Ants!!

Was in the kitchen tonight, idly drying my hands & staring vacantly at the grotty area under the radiator where the towel hangs. (Everyone has grotty areas under the radiator, right?) Anyway, it struck me that the bits of kicked-off mud/blown-in detritus were accumulating to the point where I really ought to take the dustbuster to them... then it further struck me that the bits of kicked-off mud/blown-in detritus were blowing around quite vigorously, considering there wasn't a door open anywhere to cause a draught... then the stare suddenly got a lot less vacant as I realised they had legs & what's more, there were rather a lot of them, & they were heading out of the grotty area under the radiator as fast as their little legs would carry them.

Uttered a few expletives under my breath (not too loud, as daughter #3 was watching Alien in the dark in the next room) & hoped we still had that can of Nippon kills-all-known-creepy-crawlies-except-spiders-dead spray somewhere. Being a family of congenital hoarders, we did. It had no doubt deteriorated over the years (hopefully not into a too carcinogenic state) but I used it copiously enough to drown the b*ggers anyway.

(Apologies to any ant-lovers out there.)

Then went round the kitchen stamping on the escapees. Daughter #3 thought I was experimenting with some new sort of exercise regime & came to investigate. After I explained, she watched the rest of Alien with the light on....

I may not win any prizes for Housewife of the Year, but I do have my standards, & ants don't pass, OK?

Reading & writing

Or rather, reading & not writing. That's about it, really. Lynne's week! Even tried staying off the brandy, but it didn't help...

Driving

Just completed an OU survey about my attitudes & life experience (that was a real laugh!). I didn't mind the probing questions about my sex life. If finding a correlation between number of sexual partners & average TMA score helps somebody, somewhere, then so be it. What did rile me was their arrogant assumption that everyone drives. Had to leave two items blank:
I am not a safe driver when I exceed the speed limit
I sometimes drive faster than the speed limit
Sent them a snotty email...

Waking Dreams

That's the name of a major exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite art at Nottingham Castle this summer. It's the USA's largest PRB collection, on a world tour, & Nottingham is its only UK venue.

Details here

I'll be visiting with some OU friends I met online in 2002. My social/travel phobia is such that I never met them F2F until January this year. Before that, I always had a good excuse not to join their outings....

This was going to be my "make or break" year. Despite the odd stumble that almost sent me scuttling back into my corner for good, I think I'm making it. I've met my friends. I've been to three music gigs. I've travelled alone on a train, twice. There are still gaps in my life that I will never fill, & I don't have a cat in hell's chance of rivalling the rich
experiences of so many others whose blogs I read, but maybe I'll survive.

Waking dreams? They're the worst sort.

This little piggy...

... drew itself! But didn't take the analysis too seriously!

See my pig

Something Grimsby's best at!

I can reveal here **exclusively** that the Grimsby branch of Ottakars came top out of the company's 130+ stores for its pre-orders of the latest Harry Potter book. Everyone who works there was given a large box of jelly babies to mark this achievement.
This news brought to you by my resident Dementor (who's actually quite fed up with the whole thing & much prefers LOTR, but a job is a job...)

Art in the family

Well, nearly...
My eldest daughter's partner has a portfolio of his digital art online. You might be as impressed as I am!
Dave's art

Olympean contradiction?

RE the news that London has won its bid to host the 2012 Olympics: people are whingeing already, saying it will put up taxes & house prices in the south east, & only benefit people in the south east....... touch of contradiction there, methinks!

If you care

Read nogbad's refutation of Live8 cynicism here: here
& here
.

And another thing..

I'm struck by a parallel.....
"There's no point giving aid to Africa - the corrupt dictators will only use it to buy themselves more Mercedes" (no handy reference, but stick Africa aid wasted Mercedes into Google & you'll find plenty)
& an argument a very wise university tutor of mine reported 30 years ago:
"There's no point putting baths into council houses - they'll only use them to keep coal in."
It was lousy logic then, & it's lousy logic now.

A kind of karma

Coming onstage at Hull's KC Stadium tonight, after a torrential downpour that caused the Zutons to cut short their support set & led to a massive surge in sales of £1.50 pacamacs, Michael Stipe*:

"If it had to rain here tonight, so that it could be fine at Hyde Park on Saturday, so be it."

* Or Michael Stripe, as one of the stewards called him, influenced no doubt by the blue face paint job :-)

Another community?

46541 people took this survey before me.......

Dazzled by the Sun...

Today I did something I thought I would never do... bought a copy of the Sun.
"Free CD with this paper", it said (well actually FREE CD etc. - you know the style....) "Official Make Poverty History Album". Got it home & read the small print on page 24. Today only. At Woolworths. While stocks last. Sigh.
Moral of the story: Do not trust tabloids, especially when shopping a) with hangover & b) without glasses.

Silly dates!

Just updated my profile & found myself lumbered with the wrong astrological sign... wasn't till I spotted they'd also taken a year off my age that I twigged: you have to fill in your birth date American style. So not 7/3 (UK) but 3/7 (US). You'd think they would make allowances for us poor benighted little Englanders.....

A real community

The technorati site: http://www.technorati.com/

bringing bloggers together in real time through its instant updates on who is cross-referring to whom. Alerted to this by Nog's blog & impressed by the way it demolished my scepticism about communities requiring " interaction & bilateral consciousness of participation".

Lurkers rule!! :-)

What a cynic!

He's right, though.......

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4637801.stm