Friday, September 23, 2005

Happy once, happy twice, happy chicken soup with rice

There's no reason at all for the title of this post. But I seem to have started doing song lyrics for titles lately, and that's one of my all-time favourites.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to write about. A few things spring to mind, so I'll just do bullet points and maybe add a bit more to one or more subjects over the weekend:

Where am I going to buy comics if I move to Burton-on-Trent? I don't know if there's a shop there, and I'd hate to trek into Derby or Nottingham every week. When I lived in Boston I used to buy a big batch once a month or so, but I'm in the habit of getting new stuff every week now.

There's also a fun discussion on the British Othello newsgroup today - Tony Corfe of the MSO has complained that we're not contributing to the event enough, and Othello players across the country are taking exception (in our usual good-humoured, funny way) to his comments.

It's Josh Foer's birthday today. Happy birthday, Josh!

As part of discussions with Josh about memory for his book (or personal interest) I've been reading through the emails I exchanged with Andi and Gunther about the Memory World Cup in 2004. It's funny - I snapped at both of them at different times and told them they were being childish and stupid. They were, but it's still the kind of thing that I absolutely never do in emails. I hate the idea of not being friends with everyone.

I also feel like writing an essay about the unusual decision to change the character designs on Baby Looney Tunes halfway through the first season (they stop wearing nappies). It occurs to me that I could write at great length about this. Maybe I will tomorrow.

They're selling 200g bars of Cadbury's chocolate half price at W H Smith's when you buy a magazine, so I got one today. I think I'm definitely putting on weight. Perhaps I should do something about it? Then again, I was looking back at pictures of me in 2002 the other day, and I was immense back then, so I don't think I should be worrying about obesity just yet.

We're probably switching to working part time, two or three days a week, starting next week. I'll use the time off to go down to Burton and look for a flat.

Also, must decide on exactly what to do for the party. Ace and Rep have said they're coming, which adds them to a list comprising Jenny, Crispy, Sleepy, Log and someone else I've forgotten. Oh, and my brother. There's also going to be a work do that weekend, but I'll give it a miss. I don't think work people and my real friends would mix all that well. The former think I'm a serious, hard-working type.

Mentioning work there reminded me that I haven't even thought about playing Spider all night. This is good - I downloaded it from the internet last night and spent ages playing it (my computer's Windows 98 and too ancient to have it on the games menu). I was worried that it was turning into an unhealthy compulsion.

I'm going to do some memory training this weekend - with one thing and another I haven't done any for a couple of weeks now. I'll try to force myself to do an hour numbers first - that's the one I always find least fun, so it's difficult to motivate myself to practice it as much as the others. And I want to try my idea of memorising it using twice the routes - starting again with the numbers offset by one or two digits (I memorise numbers in blocks of 3x3, so with this system I'd memorise 123-456-789 - 987-654-321 etc, then start again and memorise 234-567-899 - 876-543-210 and so on). There's a good reason for this, but it goes beyond the bullet-point scope. If I do manage to do it, I'll explain tomorrow.

Boston Utd are playing Grimsby tomorrow, but I think I'll give it a miss. Going back there was fun once, but it's still not the kind of place you'd want to visit too often. Besides, local derbies generally turn quite ugly - the Lincoln games are traditionally the ones with the most violence, but they're a nasty lot from Grimsby.

Jeremy Bates's strategy for the Davis Cup doesn't seem to have worked. But then, there weren't any sensible strategies that would really work if Murray's going to lose to Wawrinka, so I suppose we can't blame him for trying to think outside the box. Still, that makes the weekend's tennis rather pointless, because we're never going to win all three remaining rubbers. If I was Bates I'd (assuming we win the doubles and don't make the whole thing pointless) put Rusedski against Federer in the first reverse singles and hope for a flukey win, and then see if Mackin can pull off a miracle against Wawrinka to win it for us. But I can't see it happening.

Wow, that was more bullets than I expected! Granted that it mostly involves watching TV and playing on the internet, I do have quite a varied life, don't I?

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