Here Comes The Braindump

In a few hours' time I'm off to do some niece-babysitting, which involves an overnight stay. Tomorrow I'm having lunch with some ex-colleagues and doing some small-scale "consultancy" for my former employer in the afternoon (money for old rope if you ask me, though of course I'm much too polite to use the phrase out loud). Then on Tuesday I'm off up to Nottingham again for a few days, which will be followed by a further few days of tagging along with my parents and their friends on their holiday in Suffolk.

If I was being a bit negative, I'd dwell on the fact that I've not done the things I expected to do over the past couple of weeks, while I've been dealing with this bout of coughing and sinusitis. That would be quite easy, but in fact when I look back, even with the several days I felt rather out of circulation I still seem to achieved a great deal. Despite my recurring encounter with Comrade Nastichestikov, things are happening. How much value one puts on them is subjective, of course, but I'm happy. Starting with my earlier trip to Nottingham three weeks ago, I have:

• Picked up my nephew from school twice, thus unexpectedly meeting a former schoolmate who was picking up her son
• Wandered down to a local pub with my dad for lunch and finally discovered how much it has changed in the twenty-two years since I last drank there
• Helped my mum re-design the local Horticultural Society show's programme in Microsoft Word, to avoid paying a local printer to amend it each year
• Chosen new furniture for our study from the Office Essentials range at Staples (functional, cheap, not hideous, expandable)
• Caught up with a family friend and his daughter (my former school friend) for dinner, following the sudden and expected death of their wife/mother
• Wandered around a churchyard and had lunch at a revamped pub in the ever sleepy, ever lovely Vale of Belvoir
• Come up with ideas, though not necessarily funds, for what we're going to do with the garden (this will probably wait till next Spring, by which time I will have restored my income)
• Had the new car checked out by my parents' local mechanic (generally good news apart from one thing) and had the brakes fixed (the one thing)
• Had a great Friday evening barbecue with the whole family, feasting on goodies from the local farm shop

Then I returned home and, in no particular order:

• Went to Niece #3's First Communion (at which I was "official photographer") and bounced (a lot) on the bouncy castle before belatedly discovering the "No Adults" notice, then flagrantly disregarding it anyway
• Caught up on our video backlog (Lost, Desperate Housewives, The OC - "white bread" TV, very tasty but absolutely nothing nutritious in it)
• Followed the one-week Nobody's Inn pub makeover programme on ITV (I thought the Manchester couple should have won)
• Learned (finally!) how to burn DVDs on my laptop (the big breakthrough: you can't do it in WinXP Explorer, like you can with CDs, there's an obscure third-party program hidden away on the menu)
• Burnt about 60GB of media files to DVD and thus freed up hard disk space on my desktop PC's 160GB data drive from 13GB to 75GB
• Bought a fabulous CaseLogic 280-item CD/DVD holder to store the consequent DVDs and also to finally keep all those crappy software CDs in one place
• Caught up on my Napster backlog and listened to lots of albums that have been intriguing me for a while (post to follow...?)
• Bought a 4-tog summer duvet and a couple of very comfy pillows and consequently slept a lot better
• Revamped the small ex-work laptop that I asked to keep on leaving my job, turning it into a worthwhile lightweight alternative to the newer Dell unit for shorter Starbucks-type trips
• Bought a couple of sunloungers for the garden (I was getting fed up of the "zebra effect" of sitting in a chair for an hour, then standing up and finding white, untanned lines across my stomach where it was all scrunched up)
• Watched all the England football matches (Rooney's red card, apart from the obvious fact that they subsequently lost, seemed to be the making of them) and plenty of others too (I thought Ghana were impressive against a lacklustre Brazil)
• Bought and watched the 3.5 hour Doctor Who Inferno DVD, which reminds me that I really must find out more about Jon Pertwee's other work, having read in the paper recently that at one point he was in some low-budget Brit porn flicks
• Re-established contact with English Girl #1 after a few months' radio silence, though she is unfortunately no longer coming back to the UK in the near future due to a large tax bill
• Thought long and hard about storage and archiving (i.e. Stuff) and decided that I really can get rid of things that have formerly been sacrosanct
• Junked about 500 cassette tapes (four black bin bags) that I haven't played in years, taking my remaining collection down to about 80
• Junked lots and lots of music magazines and cuttings that I have kept and never, ever looked at (one black bin bag)
• Worked out how to sell stuff on eBay (though my first attempt was scuppered by "server error" and now it's too soon before I go away, so I need to leave my second attempt until I get back)
• Found a friend who can use the small two-drawer chest of drawers we were given on buying this house, which we no longer need and which is part of the problem in the study (now I just need to get it to her...)
• Worked out that the best way to deal with storage in the spare room is to get a chippie in to build a fitted wardrobe that will give us around 50% extra storage space for household items such as spare duvets (also currently part of the problem in the study)
• Agreed with Mrs Hg that our Standard Life windfall shares will be sold immediately to fund home improvements, though we haven't actually agreed which projects this is going to enable
• Bought tickets for Gavin Friday's upcoming gig in Dublin in July, following a rather surreal telephone booking experience (also possibly coming in a separate post)
• Been down to Rochester for BBQ with Sister-in-Law #1 (i.e. Nieces #1, #3 & #5)
• Chatted to Niece #1 on IM for the first time, despite the fact that we've both known that each other uses it for months
• Tidied out that damn cupboard under the sink, though three days later I can't say it looks much better
• Done lots of crosswords (oh yes, lots...) and thus learnt all kinds of words and facts that I didn't know a few days ago (the British type of architecture known as Perpendicular being the most recent)
• Booked a cottage in Donegal for August and associated flights, researched car hire options rather extensively, concluded that car hire in the north of Ireland is ridiculously expensive and decided to pool resources with Sister-in-Law #3 (also staying in the same area at the same time) instead
• Bought a six-quid cable, synchronised Outlook with my phone, consolidated my formerly standalone Outlook and mobile contacts info (the virtual equivalent of clearing out your sock drawer, but I enjoyed it), and finally started using my phone as a PDA

If I end up going back to a 9-5 job in a few months' time, in a couple of years' time I'll probably wonder what exactly I did during my career break and this is the future reminder that I'll need. There's still plenty more to do though. Next, I need to get ruthless with books and CDs. Probably not to the same extent that I have with cassettes, but as far as I possibly can. There's also vinyl and videos to consider...

Posted by Hg on Sunday 02 July 2006 at 12:06.
Received 2 comments so far.

I dunno, you sound like you've been pretty busy to me mate. Sure it's not BIG THINGS but if you add 'em all up.. it's a lot.

I'm shocked at your conduct on the bouncy castle though.. LOL, I'm kidding (and jealous!)

Comment by Gordon on Monday 03 July 2006 at 21:34.

Bloody hell, that's LOADS!

I dream of achieving that level of sortage. Unfortunately all sortulation is on hold while I finish this damn novel.

Comment by Clare on Tuesday 04 July 2006 at 23:05.

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