Wednesday, October 28
Yesterday I saw the largest collection of medieval artillery shot found on a battlefield in Europe. Amazingly, it was
found right here in Leicestershire, at Bosworth. But even Richard III's guns, ranging from hand guns to cannon, weren't able to save him from Henry Tudor. Oddly, the announcement about these lead balls was overshadowed by various comments about how it meant the battle wasn't where we thought it was. It's kind of sad that the news that was
supposed to be the big news has hardly made the news at all.
I mean, no-one knows where the battle took place, apart from it happened somewhere near Dadlington. That the finds were recovered only 2 miles away from the Battlefield Centre means it was pretty well located, all things considered. And they still don't know exactly where the battle took place. The evidence of artillery might show where the rout happened, but battles are big things. Unfortunately for the project (a project that only took place because no-one knew where the battle happened!) it's hard to locate 2 hours of history that took place over 500 years ago...
In other news, we went to Southend for the weekend for my mum's birthday. Had a good time, though my dad's not particularly well.
Wednesday, October 21
I have voluntarily exiled myself to the spare bed - Rob's 'virus' kept us both awake all last night. I have been grumpy all day. This week has sort of gone downhill from Monday. I met a very interesting archaeologist on Monday. I suppose you kind of forget, when you do things every day, that the job you do is actually very interesting. I mean, I do find it very interesting, just sometimes the sheer quantity of things and having to do so many of the
boring parts as well makes you forget. Anyway, the interesting archaeologist, well... he was particularly interesting because he was going to do some geophysical survey work the next day for
Alan Garner! Okay, maybe it's not that interesting, but I did find it very interesting at the time. I remember reading his books when I was small. :)
We were supposed to be going out to see the
Renato D'Aiello Band this evening but what with Rob being ill, and me being very tired and generally bleugh, we sent
Ali and Mat instead. Who knows if they enjoyed it, hehe. I have no idea what the band's like, I booked it because of the heavy saxophone element, thinking Rob would like it. All our plans are a bit hazy at the moment. We were supposed to be going to Southend for a long weekend since it's my Mum's birthday. Don't know if we'll make it now.
He's been ill ages now. Poor little Rob. Aaah...
Not much else to say except
Jenson Button Rocks! The Brazilian GP on Sunday was brilliant, most exciting race of the season! The first laps had me literally on the edge of my seat. I could hardly bear to watch it. Whatever else you say about the man, he's pulled off some brilliant overtaking moves this year. I'm glad he's World Champion. Hopefully next year will be as close as this year has been!
Thursday, October 15
Some people seem to post a lot of intelligent thoughts on their blogs. I guess I'm not one of those people, never have been, never likely to be. My blog tends to be me rambling on about stuff that doesn't really matter. If you hadn't noticed. I have been feeling a bit sad lately, for various reasons, nothing in particular, just kind of down. Haven't played the bass guitar for ages, I kind of wish I had fun people to play with - sometimes I really miss my the church my brother goes to, they were brilliant. I suppose with an instrument like the bass guitar there's a limit to how many bass guitarists you need. And if I'm not amazing, why should I be the person who gets to play? I only started because there wasn't anyone else playing it. I taught myself, though I had had a few classical guitar lessons (kind of similar in many ways). So... I dunno. Haven't even played the ukulele that much, which is a shame since my birthday ukulele is a thing of great beauty. :)
Rob's been poorly with some sort of cold, or man flu, pretty sure it's not swine flu! There's a limit to how much sympathy I feel able to give. I was very sympathetic to start with, when he seemed really rather ill. But it's worn off a bit. That's awful, I know. I start feeling annoyed that my daily routine is shattered. I treasure my half an hour alone before he gets home. I make some coffee, watch
Neighbours, and lately I've been doing my stupid
Facebook farming. I really like being alone. I go out of my way to avoid people sometimes. That can't be a good thing. Ho hum.
