father time, put down your scythe.

On the way home from egham I chose to voluntarily listen to the bbc orchestra playing a medley of gilbert o'sullivan hits rather than the essential session on radio one because the mindless dance music was boring the shit out of me. I even found myself singing along.

ffs, what happened to me? :P

I'm happy though. My brief comedy experience has given me massive highs and lows, from being crushed with embarassement and crying to singing to the traffic and shouting yes. Adrenalin, after glow, fear and doubt. Massive highs and lows. That's what comedy is all about, fuck it.. that's what LIFE is about. When you feel joy and pain to that extent you really know you are alive.

You have to keep pushing yourself and challenging yourself and doing things that are a little scary. I hope I have a lifetime of new experiences and joy ahead of me, stuff to share with my hubby, but if I died tomorrow I'd have no regrets, I'd just be pissed off... I've done some cool stuff :).

I'm off to Houston to learn about wiggles. And to see my hubby, dive in a tank full of sharks, fly a plane, watch an ice hockey match, drive on the wrong side of the road, see some old friends, visit new orleans, make some new friends, eat steak and drink a few beers. After living out of a suitcase in a tent smaller than my unfeasibly small car I think it will be a blast.

duck...

...real life is fast approaching and it's going to hurt. I have to go to bed, I'm exhausted, but 'blog' is on my to-do list and it must be obeyed.

I start my new job on monday, so that's me with a desk, computer, blouse that makes me look like a square slab of womaliness and a slightly glazed expression. Well, I have to work. How else am I going to pay 40 quid a night for a b&b. 40 quid!!! In Staines of all places, a place whose name makes everyone shudder in disgust. Actually, I've packed the tent. I might camp for a week or two and save myself a few hundred quid.

I miss Andy. It's a little depressing to get married and then have no idea when you will next see your other half, but I suppose some would argue it's a recipe for a happy marriage.

I did my first stand up gig. Five mins of stomach scraping horror. I think it actually went reasonably well. Oh if only someone would pay me to do it... I might internally hemorrhage, but I'd be happy.

Sorry, this is coming out really dull. I'm off to sleep on the futon with the cat hairs for the last time in the foreseeable future :(

nighty night x

what no Elvis?

I have very little time, and I have a scab of orange bean juice on my foot.

There were no Elvises in Vegas. Not a single bloody one. It spoiled my hastily devised and ludicrously complicated Elvis spotting game somewhat. There was a happy wife and nice husband who made her dream to fly in a helicopter come true though. To the grand canyon, get in :).

We had a great time, despite andy loosing his very expensive sunglasses, throwing his camera off a rollercoaster and then loosing his keys, nesscesating a hire car and tedious denver-laramie-denver-laramie road trip.

I have a million things to do, then I'm leaving the US to possibly live husbandless in a tent. It's all a little scary. At least I've finished reading Harry Potter and can get on with the laundry. It was mostly good, if almost identical to the three I've read already in no particular order.

I almost forgot... I was sworn in as a Junior Ranger at Grand Canyon national park. I'm now a scorpion ranger (ages 11 up) so I'll come down on you like a mighty fist brandishing my plastic rangers' badge if you drop litter.

Have to go, the laundry is done and the bean juice is itching my foot. x

did the married thing...

introducing socklobster

you'll be seeing a lot more of him. Andy is mostly to blame :)

Andy is a spoilsport. He won't let me set up a production company using any of the following names:

A pair of bullocks
hairy bullocks
the dog's bullocks
etc, etc

Maybe I'll go with the dog's, or socklobster in honour of my new stripy friend.

rory

I can't believe Rory has been dead 12 years, I can remember the day like it was yesterday. I suppose it must have been a while, since it was just before my GCSEs! My English GCSE to be precise.

I wish he knew how much of an impact he was still having on the world so long after his death.

One day, The Museum will be broadcast, and hopefully a few more people will be aware of his legend because of it. That will be my little tribute to him.

xxC

grr.

Apparently this is what I look like with my new hair.

cheeeeeeessseeeee!

mentalists, the lot of 'em.

I am

I am ecstatic, jumping around to smells like teen spirit,
I am a child with wrinkles and commitments.

I am scared of the future,
I am relishing change.

I am drenched in rain and dried by the sun.

I am a dreamer with a desire to capture those dreams in resin and make them permanent
I am and I am going to Be.

newsiness and nerdiness

Museum news: ep 5 is currently being written. I have to churn 5 & 6 out before I run out of weird steam. I have painfully balanced my accounts and reckon I can just about stretch to getting the audio interface I want, so it's game on for recording. As always, get in touch if you want to be a voice. You probably don't, does anyone give a shit about this project other than me? Why should you, after all?

Sorry, I'm a little melancholy because of...

Work news: ughhh... roll on September and the new job.

