Idiots abound

I was travelling home from work today along a single carriageway road where the national speed limit applies. Traffic on that route has been heavier than usual recently because a nearby road has been closed and my formerly peaceful route has become really rather busy.

A lot of the busy-ness is created by the fact that people are creating their own diversion route and doing a right turn into a dinky little road that clearly leads somewhere important. The turning for this dinky little road is at the bottom of a hill after a kink in the road (or if you're going in the opposite direction, it's before a kink in the road after which there is a hill).

Anyway, this afternoon I was approaching the turning so that it was on my left; I'd just come down the hill and negotiated the kink in the road. I saw a car waiting to turn right across me and a car on the dinky little road waiting to turn left to join the flow of traffic in my direction. The first car turned right across me. This was fine. The car at the junction pulled out in front of me. This was not so fine and meant I had to halve the speed I was travelling at. Unsurprisingly, I used my horn to let the driver know I was there. Because quite frankly, the only reason you'd pull out that close to a vehicle with right of way travelling at 60mph is if you're blind!

The driver then drove at 50mph for the next 4 or so miles; I couldn't overtake because of the aforementioned extra traffic. I swore under my breath, eased off so that I was nowhere near it and resolved to blog about the idiot.

It's October?!

I'm slightly concerned that it is now October; where has this year gone? Dan and I are already wondering about Christmas presents and where we can get a tree and when we could possibly find the time to make a Christmas cake and soak it in brandy.

Flashback

Tomorrow, I am playing football for the "Past" team at my college reunion. I graduated 3 years ago and my football boots and socks have not seen the light of day since so I'm pretty much expecting to be suffering on Sunday.

A problem I never had as a student: where is the parking near the college football grounds?

Oh yes it is!

Dan and I went out for lunch yesterday and this is the discussion that took place over the dessert menu:

Dan: What are you going to have?
Me: I'm stuffed, I can't eat anymore.
Dan: We'll have to work on this, what do you mean you can't eat three courses.
Me: I didn't have breakfast until almost 11!
Dan: You have to eat a dessert, or I won't.
Me: You have dessert, I'll have a glass of champagne.
Dan: Champagne isn't a substitute for food!

Hmm, is there a link?

As the days get shorter and everything gets darker sooner due to all the clouds I've noticed that there are more idiot drivers around (for example, more than once recently I've reached the top of hills where the central markings are dashed and solid in my favour to find cars on my side of the road because they've decided to overtake cyclists just then). I wonder if there's something linking poor weather and idiot drivers.

Occupational hazard

Papercuts are de rigeur at work and they hardly phase me anymore. However, in the last week I have stabbed my fingers with thumb-tacks, staples and ring binders and have wiped off more blood onto my suits than I care to think about. It's not pretty and my fingers hurt.

I'm not liking it

When I type a letter into the address bar on the new version of Firefox there is far too much information displayed. All the websites which have that letter in the link come up and I don't like it.

Also, has it been two weeks since I last blogged? I have no clue where the time has gone. We've been to Germany for a wedding, and have been back for over a week. I'm already looking forward to the next time I take some time off work, whenever that may be!

A gap in the market

We're going to a wedding next week and I spent a considerable amount of time today looking for a wedding card. I just wanted a simple card that wasn't too glitzy or mushy or covered in silver hearts. It was hard; the cards I found were all too sparkly or garish or had pictures of little bride and groom figures that would not have looked out of place in a horror movie. Eventually I bought a card not specifically intended for a wedding but which I felt would suffice.

Dan then made me go yet another card store where we spent ages again looking at wedding cards ranging from musical ones to ones which could be kept as a "keepsake" by the B&G and filled in with information such as "How did he propose", "Presents" and even a space for "Our favourite picture". I wanted to puke. I did find a card in the end; it's simple, it doesn't contain any nausea inducing rhymes and I won't cringe handing it over. Phew.

Whoops

So the obsessive compulsive part of me was still in bed yesterday morning when I parked in one of my usual pay and display car parks and then walked off without paying or displaying. Unsurprisingly, I came back to find a parking ticket pasted onto my windscreen and then spent the next 3-4 hours obsessing about how I was now a bad person, thereby providing a great deal of amusement for my parents and my colleagues.

This streak of stupidity continued today when between paying for parking in the centre of town and walking down one flight of stairs to the car park, Dan and I managed to completely misplace the parking ticket we needed to exit the car park. I insisted I'd given it to Dan, Dan stated firmly that if I'd given it to him he would have it, wouldn't he and as the situation became more and more fraught I stomped off to customer services to explain that I was an idiot who had lost her ticket but had managed to keep her receipt. The man in the booth said to buzz when I got to the barrier but typically after making Dan look through his wallet one more time we found the pesky little ticket.

Side effects: coloured lights when you close your eyes

While I have long suspected that I have an obsessive streak in me somewhere, it was only yesterday afternoon that it became apparent how deep that streak actually runs. From taking 50 bazillion goes to complete "Slow Ride", it appears that I can now rock with the best of them and I'm working my way through the song list... 24 songs, 2 battles and a bunch of encores down, 18 songs and three more levels to go.

It's no wonder that yesterday when I went to bed, all I could see when I closed my eyes were the coloured notes coming towards me.

Guitar Heroes

There are not that many things at which I really really suck but Guitar Heroes is one of those things where I drive other people in the room mad because of the frequency with which I am booed off stage. Still, we've had it around the house since last weekend and today is the first day that I've had the patience to persevere through the booing and actually complete a song. Then I tried the next song and found that I remain fantastically awful... I shan't be giving up my day job anytime soon.

What's that smell?

My drive to and from work takes me past some fields. Last week the harvesters were out and while there was a fine mist of harvest dust over parts of the road it was accompanied by this incredibly sweet smell which made the drive home rather enjoyable.

This week, I've been driving past those fields in the baking sunshine and holding my breath because they've finished harvesting and laid down manure.

It's not surprising that today I was glad it was raining as I was driving back.

Perseverance

I am parked up waiting for the place I need to be to open and while I wait I'm blogging from my iPhone. The only glitch so far is that I have to go into the 'edit HTML' screen to type.

This is day 26

The Wii Fit has the cute little Balance Board that is there to motivate you to use the Wii Fit. If you don't use it for a few days it admonishes you; I skipped one day yesterday and this morning it asked me if I had been busy yesterday... charming.

Everytime you do a body test the game tells you what "age" you are. I've been consistently hitting the 30s but today for the first time I was actually my own age! I don't trust the thing one bit though... I can't go from having the body of a 32 y.o. to having the body of a 26 y.o. and then back again in 2 days but the BalanceBoard seems to think I can. Totally bizarre but completely addictive.