Take A Picture, It'll Last Longer
And so here we stand again, on the precipitous edge of another year...
Actually Christmas has been pretty fun this year. Health wise I was feeling okay until we spent Christmas Day at my parents, or more accurately I felt fine until I spent the evening trading shots of Jagermeister with Stu and playing endless hours of Guitar Hero (which, incidentally, is quite possibly the most fun video gaming experience I've ever had. Although the downside is that I'm oddly addicted to lots of 70s prog and stadium rock with excessive twiddly guitar pieces, 'cos I now have some inkling of how much fun it is to actually PLAY those things!). I don't know if it was the huge stretch of video-gaming, or the alcohol reacting rather badly with my meds, but frankly I've not been right since and have foresworn alcohol as a result, which isn't exactly a big loss, is it?
We stayed at a hotel Christmas night (which would've been fun, except I was clearly reacting badly to something 'cos I spent pretty much the whole night uncontrollably shivering), then in the morning we came back home to P'boro and went to spend Boxing Day with Ronnie's folks. That was also fun, although I was tired and pretty incoherent for most of that.
Since then we've just been foottling about, staying in bed late and enjoying having nothing very much to do. We've also shopped rather extensively and spent lots of our Christmas money, but then that IS what it's for, right?
And so we come to tonight, New Years Eve. Sigh.
Ronnie's working, so if I want to spend the evening with her then I have to go to where she is, and I do want to spend it with her so that's a kinda foregone conclusion. Whether I want to spent eight hours in a pub, in Carry On themed fancy dress, or not, is another question entirely (the answer is : I really don't). Plus my feelings on New Year are well known, stupid arbitrary holiday that it is. At least MY new year starts on my birthday, which makes sense from a personal perspective. I half wonder how long New Year has been where it currently is, but I really can't be bothered to do the research required to find out, no matter how minimal it may be.
So say good-bye to 2006, 2007 is nearly here. The future eh? Ain't what it used to be.
One More Gaming Day To Christmas
Well, we're nearly there now. In a fit of the kind of Christmas spirit I seem to have inherited from my Mum, the general public really pissed me off today. God knows what the matter with them all is, I mean it's ONE DAY! That's all, it's not the end of shopping as we know it, just one day (maybe two) where the shops are closed. On top of that you've also got the remedial shoppers out, the ones who don't know what they want, where to get it, why they'd want it or where they are, and who just seem to vibrate in place like a concussed bee.
On the other hand, we went and did our few bits and pieces early, so we our time with them was brief, and throughout it all Ronnie remained flawlessly polite to people I would happily have left as mangled corpses. She's a special girl that one, I tell you. It's funny because I wouldn't normally suggest I was an impatient person, but I suppose what gets to me is almost the reverse: that everyone else is being patient and considerate, and then there are some people (like one fucker in Morrisons who tried to barge me over with his trolley) who just seem to think that they get to go first for no particular reason. So I suppose what I'm saying is that it's not the increased number of people who annoy me, but the increased number of self-centred people who never learned to co-operate. Bah, and indeed humbug.
The afternoon was spent footling about and watching Ronnie make herself a special Christmas CD out of all the Christmas songs I've been collecting and then forgetting about for the past month.
This evening I've had dinner, washed up, played with Archie, and I'm now completely failing to watch a documentary I've been excited about for several years, which is very foolish of me.
Speaking of Archie, as I was in passing, he went out into the front garden this afternoon. Not intentionally you understand, but he snuck out when we were unloading the shopping, and as we were both out there we let him have a bit of an explore. Fat Black & White Cat was sitting on the grass, and I think Archie was interested in getting to know him (or her) but whenever he tried to approach her (or him) she just miaowed at him and he slunk away and examined the stones. Then he got fed up, came back inside and stood looking very angrily at FB&W cat from the windowsil. He can be strange, that cat.
