Now That's What I Call Pondering!; vol 76

I hate when I've got all these ideas, thoughts and concepts swirling around in my head, but its so difficult to try and link them into any sort of coherent thread. It doesn't really make for the best of blog entries to just list a couple of random things that I've been thinking about...

First off, to give you an idea of the sort of boredom I must have been suffering with to realise this, but within my lifetime we're going to see the 2000^th anniversary of the death of one of the most influential people in literally the history of the entire earth. I wonder if there's anything planned for it?

It's been a busy week it seems for everyone around me, just... not me myself. I suppose I went out, and that should be a good thing, but its mainly just been very dull that so much of my time is spent resting and recovering instead of actually doing anything.

Another little piece of beautiful chaos that amused me – the other day, my brother and mum went down to visit my gran, where they returned with 3 packs of “spicy mexican chilli” flavour crisps. Because (of course), one of my gran's friends had bought the multipack, but didn't like that flavour, so it makes perfect sense to give them to her to pass onto her grandchildren “who like that sort of thing”. I love the sort of logic behind that for something so trivial, that something so utterly meaningless as the packet of crisps I'll have for/with my lunch tomorrow has a nice little origin story behind it, it's own little tale to tell of how it came to gain its place in the world.

Unfortunately the car exploded on the way home, so oh dear I won't be able to go out in it this week! What a shame that is. Somehow, I'll cope.

A-level results were this week, and more people have got As and A*s than ever before! This of course is an indication of the exams being dumbed down, therefore providing conclusive proof that because they scored higher than ever, today's teenagers are even stupider than ever before. Flawless logic.

Do you think if I keep a tab for the web page of a computer part that I want open long enough, one of the admins of the site will take pity on me and decide to send me it? “If he's this keen on it, he really deserves it for being such a generally top bloke. I'll just fetch his shipping address...”

Apparently we're now up to Now That's What I Call Music volume 76. Way to make me feel old – back in my day, I had Now 35, on TAPE. Not only am I 41 volumes out, I'm also two generations of playback medium. Three if you include minidisc, but... really, who would?

The other day I was channel surfing, and, after I'd spent an hour on the Military History Channel (watching The Atomic Ghost Fleet of Bikini Atoll, which was both entertaining and educational), I ended up catching the video to a Ke$ha song that I'd never heard before, called Take it Off. I was about to say 'her new song', but to be honest, it could be a year and a half old and this was just the first time I'd heard of it, I'm not really in a position to know either way. I was temporarily surprised to find that it had a catchy beat but wasn't annoying, and that in the video she was dressed in a very classy outfit with understated, attractive hair and makeup. Ah, maybe she's branching out?... Or not. Since by the end of the song she had, naturally, devolved into screechy ear-splitting nonsensical lyrics, had torn most of her clothes, and was now 'artistically' covered in powder paint and glitter as she mimed cutting herself. I'm sure there's a moral of this story somewhere about expectations, but seeing as its after 1am and I was struggling to make myself coherent anyway I think I'll just call it a night.

The Sky at Night

Things are awfully quiet around the house this week. The brother is off camping with dad before he has to go back to school next week, so I guess this is a trial run of how quiet the house will be without him once the holidays are over. But then, considering I sleep through most of the school day, it probably won't bother me too much, just have a lot of barking at someone arriving home around the time I get up and have my 'breakfast'.

I had an OT session today (yesterday actually, its past midnight), and I think it went pretty well. Making it out is always held up as wonderful progress, and I did that fine – we had a very pleasant outing to the local village shop. I counted 5 squished hedgehogs along the road there though, le sigh, and its not exactly a long stretch of road – it couldn't be if I managed to make it out along it, could it? I was determined that since it was my outing, I would be the gentleman and I'd pay for the purchases: a Milky Way for the lady, and some Skittles for myself. Unfortunately things cost a lot more than they used to in the good old days, and somehow that managed to come to more than the 70p I had in change, so I had to borrow a pound coin instead of breaking a £10 note. It just couldn't be one of my adventures if something didn't go wrong, I'm just glad it was that instead of any of the more serious pitfalls my mind is convinced lie out there in the big scary world.

There are a lot of things that I've never had the chance to do in my life – go out drinking, go clubbing, go to a concert, but last night I finally managed to cross one fairly minor one off the list – saw a shooting star. It could have turned into a legendary “seemed liked a good idea at the time” adventure for me to venture off into the night in search of space rocks, but after a long wait and a strained neck looking up at the 10% of the sky that wasn't clouded over, I finally got a jolt when something bright streaked into my field of vision for a millisecond and faded away into the night sky. I wasn't counting on it giving me such a fright, but still, its something I've always wanted to see that, despite my interests in space and the cosmos all my life, I'd never managed to. What shall be crossed off the list next?

Its generally been a good week for me from a social aspect, from multiple angles! I've been chatty enough with my mum's friend while she's been here, and apparently I'm a perfectly charming young man – quiet down with that snickering at the back! Thanks to some gentle prodding (and padding at my ego) I've been brave enough to send some emails to some people who sound lovely and interesting, so hopefully with some gentle persuasion and bribery I'll finally be able to push my (public) followers into double figures, mwaha! Plus you know, all the regular benefits that friendship brings. And stuff.

I was going to say its just a pity that animals can't sign up as followers, in a flawless segue into talking about my other new friend, but I just remembered that there are actually quite a few on Twitter, most of whom have more followers than me. Quite sobering actually, when you think about it. Anyway, I've been spending more time with the adorable little neighbours kitten that everyone's telling me to stop encouraging, but he's far too adorable to stop! I went outside and sat on the stone bench at the bottom of the garden, and an adorable little bundle of black and white fluff bolted from out the trees and came to sit beside me, curl up and give me lots of cuddles and purring. I can't turn that down!