Mental Note

Join a veg box scheme like http://www.riverfordnorton.co.uk/.

The ongoing gmail quest

• Thanks, Jessica, for the updated seating plan. Am I with the family on table 10, or do you think I am Michael, on the sweetheart table (?) with my wife?
  
• Thanks, St John's Ambulance, Australia, for confirming my fast-track booking to your Level two course. Travel is included, I hope?
• Thanks, Kathy of Manatron, for inviting me to an Office Live Meeting: unfortunately, 0700 on a bank holiday isn't a good time for me - still you were booking from a PST zone, so that's understandable.
• Thanks, Matt and Jan, for the baby photos; I (Michael) and Lula think the kids look charming. A bit confused by the photo of the Cafe Bambini, however. Also by your response to the vacation message, where you are "sorry for bringing this to our attention". Sleepless nights, eh?
  
• Annette, I wish I were indeed Michael, as you sound a most cheering correspondent. Rest assured that I will indeed enjoy any trips I have in the near future, and that if I grow any more tomatoes you will be welcome to some more. However, I am afraid Melissa lead you awry when she passed on my address. It seems Michael really has been "kicked off district email ASAP"...
  

The message is getting out...

This afternoon, I'd like to thank:

• Julie Winkel, for giving the background needed to help me (Mary) arrange my interview with Steve of New Haven Uni. I'm sure the Media Relations department prospers under her leadership.
• Ross Perry and Bill Dutton for inviting me (Matt?) to come fishing off the pontoon in Iowa City tomorrow. Hope the worms work out, guys.

Two apologies so far, so something is working maybe.

It's mine, dammit!

I was one of the original gmail beta testers; as a result I have a gmail address based purely upon my name, with no superfluous numerical suffix or other malarkey. I have for the past couple of years been fighting a losing battle against people who believe that they, having the same initial and surname, should automatically have rights to that address instead.

The dumb ones simply hand out the address to people, and wonder how they'll read the emails it receives afterwards. The smarter ones actually try to access the inbox first: finding they cannot log in, they issue a password change request - which of course is sent to me for validation...

Anyway, no more. I have set a vacation message on the account that, shall we say, makes clear my level of frustration with the account abuse. It also mentions that I'll be blogging all future traffic to the account. So, todays installment:

• Thanks to Colleen Laich for her offer to take me (Matt) for a birthday dinner on the 26th or 27th. Unfortunately, I have a clash...
• On the 27th, when I (Michaela) am due at a legal club presidents lunch and organisational meeting at the mall on campus
• Fortunately, I (Mary) can take comfort from a voucher towards the cost of joining my local Bible studies group

Frankly my schiz0phrenic gmail persona is getting a much more active social life than I am. Were I to dwell upon this disparity, my happy gruntled status would be at risk...

Rasputina makes 'song of the day' list

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a song about an old man. He had a cow. He had but one cow, and the cow died.

He loved the cow better than his own child.

When the cow died, getting grieved by the cow was going no milk and butter.
At home.

So, here come this song.



If you mourn for Dickie, I'll tell you right now
He was an old man and he had but one cow
Over hedges and ditches and fields he had ploughed
He ran for his life just to get to his cow

Oh, wicked Dickie done died
Oh, wicked Dickie done died

If you mourn for Dickie, I'll tell you right now
He was an old man and he had but one cow
Over hedges and ditches and fields he had ploughed
He ran for his life just to get to his cow

Oh, wicked Dickie done died
Oh, wicked Dickie done died

When the old man heard that his cow she was dead
over hedges and ditches you see he had fled
Over hedges and ditches and fields that were mown
he ran for his life just to get to his own

Oh, wicked Dickie done died
Oh, wicked Dickie done died

Now I sit down and I eat my dried meal
but I have no milk what to put in my pail
I have no butter to sop with my bread
now old wicked Dickie is dead

Oh, wicked Dickie done died
Oh, wicked Dickie done died

If you mourn for Dickie, I'll tell you right now
He was an old man and he had but one cow
Over hedges and ditches and fields he had plowed
He ran for his life just to get to his cow

Jealous?

Well, he started shooting at more or less the same time as me, but he switched to the dark side maybe a year earlier. Club tournament yesterday (American round, compound unlimited, 697 scored: second class would have been 713), and he told me he'd been selected for the County team at the SCAS shoot. What I said was "Congratulations!" but what I was thinking was far less praiseworthy.

Then he continued "It's a shame that my first County shoot is then, because its right in the middle of my first chemotherapy"... for advanced bowel cancer. I remember a few weeks back we were chatting around how maybe he thought he had an ulcer.

So I've been reflecting on competition and jealousy in general.

Your video editing skills are strong, young padowan...

Lyrics of the day

I said I'd never walk away,
But it seems we have come to that very day.
Don't waste your adrenalin
On the mess that we are in...

- Briskeby

Mozart's last letter

" I am appointed to a situation which will afford me leisure to write music just to please myself, and I feel capable of doing something worthy of the fame I've acquired. But, instead, I must die."

... and the glory of the world becomes less than it was.

Overindulgence

This software swallows all my best 'live' posts. Feel free to assemble the snippets below into an account of an evening that amuses you:

• 180 shots of flavoured vodka and counting
  
• Rochfort 10 Trappiste
• How does one share soup in a Tapas Bar?
• The cleverness of the comment blinded me to the impact it might have
• Teenagers in their first bar that doesn't ask for proof of age ID
  

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

Management

I am subject to an experiment in management style; enlightened bribery. I must say from my perspective its working out rather well. You can't help worrying if there might be a steel claw in the king-prawn-and-monkfish-kebab glove, though. Perhaps one dark day the Pinot Grigot will run red, the hotel suites wither into hastily-fumigated student bedrooms, the flights remain earthbound and replaced with trains full of 'special people' and missed connections... But until then we dance on.