T'eyla Minh

Journal re-tagging continues. On looking at the list, I have one thing to say:

"God GOD, that's a lot of shake fandoms!" :P

Was just in Tesco because I figured I would fare better getting a pumpkin now instead of later. Considering there were three left, turns out that may well be true. Anyway, it reminded me of when I was in there the other day and the entry I was going to do on getting home...

Periodically, the Tesco Metro in town decide to reverse their escalators, presumably to save on belt wear or whatever. Anyway, this decidedly simple action is enough to make ordinarily intelligent (at least, one assumes) people into blathering idiots.

I understand that we get used to things being a certain way, and when that changes it is quite confusing. But that isn't any excuse for the common sense lapse which results in the following:

Pushing past other shoppers who are coming off an escalator which is going DOWN, only to then attempt to go UP on the same escalator because it was that way around the other week, and then look surprised when it's not any more. You'd think the people coming OFF THE ESCALATOR would be enough of a tip-off...

People are weird.

Gah. What is it about PC messages - error or otherwise - that renders usually intelligent people suddenly incapable of reading?

Nothing much else to report. We started working on Porgy and Bess last night (or 'Betsy and Porg', as Adrian likes to call it) which was... interesting. Harder than it looked, and has that rather amusing effect of a majortarily white choir trying to sing phonetic African American dialect... There's a section towards the end where we have to basically learn the tune but then, in the performance, copy what the soloist ad libs. Which should be disastrously entertaining, to say the least...

I appear to have managed to poison myself again. As Paul is fine, it must be something I've eaten that he hasn't, and since we had entirely separate meals yesterday, that narrows it down to:

orange + lemon muffin from Pret
two-day-old tuna (unlikely)
bottle of apple juice
McDonalds

Given my stomach is displaying similar symptoms to the last time some off apple juice poisoned me, my vote's on that at the moment. Alternatively, since the muffin had little chunks of orange in it, it could be that my body has gone so long without proper fruit intake that it rejects the very idea of fruit pulp - I also had a dodgy stomach after I tried my first smoothie...

I hope it's just the McDonalds or something...

My insides haven't been the same since the glandular fever, to be honest. I spent the majority of the first two weeks unable to eat anything solid and lost quite a bit of weight (didn't last long, unfortunately) and ever since then the slightest thing seems to make my stomach throw a wobbler. I spent quite a significant period from October 2006 onwards feeling sick every morning (to the point where, if it hadn't have been impossible, I would have suspected pregnancy...)

So, since I just lost all my breakfast, I am eating a biscuit. Carefully.

I think I might start writing down a 'food diary'. It might help to take an objective look at these things so I can see what 'bad foods' I need to cut out... Yes. Starting Monday.

In other news, I've used up my remaining 1.5 annual leave days to extend my easter leave to a full two weeks. I was originally off for all of 12th March and the morning of the 13th, , then Easter, but I've now taken the afternoon of the 13th and also the 14th. So I'm now off from 12-25 March. TWO WEEKS OFF WORK! Hopefully I might get some bloody flat-sorting done at this rate...

At the time of writing (well this paragraph, at least), I am waiting on a social worker to email me her core assessment so I can amend it, as Ian can't get into his email to forward it to me. It's like waiting for paint to dry...

Which sort of reminds me of another silly half-conversation from yesterday - although, like the majority of them, it loses a lot in the retelling.

Gaynor: [on phone to helpdesk] I'm not flashing...
Ian: [overhearing] I should hope not!

Anyway. I should probably do some more work. If and when this bloody assessment ever gets emailed, it'll take me the best part of an hour to sort it out... probably be quicker to retype it.

I promise to post an entry of some substance at some point. I had a few ponderings going through my brain last night about inspiration, but that can wait until it's a bit more coherent...

It's. Too. Hot.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO jackiesjottings!!  Have a pirate. :)

Listening to CD2 of 3; tomorrow, Shock Treatment.  Today, it's been So Long & Thanks For All The Fish, which I think is in the innings for Best Song Ever right now.  I may have to listen to the Once Around the Sun CD, though, as Joby Talbot really is very good at this music thing.

( Amusing snippet telling the story behind SL&TFATF )

Work was fairly tedious today, really.  Nothing very exciting happened.  I phoned up Bartley Green to inform them that one of our cases was transferring and sent the file over, which it isn't my job to do, but anyway.  If it's all done wrong and goes tits-up, then it's because I'm not meant to do things like that.  The heat became unbearable at about 2.30 as usual, and Sandra interrogated me a bit more about Paul, making like she's expecting a frelling wedding invite.  Er, not that there's a wedding or anything.  Um.

That's about it.  Frell knows when I'll get anything to eat tonight. I think I'll go play Sanitarium a bit more...

I've been meaning to type up one of these for ages and kept forgetting.  In the local Sandwell Chronicle, there's a bloke by the name of Philip Solomon, who writes random articles about local points of interest.  In Black Country dialect.

I have something of a soft spot for Yammish, being a Yammer born and bred despite not having the accent, so Mr Solomon's weekly articles are really quite adorable, as well as appealing to my inner phonetics geek.

So, here's this week's. Translation provided on request. ;)

Philip Solomon's Ode Black Country Musin's - 'Ighest quality traps bear out Vikin' theory

Ado, aer kid.  This wick I thought it wuz time ter get the 'istory cap on agen.

Now a faermous, proper Black Country town, is of course Wednesfield, but yer see, year agoo that would probably 'ave bin Wodensfield, naermed after the ode Vikin' god, Woden.

