I would like to take this opportunity to proclaim my undying love for the internet. Throughout my life, well the past 10 years of it anyway, it has been a constant companion and indeed for 5 of those years has paid my salary.

This morning, that love was confirmed when it loaded some pages for me. 4 pages in fact. The first was the details page, the second was the order page and then the payment page. Finally, it loaded the confirmation page and confirmed that I have Pixies tickets.

YEE HAW!

On the very first day that I don’t have to get up and walk Hebe before work, I’m 30 minutes late. It was a really shitty morning actually, my glasses snapped. The right frame around the lens snapped off while I was cleaning them.

I got a new pair about 2 year ago. At the same time, I got some prescription sunglasses. Not really caring too much what they looked like, I got them in the same frame. So cue 30 minutes of looking for my sunglass, trying to take the other lens out of the broken pair and then getting them into the sunglass frame…while half blind.

It was just what I wanted to start my day with.

The fucking Pixes are playing London again. Please please please please let me get a ticket. Please please please.

A surprisingly interesting and informative planning meeting. Also much shorter than I expected, bonus 🙂

And time for a bad joke.

George W Bush begins his speech to open the Olympic Games. “Ooooooo! Ooooooo! Ooooooo! Ooooooo! Ooooooo!An aide comes over and whispers: “Mr President, those are the Olympic rings, your speech is below!”

I was sitting in the park on Saturday or Sunday morning. I don’t remember which. It was really hot and I was sitting reading Watchmen. I had thrown a ball around for Hebe for a while and just finished a can of coke. There were a few people around, a couple of cute ladies soaking up the sun and a few people walking or sitting with their dogs.

So anyway I was reading away when I heard a loud crack. Looked around and didn’t see anything for a second. Then I noticed movement within one of the nearby trees. A branch had just snapped off, not all that big, but certainly not a small one. it hung there, by a few threads (I’m sure there is a technical term for them) swinging until slowly coming to a stop and hanging there.

I don’t know why, but it’s important. Sitting there I knew it was and I have no idea why, I just have this overwhelming feeling it’s important.

On a whole other note, London was hit by storms today. They’ve been building up for a while. It was raining when I left home this morning, enough so that I threw on a jumper. By lunchtime it had cleared up, or so I thought before setting out for Tescos. Just made it back before getting soaked wet and the rest of the afternoon went downhill. Thunder, lightning and downpours. There was a sudden break around ten to six which a few of us took as a chance to run to the tube. No problems getting on and it seemed to be running fine.

until…

I was on the Jubilee Line around 6.30. Baker Street was closed due to an emergency. Fine by me, one less stop on the way home. Until we get to Baker Street and we sit there and we sit there and we sit there. The announcement about an emergency for the station was loud enough to be heard on the train.

A few minutes later the driver announces that the entire northern Jubilee line has now been shutdown and we aren’t going anywhere. Another 10 minutes later after what looked to be some frantic conversations with a single guard on the platform, he comes onto the PA again. “This train is out of service, all change here”.

So not only were we made to sit in a station with an emergency of whatever kind for about 15 minutes, we were then told to change there. Not a single person on the platform to help people or encourage them to leave. The guard had disappeared to leaving lots of people to find their own way out through emergency exits.

Good fucking planning London Underground. A little bit of rain causes a fuckup like this, I really do worry how many people will die when it really is an emergency.

Alex is back tomorrow. That takes me from dog walking duties. I look forward to the break. I’m not sure I could ever own a dog and have to always look after him or her. Hebe and I have done pretty well so far and looking after her was never a problem but not sure it’s really me.

It’s way later than I thought. Gotta go sleep.

– Prompted by some recent discussion on the V, I’m re-reading Watchmen. It really is a stunning piece of work.

– I feel the urge to read Dark Knight Returns again despite reading it just a couple of weeks ago. In a highly nerdy move I was looking through it last night so I could get a battle cry for CoH…I warned you it was nerdy. Were pages from it every on sale I wonder?

– There was some power levelling on CoH over the weekend. I pretty much skipped level 18, two attempts at a Synapse TF which failed due to people leaving got me well levelled and a good chunk into 19. Realising I was still playing going on 7 hours later put a big stop in that and I went to the park to read and play with the dog. Weather was nice, so the view was nice and it was a pleasant couple of hours.

