Hello again. Yes, yesterday I wandered over to the festering pile of washing up and proceeded to lay the smack down on it. Rob came along after a little while and helped. I think it took about an hour and three quarters to do it, and I didn't bother with anyone's pots apart from mine. There wasn't much else that happened yesterday, except that while I was out earning a crust (literally) some guys came and installed broadband in our house; honestly, the nerve of it. Anyway, I am bound not to use it as I'm not paying for it, so I don't have very much to say about it.

Today went pretty okay, at least for me, in terms of work. Deadline for the main payment run for this week is tomorrow, and I'm close to having finished except I guess I'll have to sort the post tomorrow, which might slow me down. Currently I'm doing the K payroll, which if for various things including meal-time assistants, or "MTA"s, if you're in a hurry. MTAs are those people who you may remember from your childhood as the dinnerladies that stood in the the playground and made sure the kids weren't screwing around too much; the thin blue-collar line if you will.

James bought me a DVD player today, which I will pay him back for. It currently either in it's box, or being messed around with by James, as I'm just trying to get ready for CU tonight. It plays VCDs, which means that I may be able to gradually burn all my videos to CDs and significantly reduce my shelf-space. Huzzah! It should also play CDs, CDs of MP3s, CDs of JPGs and some other things too.

Today Paul texted me to ask if James and I had finished the adventure game yet. We've been working on it for a year theoretically. So no, of course we haven't. Rome wasn't built in a day - neither, in fact, was Bognor Regis, so there you go.

Well I've finally done it, I've applied to go into teaching! Ahhhhhhhhhhh.
I've been thinking about it for ages and have finally applied after going into a school the other week. It was quite good. The English lesson that I sat in was a little dull but then I never liked English. And the Maths lesson I sat in was very different and much more fun than the maths lessons I remember at school, although I think I need to brush up on my mental arithmetic. It was very helpful talking to teachers and current PGCE students.

School never really changes though. Walking up to the school I noticed that all the boys were messing about and all the girls were wearing skirts up to their armpits. I'm sure we were not allowed to wear skirts that short at school (not that I ever wore them I hated skirts).

Oh and someone set a stink bomb off in the corridor while we were there. Not that I noticed as I have no sense of smell. I did wonder why this girl in the corridor was pulling such a face though.

I think it might be a bit scary standing up in front of a full class of teenagers and trying to keep there attention and stuff but I think I could do it with a bit of practise.

pray excuse shaky start to blogging comeback stop epic washing up this evening stop

Sunday was pretty routine; not a bad thing. Actually, I guess the rugby wasn't that routine, but I went to 1 mass, ate 1 portion of food cooked at chaplaincy, drank 1 pint Bass for 1 pound sterling, engaged in 1 At 1 group, played about 1 chord over and over while Lisa and Zosia worked out what we were going to sing next week. Next week is international mass. Paul said he thought that international mass wasn't a very good name for it, and he preferred cultural diversity mass. I didn't detect a trace of irony which was pretty disturbing.

Got back after that and lounged around. I've typed this all up in one session you know. That's why it kind of trails off. I'd better try not to do it this way again. Oh, and I expect I shall be blogging in arrears, as I'm writing this offline to upload tomorrow.

Saturday morning was a very post-event morning, as I lolloped about doing nothing much. I think I actually ran into Andy as soon as I got to the front room, and we chatted for a bit. By "we" I mean the whole present company. While Andy and Dan met Briony at the Boston Tea Party, James, Rob and I wandered round town, I to do proper food shopping, they to investigate the possibilities of the burgeoning videotronic game industry. Jamesbought Metroid Prime, and I came very close to buying a DVD player despite knowing that my finances are far from in order. Today (Sunday) I leanr that Mum and Dad will pay for it as a Christmas present, so Jamesmight pick it up for me on Tuesday. While stocks last though...

The day just kind of rolled along after we got back, with me doing Saturday things, like laundry and room-cleaning, until Luke arrived. We had planned... well, not planned at all really an inter-house reunion to tie in with And being here. It didn't quite come off, but it was still a good thing to do I think. Gavin didn't show, and Mino didn't deign to come to our house. He went to the Lemmy, which was the only reason I went. The entrance fee is a ludicrous £3. Apparently, five pints makes it economically viable. Four is about my limit, and I'd had three at the house. I didn't much want to engage is some kind of day of vomit on Sunday, so I would have gone home, except that Andy bribed me the said amount. I did enjoy the Lemmy, but it's a pretty dire place to get into the habit of going to I think. We danced; I danced like a maniac, which is my raisin Dietrich and Mino enacting the orbits of our solar system through the medium of dance to various kicking beats and firm young melodies. Andy he say this is how academics dance. I couldn't say.

Bed

Are you going to try and catch up or act like nothing ever happened?

That's James' apt response to my declaration that I'm writing this, my first blog entry in over a month. Hello readers; I trust the various blogging members of my family and Emma have been genial hosts in my absence.

