fun night out.

Last night was fun.

Good food (Thai, Bankok House), good company. What more can you ask for?

Jenn and Paul’s birthday bash was all that any night out should be.. a very pleasant social occasion. The number of people was really the top limit for such an event, 11, as any more and the party fragments into groups. All but three of the people were from the Earth Sciences department. Of those I really only got to talk to one of them, Paul’s cousin who works as a physiotherapist in a local hospital and has just found out that she’s got the higher paid “senior” position there.. a very nice lass.

After taking Paul and Jenn home, I finally arrived home just after midnight and went straight to bed. It’s a pitty I couldn’t sleep. I never can sleep well with a full stomach, so sort of tossed and turned all night leaving be a bit on the tired side today.

It’s just nice to be sociable, you know? 🙂

One more day.

Only one (and a bit) more day at work ’til I’m off for a fortnight. Yippee!

Tonight I’m out celebrating a couple of friends’ birthdays.. they happen to be partners too, separated by one year of existance precisely. Jenn is a year older than Paul.

As it turns out, the boyfriends of two of the other attendees for tonight’s festivities also have their birthday on the same day (25th March).. I wonder what exciting day is precisely 9 months before the that day? It must be something global seeing as the people involved are American, English, Dutch and German.

The weekend looks like it’s going to be fun, visiting Alec along with a number of the BTG crowd to eat, make merry, watch video and maybe even do a little star gazing if the skies clear.

After that, it’s off down to my parents’ place in Cornwall. Actually, it’s a little more complex than that as I’m giving a lift to one of the 4th year undergrads and her boyfriend. She’s from a litel village just outside Redruth, so it’s only a little diversion, and it’s always nice to have company on a long journey.

Two weeks of doing very little actually sounds really good at the moment.. 2 weeks away from work.

Life, the Universe and… nothing in particular.

Those fans of bodily secretions will be disappointed with this posting as I’m not going to say anything about them whatsoever. Iknow, I know, it was fun whilst it lasted, but it seems the novelty has worn off and we just have to move on.

Life? What of it? Take one second at a time and see how things pan out. That’s my philosophy. Plan ahead, make contingencies but don’t worry if things don’t go to plan as that’s just the way of the Universe.

Work? Wassat? It’s something you do to get the main societal tool, money. That’s right, money is merely a tool, like a spanner or screwdriver. Without it you can’t do a great deal, however, have too much and it wieghs you down and you find that you can nolonger carry your toolbox.

The other purpose of work, which will surprise a lot of people, is to allow you to have more of a social life than you’d otherwise have. After all, you spend a lot of time at work, you spend that time with people with whom you have to interact socially, all be it in a strange setting.

So, what has this to do with me? Well, not a lot actually. I just thought I’d write something different this time rather than a list of things I’ve done or not done. A change is as good as a rest, they say.. well, unless you’re a couch potatoe who’s been forced to do commando training.

The comments I got from my previous post via Bullet (‘cos only Alec seems to comment on here) were of the form “Don’t expect people to read your cooking tips when you have things about mucus in the same post.” Well, I would agree.. if the mucus stuff was explicit.. oh well.

Anyway, yesterday was reasonably fun, doing some shopping, getting another jumper, finding that “The Fifth Element” was in a “buy 2 for £25” DVD sale in HMV.. The only problem being that I had to find another film I actually wanted. I chose “X-Men” as it was the least horrid on offer.

After lunch I zoomed off to the UCI High Wycombe cinema multiplex to see Monsters Inc. though I think I missed the starting credits. Still, that was fun.

The evening was spent watching the two DVDs.

Today, I got up what was early for me, 10am, and managed to get the washing done and the car washed before lunch and hence the Grand Prix on the telly.

Cold end?

Other than a bit of mucus filling my sinuses and the coughing up the old ball of slime (only after exercise, so don’t worry) the cold seems to have been well and truely beaten! Yippee!

Basically, from slight sore throat to the endgame that’s 7 days.

Life can start again.

Seeing as other people are giving their cooking tips on their journals, I’ll do one and see if I get as many comments. 🙂

How to cook pork steaks nicely:-

  1. Put a small amount of corn oil in a frying pan.
  2. Add a copious amount of dried mixed herbs and pour on about 2 tablespoons of water.
  3. Mix well and add a pinch or two of salt.
  4. Heat at on a medium flame ’til the whole lot stops sizzling. The cooking oil will now be bright green with all the goodness from the herbs infused.
  5. Turn the heat down and put the steaks into the pan. Keep it hot enough so that they sizzle but not spit.
  6. Turn occasionally, cook for about 15 minutes. Serve with new potatoes and peas.

Cold comfort?

Well, it’s Saturday.

Thankfully, I got a better night’s sleep last night, though at one point I did wake up totally soaked in sweat and had to change the bed linen. (How can anyone sweat THAT much?)