..and apparently I'm a nerd



I disagree, I'm just a vaguely technology-savvy mac-geek, surely?

:)

Long weekend...

I had a nice weekend, even if I did spend some of saturday confirming that I'm the worst diver in history. I spent a while beached in the shallows splashing pathetically cos I'm not strong enough to stand unaided with all the bloody lead I have to wear. I make sure to keep my reg handy in case I fall face down. Otherwise I'd be like on of those tragic souls that drowns in a bowl of soup.

It was worth the effort, we saw some interesting moss. I think it was red, but Andy swears it was green. Who needs the Carribean?

I had a dress fitting too. My dress looks nice, apart from the lumpy body bits that get extruded from it. It's quite understated, and it looked even more so compared to the bridezilla who was having her fitting next to me. I've never seen such a blingy dress before, it was covered in rhinestones. I think having the sleeves attached to the middle finger like madonna circa 1984 was a nice touch. I'm such a bitch- she was probably looking at my dress thinking 'how plain and boring.'

Monday was the bolderboulder 10k, and I actually enjoyed it this year. I pushed myself hard, but not so hard I wanted to puke from 4k onwards. I was 4 mins slower than last year, but with a 6 month lay off from training I'm more than happy with that. Andy did really well and was 2 mins faster than last year, but I think I enjoyed the entertainments more. There were all sorts of bands and crazy people out there supporting us. There were over 50,000 runners this year, yet the organisation is exceptional- by far the best of any of the mass participation races I've done r watched on the telly.

The course isn't too bad, it's uphill at first. After 3 miles, the course takes a turn downhill as did the quality of the belly dancers. Gone were the nubile young woman and in there place some gyrating grannies. It was eye punishment. Serious.

Good News :)

I wrote to Donal Gallagher (Rory's brother) about using Rory's track Unmilitary Two-step in The Museum, and he is fine with it.

His email:

Hi Christine

Thank you for your message. Glad you would like to use Rory's 'Unmilitary Two-step", there is no problem to use the track and hopefully it will assist in bringing you talents forward to a wider audience.Your site is quite cool.

Lots of luck.

Dónal

I just made a girly noise, something like 'eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee'. I am very pleased.

More good news... 4 episodes are now written. Just two to go! Maybe I'll get this project finished one day. Maybe it'll even end up being broadcast *gasp*!

The plans for standup aren't going so well... I think when I give it a go, people will throw fruit. On the plus side, I'm likely to be very poor so at least I can eat healthily for a few days.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :-)

Jobs n deep thinking n stuff

GX offered me a job, so I'll officially be a geophysicist come september. You know how it is, us future comic geniuses need to take a day job until we hit the big time. Deluded, me?! Hurrah for my early mid-life crisis :)

My trip to the UK was good, even if it wasn't a trip I made for happy reasons. I saw a lot of friends and family. I also went to Camden and got infected with some wierd disease than made me want to buy clothes and shoes and have a cool haircut. I think I was being brainwashed by hare krishna monks too, I kept inadvertantly giving them money and thus not being able to afford to eat anything other than cadbury's caramels. I also played gay croquet- it was just like normal croquet only bitchier and more brightly coloured.

The writing is going well, it even survived a catastrophic computer faliure. Fate let me reboot the computer one last time and drag off all the stuff I hadn't got around to backing up before it dissolved into a series of epilaptic-goading disco colours.

Sorry about the spelling today, I'm extra dislexic with a side order of dumb pie for some reason. I'll put it down to the wierd dreams I had.

I've been listening to a lot of radio comedy and trying to pull it apart and figure out why it works or doesn't. I was laughing my arse off at The Likely Lads and Dad's Army, but there is a lot of stuff I heard that I'd like to avoid- like obvious set ups (Terry is slagging off Bob's inlaws to a random stranger, who of course turns out to be one of the inlaws) and 'I haven't felt this bad since...' type jokes. What both comedies have taught me is that the characterisation is key to making it work, the setting is secondary (which is a relief since I keep forgetting to make my stuff 'museumy'). Having decent characters who are different and have a unique voice is reactive, like putting baking soda in water. kind of.

I listened to some free stuff on channel4 radio too- the most important lesson I learned there is that repeatedly saying the word tw*t doesn't magically transform something unfunny into a work of genious. Comparing their sketches to something equally wierd yet wonderful, the Boosh, was a revelation. It doesn't matter how wierd something is, if it isn't grounded in plot, character exposition or a complex web of oddness, it just ain't gonna work. This is wot i learnt.

Some pictures from my UK trip

Blue Hole

Here are a couple more pictures from our drysuit course... Andy made this rather lovely panorama. Tiny isn't it? Like a little blue puddle crammed with divers.


