Onions and bacon

A classic combination. What is it about this combination that is just so perfect, so correct, so delicious? A whole essay in aesthetics could be involved here, but I just wanted to remind everyone about the many possiblilities of this allium vegetable and this cured pig-flesh.....suggest your own dishes with the two, please, whether either as a starring ingredient or merely a background basis, bloggardes.....

Ah, grrrrrrrrrrr

Sorting out electricity bills. I've traced the original mistake and it goes back to my landlord. Instead of giving the company the night and day readings, he gave instead the total and day reading which obviously skew my bills completely, as then I would end up paying for my deay electricity twice. No fucking way.

Still, British Gas (great 'leccy providers) were still dumb enough to ignore the actual readings I gave and insert an extra '1' into my readings so that my night reading of 0728 magically became 1728 to correspond with the >1000 false reading given by my landlord. Instead of questioning this figure and perhaps even getting someone official to come read the meter. So after actually getting a wrong estimate, then a totally wrong bill, I've had a third, wrong bill. And obviously the phone bill charge to sit a queue for ages.

Some of it is my fault for not querying the other bill I had in July, but I've only just put 2-and-2 together. Still, I'm damned if I'm going to pay for a trivial mistake. I'm short enough as it is.

Grrrr, utility services are usually so useless! I'm half considering cutting of my mobile phone to avoid the cost, except that almost all of my stuff is handled by mobile.....and my home phone I cant get rid of since I desperately need the broadband (:D

Still, I should cut down on my bills, by ruthlessly unplugging things.......

Two wrongs make a big smash-up

A'noon, bloggardes! It's Saturday, I dont have to go to work and I'm enjoying this immensely. Instead, I've been cleaning up my flat ready for property look-over next week. Bathroom and bedroom are all done, I just face the horror of my main room. Nah, shouldn't be too bad, just tedious.

But more interesting, and back to a favourite theme of mine, was the utterly horrible bits of driving I just witnessed returning home from getting my food in. First of all was by myself, and more about maneuvers than driving. Parked in the bike spaces (which are far too narrow for anything sensible - and mine isn't that big a steed) I had to do about a 500-pt turn to get back out! Not helped by everyone else parked up the accessible front end, making it a very nice and narrow gap to get through backwards. Still, managed it in the end, but hardly graceful. At least I had my luminous bits on to make sure everyone saw me (:-)

More interesting to tell, is the bad bit of work by a moped rider and a BMW driver. My opinions on beemer drivers are well known, and have been confirmed again. So, there's a queue of traffic moving steadily at just under the speed limit, so the moped (probably owing to lack of experience - L-plate) undertakes the BMW, but not the whole queue, and ends up just in front of the beemer in a bit of space. Not the most sensible thing to be doing. Anyway, heading up to lights the road widens to incorporate the right-turn lane, and the queue has cleared a bit. Mope is turning right, moves into lane. Beemer is also turning right, but right before the lights, undertakes the mope and screehces to a halt just in front of it at the red lights. What was the point? Just for the sake of 10' of ground, and almost causing a collision into his rear end? Even more pointless when you consider that mope immediately filters straight past and in front of him again, as is allowed. So he's back in exactly the same situation. Idiot. But the mope wasnt exactly the best rider either.

Anyhow, back to the cleaning!

Disturbing

Have a gander at this .... in some very strange way it works! Yet still, it's too, too odd......

A poser

Back again, still not dead (:-)

Spent a very nice weekend with P, after not having seen him in over a month and was really, really glad to see him. How the seasons have changed though, since it means I arrive at his in the dark and almost leave to come home in the dark. Winter is icumen in..........

My cupboard is pretty bare at the moment, I appear to be eating myself out of house and home and not replenishing my stores. So either I'll end up eating very sparsely and healthily for a while, or else I'll end up groaning home under the weight of extra staples!

To the point; Dan at work put a little poser forward, to which no real satisfactory answer has been obtained. You can describe a solid as being dense, that is, per unit volume it has large mass. What is the opposite of this quality? I put forward rarefied which I've heard used in the context of gase, but consulting a dictionary seemed to suggest this not to be quite apposite. Any ideas, bloggardes?

It's gorgeously sunny outside and I really feel like going for a ride. Getting on the bike in the morning is not fun because of the surface rime on the roads and the excessive amount of time I have to wait for the engine to warm up (even to the extent that I'm totally paranoid the whole way to work that I'm about to stall!). I'm still worried about engine failure.....but on the plus side, my insurance premium has dropped to about a third since I've racked up another year's no claims......and what with the massive bill for the electrical repairs, the enormous phone bill for the broadband services in advance and the forthcoming 'leccy bill (once corrected), I'm quite happy to be saving a bit of cash! Think this weekend may be the time to go discuss investments, once I've hoovered my hair trimmings up off the floor......living alone and not having visitors does make one incredibly lazy when it comes to housework, though living in filth is not conducive to self-respect; mens sana in domo sano, anybody?