The answer is that both alternatives would be a bit mad. I'm opting for some kind of middle ground and seeing how it works out. I'm afraid that I probably won't read my comments boxes, so you can talk about me via the blog, but it's probably not a good way to talk to me. I have a half hour lunch break at work as standard (flexitime don'cha know), and this time is very precious to me. Sorry. I might mention that my prayer-life has suffered quite a knock as a result of work, and probably needs some rethinking, but I do manage to read my bible quite a lot these days - there's a little alcove upstairs in the arts and libraries directorate...

man, i could be writing these entries for months at this rate

...which serves my turn. I was going to do a cursory review of work, but I've decided to do a cursory review of religious-type stuff first now. In order of appearance, I volunteered to play guitar at mass, so now a whole other church has to put up with me. I still go to CU a bit, but I've missed two; once because A Revenger's Tragedy was on, and once because I couldn't be arsed. I decided to go along to RCIA and ended up going to two; well sort of. Sacred Heart are doing one which is actually something like I would expect RCIA to be, this I attend on Wednesday's and is rather wetly called "Journey of Faith". Fr. Paul's (of the chaplaincy, not Sacred Heart) idea was to put us into a room and get us to talk about stuff. This happens on Sundays at 1 o' clock. I wittily suggested calling it "At one", but unfortunately they listened to me. There's a bunch of Christian's at County Hall, called Christians together at County Hall - get it? Well anyway, that's what my one hour lunchtime per week goes towards. Currently we're organising a carol service at County Hall and talking about a "room for for quiet meditation" that is apparently going to happen because of new religious legislation promoting vague tolerance. So far the interested parties have been Christians and Muslims. I expect there are a few Jews and Buddhists knocking around at County Hall too - maybe they'll express an interest later. Oh, I'm playing at the carol service too. I'm introducing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel". The person who leads it lent me her tape of The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain. I had a talk with Will in the Artful about Catholicism. We'd never really discussed it before then, to speak of, which I was finding increasingly odd. We are at odds but not at one another's throats - predictable but still good to know. I got Augustines Confessions in Wesley Owen for a quid upstairs, and a book called, neither ironically nor aptly, but definitely somethingly, God's Payroll: whose work is it anyway?. I get the impression it would be a really good book for me to read, but I've hardly touched it. I should do something about that.

This is going to take years. Hopefully you won't need too much detail about my work, as I guess it'll kind of explain itself in time, but "I process wages at County Hall", as I have said about a million times now to various interested parties. I work in the contracts section, which handles an odd assortment of people who don't like to maintain their own payrolls, like the police and grant-maintained schools and colleges. Also Devon Direct Services, who are very closely linked to County Hall anyway, so far as I can make out. I think I'll say about people as the need arises. I don't really want to say too much - it seems awfully rude.

I've had a fairly action-packed weekend, so that seems like a good place to start. Andy came to visit on Friday - here 'til Monday actually, but I didn't see her before I went to Nina's party. Nina's party was good. It wasn't what I was expecting, but that doesn't much matter. I was thinking music, and altogether more standing up and movement, but we had Interview with the Vampire and seats, which I'm tempted to think of as a format infinitely more conducive to fun. Well, maybe not Interview. Paul came along too, after I finally worked out that Nina expected me to invite him on her behalf. Paul left about halfway through, worrying Nina a bit, who does always expect that people aren't having fun. She needn't have worried. When I caught up with Paul the next day he said that he was having fun, but he quite unaccountably found himself by the Cathedral and then wandered home. Well, unaccountably save for the fact of the large quantities of alchohol. There weren't too many people there that I knew, but Alwyn, who I'd met before played a bit of musica perpetua on the acoustical guitar and Simon, who doesn't like being called Odo, was also in attendance. Plus, I talked to a person named Amy for a while. She was incredibly, I don't quite know how to put it exactly, polite> to me. The phrase "It was very nice talking with you." sort of sums up the attitude I think. A very nice person. She expressed interest in seeing Mozart's Requiem. Personally I think everyone should. I've been shamelessly promoting the concert this term for some reason. I'm usually less forthright about it. Possibly because the fact that James, with whom I have lived for two and a bit years now, has never seen me sing irks me on a subliminal level. But it seems that other people have to bear the brunt of it.

I left Nina's party in high spirit's, having consumed a few. I found myself back at a fairly quiet house, but there was an Andy in the toilet. I couldn't actually tell it was him; I could tell it was a long person, and that in opening the door to determine their identity, I would be beating their head against wood, so I opted to go with the ambiguity and just leave the light on to wake him up in due course. He was moving. Naturally it was Andy. As he gleefully put it, the first time I see him in about five months, and he's unconscious on a toilet floor.

And so to bed.

I got a seat on the train!! This is the first time I've ever got a proper seat on the Exeter-Home trip. I just wish the reason I came home early was something more enjoyable than a trip to the dentists. Oh well, at least that's over and done with.

I've finished off the database I've been working on for the booking in of clocks and watches for the horology course. I've also written a manual with lots of pictures for the less technically comfortable. I have already had about seven requests for a copy from the other students. Last of all I've finally moved over to the watch side of things, all be it in the last hour of work this week.

I might have blogged sooner, but someone had mucked up the college's Internet Cafe, locking the home page of every computer to a porn site, which also let a virus through the firewall.

