Playlist Challenge

A couple of months ago I posted on the traditional theme of "Songs Named After Girls", and today after a discussion with Chrissi this evening I was working on composing a new playlist of songs with numbers in them. This was in part inspired by a radio show this morning which was asking for inspiration on songs with numbers in them, although they did go with some rather traditional options too (Bryan Adams' Summer of '69, The Proclaimers' 500 Miles).

Suitably inspired, this evening I set out to create a playlist with all the songs containing numbers that I have in my collection. This included some surprising and entertaining entries - Green Day manage to rack up 13 entries including four from my favourite album, Kerplunk!, Feeder's Sweet16 and Seven Days In The Sun was a strong showing, The Clash's The Magnificent Seven is a superb entry and you have 5:15 by The Who to top the list off (as well as a clear tribute effort of 8:18 by Feeder also making the list).

Credit goes to the double-entries of Lost Prophets' Five Is A Four Letter Word and The Ataris' Eight Of Nine. You can also mix genres - songs with girls' / boys' names or placenames also get hypothetical bonus points, so The Stereophonics' Vegas Two Times is worth a useful number of points - although whether the permenently-referenced 867-5309 (Jenny) technically counts as eight themes as each number is said independently as well as a girl's name I'm not sure.

Final playlist reckoning was 68 tracks with 3.3 hours worth of music. A good effort.

Weekend Recap

After a good run, I've had two days without blogs mainly due to different excuses - the first because we were out on Friday, the second because I was simply lazy / inept / etc yesterday.

Friday night we were out in Wimbledon to commemorate / celebrate Myles' moving next week with a farewell-to-the-area drinks. As there were several of us who used to work together (in addition to other friends of his) it was nice to catch up with others who I hadn't seen recently. It was an enjoyable evening if a rather bizarre choice of venue - the only pub / similar venue in Wimbledon where you could book a table was also hosting a blues band. Supposedly atmospheric but mainly just a little annoying.

Yesterday's laziness also happened either side of the visit to the gym for our second training session. This included playing on different machinery - mostly with names I forget but prompted you to chest press or stretch or something similar. It was a 40-50 minute workout which was tiring but good; and we returned home feeling both tired and well exercised as a result. There was little else achieved yesterday either - mainly some relaxation.

Today I managed to wake up with a really bad pain in my neck - the result of falling asleep on the couch last night while watching the baseball. I've aimed to do little and achieved less, and as there's another baseball game on at an opportune time to watch I may end up migrating over to the couch and watching that instead!

Impromptu Naps

The last few days at work have been rather stressful, which has been somewhat annoying. Nothing particular - just lots of rather divisive arguments and aggressive 'discussions'. A couple of projects are taking a lot more time, effort and work than they should do, resulting in a somewhat tense feel for everyone involved. As a result, I'm looking forward to the weekend a lot more keenly than usual.

This evening following poker I came in, lay down on the sofa and fell asleep. Lay down is an inaccuracy - I sat down lying back at an odd angle, with my shoes still on so my body was part-suspended in midair and part-reclining. The main result was that I awoke a couple of hours later feeling the effects of dozing in such an odd position! I'm not quite sure why I dozed off - it's not as if poker itself was that tiring - I suspect it's the after effects of a long and busy week catching up with me! This will now obviously result in a strange bedtime tonight and stumbling through tomorrow until I can properly sort my sleeping out at the weekend!

Unusual Achievements

While arguably today I should be celebrating the fact that I managed to go to the gym in the evening for a swim - which was both relaxing and good for me - but I have what is arguably a more impressive achievement up my sleeve.

Both today and yesterday, I was wearing a t-shirt that was basically white. On both of these days I was boldly eating summer fruit, which I really enjoy but has a tendancy to be juicy and therefore dripping or explosive. I managed to eat several cherries and plums over the last couple of days without a single drop of red getting onto my pristine white t-shirts. After all, anyone can go swimming - but this is truly a feat.