Very Off Topic
Playing far too much Titan Quest, as I do, it occurs to me that nobody in the game world ever asks me to do anything nice. It's always kill this, kill that, occasionally rescue/find the other (which invariably involves a lot of killing), and nobody ever asks that with my frankly godlike prowess I help plough a field, rebuild a house or temple, or just help clear up the enormous chunks of rubble the monsters leave lying about; I can't imagine how the towns folk'll move them, but I could juggle them like they were tennis balls. I suppose this is all reflection on reaching the milestone of having killed 25,000 monsters (and counting!), and I also suppose that I'm over-thinking far too much: Titan Quest is an action game after all, if somebody asked me to help plough a field I'd probably just complain and wish I could be off in the wilds killing things... but I suppose it's something that extends to almost all video games. It's pretty much a given that the only way to interact with something in a video game is to kill it, whether it be by punching, hitting, shooting or whatever and I occasionally wonder what psychological effect this is having on people when the only method of problem solving in our recreation is to kill things. I suppose movies did this first, taking a ridiculously simplistic view of the world and how problems can be solved with fists and guns, and it is a visceral and exciting form. It follows that this would be a primary form of video gaming as it doesn't require much thought, originality or writing skill, and allows players to take part in their own action movies. A lot of games will justify this wholesale genocide by making your opponents unspeakably evil, but does even that morally justify such depraved violence? And what about when they're just hired hands? How about when I'm playing Far Cry, sneaking through the jungle avoiding the mercenaries, I wonder how many of them are just their because it's the only work they know? How many of them have wives and kids that they'll never see again because I can't walk past them without machine gunning them all to death. I know that there are no "real people" in these games, that they're just little puzzle pieces moved around to my entertainment, but is the wanton slaughter of so many little human shaped pieces really that much fun? I know that's over-thinking the situation, but maybe it's a situation that needs a little overthinking once in a while? Or maybe not.
We're in the final run up/count down to Christmas now and I'm still not feeling it, as per usual. I'm even listening to Christmas music in some sort of attempt to kick-start the whole thing. I spent the whole day yesterday working out how to make Ronnie's secret santa present to her boss, which I finally finished just after 10pm last night after many disastrous attempts. I really didn't figure out how to get to grips with it until about 4pm either, so most of the day was a truly stressful and depressing mixture of failure and feeling I was letting her down. Still it all came good in the end, which I suppose is the point of the whole thing.
While I was working on this, Ronnie went out to a the local pagan groups winter solstice celebration. Apparently they were going for a Mayan celebration, although I was disappointed (but not even slightly surprised) to discover that there hadn't been any blood-letting
at all. I suppose captives are rather hard to come across in Peterborough (well, in the nicer parts anyway), but the priest should've self-mutilated, and considering the special place that sacrificing children had, and also considering the heads of the group do have a particularly annoying and ill-behaved child it seems there could've been an opening there... ah well, I suppose it was all for the best anyway; I wouldn't have wanted Ronnie involved in a murder, even if it
did make the sun rise the next day. Which it wouldn't have.
Oddly I can't remember anything very much about Tuesday or Wednesday, so they must've been oh so very entertaining. Really, can't remember a thing.
I wonder if I'll post again before Christmas?
Tired
We didn't go the movies last night; my prolonged illness (at such an expensive time too!) has pretty much reduced us to poverty, so we couldn't even afford a couple of movie tickets. Nonetheless we still had a nice evening, I cooked a nice dinner for us (at least I think it was good), and we vegged out and watched TV.
We were both tired this morning. It was a struggle to get out of bed, but I was propelled out by the fact that everybody needed something from me (Archie wanting his breakfast and to be let outside, Ronnie wanting to know where her work clothes were) and I was grumpy about it too. Still, that passed soon enough and I was awake and underway.
I've just been doing odds and ends of stuff today, laundry and the like, although I spent the afternoon wrapping up (almost) all the remainder of the Christmas presents. Archie helped too, if by helping you mean "coming to sit on the shiny paper while I was in the middle of using it". Still I've wrapped everything that can be wrapped at this point, so that's good. Makes it look nice too, having all those presents under the tree like that.
Just think, in a weeks time all the noise and fuss will be over. I don't know why, but these days I just don't "get" Christmas. I suppose it's part of the legacy of the ex, but I'm surprised it's not any better this year; maybe that's got a lot to do with the fact that I'm sick, which is in turn making us poor and restricting the freedom with which we can spend. I do like giving people cool presents, I know that much. So maybe that's it. Ah well, I'm sure I'll enjoy it well enough when it's time.
