At the start of the year I wrote a list. Three months on, this is my progress.
Start a new job (10th Jan). Done.
Speak to my family at least once a week, whether I need to or not. (I suck)
Take at least one photo every day. (Boy, do I suck)
Get the most that I can out of the membership of the Photograhpers' Gallery that I was given for Christmas. (Planning on going to the preview showing of their new exhibition next week)
Allow myself to fail, learn from it and try again. (This one is causing me a bit of trouble, but I'm still trying.)
Spend more time with friends. (I've hibernated more than I thought I would this year, but there's still time)
Do more things I've never done before (off to a good start already - I've upgraded my bios and participated in a pub quiz). (Done some, plan to do more)
Love. (Ongoing)
Implement at least one redesign of this blog. Done!
Complete, submit and have a css Zen Garden entry accepted. (Still at the preliminary ideas stage)
Listen to the radio more. (Radio 4 and Storm)
Laugh. (yup)
See more music performed live. (Seen: Hayseed Dixie and Thunder. Upcoming: Motley Crue, Alice Cooper and possibly Yngwie Malmsteen)
Read more books. (ish)
Walk more. (ish2. I've bought a pedometer though, does that count?)
Be thankful for what I have. (No matter how bad things get, I know they could be a lot worse)
Cry. (Too much. WAAAAY too much)
Be inspired, and do something about it. (Yes and Kinda)
Write more. (See above)
Be selfish when necessary, and not feel guilty about it. (This is way harder than I thought it would be)
Accept that not all of these things are possible, but do everything within my control do make them happen. (F. Could do better.)
I haven't been sleeping well.
I haven't been eating well.
I haven't been doing anything well.
Unless you count production of saline and snot (long story - don't ask).
So, given my utter, utter uselessness, I'm not entirely sure how I did it, but I managed to persuade someone to part with an invite for Yahoo 360, but it seems I managed it.
So if you're curious and want to have a play with it, leave a comment with a valid email address and I'll share the geekery and send you an invite.
In the midst of everything else that's going on inside (and outside) of my head right now, this gave me possibly the biggest laugh I've had in days.
... and boy, I really needed it.
[insert witty/funny/wry/sad/happy/silly/ clever/insightful* post here]
*delete as appropriate
A thought
occured
to me
today,
as I waited
for the train
to take
me away
from home
and bed,
to work
and pay.
Leftover rain
drips down my neck.
My shoes, so loud.
Clip-clop, clip-clack.
I stop and stare.
I watch and wait.
While her brolly
silently urinates.
The thought occurs
and I compose
crap poetry (sorry Karen)
in my head.
Sat on the train,
I take out my pen
and wonder if
you'll know what I mean
when I say
I sat there gently steaming.
In no particular order, the following things have made me happy recently:
- Figuring out and resolving the problem that was preventing this site from displaying as intended in Opera.
- Chinese food bed picnic.
- Scotland actually scoring a try (or three) against England.
- Finding out that Tesco have started producing their £6 bras in my size, saving me a minimum of £15 and a trip to Covent Garden to get new scaffolding (and by extension, managing not to laugh out loud at the beautiful moment when the checkout boy scanned the bra, clocked the size, then very obviously looked at my chest before putting it on the conveyor belt so I could pack it).
- Cadbury's Mini-Rolls. Two at a time, baby. Yeah!
- Daffodils, snowdrops, tulips and cherry blossom.
- Waking up together to watch the Malaysian Grand Prix live, then snuggling and going back to sleep afterwards.
- Being in the best rock pub in the world and getting served before a bloke who'd been standing at the bar longer than I had.
- Finding out that they now sell Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the Tesco Express near my office, and having the willpower not to buy any.
- Being missed by a dog that's not mine.
What's made you happy recently?
Did I miss the memo designating today as Friday the 13th of March instead of the 18th?
I'm just curious... cos knowing in advance would have helped me loads.
Ingredients:
1 bag of fresh tagliatelle (dried would do, but it takes longer and isn't as nice)
1 fresh tuna steak (per person - and yes, I do mean fresh - not the stuff from a can)
1 courgette (rudest shape you can find, obviously)
1 lemon (see courgette)
1 triangle of parmesan cheese (not the stuff out of a tub that smells like old trainers)
1 big tub of double cream (it's just wrong to buy cream in anything smaller than the largest tub you can find)
some garlic (couple of cloves would do, or if you're lazy like me, a squirt from a tube of the already squished stuff)
some coriander (chop a bunch of the fresh stuff if you like, otherwise, tube it like the rest of us lazy folk)
Some white wine (something light that goes well with fish - if I could remember what I used I'd say, but I don't)
Method:
Bung a drizzle of olive oil into a frying pan while it's heating up.