Laters; I'm kinda at work (:-)

Quick thoughts

Over a week since last post. Show finished off OK, for those of you waiting with baited breath! Apparently it's 'the best thing they've ever done', but I've heard that about every single show by a theatre group I've ever been in, so there's not much weight behind that comment. Was good in the end though, despite still being a bit of a shambles the week before, I'm just not good at the last-minute-coming-together thing. Prefer to be mostly there beforehand!

Anyhow, my quick thought. You've all heard of the Dave Gorman collection? Was just thinking how much less of a challenge it would be in these days of Facebook, where I just discovered another 92 Jon-sters (under my real name, of course!). Admitedly a lot of those were 'Jonathon', some with double-barrelled surnames, a Jonas and even a Jon-tae (wtf kind of a name is that?), but still, searching for namesakes is rendered a lot easier.

So I'm really not unique, at any rate.

Odd dream last night involving my old English teacher who died from breast cancer, though in the dream I was at primary school. Freaky.

First night over

Well, that was the first night of the show. Went surprisingly well, considering what a buggery horrible state it was in 2 weeks ago! Two more nights to go, then I can collapse in a little heap and spend sunday sleeping. I'm really looking forward to it. I mean, really. And I can perhaps get down to a smidgen of normality again......like that is ever the case.

And I'm also considering trying out being a bit hairy for a while. Though shaven head is nice, this past week (not the most recent days, but this past week) I've looked at myself in th mirror and thought 'jeez, you actually look quite sexy', not something I often think about myself. So I might be having hair again for a bit. Nothing much more than a light dusting - I dont have the coverage for long locks these days - but something. Opinions?

Woodworms

More people keep crawling out at me on Facebook....it's getting to the point where I'm adding people I've not spoken to in 10 years, and it does make one pensive. The past ten years have been, well ten years long, to put not to fine a point on it, and a lot happens in 10 years. If I went back to being 18 again, I could probably have said the same thing about the 10 years before that, so it only goes the show how things change.

I'm certainly not the same person I was before. Less serious, to be sure, since I've realised that nobody was ever really going to take me seriously when I had no confidence in my own worthiness. I still doubt my own ability, seriously doubt it sometimes; now I can laugh it off somewhat by realising that there is no-one so pompous as him inflated with his own self-importance, and I can see that at least I'll never be in such a position, so laughing at myself means I dont lose face. Having accepted that universal acceptance is unlikely, I've actually managed to treat myself as perhaps a bit more human and actually like my life a lot more.

Still, though I have happy memories at school, they remain and will remain such; memories. There were some crappy parts of my life back then, a whole lot of confidence issues and superiority issues that matter less now, matter not at all, and so I wouldnt want to go back and be there again. I've made more of my life, though perhaps through the gradual destruction of the old me. I hope the most recent me is a better person, and it only shows how the self is not immutable. Basically, I can accept the change and look forward to more to come.

So all in all, though I'm morbidly curious about all these people who keep knocking me up (so to speak) on Facebook, I've had enough of trying to connect with my past. If I really wanted to stay in touch, I suppose I would have, but I havent. There are in fact very few people I've kept in touch with, all said.......*violins*

Enough maudlin stuff. I was perhaps aiming for something deep and meaningful here, but we've ended up with twaddle as usual....still, at least I'm doing my bit for the 'infinite-number-of-monkeys-write-Shakespeare'-project.

Goodnight bloggardes, and realise that you arent the same person today as you were yesterday, and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
to the last syllable of recorded time, and that you wont be the same person after that, either. You 'aint never staying the same, so dont try to (:-)

And I've had to park my bike somewhere else apart from my usual spot *grump*

Good Monday

Acidolysis + no racemisation = very, very happy Jon-ster

(:-)

...or actually, just at the moment : :-)

Another reason to hate Sainsburys

Why would you put sticky labels on a pepper? Why mar the perfect skin of the fruit? Just so that I can merrily chop it up and throw it into the dinner, label and all.

I am not amused.

Mildly amusing

Sunday is, so they say, the day of rest. Well, I'm not exactly resting but I'm not doing much. I have but two mildly amusing recounts for you today.

Nipped into Camberley to pick up some new moisturising bath oil, and large bottle of water for rehearsals. I've been off the bike so long, and not into Camberley for so long, that they've managed to remodel the entire insides of the Sainsbury's there, so I got a nice little surprise! Not amusing, but funny how the brain is thrown when things are not as expected. At any rate, I managed to find what I wanted.

