Reconnection

One thing that I did upon restarting my blog was, quite logically, to re-read everything that I had read before. As I had forgotten about it for nearly a year, it was almost like new material. I was surprised to find in there (amongst the many pithy and banal blogs) that there were some odd moments of humour, the occasional sparkle of insight and a lot of randomness.

One thing that I was inspired to do, however, on re-reading my old blogs was to start to poke people who I have not poked for far too long. I mean this in the figurative sense, and not in the literal Facebook poking sense, and what it resulted in was me sending several messages to people who I hadn't messaged or spoken to for far too long.

Whether I get any (or many) responses back - I already have one - remains to be seen, but at least for my part I feel that I'm making an effort to reconnect with lots of friends who by dint of laziness (on both parts) and distance I simply haven't spoken to for far too long.

Sextuple Century

Today's post is so easy to do that it is in fact lined up in advance. This blog monumentally marks my 600th contribution to the blogosphere, and considering an eight month pause just shy of this milestone, I'm happy I summoned up the motivation to restart and to make it over the line.

Previously I've commented on the excessive significane attached to round numbers and the fact that near-round numbers aren't as acknowledged. I think this is proved by the fact that few people would argue that my most recent twelve blogs have added anything of great significance to this work!

Graphical Woe

I've recently begun to suspect that there's something not quite right with my computer. It seems to be having issues - likely graphics card ones - to the extent that odd things such as scrolling in a browser window can lead to a temporary pause, the display blanking and then recovering. A minor annoyance, but not significent.

More irritatingly, it now doesn't let me play World of Warcraft for more than 10-15 minutes without crashing my entire display and never recovering. While a neat moderation-enforcing feature, it's frustrating and somewhat restricting if you actually want to do anything.

Today I've updated the graphics card drivers - it's since been okay but I haven't really pushed it - and I have a support ticket in to be reviewed tomorrow from where I originally got the computer - seeing if they can recommend anything else.

[As an aside, I know I didn't blog yesterday. I've now decided to be sensible enough that I only actually blog when there's something to add, as opposed to writing nothing just for the sake of it. Yesterday I had absolutely nothing to write!]

Familiar Theme

I've riffed on this theme before, so it won't be entirely unfamiliar - however, the problem about going out and not drinking is that you end up drinking mostly diet coke (in my case) - or other similar products. After last night - coming home at around 1am - I was still wide awake and as a result didn't even get to bed until the clock had passed 4am.

Today has been rather predictable - awake at 11am, half-asleep until 2-3, dozing on and off while reading, awaking with my face affixed to the page - and only properly up and moving around at about 4pm. At least this weekend is a bank holiday with three days to do nothing in!

The actual meeting up with people from old work thing last night was both effective and worth rejoicing at. I am glad that I poked people to set a date and get together for a drink as it was enjoyable fun.

Preparation

In retrospect I should have written a blog in advance and simply posted it tonight - particularly as I knew what I was going to be writing about, as it happened yesterday. Dad is here for a couple of nights and so I will be on the computer less and will be disappointing my faithful readers more.

The comment that I was going to make was on an incident on the train on my way to work yesterday morning. I was sitting there - eyes half closed, ignoring the world around me - but I'd noticed that there was something that had fallen on the floor under a woman's seat. It looked like a bicycle strap, or strap of some sort. The train arrived at Guildford, she got up to get off, I try and say that she has left something behind on the floor.

She had earphones in, didn't hear - or didn't fully hear. As a helpful person, I jumped up to pick it up and pass it to her. At this point I realise that this is no longer a bicycle strap as she turns around to take from me the bra of hers (or so I can only assume) I have just picked up from under her seat.

Now, she didn't return it, or say it wasn't hers - so I presume it was. Which leads me to wonder just how she managed to lose her bra underneath the seat on the train first thing in the morning. I've wondered this on and off for the last 38 hours - mainly to provide a punchline for my blog - and I've still got no idea. Anyone able to help out here and enlighten me?

First Gap

After a week of success, I fell at the eighth hurdle yesterday by failing to blog. This was an odd oversight, as I actually had some material to discuss - mainly follow up to my musings on the weather. Monday was actually cool, until I got in the office and the air conditioning was broken, and noone had managed to react to this sensibly by perhaps opening some windows. It was fixed in the afternoon, but the morning was irritating as a result.

