carolanne5

One festival I probably won't be going to ...

http://www.thewowfest.com/

Have YOU walked on water yet? 

Looking forward ...

... Tomorrow I'm off to Budapest with my old friend K, for a long, relaxing weekend.  Just need to survive work today first!

... My 40th birthday is in June next year and I've decided that I'm going to celebrate it with forty festivals for my forty years during 2010.  Insane?  Yes, quite possibly.  The goal will be to do as many different things as possible, with as many different friends as possible. 

I've been thinking about it for months, I'm still not sure it's achievable, but I'm sure I want to give it a try.  Maybe I should take bets on how many festivals I'll manage before giving in?  Maybe I should somehow link it into a charity fund raising thing?  Mmmm.

Logistically I need to aim for four festivals a month to be sure of achieving my goal.  January is almost set up, three festivals decided and three sets of friends lined up.  Any ideas for January ideas gratefully accepted. 

In fact any ideas for festivals would be appreciated, well accept for music festivals, I already have a list of dozens of those and I don't want more than a couple of music festivals in the forty.  The quirkier the festival the better.

I'll probably start a separate journal for the forty festival entries, so that my RL friends can read it without seeing my personal posts.  Hopefully I'll have time to get more organised over the Xmas holidays.

So wish me luck!

Went down with a cold on Wednesday, undescribably exhausted, managed to get into work on Thursday morning only to get sent home by the boss.  Spent Thursday in bed (gave away my concert tickets) but felt even worse on Friday (had to cancel much looked forward to mini-m00t with UC and TQ).  Got little sleep last night (couldn't breath through my nose lying down, coughed when I tried breathing through my mouth) until I rigged up enough duvets and pillows to sleep in a sitting position (keeps nose clear). 

Meant to working the Sams night shift tonight but I had to cancel, fingers crossed they can find someone to cover or they'll have to close the branch.

Still exhausted today but had to drag myself out to deal with the real world due to a lack of food in the flat.  Managed to get to M&S to acquire minimum effort ready meals.  So shattered on the bus home I was struggling not to cry.  I'm an absolute wuzz at being ill.   Fingers crossed things start improving tomorrow.

On the last Wednesday of every month the Science Museums has a free late evening for adults only; to let the grown ups wander around without the hordes of screaming children.  They put on a different theme each month and arrange related talks for the evening.  So August's theme was forensics, September's was climate change and October's theme was ... Sex.

Honestly K & I had been planning to before we knew the theme, in fact discovering the topic almost stopped us going.  But in the interest of scientific discovery we thought we should go.  The Maths gallery held the "Dance, hormones and sexual selection" talk, the energy briefing room was briefing on "A history of sex toys - from the raunchy romans to the naughty naughties", the Deep Blue Cafe held a Lurve pub quiz and scarily the "So you think you're a sexpert" was in the IMAX 3D theatre. 

It was a very odd experience.  Firstly the queue was hundreds of metres long, and full of students dressed to kill, possibly never before has the science museum experienced such a riot of high heeled, short skirted women.  After 45 minutes of queuing we made it inside, where it became clear that the museum knew exactly what to expect.  Each floor had a temporary trestle table type bar bar at each end, dispensing vast quantities of alcohol, the main hall had a DJ and the Revolution Bar had been turned into an Oyster bar.   The place was packed full of horny students.  We felt soooooo out of place, the average ages was early twenties, so we felt positively older generation. 

All the rooms with talks developed their own massive queues so we opted for ignoring the theme of the evening and enjoying the main exhibits.  Gawked at the CGI simulation of all the satellites currently orbiting the planet, admired an original Ford Model T, peeked inside Apollo 10, shivered at a 1930's dentist's equipment display, had a chill of fear at the reality of an actual V2 rocket (the sheer scale and destructive potential), admired Stephenson's Rocket and considered the miraculous advances of medical science; all whilst stepping around the drinking, flirting, giggling masses.  Quite a surreal evening.



 

Sometimes you just know the person is American ...


(I feel like Marvin dealing with the automated doors)

So I had hassles over the weekend with disk space on my laptop.  Had to methodically delete unused, unwanted items and run a disk clean up.  Which is why I was considering buying an external hard drive, for backups and long term storage.  I might have got a little carried away.  I've ordered a lovely little silver 1TB high speed USB drive.  So shiny, couldn't resist.

So since last time ...

Books 29/31 were Darren Shan's Tunnels of Blood, Vampire Mountain and Trials of Death, continuing the YA adventures of the teenage vampire assistant; simple but entertaining.

Book 32: Simon Blackburn's Think - a whistle stop guide to the big questions in philosophy, a little basic but a good primer on the subject.

Book 33: Karen Armstrong's Battle for God - a brilliant scholarly history of the development of fundamentalism in the Western religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.  Historically fascinating and elucidating, can't recommend enough.

Book 34: Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography - a fascinating insight into the mind of a utterly unique individual, should be compulsory reading.

Books 35/37: Peter F Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God - as my good friend so aptly put it a trilogy with two and a half excellent books.

Books 38/45: The first eight books of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series; addictive amusing supernatural horror slash murder mysteries. 

Book 46: TQ's Keep your Bones Safe - A first draft of major new author, oh yes, nods.

Book 47: Marie Phillips Gods Behaving Badly - What if the Olympian gods were still hanging around today?  Magical mayhem and rom com.


... and I'm up to date.

Monday, back at work, shock to the system.

Tuesday evening, mini m00t with CB, UC and TQ, wonderful

Wednesday evening; Don Carlos at the Royal Opera House.  Jonas Kaufman and Simon Keenlyside playing Don Carlos and Posa, absolutely stunning duet in the second act, sublime.  Goosebumps.

Thursday; work ARGH.

Big work deadline for Friday has meant work late every evening this week.  The earliest I've left is 20:00 and that was in order to get to a 21:00 to 23:00 mentoring shift at the Samaritans (although mentee was a star and got me a box of chocs to say thank you (milk tray too, delicous)).  So I am absolutely shattered.

Just got home, cooked, eaten and washed and now I need to go pack.  Tomorrow evening I'm down to my parents place for a week of house and brother sitting.  Soooooooo tired.

*yawns*

Sand animation ... mesmerising

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo