here now

Full stereo separation has been achieved, which makes me very happy. I can now slob about on the bed and hear the music as it is meant to be heard.

I am sitting here nursing a cup of tea before going for a shower. We watched Fellowship of the Ring on DVD and ate a HUGE chicken dinner. We also consumed three very large G&Ts apiece. This latter may have been a relatively poor idea, but it was worth it.

I managed to pick up a couple of comics when I went to Camden to get the cable I needed to expend the reach of the speaker, and found accidentally myself in the Waterstones bookshop where I was beguiled by the unexpected presence of The Last Cavalier, a thousand pages of previously unpublished Alexandre Dumas goodness. The manuscript lay lost for over a hundred years and was only published in France in 2005.

I'm looking forward to it immensely.

here now

Full stereo separation has been achieved, which makes me very happy. I can now slob about on the bed and hear the music as it is meant to be heard.

I am sitting here nursing a cup of tea before going for a shower. We watched Fellowship of the Ring on DVD and ate a HUGE chicken dinner. We also consumed three very large G&Ts apiece. This latter may have been a relatively poor idea, but it was worth it.

I managed to pick up a couple of comics when I went to Camden to get the cable I needed to expend the reach of the speaker, and found accidentally myself in the Waterstones bookshop where I was beguiled by the unexpected presence of The Last Cavalier, a thousand pages of previously unpublished Alexandre Dumas goodness. The manuscript lay lost for over a hundred years and was only published in France in 2005.

I'm looking forward to it immensely.

I want to go back to sleep

Monday morning so of course I am tired and want to be at home. Ho hum; some things never change.

I have decided that I hate my glasses. I am lucky that I am only supposed to wear them for using the computer as apparently I have a slight astigmatism in one eye, the left one I think and my eyes get tired compensating. Other than that and a touch of presbyopia on account of my age, my eyes are fine. The optician even says that I have 20-20 vision in my weaker left and better than that in my right. I don’t know how that works: I Thought 20-20 was the best you could get. Maybe I was exposed to red kryptonite as a child or something.

Anyway. I hate my glasses. Try as I might, I cannot perfect the Giles manoeuvre; I thought I had, but I haven’t. I end up polishing them to compensate for the effects of my last polishing session, which just redistributes the smears in new and exciting ways around the lenses.

That apart, I find that over the weekend I have had some congestion on my chest. Not much, but enough to have me clearing my throat every quarter of an hour or so. Since I stopped smoking what, nearly 15 months ago now, I have barely coughed even when I had a cold, so I noticed when it all started up. There’s nothing much to it, but it’s annoying.

Maybe my lungs have finally realised that the healthy layer of tar they have had for the past 30 years isn’t going to be replenished and it is finally clearing out. Any of you who are ex-smokers, maybe you could confirm how long it takes? And yes, I know that it takes about a million years for them to recover completely, if ever.

I want to go back to sleep

Monday morning so of course I am tired and want to be at home. Ho hum; some things never change.

I have decided that I hate my glasses. I am lucky that I am only supposed to wear them for using the computer as apparently I have a slight astigmatism in one eye, the left one I think and my eyes get tired compensating. Other than that and a touch of presbyopia on account of my age, my eyes are fine. The optician even says that I have 20-20 vision in my weaker left and better than that in my right. I don’t know how that works: I Thought 20-20 was the best you could get. Maybe I was exposed to red kryptonite as a child or something.

Anyway. I hate my glasses. Try as I might, I cannot perfect the Giles manoeuvre; I thought I had, but I haven’t. I end up polishing them to compensate for the effects of my last polishing session, which just redistributes the smears in new and exciting ways around the lenses.

That apart, I find that over the weekend I have had some congestion on my chest. Not much, but enough to have me clearing my throat every quarter of an hour or so. Since I stopped smoking what, nearly 15 months ago now, I have barely coughed even when I had a cold, so I noticed when it all started up. There’s nothing much to it, but it’s annoying.

Maybe my lungs have finally realised that the healthy layer of tar they have had for the past 30 years isn’t going to be replenished and it is finally clearing out. Any of you who are ex-smokers, maybe you could confirm how long it takes? And yes, I know that it takes about a million years for them to recover completely, if ever.

Dancing Japanese Elvis

Reading Stan Sakai's (usagiguy) journal entry of this morning, I was introduced to the concept of Dancing Japanese Elvises.

I have identified this as the missing piece in the work environment: this place needs a dancing Japanese Elvis.

Dancing Japanese Elvis

Reading Stan Sakai's (usagiguy) journal entry of this morning, I was introduced to the concept of Dancing Japanese Elvises.

I have identified this as the missing piece in the work environment: this place needs a dancing Japanese Elvis.

Say what?

I think that someone is going to arrive at the Carpathia sometime on Saturday and give me a quote for the supply and installation of a TV aerial. I think that if I am happy with the quote, they will do the work there and then.

This is all qualified by the word “think” because just before lunch I received a call on my mobile from a Scottish Accent. Now I know, or have known, over the years my fair share of Scots and in each case I have found their accents to be quite intelligible, be they west coast brogues, guttural Glaswegian or vowel-mangling Highlander. I was pretty much defeated by Scottish Accent however. I managed to take down a job reference, but was defeated by the telephone number on three attempts, thus rendering the former pretty much pointless. If it is the same bloke who turns up on Saturday, I may pretend to be slightly deaf so he doesn’t think that the constant “ehs, pardons and come agains?” are a sign of congenital idiocy.

They may well be, but I don’t want him to know that.

Say what?

I think that someone is going to arrive at the Carpathia sometime on Saturday and give me a quote for the supply and installation of a TV aerial. I think that if I am happy with the quote, they will do the work there and then.

This is all qualified by the word “think” because just before lunch I received a call on my mobile from a Scottish Accent. Now I know, or have known, over the years my fair share of Scots and in each case I have found their accents to be quite intelligible, be they west coast brogues, guttural Glaswegian or vowel-mangling Highlander. I was pretty much defeated by Scottish Accent however. I managed to take down a job reference, but was defeated by the telephone number on three attempts, thus rendering the former pretty much pointless. If it is the same bloke who turns up on Saturday, I may pretend to be slightly deaf so he doesn’t think that the constant “ehs, pardons and come agains?” are a sign of congenital idiocy.

They may well be, but I don’t want him to know that.