Important Music Question

At what point does a 'good song' become a 'tune'? Sorry, a tuuuuuuuuune. The ridiculous amount of emphasis on the u is important.

As I listen to the radio a lot more now, simply because I have it on in the car both on the way to and from work, I hear a lot more music. My station of choice, which I won't satisfy by giving a mention, plays a lot of random music and a lot of cracking songs (or, if you prefer, tuuuuunes) from various eras without real distinction. This evening I have gotten into my head as a result of my drive home both They Might Be Giants' Birdhouse in your Soul and the curiously named Smash Mouth's All Star.

Nothing wrong with that.

Not to Mention the Pie ...

In addition to yesterday's discussed feast of unhealthy items at work today, there was also another event that I had overlooked - today being Pi Day. This is because the date format (if you are North American at least) is 3/14 and hence March 14th is logically Pi Day.

To celebrate this I of course decided to buy pies for the building - so two flavours (apple pie and blackcurrant pie) were purchased, and advertised to the building as well as the reason. My only regret is that I sent the email nine minutes too early, sending this at 1:50 instead of the much neater 1:59 (i.e. 3/14 1:59 which is a much better visual if less correct representation of pi itself).

Background Noise

All evening there's been a gas van parked at the top of the road, making a non-stop noise. It's likely the sound of some drilling or some other similarly irritating noise - the end result being that as opposed to a peaceful night this has been nagging away in the background, the metaphorical fingernails down the blackboard if you will. It's more annoying as it generates the same sounds (albeit louder) as my computer does - I have this nagging feeling that it's my computer playing up every time I pay attention to it.

This evening Chrissi and I attempted to play a new game we'd bought but after an hour during which we only got confused at the large number of pieces and the huge rulebook we decided that we'd call this evening's game "getting the pieces out of the packaging" and return to this another time.

I was nearly due to be dispatched to Gaydon tomorrow, but fortunately a last minute meeting cancellation meant that I didn't have to get up earlier and spend most of my day travelling there and back - something which I'm most grateful for. Particularly as it would have meant I'd have missed out on pizza, which was being provided for us at work originally as bribery for attending a business update and now that the business update isn't happening as a 'well done for working hard recently' reward.

To complete the healthy day, tomorrow evening I head on to poker where I will eat similarly healthily.

Two Starts

There were two potential starts to the day, as I had it planned. A meeting in London this morning at 10:30 meant that I was starting from home, as opposed to heading out to Godalming and then back in to London, a rather pointless journey.

The first would have me rising at normal time, a little after 6am, and to head to my car where I would drive to the local leisure centre. Taking advantage of the early start, I could have a good swim for an hour, perhaps even a little more depending on my dedication, and then return home, shower, get prepared for the day ahead and leave in a timely manner having had a refreshing start.

The second would instead allow me to take advantage of the closer proximity to my starting point for the day, and enjoy a little more time in bed. As opposed to rising between 6am-6:30, I could instead sleep in bed until a couple of hours later, and still have time to leisurely get up, dressed, shower (not in that order) and get ready for work.

I decided last night to take the wise course of action and let my snooze button decide - I would simply see how I reacted when I woke up. Sometimes I feel fresh and awake and willing to get on with the day; others I'm quite happy to stay curled under the covers for as long as possible. Fighting tiredness by getting up early made no sense; taking advantage of an early start did.

I'll leave you to take an educated guess as to which one of these two scenarios actually played out ...

Morning Surprise

So this week is mostly car-themed events, because that's the main new thing going on at the moment and also where most of the amusing stories are coming from.

This morning I had an odd predicament - my car wouldn't start. Or rather, I couldn't start my car, the distinction being important. There was no issue with the vehicle itself - the battery, engine, etc were all fine. I simply couldn't turn the key in the ignition. I had not had this problem the previous evening, or yesterday morning. Chrissi then came to have a look, as she was leaving a little after me, and was met with similar lack of success.

In the end, I found the result by browsing through the manual - that I needed to do so in order to start my car seemed a little strange. The issue was that as I was parked facing uphill on a moderate incline, it wanted you to have the clutch partially down before it would accept the key being turned in the ignition. This can be understood, but at the same time is absurdly strange.

I started the car and the journey to work passed without incident. Tomorrow there'll be a break from car-related stories as I'm working from home (morning and afternoon) and attending a meeting in central London inbetween. I'm sure something there will inspire a tale.

