Ramblings of a Glorified Footstool

According to my records, here are my reading stats for last year:

• 84 books read, 3 abandoned
• 73 fiction, 14 nonfiction
• 59 came from the library, 17 were bought, 5 borrowed from humans, 5 were gifts, and 1 was an author review copy
• 36 books were illustrated, 51 not - this was the year I discovered the library's graphic novel section
• 2 had integrated bookmarks

Feeling: cheerful

Just as they predicted such cultural phenomena as Three's Company, robots that can't negotiate stairs, and driving on the wrong side of the road, the Britons have beaten us to it again. I found this out back of Buckingham Palace:

Snakes on a Vase

Current Location: home

Feeling: electrified

hippochick and I are back from sunny The United Kingdom, so I'll probably post the odd bit that I thought was interesting during the trip.

First, I expect you're all on tenterhooks wondering about the B&B of Hoaxing. We managed to get a taxi driver to bring us to the B&B from a neighbouring town (which was the closest that the train went) and we met the proprietress. Nearly the first words out of her mouth were, "You're the last guests we'll ever have." Now I've become accustomed to that sort of thing when I'm leaving a place (often with assistance), but this was the first time it'd happened on arrival. Turns out that they were selling the B&B. Two days after we checked in, if the buyer's money was in order (this would be the day after we leave). Her husband (the guy I talked to on the phone) wasn't actually supposed to book any guests for the weekend that we came, but he did anyhow. She gave him heck, but his defence was "They're R's friends."

Anyhow, she was very nice... the second thing she said was basically an offer to drive us back to the train the next day so we wouldn't have to be extorted by the local taxi people. Also, the B&B was lovely... a gorgeous old house with high ceilings and very nicely renovated. But the best thing was the fact that the weather was nice enough to leave the window open in the bedroom, and we were far enough from anyone else that there was no light, and the only noise came from the waterfall located directly behind the back garden. Second best thing? Full English breakfast for 8 that the lady made for the two of us the next morning...

One piece of advice: if ever you're staying in a B&B located outside of a small town, partway up a tremendously steep hill with no street lamps and surrounded by more hills and trees and scary animals (sheep), and you arrive at said B&B by maniacally-driven taxi¹, consider leaving the B&B by the same route you expect to use to return later on in the dead of night, rather than just skipping out the back garden and taking the scenic yet unidirectional shortcut by the waterfall... the people you meet walking down the lane in the dark might not be as willing to unlost you as the ones that we met.

1. Possibly also driven by a maniac. The first words out of my mouth after getting a good look at the taxi's dashboard were, "Is that Sauron?" Taxi Lady's response: "Yes."

Current Location: not the UK

Feeling: not at all jet-lagged

A while back I decided to book a night at a bed and breakfast that a friend had recommended. I sent the B&B e-mail explaining who I was, when I wanted to stay, how I'd found out about them, and asked them to write or call back at their convenience.

Nothing.

A week later I called them. Nobody answered, so I left a message repeating the essential information, and referencing the e-mail I'd sent. It was like throwing things into a black hole.

Then I tried one more time. Someone answered! Huzzah! I repeated my info. The gentleman told me he hadn't called back because he thought I might've been a hoax. Now I'm afraid to go. What kind of place does he live in where people will write e-mail and call a B&B attempting to book a room, all the while providing two kinds of out-of-country contact information as part of a hoax?

Current Location: home

Feeling: tired

I made my first peach pie yesterday. As usual, I fought with Crisco’s No-Fail Pastry recipe, but not as much as some days. The crust actually turned out decent.

The pie itself... well, I think I'll make a small change next time I make one.

In particular, I'm considering adding another ingredient.

Sugar.

No, it wasn’t a no-sugar recipe. I'm just an idiot.

The pie has a nice, strong peach flavour, though.

We recently received a bug report from a customer, who said they were performing a test with a user account called "Oliver Clothesoff".

At least we don't tell anyone outside the company about one of our stock names, "Heywood"

Feeling: harassed

On Friday, hippochick and I went to KW Books and Costco. We bought 9 books, and I was outbought 8-1.

Feeling: stunned

I went for a bike ride to Maryhill this morning (longest ride so far this year: 48 km), and on the way out, I looked up and saw two hot air balloons in the sky. On the off chance that it was mycrazyhair, I waved like a maniac. Was it you? Did you see me?

Feeling: tired

Our company is going to start using SPI, Scheduled Performance Indicators, to monitor our project schedules. If you take the amount of work you've done and divide it by the amount of work you were expected to have done, that's the SPI. Numbers less than 1 are bad.

We had a meeting today where this was explained.

It took an hour.

Feeling: baffled

My friend Steve and I went biking out to Wellesley yesterday morning. (hippochick elected to stay home and play piano.) We were having a good run, except for the thick fog that made it easier to see over my glasses than through them, when we decided to stop at a crossroads to drink some water and reverify the map.

I'd just gotten off my bike when Steve pointed past me and said, "Is that a shark?"

I whipped my head around, and sure enough, there was a Stealthy and Vicious Wilmot Township Land Shark creeping up on me. Fortunately, I was able to grab my bike and scamper out of danger. The rest of the ride was pleasant, but uneventful.

Feeling: relieved

I just got this from our facilities manager.

Please avoid driving on Philip Street (north of Columbia).

Raytheon (another local company) has evacuated their building and City officials are expected to be onsite for the next several hours. We are cooperating with Raytheon and City officials and we are asking RIM employees to stay away from the Raytheon building and avoid driving on Philip Street (between Columbia and Albert) if possible.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Great. They're called Raytheon, I can see their building almost from my desk, and something's happened there that makes driving by their building unwise.

What if they haven't contained the threat before it's time for my massage?

1. take mug (with tea bag) to Magic Hot Water Machine
2. dispense hot water into mug
3. get milker from work fridge
4. return to desk
5. wait for tea to steep
6. remove tea bag
7. dump milker in tea
8. drink tea visually inspect tea to verify absence of gross white floaty bits
9. drink tea

Current Location: work

Feeling: eewwww!

Okay, I usually don't do the "OMG! LOL!" thing, but OMG! And I actually did LOL.

Check out the Simpsonfied BSG characters. Potential spoilage if you're not keeping up with the Canadian broadcast schedule.

Even figuratively speaking, a comics convention is far from an orgiastic experience.

From Peter Sanderson's Comics in Context #128: V For Visionary, via Neil Gaiman's blog.

From s0ckmonkey.

Rules:

1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

Maybe if she'd played in her undergarments, as she'd considered...

From mairi_ruadh and s0ckmonkey:

Go to Wikipedia and look up your birthday (excluding the year). List three events, two births and one death in your journal, including the year.

Three events:

• 1587 - Mary, Queen of Scots is executed.
• 1879 - Sandford Fleming first proposes adoption of Universal Standard Time at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute.
• 1910 - The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated by William D. Boyce.

Two births:

• 1828 - Jules Verne, French author (d. 1905)
• 1974 - Seth Green, American actor

One death:

• 1957 - John von Neumann, Hungarian-born mathematician and physicist (b. 1903)

Current Location: home

Feeling: taxed

Hi.

Once again, it's Hike & Bike for Heart time. I'm participating. If you'd like to sponsor me, please do.

Incentives: I'm going to donate the higher of my single highest donation or 1/5^th of my total. Also, if you're the highest giver, and it's technically feasible (because, say, you don't live in Europe), I will make you ice cream. Or cheesecake. Something.

If you want to sponsor me and don't like the online thing, give me a hoot. We'll work something out.

Monitor my status

Feeling: charitable