Category: General

So, we made it.

17 hours of flying, 5 hours in Heathrow, 2 hours in Chicago (although it was nearly not enough… I’ll whinge about that in a bit); and endless hours of flying… And we’re here…and it’s veeerrry pretty.

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We’ll be packing up and preparing to be driven to London.

We’ll be starting our journey to Alaska.

It’s the second furthest I’ve been abroad at 4363 (apparently, at least to Palmer) (5523 miles (approx) is my record but I was about 5 at the time and don’t really remember that much about it).

Britain, for its part, is doing its best to be unutterably gorgeous before we leave, with crisp beautiful winter’s days, frosty mornings with bewitching spiders webs glistening… It’s just been magnificent, actually. We headed into Bath a couple of days ago ostensibly to take back Trey’s library books – I was meant to be having a dissertation meeting, but we did that on the phone instead. And that, that was an example of Bath in all of it’s splendour. Mind you, it was a nightmare camera wise. Taking photos with bright sunlight and dark long shadows is challenging at the best of times, and my little digital doesn’t really hack it terribly well. But we managed some very pretty photos… Apparently I look better with my hair down…

Here’s the photos and Trey’s description of the day, which is far better’n anything I can write.
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….is Trey.

I came into the bedroom, and there she was, nice as pie, folding up her clothes… Well, I say “her clothes”.

There were my clothes, unceremoniously deposited at the end of the bed; and, strangely absent, 1 pair of Jeans. A pair, that were to be found, neatly folded, in her pile of clothing.

Nyargh! Bloody lesbians!

I have cute new dykey glasses. They make me look cute and dykey.

I also had my second grey hair. 2. In one year! Mind, it’s been a stressful year. And yes, I’ll keep telling myself that.

Well, I’m all excited. I keep bouncing around the house. It’s only 3 days ’til we head Alaskawards, I’ve got my new shiny glasses; I’ve got my contact lenses; I’ve washed and waterproofed my coat, I’ve burned a load of music onto CD-Rs; I’ll be making up a DVD+R later for Kara; I’ve got a couple of Xmas / Thankyou prezzies to take.

And…

I’m going to be in Alaska!

Bloody hell!

*bounce*

[And they don’t scare me….]

In other news, it appears the entertainment industry have shot themselves dramatically in the foot; now that Music CD’s have started to be banned from the workplace…. Heh. You see, if you supply products that break people’s existing stuff, they get ‘unhappy’. Perhaps some market research is in order ;-)

In other other news, we managed to miss Serenity at the Cinema, which is *phenominally* annoying. As is being in that irritating intervening period between Cinema and DVD. Feh.

And this is for Trey…

Visited Countries…(subject to change next week)

create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

…and it’d’ve made no difference.

I tried, I really tried to get this pos-Agfa-Scanner working. I tried. But Snapscan is, to quote a phrase, ‘complete and total crap’.

Although the scanner works, the software is so stupid it can’t *actually* detect the presence of the scanner, because, get this, I dared to install the drivers with other peripherals connected. Thus, I can spend the rest of my life editing my Registry to remove all tainted Afga registry entries, or I can say ‘fuck it’ and ‘no scanner until I need to buy one’.

I checked. They’re about 30 quid now anyway.

Watch me not beat it with sticks. I could be asleep.

Okay, so Trey likes these. I’m not exactly 100% on Harleys, shall we say. In fact, if I’m honest, of all the bikes I’ve been rude about, Harley’s are probably saved first place only by ‘sports bikes’ and the CG125. I’ve kind of got to a stage where, because I love Trey, and she loves Harleys, I’d decided to (eventually) get one – fer Trey to pillion.

But then I remembered the Harley Compatible (well, really it’s a BMW compatible ;) ); and I think that I could quite love a Ural, or Urinal as they’re affectionately known to me.

Of course, this does not look like work. That’s because I’m eating lunch. I’ve been to Sainsburys and bought a salad I can only describe as ‘not being to my taste’*

I’ve also managed to wash 4 loads of Laundry, Lauren’s towels are about to go back in (she forgot to start the machine this morning) so they’ll be done and dried…

…tidied the lounge, cleaned the kitchen (bar the floor, which I’ve swept but not washed), sorted the recycling, discovered that there’s something in the run-off on the Beatles Sgt Pepper album (does everyone else know that already?), cleaned the office enough to make it possible to actually *see* the desk and now I’m going to run round with the hoover and start reading GLBT Papers. Woot.

* Techincally I could also describe it as ‘revolting’ ‘disgusting’ and ‘oh holy crap, I must write this down so I don’t buy it again’; also the look on my face as I struggle through eating it is probably ‘a picture’, fortunately my webcam is off.

By popular request:

Whipem Down Garage Window Sticker: Tiff / Level 2 Postscript EPS

It’s a gorgoeus day here. Proper winter sun, weak but bright, clear and sharp, making the frost glisten and shine.

I forget how pretty winter can be.

Cold too. Well, not-warm. It felt really cold this morning as I hauled myself out from under the duvet to go swimming, and walking outside I thought ‘hell, it’s cold’ (it’s 7°C / 45°F), but having been swimming when I came out of the pool it was just right. Still 7°C but once I was awake it felt fine :-)

Bodies are odd things.

My eyes are currently still whinging about this morning’s swim. I forgot my goggles and decided to swim anyway; and they’re still stinging an hour later. I was quite impressed, after fighting with my body which screamed about me opening my eyes in the chlorinated pool water, and struggling to breathe properly as my body rebelled, I managed to get to the point where I could swim properly, and ended up spending about half an hour in there; which was about the point when my eyes started to inform me that they really did hurt. (As opposed to ordinary whinging).

Main badness about it is that I have no depth perception, and kept nearly swimming into people, because they only became distinguishable as people too late.

I’ve got loads to do today (topic jumping :-) ) – I need to have a look at how the IP stuff is going on, I need to start on my dissertation, I’ve got to continue the laundry festival (I misjudged, there’s 4 loads in total, the second of which is currently twirling and churning within the bowels of our washing machine), I’ve got some health stuff which I need to do before I go… Bleh.

I’ve had a horrible realisation, a few days ago I listened to a song on the radio, bopping away happily I was… turned it up even, then found out it’s Girls Aloud. A group so bad that even my shamed mind, one which had to live with buying Kylie Minogue’s [meant to be] Beautiful Princess album (still think they should have called it that). It’s their new single – Biology – and I’ve played it at Lauren and she thinks it’s good, and so I don’t feel too bad. I think Trey liked it too. It’s cheery, mindless, happy pop, but it’s the first bit I’ve heard of theirs which I actually think is decent music. Meh.

Uh, anyway, I best get started.