Oh hey, I have a blog. Well, you know what? Yesterday I:
- Got up good'n'early to get a workout on the new EA Active fitness thing we got for the Wii. So far so good on it: I've hit my loss target for the week. It works a lot better than the Wii Fit, simply because it actually presents you with a program rather than letting you choose whatever you want to do (ie the easy stuff). Exactly what a spineless cop-out monkey like me needs.
- Did some dishes. My life is the kind of crazy shit you can only dream of!
- Scream for me Melbourne! Listening to the Flight 666 soundtrack. God I wish I'd gone to see them on this tour.
- Went out to Wickford in sunny Essex to have lunch at the merry Wagers. Tony is an old boss of Alex's and they have an expansive, lovely home out there. Always a nice time, as they really are fantastic hosts. Lovely roast lunch to boot. And I trampolined.
- Got the train back into London, then a bus back from Liverpool Street.
- Watched a little bit of Big Brother which seems even more like torture than usual.
- Hit the sack, where I appear to have cultivated some kind of strep throat. Great.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Things I Did Yesterday 08/06/09
Monday, May 25, 2009
Things I Did Yesterday 25/05/09
Tut tut. Yesterday I:
- Got up nice and early but then sat at the computer, trapped in our bedroom until Alex's mum woke up in the lounge. Oh, she was very generous in terms to telling me not to be sheepish about waking her in the morning, but dammit I can't help it. I'm always like this when people stay over, not wanting to impose on them. To be fair, I wake up early on the weekend and I appreciate that most people don't. So being a prisoner in our bedroom seems like the reasonable course of action.
- Got ready and then once everyone was up and functioning, we headed down to Spitalfield Market. I haven't been down there since all the renovations, and I'm really not sure how I feel about it. It certainly feels cleaner and more orderly and the food places feel a lot less like botulism stands, but it is lacking in soul. I'm sure the tourists love it, but it won't be a regular stop for me.
- Went around the corner to a proper East London street market, which is always entertaining for the barking stallholders, but quickly realised that pressing my way through throngs of pushy, inconsiderate people isn't that much fun either.
- Headed over to London Bridge and went to The George, a very nice pub off the main drag with a spacious courtyard out front. Had some lunch which mum-in-law kindly paid for. Result!
- Saw Alex's mum off, then walked back up through town for a while. Near Holborn Circus we found an abandoned office chair which I nabbed as my old one has fallen apart. Wheeled that up to Rosebury Ave and got a bus.
- Faffed about on the net before a dinner of delicious lamburgers.
- Watched Big Man Japan, a film which has been doing the YouTube rounds thanks to the scenes where our eponymous hero battles against bizarre giant monsters. The guts of the film, however, is a little more meditative, shot as a documentary about the normal life of our monster-fighting hero. There's a lot going on about family, sacrifice, honour and the fickle nature of celebrity, but to be honest a lot of it fell flat with me, probably because it really does speak directly to Japanese culture. It also suffers from a narrative shift, abandoning the documentary format whenever he becomes a giant monster-fighter, which is quite jarring. There were certainly aspects of it I enjoyed, particularly the trippy final scene, but the fights are pretty much all covered by the clips on YouTube and the documentary material only works sporadically, unhinged by a largely unsympathetic lead character. Can't recommend it I'm afraid!
- Watched some Inbetweeners then hit the sack.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Things I Did Yesterday 19/05/09
Listening to the Bugsy Malone soundtrack on Spotify. Sweet. Anyway, yesterday I:
- Had the day off, awaiting the delivery of our new washing machine. I got up at the crack of dawn to go down to the post office to pick up my new phone, only to be told it hadn't come back to the branch yet. Miserable bastard behind the counter too. Put me in a fould mood.
- Got home and took out our old washing machine, ready for disposal. We had paid John Lewis £9 to take it away while dropping off the new one. Took it outside to empty any excess water out, then left it there with a note on saying it was being taken away. Within the hour someone had nabbed it! Waste of £9.
- Found out the machine would be coming after 12, so I went to the library and got a few new audiobooks: Enduring Love by Ian McEwan (read by Richard E Grant), The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco (didn't the print version of this have comic strip material? Interested to see what they do about that) and the first season of The Mitchell and Webb Sound. Loving me some audio books at the moment, especially since I started hitting the library.
- Got home and faffed about. Twittered a bit, browsed Spotify, played some Crackdown (which went quite well, though the difficulty curve between islands is pretty steep). Didn't do any of my cleaning jobs. Oops. Did some dishes though.
- Alex surprised me by popping home in her lunch and picking up my phone on the way. She's a keeper. Got that sucker on to charge.
- The machine arrived at about 4.30, which is typical. Went to install it, only to realise that I needed to install an electrical socket to replace the dedicated cable the old machine had. Ran (walked quickly) up to Leyland and picked one up. Connected that, plumbed the washer in and hey presto! We have laundry! Cool machine, actually. Nice and modern.
- Had a bath then some dinner. Then retired to the bedroom for a little phone action. Oh yeah, baby.
- Initial impressions of the HTC Magic are very good indeed. Fairly intuitive interface, all very attractive. The touch screen is very responsive and I find the onscreen keyboard easier to use than I thought I might. The app store (the real deal-breaker for the newer generations of phones) could do with some more sorting options, but otherwise is a cinch to use and I was finding plenty of decent utilities straight away. I feel like I'm just scratching the surface so far, so more impressions as they occur to me. I must admit, I've fallen for this little minx pretty hard. I hope she's not a heartbreaker.
