Twenty-one (and a bit)
I have been alternately too busy and too tired to update recently. Which is good and not so good, respectively.
I had a nice birthday, necessarily fairly quiet due to work. Went out for a midday pint at lunchtime with work chums and had a few friends round in the evening. On Thursday, I went to Buckingham Palace for what was the most expensive (in terms of travel), most secure and all-round oddest film outing I've ever been on all rolled into one. Seeing Shaun of the Dead on a small and slightly tatty screen in an ornate back room of the palace was unusual enough, but even more surreal was the 80s soundtrack being played before the picture started. 'The Power of Love' and the theme to Beverly Hills Cop are definitely more enjoyable when played in an atmosphere of ormolu clocks, large expensive paintings and a few hundred years of history.
I got home later on and discovered that my trousers had been split down the bum-seam for an uncertain length of time. Classy.
...
I was sent on a one-day PAT testing course by the school recently. (Those of you with 'PIN number' rage will be glad to know that PAT stands for Portable Appliance Testing.) It was extremely dull but also a worrying flashback to school, not least because the course was done in one of our own science labs. I think there's something about the experience of sitting at the back of one of those rooms, making jokes with a friend while some dullard attempts to figure out how to shut down a computer and work a VCR that will always be with me.
Hmm, I can't believe I'm 21. I feel all old and young at the same time. I wonder when I'll get to get drunk in America.
Oh, what should I request as a Christmas gift? I would like to hear suggestions for geeky things I would not otherwise have found, otherwise I am going to have to be exceedingly boring and ask for a DVD burner or something. (I also now have my Special Birthday Gift, which I shall write more on later.)
I had a nice birthday, necessarily fairly quiet due to work. Went out for a midday pint at lunchtime with work chums and had a few friends round in the evening. On Thursday, I went to Buckingham Palace for what was the most expensive (in terms of travel), most secure and all-round oddest film outing I've ever been on all rolled into one. Seeing Shaun of the Dead on a small and slightly tatty screen in an ornate back room of the palace was unusual enough, but even more surreal was the 80s soundtrack being played before the picture started. 'The Power of Love' and the theme to Beverly Hills Cop are definitely more enjoyable when played in an atmosphere of ormolu clocks, large expensive paintings and a few hundred years of history.
I got home later on and discovered that my trousers had been split down the bum-seam for an uncertain length of time. Classy.
...
I was sent on a one-day PAT testing course by the school recently. (Those of you with 'PIN number' rage will be glad to know that PAT stands for Portable Appliance Testing.) It was extremely dull but also a worrying flashback to school, not least because the course was done in one of our own science labs. I think there's something about the experience of sitting at the back of one of those rooms, making jokes with a friend while some dullard attempts to figure out how to shut down a computer and work a VCR that will always be with me.
Hmm, I can't believe I'm 21. I feel all old and young at the same time. I wonder when I'll get to get drunk in America.
Oh, what should I request as a Christmas gift? I would like to hear suggestions for geeky things I would not otherwise have found, otherwise I am going to have to be exceedingly boring and ask for a DVD burner or something. (I also now have my Special Birthday Gift, which I shall write more on later.)