Gone-age

Away for the weekend.

Little to no chance of updates.

Enjoy the peace and quiet.


Out Somewhere, Being Busy

Out of action today because of

  • More Driving
  • Shopping
  • Sociable Stuff
  • Family Stuff
  • Barbeque Stuff (May be associated with the two items above)

Life getting in the way of writing. It happens.


Blog/Tweet Meet

While I was down in London this time, I organised to meet up with some long-standing friends, most of whom I hadn’t seen in far too long.

I’ve known Lori and Topper since before the first Mancunian Blogmeet (October 2003, fact fiends) , known Pix since I met her at Karen and Pete’s place in Wokingham in around 2004 (I’ve looked back in the archives and can’t find that one mentioned at all – how strange) and Sevitz since Mancuian Blogmeet 2 or 3, I think.

Since then we’ve all met on occasion – and I was able to meet Lori and Sevitz last time I was in London too – but it’s always good to do so again. We do all get on really well, and we really should meet up much more often I think – the time always seems to fly past (and so does the beer) while we all gas and put the world to rights (again).

As Lori says in her own post on it, it’s also interesting to see the way the technology has changed for organising these things. Where it used to be all done via blog and comments, this time it was initially done by email, with final decisions done by email, Twitter and texts on mobile phones/smartphones.

Anyway, it was (again) a really great evening with a dollop of beer consumed as well as some gin and wine (on the part of Lori and Pix) as well as meeting Carl, Pix’s fiancée, which was a joy too.

Hopefully we’ll organise another one within the year!


Changed Plans (Again)

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.


Bowling

The bowling night on Thursday was actually quite  a lot of fun – helped by the fact our team won, but still, quite a laugh all round. I know, you lot never expected me to say something like that about a work-based social event. Truth be told, neither did I.

I do find bowling fascinating though. Any time I go, there’s always at least one lane of people with absolutely no fucking clue whatsoever about throwing a ball down the lane. Pretty much all the time, they’re in the lane next to one with at least one decent person playing – by which I mean someone who knows what they’re doing, and scores over about 125 or so in a game. Not perfect, but a damn sight better than the people next to them.

And yet those people with no clue never (and I do mean bloody never) take a look at the person next to them, and see if they can figure what they’re doing wrong/differently. It’s bizarre.

When I first went to bowling – admittedly, many moons ago now – I did exactly that. I watched some decent people and figured out most of it from there. It’s not difficult, just watch and learn. As a result, I’m not bad now, (I tend to average around 110 – 120 per game) pretty consistent in how I bowl, and if I went more regularly I’d probably be a lot better. (Which might be something to think about doing, I don’t know yet) There were other people on Thursday a lot better than me – and others a lot worse. So I’m probably somewhere in the midle.

But even there, the people who were really bad at it didn’t seem to want to figure out anything about how to improve it.

For me, I always want to learn, want to improve on what I’m doing if/when there’s someone around who’s far better at [activity X] than I am. Maybe that’s where I differ with a lot of people, I don’t know.


Sociable

Tonight after work I’m actually socialising with ’em too, and we’ll be off ten-pin bowling.

As has been previously noted, I’m not the most sociable of people when it comes to colleagues, so this comes as almost as much of a surprise to me as it did to Herself when I told her.

Still, it should be amusing one way or t’other.


Quiz Night

Last night we went off to another quiz, this time in benefit of Dereham Operatic Society. It was a quiz night with fish-and-chips, and turned out to be quite a fun night all told.

In the end we came second (well, joint second although we’re not quite sure how) and had a lot of fun – along with a fair amount of alcohol for the non-drivers.

The query about coming second was/is because the other team with the same score were right next to us – and we’d scored their sheets, so we’re pretty damn sure that they did worse than us. It’s not something worth protesting – we’ve seen that happen in other quizzes, and know that our reaction is always “What a bunch of tosspots – it’s not that serious!”.

Even with that minor doubt on the scores though, it was a fun night.