2:56 am Friday, 30 November, 2007
Odd week.
Odd, odd, odd.
Archive for November, 2007
Pack up, don’t stray…
1:24 am Wednesday, 28 November, 2007
The oddness continues. I think it’s going to take a while to settle down. I have not managed to sleep in yet, I’ve been up and around before 10 each day (and no, that’s not a sleep in!). I don’t feel overly tired. I’m sleeping well for the most part but mentally I think I’m just exhausted.
I could really do with some more stability in my life. It has to come soon one way or t’other so hopefully that’ll help me to centre myself a little more.
Recent stuff. Well as you may be able to tell from the photos, I was in Brighton with KG over the weekend. It was cold and a little wet but I’m pleased with a few of the photos, perhaps more than I should be, and overall I enjoyed the weekend. We had a very nice meal in a small Mediterranean called Mint which is hidden away in the Lanes. Great food, we were both quite impressed.
I should, and it’s a shame it’s Autumn/Winter now, take this free time to get out of London some more and to take some photos as I really enjoyed doing that on Sunday afternoon.
Other stuff. Well I *love* Leopard, in particular Spaces. It’s so simple and it’s so easy and it’s just rocking my world. I know, I know it can be done with many pieces of software but lets face it many pieces of software just don’t do things as easy as Apple do! XP is up and running, and running well. I’ve taken a quick look at gaming on it, might be a little less on the graphics side but I really only too a quick look so I might play around with the settings. Still handy to have a laptop that can boot into Windows if needs be!
I watched This is Spinal Tap this evening and I was left wondering what the fuss was all about. It shouldn’t be lost on me but it pretty much was.
Earlier in the week the first season of Picket Fences arrived and I’m in the midst of the first episode. I’m just taking a break to write this. It was the first David E. Kelley show I saw and I remember enjoying it a lot. Tom Skerritt is excellent as the lead and is as good as I remember. Lauren Holly isn’t quite as cute as I remember but damn Lauren Marie Combs is so cute. Then again, saying that the cast of a David E. Kelley show is excellent really isn’t necessary, it just comes with the territory. Someday I suppose I should give Ally McBeal a tryout…
What else…um. Some gaming, not as much as perhaps you’d expect. Some more badge stuff and good fun. I11 comes out tomorrow and so I think I’ll be spending some time on that over the coming days (yay badges, yay IOs!)!
Here is Stu’s writeup for Duke Special from the other night. Go and read, he writes prettier than I do.
On the subject of, I was thinking today of things to do to fill the time. One of the thoughts was that I wish I had a novel in me. That would be something to sit down and do, but I don’t and so I won’t. Nor will I, you’ll be no doubt glad to hear, attempt some poetry. Timing is bad for camera work but I guess I really should try and work around that. I do have some plans for it in the next coming weeks.
Also cinema, a lot of cinema. After recently complaining about missing things, I intend to catchup with a vengeance and that’ll include the final cut of Blade Runner now showing (very limited showing but still showing!).
That’ll do for now I guess.
12:42 am Saturday, 24 November, 2007
Odd.
That’s my word of the week. Things have been odd.
I’m absolutly exhausted. I am so tired that I didn’t actually bother going to my gig this evening. I’m just so drained and it’s so cold outside that I decided I didn’t care enough to go all the way to Camden…all three stops. So I stayed in and commited a crime against Apple.
I have just finished installing XP on my MacBook. I am, in fact, writing this in Firefox within XP. It’s easily the smoothest Windows install I’ve ever done and it’s running like a dream. I think that says a lot about Apple…
Anyway to back up a second, the reason I can do this is that I stopped off in the Apple store this morning and bought Leopard. First impressions are kinda hum ho tho I *love* Spaces. I can see myself using that on a regular basis. In fairness, I’ve not really played with it much,I wanted to get both OS in and running and then take it from there. I imagine that I’ll just be using the Windows partiation for gaming but it’s fun to play with for now anyway.
Some major retail therapy going on this morning, after Leopard was the second volume of Absolute Sandman which despite being a few quid more than it really should have been had to be mine.
Actually you know what, I’m tired for this now. I’m going away tomorrow, just for one night. I’ll come back to this sometime early next week.
12:17 pm Thursday, 22 November, 2007
Odd odd odd.
Gig last night was terrible. I left after about an hour. I suppose it had to happen sometime.
