(no subject)

[chess]

Had a very busy weekend, of the type where you can't quite work out where all the time went.

On Saturday, messed around trying to work out what was killing my Psion batteries in two days rather than a week (failed, but I suspect a combination of the cold weather (using the poor thing on the station at about 2-5degC, which is enough to make the screen go pale (very high temp, like leaving screen in direct sunlight in middle of summer, makes screen go dark)) and increased daily usage due to NaNo are to blame, possibly along with the lower voltage of the high-capacity batteries when slightly discharged leading to incomplete dishcharge + memory effect).

Then went to gym. Then (after lunch) I wasted a couple of hours courtesy of Sluggy and other random websites, then I went out driving with my dad. I seem to have a habit of crashing into curbs lately. It's annoying. Then I went to the 8-10s youthgroup (time, not age! - except it's normally Sunday, from 8.30pm, and Saturday it was at 7.30 instead...) to eat lots of Japanese food courtesy of (Akiko? It *sounds* like that...) the Japanese girl staying at Chris and Penny's (which is where we normally have 8-10s, and she brought us some sushi there once, which I suspect gave Pete and Ju the idea). It was very nice, and had a habit of taking things I don't usually like and making them taste good anyway. Like the sushi had rice vinegar on the rice, and I usually detest vinegar of all descriptions, but it was actually really nice. And the vegetable cakes (mostly noodles and potato, I think) had lots of onion in, but I liked them too. And the red bean paste was a little gritty, which normally puts me right off, but it was actually quite good. (The other dishes were some kind of potato soup (well, broth, really) and a big wok full of noodles and mushrooms and meat and onions. They were also really good.) Afterwards (well, with the red bean paste) we had icecream (nice white vanilla icecream) and toppings (chocolate sauce, strawberry sauce, chocolate that hardened into a crispy shell, and sugar strands. I ate sugar strands by the handful. Sugar strands goood. I am *so* going to get Type 2 Diabetes if I keep eating sugar like that). Even better, Pete and Ju locked the dog in the loft (with their mother, who was playing on the computer in there), although one of the cats decided to make up for it by moulting all over and eventually scratching right through my jeans. I didn't mind her so much as the dog, though, because she's pretty. (And hence do cats (and enchantedmelodys) get away with all manner of evil.)

On Sunday I went to church, which was surprisingly good given the mood I've been in all week. Olive attempted to kidnap me a couple of times but was foiled by people wanting to talk to her, so I was left talking to Akiko, which was a little difficult given that her English isn't precisely as good as, say, enchantedmelody's. She only appeared to know one descriptive word, 'nice', so she asked me lots of questions and I gave simple answers and she said 'that is nice' and then I asked her the same questions and got something approaching a reply. (Don't get me wrong - she's very nice and knows an awful lot more English than I know Japanese, it's just the whole thing was a little embarrassing as I'm not too good at conversing with people at the best of times.) Eventually Olive returned and rescued me while Akiko intimidated a small child by saying how nice her dress was and ruffling her hair excessively. (I think it was one of Sheena's, but I'm not sure.) Due to the goodness of the service I was slightly out of things to pray about me, so we went after the Bible study thing. She also told me that I was coming to the evening service whether I liked it or not, because Crowded House (my other youthgroup) were leading it and I hadn't been for ages, although she promised that I wouldn't actually have to *do* anything. We agreed to do some Bible note swapping there, and then I got home just in time for lunch, which was roast beef (not wonderful) with parsnips (which are good).

Sunday afternoon I mostly spent ironing and tidying my room. And then untidying my room with all the guck that's sitting on top of the scanner, waiting to be somehow fed into the computer. So I got through about ten sheets of notepaper typing in poems that weren't quite good enough to make the first pass but could be okay with a bit of editing, or that conveyed an idea/feeling/event I wanted to keep the memory of but were not necessarily any good as *poems*. I meant to start scanning stuff in but I discovered why I hadn't - I forgot to reinstall the scanner drivers when we messed Yamsyn around and the discs are all downstairs.

Comments

[passage.livejournal.com]

I don't get it ... what's this post doing on the backdated list. I mean, it's not actively depressed.

Neil

[chess]

I was just posting everything in the file backdated. (You can't post things in the past without backdating them any more, and I wanted it posted at the date I'd written it.)