30th December, 2008 (10:41 pm)
The Day With the Victory (9)
No, it isn’t a new cube. And no, I didn’t pull off the bloody stickers. Perseverance, baby - that’s all you need! Well, that and an insane amount of farce, luck and numerous online guides. (Look, it’s not cheating - Stephen Hawkings himself would struggle to organically solve this motherfucking thing. And considering most of the tutorials I found were more complex than the cube itself, it’s still a feat and - cheat or not - I’m chuffed, ‘k?)
Next step - to memorise! This - along with my dancing matchsticks - has to be my new party piece.
Edit: My hands do not look like the small, dainty affairs I’ve always envisaged them to be. The words ’sausage’ and ‘fingers’ spring to mind. Hmm.
Comments: (9)
28th December, 2008 (9:48 pm)
The Day After Christmas ‘08 (6)
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
What do you mean I’m late?
You know, I’ve barely even looked at my Mac these last few days, let alone attempted to sit down and write anything on it. When I jumped on this morning I had over 400 accounts to review at CodeGrrl and nearly 50 accounts to approve at SHHF, and I don’t think that the numbers ever reached that high even when I went to NYC, or Spain for a week. It’s weird because I never felt all that busy even though I clearly have been. I finished work on the 19th and besides making mince pies with S (yum) sometime that weekend, I don’t recall what the hell I did until the 23rd arrived, bringing along our friends from France with it. They stayed overnight - drink! Chinese food! Playing games! Yay! - and then Christmas Eve we went to my parents for Christmas dinner which was lovely, even though the goose-fat potatoes and gravy kicked off a gallstone attack at half five Christmas morning. We left around six that evening, came home, and then I realised that I hadn’t wrapped three boxes worth of gifts in the garage. I wrapped presents for what felt like a gazillion years and then - fuck me - it was Christmas Day. How did that happen?
We’ve had a good break though and as always, it was pretty low key. This year it was just the three of us, as our in-laws had been pre-booked to go to M’s sister’s for the day, and so we enjoyed a small but perfect lunch squeezed around our tiny dining table, spruced up with festive linen and crowned with the bunch of flowers S insisted on buying me - bless. :) The lounge, however, was a different story. It looked as though David Tennant had thrown up everywhere, the entire room littered with figures and games and stickers and props and toiletries all along the Doctor Who theme. For example: my parents bought him this insane remote control Dalek, which - when it’s not careering into your shins or smashing into your coffee table - tells you that you’ll make a good Dalek before, as contrary as a WAG on Rodeo Drive, it turns and tries to exterminate you. Awesome.
‘We’ bought S the Leapfrog Tag Reading pen, which he loves. I’m so, so chuffed. There’s very little about me that I think should be passed on to other, mouldable human beings, but my love of books is probably the one thing I hope he inherits and takes into adulthood. We bought three books to go along with it - SpongeBob, Cars and the Kung-Fu Panda - and he’s lapping them up, reading them utterly unprompted and unassisted and periodically throughout the day. Yay. Other than that, mostly everyone gave him Doctor Who goodies, which means I have had to clear out one of the trays from his toy unit in the lounge solely to house his DW figure collection which - and I wish I was making this up - sports NINE Tenth Doctor figures. That’s right - nine. And of those nine, six are IDENTICAL! I’m just so relieved that I bought him two Nightmare Before Christmas playsets to balance it out. :)
As for me? Amidst the wonderful plethora of books (Hornby, King, Tropper), CDs (Take That - woot! - and Snow Patrol) and DVDs (Blackadder Collection - although even though he lives in the same house of me and has done so for twelve years, M didn’t know I’d already had it) I had GHD straighteners - which I’ve been coveting like a fat girl in a cake shop for ages - and a new hairdryer which puts my current circa-1987 one to SHAME. I also received Lips, which I’m enjoying in a this-is-fun-but-serves-no-purpose kind of way that makes Guitar Hero look like a Mensa entry exam. Coupled with family gifts - which includes my early XBox 360 guitar, a mic stand and a guitar tree - it looks like a recording studio in here. A bad one, admittedly, but a studio all the same. And now that I can wield the axe and sing the lyrics at the same time, I know you’re jealous of my awesomeness.
Oh, and before I forget - special love and kisses to Claire, Raq and Sharon who never fail to make me feel loved and appreciated this time of year. You guys are just as awesome as I am. Seriously.
Of course - and as always - about 2.4 seconds after S unwrapped his final gift I suffered crippling post-Christmas spending guilt. It’s a cliche but CHRIST I feel bad when I see the excess of paper and wrapping and food. I started out so well, too; because of the current climate, and me not knowing if I’m going to have a job in six months’ time (fixed-term contract expires - bummer), we had strict spending limits on S and on each other, but then as M’s total crept up - which was probably because the total for my gifts did first - and then I felt bad for S, who by mid-December we’d spent the least on, and kept adding to his pile, too. So in the end we spent a gazillion pounds on things that, whilst lovely, seem silly and overpriced. It’s hard to regret it when your kid is beaming and I know we can kind of afford it but … meh. You know, it’s just as well I’m utterly faithless: I think if I did believe in God and Jesus and the whole nativity thing, I’d be devastated at what a fucking mess Christmas has become.