Other amusing recount is to do with the bath oil. Having bought it and take my bag of purchases away, the bottom falls out of the bag and scatters the contents all over the floor of the shopping centre. Nice. Shows how flimsy they make bags these days!

That's it for now. I'm off to make goulash.

Smile on the day

Yes, there is a smile on the day, because some of my karma has come back to me. A gorgeous day, and two loops of bike riding; a 1 hour and a 2 hour, and I still could go out for more if my wrists weren't aching at I'm getting tired; have to be sensible!

Otherwise, have done a weeny bit of laundry and cleaning, and squaring up to rehearsals tomorrow.

Grrrrr

OK, so I had my posh shoes in for repair, and since I was being all local and supportive (and not being with bike at the time to go to Camberley) I put them into the repair place at Bagshot. They were ready for Tuesday, but I only went in today to pick them up, and lo and behold but they've repaired my heels but not bothered to do the front of my sole, which was why I really had them in in the first place. Grrrrr. So now I'm going to have to make another trip there tomorrow to pick them up!

Otherwise, it's been an odd week. I have a multitiude of acidolysis reactions to do that I've been putting off, but should really start to do ASAP. Next week shall be the week devoted to acidolysis (and smelly reactions).

a la recherche du temps perdu

Went to bed with my draft copy of thesis last night (as you do) in a fit of nostalgia, and ended up reading quite a bit of it. Realised that actually, my lucid prose isn't actually that lucid, or at least could have been substantially improved stylistically. Gets the message across but is rather hastily put together, as it was really, considering I was in a rush to get it finished and submitted. What was more worrying was that I was looking at all those compounds that I made and thinking 'ugh, they look horrible', and wondering if it was actually possible and that no, surely I couldnt have done that! I know I did, and a quick squizz at my NMR data (broad multiplet, sir?) reminded me how bloody awful it actually was. Still, a little glow of pride was allowed to rear it's ugly head before I collapsed into sleep again.

Woke again at about 2am in a state of wheezy - seems like when I get asthma troubles, it takes an age to die down again - and had a little 'erk' moment when I couldnt instantly find my inhaler, having left it on the sofa. Unpleasant wheeziness, and my condition is really mild. Doesnt bear thinking about what life used to be like in the days before salbutamol and pocket inhalers. So not very nice, though I dozed off plenty nicely after a huff or two. But mornings are becoming ever more difficult now that I'm clearly getting up in the pre-dawn twilight, and feel like I'm sleeping really bad when I'm probably just dozy. There may be something to be said for sleeping with the seasons, and just sleeping longer in winter when it's dark. Not sure it'd wash with work though (:-)

Now evaporating numerous fractions from my column this morning, so ever-so-slightly bored. But at least it's a bit satisfying.

Forgot to collect my shoes

...so that'll be a tomorrow afternoon job, after getting into work supa-early tomorrow!

This is of course a minor piece of news for the day, since *tan-tarrah!* I went to pick my bike up today! All fixed, and boy there must have been quite a lot of shit going on there, since it was far more sparky in firing (new starter motor :D) and the steering was incredibly amazing! I'm loving it!

Except.....the wires were a lot more exposed than previously, so I tried to tuck them back in a bit. Big mistake, I managed to loosen the indicator connections, making them go crazy re: flash timing. So after a few moments of absolute panic, I've re-worked them into a position where the connection isn't pulled when I steer. But the ends are quite a bit more exposed, so from now on I'll be absolutely paranoid about them getting wet, and will probably start carrying something to put over them to keep the rain off when I'm out! Not that I'll be riding many places now that it's winter, but.....a scary moment when I'd just forked out loads for the repair and not really ridden very much. I'll be keeping an eye out, at any rate, and may treat myself to a replacement machine sooner than I was meaning.....2 years isnt a bad run for a first bike though, especially since it's 10 years old. Have to start looking out for a good deal!

Had my first totally random 'poke' on Facebook the other day, not a clue who it is but they must have surfed on in from an actual friend's page. Most odd. I've sent him a message along the lines of 'I havent a bloody clue who you are (unless my memory is crap) but thanks', and have heard no response. I feel like I'm being stalked. Slightly odd feeling. And on this theme, got a totally random text message from some guy I once had a date with. I'd deleted his number ages ago and he'd obviously forgotten who I was, but was curious why my number was in his phone. Fair enough, but I'd just delete it rather then sending a txt and then proceeding to call. Here's advance warning bloggardes, that I've finally got my first stalker! So exciting! But please keep a watch out for me, I dont want to inadvertantly drawn into a cannibalism pact (again). Natch.

Rehearsal again tonight, we're on next week and it's getting along....only worry is having a massive allergy response next week; I had a bad weekend of it after set-build and I'm hoping a lot of that was sawdust. Dont want to be inhaler-sucking and steroid-slapping all week.

Time for dinner, people......