Saturday, February 25, 2006

Karaoke for the deaf

From a round robin type source. Utterly brilliant:

video here.

Monday, February 20, 2006

How intriguing

I heard the BAFTA results on the radio today.

Apparently, although the British film The Constant Gardener was up for ten nominations, it only received one award. However, Brokeback Mountain managed to walk away with four.

It occurred to me today that it is rather ironic that although the constant gardener was looking like the more successful, it was in fact the uphill gardener that won...

Made me laugh, anyway...

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Zzzzzzzzz

It appears I am getting old. Both in terms of my lack of tolerance and in my inability to cope with sleep deprivation. I had a fantastic weekend away with the boys (pictures available here) but I did notice, as did the others, that our previous technique of staying up until we decided it was just silly late didn't work any more. No longer is it a question of worrying about 'spoiling tomorrow' if we stayed up later, more a case of "Although I am having a right laugh, I can't keep my eyes open". A turning point indeed. It didn't by any means spoil the weekend as far as I was concerned, but it was a noticeable change in behaviour.

Further evidence for this was found last night. It was the delightful Mermaid's birthday, so we decided to go bowling (I won the first game and overall on aggregate; 306 over two games. Irrelevant to the story, but I must mention it because I am a competitive twat!) and we ended up going to a couple of pubs after. These late opening hours do not a short evening make...

I have only just got used (nearly) to getting up for work at 0715 after 3 months of inactivity and sloth at home, but after my first week of work to have a weekend of no more than 6 hours sleep per night followed by a further three nights in the pub has left me a little drained. So much so that once I have finished this post, I am going to bed. It's perhaps not quite as wimpy as it first sounds, I was just tired and in need of an early night until last night but I had to come screaming back from work to get showered and changed to get to meet the crowd on time last night. Thus the entire day was a rush, and so a busy evening bowling, messing about and giggling until we were thrown out of the pub at gone midnight was not helping. Particularly as we managed to wander all over town walking various people home in the cold and I ended up at a house with the stragglers until I finally managed to get home and get to bed at 0415... Getting up three hours later was not funny, I can tell you.

So I was absolutely buggered at work today. Real 'watch the bimbling spastic as he wonders around trying to concentrate and saying "um" a lot' moments all day. I also managed to nurture a cold last night and have spent the entire day sniffing and swearing at the fact my nose won't stop running and that I have a headache. Bleugh. So I am a bit pissed off about that. I seem to collect colds like normal people collect pay cheques. And with a nose the size of mine, colds are not an insubstantial issue, the quantity of snot alone would float a medium sized boat. Yum. Hope you all haven't just eaten....

As for intolerance (drifting briefly back to the point of the post as mentioned in the first line), one of the reasons that I was at the aforementioned house until so early/late was that I had to go and calm a friend of mine down over an incident earlier in the pub. She happened to cause an issue between myself and a total stranger, and the incident royally pissed me off. None of this gang of friends had seen me properly annoyed until then, and my refusal to talk about it until I had calmed down (her getting defensive when drunk at that stage may have caused a row, so I chose political awareness) just made her think I was going to hate her for ever. Bless her. So I had to go and tell her it was ok and give her a hug, as apparently I was a bit scary and I made her cry. Whoops. Still all is ended now, and she understands what pissed me off and why, so were are all ok. I'm sure you were all on tenterhooks about the result. It actually surprises me that I even get pissed off at all, never mind with such short provocation. I never used to have any sort of temper on me and was pretty much not bothered by anything in terms of an actual reaction. But I was instantly annoyed last night and bawled the guy out in the pub sufficiently that he slinked off and avoided me from then on. Odd. I would never have believed ten years ago that I would some day react like that. Still, the guy was a cock and he deserved it. At least now I have actually gained a temper, it remains a logical and justified one. That is no small comfort to me; I would hate to be someone who flew off the handle without sufficient provocation. That may surprise some of you (particularly ones that frequent the groups and forums on ) but I am generally more placid that I perhaps appear.

Anyway, at risk of showing myself up as a doddering old twat that is practically dead, I am totally shafted and am going to bed (it's nearly 10 o'clock in case you're wondering!). I have decided to try and write more so this is a attempt to kick start that process, if perhaps not a very entertaining one. But I have to (re-?)start somewhere, I need to switch on the part of my brain that notices the things that I usually blog about. Sleep well all you fellow old bastards.