– Saw King Arthur last night. It was fun, much better than I expected and the cast were excellent. I’m now far more sold on Ioan Gruffudd being able to pull off Reed Richards. Ray Winstone, as ever the man.

– Again, via the V: Pop Quiz. 200 lyrics to match to song and artist. Score so far and counting 253. Sent it around the office at lunchtime and got a lot more people in on it. I will break and head to Google soon…or just open the answer sheet.

– Saturday evening, off to the Ben Crouch for tintintin’s birthday where there was much amusement about with Cobweb getting handcuffed to the table (guilty as charged) and then being sat on by Bee-loving little comment slag! for some time. Other comedy includedMcKelvis in locking’s dog collar, shame the photo did not come out better. After that was off to Thirst, thanks to budgie_uk’s directions (after a ‘comedy’ “we were following you” moment) along with Sandi, Neil (get a LJ Neil!) and ciaranmcnulty for drinks till late. Then we ended up in some club which played decent music but rather disturbingly had comic posters all over the wall including several Greg Horn pieces. A good night, light on the drinking compared to the usual and much good conversation.

– Why did all of the random strangers (6 of them!) over the weekend who came up to talk to me about my Pixies t-shirt have to be male? Not even a sign of a nice young girl. Two bartenders tho, but Nick wasn’t around to take advantage.

– Not that you noticed but the post was just interrupted for massage time. I feel so much better, as it happens today included a head massage and man it feels good.

– With a bit of luck there will be a gig this coming weekend. Neck are playing somewhere around Kings Cross and awatson and I shall be off along. They were damn good fun at Glastonbury and I’d like to see em again.

– I really should go back to reading through PRD’s this afternoon. I do like skimming through to the pictures but that’s not always good enough.

– Also, yay macros! Semagic is working out quite nicely.

Now back to the lyrics crack.

– Vote John Kerry. Best of a bad lot or not, anyone but Bush has to take priority here. I read his speech this morning, it’s not bad at all. Better than I was expecting

– The Pixies’ Into the White is a damn fine track

– A quiet weekend is planned. There are free drinks after work tonight for a couple of leaving dos. Not planning on staying around too long. Aside from the fact that I have to get home to Hebe, I don’t want to start tomorrow hungover. Then tomorrow night appears to be V in Ben Crouch, not free there unfortunately but certainly going to try to take it easy.

– I want to level both my chars in CoH at least twice over the weekend. One of the I’m hoping for 2 or 4 times but I really can’t see myself getting my main one past 19. Couple of TF may be worth a try.

– I also need to clean up a bit. Hoovering has to be done and a small amount of dishes. Last weekend of freedom before the flat mate gets back wandering around doing as I like.

– Tickets for Modest Mouse all booked. Looking forward to it quite a bit. Should be good stuff.

– Shatner’s cover of Common People is actually one of the best things I have heard in years, seriously. I really can see myself buying the album off the back of it. I really hope it gets released as a single. It deserves a video of the highest quality and a number 1 spot for a few weeks. I don’t buy many singles, I’d be out for this one like a shot.

– 15 more minutes till I can get out of here. I’m hoping that next week will bring some documents and some information to let me get out of this rut here. It really had better.

-Dave’s gone off on holiday for couple of weeks which means no chess at lunch. Of late, we’ve had some really good matches and several unexpected checkmates on both sides. I’ve actually given some small thought to finding a chess club in London and playing there for a while. I’m not a very good player but I’d like to improve.

– I’m reading Stasiland by Anna Funder. The subtitle is Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall and it’s pretty fascinating. I picked it up to read yesterday as I didn’t want to be carrying a hardback on the tube. I keep getting called to go and read one of the new books, books I have been waiting for but I can’t drag myself away from this. I hate reading two books at a time so I’m sticking with (and enjoying) this one till the end. It really is astounding how some things can still happen in this modern world of ours.

– Monday evening I took Hebe out for her night’s walk fairly late. Fairly close on 1 I’d guess. It was a lovely warm evening and she found an old burst football which of course she was quite happy to chase around for a few minutes. I was lying down looking up at the sky for a while. Some more stars would have been nice, but there was a lovely red moon. It was fairly quiet, just the background hum of the city to match my thoughts.

– Michael Chiklis sounds perfect as The Thing. I don’t think I can get excited about this movie, but if I could that would do it.

If I start writing here I’m just going to post lyrics after lyrics. Instead I’m going to go to bed and read a book that I don’t want to read but am hooked on.