Am quite chuffed to see that my humble little blog is now linked to from Liz's blog. I've been a bit zombie-like since yesterday. On the way to work I suddenly snapped back into the real world with an audible click and was aware that I wasn't entirely certain how I'd got half way to work. I could remember leaving the house, but I don't really remember covering the majority of the intervening space. Someone was running in front of me and somewhere in my mind it occurred that they must have ran past me at some point but I couldn't for the life of me remember it happening.

Last night I met up with two of my housemates from last year which was fun. Got all the gossip on what who had done, who they had done, and how that affected someone who had done them in the past. There are a surprising number of love polygons* between my old flatmates. I should start my own Trisha or Jerry Springer-like TV show!

No snow in Aberystwyth :(

*like love-triangles, only bigger.

Got a load of stuff done and so am feeling considerably better than this morning. Finally submitted my tax return, it's only taken me 8 months. That's fast by my usual standards.

At work I have convinced people that the task I had been given was not possible for me to do and they've finally agreed to take it off my hands so that I can get on with things that are more important. I'm actually looking forward to writing documentation - that's how bad the last few weeks of work have been.

Not been having the best of days today. I won't go into detail because it's not interesting and is probably more to do with my mental attitude than anything else.

Played my usual weekly badminton at lunch yesterday. I was unbelievably crap, quite a let-down after the games I played last week and the week before.

After we played we went to the CO-OP to get lunch. This week I brought my own sandwhiches though as I was less than impressed by the vast vegetarian selection of one cheese and tomato "cob". I also brought a bottle of water, so all I had to buy was a packet of crisps and a chocolate bar and I had my usual lunch. It cost me 65p. The week before I spent nearly £4. Well it made me think and so now I am bringing my own sandwhiches every day from now on.

Pesto sandwhiches are so nice too!

*sigh* Another bug found and fixed. The archives now display correctly.

Wow, I got an honourable mention on Liz's Blog! :-o World-wide recognition is surely soon to follow.

Been trying to buy a modem from Ebuyer today, you'd think they'd be keen to take my money. Instead I am having to re-register and faff about just to get to the checkout screen.

It's freezing in Aberystwyth at the moment, there was (very briefly) a little snow on the way into work. I thought my gloves weren't making a difference until I took one off to look at my watch. It didn't take me long to realise that they were, in fact, making a rather large difference and so I put it back on pronto.

I've been eating a vegetarian diet for over a week now, and I'm still not decided whether I want to do it full-time or not. Currently my plan is to remain on the vegetarian diet and see how it goes and make a better decision as to whether I want to remain this way at some time in the future. Funny thing is I haven't had to make any changes to what I buy or cook, the only change is I can't buy my usual Chicken Tikka baguette in the refectory. No love lost there, though.

Despite my relaxed attitude towards becoming a vegetarian, I have to admit I am feeling a little guilty that I bought a Chinese take-away the other day with noodles, which may very well have been egg-based.

And finally, on my way to work I pass a small church in Llanbadarn. Every day I look at the gate that leads to the church and note the hefty padlock on it, and somehow it always strikes me as odd, although I never know why. Today I worked it out. The walls on the left and right of the gate are only half a foot high. You could just step over the wall - as if a padlock on the gate is going to stop someone getting in! Funny how the subconcious can pick up on things before the concious does.

That last blog revealed a problem in my blogger - the two URLs next to each other caused the regular expressions that deal with them to get rather confused. Anyway, the problem is now fixed. :)

Back in work after a long, rather splendid, weekend. Liz came to Aber in the end, so I didn't have to mess about with trains afterall.

Friday was spent at home waiting for the BT engineer to come and reinstall my phoneline. They even turned up this time! In the afternoon I was basically just preparing for Liz's arrival - I did the shopping etc. We got some videos to watch, But I'm a Cheerleader and Big Mamma's House. They were purposefully chosen because of their "nobrainer" appearances (Liz wasn't well) and we thoroughly enjoyed "But I'm a Cheerleader". Funny how appearances can be deceptive. It looks like it should be a typical American teeny-movie, but is in fact a highly stylized comedy and excellent in every respect. Well worth a watch. Big Mamma's House we stopped halfway through, don't watch under any circumstances.

On Saturday we met up with Burt and went for a coffee. Later we played some Cluedo and generally lazed about.

On Sunday Liz went to see a friend and I went to play some Snooker with a mate, which all ended in tears. Then later, Liz and I went to see Dan at his place in Penparcau. Lots of fun was had playing on his arcade machine :-D

And so this morning I saw Liz off on the train and then came to work where I am sure I will have just as much fun as I had over the weekend. Yeah. Right :)

Looks like I'm off to Newbury tomorrow as Liz has got a kidney infection and so isn't going to be able to come here. A search on Qjump reveals that the only train I can get is at 17:34. The only other train leaves about 19:30 and gets to Newbury about 07:30 on Saturday. I'll give that one a miss then.

If I could get a lift it'd take 10 minutes to get home, not a problem, but the person who would normally give me a lift is leaving work early on Friday. So I'm going to have to walk. It takes 30 minutes to walk from work to my house, 25 if I walk fast. So I'll have to run. That takes about 15 minutes, getting me home for about 17:15.

It then takes about 5-10 minutes to struggle to the station with bags, fighting against masses of pedestrians and cars. Then there will be a 6 hour train journey, almost certainly with a screaming kid behind me the entire way, getting me into Newbury at 23:43 feeling knackered and shell-shocked only to do it all again on Sunday. And how much will it cost for this privilege? Only £38.

And they wonder why there are so many cars on the road...

Umbrellas. They should be made illegal. Or at least controlled. Perhaps an umbrella license should be introduced. As soon as there is even the slightest hint of rain they come out in hordes, and they are always attached to the most irresponsible people who walk at ridiculous speeds approaching 4mph and who have no control over their steering. I lost count of the number of times I was nearly decapitated on the way to work this morning.

Plus there should be tougher penalties for people who splash pedestrians by driving through huge puddles in the roads at vast speeds. They'd soon start being a little more careful if the police showed up at the door with a bucket of water for each pedestrian they had soaked and proceeded to dump them over their heads.

Yes that's right. I have jumped on the blogging bandwagon. I always proclaimed that I wouldn't do it ... but then I said that I'd never get a mobile phone, and look how that turned out. So here's my own little journal of random thoughts so you can keep track of what I'm up to, if you so desire. I could blather on about how this will provide you with an insight into my mind, but trust me when I say that there's not much in there to see.

So this is the first ever blog. This is the one where everyone always lays down the "ground rules" that describe what future blogs may or may not contain and all that. Well I'm not going to do that, you'll just have to wait and see. As to why I am blogging... Well I guess the biggest reason was I just fancied writing a blogger. The actual blogging I am less enthusiastic about, but will do my best to keep on top of. So my blogger has been born out of procrastination and will present me with many new procrastination opportunities in the future. Splendid!

I can see now that my blogs are all going to start off as huge long things and slowly degrade to smaller and smaller less frequent postings. Place your bets now for how long it will last! :)

Anyway, I shall now go do some work as I have had to take half a day off work to let a BT engineer in. The git didn't show up and so I will now have to take Friday morning off work too. Damn incompetent phone operators at BT. So, until next time, ciao!