Happy Birthday Bro!

I gave in. I took the day off. And made reasonably productive use of it.

Dragged my ass out of bed early to make breakfast for my beloved before she scuttled off to work. Chatted online for a bit, then headed in the general direction of the XBox. Yes, I was playing that game again. That's the last time I spend $500,000 on a swimsuit for Leifang, I can tell you. Ungrateful slag.

When I returned to the PC I ended up arranging an impromptu Let's Do Lunch(TM) with Anne to be followed by the usual hilarious (to us) deconstruction of Merry Hill, its shops, and the people foolish enough to be in it at the same time as us when we're On The Bitch(TM).

So Pizza Hut was fun. I swear when we walked in there were more waitresses than customers - and the place wasn't exactly empty. However, I guess we had walked in bang on 12 and it was possible that they had opened only seconds before. This didn't occur to us at the time, however, so we got good mileage out of making clever comments about the fact rather than actually applying our brains and drawing clever conclusions instead.

Waterstones. Given how much of a book whore I've been these past few weeks there was little to tempt me in Waterstones - possibly because I've already bought everything that's tempted me. That explanation does make a lot of sense, LOL.

Phone shops. How come Nokia suddenly seem to have no clue how to design phones? All the new Nokia models seem to have fucked-up keypads that I'd totally need to retrain my hands to be able to use swiftly. I guess I'd adapt OK though. I have a feeling I could be upgrading to a 7250 later in the year when my contract says I can. Or some other such media-messaging-capable phone. Yes, not only a book whore, also a gadget whore.

The persistent lack of a decent Starbucks in Merry Hill lead me to make a quip that will probably now doom my friendship with Anne. I pointed out how most friends end up talking about opening a bar together, and said maybe we should buy a unit in MH and set up a decent dark coffee shop. Once you talk about clubbing together to buy a bar (or equivalent substitute, in our case), the friendship is probably as good as over.

Note to everyone: I am of course kidding. It wouldn't work anyway. I'd end up being the one who opened up the shop every day and she wouldn't turn up until the first coffee was ready. Either that or she'd sleep in the shop with an intravenous feed from the espresso machine linked to an alarm. Either way, I don't think it'd work.

I keep forgetting to mention this. I dearly hope Jasper Fforde has seen the article. Note to Non-Jasper Fforde readers: I am not explaining why this is cool. You wanna know, go read the books yourselves.

Since I got back from my excursion I have advanced my progress on Chapter Two of Enslaved (which dedicated readers will remember is the first book in the scifi trilogy that it would seem is gonna take me several years to write). Still, Pepper Rats (and maybe its sequels and prequels) should keep me in the money in the meantime. Or at least, I can dream. I should also mention that I haven't finished Chapter One yet. But the two chapters are independent, as they concern different threads of the story. So do three and four, probably. Second chapter, and I already have two Rogue Characters. Not Page-Runner type Rogues, but Floo type Rogues. Characters who pop up as incidentals and then instantly endear themselves to you. In this case the characters are called Qi and Raven. Qi is already lobbying for a lesbian relationship with one of the other characters later on and Raven is probably going to be quite a Nasty Piece Of Work(TM). Not entirely sure what to do with him, which is always a bad sign.

That's pretty much it. Off to see my brother tomorrow for reasons which should be apparent from the entry title. Off to bed now, because I'm exhausted. And I haven't been taking early morning baths or anything like that...