I also spent some of Monday following the England vs South Africa test match in the cricket - was a tighter finish than it could have been earlier on, but in reflection South Africa the deserved victors. A couple of tight moments in the game could have ended up the other way round with the result - but over the series the Proteas were the better side.

This is a neat segue into a mention of my Battrick team which I have also recently started again at. I'm idly watching their current first class match in another window, and their opponents have managed a collapse that the masters England would have been proud of, slipping from 248/4 to 261 all out (helped by an immense spell of 6-5-5-4 from paceman Nyron Lebenthle).

The start of the previous sentence prompts a second diversion, as I note with amusement if you type in 'segue' to google - as I did to verify the spelling - the second option you're presented with is 'segue way'. It's worth visiting the results for some of the horrendous and inadvertently comical examples of English that are the result.

Status: Recently Rocked

So yesterday Chrissi and I went up into London to see the musical We Will Rock You, based on the various Queen songs. It was enjoyable - a lot to recommend about it. As with all musicals based on existing songs as opposed to where the songs are written to fit the musical, the story always leaves something to be desired.

This, as you can readily imagine, is particularly the case with Queen's discography - a lot of their songs are simply plain surreal, although I was amused that they managed to get lyrics from Bicycle in there. The script was witty, with some good throwaway lines that got some good laughs - and there was a recently penned line referring to Brian May's performance at the Olympics closing ceremony (see earlier blog).

The actual plot was based around how rock and roll was banned, as were all musical instruments and identikit musical clones had taken over the world (part nonsense, part documentary). However, Queen had hidden some guitars somewhere which would then allow our heroes to let rock back into the world and overthrow the totalitarian corparocracy. Something along those lines, anyway.

It's also stiflingly hot right now. There was a thunderstorm this afternoon, which I had hoped would be the necessary break - but it's just as hot, if not hotter, this evening - which is why I'm still up and still awake writing this at just before midnight. I've not checked the weather for the rest of the week, hopefully it's not too bad - a quick aside to review shows that it'll be cooler and much less humid tomorrow and throughout the week. Let's hope they are right!

March in August

Today marks the first post-midnight blog of the new blogging regime; a not particularly noteworthy fact but a point of interest all the same.

This evening Chrissi and I watched Ides of March, a LoveFilm DVD we have had sitting by the TV for far too long. I saw the trailer for this what must have been ages ago (I can't honestly recall when it would have been), and thought it looked quite interesting. A renter, definitely - I'm always more partial to the political style thrillers and it seemed like it had some potential.

It wasn't bad. It was just ... average. The plot wasn't spectacular. There was obviously no action to speak of. Because of the content (set in one presidential primary) it didn't have a definitive start point or an end point, so it was hard to see how they would end it cleanly (they didn't). Characters were fairly cookie-cutter for political stereotypes, nothing spectacular all round. It was interesting but not absorbing.

Overall, just watch a couple of choice episodes of the West Wing, in my opinion.

Walking Oddities

As I sauntered home this evening, idly thinking of material that could be used for my blog today - as I intended to keep this run going - two odd events within five minutes gave me enough to mention.

Firstly, I reacted in horror as I felt something land on my head. Fearing the worst, I reached up and found not the anticipated-with-dread wet patch indicating that I had become a passing bird's impromptu toilet, but instead a fly. Considering flies are usually skittish at best and paranoid at worst, the fact that it had (a) dropped out of the sky and (b) having done so, allowed me to pick it up while evicting it from my hair. I'm not sure fly is still the right description - and so it continued as when I lightly flicked it on its merry way, it merely dropped like the proverbial stone to the floor under my oncoming shoe.

The second odd moment was that I accidentally 'love'd somebody. In politely suggesting that the idiotic woman - standing in the middle of the pavement gawping at the distant bus - move out of the way to allow fellow pavement-users past, I uttered the phrase 'excuse me, love'. Suddenly my sentence had been transplanted from many hundreds of miles north, a surprising relocation for any collection of words. I then chuckled to myself at the surprise - although saying that, she did move. I'll grant her that. And probably felt slightly patronised by me addressing her as love.

More depth is warranted to my inspiration tomorrow, I suspect.

