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| Friday, December 25th, 2009 |
mouseferatu
|
7:02p |
Holmes for the holidays
Sherlock Holmes: Good; far from great, but good. Enough that I'm really hoping for a sequel, since all the performances and character portrayals were great. They were just dragged down by a plot that, though functional, never quite came together. Actually, if Downey Jr. spent the next decade just bouncing back and forth between Holmes and Stark, I'd be a happy man. :-) Current Mood:  mostly satisfied |
| Saturday, December 26th, 2009 |
andrewducker
|
12:37a |
Thank Goodness For ReadItLater
I currently have about 20 links to reviews of Avatar and Dr Who saved for perusal once I've seen them both. I've got into the habit of that lately - missing the conversations as they happen, but saving them so that I can feel better informed about things I might have missed and subtleties I might have overlooked. I'll hopefully get caught up with Dr Who tomorrow, otherwise I'll be catching it on download when I get back to Scotland. Not sure about Avatar - Hugh fancies going to the cinema for his birthday tomorrow, and I've also got an appointment with Ed and Erin, so I'll definitely be seeing it at least once in the next week, and possibly twice. Or we might see Sherlock Holmes tomorrow, in which case I'll get my dose of topless Robert Downey Junior instead. It's Win-Win really. Uther keeps rearranging himself on the other side of the bed. I've managed to actually claim half of it this time, but he's moved from having his head on the spare pillow to resting it on my legs, to briefly having it on the laptop keyboard (not a success for either of us) and is now curled up in a circle next to my knees/feet. I should have been asleep a good hour ago, but I finally got a chance to catch up with Julie online. I was awoken at 6:45 by a small child shouting "Knock Knock!". I would have complained more, but he wasn't even shouting it at my door - Hugh had been woken by him and taken him to the living room, to let Meredith sleep. When he had to use the toilet Noah decided to stand outside and demand entry. I'm pretty amused by this, and I'd probably be moreso if I was more awake :-> And that's enough rambling for tonight. Five more minutes of chat with Julie, I think, and then a couple of pages of Logicomix (a present) and then sleep. I hope you had a lovely Christmas, wherever you are. |
| Friday, December 25th, 2009 |
andrewducker
|
11:31p |
Fore and aft
A couple of photos from our Christmas walk on Dartmoor Meredith and Noah keep up the rear:  Mum and Hugh at the front, Noah on Hugh's shoulder, Meredith just out of sight behind Mum.  At the right the small blotches are the "wild" ponies that live on Dartmoor year round. Mike had great fun breaking up some iced-over puddles and then throwing chunks for Uther, who got very confused when the bits he picked up vanished in his mouth. The rest of the day was spent with Turkey Paella, a random episode of Blackadder III and then The Fall, which was remarkably pretty even on a 27" LCD (it was prettier in the cinema though). |
andrewducker
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5:01p |
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andrewducker
|
4:31p |
Christmas Poll
Poll #1503402
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 59 Christmas Meal Bread I am on the internet because... Andrew got Dance Dance Revolution for the Wii (thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bohemiancoast and drdoug for the recommendation) |
andrewducker
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11:00a |
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andrewducker
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9:30a |
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andrewducker
|
9:16a |
My Christmas Gift to you all!
You love slash, right? And you love old-school, original, Kirk-slash-Spock the best, right? And what you _really_ want for Christmas is Zachary "I'm Spock Too!" Quinto to read you some Kirk/Spock, right? Then you can thank your lucky stars that someone took the audio files of him reading something else entirely, and cut/pasted it together in a terribly rude manner. Original post here. Video was taken off YouTube, but there are copies floating around. There's one here for instance... HO! HO! HO! |
| Thursday, December 24th, 2009 |
andrewducker
|
11:22p |
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mortal_sin
|
5:54p |
Ah, winter break. No work until Jan 4th. There are perks to working for a university. Looking forward to getting over this cold and relaxing for a bit. Muck around with some computer stuff, and definitely do some cooking. My friend suggested I try making all the french mother sauces, and I think that's a brilliant idea. |
blackmanxy
|
9:44a |
A Big Meh
I was going to post about something I hate. Something holiday-related, insofar as childish negative reactions to the holidays are holiday-related. But it's Christmas Eve, so even though I'm sick and operating on five hours of sleep, I'm in pretty good spirits. I worked 11.5 hours yesterday so I'd only have to put in four hours today. After that, it's a long weekend of feasting, relaxing, and spending time with family. AKA better things to do with my time than cycle more hate into the internet. Current Mood:  stuffy |
andrewducker
|
3:17p |
Normality has been restored. Any problems you still have are your own.
