Monthly Archives: February 2007

Sunday Roast: by “Hot Lesbian Sex”, we mean tea. But it’s still hot!

What to roast, what to roast… That’s something that goes not only through my mind throughout the week, but through the minds of my minions spread around the globe. Boy do they do sterling work! As they are already have my eternal love and devotion, all I can do is give them a shout-out at the head of the Roast – thank you this week in particular to Moose, Divine M, Neko, Surly and illyna (and she’s the one responsible for the title as well).

ProBlogger (who I haven’t linked to in a while. I feel bad) has an article on the 10 mistakes that will kill a blog. Whilst I know I’ve been suffering from 6 (slow blog) lately and trust me, it’s annoyed me far more than it’s annoyed you! And I try not to let 2 (cliques) form, I like to think that I’m not doing to badly against that list. Um… You will let me know if I’m starting to go to the dark side, won’t you?

Blurbs in the publishing world are much maligned, yet they do a vital job – getting you to read the book in the first place. As a dedicated library-surfer, I’m always on the lookout for new books, but if that blurb doesn’t catch me then the book stands no chance. Conversely, I’ve also fallen foul of brilliant blurb only to get three pages into the book and go WFT?! and put it down in disgust. Blurbs however are not only needed in the literary world – I’m struggling to write leaflet blurb/bumf for one of the projects at work at the moment and Damn, but it’s hard! So I could do with all the help I can get.

Kristin, one of my long-time blog-crushes has a stellar how-to on making fancy-pants WordPress sidebars. Even if you’re using a theme/mod you didn’t design yourself, it’s always good to understand what the code actually does so you can play and not break things.

danah’s thoughts on how musing online can make things ‘real’ came at around the same time I (once more) accidentally-on-purpose gave the URL of Bright Meadow to the RLO at work and at the time I was having a mental hissy fit over the Cute Canadian. Timing. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who does this kind of thing.

I know when I really want to Roast something when I go digging through archives to find a post again after my bookmark got broken due to permalink re-structuring (grrr, btw). Turns out, Josh has a bit of an icon obsession going on. My own obsession with icons is slowly growing. I’ve not got to the point where I’m rethemeing my entire desktop, but there’s a fair smattering on non-standard graphics in use now. It just makes the whole computing experience more personal.

The things people do for charity. I wouldn’t go quite that far, though work are trying to get me to have a sponsored tattoo for Red Nose day (no), but I am doing this.

Want your shiny gadget laser-etched? Go to adafruit.

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to stumble across this blog! Penguin Geek. It’s all in the name.

It’s long, but the ending makes it ALL worthwhile. What do you get when you mix two Top Gear presenters, a Reliant Robin, and eight and a half tonnes of rocket fuel? Watch and find out.

I thought I was bad enough with my pens, but Gnorb takes it one step further into a pencil obsession.

And lastly four film trailers that have caught my eye for various reasons. Not saying I want to watch all of them at the cinema, but if I saw the dvd I’d most likely rent it.
Fracture – Anthony Hopkins really has cornered the market in crazed psychopaths, hasn’t he? (And yes I know that ‘crazed psychopaths’ is a tautology).
Wild Tigers I Have Known – I want to watch this if only to work out what the f*** the film is about!
In the Land of Women – we all know I’m a sucker for a happy/fluffy.
The Condemned – this I really don’t want to see, but the soundtrack for the trail is just perfect.

Pancakes

It’s official. I don’t like lemon on my pancakes. Each year I go to myself “do I like lemon on pancakes?” So I try some lemon on a pancake and invariably ruin a pancake because it turns out I DON’T like lemon on pancakes.

So I thought I would blog about it so next year, I don’t forget.

The trouble with RLOs

I really need to stop giving out the URL of Bright Meadow to people I know in real life. More importantly, I really need to stop giving out the URL of Bright Meadow to RLOs (that’s random lust objects to those who are new).

