Moving On Up
Having had a very good offer for my flat, we've now seen a new place that we want to buy. The shift from two of us (and cat) living in a one bedroom flat to a three bedroom, two reception room house could be quite traumatic, but in a good way.
The next huge debate, assuming all goes well, will be to work out whether said cat will be allowed out at the new place. His other dad is having over-protective pangs. And I confess it would be heart-breaking if anything was to happen to him.
Yet More Food
Another flight, more rounds of food, though a shorter flight and fewer rounds this time, but still, a fairly steady sense of too much to eat in too little time to justify it.
Mind you, this comes after dinner last night in one of my favourite restaurants in the whole world - Metrazur, located on one of the balconies overlooking the main Concourse of Grand Central Station (strictly, Grand Central Terminal). The food was great as always, the cocktails were outstanding, and the whole package is topped off (literally) by the huge expanse of the concourse's high, vaulted ceiling with the constellations fresco'd on it. It's basically the perfect package.
Next time I have only twenty four hours in New York, I'll know where to eat 
More Shop Fun
Further to last night's comment about the Macy's man covering up my pants, I've realised that it's an action from the same school of thought that leads shop people to hand over a gay magazine* face down, or inside a newspaper if you're buying one at the same time. An overwhelming desire to protect your dignity, or a staggering over-reaction to something fundamentally unimportant? You decide.
* No, not *that* kind. Get your mind out of the gutter.
Airport Again
So after a grand total of 31 hours on the West Coast, I'm in an airport lounge waiting to board an overnight flight to the East. By the time I'm home at the weekend, I'm going to be shattered.
I remember when flying felt exciting to me, and I'm rather sad that it's pretty much become a chore. I hate that I'm so jaded.
The Food Overload
There's something about very long longhaul flights (the nine-hour plus ones) which sort of makes them blur into an ongoing round of food and drink stops. I took one such flight today and my head seems to think I had three meals on it, even though I really didn't. And yet here I am at 7pm local time and crazy hungry. There's a bar down the street from my hotel where I often eat when I'm here - it's the kind of place where you can sit at the bar and get the full restaurant menu while chatting to the bar staff. This is a small blessing when you're in town by yourself.
En route from the office to the hotel for a shower before going out to eat, I stopped into Macy's and bought some new shirts and underwear. When I was given it all in a nice Macy's bag, the sales guy realised that the (packaged) underwear was visible in the bag, so he pulled out an extra bag and carefully covered it up. The attention to things that don't matter at all is amazing.
300 Six-Packs
Last night we went to see 300 on the Imax screen at Waterloo. Based on the Frank Miller graphic novel, it's a retelling of the story of 300 Spartans who held back the massed ranks of the Persian army at Thermopylae. It's impossibly over the top, though really there's no way to underplay a story of that type, and as David said, would have been better with some real actors and better dialogue, but it was entertaining nonsense for a Friday evening.
My favourite thought arising from it was that the casting sessions must have been entertaining. Given that almost the whole film is packed with muscular blokes wearing skimpy leather pants, cloaks, and not much else, I have this vision of an endless stream of lovelies being asked; "Can you show us your thighs? And your arms? And now your obligatory six pack? And now could you just try these on? Thank you. Next!"
There are some amazing bodies in the world.
This didn’t take long…
Obviously the Scooch song has been out there for a little while, but even so. (Someone on Millarworld dubbed Scooch "The Rock Follies Trolley Dollies", which I like, though it's a bit of a slur against the greatness that was Rock Follies.)
Making Your Mind Up
(Do you see what they did there?)
Watched the opening part of the "UK-chooses-its-Eurovision-entry" programme just now. According to the BBC site, Justin Hawkins (ex-The Darkness) is the favourite, but my guess is that it's not what the person in the street thinks of as a Eurovision song. Worryingly, the not-very-poppy 'pop' song by Scooch probably is.
Meanwhile, probably the best song of the evening is the ballad performed by the previously-unknown Cyndi, and The Mrs is voting for Big Brovaz. It's wide open this year, folks!
Edit after the result: Dear god what a shambles. Having reduced the field to Cyndi and Scooch for a 'sing-off' (Hawkins left the stage is singularly abrupt manner), the utterly vacuous Fern Cotton declared that their voting numbers would be on the screen throughout their performances, then they weren't, and most indefensible of all, when it came to announcing the winner, she and Terry Wogan each announced different acts! Some head should role for that, which topped a dreadfully produced piece of live TV of a type the BBC should be able to get perfect with their eyes closed.
So in the end, we're being represented by a collection of bad innuendo and people in mock airline uniforms. Joy
Mostly Not Funny
There's a sitcom currently running in Radio 4's 6.30pm weekday evening slot called Weeke At The Top, or some such feeble pun. Alexander Armstrong (to whom I'd usually give more credit, though there are those Pimms ads to take into account...) plays lead character John Weeke, who's a Marketing Director, and the whole thing is a rib-tickling exploration of corporate politics, or possibly a biting satire on the nature of marketing, or actually perhaps a series of not very funny jokes held together with some staggeringly unconvincing performances.
(I've just realised that I had some specific point to make arising from the discussion of this pile of rubbish, but having been forced to leave the PC for a while after writing the above, I can't remember what it was going to be . Oh well, it's a shame to let the effort go to waste, so imagine this was only ever meant to be a piece of mild criticism directed at a programme I don't like.)