- Watched a couple of Inbetweeners from season 2. I like it.
- Read my book and dropped off to sleep.
- Didn't write. Haven't written in some days now. I plan to remedy that from tomorrow morning. If I can stop playing about with this fucking phone for 5 minutes.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Things I Did Yesterday 18/05/09
Waitin' for the washing machine man. But yesterday I:
- Got up and faffed about online while waiting for Alex to wake up.
- Decided our day-trip would be a walk out to the Leyton ASDA. Exciting! Quite a nice walk on the whole, taking just over an hour. A good mix of inner-city London, through rough estates and nice parks.
- Shopped at ASDA, which was something of an endurance test. Honestly, Sunday afternoon shopping is some kind of awful lesson in dog-eat-dog ruthlessness. People are just so ridiculously blinkered to the needs of anyone else for fear they might be disadvantaged in some way. Anyway, went to buy dinner stuff but grabbed some clothes and other assorted household goods. Well, it was a nice walk, anyway.
- Came home and chilled. Played Crackdown for a while, had some dinner, then I went to the bedroom and played around a bit with Spotify, as well as a new (to me) music player called Media Monkey.
- Watched Liam Neeson action flick Taken. It was a lot of fun, although the American xenophobia was a bit heavy handed: the French are spineless; Europe is murky and dangerous; don't trust Arabs or Eastern Europeans. Neeson is great though, really selling the role.
- Read for a bit then hit the sack.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Things I Did Yesterday 17/05/09
Did I miss one? Rats. I'm playing about with Spotify at the moment. It's...okay. More functionality with LastFM it would seem to me, but there is something to be said for Spotify's simplicity. It's almost like that "radio" thing the kids are all on about. Currently playing the Alestorm album. Anyway, yesterday I:
- Got the bus in. I'm listening to an audiobook of Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, which is great, even if the reader's voice is a little soporific.
- Worked. Got into town to have a coffee and read for a bit first, but I was horrified to find the nice Nero not open yet (at about 8.30). Weather is still a bit crap here, so no park sitting. Had Costa instead, but it wasn't as good. Life is so tough! I'm concious of the lack of morning writing I'm doing at the moment. Must remedy that.
- Had one of those work Saturdays that dragged like a corpse caught on a smallish speedboat escaping the scene of a crime. Man that sucks.
- Walked home with Kane. Oh shit, maybe that's what I'll do tonight: watch See No Evil, starring WWE star Kane.
- Umm...what did I do? Played some Crackdown, I know that much. Oh, of course, Alex and I watched the Eurovision finals while playing cards to determine who would do which household cleaning tasks. Happily it all worked out pretty evenly, with 9 jobs each, though to be honest I've come out the better I think.
- Found a missed delivery card for my new phone. I'll have to swing down on Monday before Alex goes to work, as we've got a washing machine coming at God only knows what time. 7am-5pm is all the info I have so far, but they are supposed to be contacting me with more details. New phone is very exciting.
- Eurovision was fun. I've never watched it before, other than glimpses on a pub screen the year that Lordi won. It was very entertaining, and Graham Norton did a sterling job of putting some snark into the proceedings.
- Hit the sack and read for a while before succumbing to sleep's deathly grasp. Not this time, though. Not this time, you fucker.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Things I Did Yesterday 15/05/09
In the nick of time! Yesterday I:
- Had the day off! I got up early-ish, read my web crap, then made a to-do list for the day.
- Popped down to Angel and bought some birthday cards for nieces and nephews. Wandered about a little, mainly in the bookshops. Saw a history of post-colonial Africa that looks pretty interesting.
- Had a coffee and read my book for a bit. Into the third book of Greg Keyes' Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. I'm enjoying this series a great deal.
- Came home and settled in for an afternoon of web-shopping!
- Bought a new washing machine, which is coming on Monday, so no more £8 a pop service washes at the laundrette.
- Got myself an HTC Magic phone ordered from Vodaphone. I figured it was time to get into the modern world of handhelds. I'm trying not to get my hopes too high for it, as I'm sure it'll disappoint in many ways, but I'm looking forward to seeing how the Android OS develops. Also, I'll have a phone with a working call button! Oh, one important note here: this was the first time I've passed a credit check in years! I must be doing something right at last!
- Sorted out most of Alex's birthday present, which I obviously can't go into detail about here. Not that she reads this bloody thing.
- Had a sort of nothing evening.I honestly can't even remember what I did. Watched some Inbetweeners. Read my book. Read the internet. Maybe watched Britains Best Home? Was that last night? Christ, I'm losing it.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Things I Did Yesterday 14/05/09
Ahh, a day off, eh? The things you can do! But yesterday I:
- Worked. Delivery day, so I spent most of it unpacking the Thursday comics out the back to the tune of Waits' Orphans discs. Well, Brawlers and Bastards, anyway.
- Didn't take a lunch break, so I just worked through until 5 then finished early. Spent the afternoon bagging and then got a sneaky start in on the filing. Then it was off home.
- Read a bunch of comics. Actually got through my whole stack for the week, which hasn't happened in a while.
- That's about it. Bloody hell...