Huzzah for BT! They got my parents broadband hooked up on the day they said they would (Christmas Eve). Boo for BT! They have totally failed to deliver the WiFi router. So I popped over to the old house, picked up the modem/router/WiFi access point from there, brought it back over here, plugged it in, faffed with it, plugged it into a different socket, and Ta-Da! We can has broadband! I think my heart grew three sizes :-> Now to wrap presents, have a bath and then exchange Christmas presents with la famille. |
andrewducker
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11:00a |
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| Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 |
andrewducker
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10:55p |
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blackmanxy
|
11:17a |
I've Always Wanted An Anthem
"We the American working population Hate the fact that eight hours a day Is wasted on chasing the dream of someone that isn't us And we may not hate our jobs But we hate jobs in general That don't have to do with fighting our own causes. We the American working population Hate the nine-to-five day-in/day-out When we'd rather be supporting ourselves By being paid to perfect the pastimes That we have harbored based solely on the fact That it makes us smile if it sounds dope" - Aesop Rock - "9-5er's Anthem" Current Music: nur |
andrewducker
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12:03p |
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andrewducker
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11:02a |
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andrewducker
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8:30a |
J'arrive
Made it here in one piece yesterday. I slept on the plane, watched dawn over Bristol airport, and then slept again in the car from Bristol to my parent's place in Devon. Which meant that I spent the day feeling tired, but not dead. Their new house is very nice - apparently it used to be the groundskeepers lodge for the estate it's at the edge of, and it's clearly been upgraded on several occasions - some of the roof timbers are rough hewn from the nearby woods. The ceilings are quite low (about 8-foot), but the rooms are spacious. They're going to be doing a lot of work to it over the next year or so, so it'll be interesting to see how different it is whenever I visit. They only moved in a short while ago, and the phone only got set up 3 days ago due to BT's incompetence, so there's no broadband yet. I was able to make Dad's life much easier by using my mobile to get him some low-speed internet for him, and also by getting his new iPhone up and running - having to download the entirety of iTunes just to activate it was rather a pain. Other than braving the warzone that is Tescos things have been delighfully quiet. There aren't even traffic noises here, and the stars are incredibly bright due to the fact that the nearest town is a fair distance away. We decorated the house with tinsel and baubles, ate roast lamb for dinner and then played a game of Citadels, and then bed. I woke briefly at 3am to use the toilet, and was joined by Uther, my parents' 10-month-old Alsatian. He greeted us at the door when we first arrived, and I was somewhat shocked to discover that he's now long enough to put a paw on each of my shoulders while he washes my face. He's very friendly and playful, although not terribly careful, so Noah (3.5 year old nephew) keeps having to duck at the last minute when a massive tail whips by. In any case, Uther came to investigate who was padding around the house in the middle of the night and then joined me in bed, delighted to find someone awake enough to play with him. He was very well behaved though, as soon as I turned the light out he rested he head on my chest and went straight to sleep. I do miss having a dog sometimes. Today I have a blocked nose and a sore throat, but neither one is so bad that I care an awful lot. I shall simply hope they don't get worse and spend the day relaxing. I hope you're all having a similarly relaxing time, or soon will be. |
| Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 |
rollick
|
12:16p |
For your inconvenience
Well, this is preposterously frustrating. I'm due to fly back to Maryland today, to spend the holidays with my parents and sister. I went to check in for my flight last night per usual — especially since I'm flying on Southwest, which means no reserved seating, which means early check-in is a must if you don't want to be in the middle of the back row — and the website said (cutely and unhelpfully) "Oops! Your itinerary is not eligible for online check-in." I'd never seen that message before, so I called Southwest, and they said that as part of the new Secure Flight Resolution (or some such), I had been "randomly selected to check in at the airport." Meaning, randomly selected to get on the plane dead last and sit in the middle of the back row. WTF? They told me it was an internal system thing, and there was nothing they could do about it except advise me to call the TSA. So I called the TSA, and they told me it's probably because my middle name isn't on the itinerary, and I probably have the same name as someone on their no-fly list. So I basically have to show up at the airport and prove my identity. And if I want to make sure this doesn't happen again, SOP is for me to request they do a background security check on me to make sure I'm not a flight hazard. That involves filling out a bunch of forms and waiting 30 to 