Anyway. Shall I move on?
To summarise: Christmas was good. Kinda quiet, but good. Between you and me I’m still a little badgunkified, but all that’s going to be regurgitated within the safe confines of a password-protected entry in the next few weeks. It’s just me being me: a miserable, moany misanthropist who probably needs to learn how to calm the fuck down and unclench. Heh. In the meantime, make me feel better. Talk to me! Tell me your best present and worst of the year and the readers of FA.com can vote for the best and crappiest gifts of 2008!
Hope your Christmas break - no matter how/ if you celebrate it - was peaceful and fun. May your 2009 be all you deserve it to be. :)
Comments: (6)
21st December, 2008 (7:09 pm)
The Day With ;-) (11)
Heh. Go on - read it. I promise that it’s worth it. I’ll wait right here till you come back …
Did you catch that the guy states that “legal use will be possible after buying an annual licence from us. It won’t cost that much - tens of thousands of dollars”? Oh, it is only TENS OF THOUSANDS? Is that all? And there was me, thinking that trademarks existed to protect intellectual property and stop assholes exploiting people! Silly, silly me.
FTW, the president of the Russian social networking site odnoklassniki.ru suggests that “you’re not likely to find any retards in Russia who’ll pay Superfone for the use of emoticons.”
Best. Quote. EVER.
Comments: (11)
11th November, 2008 (9:26 pm)
The Day With the Rock God Wannabe (8)
My son just spontaneously sang out the opening verse of Welcome to the Jungle, complete with Axel Rose-esque screeching and air guitar.
Be still my heart - I’m so proud.
One day, baby - when Mummy’s joined the fake band in the sky - all these air guitar games will be yours. Take good care of them, son.
Comments: (8)
27th August, 2008 (3:43 pm)
The Day With the Dancing and Dr. Who (12)
I think we’ve just about recovered from our trek across the country to see George Michael’s (allegedly) final UK arena show. As M’s work wouldn’t give him the day off following the bank holiday weekend (bastards), we had to drive to London and back all on the same day. This meant that I got home at 2am the morning of my return to work. Heh.
It was a sheer fluke that we got the tickets at all. I was home the day they went on sale but by the time I got through on the priority line for Ticketmaster at 9.02am they’d already sold out, and the website was crapping out errors and time-outs like nobody’s business. So I’d kind of resigned myself to missing it but kept doing that random refresh that netheads do, just on the off-chance the page may load, and then on the off-chance the page did load. I hyperventilated and promptly booked the tickets before the website changed it’s mind, and a few weeks later two shiny, purple Final Two tickets fell through my letterbox. AWESOME. I didn’t even have to get one of those bolloxy restricted view places or pay £200+ tickets either - for £50 each we were sat smack bang in the middle at the back of the top tier. This meant that we had a fantastic view of the entire stage, albeit with Michael left looking a bit ant-like due to the distance. But I could live with that!
We got there really early, though. M gets a bit anal about travel/parking times etc., so thanks to an early start after dropping S off at my in-laws and a clear drive, we had five hours to kill when we got there. FFS. :p So we had a walk around, a drink and some food, and managed to spend the entire day together, just the two of us, without one wanting to murder the other. And because it was, like, THERE, we went to the Dr. Who exhibition - WITHOUT OUR SON. (I’m sad to report that after suffering through three series’ worth of the Doctor and Rose and Donna and crap-actor-Martha (S isn’t interested in Chris Eccleston, so we haven’t seen S1) I’ve been infected by the Who bug. How embarrassing.) I felt awful about going without him at our side, but wtf IT WAS RIGHT THERE! We toyed about how to approach it; lie and pretend that we didn’t go, fib and say we HAD to go or simply cough up the truth. In the end we plumped for the latter, so after I gave him his pressies and showed him the (bad phone) photos, I asked if he was cross that we went without him. He cuddled me and said no, course not, he got the best pressies which is just as good! Bless. :) We bought him an exhibition guide so that he could see all the exhibits currently housed in London and he loves it . . . to the extent that the front cover has already fallen off due to excessive reading. No Kudos Cool Parenting Points loss for us.
Personally, I think the main reason he’s so cool about it is because the Earl’s Court show sports two of the spooky Father Christmas’ from the Christmas Specials and they completely and utterly SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF HIM. That’s right - not the daleks, not the cybermen, not the woman who steals people’s faces or the teachers who turn into flying bat-things. He will watch just about anything other than extras dressed up in cheap Santa Claus costumes and plastic masks.
Anyway, I know Michael’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I thought he rocked. He did some solo stuff I knew, some solo stuff I didn’t, and then some awesome Wham! (WTF? there’s no official website?!) stuff that everyone knew and went mental for. I’m a little young to remember Wham! properly - I was five or six when they split up, I think - but I do love the complete campness and danceability of stuff like Freedom (good video!) and I’m Your Man. I don’t normally notice stuff like video displays and light shows, but even that was incredible - so while I fidgeted through the slow stuff that I don’t like, the stage still looked pretty and it was more than adequately balanced by his patented hip shake and fake police uniforms. Yay!
Comments: (12)
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