T'eyla Minh

Worringly, I have not remembered any of my dreams in months. I dislike this turn of events. However, lately I have actually been remembering them in part, though a lot of them have been disjointed and weird and not coherent enough to write down in any constructive manner.

Last night's was so brilliant, though, I simply must share it. :D I will endeavour to start writing down what I can remember a bit more often as some of the latest dreams have been vivid along with the weirdness, and something is infinitely better than nothing. Nevertheless, here is what I remember of last night's.

( Dream: My Mate Derren )

Here's hoping I can start remembering my dreams more properly now. As I say, I've had a few strange visions of late but nothing concrete. I generally dislike the dry periods, and they seem to occur when I'm especially stressed and trying to get through things without committing homicide, which seems a fair reaction, but I'd rather my brain sorted the problems out through dreams instead. I would even prefer the recurring nightmare themes (such as being chased / trying to escape) to barren nothingness.

So, yes. There we go. Hopefully more to come if I remember to write them down. (Waking up with migraines doesn't really help, to be honest...)

In other news, Project Fitness is now underway, of sorts. We didn't manage to go swimming on Sunday as we ended up sleeping in until half-eleven - clock changes notwithstanding - so we obviously needed the sleep catch-up. It was nice to have a quiet weekend for a change, though. We stocked up on mixed salad and dressings (and bacon bits and crispy onions) in order to make lunches, and on Sunday night we were terribly organised and made roast duck salads (using the leftovers from dinner) to take in to work on Monday. And of course we both left them behind, so they had to be thrown away.

Today we have chicken caesar of a sorts, although I forgot to make any croutons last night to go in them.

We did, however, manage to get to the gym last night - and subsequently ruined the hour of hard work by going to McDonalds as Paul was en route to Broken Amp - and my arms and legs all hurt, so I'm taking that as a positive sign. No more excuses now, twice a week and swimming at weekends and sensible eating habits. YES. Today I have my (possibly too small) salad and an apple and a clementine and I will get a healthy yogurt at lunchtime too. I CAN DO THIS.

Next week I will start a food diary and keep track of my calorie intake daily and weight on a weekly basis, now that I have floors that are actually level on which to place my scales. I was doing really well last January (as in 2011) but then became disheartened when I realised the bathroom and kitchen floors were both so uneven as to give me five separate readings on each occasion.

So yes. I will try not to bore people with updates but cannot promise anything. :P

Just five new ones to share. I made the latter four a few months back and forgot about them...

... ... ... ...

The first is mostly to be used on my food diary posts (which are not visible to the general public / friends as they are mostly for my own benefit) because I needed an icon for them. I may periodically use it on other random food-related posts as I don't have a foody icon anyway.

The other four, obviously, are icons I made from the various programme scans from Derren Brown's show back in March. I was going to put text on the first one but couldn't decide what to go for. I was going to have "good witch" but I think any text would detract from the cat-got-the-cream expression and ruin it. Besides, the other two are still quite apt. The last one is basically just a scan of the programme cover, and will probably end up as a default if I ever get around to layouting the other, bigger scans...

So, there we go. A rather boring entry of no consequence.

Beethoven's Missa Solemnis is really frelling hard work, although there are some very pretty bits of harmony in there. Beginning to see why Adrian gave us an extra four weeks to rehearse it; the concert's not until November... It's also ridiculously high, an awful lot of the time, and really horrible for the men. I know you were deaf, Mr Beethoven, but that's no excuse to bully the tenors. :P

Paul is out at some gig or another and will probably wake me up later. I should probably try and get an early night, even though it'll doubtless get interrupted...

Hee, Derren Brooown. :)

That was an entertaining evening...

We got the 3.49 train to Derby, arriving at around 4.30, and made our way to the Assembly Rooms to pick up the tickets. The last time we were there (some point last year, might even have been 2006), the entrance to the Eagle Centre from the subway was blocked off for redevelopment - they have now finished that redevelopment and it looks very nice indeed. The shopping mall has been extended (although it does probably mean that they've destroyed the shops out the back, including the funky comics/memorabilia-type shop and more than likely the huge Wilkinson) and they've put Debenhams and M&S there. I completely lost my bearings for a moment until I found Sainsbury's.

It looks very impressive indeed; if they ever finish rebuilding the bus depot to make it less of a concrete monstrosity, the city centre will look even more impressive. Which is nice, because at least if there's some decent shopping people might visit Derby for more than being a gateway to the Peak District... although judging by the posters at the station, it may well provide lots of traffic to London and hence Europe, as it goes directly to St Pancras...

Anyway, that was a little confusing at first, but I like it. Definitely want to go back there for a bit longer in order to do some shopping or at least have a better look around.

After that, we picked up the tickets and had a wander to suss out food options, also stopping for a drink in Coyote Wild. Eventually I decreed we should go to Baracuda because the one in Birmingham is rubbish (it's part of the same chain but due to its location tends to be more of a nightclub than a pub, at least as far as I can see), as the other option was Walkabout and/or the Wetherspoon pub - and, well, we have one of them around the corner from home. Barracuda was the place we went to last time where we had a sharing platter which comprised half a farm, and aside from that the food used to be really nice - vaguely Caribbean-themed with spicy sausages and burgers and things.

So, I was ultimately disappointed to discover that they've abandoned their interesting food in favour of a bog-standard pub menu - scampi and chips, steak, stuff like that. Bah. Clearly what the general public want is not interesting Caribbean-style food but boring stuff which you can get for half the price at the nearest Wetherspoon (which would have more choice, ultimately)... We had a sharing platter as it was the cheapest option, and even that wasn't too intersting, comprising onion rings, chicken dippers, breaded mushrooms and cheese-&-chilli bites, with some wedges. The cheese-&-chilli things were interesting, but everything else was fairly meh... It filled a gap, at least.

After eating, we played a couple of games on the gambling machine, then headed over to the Assembly Rooms. The programmes were a fiver (fairly reasonable, considering) and even though the tickets said "restricted view", the only thing I couldn't see properly was the screen at the back of the stage...

( An Evening of Wonders - don't read if you don't want to be spoiled... )

So, apart from the disappointment at Barracuda, a very pleasant evening. I will scan the programme later, and also get the Samsung phone software installed in the hope that Paul's phone will work, as I can't get mine to work properly any more, and then I can bluetooth the photos over and post them... There shall be some Derren-esque icons soonly. :)

( Some further pondering )

I mentioned some of that stuff before when I first had a proper look on Bad Psychics.Com, but it deserved to be reiterated. ;)

Must do some work now... photos coming soon.