It made for the politest argument in F1 history though. Which was amusing. And also David directed some "sarcastic applause" towards Montoya. I don't think there's enough sarcastic applause on the TV these days. *grin*
Nice for Rubens to finally get his second ever win. Although with all the debate over Ferrari getting him to move over before, they could hardly tell him to move over. Could they? I half expected them to, to be honest. It didn't make much sense last time they did it, what with Rubens needing the points. Unless they don't want a Ferrari 1/2 in the constructors' championship.
Although with their pace, the world is their oyster...
Saturday, June 22
I changed the tabley thing at the top again. Now does
that look more like a monkey and less like a monkey bird thing?
Me again. Obviously. Bit not quite here, though. I spent all day watching the
Star Wars trilogy. I thought I ought to watch them again, what with having recently seen
Attack of the Clones. So many clever references. And
so much better than the new prequels! *sigh*
Anyway, just a short note today, really. I'm chatting, so I ought to pay attention. I
want to pay attention! I like these people!! One of the people I'm chatting to is
Mark. He just started a blog, so if anyone would like to visit it and make him happy, go ahead!
The lights at the crossing by our house went mad the other day. They stopped traffic for 20 seconds, then let the traffic go for 20 seconds. And so on. The traffic was building up like mad! It would have been quite useful (for getting across half of the dual carriageway), but it wasn't actually displaying a green man. And the old ladies might not make it across in 20 seconds. :-)
Return of the Jedi rocks. Totally!
Oh yes. It does.
Friday, June 21
I don't know if it looks like a monkey or not. But I think it's an improvement on the robot. Plus the robot was just a template from Blogger, and this is something
I created. It probably shows. :-)
Anyway, the football, then. England lost. But it was a valiant enough effort. To be honest, I hadn't really thought they'd get this far. Last Friday I found some "good luck England" things to put up at
work, and I said maybe we ought to put them up because it might be the last day we could use them. Because they were playing on Saturday, you see. And I didn't think they'd win. A lady overheard me and said I wasn't very optimistic. Heh.
I don't really care about football, though. I care about England doing well, because as a nation we seem to get so caught up in it. There were St. George's crosses everywhere. On cars, on houses, on people... It was the first time I remember everyone getting so visibly involved. But I don't actually care about the football side of things. I don't watch football usually, and although most men seem to watch the World Cup even when they don't usually watch football, I can't be bothered. I have F1 to keep me occupied. I don't need football! But I
did watch the second half of the match this morning. When Brazil scored two goals to our one. Drat.
That Rivaldo person is annoying, though. I believe he was fined because he fell over clutching his face when he got kicked in the thigh. Well, today he was touched on the shoulder and he held his face and grimaced in pain. Honestly, what sort of wimps
are these people? It's weird, really. David Beckham's out there on a broken foot that's not completely healed, and Rivaldo's hamming it up. (What a strange expression.) I know
why he did it. To get someone sent off. But... it's just not cricket, is it? If you argued with a cricket umpire that'd be it. Maybe they ought to introduce genteel cricketing rules to football. :-)
Oh, and the other thing is to do with Holly Valance, again. Sorry to keep bringing this up. Heh. Um, there was a bit in the paper, you see. Alesha Dixon, from
Mis-teeq, said, "We'll leave the naked videos to Holly Valance. We're about music and selling music so we'll be keeping our tops on." Their very skimpy tops, I presume? Hmm. I did notice, incidentally, that you don't see Kylie's bottom
at all in her latest video! I think it's called "Love at First Sight". You only see her top half, and she's wearing a fairly modest top. So, yes.
Goodnight. :-)
Thursday, June 20
I was going to write a long and complicated entry today, but I got sidetracked by making a robo-monkey to replace the robot.
I
think he looks like a monkey. My brother came in and exclaimed, "Monkey!" before pausing for a moment and adding, "Bear?" So if I just count his first reaction, it must look like a monkey. Although he says, "Monkey!" a lot for no apparent reason anyway, so it could have just been coincidence. :-)
No news on the CD player face, JICYWW...
I'll just say a bit about the highlight of my day. Today at
work I had what must go down as one of the strangest phone calls I've ever had. It was, let's say, cheeky. It was the
Virgin Megastore across the way. They had
Mis-teeq coming to do a signing session (and sing the songs on their new double A side), but they'd realised they didn't have a table for them to sign at. This was just
two hours before the event was due to take place!