When it's hot, lob the tuna steaks into the pan and cook for a minute or so until it's not pink on that side any more.
Flip them over and repeat.
Squeeze some lemon juice over the top.
Flip them back every couple of minutes until you can't see any pink in the middle.
Transfer them to a clean plate and put them in a safe place.
Chop the courgette into bits. Slices work, but so do chunks.
Put a knob of butter into the pan, then add the courgette. Fry the courgettes in the butter and leftover olive oil for about 5 minutes, flipping them back and forth until the soften slightly in the middle but are gently golden on the outsides.
While the courgettes are frying, put some cream in a pan and start to warm it up. Add the squirt of garlic stuff, the squirt of coriander and a good slosh of white wine. Squeeze a bit of lemon in, then add another slosh of white wine. Add some salt and pepper if you want. Stir. Season to taste.
Boil the kettle then grab another pan, put some salt and a drizzle of oil into it, then pour the boiling water in and add the pasta.
When the courgettes look like they're ready, put the tuna back in the frying pan and use a spoon to break it up into chunks.
Pour the creamy sauce over the tuna and courgettes and stir it well as it reduces down and thickens. Try not to let it burn and stick to the pan.
When the pasta is ready, drain it and put it back in it's pan. Squeeze some lemon juice over it, then shake it around a bit to try and get the lemon juice over most of the pasta.
Grate some parmesan over the top of the pasta and shake again.
The object of this is to wind up with pasta that's got some lemon and some parmesan on each strand. Not necessarily covered, just lightly dressed (I think that's what proper chef types call it).
Separate the pasta into bowls.
Bung the tuna/courgette mix on top, dividing any leftover sauce however you see fit.
Serve with the rest of the bottle of wine, shared as equally as you can depending on who gets to the bottle for a refill first.
Get someone else to do the cleaning up.
I can understand the production of counterfeit money.
I can understand the production of counterfeit jewellery.
I can understand the production of counterfeit art.
What I can't understand, however, is why on earth* anyone would want to produce counterfeit condoms.
* I really wanted to put "in the name of all that is holy", but figured that might just be a little bit too much in the context.
Woo-hoo! I'm rich!
Gordon Brown's a generous bloke, isn't he?
The new budget means that I will be a whole £4.82 better off each month, rising to £4.86 if I spend my £4.82 on a bottle of wine.
If that's not an excuse for a nice bottle of Rioja, I don't know what is.
The pile of reading material currently available for perusal in our bathroom consists of (in archeological order):
Private Eye issue 1127 - 4-17 March 2005
The Week issue 501 - 5 March 2005
Revolution magazine - March 2005
New Scientist no 2489 - 5 March 2005
Marketing magazine - 2 March 2005 (unopened)
delicious magazine - September 2004
ES magazine - 10 December 2004
Comet advertising paper Christmas gift issue
Plan "sponsor a child" rundraising leaflet
WAGN 2 for 1 experiences offer letter and vouchers
The Big Issue magazine no 629 - 14-20 February 2005
delicious magazine - January 2005
Evening Standard newspaper - 7 February 2005
Evening Standard newspaper - 26 January 2005
Marie Claire magazine - December 2004
bluewater the magazine - December 2004
Evening standard newspaper - 10 December 2004
Guardian review section - 27 November 2004
Guardian cars section - 27 November 2004
delicious calendar 2005
Observer magazine - 31 October 2004
Observer magazine - 26 September 2004
What's in your bathroom?
It works!
Or at least, I did it once and it worked (although the cynic in me wonders if I'd have gotten a different response if I'd used my personal email address rather than my work one, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt in this case).
Anyway, some of you might remember might post in early January urging you to write to your MP asking them to sign Early Day Motion 461 regarding web accessibility.
Obviously, while urging you lot to write to your MPs, I wrote to my own MP asking her to sign the EDM and enquiring as to her plans for ensuring the accessibility of her own site and sat back waiting for a response.
... and waited.
... and waited.
... and waited a bit more.
... and was on the verge of writing a fairly sharp follow up email because I'd heard absolutely nothing. Probably including something along the lines of asking whether it was common and acceptable practice for MPs to utterly ignore communication from their constituents.
I don't have to do that now, since finding a letter from the House of Commons on the doormat this morning.
