One Man's Notes

1. My coffee addiction made itself manifest today. I felt absolutely terrible until about 11.30am, when I had my first cup of coffee. After that. I became a human. Only two cups per day for the rest of the week, and then only one cup each day next week. I shall be buying some herbal teas this lunchtime.

2. I dreamt about an ex-girlfriend becoming a vampire the other night. The strange thing is that this was an ex-girlfriend from about 9 years ago, whom I've barely thought about for 3 or 4 years. Strange and slightly disturbing but ultimately meaningless, I suspect

3. While I didn't get done all the spring cleaning I wanted to get done over the weekend, I've done enough that I'm happy to show Lorna the flat again tonight, when she gets back to London. Flat cleaning is much like painting the Forth Rail Bridge - you never finish.

Day three of the Easter break has not started well. I missed church this morning, not through oversleeping, but through forgetting about the hour change. I was just getting ready to lave the flat and head for the car, when I happened to glance at the clock on the video, which auto-sets itself. 12pm, not 11am. Ooops.

Ah, well. At least we’re officially in British Summer Time (Greenwich Mean Time + 1 hour) now. Light evenings!

Hey, I’ve used the first of my LiveJournal invites. So, welcome semichrist. I don’t know him personally, but he’s been pulling together the very useful Pen & Paper site, which I linked to the other day.So, let’s all give him a big LiveJournal welcome and hang eagerly on his every word.

Or, errrr, not.

Up to you, really.

Well, the Queen Mother is dead.

All the radio stations I’ve tried are playing mournful music, or continuous discussions of her life and the impact of her death. Obviously, this is meant to be a significant moment in our national consciousness. I’m not sure if that’s the case yet. I’m not sure if it’s even affected me, and I’ve been listening to the coverage for the last two hours while I continue with the spring cleaning.

Adam’s RPG credits

The Easter holidays are here, I’m alone in London and it’s time to do my spring cleaning! Four days to get my life in order - let’s see if I can manage it!

Of course, my recent purchase of Black & White may have an impact…

Well, my deadline crunch has passed and I seem to be in one piece, more or less. One set of redlines are back and the developer seems largely happy. I’m slightly more nervous about the second set, but we’ll see what happens.

In other news, I went to an excellent party on Saturday night, pictures from which will be up on the web in fairly short order - no later than Friday, certainly. The highlight of the trip was my car nearly getting blown up. Lorna & I were sat in the car park of a service station off the M4, eating lunch. Lorna was on the phone to her Mum, and I was chilling out with a sandwich. A car pulled up behind us, with what appeared to be steam coming from under the bonnet. An elderly lady dashed out, grabbed her yappy little dog from the back seal and legged it.

By now, the steam was taking on a distinctly smoke-like-appearance. I prodded Lorna, who turned around, took one look and leapt out of the car. As I watched her run across the carpark, I decided that I probably had better leave, too.

Good call. By this point flames were licking out of the bottom of the car parked behind mine. About five minutes later, the front tires went as the smoke turned black. Yup, the upholstery was going. We had ten minutes at the outside before it hit the petrol tank (that’s “gas tank” for my american admirers). Lorna was quietly musing about the fate of the people who had moved closer to get a better look, and estimating how much of my car would arrive.

The service station were busy shooing people out of the area, and getting all the cars in a 10 metre radius, bar the three nearest the burning car. Yes, mine was one of those three. By now the whole of the front seat had gone. Minutes to go…

And the fire brigade arrived and put it out, just as I was rehearsing my “Ansis, you know that car you sold me a year back? Got anything similar?” speech.

What fun. Still, I’m glad I pay my taxes to pay those firemen..

Hi there. Long time no see. Sorry about that, but been kinda busy, you know? Lots of writing on at the minute. Took a special project that was close to my heart and most of my screen time was devoted to that. What else have I been up to? Well, I went to visit my Mum. She’s doing OK, although she has her down days.

I read a very interesting article in the paper at the weekend, though, which put forward the idea that we no longer know how to deal with grief. Once upon a time, there was a period of mourning, and you wore black or a black armband. Everyone could see that you felt like shit and that you were miserable. You were allowed a decent period of time to wallow in it and then you moved on. It’s been nearly six months since Dad died. I still miss him terribly, and I’m going through a bad patch right now. It’ll pass, I know, but how much am I allowed to let it affect me now? How much can I talk about it at the moment? The rules have gone. I’m confused.

And now we hand you over to our Strangely Appropriate department for this brief public message:

I could tell you why this was appropriate, but then I’d have to smite you.

Well, I’ve been busy sorting out an accessible photo album.

Adam’s Photo Album

Feel free to go have a peek into my life.

Typical. I’ve started a rash of Hitchikers quiz posts. I can’t even be consistent in my whining.

Now, I’ve got that deadline to hit.

Which Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy character are you?

I’m feeling rather confused, you see. Anyone know where I can get a nice cup of tea?

Am I allowed to whine that my friends page seems to be filling up with people’s tests, rather than them actually writing something interesting? Or will that just be interpreted as another step on the short, slippery road to middle age?

OK, I’ve been using LiveJournal long enough that I’ve decided it was time I stumped up some cash. I’m a great believer in supporting web services that I use, so the LJ people now have 25 bucks from me for a year’s use of the service. If nothing else, like gym membership, it’s an incentive for me to use it more.

I’ve been thinking about tenzil’s recent post about writing for himself versus writing for other people’s IPs. He also said some interesting things about motivations and deadlines. I’ve been accepting freelance assignments pretty much by rote of late. I suppose that I’m just enjoying having the free time to do it again. The fact that Lorna is so close to the end of her PHD makes it an attractive proposition, as well. If she’s in the lab, it gives me something interesting to do. However, like Jim, I would like to write stuff for other people, not just the magazine or the gaming company. Still, I don’t suppose this is a good time to make any final decisions. After all, this time next year, I might be upping and leaving London to go freelance full-time.

Oh, and I’ve made a decision about that friend I met up with last week - I am going to contact her.

Find out which Buffy villian you are most like!
By

I’m sure that’s not how you speall “reaking”.

There’s nothing quite as frightening as a doctor holding your eyelids open and saying “nurse, fetch the orange needle, would you?” This was how I spent my Sunday morning. The morning had started well. Mum wanted to go to church, so I was busy getting ready. I popped in my right contact lens, and then the left one. My eye exploded in pain. I couldn’t see properly out of it, but I could feel that the contact was there. Could I get at it? No. Could my Mum get at it? No.

So, an hour later I was in the Patrick Stead hospital in Halesworth, having my eye washed out. When the lens started coming out in sections, the doctor called for the needle. My, such fun. The net result is that I had to abstain from driving for a day, computers for 48 hours and wearing contacts for two weeks. I am officially a speccy git for the next fortnight. Still, at least I can see.