Being the nice person I am (yeah, right) , I said I'd phone them back, and found one of the managers. She said they could have one of the tables in the staff room. So I organised the table's journey to the shop opposite.
Mis-teeq have sat at a table
I organised...! (It's not a claim to fame, really, is it?) Maybe I should have said they could only borrow it if they got
Mis-teeq to sign it... I don't know. :-p
Not that I really like
Mis-teeq. Another group who've only got where they are today by wearing as few items of clothing as possible.
Have I been coming across as a tad jealous, lately? *g*
Wednesday, June 19
It's hot in here. Much hotter than outside, probably. I just opened the window. As long as the bugs don't come in...
It's been hot for the last three days, which is odd. I don't want to strengthen the idea of England as a cold, wet, place. It's not like it really rains all that much. At least, not down here in Essex. And it's not
cold, as such, just not really warm. But Monday it was 27 degrees C. I even had an icecream! And although it hasn't been
quite that hot yesterday and today, it's still hot. Finally, I think this is the summer. Perhaps we'll get another two days or so before Autumn hits. :-)
The other day
James was complaining about Holly Valance. Now, I have to admit that a couple of years ago, when I'd finished university and was hanging around the house being unemployed, I
did get quite into
Neighbours. I thought Flick was a pretty interesting character. Whether she still is, I don't know. Last Thursday the 4,000th episode of
Neighbours was shown on
BBC 1. That's an awful lot of stupid plot twists.
Anyway, Holly Valance. I've heard
worse music. I have a rather poor view of most chart music these days. Occasionally something good slips through, but it's rare. I wonder whether most people feel the same way, or whether it's me. Am I getting old? It has to be the youngsters that spend their pocket money on singles. I usually wait and see if there are a couple of songs I like by someone and then think about buying the album. Except in rare cases. Like
Madness and the
Gorillaz.
What I object to is that she's decided to get noticed by seemingly being naked in her video. Yes, I know it was a flesh coloured body suit. This is where I realise that I have double standards. Most of the reason I feel... extremely mild dislike...? Anyway, most of the reason is that she said horrible things about Kylie. And part of me knows that she probably never said those things, because the press is evil. And anyway, it's not like I'm a big Kyllie fan. Well, when I was small it was Kylie and Jason mania. (Back to
Neighbours again, eh? Although I wasn't allowed to watch it when I was small.)
Okay, I digressed again. I was saying about double standards. The thing about Kylie is that she's a little tiny person that no-one can really take offence at. She seems... nice. Plus she's really pretty. However she achieved her pert bottom. :-p
The pert bottom, that's part of the problem. Some people would say that Kylie wouldn't have gotten where she has without assets like her bottom. And she took
all her spacesuit off when she was in a spaceship for one of her videos. It was a pink spacesuit, too, which is just bleugh, basically. Heh. But if Kylie does it, why should I have a problem with Holly Valance doing it? I'm not really sure. I think Miss Valance is maybe trying too hard to usurp Kylie.
Let's face it, it's not going to happen. Apparently, when tickets went on sale yesterday for a Kylie Australian gig, they were gone in a matter of minutes. However you feel about Kylie, she's produced some cracking tunes. And plenty of not so good ones. But the good tunes, they're what people remember. She did it in the 80's, she's still doing it now! Oh yes, I remember dancing around the playground at school to
The Locomotion.
However much the kids like
Kiss Kiss it's not something you can dance to, is it..?
Tuesday, June 18
Right, own up. Which of you people knows where the face to my brother's car CD player is?
He's very upset. He spent about £200 on the
CD player (it has
no knobs or buttons of any kind, it's entirely remote controlled, wow!), and another £200 or so on the
subwoofer (it's number 2) and everything hooked up to it. And that was at cheaper online install it yourself prices. And now it's all a bit useless, really.
It's not just that it's used up loads of his hard earned apprentice mechanical engineer wages, but he's spent
ages installing it and tweaking it and getting the balance
perfect. If someone
did take it, I hope they... can't think of a suitable thing to say there. Die horribly? No, that's not it.
You fight like a dairy farmer, you horrible person you.