So what did I do today?
Yup. You’ve guessed it.
Firmly put my size sixes in my cute little mouth and gave the work RLO the URL of Bright Meadow…

We were having what started as this innocent conversation about work and the future of the team and the next thing I know I’m explaining how writing is my thing, and that I have this website, and – well, it was give him a moo card with the URL, or let him think I have a MySpace. What else could any self respecting 9ruler do?

I think I might have said this before, but this whole blogging my life deal does make it hard when objects of my desire are suddenly equipped with a window into my neurotic thought processes. I mean, I have taste in my lust-objects, so they invariably have brains, and are MORE than capable of penetrating the cunning code I use to disguise identities. That’s the other problem with my life: when there’s *counts in head* ONE guy in your team who was born in the same decade, it kind of restricts the potential candidates for RLO status even more.

Sigh.
I have no other way to end this post really. I’m just going to have to drunkenly dance around my room a bit more to a bizarre playlist comprising Enrique, Eve 6, The Ataris, NFG, Foo Fighters, Mika, Greenday, and Fools Garden (bless autofill) and then go get some sleep. I mean, the RLO could be in the office again tomorrow and I’ve got to be looking my best 😉

Time to move on please

So I’ve got one ex definitely out of my brain – woot. It’s about as confirmed as it can be: Mr T no longer floats my boat in that way. As I said, woot. Now if only that meant I’d also worked the other “tall, ginger(ish), good collar bones, climber” out of my system…

Hand on my heart, if the CC asked me back today I would say ‘No’. Not that he’s going to ask me back, but you get where I’m going here. I’m logically over him and probably about 85% emotionally over him as well. But that leaves a treacherous 15% of gooey, icky, soppy heart that’s whimpering in the corner, remembering the good times. Damn it. I blame Valentine’s Day.

It used to be I didn’t get many daily reminders. There’s something to be said for your ex winding up on another continent as you can be pretty certain you’re not going to run into them down the supermarket whilst you’re looking particularly fetching in your tracksuit. I finally got rid of the football he’d left kicking round the flat at Christmas (figured Moose’s nephews might get more use out of it than me). Somehow his favourite glass has managed to survive fifteen months in the Meadow Towers kitchen which is a miracle considering my clutzy nature, but when (note the when, not the if) it does break I won’t be devastated. I can even wear the earrings now without immediately feeling conscious they were a gift.

But… I’m not as there as I figured I was. I was trawling through my hard drive looking for a particular picture last night and I stumbled across a batch of photos I’d forgotten about. The little lurch in the pit of stomach was a good indicator all was not hunky-dory in Cas’ head.

Why, when I’d convinced everyone including myself that I was like, so TOTALLY over him, do I now realise I was perhaps protesting a bit too much?

Because Facebook friends collided, as they are wont to do, and suddenly there’s the CC’s profile, in all it’s cute, Canadian glory, connected to my profile. I deleted his blog from my rss reader a while back because I’m really not up for that whole masochistic “does he still think of me, will he write about me, I hope his life is miserable” gig. I didn’t delete it straight away because I didn’t want to seem petty but then one particular post got written and I decided I wasn’t over him enough to want to read about his new partner. There are more enjoyable ways I want to spend my free time – college work, cleaning the bathroom, having my left leg amputated. And I never signed into IM programs so I never saw him online either.

Of course, I’m now signing into IM programs a lot more so, not only is he there in my Facebook list, he’s also there on my buddy list. Silent. Not plinking me. Why?! Yes, I’m not plinking him either, but… He ended it with me. Does online etiquette mean he has to plink me first, or I have to plink him, or is the accepted thing for both of us to sit there on our respective sides of the Atlantic, studiously ignoring each other?

Why should I care? Why do I feel it’s like the elephant in the room when I talk to mutual friends now? Why, when I am actually at a point where I am moving on, does my heart just want to look back?

