Friends

These found by fencingsculptor:

The Doctor's Facebook Page
The Master's Facebook Page.

Fantastic!

When they say on the radio that last night was the coldest night of the year, it sounds impressive until you remember it is only 8th January.

It wouldn't have to be particularly cold to set a new record in that space of time. But as I type it has been changed to 'coldest night of the winter so far'. Bum. That's a grumble that has been promptly addressed.

Minus 21 Celsius in Scotland, eh? Another 6 degrees before it's the coldest I've ever walked through (Winter of 78-79, Shropshire. Took me days to feel warm again).

The offer of employment from the Law Society has been withdrawn.

Back in the mire. At least I hadn't signed the contract with the nursery.

Current Mood: grumpy

On the assumption I can get to Brum this Saturday, it seems prudent to arrange to stay somewhere rather than drive home at 2 in the morning, etc.
Who'd like a pet DM for the night?

Global warming experts are politely requested to refrain from meeting members of the public for the next few days unless their journeys are absolutely necessary.

That is all.

Another day, another morning that’s starting after a night of not enough sleep :s although I got more than fen_wolfchile, I don’t think he had a solid hour all night.

I got the bus to the station again this morning, which was fine, got on my usual train and snoozed as usual, then I looked at the hill up from the station and decided I just couldn’t face it this morning and got on the tram. As I was on there anyway I got a day ticket so I can get the tram back down again later. Must not make a habit of this!

I feel like I’m made of lead this morning and am moving very slowly. Saying that, I have been through the piles of paper for important clients one and two and done things and, having broken myself in gently, am about to tackle the much more complicated important client three.

Current Mood: tired

I have just sent a disappointed ellefurtle off to work and I shall be following shortly. The entire country is snowed in except for us. Yes, there was snow yesterday and yes, we believed the panicked announcements of the local media (more fool us).

That meant we came home early yesterday, which of course, was good. But it stopped snowing by about 4.30 yesterday afternoon and never started again. Everything is running smoothly, except in media-land and try as hard as we may, neither of us could think of a reason why we shouldn't traipse in to the office.

Note to self: win lottery jackpot and retire to live in lap of luxury.

Quiz tonight.

Another reason why Russell T Davies should be avoided: Torchwood: The Musical.

Music by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus from Abba. It ain't happening, but it was discussed and yes, I know it wasn't his idea, but clearly someone thought he would go for it...

There's something very wrong about this.



No, I tell a lie. There's everything very wrong about this.

A while ago, a relatively new magazine by the name of Standpoint caught my eye. Not far into it, I began to suspect that I was not a member of its target audience; any lingering doubts were dispelled in the next issue, when an opinion piece used the term 'pro-abortion' seriously. Since then it has continued to cement that impression with occasional casual swipes at non-Christians in general and atheists in particular. But I read it anyway, because it's no use just listening to people with whom one agrees.

When it touches on subjects about which I know anything, I rarely find myself in agreement with it, and sometimes I think I catch its writers being... either less than knowledgeable, or less than honest. Thirteen pages into the January/February issue, I came upon the latest case; Barton Swaim holding forth on the subject of 'uncivility', a word which the US left is apparently trying to redefine as 'the expression of an opinion incompatible with liberal-left consensus'. As an example of what the left considers uncivil, he mentions, 'a number of "town hall meetings" on the subject of health-care reform were "disrupted" by people who had got the idea that they were going to be forced to pay other people's hospital bills.'

For one thing I'd question the use of quotes around "disrupted," and for another, from what I've read some of the incidents went beyond disruption and arrived at orchestrated efforts to shout down and intimidate the pro-reform argument. Furthermore, there was more driving the protesters than a not-entirely-inaccurate description of socialised medicine; far more pernicious falsehoods were and are making the rounds – such as that the NHS would have left Stephen Hawking to die. (Somebody at the Investor's Business Daily should've checked their facts rather than just listening to the Professor's US-accented voice synthesizer.)

