marramgrass

Why is it that when getting to sleep is quite imperative, that’s when you can’t?

(Background: ever since I was about 9, I’ve had recurring bouts of insomnia. I’ll regularly have spells of a week or two to a month or so where I sleep very little verging on not at all — at these times a lot of reading gets done. It’s a trait I share with my father and my brother. You get used to it.)

This morning my alarm went off at 0430, as I had to drive my sister-in-law to Dublin airport (about a 180 mile round-trip — I was back in time for breakfast).

But of course, when I got into bed last night, I lay awake until sometime after 1 a.m. Typical, and I knew it would happen. Any time I have to get up earlier than normal, it happens, sure as anything. Probably because I tell myself it’ll happen, I know.

At that time of the morning, it was quite a pleasant drive.

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While I’m here, I think I’ll be adding another link to the sidebar, on top of the recent flurry of activity there. Monochromatic Outlook is the very readable and rather eclectic blog of a guy in (I think) San Francisco.

I know that I am revered as one who has his finger always firmly on the cultural pulse, relied upon as a barometer of cool. Yes, you may protest, but we know how it really is.

But even I must admit a few guilty pleasures, tendencies the revelation of which risks my reputation, such as it is. These three have been recently recognised:

Last weekend I was at my mother-in-law’s birthday bash (’tis the season for barbecuing), and somebody stuck a particular Garth Brooks album in the CD player. It may be the only Garth Brooks CD I own (if you will accept that fact as mitigation), but the next day I had to hunt through a stack of boxes (six months after we moved house, the CD collection is still only half-unpacked) until I found it. The car stereo has been turned up loud ever since…

I have posted before on the influence my parents’ satellite television service has on me. A new-ish discovery (to me, anyway) found there is Las Vegas. Flashy, a little trashy, hugely entertaining brainless TV. Amazon (here’s me wishing for an affiliate link, but I’m a long way from being dragged into the ‘blog monetization’ trend) are currently selling the first two seasons in DVD boxed sets cheaply. They landed on my doorstep this morning. Now, if I can convert my wife, all will be well.

The Archers is a British (English?) radio institution. I had a short-ish run of days when I happened to be in the car while it was on. This is associated with my turning to Radio 4 in the absence of Radio Scotland on this side of the water. But during this spell of exposure to the denizens of Ambridge I got slightly hooked. Not hooked to the point of losing sleep if I miss it, but if I’m by the radio (which generally means in the car) at the appropriate time of day, I will tune towards Radio 4 rather than away from Radio 4 — which is what would (perhaps should?) have happened. A bothersome development indeed.

The bizarre thing about The Archers is that after months of on-and-off listening I’ve only got a handle on who a couple of the characters are supposed to be, but I still enjoy it. Freaky.

There you have it. Comments are open :-o

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So, this site got broke for a little while from last night. Some more configuring at the web host that caught me on the hop.

All is well again.

I don’t know how much you’ve heard about the current mix-up (I say ‘mix-up’ - I’ve heard the words ‘chaos’, and especially ‘debacle’, so many times now they’ve lost their meaning to me) with recruitment for junior doctor posts in the NHS. It’s close to us because my wife is right in the middle of all the uncertainty, but I’ve only really seen a few brief references in the news, mostly short on the detail.

But last night Channel 4 News got full-on with the Secretary of State for Health, Patricia Hewitt. I don’t know how long they keep the article on their website for, but I think the video is only there for a week. If, after that, you want to see it, drop me an email and I may know how to get it in front of you… ;-)

UPDATE:  An enterprising individual has stuck the interview up on YouTube.

There’s this guy. Joshua Longbrake. I came across him via a few pieces he wrote for the RELEVANT website. RELEVANT is a fun place to find thought-provoking reads, and Mr Longbrake’s site is another.

I’ve been reading it on and off for several months, and meaning to do the linkage here, but was finally spurred into action by this post. Read it. I do believe it has the potential to make your life and your world just that little bit better. For real.

Casanova was surprisingly not bad, either. In my defence, my wife was off work sick, sitting on the sofa with a hot water bottle, and I was looking for something brainless-yet-entertaining to divert her for a while.

It worked. Quite entertaining, and fairly unusual for this kind of thing in that all the notional ‘bad guys’ were played to be quite sympathetic characters.

We ended up in Belfast this afternoon to grab a couple of things, and while my wife was in the bead shop (not altogether my bag, I’m sure you’ll appreciate) I stood outside and watched the crowds go past.

I was struck by the number of obvious tourists and people with honking great big digital cameras hanging around their necks, and that that wasn’t something you would have seen much of seven years ago when I left Northern Ireland. It’s a happy thing to notice in this week when our legislative assembly has got itself up and running again (even if the “historic day” consisted of many of the same people saying most of the same things as the last time our society changed for good). The other husband standing outside the shop agreed with me.

So, “while I was away”, my web host did a couple of very cool upgrades. I likey.

Unfortunately, one of them broke my WordPress install in an extremely subtle way. It disappeared the email address through which I receive comment notifications. This has had two consequences: people left comments that I didn’t know about, and spammers left comments that I didn’t know about. 3000-odd of them, actually, mostly really nasty pr0n stuff.

Ewww.

Sorry.

If you left a comment, I didn’t ignore you on purpose.

If you saw the ick, I apologise. It wusnae me.

Now the war on spam begins in earnest, with an investigation of what excellence the world of WP plugins has to offer…

And another thing: more new linkage.

The Peatster has been blogging for a bit, but it happened during my blip and I forgot to to link up. Duly remembered and done. He is a dude. We spent a very pleasant few days with him and Mrs Peatster, not to mention Peatster Jr., while we were back in Scotland last week.

Mean Girls. Much better than I expected. Actually funny, with occasional moments of slight originality. Cool.

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In other news, my spam filter appears to be eating my email notification of comments, so I haven’t noticed a couple over the last few days until now. Sorry. And it’s too late at night for me to think about replies. Sorry take two.