I should have just gone and gotten really drunk. Today would be going better if I had a massive hangover.
I can’t decide if I’m nervous or not. It’s been so long and I’m feeling so…
Hmm that’s enough of that.
I’ve got my back against the record machine
1:51 pm Wednesday, 21 November, 2007
What do you get when you have a folk/soul Northern Irish singer, Duke Special, playing piano along with one of his band playing piccolo and they are covering Van Halen’s Jump? Well it’s either going to be awful or it’s going to be awesome. There is just no two ways about it. Well the first thing you get is a wave of giggles around the room and then it is indeed awesome.
Don’t believe me, judge for yourself YouTube!. If you look really closely you can see me in the top right corner!
It was covers night, there was a ton of weird and wonderful stuff. They handed out song sheets for various choruses and some were just amazing. It was such an odd selection. The first one we got was Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights which of course is glorious and they didn’t do too bad a version. Perhaps almost as odd as doing Van Halen, we got Kaiser Chief’s I predict a Riot which didn’t work so well. The final song of the evening was the utterly wonderful Maps originally by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Love the song, I found it through a cover by Arcade Fire and it’s easily become one of my favourite songs. So a nice just piano version to end the evening was fantastic. I also found while perusing eMusic this morning that he’s recorded a version too and it’s pretty damn good.
So all in all an excellent evening. Tonight I’m doing to see that other Duke S band, the Duke Spirit and I’m looking forward to it.
Sleepyhead, come on let’s take a ride
2:11 am Monday, 19 November, 2007
Ah Sunday evening, Monday morning how I dread you so. Another week begins. Lets first take a look back at this past week.
I’ve just noticed that I have been posting an hour in the future for some time now. I wonder how I missed this. I bet it’s some sort of GMT/BST thing. Anyway please subtract an hour from the last few postings, thanks very much!
Right lets go straight back to Friday evening. I took the day off work because something was up and I had things to do. This wasn’t so bad. I got some things done but not everything, wait that’s the story of my life is it not? Anyway I still had to go out to Hammersmith because that evening I was going to see Ryan Adams and the Cardinals in the Apollo. It was a mixed evening. The bad, we were seated (the entire gig was) and about halfway back on the balcony so it wasn’t great. The crowd was basically a bunch of cunts. It was the worst crowd I’ve ever been with. From the moment they came on stage there were people shouting shit and throughout the entire gig people were shouting requests. It was just odd. Every song would finish and people would shout and shout and shout. Assholes. Now the other big problem I have with seated gigs is people getting in and out. There seemed to be no rush at all for people to take their seats or anything like that when the gig started. Everyone milled around, people sat in wrong seats and then shouted about it. So shit crowd, like I say basically a bunch of cunts.
The good however could have been so much better. If this had been in Brixton or somewhere like that, it could well have been the best gig I’ve ever been to. They played for just over two and half hours and the setlist was amazing. There was almost everything I could want to hear (opening with Let It Ride!) from all the albums. Really good stuff.
So that was good.
Saturday was quiet. I did some stuff locally in the morning before my sister came around to use the net for a while. Her job fell through and so it’s back to square one but I suppose from my point of view at least she has a flat of her own now.
Saturday evening I stopped by for a quick drink at Andrew’s birthday party before heading out to Alexandra Palace to see Arcade Fire. I was most amused to find the shuttle bus to be a green ex Dublin Bus bus still with all the signs inside. Anyway into the gig as the band took the stage and it was excellent. I wasn’t in the best of form at the time (and probably ain’t now either to be honest) and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would but it was still damn good. Little bit of a chore getting home as I took a wrong turn and spent more time walking than I thought. Oh well.
Sunday…dead. I was meant to be seeing Arcade Fire again this evening but it didn’t happen. I generally use Stargreen for all my ticketing needs in London. I provided them with a change of address when I moved but this seems to have caused huge problems for them and for me. Twice I’ve had to collect tickets from them and for Ryan Adams I had to get duplicates from the box office. Despite two conversations in the past few days, they knew I had not got my ticket for tonight and yet still didn’t get back to me to tell me what I was doing. Do you think they were open on Sunday? So not happy there, I’ll be onto them tomorrow for my money back. I’m considering a strongly worded letter…not that I’ll ever get to it, it’s so old fashioned.
