2009 — 12 March: Thursday
Back from the birthday bash (followed by an HD showing of "Lucky number Slevin") at 00:52 or so and, once again, it's well past time for tonight's picture of Christa. Another one I took in Meisenheim in December 1977. What a nice smile:
Sixteen months as of yesterday, Christa. Unbelievable! Ho-hum. Time for a cuppa and then bed. G'night. At (yawn) 03:25 or so.
(Donna) Summer is a'cumen in
If there's a jauntier track to greet me (somewhat bleary-eyed, I admit) over the airwaves (and the all-important initial cuppa) than "I feel love" then I don't know what it is. And there's an increasing amount of blossom on display here and there, too. All is not quite all roses, however. The next batch of laundry may go awry. I discovered (too late) that the Ariel box contains loose powder rather than neatly-packaged "doses" so I may have over-egged the mix.
Last night's (this morning's) lateness is nearly all Microspit's fault. It started with the kindly message that I could install the next batch of updates as part of the process of shutting down. I prefer to see what goes on, so I set in motion a manual update, then decided that while I was waiting, I might as well do something a bit more pleasant... why not run Joe Kane's Blu-ray version of Digital Video Essentials through the system and see what repairs,1 if any, were needed after rather foolishly using the crude but interesting HD setup tests offered on the Pride and Prejudice disc? Why not, indeed?
A couple of hours later — Microspit entirely overlooked — I picked my jaw up off the floor, closed things down downstairs, and turned in, having adjusted and tweaked the picture to within a pixel or two of visual perfection.
Time (10:59) for an overdue spot of breakfast and the second infusion of tannin. The sky doesn't look too bad (it was trying to drizzle about ten hours ago) and the barometer's still north of "Schön", which is added goodness.
Does that quaver mean you're lying?
A while back, I took a gentle pop at polygraphy and its thoroughly undeserved reputation for working. I spotted a story yesterday about two academics being threatened (by the Israeli company peddling an alternative truth-detecting technology [or pseudoscience as some {many} have termed it]) with legal woes for daring to suggest that their research results showed that voice stress analysis doesn't actually work. Today's Guardian has waded into these same murky waters. The truth is out there somewhere...
Flash in the pan
As I crack open folder #5 (of the 13 that I use to hold my DVD cover artwork in transparent sleeves) I've just reached a title that celebrated its silver anniversary four years ago: Flash Gordon.
The music I'm playing (from the upstairs Media PC) during all this nearly mindless scanning is set on "shuffle" so I never quite know what to expect next. Although it's actually an entertaining exercise, I'm not sure which is the more dispiriting: the great age of some of the film titles, the great age of some of the music, the length of time I now realise has elapsed since Christa and I first watched, or heard, the stuff, or simply the great age of the chap now doing all this scanning and listening. Time's Arrow indeed.
Soon be time to make myself a spot of late lunch — it's already crept round to 14:21 and the tum is beginning to rumble.
Suddenly, it's 18:35
And time for yet another meal; the last of the current crockpot. The morning's laundry was successful and untroubled by an excess of foam, though it remains a total mystery to me how some shirts regularly manage to turn themselves completely inside out. It's been a somewhat contemplative day in some ways, but I'm cheering up again. After all, as my wise chum in Stockholm reminded me a month ago:
When life is naff, you generally have two ways to go. Down or up. Up essentially means that you're OK. Going down means giving up but unless you're really going to do something extreme, and I think neither of us is of that nature, it's just down to hanging on for the rest of the evening as life usually seems better in the morning. If all else fails, go to bed early. Besides, I've always wondered, where do you go to give up?
This opening bit of monkey business made me smile. So did the current episode of "Old Harry's game". And watching Darcy's literate reaction to Lizzy's rejection of his proposal (which I shall be doing in a couple of minutes, plus Java startup time) is always a guaranteed endorphin level raiser. But (this time) I shall not venture into any more HD setup.
A chap has scanned enough DVD artwork for a while.