506

Playing Yahtzee round at Mally's last night with Cath, the Vivster and Irony Boy, I chalked up my highest score ever: 506. That's three Yahtzees and everything in the bottom section except a full house. Oh yeah.

Incidentally, this blog has been offline of late because I've been concentrating on job applications. There are some really fantastic looking jobs out there. Now I've sent them off, I've got everything crossed (which make sitting here a bit painful!)

It'll be another four years till I blog again... on a leap day! (Had you going there, didn't I!)

Portapotties

Well I take a few days off and the place falls apart. Got back into work today to find that a) the toilets were out of order and we had portaloos in the car park; and b) the servers are out of action and I couldn't access any of the files I needed to work on.

I don't think the two areas are related, although if they are, that gives a new meaning to the phrase "data dump". (And possibly explains the quality of some people's work...)

Crucially, though, I did get on and complete my latest inspiring task - working out the Biscuit Supply Rota for the new team.

I realise as I'm job-hunting, some of the stuff I write on here about work makes my career seem trivial and banal. Which, of course, is a contributory factor to the restlessness. On that note I had an exciting chat with someone today about a high-powered Comms job that looks the biz. It would stretch me to the nth degree, but I need that because life is too short to be bored.

Insincerely...

We get too many cards round work these days and I've been tempted to start signing them with gibberish. I mentioned this to my sister-in-law when we were talking about signing her bright red leg-cast (achilles tendon snap, if you hadn't heard). She says it's stupid, but I think she thought it was a cleverer idea than she'd ever admit. (She doesn't like to humour me as she knows nothing good comes of it...)

Here are a few possible gibberish phrases. Feel free to use them.

Ar Fflarffan Boingo (pretend it's Welsh)
Grond Toglwogl (ersatz Norwegian - or possibly Greenlandic)
Hin Qin Tai Che Roh (could be from any Asian country)
Lapsis Anagooksis (faux Greek - you could additionally claim it's a Cypriot dialect)

NB - to get away with using nonsense greetings is just be confident if anyone asks you what it is. "Well it' s the customary greeting of the Lammu tribe in Vietnam. I just thought it would be fun."

After all, who's gonna know?

Telegraphed plot twists

I've recently finished reading The Kite Runner, which was excellently written and moved me greatly. The waste of life and potential as a result of the blinkered Islamist takeover of Afghanistan permeates the book and it's quite a melancholy read as a result.

The only problem is the two plot twists which I have to admit I saw coming a mile off. For a start I guessed the relationship between Amir and Hassan well before the former learned it in the book. Then I knew the identity of the white-robed Talib almost immediately - it just seemed so inevitable who it was going to be.

Maybe I'm a bit over-read, or analytical in how I approach novels. Today I finished Matter, the latest Culture novel by Iain M Banks, which had a very sudden and slightly unexpected ending. But again the main plot crux stood out before it was revealed by the author. In this case the problem is it's a plotline used in literally hundreds of epic SF stories. Banks hides it well, because for the first two-thirds of the book you don't know what the main point of the story is. But when it settles down to the plot proper, it isn't that much of a surprise.

Which is a shame really,because Use of Weapons remains my favourite Culture novel - mainly because I didn't see the twist coming until it was too late. And the shock (and sense of violation) I felt at the literary betrayal by the 'hero' still unnerves me on subsequent re-readings. It seems those heights (depths) elude even the greatest writers occasionally.

Men and women, part 1,982,456

Yesterday on a late run to Tesco Extra, the main clientele were blokes buying Valentine's tat and flowers. A guy behind us in the queue had a bunch of roses costing £35.00.

In a discussion with (male) colleagues today we agreed he was probably buying them for someone other than a wife or long-term partner, mainly because a wife or long-term partner would flip out if you spent £35 on flowers instead of something useful. Of course, he could have been so rich, £35 was just spare change, but if he was that affluent, he hid it well.

In fact my wife/long-term partner couldn't believe someone would spend £35 on roses (especially not from Tesco) and said as much to me. "No," I agreed, wistfully. "For that money I could buy that really amazing lego set of the radio-controlled dinosaur that's marked down at half price..."

I do love lego.

Paintballing

I took the day off work today to go paintballing with the youth. T'was tremendous fun. And as I said to some of my fellow group leaders, the way things are at work at the moment, spending a day running round in the mud being shot at, is far more preferable to being in work.

I have to admit before I went I was a bit worried I'd be the de facto target for the games. But in reality when you're in the games you spend so much time scrambling for cover you can't really pick any one person out. Plus I'd let it be known I would operate along the same lines as Imperial Rome and dish out a disproportionate response to anyone who shot me - namely a severe case of revenge shooting. (Of course Imperial Rome would just crucify the whole village, but the principle of disproportionate response was the same)

I even managed to avoid getting any major bruises. The only one I have got is conveniently on my forearm, so I can show it off tomorrow and bask in the kudos of putting my life on the line "for the kids." Oh, yeah.

California flashbacks

I'm currently munching my way through a box of Hot Tamales - the cinnamon candy you can't buy over here. I discovered them in California and every time I bite into one and close my eyes I can see sunshine on the surf as we cruise down Highway 1 from San Fran to LA. The beaches are pristine, the road is winding and fun to drive, the trees are huge and evocative of an untameable land, the pampas grass flutters in the breeze, and life is good.

In my heart I think I'll always be a little bit in love with California. And the taste (and smell) of Hot Tamales will always take me there.

More interesting things from my week

1) I put the word Jedi down in a game of Scrabulous as a joke, and the dictionary accepted it. Cool.

2) E-marketing guru Michael Katz thought my entry into a haiku competition was one of the best. My haiku was:

Chat to guru Mike!
And listen perhaps to the
wisdom of penguins?

The war escalates

After setting traps to cath the mice in my friend's loft the other day, we returned last night to find that all the bait had been eaten out of one unsprung trap. And the other trap had COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED!

We have our theories on that. It could be a) bigger rodents than mice, who wouldn't be particularly affected by Little Nipper traps. It might be b) a mouse got caught, but not killed, and carried the Little Nipper trap off. It's possibly c) a mouse got caught, but next door's cat can get into the loft and took dead mouse, and trap, away to eat it (the mouse not the trap). Or maybe it's d) the mice took the trap away to analyse it in the lab and work out how to defuse future traps.

Either way, I'm off to the hardware store this morning to look at f-off traps. Because when the mice start taking the traps, it feels like they're taking the p---!