Random Stuff when I can be bothered

Was at work and my sister phoned up, her car had a problem, could she have my card details to help sort it out.
Me being a trusting (and gullible) person said sure and preceded to recite all my card details to her. It was only after I'd put the phone down that I realised that I hadn't dug my card out but had done the entire lot from memory.
I've never made any attempt to memorise it, but somehow, a 16 digit number, an expiry date and a security code had sunk in without me noticing. I didn't think I used my card that often, but the evidence is suggesting otherwise.

Might have to find new "Favourite Pub in the World", the old "Favourite Pub in the World" is a lovely place, notable for the fact that it does not serve beer, you get farmhouse cider of various sorts, farmhouse wine of slightly drinkable sorts and mead. Normally I go for the mead, which is sweet, strong and gorgeous.
However, for some reason, they have changed mead suppliers and while they now have two brands of mead instead of one, they are both crap. So my friend and I, instead of enjoying an evening of mead, had to enjoy an evening of Cider instead, which was still good, but not as good. Since we have also enjoyed their cider in the past, we made a point of avoiding Thatchers Diesel, which while not a bad pint, has the bad luck to be a luminous almost glowing orange and strongly resembles radioactive sludge, if such sludge was orange and cider flavoured that is.
So, while it has not yet been deposed, my loyalty is wavering, I'll have to see if I come across any better pubs during my various wanderings.

Was driving to work this morning, not really paying attention to anything much when suddenly, Dawn happened. Admittedly, it had probably been happening for a while and I hadn't noticed, but now, I had cleared the buildings, past the trees and spread out in front of me in glorious technicolour was dawn. the clouds on the horizon were a blaze of red and orange, fading to pastels across half the sky. I just stared and admired the beauty of it, wishing I had a camera. I am not a big fan of mornings, but just occasionally, I can see why some (crazy) people enjoy them.

After much ritual humiliation from a friend about my lack of cooking ability (I've mastered microwaveing, frying and roasting, but apparently that ain’t cooking) I succumbed and bought (look, no 'r' (private joke)) a cookbook. Decided to start out simple, cause if it looked to difficult, I wouldn't bother and so got one on soup, as a) sticking stuff in a pot and slowly cooking is easy and b) I like soup.
After looking though and getting very hungry at all the lovely piccys it was decision time. Went for a nice sounding corn and potato chowder (apparently, a chowder involves milk as an ingredient and I've no idea of the difference between a soup and a stew), anyway, followed instructions, and ended up with a pot full of lovely smelling food, so grabbed a bowl, filled it up and went off to enjoy delicious home made soup.
Now for the result. First of all, soup fresh from the pot, is surprisingly hot, yes I knew it was hot, but I didn't expect it to be quite that hot so my next statement must be read, knowing that half my tastebuds had been burnt off and the rest were in shock. So secondly, a bit under seasoned, which while a problem, is a lot better than being overseasoned as I can (and did) add more salt and pepper, couldn't do much about the garlic, but I'll know better for next time.
So over all, a success, not a brilliant success, but anytime you produce food which is edible, you have to feel pleased as there are a lot more ways of ending up with foul tasting gunk than there are of ending up with food.

Arrive at work today and there, in my office are 5 wasps (yes, this is the 'they' I'm on about, bet you regret starting to read this now, never mind, always more blogs filled with 'interesting stuff' to read).

Anyway, as I was saying, 5 wasps. Yesterday, there were none, nada, zip, a big, fat zero wasps, but today, wasp central, not only that, but one of the five is a dead one on my desk, how does that happen, not only do they turn up, out of nowhere, but one manages to turn up and die without actually being in my office (at this point in time, I could insert a nice long chat about Schrodingers wasp, but since the question isn't if the wasp is alive or not (current score, 4 alive, 1 dead), but more where the hell they came from). Anyway (2nd anyway, if I get to three anyways it means I've had to much to drink), what to do, the dead wasp is easy, pick it up and throw in bin, but the live ones are more irritating, don't want to kill them, don't want to leave them be and they show a decided lack of interest in the windows (which spent the evening shut, so they didn't get in that way), so, grab a plastic cup from downstairs and start wasp catching which is actually quite simple, wait for wasp to land, nudge it into cup and cover top, head over to window and release outside.

After 5 minutes, no wasps in office, but still, that leaves the question, where did they come from. Victorians believed that flys were generated from dungheaps, perhaps wasps are generated by people who will be irritated by them. never mind, they are gone, and I will have to endure the excitement of wondering if there will be any tommorow.

The last couple off days there have been some right numptys on the road. I know that normal driving standards range from below average at best, to abysmal at worst, but some of the drivers over the last couple of days have reduced my expectations to a new low. It's not they are dangerous, some of them aint, it's the sheer lack of consideration and general stupidity that gets so annoying. Anyway, I suppose I have to give a few examples so, in at No. 1 is

Morons who rush to overtake and then drive like snails.
There you are, happily driving along, you approach some lights and stop, in a lot of case the road splits into more than 1 lane, some idiot pulls up along side, and zooms off the second the lights change and as soon as they get to the front and the road narrows back to 1 lane, all of a sudden they are mister safe driver and sloooooly cruise along at about 10 mph under whatever the limit is.

