2008 — 20 June: Friday
Another late-night placeholder — it's "only" 00:25, but I'm ready for sleep. Tonight's picture, therefore. It's one of my favourites, and I've revisited the original scan I made of it. Christa was a beautiful lady:
Christa outside the Old Windsor farmhouse, 1974
While I generally only believe things when they have been officially denied, I'm hoping the letter I got today (yesterday) regarding the IBM Pension Plan is an exception. "The Trustee is not aware of any plans to discontinue or wind up the Plan." Phew! Still I also got two ERNIEs... Hope your cold goes soon, son! G'night.
And another day...
Why, when I'm so tired so relatively early that I go to bed early, do I then wake at 4 in the morning? Total mystery, but seems to be consistent. Inflation for the BBC Radio 2 audience: nine "pic'n'mix" sweets for 75p — that's 15s 0d (in "the old" money) or nearly two bob per sweet. I can remember farthing chews! Well, when I've sunk the first cuppa I shall start stuffing the next crockpot. It's 09:11 which gives me a window of about an hour for it to form tonight's meal.
No cutting remarks, please! A line in the penultimate paragraph (almost) made me smile:
Mutilating male members may mar men's mischievous matings
The men who enforce and undergo the rituals are no more aware of the underlying evolutionary motivations than of why their testicles are the size they are.
Hah!
Crockpot is stuffed and starting its simmer. There's one new ingredient this time — a splosh of French cider (I fear it may even be their equivalent of scrumpy) — as one has to elude the boundaries of one's comfort zone de temps en temps. Meanwhile, as I await the return of any sign of an appetitie for brekkie, I can single-mindedly turn my misguided attention to multi-tasking.
In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, "Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers."
There's much to amuse in the article, fear not. And, judging by the stuff here, there will also be much to amuse (or madden and sadden) tonight while I sample my crocked-pot:
Those of you who've ever been in my study may recall a favourite (and — as usual — prescient) Doonesbury cartoon frame that the Guardian used in August 1995 for their weekly technology section front page:
Trudeau hitting the software nail on the head, August 1995
(Portis)head's up... dept.
I have yet to hear, or buy, the third album from Portishead (though it's only a matter of time, I expect). There's a forthright interview with the trio. Mind the language, by the way. Monitus es.
It's 11:44, brekkie is freshly loaded, my online bank is "currently offline", and the bank account I "inherited" from Christa today announces itself pleased to confirm its agreement to give me an (unwanted) variable rate on-demand overdraft facility. Paragraph 11 of the 12 Ts&Cs begs an obvious question:
As this is an outfit hovering somewhere between Hong Kong and Shanghai, I presume any defaulter is thereafter handed over to a Chinese triad to sort out?
He's back... dept.
It's 16:31, which marks the end of an earlier than usual Friday afternoon trip into Southampton. But then I only got as far as Borders. Big Bro, meanwhile, has sent me this picture of an aero near-miss.1 Is he trying to put me off flying, I wonder?
Lifting the lid...
... on the crockpot to see if I can combine it with the Bill Gates programme... Alas! My stew was somewhat tastier (and considerably meatier) than the BBC Money Programme. No matter.
Today's retail therapy... dept.
As I said, I got as far as Borders:
I've been keeping a gentle eye out for the new Pinker2 in paperback since reading a review last September. The Maupin was a no-brainer. (I bought the first of the sublime Tales of the City sequence in December 1980 when we were still living in Old Windsor. Actually the young fella in Borders asked me why I'd bought it — from something I'd overheard him say to his colleague a few minutes earlier I half suspect he may bat for the other side, if you catch my drift.) The CD and DVD-ROM are from the pair of magazines that completed my acquisitions.