How many straws does it take, again?

Aaand just to top yesterday off, our old favourite, insomnia!

That really irritating kind, that keeps you awake and fretful all night then allows a grudging ineffectual couple of hours' sleep as the sun comes up, so you start the day both late and grouchy. I really should learn (actually, I really should have learned by now, after a not-short lifetime) to manage this better. To do what my friends do, in fact, get out of bed and do stuff rather than just lying there listening to the radio and much oppressed by cats...

Anyway. Am late up, late to work and it's raining. What more, I wonder? I'm almost afraid to go downstairs and check the post...

I would like to complain about this poll

I am a proud and longstanding member of [redacted] Association - and every now and then they do something that annoys me so much I (even I, who am the mildest and least confrontational of men) have to stand up and shout about it.

They are currently canvassing opinions about a proposed series of meetings. They have circulated a pro-forma, with ticky-boxes. The three main choices to be ticked are:

* I agree that it is a good idea
* I would try to attend regularly
* I [...] would attend when possible

...and after that we're into details about location and frequency and such.

Does anybody else see what's wrong with this poll...?

Seriously. I've never seen so rigged a ballot. Even Ahmadinejad would be ashamed of this.

*fires off furious letters*

Note to self

It is not actually necessary to fire up the computer password in order to take a pill that happens to be on the desk.

Sometimes I think I spend too much time at this machine.

In which I am a lying liar who lies

I dropped a foodstuff on the floor. There was the predictable thunder of tiny paws, the hurtling arrival of small furry bodies.

I said to them - they heard me! - "It's celery, for cryin' out loud! Boys don't like celery!"

Apparently I was mistaken; boys do too like celery. At least, when it's been simmered for eight hours in lamb-juice they do.

Remarkably, it was Barry-the-Baz who ascertained this, by dint of getting there first, standing over it and growling furociously while he nommed.

And now I must, I really must put my hat on and go to work. It's after twelve already.

Unless I just stay home, and spend the day making inconsequential blog-posts...

Home again

So I did go into town, eventually. In my T-shirt, in the rain. A missing chromosome in my jacket-and-genes, alas: I became wet en route.

And then I sat in the Silence Room and worked until I had achieved quota, and never has it been so hard to get there - despite the tiger! who is a good tiger! but not at all what you would expect of a companion animal, oh no - but in the end eventually I did got.

And came home in a retaily therapeutic fashion (book! phones!), and am now frankly frittering my time, for lo, I have quota.

Also, I have remembered that tomorrow the Lit & Phil is closed until lunchtime, for staff training purposes. Lawks! What shall I do...?

Miss quota, probably. In the morning I suspect I shall stay home and bake bread with my reserved sourdough starter, and cook a ham. Then I have a proof to check, and other stuff it wouldn't hurt to read; I might forgo the library altogether, and take those to the pub. And possibly not work on the novel. Again. These days off, they are accumulating; I wish I didn't care.