Sharp blind corners

You're heading towards one, and all of a sudden a car appears coming the other way. This is perfectly normal and is nothing to worry about, however, in this case, they have decided that 1 lane is not good enough for them and they have to straddle the center lane. If you can see that the road is clear, not a problem, but as I noted, this is a BLIND corner, you can't see round it. All parties take desperate avoiding action and normally, everythings OK.

Damn, sometimes I really wish that cars were equipped with weapons, it would increase the driver mortality rate, but care and consideration towards other road users would also increase and I really feel like that would be a fair exchange.

"Battlestar Galactica returns in January for a run of 22 new episodes. Initially the series was only picked up for half a season, a mistake the SciFi channel quickly corrected when fans expressed some anxiety over the limitations of an 11 episode arc. (There were to be 13 episodes total with the Pegasus movie counting as the first 2 episodes, and the remaining episodes being focused on the original story arc.)"

What are the directors of SciFi channel on? Damn, for a channel named after SciFi, they sure don't seem to have a clue, They are messing Battlestar Galactica about, they cancelled farscape after season 4 and as for firefly, didn't even make it to the end of season 1.

The only reason I can think of is that they all suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder and they get bored very very easy, either that, or they really hate Sci-Fi and are trying to fool us all. Ahh well, let's hope for a season 5 to finish the story off, otherwise I'll have to make them run naked though thorn bushes before doing bungee jumps into a pirahna pool.

Update to above, looks like the creators of BG have decided to stop after season 4 , looks like SciFi aren't to blame this time, never mind, hate to waste a good rant so we'll blame them anyway

Damn, aint updated here in a while, luckily for me I have two very good reasons for this.

Firstly, I'm bloody bad at blogging, of course, the best way to improve is practice so I should really try harder (which rather undermines my point, but so what, consistancy is the bugbear of small minds as someone whos name I can't recall said) so this is more of a excuse than a reason

and

Secondly, I've moved, now this might not seem important to you but it was a flamin' nightmare for me. The (endless) packing, the carrying of boxes, bags and containers that I could of sworn did not exist before the move. I live in a shared house and so all I had was one rooms worth of stuff, but it did not feel like it. I spent hours creating a massive pile of stuff and then saw how little I had actually cleared, I'm convinced that rooms are actually small TARDIS's* cause the ammount of stuff I moved could NOT have fitted into my old room and could NOT have fitted into my new one, but be some miracle and a lot off squeezing it did. I was thinking off buying my own place, but that idea has been shelved for a few months, I need to let the pain of this move fade a bit, on the bright side, I can save a bit more of a deposit up which is always good (having 4 take-aways within a couple minutes walk might be a handicap in this respect, but it's a good chance to exercise my will power, thats about the only thing that does get exercise, but that's a blog for a different day)

* Time And Relative Dimensions In Space : The Time machine owned and operated by Dr. Who. It's (a lot) bigger on the inside than on the outside.

Well, the next 4 weeks will be just full of excitement and joy for me, I'm being evicted from the house I live in. While we're still near the front of this blog, I'd just like to state that it is NOT my fault and since it actually aint, I can say this with a straight face.

I can also state that it aint that much of a surprise, I've been expecting it for a while now, once the landlady put the house on the market (that reminds me, better mention that we are all being kicked out, not me) I knew it was only a matter of time.

Well, the time is here, and we are moving, it's a bit annoying as I had only recently started looking for my own place and haven't got anything sorted yet, but then, things very seldom work out that convienent. One of my friends recently brought his own place so I'll have to get some info off of him, like, "how long does it take to buy a place?" and other such questions.

Bloody annoying (I hate moving, I own too much junk) but something you have to do every so often

As stated in my last post, my fitness was shown to be lacking in the endurance stakes, as I was a complete wimp when forced to do any speed walking for any length of time. Since my existing exercise regime (roughly 10 minutes on a rowing machine every day) had shown itself to be lacking I decided on a new plan.

Twice a week I meet friends down a pub for various games, normally I drive but a quick bit of work on google earth showed me that it was only 2.5 miles away. So I thought, 2.5 miles there, a couple hours rest then 2.5 miles back, not a problem and in a general sense it aint. However, there is one thing about this that is puzzling me, home to pub is 2.5 miles, home to city centre is 2.2 miles, so why is it I can walk into Oxford without trouble (even on a blazing hot day), but the extra .3 of a mile to the pub causes me to sweat like a very sweaty thing (in the evening when it's nice and cool). Is there some physical difference to walking in the evening that you don't get during the day, is my mind subconciously saying this is exercise and therefore I should sweat or is there some other factor that I haven't thought of yet?

Anyway, tonight, I am off again and this time I will be concentrating hard on the fact that it is a lovely evening for a brisk walk and I am NOT exercising. Hopefully, if it is all in my head, this will persuade me I'm not exercising even though I really am. Besides, it REALLY is a lovely evening for a walk and considering the massive downpours we've had lately, it would be a shame to waste it.