Then, attempting to build a case of leftist hypocrisy, he quotes Democrat chairman Howard Dean as having suggested that George W Bush had foreknowledge of 9/11. Even if he had said that – and the actual quote is open to interpretation – it hardly compares to the teabaggers' behaviour, and the attempt to draw the equivalence opens Swaim himself up to the accusation of hypocrisy.

I suspect Swaim of being disingenuous, and I'm certainly not taking on trust his opening assertion that in the name of diversity, American universities' humanities departments 'have imposed upon themselves the rule that no person shall join the faculty whose opinions stray significantly from the rest of the department.' One wonders if he's reached this conclusion due to them having a disinclination to employ racists, sexists, homophobes or young-Earth creationists.

I am currently suffering a problem that Eddie has a lot - too many books to read. Not that Eddie reads books (well, he's read to Kill a Mockingbird but stopped when he realised the title was misleading), he has the same problem with toys - so many toys, no idea which one to read first!

So, the dilemma is this: what to choose between:

The fourth Felix Castor novel
The latest Morganville Vampires novel
The first Sookie Stackhouse novel

Or steal another one of Sarah's new books and read that before she does? :)

The book I have just finished (which was stolen from Sarah) was very cool. Halting State by Charles Stross is well worth a read if you are in anyway into computers, computer games, roleplaying or LARP. Some nice ideas in it and a very strange PoV which may take some getting used to. Not sure what to call it but everything is written as if a roleplaying GM was describing a scene to a player in a game. Its all 'You feel scared as you walk, wondering what you will see when you open the door...' and seems to work for this story - especially when every chapter is named for the character who is 'you'. Though it can get confusing when you leave it mid chapter and go back to it having forgotten who the protagonist is in that particular chapter... Definitely suggest you all look out for it...

This evening I got to Nottingham station and was waved through the ticket checks by a very cheerful man without showing my ticket. As I walked away I heard something the lines of "what was that?" from his colleague, " I know her" my man said, "she has a season ticket". Admittedly the same chap has been on ticket checking duty for the last couple of days, but I thought knowing me might be a bit strong... I guess they don't get that many tall, dark-haired women with turquoise gloves, an almost matching scarf and a walking stick passing through :D

This evening we have taken the xmas decs down and I am settling in nicely to my new knitting corner :)

Spotted these tracks in the snow today. Can you guess what creature made them?




ETA: Here is the shot that I took of his footprints in the sand...

Yesterday we went to Beaconsfield to sign mortgage papers and such. On the way out I took a couple of mphotos of the ice that's building up outside the Carpathia as a result of the over flowing gutter (God knows where the water's coming from) and the continued cold snap.




I didn't realise until I uploaded the photos from my camera, that in one of the little ice bubbles there is a red heart. We think this is a red elastic band that has been sitting out there for some weeks, that has got caught in the ice. The shape is just a happy coincidence!

I have made it in to work this morning, and sitting in the office in the middle of Nottingham you wonder what all the fuss is about as it's pretty much clear over here.

By the time I left the house in Derby this morning it was practically a blizzard again, lovely big fat fluffy flakes of snow coming down heavily and settling on everything! Beautiful! :) I could sit and watch snow like that all day :)

We decided not to try and move the car, so I ambled up to the bus stop in the glorious snow and sat and watched it come down until a bus showed up. Buses were running fine, trains were running fine, so I got on the 8.10 I used to catch to work and was here at a sensible time. In hindsight walking up the hill from the station was a mistake and I will probably be getting the tram back later.

Not slept too well the last couple of nights so I'm going fuzzy round the edges, but I did get two repeats done on my Frostberries shawl last night while drinking bubbly to celebrate fen_wolfchile being offered a job! woo hoo! :D

While I think on it, is it just me, or is Hollywood as a gestalt, losing it completely now, even by their own low standards?

We went to see Sherlock Holmes yesterday (which I am hoping ellefurtle will review: she was seething) and settled down to enjoy the trailers for the forthcomig releases as usual.