Fast Forward: Friday To Sunday
Friday night was Ronnie's office Christmas party, so me and Archie were left to our own devices again for much of the evening. I don't recall anything of significance, except that a freak gust of wind blew the kitchen door to and poor Archie was stuck outside in the rain. I don't know how long he was out there to be honest, although it can't have been too long. He probably could've opened the door if he'd tried, but it might've been too heavy for him and he always pushes in the middle anyway, just to make things harder. Anyway when I found him he was huddled under the kitchen window and was incredibly happy to see me. Poor little fuzz bag was all wet, and he spent the rest of the night sitting right next to me and refused to let me out of his sight!
Saturday we went on a trip into Spalding. We had shopping and whatnot to do, but it just seemed easier than going into Peterborough (given what time of year it is and all), and neither of us had been there before. It was a really nice quaint little place, it had all the right shops and banks and stuff and a few more odd things beside. We ended up going to Baytree and Springfields too, continuing our never ending quest for glass icicles to decorate the Christmas tree. We've both had them in the past, which makes it odd that they seem to be next door to impossible to track down. Still, we found lots of other exciting things to decorate the tree with, so that was good. While we were at Springfields we went into GAME there, and sadly they seemed to have lots and lots of copies of Twilight Princess for the 'Cube. Admittedly they were being GAME and charging a fortune for it, but it was there, sitting on shelves just waiting to be bought. On top of that, they also had lots of good second hand 'Cube games and to make matters worse they were even selling the Superman Returns Xbox game at half price! Now everything I've read makes me believe that it isn't the best game ever made, hell I doubt it's even barely competent, but dammit I want to be Superman and sometimes wanting to like the material is all you need to see past the bugs, mistakes, design flaws and general screw-ups. Needless to say I could've spent a LOT of money in there, but I don't have any money, let alone a lot of it, so we purchased nothing (at least nothing for me). When we got home Ronnie was exhausted, so she had a sleep and I tried to make sure she had everything she needed to get ready for work in the evening. I know it's not much, running baths and cooking and ironing shirts, but it's all I can do. She's the important one, and I do what I can to keep her running! Shame she had such a shitty night though, I swear the people she works for have had some sort of operation to remove any sort of basic competency removed entirely from their bodies. She was shattered and pissed off when she got home, and it was getting on for 2am at that point.
This morning she had to go back to work again. Hopefully her shift is over now and she'll be back home soon. There's some talk of going to the movies tonight, so let's hope she's not too tired: it'd be fun, we haven't been to the movies since Dead Man's Chest came out, and it'd make a nice change to do something normal again. Speaking of which, after the way this week started, I have actually felt surprisingly normal today, so much so that my internal narrator even stopped to comment on it while I was out emptying the bins. On the other hand I'm still really tired (I fell asleep watching Smallville this afternoon, and not because it's boring), but it's nice to think that at long last I'm starting to get better overall. I'm gonna have to get a new sick note sorted out this week, 'cos the old one runs out on Thursday (of all days!), but maybe (just maybe) it'll be the last one I need and next month (okay, next YEAR, but next month narrows it down a little) I'll finally be able to rejoin the world!
That'd be good, wouldn't it?
Less Wobble, More Jobs Done
Yet another day of steady improvement, which can only be a good thing.
This morning was super lazy in so far as I read a few comic books and had a bath, and that was the full extent of it.
This afternoon I put a bit more effort into things, did some laundry, bleached the kitchen floor and hoovered the house top to bottom (although that last bit made Archie quite scared of me for a few minutes).
Last night when Ronnie got home from work she was shattered. She just had a bath and came straight to bed, whilst I went downstairs and attempted to make a stir-fry-something-or-other with pork. I think it worked quite well, she certainly ate it all. And then fell asleep. I wasn't really sure what to do with the rest of the evening after that (it was only 8.30pm!), but I knew it had to be something quiet. So I was quiet until it was time to go to bed.
Sony have been caught doing something stupid again, this time using a fake blog to try and whip up some buzz over the PSP. Now quite why Sony think they need to stoop to this is beyond me; I've said it before and I'll say it again: the PSP is an amazing piece of kit. There's scarcely a day goes by when I don't miss mine if only a little. They should just have some confidence in the collection of very fine games there are on the system (there are! well, I liked them) and promote it's excellent multimedia functionality. And sell it with bigger memory sticks! See, talking about it has got me all wistful now, I just wish I could have a quick go at Ridge Racer...
