Sleep Patterns
Long time readers will know that insomnia and I are old friends, but my sleep these days has taken on a rather different kind of structure. I'm not having trouble getting to sleep - in fact, so knackered do I feel most of the time that nodding on the sofa isn't unheard of, but after a few hours sleep initially my nights tend to fall into a pattern of waking, laying thinking about whatever is uppermost in my mind (usually work), and trying to go back to sleep, usually achieving no more than a light doze before more waking and thinking. Which means that usually by the time the alarm is due to go off at 6am I've been awake for ages and it never actually gets a chance to wake me.
Slightly less than a month from now, we're heading off on slightly over two weeks off, and in an ideal world we'll spend enough of it doing bugger all that I can finally feel like I'm caught up on my rest.
Flattering!
I've just had an email confirming the details of the Reception with President Bush tomorrow afternoon.
What? Did I not mention that I was on the guest list for an event in support of Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, to be attended by POTUS? Oh yes - very swanky it'll be, with no end of stimulating hard-right political discussion and religious intolerance, I'll be bound. It was so thoughtful of the Senator's fundraising team to think of me, and of course a couple of grand is a small price to pay for such a worthy cause.
No, wait, hang on. That's all a load of bollocks. I got the mail by mistake. I get a lot of that on my Gmail account.
My reply was:
"Dear Lindsey,
I'm afraid this email has come to the wrong person, but if the invitation's open I could hop on a plane.
Can I bring my boyfriend?"
Revised RSS Feed Locations
For reference, now I've moved everything, the following four links will work to get your More a way of life.... RSS fix - take your pick:
http://www.moreawayoflife.org/wp-rss.php
http://www.moreawayoflife.org/wp-rss2.php
http://www.moreawayoflife.org/wp-atom.php
http://www.moreawayoflife.org/wp-rdf.php
"Thank you London. You’re fab!"
Just in from seeing the Pet Shop Boys performing as part of the Tower of London Festival, and giving what David (a veteran of several) described as the best Pet Shop Boys gig he'd ever seen. It was a great atmosphere - all helped by it being such a lovely evening (outdoor gig), and a very mixed bag of an audience indeed. The set was a very solid mix of the classics and stuff from the new album. Unsurprisingly it was The Sodom and Gomorrah show that brought the house down, but everything was well received, including a little slow selection in the middle kicked off with a great rendition of Home and dry.
It's been a while since I enjoyed a gig as much.
You May Notice A Change
I've been meaning to update the blog for a while (in the sense of move on from Moveable Type). Don't get me wrong - MT has a lot going for it, and I'm glad I used it for as long as I did, but I felt the need to try something new. All I needed was the impetus to do it.
In the end, the impetus was provided by an utterly impenetrable set of oddnesses happening with my MT installation that caused several long postings to vanish without trace, others to be multiply duplicated, and still others not to appear at all when I added them. In fact, at the time of wring I can neither make a new posting nor get into any of the old ones to edit them. And while my technical know-how isn't as great as some people's, nevertheless, I tend to be able to get my head round most things that I need to. Not this one though.
So it's bye bye MT and hello WordPress. Which I'm liking so far. I had a brief introduction to it at the weekend when my Beloved decided to set it up for the blog associated with his new project (more on that when it's all official), and decided to give it a go here.
I'm also taking the opportunity to move the blog front and centre and put it at the top level of the domain - I haven't done anything with the other page of the site in longer than I can remember, so I may as well ditch them and start over. This template will change when I get a chance to come up with a new design I like - this is the WordPress default just at the moment.
Now that I've moved i it'll no doubt take a little while to get the furniture all in the places I want it and the colour scheme just right, so don't be surprised if not everything stays where it is right now.
Anyway - welcome to my new home.
The Next Worst Service
So for reasons that I won't go into, I've been trying to buy something from Next (I'm not linking - they don't deserve it), and faced with uncertainty about trawling round their shops before the weekend, by which time I have to be sure I've got the things I need, I thought I'd shop online.
