Bonny Scotland
Well, here I am in the not-so-frozen North, British Airways having managed to deliver me here on schedule yesterday. The family are all well, and Andy's new dog is quite the daftest animal I've ever come across. She's come from the pound, and having been rescued by him, she just never wants to leave his side. Though I appear to be a bit of a hit with her myself, having been honoured with her sleeping on my bed most of the night.
More later.
Pre-Departure Linkage
Right, I'm sorted and ready to go - I'll be posting over the next few days, so just to keep my hand in, a couple of links from my Favourites folder that I've been meaning to post for a while:
In Passing... is a log of overheard comments from the author's everyday life.
one word is a little linguistic challenge. Click the button and reveal a word. You then have sixty seconds to write whatever seems most appropriate to you in connection with that one word. Genius.
For anyone who won't be online over the festive season, hope you have a great one - rest, relax, and be refreshed, whatever you celebrate (and if you don't celebrate anything, have a great break anyway).
The Break Starts Here
Well, this is the first day of my seasonal break - though I daresay I'll be doing some work on and off.
The company festive do was last night - we went bowling and then for food and drink, and everyone seems to have had a good time. There was a bit of a consensus that more bowling should be done, so we'll have to work on that for the new year.
Tonight Barnaby's organised a get-together that I'm heading off to, then tomorrow Alison's having a pre-Christmas lunch at hers, so it should be a good weekend all told - I'm even quite organised for heading up to Scotland on Monday already.
Rebuilt
Well, Dave has finished working his magic, and my machine is now itself again, only hopefully better. Unfortunately, something's gone awry with the import of my old ICQ data into Trillian, which Dave decided to try me on, so if you were on my contact list, please send me a message, and I'll add you again.
Mac Unlimited
As my own machine is currently undergoing a pre-Christmas rebuild, I'm temporarily working on the office Mac, getting used to OS X, and remembering the good times - it's been an age since I did any solid body of work on one of these things. There's a lot to be said for them, though getting used to a single-button, no-wheel mouse is actually proving to be surprisingly tricky.
Round-Up
Soundtrack - Once More, With Feeling cast album
I've been doing holiday greetings cards this evening, and have just about managed to get them all done. The number that I send seems to go down each year, which seems rather odd to me....
I note that the Golden Globe nominations are out - not many surprises, though not having seen Chicago (the film), I can't comment whether it deserves all of the attention. Films I am looking forward to seeing when they come out over here that get mentions: The Quiet American, The Hours, and Far From Heaven. The more I see the trailer for Gangs of New York the less I want to see the film, I'm afraid.
And Chris pointed out that today is the 70th anniversary of the BBC's World Service - which was marked by a fourteen-hour broadcast from Table Mountain. I know the WS has its critics, but I think its good outweighs its bad. I *never* get to listen to it though - must try harder.
Company Christmas do tomorrow night - and then I'm done 'til after Christmas. Which might actually mean I have some time to get this place up to date and caught up on some linking, reading, and even the long-promised redesign....
Mad
The traffic lights outside the tube station near work have been out of action since some time on Monday afternoon. It's a major, busy, four-way junction, with two pedestrian crossing periods built into its phasing, and it's been out of action for days. How can it not have been fixed yet?
The chaos that has been going on there all week is astonishing. It makes me long for the common-sense approach of the North American Four-Way-Stop, which by any rational standard simply shouldn't work, but contrary to all expectations about human nature, does. Perhaps the rules should be changed to require four-way-stop procedures to be the fallback when traffic lights fail....
Lord Alive….
....but that was amazing. The Two Towers, that is.
My local cinema was a complete scrum - they'd sold out of all four later screenings by the time we went to settle down for the 7pm, and I've never seen the largest of their screens full before. Three hours later, we emerged exhausted into the night. Trust me when I say that you've absolutely never seen anything like this. Go and see it.
I've put a review of it up in Opinion, which prompts me to mention that I've posted up four new items in that section in the last few days, in a desperate attempt to get back on track.
Now I'm going to have a nice cup of tea and something to eat, and think about going to see it again....
Today’s The Day
Well, if I'd been counting down, we'd just have hit zero - today's The Two Towers day. 7pm screening, here we come.