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A couple of drabbles…

Just to fill some space, more than anything.

I want to ride my bicycle
I bike to work. It’s two miles on lonely back roads. I started for fitness and continued for fun. There’s not much better than freewheeling alone down glossy blacktop, nobody in front or behind for miles.

It’s all uphill except the end; the only thing better than smooth roads is going downhill so fast that it frightens you.

There’s an intersection at the bottom of the hill which I speed towards, not knowing if cars are coming from either direction, or if I can stop in time, and I really don’t care – I just want to go downhill forever.

The Condensed Bible
The Old Testament: Some naked chick eats an apple on the suggestion of a talking snake. Ruination ensues. Many books of Hebrews follow. Lots of begetting, some angels, pregnant women dashed against rocks. Some weird shit about polycotton blends and shellfish, and what you shouldn’t do at the weekends. No buttsex at all, not even if you both want it really bad.

The New Testament: Some hippy walks around annoying people and being a smartass. Said hippy gets nailed to a tree or something and deserves it. “Jesus loves you. Here’s some fish.” Still no buttsex, and probably no lesbians.

I have nothing to say…

… except that I am working still on my story. It’s a new genre for me – a Western. Yeah, a Western. I’ve wanted to do something in that vein for a long time, and now I can.

And in other news, one of the greatest comedy sketches of all time:

Quick update

Nothing much to report today. The new short story continues apace, and will be done in a few days. It’ll be different, I promise you that!

Work is dull but keeping me busy. Can’t complain, I suppose.

I now own this bike:

To finish, something for the missus:

That Was The Week That Was (And It’s Still Only Wednesday)

In which I try to do bike-related things and fail; also a short piece about being CRB checked.

The bike was to come from Woolworths, and was duly ordered. Due to the ineptitude of the delivery company, they weren’t able to deliver it until Monday, a full week after it was bought and paid for. I took one of my annual leave days, because they couldn’t tell me when it would be delivered. After being told by Woolworths first thing in the morning that it would be arriving between 9:00 and 1:00, I duly waited for it. I then had a call from the driver of the van to say that it would be mid afternoon. Grr etc. I duly made dinosaur noises, and then settled in for the wait.

2:30 rolled around, and I got my bike. W00t! I unpacked it, at which point, I thought that it looked a little on the small side. Hmm. Maybe that was just because it was in pieces. After assembling it, it was definitely too small. Gah! Like by about 4 inches or so. This was after reading on their website that said bike would be a perfect fit. This is obviously too small to be dealt with. A little bit too small is one thing, but this was just not to be borne. So it’s going back.

Luckily, I hadn’t yet done anything with the old bike I’d inherited from my granddad. It’s a fifty(ish) year-old Raleigh utility bike, suitable for a wide range of activities, with a steel frame. It’s like the one in the picture, but in light racing green with a basket on the front.

It’s creaky, the tyres are perished and the chain is all sagged out. This morning, I took it to a bike shop in town which also does repairs; they said it’d be about £60 or so replace the lot, and I could have it back at the end of the day. I did my Monty Burns impression and left my work number, anicipating that I would pick it up at the end of the day, the old sit-up-and-beg rejuvenated and raring to go.

Unfortunately, I got a call later on to say that the rear sprockets are completely knackered, meaning that the beautiful, original Sturmey-Archer gear hub would have to be replaced. Luckily, they had a second hand one, but it meant that the bike would have to be picked up tomorrow morning. Damn and blast and aaargh!

Still, at least I will have a working bike tomorrow morning again. I’d forgotten how slow it feels to walk anywhere.

In other news, I now have to be CRB checked.

It’s been a pain in the arse week.

A busy day

Well, I think it can be said that the first day at the new office went well.

I found all of the stuff that I had packed sitting on my desk, and I mean all of it. A huge pile of stuff. I got most of it put away, and then we moved onto the filing. There were approximately 35 boxes of it, packed full. Not small ones, either – each of them is about 1 1/2 metres long, half a metre wide and the same deep. That’s a lot of filing, I’ll tell you right there.

I then spent most of the day teaching other people how to use the phone system and new photocopier-printer-fax-scanner thingie. This despite having only this morning been taught how to use them myself by the ICT people. Further real work was prevented by my database playing up. On the plus side, I do have a new computer, factory fresh. On the negative, so does everyone else, so I also spent a long time setting minor problems to rights with them, too… All in all, it’s been a busy day, but satisfying in a way: we’re completely moved into the fancy new building on the business park, and while the office is open plan and shared with other teams, by the time they move in, we’ll have been there months already and will have superiority and they’ll have to adapt to us, rather than the other way around. Office politics.

I’m still working on the bit about I Am Legend, but will have it soon.

In other news – the most popular search term for me right now is Charles Darwin, and untold numbers of people are looking at the birthday post I did way back when. And I have no idea why.

Speaking of searches, one of my most popular terms is dinosaur noises. Whoever is consistently searching for dinosaur noises and finding me, I salute you – your nutty persistence is a testament to human weirdness. As strange as that is, it pales in comparison to the newest persistent search term, which is pirate noises. The third most popular weird search is donkey in a bathtub and variations thereupon.

You people are weird.

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I am currently damaging my ears with Electric Samurai (again) and Gone Gone Gone by Charlie Feathers. Yes, I know listening to a Japanese axe-master and a 50s rockability one after the other is odd.

On my film list recently: The Evil Dead, The Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. Look forward to reviews, campers.

BWO

I think anyone who visits this blog regularly has by now realised that I am not a frequent blogger. It doesn’t come particularly easy for me, most of the time, and I often just don’t feel like I can be bothered to do it, if I’m honest.

And that leads me to feel a little guilty – which is ridiculous! I know that the Odd Blog isn’t XKCD or Feministing or Alas, A Blog. People aren’t waiting with bated breath for my latest pronouncements on whatever happens to interest me lately; I know some of you turn up whenever I post something (mainly because I have secret cameras installed in your houses), but I also know that you probably aren’t going to be riddled with sorrow if I don’t post anything for a week or two.

Back at work…

After my unfortunate abcess experience, I’m back at work. Not much to report on that front, just catching up on stuff that I missed throughout the week. Luckily, my colleagues have shouldered some of the workload and managed to keep afloat the things that I would normally be doing. I’m very grateful to them for that; we have the kind of office environment where things are nice and easy. Not with that constant aura of tension which was so prevalent in my last job.

Update: I’m also working on a post with the working title of “On Politics”.