The YOLO of Fantasy

I'm sure I wasn't the first to notice this connection*, but one thing I couldn't helped be amused by the occasional visits to / references to Braavos in the Game of Thrones series was the repeated use of the phrase 'valar morghulis' which bordered on a greeting or similar. As it translates into the common speech, 'all men must die'. The worrying point is that I suddenly realised that this is no more than the Westeros equivalent of YOLO. All men must die vs you only live once? Sounds about the same to me. I have suddenly lost a lot of respect for the Braavosi.

Now I need to get myself a twitter or something else mundane so that I can tag all my daredevil-like tweets about daring things with #vm or #valarmorghulis instead of the #yolo trend so I am hip and interesting. If only I either did such events or bothered with twitter, this would be a great insight.

* A quick search proves oh how right I am on this and reminds me that I'm not the only source of original insight, particularly when I'm several years late to the source material.
 

Absence Explained

The best reason I can think of for my lack of writing over the past month - despite having several subjects I wanted to cover - is to simply blame the heat. Well, primarily the heat and secondarily that I've been doing other things.

The heatwave has been problematic for me because I don't deal well with high temperatures - I need to be kept cool and well watered or I have a tendency to wilt. However, the problem is that not only is the house entirely south-facing but it also retains the heat very well. Most houses in the UK do - they're more designed to deal with the winter cold than the summer heat. My tendency when I have come home recently has been to collapse on the bed with the fan on, and have typically read or played on my phone instead of sitting at the computer.

The other reason is in part down to the reading - since my last update at the beginning of June I've now caught up entirely with the Game of Thrones books. I've managed to finish the ones Chrissi owned - she had four, the first two books and then the third book's two halves. I have got through these and then added to them with the fourth book and then the two halves of the fifth book. I'm now waiting for the sixth (and last) book, which has the drawback of having not been written - although there was a teaser of a chapter at the end of the fifth book, which didn't help at all! Nothing is resolved and more of the characters I liked are dead, and there seems to be endless amounts of wandering around going on - hopefully this will all lead to something at the end, but I have to wait a while to find out.

Small Things That Irritate II

There's no specific prompt for this from an event today, but one thing that utterly baffles me is how people who wear t-shirts bearing a slogan or writing on them seem to be utterly offended if you try and read said writing. While this is might be more predictable for females, who might perhaps interpret your reading of their garment as mere cover to closely peer at their chest, it's also surprisingly true for males who regard you attempting to read their clothing as a personal affront.

I do wonder what puzzles these people - is it the fact that people are reading the writing? Were they unaware that the t-shirt they were wearing had writing on it? It's a mystery.

The other day I - while wearing the classic descending-evolution t-shirt showing the ascent of man and then the descent of man into a chair before a computer - politely stopped as someone took a step back while staring at my t-shirt and then explained he was reading it. As he slowly read it out loud, he then asked of the slogan (somewhere, something went wrong) "what does that mean?". I fear the wit was wasted on him.

Unexpected Places To Be

So after a long absence almost entirely based around laziness and heat-prompted demotivation, I thought I might pick up my metaphorical pen and write another blog entry.

Today the main achievement was that Chrissi and I went for our gym induction. Yes, I too find this hard to believe - I am now a member of a gym. We joined last week - there was a special offer on and with a joint membership not only is it ridiculously cheap for the first month and a bit, but it also will hopefully help in allowing us to motivate each other.

As well as this we also had our first of five half-hour individual sessions, which are included as part of the deal. It meant that I actually got to play on some of the gym equipment (rowing machine: decent, crosstrainer: incomprehensible), which considering that as a 28 year old I've never properly been to a gym was rather novel.

The membership covers both pool-and-gym so means that I [should] have much better prompting for early-morning swims as I am already paying for it! It's still not too hard to get from there to work - although it wouldn't be as easy as the early-morning drive to near work and then the journey from there to work that I have done of late. However, the gym near to work doesn't have a special offer there!