I was in the GTUK taekwondo team championships yesterday in Altringham. I had to get up stupidly early to get there for 8.30am (early for a Sunday I think). But it was worth it as our team got silver for our category - women yellow tag to green tag. We got bronze place for the sparring and then the top four teams had to do patterns and we got gold for that so ended up silver overall.

The sparring was really good fun and we didn't do too badly since we haven't actually done much of it with the proper gear and everything. It was a knockout tournament and we won the first round, lost the second so we thought we were out of it then, but then they called us up to fight for bronze place as there were only six teams. We drew that so had to send up our best fighter for another 30 seconds as a decider. So I ended up going up for that as Sam and Rose who were in my team think I'm better than them at sparring even though they are a higher grade than me. Anyway I won that 4-0. I kept getting my opponent with the same move, she didn't seem to work out what I was doing and I kept getting points for it so I carried on doing it. It worked anyway.

The only problem with sparring was at first we kept getting loads of warnings for breaking the rules. That was because we didn't actually know the rules very well and we had been told different for a couple of them. But by the third round we had worked it all out and settled into it. The sparring looks quite scrappy but its really good fun.

Anyway then it went to patterns which was a knockout thing again. Two teams did their pattern one after the other and the judges picked the best team. So we ended up doing it twice and won gold.

Stockport got the gold medal which isn't so bad I guess as they have the same instructor as us. I didn't actually like having to go up against them in the patterns (we didn't have to in the sparring). We beat them at that but they had got more points overall getting gold in the sparring and silver in the patterns.

For my first tournament it was really good. There is supposed to be an individual tournament in March so I think I will see if I can go in for that. And next time I will have a better idea of what to expect and stuff. And a better idea of the rules!

It's a little odd coming home to an absence of siblings, admittedly it's nice to see Mum and Dad, but I've rather got used to seeing or hearing one of you lot around. The train journey home was a little better than usual.

I'll be moving onto watches soon on the course after all this time, I'm a bit nervous as I'm not really sure that I'm up to watches. I'll enjoy being able to find my elusive head instructor more easily and hopefully avoid one particular student who is a general irritant for the Horology students, being a "You don't want to do it like that" personality.

Had a bit of a scare at college last Friday, all the staff were called away for an emergency meeting (at 11:00), so training was cancelled until after lunch time (13:45), obviously rumours were flying around, so a student meeting was called to "explain". The Principle in "manager \ politician" mode spent a lot of time saying nothing in particular, so the student asked the instructors for a real explanation. It turns out that it was just about a change in the college's board, admittedly it was the appointment of the stooge of the incompetent £40,000-wasting ex-chairman so there could be some worrying implications, but we eventually got the message that the courses would be unaffected.

I've decided that I hate undergraduates (well maybe hate is a bit harsh). Its been really nice living in Withington in Manchester until a couple of weeks ago when all the students decided to invade. There is now loads more rubbish on the streets, usually in the form of beer bottles and pizza boxes, and the bus into town takes so much longer as it usually sits for ages outside the halls. Also there is this flat across the road which must be full of students who don't know how to work a burgular alarm as its always going off as from freshers week. I hadn't realised how quiet it had been over the summer.

Seeing it from a locals point of view I can see why locals sometimes are not so keen on students. I never remember throwing litter on the floor or anything when I was a student. Its probably the small minority, as is always the case, that give them a bad name.

Just realised that I haven't blogged for over a week, so my gorgeous green boxes have dropped off the bottom of the screen. Hmmm, what have I been up to?

Back at choir on Tuesday. We're doing some nice pieces this year, Faure's Requiem (jointly with the orchestra), some Negro spirituals (we did one last year, and it was lovely), and other stuff. All looks good. Then I realised that I can't make the concert (13th Dec, Manchester, £3/5 student/non-student if anyone's in the area), 'cos I'm at: a) a wedding, b) a family do, both of which are in Hampshire. Grump. It's not looking promising that another day would be possible instead.

Tried out the Gospel Choir on Wednesday. I was curious. Entered the Catholic chaplaincy, to a small room filled with about 500 women, and 2 blokes (estimated figures!). Just did one piece, which sounded very nice by the end. Unfortunately, there's only one male part, so I'm struggling with the high notes, and the tenors are struggling with the low notes. I'll give it another go next week, but I'm not sure I'll keep it up. If I were single, I might be more tempted to stay.

Finally - today!
I gave a seminar. I usually find this a nerve-wracking experience, despite the audience consisting of the guys in my office (i.e. 3-4 people). Today's went well. I was trying to demonstrate an incredibly complicated computational technique in nice cases, the aim being to demonstrate that it's not that bad really, and to get people more comfy with using it. Makes me sound so considerate, doesn't it! I think people found it useful, so mission accomplished. Yay! Goran was also asking about what I was trying to calculate with it, so I got a lot out of the talk as well.
Enough technical rubbish - postgraduate football is back on! My Wednesday evenings are now complete!

Hello, I've got a job. County Hall had another vacancy for the same job I was interviewed for in payroll, and they gave me a ring to ask me if I wanted it. I start on Monday and it's 11706 p.a. Got some blogs to read now.