My Post on 'ThisWebSite .." ..
TODAY: write to a Mass Murderer

no, you don't have to do it ..
[ BlueDog | 12-01-2004 19:06 ] ... you have a choice. That's the point of the diary I think - it could ‘change your life’ in that you stop for a moment, for once, in the rush of everyday life and think... in this case about Murderers, redemption, morality ... and choose to write, or not. I have no black and white reactionary issues with mass murderers, who may have changed (or not) in prison , but it isn't about them.. it's about me and what I have actually stopped to think about for a while (that's the goal of the Diary isn’t it? to make you stop and think for once?) :-)

So, I cooked us all a splendid meal tonight but now I've got reallllly bad wind and Anita understandably suggested I maybe stay down stairs for a while. It is that bad. Nothing on TV, too tired to paint for the exhibition, so I've been mooching about looking at the board on the 'thiswebstewillchangeyourlife' site. Tomorrow, I have to strike up a conversation with a neighbour I recognise but don't normally speak to (have never spoken to , I think actually).
Hopefully the frequent farting will have stopped by the morning, that's a conversation killer before any new friendship could be made.

Lazy life tasks

Most years (over the past 7 or so anyway) I try to set myself a few tasks for the coming year .. you know, things I wouldn't normally get round to amongst the job, shopping, DIY, watching TV, eating, sleeping, driving kids about etc .. previous tasks have been:

Write some Poetry
Write a Play (or two as it happens)
Become an Actor
Hold an Art exhibition
Research the family tree
Learn to play the Didgeridoo (Circular breathing - that's HARD, still not there yet)

Anyway , Emma-in-Law got me a great book this Christmas that doesn't have big goals to follow, but loads of day by day tasks - 'This diary will change your life' with the linked website :
http://www.thiswebsitewillchangeyourlife.com/
can't bothered writing the HTML to launch this as a link - so cut and paste it ya monkey.

I'll be periodically posting how I get on with each task as I do them. And I'm sure I won't do them all by any means. Today's was 'Cut out addictive substances for the day..'
I failed to abstain from Coffee but I did avoid chocolate even when thrown in my path at work AND home. I declare myself abstemious :-)

This is actually a test on new site layout BUT whilst I'm here ...
there's something nice about lying in bed on a january night, listening to the wind and the sound of the little stream that comes near the back of the house under our window, was thinking that last night during a spate of insomnia :)

oh bugger

oh bugger, I just spent 2 hours updating my site and now I've lost the blog i-frame.
And it's 1.15 a.m and I'm tired. I would have left it another day or so but I realised it was THE END OF THE HOLIDAY and WORK IS LOOMING so I panic'd " not enough time, too much to do ... not enough time, too much to do ..." etc.
You know what I mean.

Music keeping me company tonight (that I can recall) was: Husker Du, The Cult, Elvis Costello, Pearl Jam, Sam Brown, REM, The Police, Van Halen, Nina Simone and Tracy Chapman.

None of this is getting the paintings started for my exhibition.
Tomorrow is a DIY-tastic day though : putting up Lian's TV bracket and then stripping old cupboard doors (why did people cover nice old panelled doors with shit hardboard in the 70's?)
Art will have to wait again :-)

happy another year

I slipped on the millennium and find myself in 2004.
Bewilderment won't be unique to me I know but I am more along that line than the way-hay-lets-toast-the-end-of-another-year frame of mind. We did go out tonight though and it was nice to see familiar faces from the village with their friends and families. Even in the Kes meets Brassed Off surrounds of the Legion Club.
Good mix of music thanks to Tony but I couldn't really get into it though, too surprised to be tripping in to 04 at such speed and conscious this is the year of turning 40.
Joe particularly had a good time, lots of his mates there so we left him bopping away and brought Ronan home about 1.00 am. It's a foul night out there, sleet and high winds. He just got back (2.00 am) and he's clearly knackered ... disappearing upstairs to bed but still managed to ask me the customary "Dad, what we doing tomorrow?".
Looking at the start of 2005 if we blink Son ;-)