SpaCeMonKeY UK

I made a birthday wishlist, yay. It is hard thinking of things to get.

Don't know if I want to add anything to the holiday info that Ali posted, but I did post some photos, as you can see below...

I was horribly sunburnt on the Friday, and it hurt for days, but now all my skin is peeling off. So I suppose on the plus side that means I'll have nice new skin soon. Or something. Feeling a bit sad and annoyed at the world. It's too hot. And I have to go to Nottingham tomorrow. I don't want to. I'm scared.

I wish the internet could go back to being like it used to be. I hate that it's just a mass communication device for ordinary people. When did it stop being fun?

Maybe I will go and read or something. Find somewhere cool. Hum.

Sunday 9th July, Rob at Elberry Cove

Wednesday 12th July, Ponies on Dartmoor

Thursday 13th July, Meerkat at Paignton Zoo

Friday 14th July, Dartmouth Castle from a boat

Saturday 15th July, Sunset at Brixham Harbour

Thought I'd just add a little more about the Billy Joel concert. The concert was supposed to include more of the album tracks, rather than necessarily the ones people knew. I tried to remember the songs they did... something like this: Movin' Out, Piano Man, New York State of Mind, She's Always a Woman, Only the Good Die Young, Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, Allentown, An Innocent Man, Uptown Girl, You may be Right, Don't Ask Me Why, It's Still Rock and Roll to Me, Keeping the Faith, River of Dreams, We Didn't Start the Fire, Downeaster Alexa, I go to Extremes, not in that order and that's nowhere near complete, but hey. Interesting choices of letters to capitalise, too. Also I don't think I mentioned Chainsaw, the roadie who sang 'Highway to Hell'. Very odd. ;)

Two exciting events have occurred since last time I blogged:

1) The Storm

Wednesday morning there was a massive storm here in the East Midlands. I'm not sure how much was right about what happened and what was hearsay. But this is what happened, allegedly... County Hall was struck by lightning! It hit once and the backup power system started coming on. Then it hit again, knocking the backup system offline! The computer network (and the phones) all went down. No-one could contact us, and we couldn't do any work! And then, after a while like that, someone wandered through and told us that the two floors above us had evacuated because the fire alarm had gone off - our alarm wasn't working! So we all had to go outside in the rain. There was a burning smell coming from somewhere, but we weren't told whether there really was a fire. Anyway, it didn't take long to get hooked up to emergency power, then the computers etc. worked again. So I did get some work done in the afternoon.

Don't know if our power went off here or not - the fridge didn't tell us, and it's supposed to, I think. But some of our friends south of the city had lost power. Apparently 54,000 homes were without power. It was a big storm!

2) The Billy Joel Concert at the NEC

I made Rob take me to see Billy Joel last night. It was good, he had a grand piano that came up out of the floor and rotated around so that you could see him (instead of seeing his back all the time). It didn't constantly rotate, just every so often. If it rotated all the time that'd be silly. The band was amazing, one of the guys played sax, trumpet and trombone, one played several different saxes (including soprano) and random percussion. Then there was a guitar player, a bass player, keyboard and drums. And, of course, Billy Joel himself. I think some of the musicians had been playing with him for years.

When we got there our seats had been re-allocated, which was good since we ended up with much better ones. The concert started with a few old songs that I didn't know, but after a certain point I knew them all. They played for two and a half hours! It's hard to say which songs I enjoyed the most, but I was glad they played 'Scenes from an Italian Restaurant'. That was one song that's supposed to be one of the best sax songs ever, and the sax solos in it were brilliant. He did the ones that non-fans would probably recognise, like 'Uptown Girl', and 'River of Dreams'. I suppose I only got into his stuff because it's musically very good to play to (with quite varied styles). I know my brother reckons they're good to play drums to, and they're good for bass as well. So that was good - and my first proper concert! Other than that it's just bands I saw at the uni balls. I'm not sure they really count.

Thursday I was listening to the radio and, I think it was Edith, said that you can't expect live singing to be as good as studio recorded stuff. She was talking about festivals. But, wow, Billy Joel's voice really is amazing. And he's way better at the piano than I thought from CD's. Somehow it seems more amazing when he's playing live. He made comments about Madonna making venues turn off air conditioning so she didn't ruin her voice, but he wanted it on so that everyone was comfortable. I think mainly he was being mean about her voice, but it's definitely nowhere near as good as his. I was very impressed!

So I will be off now. Didn't really have time to blog, but thought I should since I may not have time for a while. There are probably plenty more things I could have said about the concert. If I thought about it. :)

Bye!

Still haven't completed any more of Tomb Raider, which is a bit awful, but I was fed up of wasting time trying to complete something that should clearly be far easier than it seemed to be. *sigh* Rob's friend wants it back anyway, so at least then I can say I didn't finish it because we had to give it back, and it wasn't that I just became disillusioned and didn't want to spend ages trying to finish it. :)

I'm sure plenty of things have happened lately. It's much too hot here at the moment. The MET Office issued a level 3 heatwave warning. There are supposed to be storms though tomorrow, so it should cool down a bit. Over 30 degrees is WAY too hot for me. I ended up with a migraine and I'm still headachey... heat and Helens don't mix.

I'm also trying to lose some weight, like Ali. Dunno if it'll work, but it's worth a try. I need to lose a bit to by my 'ideal weight', I think being married has meant I've eaten worse than I used to. I'll give it a go, anyway.

Bought three series of Black Books for £5.97 each in Tesco. They've reissued lots of classic C4 comedies, Spaced is cheap now as well. Funny stuff. I'd never watched many episodes of Black Books and they're making me laugh out loud on a regular basis - not many things do that!

My parents came to visit at the weekend, which was nice. Despite the heat, they did a fair bit of drastic gardening, chopping down trees etc. We never really have the time nor the inclination to spend what little free time we have doing gardening, so their help is much appreciated. My little seedlings have survived and one has a flower, so that's probably the limit of my amazing gardening for now. My indoor plants look okay too. Perhaps I'm getting the hang of the green finger thing.

I'm finding it hard to assemble sentences, it's getting on a bit and I haven't been sleeping all that well lately, what with the heat and all. I've probably written a complete load of rubbish.

I've been listening to podcasts quite a lot lately. Mostly the Chris Moyles Radio 1 podcast and various Tartan podcasts. And They Might Be Giants. They're all very good really. I heard a very odd band on one of the Tartan podcasts - Acrnym. It sounded like dance music created with Amigas. Or something. It brought back memories. I suppose you might not want to listen to too many of the songs at once, but it was very cool. Ho hum.

That reminds me, I also played a bit of Flight of the Amazon Queen, which you can download for nothing from the ScummVM website (you also need that to play such an old game on your PC). ScummVM lets you play all the old Lucasarts point and click adventures on modern computers, you see, but also has freeware versions of FOTAQ and Beneath a Steel Sky. That was a great game, made by the people who make the Broken Sword games. Those were the days. Anyway, still soldiering on with FOTAQ. It's... surreal. That thing with the gorilla is really odd. And it's free! Hooray for free games.

Perhaps I will finish here. Go and read something for a few minutes before trying to sleep in the sweltering heat. :)