An exciting preview came up and I wonder out loud to Furtle if maybe there was a remake of Jason and the Argonauts in the wind? I wasn't far off, of course: the stentorian tones of the voice-over artiste announced solemnly and dramatically, "Titans ... will ... clash!!!" And then the title flashed up on the screen: "Clash of the Titans"

Come on Guys. You're not trying anymore.

Today was our last day before work recommences tomorrow. Frankly, I don't feel like going back. There's nothing wrong at work - as I've noted before, it all seems to be going swimmingly just now and there are potential opportunities ahead. I just don't feel like going back in just yet. I'd be quite happy for them to email me something and let me tackle it at home, it's the traipse into the office as much as anything that I am not looking forward to. That and having to get up on a cold morning, too.

Anyway, the snow seems to have made its way back to the Barnet/Whetstone end of London, so there is still hope. There's not much of it around just now, but what there is, is sticking and it's not yet midnight, so who knows? Maybe I will be able to claim a day off because of adverse weather conditions after all. It doesn't take much to bring London grinding to a halt¹.

Today we were busy, so our last day off was less than relaxing. Thanks to the new money-laundering regulations, we had to present ourselves at our solicitors to prove that we are who we say we are, before they can move on the house purchase. I'm not sure that I've heard of this happening to any of our friends, some of whom claim never to have met their solicitors dealing exclusively by snail mail, email, telephone and parcel post². Maybe we just look or sound shifty. Our trip to Beaconsfield was aided by a series of very fortuitous train and tube connections. We left Marylebone at 13.00 and were standing on the platform at Beaconsfield ready for our return by 14.08. In that time we had signed what had to be signed, bought a crudité dish and a posh teapot, though these are not essential aspects of the home buying experience. Thence back to Whetstone with no further ado, 3 pints in the pub and then some grocery shopping.

We finished the holiday by packing the tree and decorations away and ordering in a curry.

Work tomorrow. I think I might have mentioned that. Ah, me.

¹I know that the UK, and London in particular, is an object of derision in countries that regularly get mountains of snow and which carry on regardless, but in our defence, I would say that the past few weeks not withstanding, you can go decades without seeing significant snowfall in probably 90% of the country. So unlike say, Sweden or Finland, or Canada or the US Midwest, any councillor brave enough to suggest spending a few millions in any locale to buy snow clearing equipment that will rust out a century before it has chance to wear out, will find himself dining on his own filleted 'nads.

²On the other hand, I've never pressed anyone for details concerning their house purchases. It would be a level of detail and tedium I don't feel up to.

Yeah pretty to look at but a c*nt to drive in.

and please don't say things like, well just stay at home, some of us have to work for a living

Guilty of not going to work because of the snow. There was nearly a foot of the fluffy white stuff. I managed to get out of the warmish flat to move some of the snow from around the car and path. I did use some of it to make a big snowball, there is still enough left in our yard to make at least 4 more but I don't have the energy.

Current Mood: cold

Today was a day of achievements in the bathroom! I was manly and did the DIY thing by putting the bathroom cabinet back, putting the blinds back up and fixing the new toilet roll holder. This involved much manly action involving drills and screws. I also started to put things back in the now freshly painted bathroom but was interrupted by the early return of my darling sweetheart which, of course, necessitated tea drinking. Apparently she had been sent home early due to the thing I am not blogging about. Tomorrow will probably see the completion of the decorating and the world will tremble to the might of a fully operational bathroom.

I was going to go into the college tomorrow to gripe at them again, having given them a few days respite to recover from new year. However, this may be pointless now as the college was closed due to something I am not going to mention and may be closed again tomorrow for the same reason.

I did however apply for a job at an all girls school advertised by an agency (which may actually more than likely be bait in a trap to lure you into signing up for the agency but I don't care as I already signed up with them anyway...). I made sure to mention that I was looking for placement schools in the application in the hope that they will take the hint and find me something. A placement I can be paid for would be great :)

For some reason, a lot of people are complaining about traffic problems and difficulty getting about. I have my suspicions as to what is causing this but have promised not to blog about it...