This weekend I was supposed to be at Brighton Shock, the 2010 the World Horror Convention.

Next weekend, I was supposed to be at Odyssey 2010, the SciFi Eastercon.

As it happens, plans have changed (now there’s a common theme) and I won’t be at either.

This weekend ended up clashing Brighton Shock with both WebSourceEast and the Peter Gabriel concert at the O2, plus I figured I couldn’t really justify being away for two long weekends on the trot with work and home. So Brighton Shock got the boot.

As for Eastercon, when I signed up for it I hadn’t realised that Easter was the date it was, and it would’ve meant being away for Herself’s birthday. (Less charitable souls might suggest that me not being around would be a good present in and of itself, but that’d be nasty) Additionally I did some maths and figured out that the cost of it all would be feckin’ expensive, as it’s at the Radisson hotel at Heathrow – not a venue known for its low prices, I think it’s fair to say.

So instead I’m at home for the next two weekends and not travelling round the country like a loon. In some ways that’s disappointing, in others it actually makes a lot of sense.

This weekend was supposed to be a quiet one. Herself was supposed to be really busy throughout, and staying elsewhere for two nights. She was going to be out on Friday at the theatre, on a course over the weekend, and then down to Basingstoke for a work-related course on Monday. Which meant a nice quiet weekend for me – allbeit looking after the animals etc. – and getting some outstanding work done.

At the last minute though, the weekend course got cancelled “because there weren’t enough people signed up for it”. No bad thing really, it gives Herself  the wekeend back, but still quite a pain in the arse – especially considering that it had been paid for, along with buying specific materials for the course. We’ll get the money back for the course, that’s not an issue. It’s just all deeply annoying.

So the weekend changed a bit, and today I also ended up driving over to Fakenham to pick up the stuff we’d left there. (at the request of the course organisers)

Still, I’ll do some of the necessary work tomorrow while Herself’s off down to Basingstoke for Monday. Better than nowt.

In a couple of weekends we’ll be going to the O2 to see Peter Gabriel in concert. (Again)  So I booked the car-parking a week or so ago.

To be fair, booking the parking spot is pretty easy, and they even give you the name of the gig, so you can check you’re booking for the right day.

Only it turns out that Peter Gabriel’s now doing two nights at the O2, right after each other. You can see where this is going, can’t you?

So yeah, I need to find out whether I can refund the one on the wrong fucking day.

What a twat.

I think I must be getting old. This week I’ve been spending some time online reporting potholes in the roads I use on my daily commute.

It turns out that Norfolk have a form for reporting these things, which has been pretty useful. I don’t yet know how efficient it makes things, except that the road I made the first report on was repaired within two days of me reporting it. Of course, it could be coincidence, I don’t know. I guess we’ll see when it comes to how long it takes to repair the other.

Back in January, we ordered a new suite. The old one is/was still OK, but it’s proved to be somewhat less than practical where we are now. The Christmas period proved this, when we had my family here, and the sofa was large enough to be used, but not actually practical.

So it was time for a change.

It’s being delivered tomorrow, which means tonight we’ll be moving the old sofa out. That should be entertaining – if memory serves, it’s just able to get through the doorways. But it might involving taking the door off, I don’t know. Don’t think so, but we’ll see.

Tomorrow the delivery people will drop the new one off in the correct room, so getting the new bits in is their problem rather than ours.

I’m looking forward to the change – although I think it’s going to stress the animals out no end. But it’ll be good, I’m sure.

Well it’s New Year’s Eve, so it’s time for me to have a few thoughts and ideas for 2010.

As always, there’s a number of ideas and plans coming together at the moment, but whether they’ll all come into fruition or not is something only time will tell. But for now this is the list of what’s in my head, and we’ll see what happens. I’m trying to keep it down to four or five categories, just to simplify things a bit.

• Photography : I really want to make some progress on the photography side of things, work towards selling some bits if possible. I’ve got some contracted work to do for the charity I worked with a while back, and from there see what progresses.
• Writing : Again, I want to get to the point of having some stuff actually done and finished. I planned to do this in ’09, but that hasn’t worked out. There’s a few bits that have been started, but I need to finish at least a couple of them and work that way.
• Work : I’ve made the commitment to stay in the current job throughout 2010 – allbeit with the “unless everything turns to shit as a result” proviso – which will keep the bills being paid and me in general work. But I still want to get some of the outstanding projects and ideas into some version of reality.
• Social Life : Over the last couple of years (really since moving to Norfolk) I’ve been utterly shit on the social side of things. So I plan to spend some time getting back in touch with friends around the place, and seeing them etc.
• Money : For me, 2009 wasn’t a good year financially, and want to spend 2010 getting back into a place that I’m happy with. Currently I’m not happy with the situation for debt, and I want to get a significant dollop of all that paid off if at all possible.

And that’s it. There’ll be more detail over time, I’m sure – and there’s also stuff on the domestic side – but that’s the rough plan. It’ll do for now.