If you ever get the chance to buy from Next online, "don't" would be my advice. To start with, it's not actually possible to order from them without also checking the box that says you want to open one of their 'Flexible Accounts', whatever one of those is. Additionally, when you try to buy, and have the item delivered to your work address on the principle that you'll actually be there during their delivery hours, you're given no option but to specify your home address for delivery. You do have the option of nominating a neighbour to take in your parcel, but of course you first have to talk to the neighbour to make sure that they'll be in all day from 8am to 6pm because Next won't be more specific about a delivery time than that.
So despairing of that option, I decided to call them and check whether they could check availability or get the items into a specific store that I could collect them from. The woman who answered the phone was delightful, and gave me a quotation of the week when she said "We've had to introduce new security measures because of security."
She couldn't help me at all, however. Despite the fact that I was asking her to order in stock to a shop to which I would then go to pick it up and pay for it, that's apparently not something they can do. "Because of security", they can only do that for your second and subsequent orders (how in heaven does anyone ever place ONE, never mind more?). The first order has to be delivered to your home, but if you're not in they can leave a card telling you where to pick it up.
Which is good of them.
Seriously - in a world where I can get online and order electrical goods worth hundreds or even thousands of pounds and have them delivered exactly where it's most convenient for me to get them, what bizarre prehistoric realm do the people at Next inhabit?
West End Wonderment
Meant to mention that we went to see Avenue Q at the Noel Coward Theatre on Tuesday evening, and a FANTASTIC time was had by all. It's one of the most entertaining shows I've seen in a long time, and the audience provided a whole extra level of entertainment to boot.
If you haven't heard of it, it's a Sesame Street style presentation telling the story of the inhabitants of Avenue Q in New York - there are human characters interacting with puppets, each of which is visibly 'performed' by the performers on whose hands they perch. Primarily the story of Princeton and his quest for a purpose in life, along the way it takes in repressed Republican Rod, the love story of Brian and his fiancée Christmas Eve, the porn-fixation of Trekkie Monster, and the evil manipulations of the Bad Idea Bears. (Don't worry - it all makes sense when you see it.)
The songs run the range from typical (but very well done) musical standards like There's a fine fine line (between love and a waste of time) to the more story-specific Everyone's a little bit racist and The more you ruv someone (the more you want to kill them).
The audience was very varied (and also the most vocally enthusiastic crowd I've seen in the west end in a very long time). The gays were out in force, as were a lot of young American women for some reason, plus odd individuals, like the man who sat next to me and started the evening my loudly sniffing his underarms (nice) and the family behind us who over-analysed everything and whose father's comment at the final curtain was "Well that was jolly entertaining."
Highly recommended. And unless you're a straight man or a lesbian, I defy you not to fall a little bit in love with the lead male performer. I know we did.
The ‘Do’
We finally made a decision on what we're doing for the 'not-a-wedding', by the way.
After having run the gamut of fancy /plain /ceremony /no ceremony /hotels /'halls' /bars /fuck it let's not do anything, the final decision is:
No ceremony - we just go and sign the paperwork on the morning of the day.
Lunch with just our close family and the witnesses.
Big party for everyone we can think of in the evening, taking over a bar with two floors and lots of different spaces to allow for dancing, mingling, eating and quiet times.
And cake. Oh yes, there will be cake.
What The Hell Was I Going To Talk About?
Having said that I'd spotted loads I thought blogworthy while I've been silent, I can't remember any of it now I come to have a go.
Come on, come on:
Okay - I'll start with Big Brother, which David remains addicted to. There's a lot to be said for sitting reading or at the PC while he gets worked up by the freaks and nutters in the house. It's weirdly entertaining without at any time forcing one to get involved in what's going on.
Last week, after the evil bitchy one had been nominated and took it very badly, proceding to be even more bitchy, rather than less, the air was punctuated with cries of "and *that's* why everyone hates you". When the wannbe Footballer's Wife was also venting about having been nominated, David gained a new catchphrase: "Who *is* she? Who *is* she?" accompanied by an arms thrown out gesture with resonances of Servalan.
Honestly, it's better than the telly.
Ridiculous!
Eighteen days without an entry here, and yet on numerous occasions I've seen or heard things that I thought emminently bloggable. What on earth is wrong with me?
Time to try and do some catching up.