And more importantly, what can I do about it? They say time heals all wounds and recent experience running into Mr T. has proven this to be true, but I’m not sure I want to wait three years! Plus, if time to get over is related to seriousness of the given relationship, then I’m doomed to be single and hung-up till *does some rapid calculations on the handy Dashboard calculator widget* 2010 at least. Let’s say 2015 to be on the safe side.

That’s really not a viable solution. I should just bite the bullet and plink him, right? Be all cool, calm and confident? Oh, that won’t work, because the blithe confidence thing was part of what attracted him in the first place. I guess I could just hope he still reads Bright Meadow and realises that, appearances to the contrary I’m really still a ditzy bundle of neurotic insecurities. But then, that was partly what kept him hanging round so long…

I’m doomed. I wish I wasn’t, but I am. And you’d hope I’d learnt my lesson, but I really haven’t. What *is* it that I find so bloody fascinating about rangy ginger guys? Seriously, it’s like a disease or something 😕

Sunday Roast: stand still long enough and the dragon will find you

Happy Chinese New Year everybody!

I am sorry that the Roast is on the later side of the afternoon today, but as I had a near escape from being eaten by a Chinese dragon in the city centre, feel fortunate you’ve got one at all! And then we went to go and see Hot Fuzz and now I am horrendously homesick. The movie was very funny though 🙂

Continuing the ‘Chinese’ theme, I (OK, the BBC) bring you these sickeningly cute picture of a Panda cub playground. I challenge you NOT to go “awwwwwwww…” at some of these, especially pictures three and nine.

World of Warcraft can teach us valuable life lessons. No, really – see, respectable people say so.

Pictures of the Hot Fuzz premiere – as I already said at the top of the post, Hot Fuzz is a very funny film, go see it – . I just love that they not only filmed in Wells, but they held the premiere there! In the local cinema that was once a Scout Hut! And god-damnit, I’m still feeling bloody homesick.

Feeling inspired? Fancy writing a chapter of a story? Now you can. But it had better be good, because you will be up against me, mwhahaahhaaa!

And lastly (eek, this is a short Roast!), it’s getting to that time of year again when I ask you all for money – once again, I’m doing the Race for Life for Cancer Research UK. I’ll be talking about it more in the lead up to the race in July, but I just thought I would give you some warning.

And, yep, that’s it for this week. I’ve clearly been spending far too much time over at 9rules notes and not enough time finding things to Roast. I’ll try to do better for next week, promise.

Wow! (A call to delurk)

101 subscribers?!

One hundred and one subscribers to my RSS feed? Wow, where did y’all come from? Not that I want you to go away again, just… Man, it’s good to see you.

If anyone fancies delurking and introducing themselves, please do. Everyone’s lovely and friendly here 🙂

Dreamers

He looked across at the figure at the other end of the bar, his eyes drawn in fascination by the sharp planes of her wrist bones, the casual grace of the limb. It wasn’t something he would normally remark upon. The hand wasn’t the usual appendage noted about the female form, at least not first, but on her, the wrist was all he could clearly see. Resting along the battered counter top, motionless, as if it were divorced from the rest of the world. A sculpture. At that moment he would swear on any scripture you cared to name that, if he could touch it, that arm would be as smooth and cold as the marble it was carven from.

The middle finger, centre of the bridge her hand made, arced up ever so slightly, bearing a wide sliver band. From here he couldn’t see, till she raised her hand to lift the tumbler to her lips, the rectangular amber stone recessed flatly into the metal, the colour of the whisky in his own glass. All he could see in the downward shaded pool of light was the silent flight of her arm: the fingers birds, stilled momentarily in migration from the shadows cast around. A moment of silence in which he felt the woman had come closer to him than a lover. He knew her deeply, and was moved in turn by the honour she had bestowed upon him by permitting this glimpse of quiet strength. She might laugh at her companion’s joke, but it was he who was privy to her lyric calm.

Oh yes, he would later tell his children, it is possible to love someone you have only just seen. To commit so deeply to one person, for the chance that you might one day be permitted to see once more the silent grace, and rest at last in its calm.