Seems that my email worked. She's signed the EDM, said she's passed my concerns to the DTI (although I have no way of knowing whether she has or not) and also apologised for the delay in responding. In addition, she's also indicated that she's going to look at the accessibility of her website (which isn't as bad as some I've seen, but it's got a way to go), which is also a good thing (if she follows through with it).
What interests me more though is that it appears she might have persuaded another MP to sign the EDM at the same time she did (a quick shufty at the EDM database lets you see what EDMs your MP has signed, and it seems that they frequently sign in packs).
So. If you wrote before and haven't heard back from your MP or if your MP wrote back and said they'd sign, or they'd think about signing, have a check to see if they've made good on their promise, and if they haven't, please consider following it up.
On the other hand, if you didn't write before, or weren't reading two months ago and don't know what I'm talking about, then why not take the opportunity to do it now. Follow the link above to my previous post, where you can find all the details of what to do and how to do it.
This post brought to you by my complete and utter surprise that the process actually worked.
If this works, and this post shows up, then I've popped another of my geek cherries.
I used an SSH client and set up my very own little crontab, to let me autopost from MT.
A small step, perhaps, but an important one.
I've come to a conclusion.
[I know it's shocking and scary and I'm sorry to spring it on you all like this, but it was such a momentous thing that I felt I had to share.]
My conclusion is thus:
Being off work is bad for my health.
[No, you don't need to adjust your monitor. Yes, I did really say that.]
"But why?", I hear you cry.
[only not really, because you're all asleep, which, as you'll see in a minute, is my point]
It's simple really.
It's 5.11 am.
I am awake.
I shouldn't be. I don't want to be.
The trouble is that my body clock seems to live on the West coast of the US (I think it's partying down in San Francisco, but I'm not sure, because the rotten thing stopped sending postcards), all of which would be well and good, well, if I actually lived there.
Only I don't. I live in London. Which is 8 hours behind.
When I'm working, I can almost force my body clock to switch to London time and stay there, but if I take more than two days off, it rebels and heads off to warmer climes and so here I am.
Exhausted. Needing to sleep, but not able to.
I wouldn't mind so much if I could use this time for productive things, but apparently I can't, because I've sat with a movable type window open for the last 5 hours attempting to do some kind of write up to explain why it took me 15 months to properly redesign this site and how I did it, and I've got all of 5 paragraphs and they're all nonsense.
It wouldn't be such a big deal if I could sleep all day tomorrow, but I can't because I only have a half day holiday tomorrow because there was a meeting organised that I should really be at work for and it had been organised since before I had to re-arrange my holiday time.
Somehow, I don't think I'm going to be at my best.
Anyone got a good cure for insomnia?
Old age seems to make it difficult to resist passing bandwagons...
So my contribution to the Bloggers' Disco soundtrack is...
Ace of Spades by Hayseed Dixie
Motorhead vs banjos. Can't beat it.
So. Here I am.
I can hardly believe that I've been writing a blog for five years.
What started out as a place to vent about the situation I found myself in has grown and mutated into something that I can't quite define, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
It's seen me through good times and bad and I'm a vastly different person now to the person I was when I started.
Oh yeah, and I decided to celebrate the occasion by redecorating, of which more later, when I've had some sleep.
... is inevitable.
Except from a vending machine.
Sunday afternoon, pootling around reading blogs while Adrian's out washing the car, I click my way down the blogroll until I get to Casino Avenue, at which point I'm totally stunned.
So much so I don't even take the time to read the BBC News story before running outside to tell Adrian.
This is my John Peel moment.
While I would occasionally listen to John Peel, the majority of my teenage years were spent listening to Tommy's rock show.
I was that cliché. Lying in the dark on a Friday night, listening to the rock show through the headphones I "borrowed" from my dad.
If it wasn't for Tommy, I wouldn't have the friendship I have with S. A friendship that was sealed in an instant by two words - Yngwie Malmsteen. I wouldn't have got hot and sweaty at so many gigs over the last couple of years - Yngwie, Queensryche, Thunder, Skid Row, Whitesnake and Gary Moore... the list goes on.
Thanks, big man.
Rock in peace.
This was what I had to deal with as I tried to get to work this morning.
Thank goodness for coffee bars on station platforms.
If we perceive it, does that make it so?
... the online home and (not very) alter(ed)-ego of Ann McMeekin, a recently freelance Web Accessibility Consultant.
... passionate about many things, most of which will turn up on this site at some time or other.
... contactable via email.
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