Home Alone

As usual i've become slack at updating this mofo, but I'm going to try my best at keeping it reasonably up to date and soon enough it'll become habit.

I'm home alone at the moment, Kelly has disappeared off to Houston for a week to study oil rigs and booze (not necessarily in that order) so i'm all on my lonesome. I dropped her off at Heathrow this morning and have been a lazy bum for the rest of the day.

I often thing what I would be like living on my own; i've never done it before but it's something i'd quite like to experience. I have of course had my own room at University Halls and lived with mates, but the last two years have been spent living with Kelly so i've never had to live on my own. Some people I know do it and love it; I imagine there is a wonderful sense of freedom and the thought of not having to worry about how your actions will affect somone is probably quite nice. I am quite fortunate in that I am perfectly happy with my own company so I don't think i'd get lonely, though there is always the option of getting a cat/ferret/hamster/snake or some other animal to talk to - cats are the best though cos they talk back and I like to think I can hold a reasonably good conversation with a cat. Twinkle and I used to have fascinating chats.

I have been in my "crap friend" mode for the past few weeks; there are so many people I keep thinking "I must get in touch with them" about but I never do - mostly Uni friends who I haven't seen for about a year, but also other people who either live far away (Hi Leah!) or I just don't see any more like old school or family friends. I go through phases of getting back in touch with people but then leave it 6 months before any other kind of contact, which is a bit silly.

A while ago, in my other blogs, I used to do this thing where I summed up the highs and lows of a month and year. Seeing as we're now out of June and into July, now would seem like an appropriate time to have a juicy summary of what happened in June:


June Highs

• Playing a couple of excellent golf days with work pals and reigniting my love for the game - hopefully I can keep on playing this time.
• DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL - simply one of the best weekends of my life, meeting people and making new friends, seeing some excellent bands and just generally having a brilliant time
• Taste of London - getting to sample food from some of Londons bestest restaurants. As someone who enjoys my food (I don't get this figure from eating salad) I love going out for dinner, and now I have a whole host of new places to try out!
• BBQs
• Camden
• Paying off my credit card debts from the last 5 years
• Getting back down the gym
• Getting High Definition telly!

June Lows

• Not having much money (just a short term thing though as now i've paid off my credit crd debts i'll have more cash to play with from now on)
• That's about it!

All in all June was a good month. July is shaping up to be a corker too, lots of fun and games planned. HOORAY!

Oh and another thing...

Today I bought "Planet Earth" on Bluray! I love the TV show, and the thought of seeing it in high definition glory makes me wet my pants with excitement.

Pigs

Today was a glorious day. One of those days when everything feels good, there's not one thing that's getting me down or worried or anything like that. I decided to take a walk at lunchtime and I ended up in Leadenhall Market, which is just over the road from where I work. It's one of those places that you can't help but like; it's got character (it's about 150 years old), there's plenty to do, lots of nice little cafés and restaurants with people sitting, eating, drinking and talking outside, pubs with people mingling and laughing, market stalls selling little arts and crafts and foody bits, chaps shining office workers shoes, and today to top it off, there were morris dancers. It's one of those places that makes me love London, and definitely somewhere I would love to show visitors.

Not even all this talk about pig flu can get me down today. Sure its a nasty bug that's doing the rounds, but with the exception of Mexico it doesn't seem to be very serious and everyone that's had it so far has or is making a full recovery. Sounds like normal flu to me. The mdeia or course, is blowing things well out of proportion and telling people to wash their hands, be vigilant and not to go into work if you have any symptoms - but surely that's what you should do if you have normal flu anyway?! I had normal flu a few years ago and it was probably the worst thing I have ever experienced - I couldn't get out of bed for about 5 days, I felt truely awful. So obviously it's not the nicest thing to catch, but I don't think it's the killer virus everyone is making it out to be. Bird flu on the other hand...