45 days. Though she thinks probably just adding my middle name to future airline tickets will solve the problem. As much as I hate bureaucratic bullshit and resent the petty inconvenience, this whole thing actually kinda makes sense to me; my dad bought these plane tickets for me back in September, and if someone else with my name has gotten in trouble in the interim, it's no big surprise that I can't get a boarding pass remotely without showing any form of ID. I can't fault them on that. And "You have the same name as a criminal" is still less apoplexy-inducing than "Our computer has randomly selected you to be screwed out of using our standard system." I'm just anxious and frustrated, because it's snowing in Chicago, and I'm flying into a city that was just buried under two feet of snow and is still reeling from days of flight delays, and it's the holidays and in my experience, the check-in line at Midway right now will snake through the airport and take an hour to get through, and that's already three forms of uncertainty about whether this flight will actually happen. So I don't need one more, particularly in the form of "Wait an hour in line to be told you can't fly." And I hate sitting in the middle of the back row. And given all the other problems, if I can't make my flight, who knows when I'll make it home. So basically I'm just a sullen ball of vibrating anxiety right now. The problem with being singled out for faceless bureaucracy inconvenience is that you never know how far it's going to go, you just know that you're doomed to hear a lot of "Well, there's nothing I can do about that, sorry." The TSA lady I talked to sounded like she was about 16 years old, and not very experienced; she sounded like she was reading from a script, but she stumbled over it a lot, and kept repeating herself. And once she'd convinced me that I had no recourse, and I was about to hang up, she added "Oh! Make sure to mention that this is happening because of our new Secure Flight Initiative, which makes everyone's flights safer." I honestly couldn't get any words out. Mention that… where? Did she just assume, in this day and age, that everyone blogs or tweets or journals everything, and that I'd necessarily be telling this story to someone? Or am I supposed to pass that on when I complain to… my senator? The local paper? In this strange TSA-mandated script, why would I make a point of passing on, to whomever I bitch to about this, that it's happening entirely for my convenience and security? Oh wait, I did. The system works! Current Mood:  cranky |
andrewducker
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11:02a |
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blacktigr
|
2:43a |
It's Day 9 of my work week, and I am starting to get fatigued. Today, I am going to sub Zumba in Boston, come back and get whaled on by my trainer, train someone else and then do a whole shift. Tomorrow, I have 2 shifts, because I switched with a coworker so that he would work for me on Shacking Up Day. I want Shacking Up Day off. I am going to eat lots of bad-for-me calories and snuggle with Ed like there's no tomorrow. I can make it to Christmas. I can. Today, my blood sugar crashed and my emotions did, too. I wound up curling into an exhausted ball on the kitchen floor, tears and all. It wasn't any one thing. It was the build-up. It was the snow, and the car breaking, and taking a coworker's shift, and the feelings of Zumba inadequacy and fear of failing, and the fact that I didn't have any clean, dry socks... I don't know. It was just too much and I needed sleep and food. Still need sleep and food. Just need to wait a few hours before I eat again. |
| Monday, December 21st, 2009 |
blackmanxy
|
6:39p |
Awesome
So, thanks to someone's fuckup at work, I'm not going to be able to take advantage of the offer to work a four-hour day. In fact, I'm going to have to put in 9.5 hours each tomorrow and Wednesday just to work the usual six hours at the end of the week. It's not too big a deal; I've worked plenty of Christmas Eves in the past. But I was looking forward to it and it's still irritating to have someone else's mistake mess up my plans. I might request a couple hours off to make up for it, but I'm not sure I want to make waves. And getting time off on the week of Christmas is nearly impossible. Current Mood:  annoyed |
andrewducker
|
10:10p |
One last update before bed
Current plan is: 1)Go to sleep now (10pm). 2)Wake up at 4:30 3)Taxi at 5:15 4)Check in at 6 5)Take off at 7 6)Sleeeeep on the plane. Looking back the way, Julie couldn't sleep until 3am on Thursday because of an upset stomach over something she ate. Friday we had Soulwaxmas. Saturday the bloody hotel was hosting a party 4 floors beneath us until 1am and the bass reached all the way up to us until 1am. Sunday we got to bed late and then had to go to the doctor's for Julie before 9am. I think the last night I slept _well_ was last Monday. I'm really looking forward to getting to Devon and just falling over... |
andrewducker
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5:40p |
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andrewducker
|
4:35p |
The gift that keeps on giving
Ok, who was it that discovered that I _love_ getting up at 4:30am so I can get a taxi at 5:00 to the airport, so I can be on a 7:00 flight? Because whoever it was thoughtfully arranged to get my flight to see my parents tonight cancelled. And the 7:10 tomorrow morning was the best replacement Hugh could get. Bah! Humbug! |
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