Now to talk about some other stuff. Work, well I can sum that up simply. I don’t know. I’d add stop asking me please but to be honest I think most of you know that already. When I have something to tell you, I’ll tell you. I’m really unhappy about the entire thing but there isn’t anything I can do but wait. It sucks.
Flat, well my flatmate gets back from America tomorrow. Family has kept her there for the past couple of weeks and is going to have her moving back to there in December. I have no idea what this means for me. I cannot afford to take the flat here on my own and we are both paying a lot for this place because it’s a nice flat and we can afford it. I’m not optimistic about keeping it. Of course to add to the complication, we are under contract and I don’t know what, if anything, we can do about that. I’ve that to follow up on during the week.
So just when I thought all was okay on the home front and I could worry about work, I had been so afraid of having to deal with them both at the same time, here I am having to deal with them both at the same time. Not good, not good at all.
Hence the real need for some quiet time. It’s odd that with my flatmate away so much recently how little time I’ve had to myself. Between going out and about and having my sister around and of course KG, I’ve just been all over the place. None of these are bad things I’d like to quickly add but it just stacks up. I feel worn out. I slept until 12.30 today and I still feel so tired (and cold for that matter). I should stop going out so much, that’s out in terms of booking things and that but there is so much good stuff on that I really want to see. I have another 3 gigs this week and then I’m going away next weekend so I’m already looking at the week after for having some time. It’s kinda mad. Some of it’s really good but some of it’s just kinda mad really I think.
I watched some stuff recently. House continues on a grand little roll. I’m really enjoying it, to the point of watching it before I watch anything else which is unusual for me. I guess it’s mainly because Boston Legal continues it’s roll of not being very good. I hate all the characters with two obvious exceptions and dammit I’m starting to hate them a little too. I have not cared enough to watch Heroes for the past few episodes but I hear that it picks up a bit…it needs to. I’m not sure why I’m still watching Weeds, oh wait, yes I know why but it’s a shadow of it’s former self.
Gaming and another couple of big ones recently. This weekend I completed two major nagging concerns. Sewer Trial for a number of badges and then today with the Goodman brothers, the Praetorian arc giving me some much missed badges. It took a good while, we may have been at it for 4 if not 5 hours (oops) but it was nice to get it done from start to finish and get the missing pieces. It was good fun too.
As I think I mentioned recently, I’ve been reading the Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell. I’m on book 5 Sidetracked now. I took a brief interlude to read Slash’s autobiography which while being nowhere near as entertaining as The Dirt was still a decent enough read and did leave me dreaming of having been in Guns N’ Roses one evening. Odd that was. Anyway book 5 and there is a whole style to his writing that I just can’t identify. I was going to say it was translation but there has been at least two translators. Well if whichever blurb it was can get away with just saying it’s very “Nordic” then I’ll go with that too. I’m kinda enjoying them, it’s odd I’m really not sure if I am but I’m still reading and buying more anyway. I guess I should stop that but I like finishing what I start (that includes series).
I need to use my camera. I should have this weekend but it’s cold and wet. I’ve done a tiny amount of macro work late ate night recently. A few photos are up but most are crap (and some could argue so are the ones that are up…) and I just need to get out and do more. There’s that having time again…
I’ve missed so much at the cinema. There are so many movies out at the moment or out over the past couple of months that I have not manged to see. Not just random stuff but things I’ve actively been looking forward to seeing (Once, Into The Wild) and I’ve just not managed it. I need to get that into order.
Oh did I mention that the full length tracks with the Heima DVD are even more amazingly beautiful than I had expected? I didn’t. Oh well they are. Truly amazing stuff.
I’d quite like a holiday. First I’d like some money for it though. I seem to be just hemorrhaging cash at the moment. Instead of getting money back from people for tickets and the like I just seem to be getting more tickets. It’s fine, it’s just it seems to be racking up at the moment. I’m not stuck for cash or anything but I’m just aware of my bank balances a little more. It would be nice to get it all back and pay off a credit card and then just carry on. It’ll happen, just like everything else it’d be nice if it happened on my timescales as oppose to anyone elses.
Oh, I’m perfectly sober now, but I really must try and remember to tick the drunk box for anytime I’ve been drinking before going on the internet. Context is king, yo!
Finally here’s a thought. You know how there is the old line that if you think you are crazy, then you probably aren’t and that it’s the ones who think they are perfectly sane that are actally crazy? Well anyway there it is if you don’t know it. I wonder if it could apply to anything else…