He left it at college, probably. Which college? Hmm, it's a technical college, I think. It was at Basildon, but now it's at Thurrock. I think they have two campuses. (Good clues, eh?) He must have left it by his bag instead of in it, unless someone took it out of his bag. It'd be fairly pointless to take a face though. So he probably left it there. So someone must have found it. Mustn't they? They're not going to be reading this though. Unless something
really weird and coincidental is going on. Hmm.
It must be aliens! They broke his leg be
low the knee. Hel
lo. Sorry,
Red Dwarf quote for no apparent reason.
I hope it turns up in the lost property or something, because my new
David Bowie album sounded
perfect in that car. David Bowie knows how to make an album that sounds great with surround sound type stereo speakers and frequencies being sent to different places. He's very technically minded, you know. It even had the track names programmed into it, and the only other album we've found that had that was Cake's
Comfort Eagle. I think it was called that. I always try to call it
Lone Eagle, which is the name of a Danielle Steel book. What terrible things to get confused.
If that sounded selfish it wasn't supposed to. The part about
Heathen sounding great, I mean. Before I rambled on about other stuff.
All his money was in that stereo system! (Not literally stuffed inside or anything. You know what I mean.) He's penniless! Take pity on him!
BTW, I
am aware that I've been less interesting lately.
Sorry. :-p
Sunday, June 16
Another week, another list of stuff I've been watching/reading/listening to etc. *sigh*
You know, the most popular search that ends up here is to do with
The Phantom Menace. Which is weird, because there must be loads of sites that mention
TPM. Although, clearly not that many that mention
Spaced and Peter Serafinowicz as well. Having said that, I think only one person searched for Peter Serafinowicz. Every time
I have to type it I have to look it up - it's too hard to spell. Heh. Most people search for Duane Benzie, instead. I mean, they search for "Duane Benzie Phantom Menace", which is weird since he was Duane Benzie in
Spaced and Darth Maul's voice in
The Phantom Menace.
As I'm mentioning
Spaced, I'd like to point out that if you go to that site, I've provided them with one of their news items. It's one of the 15th June ones. I'm not going to tell you which. I'm not sure why, I just don't want to. It'll add some excitement to your life trying to find it. :-p
Anyway, I mention
The Phantom Menace not because I want to impart any more info about it, but because I went to see
Attack of the Clones this week. I can't wait to see what a third series of
Spaced will say about it. It was definitely much much better than
TPM. Not that that is hard! I was just... so disappointed after
TPM. I thought George Lucas had lost it. I felt like Tim in
Spaced. He burnt all his original
Star Wars stuff. He lost his job because he shouted at a kid who liked Jar Jar.
I reckon there are two ways you'll approach the new films, if you're a fan. You're either going to love them just because they're adding to the story, or (like Tim) you're going to hate them because you've had such high expectations. Having loved Episodes IV, V and VI, I think it would be hard to make anything that was better. Those films have gone down in cinema history, after all. I thought maybe the problem with
TPM was that it was just impossible to live up to the other films. I thought that might be the same with
all the prequels. But
AOTC has proved that they needn't be rubbish, even if they're not going to be groundbreaking...
Why did
TPM spend so long telling stories that didn't matter? There wasn't really much of a plot. It was too... silly. With pod racing and... Jar Jar. Heh. Jake Lloyd annoyed me, though I'm prepared to give him another chance, now that I know he was in
The Pretender! (Sad, eh?) But in
AOTC George Lucas started telling the
real story. We had to have seen the events in
TPM, or at least
some of the events, but I think it could have been organised differently. I really can't see how everything's going to be fitted into one more film! Hmm.
I've run out of time. I have to sleep. Maybe I'll talk more about this in the future.
Something to look forward to, eh? :-)
Thursday, June 13
Well, I saw
Attack of the Clones, and I'll probably talk about it at some point. Because
everyone has to have an opinion, right?
But at the moment I'm thinking about
Angel. Wow. What a season finale! The
Buffy one wasn't so bad, because it was sort of a conclusion, but this... this is awful! How can I survive until next year without knowing what's going to happen?! Part of me thought it was a bit
Meridiany, but that's because I'm a sad and pathetic 'gater. I feel like saying "go figure" at this point in the proceedings, but hey.
So she was going up, and Angel was going down. Everything's changed! The team's gone all Pete Tong...!
I'm deliberately trying not to spoil. If you watched it, you'll know what I'm talking about. :-)
It's one way of dealing with shippers, I suppose...