My nose tap has started to slow down now, but it’s going to the slightly gooey stage. Now, of course, I’m getting to the coughing time 🙁

As for things I did today. Tom (xencat) phoned asking if I was feeling well enough to meet up at Gloucester Green for a day out. Although at the time I was feeling a great deal better than I had been.. I actually had some working brain cells and didn’t feel as though I was high as a kite, I decided that I wasn’t really up to a whole day out and also didn’t want to risk giving this awful cold to Tom, Shona or either of the Tanaqui’s so declined the offer. This was probably a good thing as later on during my shopping I started feeling iffy again.

Anyway, I popped into the All Formats Computer Fair to see if there was anything useful in their second hand stalls.. there wasn’t, and I was disappointed to discover that the £1 off tickets are only valid until the next fair, which means that it doesn’t give the dates for the following months, which I really wanted all along.

I then popped into town, bought a new jumper, diverted into the Virgin Megastore and saw that they were selling 2 DVD’s for £11, 5 for £50 or £15.99 each.. if you work this out it means that if you buy two then they are £11 each or £10 each if you buy 5.. Seeing as (a) it’s not much better buying 5 v 2 and (b) there weren’t 5 DVDs in the offer which I wanted, I managed to find 2 and buy them: Stargate (Director’s Cut) and In The Line of Fire (Collector’s Edition).

Neither of the DVDs have wonderful extras.. I dunno why the Clint Eastwood film is the collector’s edition as it’s not got mant special features at all and the one thing it does have which isn’t a trailer has marginal connection to the film.

Anyway, After this I trundled off home played with the DVD’s a bit and waited ’til 1pm so as to allow the crouds to subside from Sainsbury’s. Thence, it was Sainsbury’s shopping, where I forgot the milk, so after watching Stargate with the comentary popped down to Tesco’s for the milk.

The evening has been spent watching In The Line of Fire followed by Galaxy Quest on Sky Premier Widescreen and the last half of Charmed.

Hmm.. it seems like the actors from the BBC comedy “Coupling” are doing supernatural drama now.. “Strange”

(That’s all I can describe seeing the actor who played the sex crazed welsh lout in Coupling looking the same and playing an ex-priest fighting evil, whilst the woman who played one main love interest in Coupling trying to defend her son from an electricity demon. And I’m sure the demon was played by an actor who had a bit part in Coupling too.)

Anyway, it’s now 10:30 and I thing I shall try to go to bed and sleep after a mug of Lemsip.

Horrid, nasty, nasty cold.

OK.. So this cold I talked about in my previous entry got worse overnight.. I went on a sort of temperature rollercoaster, burning up, feeling chilled and all the time having a nose running like a tap.

Not only this but it upset my innards so that I was running to the loo all the time. What made this more interesting was that everytime I tried standing up I felt extremely nauseous and also light headed.

Let’s say that I didn’t get much in the way of sleep.

Funnily enough, I didn’t go into work today.

Thankfully, the problems with the innards finished by lunchtime, but the tap which is my nose continues to flow.. maybe I need a plumber?

Blurgh! Blurgh! Thrice Blurgh!

Let’s see..

I’ve got an awful cold.

I drove part of the way into work this morning ‘cos of the cold and parked in a part of Oxford called Marston, just across the marshes from the University, about 15-20 minutes’ walk. (It’s never a good idea to exercise if you have a virus ‘cos the increased body metabolism just helps make more virus.)

Work wasn’t much fun with a cold, and I’ve got to go in tomorrow.

I got back to my car this evening to find some b’stard had keyed the rear passenger, driver’s side door. Thankfully it’s not dented. A friend who suggested parking in that area has done so for the last 3-4 weeks without problem. Maybe it’s ‘cos his car’s a G-reg Peugeot 405 without a Uni parking permit and mine’s an X-reg Saab 9-3 with an out of hours permit in the window.

The scratch MAY be fixed with touch-up, but I doubt it somehow, so it’ll need a half-panel respray, probably.

Grrrrr.

That monday feeling.

Hmm.. what have I been up to during the last week?

Not much in the actual week, as such, other than popping in on a couple of Friends in Wheatley to give them a video tape and to cheer Jenn up ‘cos she has the gastric flu thingy going around.

Saturday was fun. After the normal weekly shopping in the morning (where somehow I spent 10 quid more than usual.. about 30 quid) I popped into London and met up with Alec etc. for the By the Gods meeting thingy. We joined up in Charring Cross Police Station then went of for a meal in an Italian place in Covent Garden. I had a lasagne, salad with apple crumble and custard (I know, not ver Italian) for afters. We then popped off to a little cafe near Charring X nick where Maureen and her police pals often drop in for coffee. T’was then time to pile into Maureen’s RAV4 to travel back down to Page’s Bar in Westminster.

The evening in Page’s Bar was spent, as usual, with much nattering and otehr fun things, but unfortunately, I got a sinus headache so had to leave a bit earlier than usual, at about 10:20.. still, it meant I got home at midnight. I did discover some useful information.. The episode of “Alias” Sky show on Saturday IS NOT a repeat of the one on Wednesday, which means I’ve been missing half the episodes!

Sunday was spent with a bit of a dodgy tummy.. I think the lasagne was fighting back as they’d only microwaved the thing rather than having it freshly nuked from the oven. I felt just blurgh all day, so didn’t do anything much at all.