Wake up in the morning, wanting some breakfast....

Cue Vitalite. Actually, I don't think they make that any more, do they? In those round, flat tubs? The world of margarine is very different than in used to be.....

Off to work in a minute to welcome the new guy, and I'm in cubby mode. I think I've basically given up on the full-on headshaving for the time being, it's been a couple of months now and I'm only missing the fresh feeling, rather than the look. I quite like furry Jon-ster, though P thinks I look like a tramp.

Theatre tonight - better learn some lines, hadn't I?

I was going to make a post more recently!

...and how many times have we heard that? :D Seriously though, I had some photos and everything, but I think this story will work just as well by description, and hell, it's good exercise for my brain and fingers to get it down in print.

P and I went out for chinese the other night. Nowt posh, just essentially take-away but without taking-it-away, but in bigger portions and some things slightly more obscure. And the same place serves dim sum on a weekend, just like the place in Southampton I used to frequent did. Even down to the deep-fried prawns served, bizarrely, with the quintessentially asian ingredient of salad cream (strangely tasty in this context). Anyhow, meal over, regulation fortune cookie and hot towel dispensed, nice nice. I crack mine for the fortune 'you will receive a gift you have always wanted'. So far, so typically trite.

P cracked his to obtain the fortune 'British Telecom has made a mistake, you will get a rebate'.

Errrm, whut? This is a remarkably precise prediction for an art form usually mired in indecipherables and inexactitiudes. That a cookie not only knows you have telephone provided by BT, it knows they've buggered up your bill and that the cheque is in the post. Not that this is unlikely - I have many gripes over my BT service at the moment but nothing is likely to change - but still, surpisingly to the point. I did take a picture just to make sure it was real and not a hallucination, but as yet do not have the technology to transfer them (read: my camera battery is flat and I don't have an SD card reader).

It is a pleasant day today, not much happening; big mug of coffee, crumpets and sausage rolls. Shall have to stop with the pastry soon though :-(

I shall love him and cosset him, and call him Brian

There follows a picture of my coffee french press. Oh how are the mighty fallen! Not only do I now make coffee like I live in the 1980s, but I've let it become covered with the lovely green residue of mould. Coffee grounds are noted as being good for compost; clearly they are attractive to microorganisms who have decided to come and live with me. I'm a skank, no two ways about it :D




I've been having a little electrical trouble with my bike recently, something lurking deep within the myriad dirty cables under the seat has decided it doesnt want to play any more and is shorting out the dashboard. So though my engine will start and the bike will run, mechanically fine (though I'm paranoid about all the knocking I 'sense'), I have neither brake lights, nor indicators, nor indeed a working rev counter. My speedo stays dead at 0 mph even though, woah, I'm clearly nipping along the dual carriageway at a fair lick. Honest, officer, the dial said I wasn't breaking the limit.

Work is shaping up fun and interesting, especially now I'm on a new area of project as the first dedicated guy on the job, even more so now there are new people around joining in on it. Always better to be the 'old hand' rather than the young buck, I guess. And somehow in the last 6 months to a year I've randomly managed have 'the knowledge' in my field. Or at least, I don't give a crap if I make mistakes anymore :D

I've also recently found out that I have quite a high level of cholesterol in my blood. Now, despite the fact that this should come as no shock to anyone who has lived with me, or indeed has ever eaten food prepared by me, it was still a little bit disconcerting. Jon-ster is therefore moving away from the delicious red meats he loves so much and is even going to be sacrificing a quantity of cheese-nibbling. Luckily I can pretend pork is white meat, the fattiest of the lot! Clearly in a case of wanting immediately whatever one is denied, I've been thinking about slow-roast belly pork and large pieces of crackling. In fact, sometimes I've though about pork dishes entirely in terms of the sensuous fat which leeches out and soaks sumptuously into my big pile of kraut. I'm hungry again.