Gonna Fly Now!
Today has been much better. Still not as good as the highs of last week, but a marked improvement none the less.
It didn't start out like that though, oh no. It wasn't Archie making a fuss this morning, it was somebody's car (or possibly alarm). How you don't know that it's your car (or house) that's shrieking fit to wake the dead I can't imagine, because clearly who ever it belonged to had no idea it was keeping the rest of the street awake. I was starting to have visions of going outside and murdering said car (or indeed house) with an axe, although where I was going to get the axe (or indeed the energy to get out of bed) I can't imagine. It did shut up in the end though.
I did my best to fix the keyboard tray this morning, although that wasn't an easy task at all. It was pretty much completely fucked, and keyboard kept falling on the floor and such, but given where it is and how it fits onto the desk (ie, it's screwed on underneath), fixing it has not been easy. That is of course even assuming that it stays in it's current only-slightly-dodgy state, which isn't guaranteed at all. If it does fall apart altogether though, I'm buggered if I know how I'll replace it. Ah well, these things may never come to pass.
The rest of the day has been uneventful, and I can't for the life of me work out what it is that I've been doing all day, but I can conclude that it can't have been very interesting at all! Oh wait, I remember, I was reading some comic books! All Star Batman and Robin (which was quite obviously brilliant, what with it being written by Frank Miller and all), Grant Morrisons All Star Superman (which was an oddly lovely throwback to classic I-can-do-anything Superman), and Jeph Loeb's wonderful Batman & Superman. So it was a happy afternoon then! I do miss comic books, just wish they weren't so darned expensive these days... ah well.
Freefalling!
Wow, things just go from bad to worse, don't they? Yesterday I was a little wobbly, today I've got full on vertigo! It's really unnerving too, just sitting or standing and then suddenly having this feeling of the floor just rushing away from you like you're standing on the top of the Empire State building. When I moved to get off the sofa earlier I had the awful sense that I was about to fall hundreds of feet. Even sitting here now I feel like I'm perched half a mile in the air, and let me tell you it's NOT a pleasant experience at all.
Archie was a total pain in the bum this morning, he would not let us sleep. On and on he went, whining and meowing for all he was worth, totally robbing us of any hope of sleep. I've half a mind to wobble downstairs and see if he's asleep; if he is I'm gonna wake up by calling his name over and over again until he's sick of it! See how he likes it, the fuzzy little pest.
The worst thing about feeling like this is that I don't even know what I can do with my day. I'll probably just end up vegging out with some junk on the TV waiting for it to go away!
Oops Upside Your Head
The past week I've felt more like my self than I have in a long time. A wobbly version of myself to be sure, but myself nonetheless. I've wandered about, played with the PC, even speculated on the possibilty of returning to work after Christmas.
Not so today.
Today I feel tired, confused, dizzy and just plain out of it.
Still last week was neat. We went to a pagan meeting on Tuesday night, and met some of the most deluded people I've ever seen. They leant us a pagan magazine to read, and after Ronnie had first go and declared it gibberish, I had a read too, and she was not wrong. We've been invited to a Norse feast to celebrate the winter solstice, which I am eager not to attend. Wednesday night we took advantage of the late night shopping to go and get a lot of our Christmas shopping done. That was a really nice night, not too many people about and we got a lot done.
I don't recall much at all about Thursday and Friday... Saturday was a lovely relaxed day, the kinda relaxation we haven't had in a long time. Sunday we did a little more shopping and started to wrap the presents. We put them under the tree 'cos they look pretty like that, and Archie has taken to pushing his way through to the back and hiding in their, like it's a little gift wrapped fort! He still tries to eat the tree too, despite my confidence that he'd grow out of it once he realised it wasn't a real tree. Maybe I gave him too much credit?
Short Trip, Quick Fall!
I told you it was unpredictable! Today I feel much much worse than yesterday; my head's pounding and everything seems quite distant. Nonetheless I took a brief walk out to the shop to get some bread, and still riding high on the back of yesterday's healthy feelings, went out without my stick.
