thing13

The summer of 2008. Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas, etc.

So, by way of a frantic catch-up: since we were last here, I have…

• been to India, to escape parental carnage over the New Year. Spent three weeks in Kerala, discovering memorable individuals, more amazing food than we could have imagined (and we could have imagined a lot), and plenty of new and clever ways to get killed. All in all, months ago, now, but unforgettable.
• continued to try to buy a house, though things are closer to actually happening this time. The closer we get, the more gutwrenchingly awful it will be if things fall through… but let’s not think about it that way, shall we?
• observed that the old saying about the only constant being ‘change’ is proving itself to be a genius description for life at the Beeb, with things in another exciting new structure (hey, why stop now?), and me in a new (or rather, renamed) job. It’s all going to be OK, though, actually. Which is nice.
• been to France, for a bit of camping and eating and being in the sunshine. Got a new tent, which makes me very happy.
• failed to blog as regularly as all that… but trying to justify it. Succeeding, mostly.
• read increasing amounts about things like RDF and FOAF and OWL and all that sort of thing. It’s all very clever, this web stuff. (More about these things and more, quite likely, at the soon-to-arrive BBC Developers Blog. You heard it here first. Although, to be honest, I’d be quite surprised if it launched before the heat death of the universe.)
• not done any woodwork, which is making Jenny angry ‘cos I’m not making her the breadbin which she desires.
• made bread a bit more frequently than my recent average, which is quite low. Y’just can’t beat freshly toasted toast from freshly baked bread, with Marmite on it, all with a cup of tea. You just can’t.
• read lots of rants from my old friend Stu, who is nearly always right about these and other things.
• tried not to get any Big Ideas… they’re not gonna happen. Failed, however, and they might just…

October is the tenth month of the year. So why is it called October? And December. Twelfth, but calling itself tenth. Barking. I feel some Wikipediaing coming on.

There seems to be an awful lot happening right now. Time for another list.

I have mostly been:

• Trying to buy a house, and failing miserably due to the fact that some people find it amusing to change their mind and not sell their house after all, even though we paid money for things. Not a survey yet, though, thankfully. But still.
• Doing presentations at work, trying to convince people that they should allow us to totally overhaul the part of the BBC’s site that I work on. It’s a long story, and one which I might find time to explain some time. (But let’s face it: probably not.) It’s all good though, the presentations seem to be doing the trick for now.
• Saving the lives of people who have massive fits in Tesco by swiftly putting them into the recovery position. Well, one person.
• Cycling around in my new red jacket in the freezing cold.
• Installing Mac OS X Leopard, and having fun with the new speech synthesis addition: ‘Alex’. It’s one of those hugely impressive things that comes around once in a while. One or two other bits of Leopard are a bit less impressive, but hey.
• And so on…

This year so far, I have mostly been:

• not really going with my resolution to keep this site up-to-date with illuminating posts on life in general
• travelling on the tube between Holborn and White City, reading The Metro and thinking that everyone else in the world must be completely mad for reading it every morning, no doubt surrounded by people who see me as one of the completely mad people (although some of them are, I am sure, actually completely mad)
• making a box out of ash, and taking far too long about it
• drinking more than normal, and assuming that it’s perfectly fine because there are definitely people in the world who drink much more than that
• really actually seriously considering buying a house, which, needless to say, is quite a scary thought
• realising that my family, who for most of my life have seemed quite sane, are actually totally fucking insane
• doing yoga, which I didn’t ever consider one of the things I should do, and quite liking it to be honest
• not reading very many novels, which seems a shame because I’m sure there are lots out there that I was planning to read, although I did read jPod the other day, and it’s quite funny, because some of the people I work with are like that
• going to lots of weddings, which, I gather, is something that starts to happen about this time
• not playing guitar at all, and feeling a bit guilty and stupid about it
• seeing my dad more often, going for a pint after work at a very nice pub and being rather pleased about it
• not being the most efficient human being on the planet
• ranting, which I have to teach myself to do less of
• reading Daring Fireball in a slightly all-the-time kind of way
• cycling around London and noticing bits linking with other bits in ways I never noticed, like Kings Cross and Angel.

This weekend, I have mostly been:

• discovering how to make pancakes just like I had in Canada and making myself very happy eating them
• putting a large number of scraps of paper that have things like “Inland Revenue” on them into the recycling bag. That’ll teach’em
• cycling around in the rain in London, when it would have been nicer inside with a cup of tea
• being inside with a cup of tea, where it was much nicer (especially with the food we had got while out in the rain)
• going to a gig where the sound was bad, and thinking about how I’m not in a band any more and how that is [insert word for it here], generally
• going to a yoga class for the first time, and feeling really quite strange in a very good way afterwards
• not being entirely sure how much of a good idea it is to go back to work again on Monday