Year: 2009

Don’t see many new cars round here either and dealerships are either merging or closing

I’m still driving a 95! Oy!!

After earning a little streetcred this morning with the results of a little miracle working last night, I was heading up and down the motorway again today.

As well as iPodFM, I’m usually hunting for something to keep my brain active and fully awake while driving. When you’re going on Britain’s motorways, it pays to maintain a very sharp level of attention to keep an eye on the Nutters in the other cars. Unbelieveable people like the one in the service station who waits, waits … waits even more – and then pulls out in front of me at a time when I have to then slam the brakes on.

Yep – there was the predictable Bluetooth telephone headset in her ear.

So what was the Entertainment Of Choice for today’s drive ? I was curious … And started looking at the registration plates whizzing past. The question on my mind was – “ok, it’s 3 months into the new registration plate, how many new cars out there ?”

The answer, sadly, is not many … I saw a few “08” and “58” cars out there but only one “09” car. Over in Britain we now mark our cars with numbers for when they were made, so my Focus is a “52” car, which means it was registered in the second half of 2002. My last car was an “S” registration, which takes a little more working out … (it was registered in 1999).

So that’s my observation of the day – connecting a lack of new cars out there with signs of Recession. Of course it could be because I was travelling at 10.30 to 1.30 and 16.00 to 19.00, so I probably missed all the RepMobiles (Sales Reps get a bad reputation on our roads for a Devil-May-Care attitude) and the hire cars.

Trips out aren’t too much of a hardship, as they allow me to indulge my biggest addiction (for now), which is listening to music 🙂 However, IpodFM isn’t as clear as it could be due to increasing pollution of the airwaves by commercial stations. At least the music doesn’t seem to be the cause of the lag I’m suffering on Warcraft, as I still had the lag even though no music was playing earlier. Think I have a little more to do with my network setup to get better gaming performance.

Right ! Time to get updated with what’s been going on in the world while indulging that music addiction. Current track is “Think About You Now” by Gloria Estefan. Thinking about a few people at the moment. There’s the Rose with her illness, Snow Queen with her bugs, the gaming people and whether they got bitten by the food poisoning that got me on Monday, Miss AB who I’ve sadly not spotted since she left our project and Ms Cantina who will probably be wondering why I wasn’t hunting sandwiches today 🙂

Got my fingers crossed for some better days soon. Lots of people I know seem to be not doing so well at the moment and rarely for me, I seem to be joining them …

There’s our Snow Queen who’s suffering at the moment, that usually sweet clear voice is now unusually husky. I still have most of the control of my voice but I’m sharing the energy issues cos of last night’s events …

The nuts bit back.

Don’t think any of the messy details are needed so I’ll not scribble them down 🙂 Suffice it to say I didn’t get much sleep last night due to dehydration making my leg muscles cramp up on me. Not all at once but one at a time through the night. Grr. No lasting damage though 🙂 But I’ve been a little spaced today due to the lack of sleep and metabolising a bit too much of those bad nuts.

But a bit of food poisoning and bugs won’t stop people like me and the Snow Queen from coming in to work 🙂 Even though our Snow Queen has had people saying she should go home and sleep off da bugs. Ms Cantina’s been off colour as well lately but I’ve still had the pleasure of sharing a grin with her in the canteen area when I pick up my lunch 🙂

However our problems pale in comparison to what’s facing another of my colleagues. Let’s call her The Rose because she resembles the quintessential English Rose. Our Rose has a tall athletic figure and there’s a strength of personality that suggests you don’t want to feel the thorns 🙂 She works in another section of my team but I sadly don’t have the pleasure of having a chance to say “hello” too much. I usually spot The Rose as she’s walking up and down the floorplate and it takes a lot of control to look away 🙂 Staring is rude. But if I’m spotted I occasionally get a small smile answering my traditional grin 🙂

Trouble is though, that small smile has been somewhat shadowed lately, due to the health problems our Rose is suffering. They make food poisoning and bugs look insignificant.

Fingers crossed that she comes through ok. Looking forward to seeing that smile again, without the shadow that comes from serious health issues.

Buying new CDs is always therapeutic but I so hear you on the battery thing. Easter cannot come fast enough!

Sounds like a busy week. We all need alone time once in a while to catch up on stuff and recharge the battery.

Here via NetChick. She said hi too. 🙂

First night this week where I have an evening to completely dedicate to chilling out 🙂

Monday – would have been gaming but some people were missing and others were feeling ill. And I was heavily drained after a weekend of fixing things (see Techie Zone) and driving long distance.

Tuesday – Mall trip 🙂 Where I acquired 4 new cds for the collection and also where the title for this post comes from. I’m an electric toothbrush person and the toothbrush batteries were getting tired … Batteries come in packs of 4 and I needed just 2. I went out of the shop with 12 🙂

Wednesday – shopping. (and a couple of later work nights in there too)

Tonight should be a good chill-out ahead of the 3rd one day international (cricket) where England take on the West Indies. Yep, more cricket watching that will get me far too heavily involved in what’s going on in the game 🙂

New cd’s :

Goldfrapp’s Supernature
KT Tunstall’s Drastic Fantastic
Gorillaz Gorillaz album
Paramore’s All We Know Is Falling

Yep – my music collection is expanding yet again … there’s now close to 3000 songs in my iTunes library, so it’s a good thing my new laptop has a much bigger hard disc than the last one. I’ve been very impressed with a few of the newer artists to get in there :

Goldfrapp – amazing vocals on show here and the music is sufficiently different to be highly interesting.
KT Tunstall – not as inspired as Alison Goldfrapp but more very high quality music.
Katie Melua – similar to KT Tunstall here, hunting her 3rd album now.

There’s a bit of a common theme in that list isn’t there … Gotta admit that I do have a thing for quality female vocalists 🙂 I do listen to other things, Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones is a particularly good album that I’d forgotten about. And it’s not just mainstream, there’s a couple of Iron Maiden albums new to the iTunes library too.

In other news, I think I embarrassed one of the canteen girls today.

Hey ! It wasn’t my fault I walked up behind her while she was singing “Love Is In The Air” … This is the same canteen girl (aka Ms Cantina) who was desperate for me to nibble her waffles last week. I shall have to see if she’s still blushing when I go bacon sarnie hunting tomorrow morning.

Looking forward to chilling out over the weekend and Easter can’t come too soon. Needing a break from work to recharge my own batteries. For some strange reason, our bodies don’t run on AA cells like everything else does … Although demolishing a pizza or a bowl of pasta seems guaranteed to get the motor running again 🙂

PS I told Ms Cantina while paying for my muffin that I’d be humming “Love Is In The Air” for the rest of the day and yep – that song is still in my head 🙂

Lol – Nada comes from rarely having anything to eat before legging it for work 🙂

you’re a lot like I imagined you 🙂
you’re adorable

when my son first started playing little league baseball he was forever putting his cup on wrong and then running around the field in the oddest ways – one time he asked for a time-out to “fix myself before my penis falls off”

that’s my boy!!

and I repeat – you’re seriously adorable

you’ve got some great names!!
I love Lynx Crunchie and Orange Socks and Nada