I think the main problem with the whole 'not playing the bass guitar' issue is that the one event I
would get to play at (church music practices) I'm terrified of attending. I psyched myself up last time and couldn't go because there was another meeting I didn't know about. I really am terrified. My heart's speeding up just thinking about it. Pretty much every time I've gone I've ended up wanting to cry. I end up feeling a) useless at playing the guitar and b) like I don't have any friends. I'm not very good at friends, really. At church there's always people making small talk, but at stuff like the practices everyone has friend groups that they congregate in. I just feel old and useless. My inability to talk to people face to face is (let's face it) the reason I used to spend so much time online. Much easier talking to people if they're at the other end of a computer.
Aargh, well, I shall stop rambling. And in posting this, I'm not looking for sympathy or anything. Sometimes I just feel like I need to post stuff because it's inside me and I don't know what to do with it. I find it hard to explain out loud when I have things bothering me. Much easier to think it through and type it out. So there we go. :)
Tuesday, October 13
Here we are again, finally blogging. I started this
Farmville thing on Facebook, which means I have to keep logging on to look at my farm, but I still don't manage to blog regularly! Dreadful. I wanted to talk about two things -
Stargate: Universe and, hmm, something else. What was it? Can't remember. Might have been the new
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book, 'And another thing...', which came out yesterday.
On the subject of
Stargate: Universe, well, I liked it a lot! It's certainly a lot darker than previous Stargates. It's hard to see how it'll turn out, but it's an interesting idea (easiest way to get an odd bunch of people together, the old 'ship a long way from home' premise). Okay, it's sort of Star Trek: Voyager, but hey. It has Stargates instead of transporters! I bet you could go through the cast and match them up.
Hmm, that's too tempting not to try:
Nicholas Rush is kind of like Chakotay. He's a bit scary and you're not sure what he's up to. To begin with it was hard to know what Chakotay's motives were - was he Starfleet or Maquis?
Everett Young, the man in charge - I guess he's got to be Captain Janeway.
Matthew Scott, well, he's competent and clean cut so he has to be Harry Kim.
Eli Wallace is the comedy relief but he's clever and has to get used to doing things the military way. I suppose he's most like the EMH. Either that or he's Neelix, but that would get irritating.
Chloe Armstrong (intelligent female) - bit harder to work out, but possibly Kes. I guess if she gets together with Eli then we'll know for sure...
Tamara Johansen, she's most obviously a sexy medic, so she'd have to be 7 of 9 purely because of the 'sexy cast member' tag.
Ronald Greer, the 'angry airman', has to be Tom Paris. Their circumstances were almost identical - they were both in prison until given a new chance on Voyager/Destiny.
Wow, the similarities!
Anyway, I should probably go and find some dinner. Not a lot has happened really to blog about, we went out with John for his birthday on Friday night. Most of the weekend I looked after pathetic Rob, who has been all poorly. Aah.
Wednesday, October 7
Happy 10th birthday, Blogger! I guess I was a few years late to the party, not starting until 2002, but still. My blog's been invaluable - since I haven't kept a diary since I was a teenager, it helps me remember what I've done! And being digital, it's searchable. Brilliant! Obviously I don't type really personal stuff on here, as I would in a diary, but I probably have moaned a fair bit. Probably have to be even more careful than I used to be now it has an RSS feed linking it to Facebook (scary).
Since my last blog entry the main exciting thing to happen was a visit by my parents. They slaved away for several days to finish off our lawn - dug it over, got rid of the pesky roots that had brought us to a standstill, levelled it, bought and laid the turf - we just have to keep it alive now. We started painting the fence as well (the one that's not falling down) and did the shed, so it's looking much smarter than it did. They did a very good job.
The Japanese GP was pretty exciting - worth getting up at 4.45 for. Looks like it's going to be a bit of a nail biting finale to the season. I hope Jenson can hold on.
In other news,
Stargate Universe started last night on Sky 1 HD. I haven't watched it yet, I will attempt to watch it tonight. I will probably post what I think about it on here afterwards...