Monday, June 10
I forgot to say! My ticket for
Wolf SG-5 came this morning! I'm going to another
Stargate convention! Woo-hoo! The downside is that the theme for the fancy dress is the Tok'ra. I guess I'd better start that fitness regime straight away. *g*
Running out of time again, but I'm going to see
Attack of the Clones tomorrow night, so I won't have a chance to blog. :-)
I'm tempted to do another entry about things people have searched for to get here, but maybe I should leave that until another time. Because I'm sure people find it absolutely fascinating. *s/v*
Ummm.... my teeth are aching a bit, but I think it's paranoia. A few times lately when I've brushed them I've noticed blood, and last night I
finally figured out where it was coming from. One of my slightly sticking out wisdom teeth. Oooh, I hate them... The last time I went to the dentist, which was, erm, years ago, I had X-rays done and he said they wouldn't come through. Like my teeth have ever done the expected. But ever since I found out where the blood was coming from, I've felt a dull ache.
All those years of orthodontic treatment and they're
still crooked. For a while they were straight, but not long enough. Boo.
I have nightmares about my teeth. I think the orthodontic treatment scarred me for life. I'm terrified of dentists now. When I had a brace, going to the dentist's was fine - it wasn't like he could
do anything. I didn't mind the orthodontic stuff - it hurt
enormously, but it was somehow okay. He never said what he was doing, but I didn't really want to know. When I had seven teeth taken out I had a general anaesthetic, which is partly where my problem with dentists lies. What if they want to take out one of my wisdom teeth? Or both? And they want to use a local anaesthetic? And I'd be conscious? And there'd be tugging, and... it'd be horrible.
I know, people go through worse. But this is something that really scares me. Teeth. Go figure.
In other news, good result for
David Coulthard yesterday. And Rubens shouldn't be complaining. If he'd made the chicane maybe he'd have a case, but if he'd made the chicane DC would have been penalised anyway, so...
I think I'll stop rambling now.
Bet you wish I hadn't bothered writing
anything!
Teeth..! Aaargh.
Saturday, June 8
I haven't blogged for ages! Hmm.
Tony Amendola (Bra'tac in
Stargate) was in
Alias on Wednesday. He's a nice guy. He did seem to have a tendency to try and run acting classes when he was at the
Stargate convention I went to, but still. (Yes, a
Stargate convention, how sad am I?!)
Alias doesn't seem to be quite as exciting as it was. There are only so many "she's going to die" cliffhangers that you can have without it getting silly. *sigh*
Still, even if it's not as exciting as it was, it's better than a lot of TV that's around at the moment.
And Tony Head (Giles in
Buffy) was in
Spooks on Tuesday. He was an MI5 agent that seemed to have divided loyalties. He met a nasty end, too. I'm always confused about his accent. He was born in Camden, which means he should have had a sort of cockey accent, in theory. But whenever he has a role where he's supposed to have a sort of cockney accent, he doesn't sound... right. Whether that's because I'm used to him sounding posh, or whether it's because he's lost the ability to do a decent common person accent, I don't know. Hmm.
TV, isn't it great?
You know what else I watched this week?
The Postman. I'd thought it was going to be awful, especially after watching that
other Kevin Costner post-apocalyptic epic. Heh. But it was surprisingly good!
I liked the excellent Shakespearean actor, Bill the Mule. His swordfighting was excellent! I liked it when the people complained that they wanted to watch
The Sound of Music instead of
Universal Soldier. I liked lots of bits, really. But it was overly long, and they could have expanded some bits more and left out a lot. It's easy to say that, I know. Without being specific about what should be done, I mean. But I liked it. I sort of wish I'd taped it. It would probably be silly to buy the DVD!
But I've ordered the book. So I'll probably be talking about this in the future. *grin*
So, what else happened this week? The main thing was probably the England vs. Argentina football match, which I didn't watch because I was at work. It was probably more exciting experiencing it the way I did - via the people above us in the pool club. They were
really noisy when England scored, with cheering and chanting and stamping. It scared a lot of the customers, who don't realise what's on the next floor. Heh.
After the match they played England World Cup songs
really loudly. And then we could hear people singing. Indeed, I could
see the singing people when I left work at 5.30pm. There were many people wandering the High Street draped in the flag of St. George. And to think that before now I've never heard out of tune (probably slightly tipsy) young men singing "I'm H A P P Y" very loudly.