This was a mistake.
Long story short, on the way home I fell over. I didn't just drop like a sack of bricks though, it was a kinda wobble/stumble, which led into a wayward step which led to a slip which led to falling over. Still at least I was back in the cul-de-sac so nobody saw me!
I had a brief play with the demo of Sid Meier's Railroads! this morning, and for the life of me I don't get it. Civilization I absolutely adore, always have since it's very first incarnation (playing THAT for the first time was amazing, discovering all the wonderful things you could do was a real joy!), but the train thing? No idea what that's about.
Archie? Alkie More Like!
More tree decorations were put up yesterday, including the lights (which I spent something of the order of four hours untangling!). In the evening we had Christmas pudding with brandy butter, and Archie liked the brandy butter. He liked it a lot. We only gave him a bit, but he wolfed if straight down, and then spent the rest of the evening looking very sleepy and walking about very carefully like he'd never seen the floor, let alone the living room, before... he wasn't up when my alarm went off at seven this morning either; I think he might've been hungover.
My health has been exceedingly erratic these past few days. Yesterday I could barely stay awake come the evening, I was tired and wobbly and having immense difficulty getting my eyes to focus on anything, whereas today I've been full of beans, dashing about (yes, I've actually run up stairs!) cleaning, doing laundry, and hurtling through the demo of Bookworm Adventures, a game where you have to spell words to defeat your foes! Sounds nerdy I know, but it's ridiculously addictive and complusive!
Shake and Bake!
It's been a weirdly NASCAR influenced few days; last night we watched Days of Thunder (which I'd never seen before), this afternoon I watched Cars and this evening Talladega Nights - The Ballad of Rickie Bobby. I'd never seen Days of Thunder before, but it helped my enjoyment of Talladega Nights immeasurably, not that enjoying Will Ferrell mucking about needs much help, but it did crystalise overall satire of the sports movie genre. And it was very funny.
We put the Christmas tree up last night and started to decorate it, and Archie was obviously much enamoured of this new addition to his house. In fact he seems to be treating it pretty much like any other tree, which is to say that he hides underneath it and occasionally tries to eat the leaves... I would've expected him to stop that pretty quickly, as the leaves are obviously plastic and can't taste very pleasant at all, but I caught him doing it this evening too, so maybe they taste okay, or maybe ALL leaves taste like that to him and he can't tell the difference. We were surprised (and pleased) that the tree was still standing when we got up this morning though.
We did a little shopping this morning, and then Ronnie was off dashing about, visiting her grandad in hospital and helping to bring him home before she had to shoot off to work. So me and Archie have had the house to ourselves most of the day (as per usual!), hence the large number of movies watched...
Sigh.
Oh well, these things have to be done, right? Soon she'll be on her Christmas break, that'll be nice for both of us.
Wonder what I'll get up to for the rest of the evening?
These Boots Were Made For Walking!
Finally got up the courage to go to Morrisons today.
It's only about a miles walk, but that mile sure seemed long today. I prevaricated like a good 'un this morning, thinking of all the reasons why I
shouldn't go, all the things that could go wrong, but in the end I figured what's the worst that can happen? And off I went.
The journey there wasn't so bad, but the supermarket itself seemed terribly confusing, with noise and movement and what-have-you everywhere. Then came the trip home, where I quickly realised that not only had I overestimated the amount I could carry, but that I hadn't really thought about how to carry the shopping bags and walk with a stick. About halfway home I thought my arms were going to drop off, but they didn't and I eventually made it home. Then I had a nice relaxing bath, and now I'm going to empty the bins, and see if I can find our Christmas decorations, 'cos it's December!
God knows how it got to be December, time just seems to be passing me by in a blur of uniformity these days. I need to put a bit of thought into what we can afford to get for everyone, and what we can make or do as well. As usual I feel little enthusiasm for Christmas. This year it's particularly disappointing, 'cos I was expecting... well I was expecting things to be different eh? I thought we'd have a little money to spend, Christmas shopping would be fun rather than heavily constrained by budget, I'd be healthy, there'd be parties and such to go to and that it'd generally be a Christmas like I'd always thought it should be.
Better luck next time.
