Points for realising that I am paraphrasing a Cliff Richard song.
This year we moved (officially) to Swindon. I spent ten days in hospital recovering from an ovarian ectopic pregnancy. We bought a flat. I joined a sewing club. My cooking got a smidge less tragic.
Here are some of the things I’d like to accomplish next year:
I rarely pay attention to upcoming publications, but Dan Rhodes has written a new one and he’s always worth a read. The standard-bearer is Timoleon Vieta Come Home and Anthropology is always good for a wry giggle. My prediction is it will be good and maybe a little cringe-making, but that’s Dan’s style.
I’ve already mentioned the old Book of the Month hardbacks I’d like to tackle, and there’ll be more books I come across that look good, I’m sure.
I’d also like to make a set of pouches that snap together to keep stuff in my bag organised. My habit is to throw everything into a backpack or shoulder bag, which means I have dig through it like mad to find something. It’ll be my main Sewing Club project this year, I think.
The final event to watch out for is the successful removal of the parasite that is only scheduled to make an appearance in the first half of summer. Let’s hope it doesn’t come ripping out like the Alien. I’ve got a big enough scar on my belly as it is.
And then I have to hope like mad that I will be able to cope with everything. I can barely take care of myself. Eeps!
Twitter ridiculousness. I’m obviously too stand-up, I separate my personal account from anything to do with work. Followers aren’t exactly customers, eh.
I finished reading my hundredth book this year — T.C. Boyle’s Water Music.
Wahey! Next year it’s a new challenge. Neil and I have inherited (i.e. no one else wanted them) a collection of hardbacks, published as part of a Book of the Month type club that his dad belonged to. There are a couple of classics in there, but I’ve never heard of most of them. So this should be quite the challenge. I’m not known for being comfortable with anachronistic language.
They’ve been stored in the loft for decades, so the first order of business is to clean them up. Yay!
(We’re now in possession of a bunch of Neil’s old Ladybird books, too. Thank goodness for garages.)
I hope your holidays are calm and delightful. This reminds me how much is small stuff and what really matters in life — the people you love. This is for my family, from my 90-year old grandfather to an almost four-month old Mila.
I don’t know the line verbatim, but the above was in the final panel of a strip where Calvin is wondering where he came from. Hobbes decides to look in his t-shirt.
So this is a video homage to Calvin’s snowmen:
I miss Bill, too. Calvin and Hobbes was the best comic ever.
Aiyoh, these issues with the MRT in Singapore. I’ve been using the train since it started service in the 80s, and this is the first time I’ve heard of ongoing issues. Singapore has never struck me as a place that doesn’t undertake regular maintenance of their capital assets, although I could be wrong. But the article linked above may have found the root of the problem.
The most exciting thing I did this weekend is walk to an industrial estate and buy a new computer (I would say ‘we’, but I don’t think Neil was that blown away by it). It’s a somewhat dated Windows machine that I’m upping the RAM on (when I say I, I mean the shop) and then installing Ubuntu (it’s actually me doing that part).
I thought this was going to be an expensive exercise, but a quick look around the flat has determined that it won’t be. We have a small flat-screen television with a VGA input and a mouse, so all I’ve needed to buy are the tower unit, keyboard, and cables. A new ‘puter was going on the ‘to buy in 2012 when I can face it’ list, but now I feel I’ve got me a bargain.
(I took a ‘geek test’ on Facebook but I scored poorly. I decided I’m not really a geek, just a nerd.)
Oh, please. Property speculators could only ‘flip’ because there was so much cash floating around, extending credit to those who may not otherwise have been able to get another mortgage.
They’re not anti-capitalist, they’re anti-inequality: London bankers baffled by protest camp’s aims – survey. Either way, I’m not surprised that many finance workers don’t get it, they’re doing their damndest to climb up the greasy pole and will probably do their best to destroy anyone who gets in the way.
Many of those have been dismissive of the movement.
“They’re there with their shiny pop-up tents and just look to me like the music festival crowd, here for a bit of a laugh. We have much bigger things on our minds right now,” one banker based in the area told Reuters, referring to a wave of banking job cuts and the economic woes engulfing Europe.
Oh, boo hoo. You might lose your job because of the state of the economy. Welcome to the reality others have been facing for a long time.
It’s so cold even Doug needs a beanie. You can’t see it from the picture, but it’s actually the first (wet) snowfall (aka ‘wintry shower’) of the winter.
I remarked to someone on Friday night that if Gingrich gets the Republican Presidential nomination, the 2012 election should be Obama’s to lose (I’m guessing they weren’t expecting a political discussion at a Christmas night out). It turns out that I may be wrong, because too many Americans could be insane.