Essential Purchase

So today I made the essential purchase of an ice scraper at lunch, simply to spare myself a repeat of the ridiculous journey that I made this morning. Consider:

I leave house and walk down the road to Chrissi's car; opening car I then retrieve ice scraper from Chrissi's car, locking it behind me and continuing on my way.

Walk down road to my car; open car, heat it while I do the essential ice scraping of the frost from the windows.

Switch off and lock car, return up road to Chrissi's car. Open her car, return ice scraper for when she leaves, lock car.

Return to my car.

It was at this point that I remembered that I hadn't put the recycling out, but at that point I'd done too many journeys back and forth up and down the road that I thought the recycling would do just fine on its own inside for a week and left it at that.

Restarted Habit

So having a near two-month hiatus, I've returned to my blog determined to add commentary and posts charting the goings on in my life day-to-day. This extends to this evening - returning home a little after midnight, my instinct is to come online and write a post about the day's events.

And what events to discuss! It saddens me that they will receive an abbreviated summary as time is drawing attention to the fact I want some hours of sleep before morning. Today during work I had an obnoxious meeting, spent many stupid phonecalls trying to sort out car insurance, went to the bank and withdrew a large amount of money, in the evening went to purchase a car and successfully completed the purchase of said vehicle - which I drove home without any issue.

Following this Chrissi and I headed straight for the train station to just make it in time for our comedy show this evening, which was very entertaining - the main acts tonight were Katherine Ryan and Nathan Caton, but all were pretty good, the compere was in good form and I was once more grateful that I wasn't sat in the front row of the audience!

More updates on some, all or none of the above will be forthcoming in later days when I have more time to write!

Weekend Review

On reflection that was a moderate success - while I didn't achieve everything I'd hoped to (didn't manage to fully purchase a car on Saturday), I was nevertheless able to make a decision and put down a deposit this morning on said vehicle. I'll pick this up after work tomorrow evening, which means I'll be able to use it to travel into work on Tuesday - which should be nice!

I didn't have as much success with other points - although it's worth noting the typical weekend to compare with, as I observed to Chrissi this morning that we'd both left the house both days, which almost counts as an achievement. What's more indicative is that we both also got dressed both days of the weekends, which is perhaps more damning as to our typical weekend!

We're currently trying to sort out plans for tomorrow evening - when planning to pick up the car after work, I hadn't even considered that Chrissi had booked tickets for a comedy show in London the same evening. That's at 7:30pm near Waterloo, so we may still be able to make it but it'll be a bit awkward and quite a rush - and so Chrissi's seeing if any Andrew-substitutes exist to go in my stead.

Musical Update

I've been listening to the radio a lot more of late, and often in the evening as well as variety from my own music. While there have been some terrifying moments - getting Men Without Hats' Safety Dance stuck in my head for an entire weekend after hearing it in an 80s Anthems show was possibly the nadir - there have been some good songs from bands or singers I'd not really heard of before.

Here are a couple of my favourites that I've heard of late; likely you'll have heard of them, but they were relatively new to me. I've provided as links as opposed to embedded videos because that always breaks sooner or later!

Haim - Don't Save Me
Jake Bugg - Seen It All
Bastille - Pompeii

More musical points when I remember them.

Two Days In A Row

Having been in a pretty irregular writing mood of late, I've suddenly picked up a bit of motivation to scribble with greater frequency. Typically I start the third month with a feeble pun based on its name, but none of that this year thank you.

Having started to write I have little to actually add - so I'll make a few notes about what is planned for this weekend and almost certainly won't happen. I want to get up early tomorrow, go for a swim first thing (before the leisure centre car park starts charging). On coming back home I will commence with breakfast before heading out to look at a few cars nearby - hopefully having some success; if I settle on one I like I'll then return home, get in touch with the insurance brokers and confirm that it'd be no problem to add on to the existing policy (shouldn't be - but I'd still like to know the cost). If this is satisfactory then I will return to my final decision and purchase my vehicle of choice.

This is the main plan - I also need to do a couple of other things (buy a pair of shoes for one; or rather, for two - both a new pair of trainers and a pair of casual yet presentable shoes), and other things that have escaped my mind but are likely if the mundane variety - ironing, washing, other similarly exciting activities!