This Post Has No Title

Today I was back on my feet and back in work. The main highlight of this was an hour long meeting that ended up taking two and a half hours. As this happened just before lunch, and I was a little peckish, I was unamused. This sort of thing should not be allowed.

My main achievement of this evening was to open up my computer and properly clean the airholes on the side. They had become a little dusty, so much so that they were fully clogged with dust. This might explain why my computer has been sounding of late like a washing machine in mid-spin cycle - this evening, properly cooled, it has once again been purring like a contented kitten.

Now I Remember ...

Having returned to the blogging - which I have done this week - I recall now why I stopped. Today I was at home ill from work - some sort of generic flu-lite bug that drained me of all energy and left me absolutely shattered.

As a result, when I come to update my blog in the evening, I have bugger all to say - yet knowing this, still came on determined to write a blog.

I also know I've got ten months of updates (or 'backstory' as I will optimistically call it) to get through - from holidays and jobs to many other things - and am trying to work out how I want to build this in without devoting my entire blog to recapping events long in the past.

But noone knows about them anyway, so it's still exciting enough to include!

Resurrection

I'd be astonished if anyone noticed this - but yesterday I ended a nine-month absence and started to blog again. It was due to be only a one-time thing, a sarcastic diatribe on the Olympics' closing ceremony. But having rediscovered my blog, and done some re-reading through old posts - I decided to keep at it.

It's not a surprise thinking about it - while the world may love the 140 characters of tweets, or the slightly less restrictive updates of Facebook statuses, I don't. I'll usually post something longer - bourne out by the fact that I've only made one Facebook status update in six months (that being thanking people for birthday wishes). Over the last year I've made a mere six status updates - three of these within a week (when I started my new job).

It doesn't entirely explain why I haven't blogged in the last ten months though - but it might explain why I've now kept going having restarted.

Closing Ceremony Commentary

If the Olympics represent peace between nations, then the closing ceremony is probably best viewed as the resumption of hostilities. Britain proved this particularly last night by unleashing the Spice Girls on the world without prior warning. Such is the brutal international relations we have for 206 out of every 208 weeks, spoilt only by this two weeks of wishy-washyness devoted to sport.

Despite this unbridled declaration of war on the senses and on the world, some entertainment managed to make it through the battle. Brian May was immense, Eric Idle stole the show, and a nation held its breath as Boris managed to hold the flag dangerously close to a naked flame without setting either it or his hair on fire.

Besides the nadir of the Spice Girls' unleashed in all their horror, the lows were intermingled throughout, although Jessie J emerged triumphant by an overwhelming margin. Having started the evening wearing a bizarre flesh coloured leotard, she re-emerged with now one only one leg clad to join Queen on stage. Showing all the competence for singing she had for trouser selection, she proceeded to desecrate We Will Rock You, a song that is almost impossible to sing badly.

George Michael added interest to an otherwise bland routine by announcing that London was at the centre of the universe - prompting me to yell at the television that this was not only exaggerated, but also cosmologically inaccurate. Someone also scheduled The Who to finish with My Generation, somehow missing the irony that this being belted out by the 68 year old Daltrey might not quite marry up with the inspire a generation theme. Daltrey, Townshend et all have been subject to this for so long that they're on an entirely different plane of meta-irony about this.

The dignitaries' speeches gave great hope for more unintended humour; duly delivered as Seb Coe forgot to leave an applause point after the word volunteers, and was confused as the rapturous crowd overwhelmed the rest of his mundane sentence. He then stood politely aside, hands folded and waiting attentively like a well-trained butler as Jacques Rogge took over.

Rogge, a man straight out of central casting for Bond villains, introduced his henchmen and informed the assembled athletes and audience that he had planted a bomb in the stadium and that they would never find it - they must either meet his demands or die. He may have mumbled something else in reality - I was having too much fun completing his sentences with 'Mr Bond' to take any notice of what he actually said.

Rogge's fiendish plot foiled, the whole thing came to an awkward pause as the flame was extinguished and cleaners came in to tidy around any lingering guests, while any confusion on what the £9 billion budget had been spent on was removed as enough fireworks to adjust the earth's orbit were launched to celebrate that yes, finally, it was all over.

Roll on Rio 2016.