I'll probably remember it forever.
Bizarre...
Wednesday, June 5
Back to work again. I ache a lot. Either that's some sort of delayed muscle thing from the Bouncy Castle action on Monday (Jubilee BBQ) or it's from the tiny bit of decorating I did yesterday. Either way, slightly worrying. Neither was
particularly taxing. If I had to choose one, I'd say the Bouncy Castle was a lot more tiring. :-)
It made me think, actually. The Jubilee BBQ was a church thing, but it's not the church I go to. Well, it's confusing... On Sunday mornings I go to Ashingdon Elim, which is the church I've always been to. But in the evening I go to this thing called Emmaus, which is actually people from different churches that meet in the Ashingdon Free Church building. So the people that actually go to Ashingdon Free invited my brother John and me to the BBQ. (Long boring story, I know.)
So why did it make me think? Well, the adults were, well, scary. I didn't really know many of them. I find it hard to hold conversations with the majority of people as it is, let alone people I don't know at all! But the children were really good fun! If you want to join in, they just let you! And they involve you in it. They talk to you.
For instance, I ended up being in goal in the "all the kids against the three grown-ups" football match. I can't play football. But I was standing around and they had no-one in goal, so they said I might as well stand in the goal. :-)
And the Bouncy Castle, well, let's just say it ended up with the kids trying to kill my brother's friend Chris (although he'd told them his name was Bob, so they were shouting "Kill Bob!" See, most people I know are completely mad.) It didn't start off with death threats. First there was bouncing, then trying to attack
all the adults (or parents, as they called us, scary!), and then just attacking Chris. He's very tall. They probably can't see what he looks like. What with his head being so far into the sky. Heh.
When I got home from all that, I watched the
rather excellent concert from Buckingham Palace. It's good that something (even if some people really seem to hate The Queen) can bring us together. I guess the only other thing that unites people at the moment is football, but that always tends towards violence. Sad but true. That was a
great concert.
I'm not sure why there was so much Brian Wilson. I have to admit I thought he was dead, which is partly the fault of the
Barenaked Ladies. Now that I've looked up stuff about his life I understand that he needn't
necessarily be dead, but he
did look quite dead. Sad. There were so many great artists that only got to do one song, and he did loads! Maybe The Queen liked The Beach Boys. What a thought.
So that was Monday. Yesterday I spent the whole day (pretty much) watching the Queen's Jubilee gubbins. The parades, eh? The fly past by Concorde and the Red Arrows! The flag waving! I bet the atmosphere was amazing. Wow. Makes me proud to be British.
Really, it does.
Sunday, June 2
I changed the sidebar. It has loads more links and things. And stuff on it that's likely to change fairly often. Just to keep things interesting. Do people really look at it, though? Do they visit the places I go to? Do they laugh at my bad taste and applaud when they agree with me? I don't know.
Didn't sell boats today. It was so quiet yesterday that I didn't want to go today. So I did an enormous amount of laundry, since it was so nice and sunny. My life is
so exciting! I only watched a few minutes of the England vs. Sweden
World Cup match. Turned on the TV and Sol Campbell scored! I must be magic. Didn't work when I switched over at the end and they were drawing, mind you. It was entertaining being in the garden - I could hear people shouting at their TV's. Things like, "Run for it, lad!" Heh. I found that more entertaining than watching them playing...
I watched the
Stargate episode
The Tomb, with Peter DeLuise and the M&M's commentary. Quite entertaining, but you'd expect that from three completely insane individuals. And I also watched
Waterworld, though I missed the first half an hour. It still seemed long! What an odd film. A lot of potential, but... I thought Kevin Costner's "Mariner" character was a bit like Kurt Russell's in
Soldier. But I think Kurt managed to do the whole, "I'm thoroughly dislikeable but you like me for no reason" thing better.
And I'm
not in love with Kurt Russell, so ner.
What else did I do? I listened to the jet aeroplanes flying around all over the place. Didn't really see any. But I wasn't looking hard. And to be honest, it's only the ones like the
Red Arrows that you can see, because they fly quite a way away from the seafront to get into the different formations. I don't think I'll bother going down to the seafront to watch
it properly.
As long as I don't waste my precious days off, eh? *g*