Now some people say as tharray so, but it's gorra be, ay it?  Common sense tells yer that.  Un all yow schoolkids frum thar area as follows me column, just goo an 'ave a look at whar it sez on the gaertes in the park.

In fact, thinkin' abaert it, a lorra them Wednesfield folk 'ave got the look of the Vikin's abaert 'em, as well.  Yer know, very 'andsome, fair-yedded, yet they'd soon sort yer out if yer crossed 'em.  Un I should know cuz I wuz born in Wednesfield.

But another thing they wuz really faermous for all over the waerld, wuz mekkin' all sort of traps.  In fact they 'ad a reputation fer mekkin' some of the very finest, un I ay ob abaert the sort ter ketch mice in, neither.

Every animal yow could imagine would 'ave a trap med ter ketch it - even things like lions - but I suppose moost of the traps they med would 'ave bin ter ketch rabbits, 'ares, foxes un all sorts of similar creatures, which we all think am very nice but of course would 'ave bin the bane of the ode gaermekeeper's life on all the country estates up un daern the country.

Un if yow want ter research this, I venture ter say yow'll find as a very large percentage of any of these contraptions yer see 'angin' up as examples of yesteryear in some of the big 'ouses wuz made in Wednesfield, un might even be stamped with the naerme.

Course, I suppose terday there ay the saerme need fer such awful things as some on 'em wuz then.  I wuz once showed an 'orrible thing in America, a great big back-breaker of a thing with massive teeth on it, un do yow know whar it wuz used for?  It wuz a mon-trap, un although I cor be certain, I should think we even med them in Wednesfield at one time, cuz if a trap 'ad ter be of the very 'ighest quality, Wednesfield wuz wheere it generally come from.

In mooer recent years, I suppose the town 'as become well-known (alongside its close neighbour, Willenhall), fer mekkin' locks as a lor of yer wull known, un' probably 'ave waerked at plaerces such as the Yale, un' lots of other smaller plaerces.

So theere yer goo, that's what Wednesfield wuz faermous for.

Also, at one time, it would 'ave 'ad a very traditional little market wheere yow could 'ave bought anythin' frum a sheep's 'ead to a spool of cotton, un in fact, it still 'as a very nice market ter this day.

But next time yow visit theere, yow want ter watch out fer two things - Vikin's, traps as might be set fer yer, un things ter lock yer up with!

Tarra a bit, aer kid, un I'll be back next wick ter tell yer a few mooer musin's.


'Sbrilliant, isn't it? :D

In other news, Eni sent me a goldfish through the post.  How's that for random...

This one didn't take as long; wish I'd typed the other one straight up...

( Phantom )

Tee hee.  I just love that story...

a quote from saturday that i just remembered, for your amusement.

whilst discussing the casting of the phantom movie...

Me:  And... Simon Callow's in it.
Eni: Who?
Me: He was in Four Weddings and A Funeral.
Eni:  Ah, I haven't seen that one yet.
Me: Oh, well, he's the one in the kilt who dies in Four Weddings...
Eni:  SOMEONE DIES?!? ... Oh, wait.  Four Weddings and A Funeral...

that entire snippet of conversation is probably the eni-est thing ever... and considering i've only known her little over a month, it's rather impressive i know that. :)

it must be summer. i was out with bare arms just now...

that, and there was a fly in the kitchen. methinks i should clean it before we have an infestation. it's practically a biohazard as it is.

Today's Quote (a long one): "It is a kind of heaven. This is what i was made for. It is doing nothing. A fraud is being perpetrated: writing is not work, it's doing nothing. It's not a fraud: doing nothing is what I have to do to live. Or: doing writing is what I have to do to do nothing. Or: doing nothing is what I have to do to write. Or: writing is what I have to do to be my melancholy self. And be alone.

Moreover, I don't have to think about food. No one here now finds eating an essential part of their life. In addition to smoking, drinking coffee and writing, I make regular trips to the fridge to gaze on its cosmic emptiness. I adore its lit-up vacancy... There's a bit of inedible cheese, a jar of jalapeno chillies which I nibble at when I'm peckish. Every 36 hours to so I call in an emergency pizza. Another nice man on a bike brings it round. I do not die of starvation. I continue to drink coffee (sometimes tea), smoke, write and stare at the ceiling."

Jenny Diski, "Moving Day" in Don't

i did an entry whilst at uni but it didn't post it. i think i can vaguely remember what it was about - having watched "the green mile" (wonderful film...) i was still lying awake at 4.00am, and am now running on about three hours sleep. this is not a good thing. i am, however, amazingly not tired...

oh, and wonder of wonders - david brottman let us out of picturing books half an hour early, because we were all dying from heat exhaustion...

that's about it. the other one was better...

Today's Quote: "Why, dey's like angels. Angels from God's own heaven..." (which is probably a mis-quote; it's close enough) - John (can't spell his surname...) in "The Green Mile", whilst watching Fred Astaire and, I assume, Ginger Rogers although someone is bound to correct me if I'm wrong, in "Top Hat" (And if anyone'll know, then I'm betting on either igneouskitten or sweeterthing...)

currently, the phrase, "Turns out, Scorpius is like eighty-five percent water. Who knew?" is making me cackle hysterically.

from here, if you're curious. he finally updated...

oh, and, slightly non-spoilery line from 'angel' tonight which had me cackling like a lunatic...

fred, pretending to be a vampire, claws up her hands and goes "rahhhh!". and angel says, "you're a vampire, you're not in 'cats'...."

*grin*