Once again, work has been ludicrously busy and when I’ve got back from it I’ve been committed to finishing Raymond E Feist’s “Serpentwar” saga — lots of lovely pulpy fantasy (although strangely disappointed at the end of this one). I do seem to have that addictive personality type that wants to see things through once I’ve got into them. My Dad always used to say that if he liked an author, he’d read everything by them; I find myself doing the same, and shopping on Amazon to find any oustanding books… Its a tricky one. They should have a “buy all by this author” button…
Normal service will soon resume – have a huge backlog of stuff I want to blog about, and I think I’ll explode if I have to keep it in, or relay it via conventional conversation (yes, some of it is probably only interesting to me and a few odd people around the internet. Well, I hope so – I’m playing the numbers, there’s like a billion people out there on the net).
Chris has made something of a tradition with the photoshopping…
More photos & anecdotes around the evening to follow.
Update: Still too tired to blog today; it was, in short, though, a great party and the innovations / eccentricities (no shoes, plastic cups, etc.) made the clearing up today slightly less painful! Think Damian has as good a time as I did, and much help from Gem, Marion, Louise, Robin, Chris, etc, made light work of preparations and cleanups. Great turnout, small B2L posse in fine form (commandeering my camera for substantial portions of the evening). Many photos posed, I don’t hesitate to add, if you choose to check them out at my photostream (link on right, somewhere…)
Anyway: finally done celebrating birthday, now, so can start thinking about Christmas…
Not quite getting on to those substantive posts of which I spoke, but rather a requested post from a man more egocentric than even my humble self, the great SK had his birthday do last night at the ever-popular Sway bar, and it was an entertaining evening indeed.
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve witnessed drinks ignited midway through the process of being imbibed, but Sam, having valiantly paced himself through the evening, was appropriately and sufficiently waylaid by his friends into consuming a number of flaming vials of that most aniseedy of elixirs — [[black sambuca]].
The net result – an entertaining evening. Whilst my rapidly approaching middle age had me home at a relatively early hour, it was not before I witnessed a fair few flaming shots, and a number of bongo-offs between SK and the resident, erm, bongo-er, and, indeed, borne witness to Steve’s more pyromaniacal tendencies.
And if questioned as to why I didn’t set fire to drinks in my mouth? Well, this should be enough answer for anyone…
Been a busy weekend; have implemented about 4 new plugins on this website – fun as it is for people to read about the updates to the blog, suffice it to say that its simply been an effort at digital housekeeping…
…which has been accompanied by literal housekeeping. We’ve completely reorganised the living room; its amazing! Like waking up to a whole new house. Feels pretty good…
Anwyay, more substantive posts to follow. Have finished yet another Raymond Feist book this weekend, as well as the housekeeping (including the minor DIY already referenced), and made it out on Sat night (more to follow…).
Phew. Busy Saturday so far. Inspired by Sheila, we’ve had furniture rearrangment, hardware buying, picture hanging, [[dim sum]] eating, and general life reorganisation. Had I been lacking in enthusiasm for the project, I’d never have indulged in the dust-kicking-up expedition that has been today: Don Quixote now hangs in pride of place above my bed (I would, after all, fight the unbeatable foe just for the hell of it), and our living room is transformed.
No doubt part of the same batch of pro-activity that has seen the addition of the wp-audioscrobbler plugin (that tells you what I’m listening to somewhere down the right had column of the blog, and the Wikipedia plugin (link for which I can’t now find) that lets me link to that wonderful repository of information with nothing more than two pairs of [[square brackets]]…
Unsurprisingly, the last post was just to check if my Wikipedia plugin for WordPress worked. Now I just use square brackets to link directly to a Wikipedia entry about anything. Even [[halitosis]]. Or possibly [[narcissism]] itself.
…went really well. I managed to do reasonable justice by way of gifts — most significantly, spent 4 hours shopping with her for a storm watch (model = vista, in pink, if you care to google for it), from Debenhams. Shopping for that period of time made me really hate people (by which, I mean the crowds that inconsiderately march Oxford street…)!
But I coped, just about, and a bunch of us went for a very nice meal at a restaraunt called Octave8 in Covent Garden, which was awesome – and first time I’ve had “surf ‘n turf” in ages! Was a great evening, and glad Gemma enjoyed herself.
For those who think that I’m getting more egocentric than necessary by posting a picture of myself here, it’s at Gem’s request that I don’t post her pic too flagrantly on my blog! Privacy concerns from the non-exhibitionists out there!