I was thinking the other day how humans are defying the laws of nature. By inventing medicine, welfare, benefits etc., from a purely scientific/genetic point of view, we are actually weakening the species as a whole. In nature only the strongest survice - if a killer virus sweeps a habitat, only the ones who build up an immunity will survice, who in turn will pass that on to their kids and so on, thus ensuring the species has protection from that disease going forward. And, if we took this pigflu thing in the same way, thats what should happen to us. But because of medicine the people who are genetically weakest will still survive, meaning the overall strength of the human race is somewhat diminished. This is a pretty dangerous path i'm walking down as the same could be said for stupid people, disabled people etc...and I suppose that's where morality comes in; as humans we have evolved past the survival of the fittest and everyone should have a chance to survive. But think how much better off we'd be if all the chav scum on benefits were slaughtered - the average intelligence of the nation would increase by about 50%!

This is all rather philosophical for a friday night. Kelly has been out on the lash with a couple of friends who she hasn't seen for a month or so, so i've had a rather pleasant evening to myself and i've had time to think about this kind of thing. I also think the only thing thats pissing me off at the moment is this fucking computer, which seems to freeze every 30 seconds or so.

Tomorrow, Kelly and I are looking after Kelly's cousin, Josh, who is 5. We are taking him to the zoo. I am excited, I love zoos and going with a 5 year old should make it even more exciting! We will do a packed lunch and have a picnic somewhere if we can have a break. I am looking forward to seeing the lions and tigers and bears. Oh my!

Pah

And they say men can't multi-task. Sitting on the loo and having a shave at the same time? Now thats the kind of multitasking that would put most women to shame!

On reflection I have decided not to post every single meal I eat on here, simply because:

a) I probably won't always have internet access
b) my memory is pretty pants so i'll probably forget
c) if some stranger reads this blog all they'll find out about me is that I like to write about food. And there's much, much more to me than food.

This evening I have updated my mp3 player, as the last update was about 6 months ago and I'm now bored of the stuff i've got on there. So there's about 500 new tracks on there, from such artists as Iron Maiden, Faith No More, Eric Clapton, Mastodon, Opeth and much, much more. That should provide my ears with some pleasure for the next couple of months or so.

It's time's like these I realise that 1) I would never like to be deaf, and b) 8gb is not enough!

Question

Of course the big question is, will anyone else view this page and if they do, will a list of my daily food intake make for interesting reading?

One to mull over during sleepytime tonight methinks.

Only a year and a half since the last one

Not bad really. As with all things when it comes to me, I get these fabulous ideas that I embrace fully for about, 2 weeks, then they fall by the wayside as I become bored and/or distracted and/or I find something else to do for two weeks.

Anyway I decided to restart this thing for a couple of reasons.

Reason the first: A long, LONG aim of mine has been to lose weight and get down to some sort of sensible size. I've been podgy for too long. The main trouble with me is not necessarily eating unhealthy stuff (i'm the first to admit my diet could be better, but I dont stuff my face with cake), but more the quantity of food I eat.

Instead of diets, which are just a fad and a con to get you to spend money, i've learnt it's just about being sensible. The best way I have found to be sensible is to write down my meals for the day. Writing for me has always been the best way of getting my brain to work; be it revision for exams, reading reports at work or trying to eat less crisps. It's only when I write stuff down it actually gets in my head, and with respect to the food thing, it's only when I write down what I eat that I realise just how much I eat during the day. So, i'm aiming to write down what i've eaten every day so I (hopefully) get a bit more sensible.


Reason the second: I just like reminiscing about times gone past. I sometimes read my other blogs from years ago (I started in 2001; remember Leah?!) and I enjoy reading them. I've sort of got a record of memorable events and stuff i've done and thought about for the last 8 years somewhere here on the internet, and i'd like to keep that up. So there we go.


First thought of the day: Fucking Howard Webb needs to be shot in the face - how he can award a penalty for that tackle is beyond me, and when a player decides to criticise the ref in the press they get summoned and have to explain their actions. Nothing like that for the ref though, he gets to go about his normal day without having to explain why he fucked up a game that Spurs would otherwise have likely won! What a tit.