This is what happens when your sinuses are out to get you. I think Andy's face exploded 3 times in the end. I would be sympathetic, but it didn't hurt him and it was a bit traumatic for me to have my hubby-let swimming towards me with a mask full of gore. Apparently it made everything look green..

More Museum News... and a flat horse?

Here is an email exchange I had with someone from Radio 4's light entertainment commisioning:

Quoting xxx - Private :

Hi,

I have to be honest and say that not only was there the Museum of
everything but we are also doing a 6 parter from David Nobbs based in a
museum called the Maltby Collection. Having looked at your script it
really doesn't offer enough that's different.
Sorry not to be more encouraging
Best
xxx


and my reply:

Hi Paul,
Thanks for taking the time to read it. I am going to finish my series anyway because I think I have some good ideas, and if nothing else it will be a positive learning experience. I will probably attempt to get it into production in some form elsewhere; I think going through the process is important because I don't imagine many writers who give up at the first setback end up having their work produced. Having said that, I realise there will come a point where I need to move on to other projects if I am not getting anywhere.

Cheers,
Chris

So while this obviously isn't the most positive outcome, I am no where near giving up on this project. I will write what I feel I need to write and finish The Museum. Then the plan is this:

1) Hopefully there will be some kind of reading of my work at the Edinburgh Fringe (more on this later). This will make a few people aware of The Museum, and give me some useful feedback on what works.

2) The BBC might send me some proper feedback some time late spring/ early summer. I'll use this to improve the script and concept.

3) I'll try and get the improved series in production via one of the many indie production agencies. This probably won't go anywhere because most of them pitch to the BBC I think, and the BBC aren't interested, but it is worth trying.

4) If I can't get The Museum professionally produced, I'll do it myself. Probably as a radio series, but there is the possibility of developing it as a stage show also. With a new mac, an audio interface, a lot of patience and some willing bodies I can make a professional sounding job of the recording.

5) If I record it myself, I'll get it 'out there' via my blog, BBC Comedysoup (ironically) and approach local/ indipendant radio stations. They can have it for free if that's what it takes!!

6) After that comes the time to stop hammering the dead horse flat and move on with some dignity... but I will have given it my best shot and we don't really have any right to complain about our dreams not coming true until we get to this stage.

7) Have a new brilliant idea and start again.


I don't know why, but after years of being pretty pessemistic I am finding new ways to be optimistic about this. I just have a good feeling about it and think it is worth the effort. I still have my fingers crossed for a callback for the channel 4 radio competition in a few weeks. The odds are probably almost as low as getting a bbc commission, but I have to believe it can happen. If it does, I will have a contact there. I know no one listens to channel 4 radio, but they will in the future. Maybe.

godammit!

First hurdle to overcome getting The Museum into production: apparently the biggest radio 4 comedy in years is called The Museum of Everything. Apparently it is nothing like The Museum, but still, the setting might be enough to fire a big smoking hole through my attempts to get produced. I am going to go ahead and write the rest of the series because I have some good ideas and this would be a really stupid reason not to get them down. I'm not giving up...

The same thing happened to me when I was 10 and I wrote a story about a dog that saves a family from being burgled then Nan Lane gave me a comic book with a storyline involving a dog saving a family from a fire and NO ONE believed I hadn't ripped the story off. :'-(

If only there were less people in the world things like this wouldn't happen. I'm proposing a new law were babies get their hands bound tightly at birth so they are unable to operate keyboards and therefor can't type up scripts. And their noses filed down flat so they can't use them either. And maybe they get injected with some sort of laryngococcyl bug to make them really bad at dictation. Things will be so, so different when I am in charge :-D

later.....

I've calmed down now anyway, better go and apologise to all the people I ranted at :)

On a more positive note, one of the baby fish survived. She has entered the difficult teen period now and is tearing around the tank, pulling splinters out of the log and hanging out with unsuitable tetras. One of the snails is achingly cool: I swear on my life, it was surfing around the tank on a piece of elodia leaf. It caught the current from the air filter, did a few loops and then gracefully sank to the bottom. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen in my sad, geeky life.

Today..

Darren was buried today. Part of me wishes I was there because it might have forced me to accept his death. I'm not going to say a lot, especially since grief is a private matter... except that I miss him. Since I gave up the comfort blanket of faith I've had to face some harsh realities, and some beautiful truths.. but one of the harsh realities for me is that I won't see someone I cared deeply about ever again. I'll cherish my memories.

Goodbye Uncle Buck :-(



ps... unimportant website news in small font: the contact form is now working properly.

Website news

Thanks to all the people who gave feedback on chrissieB.net.

Some new features: The complete script of episode 1 of The Museum and synopses of the rest of the series are now available through The Museum homepage.

Some of your nice and not so nice messages have been uploaded on the messages page.

And thanks to Alex and Calum for the drunken bug report... I'll get my crack webmastery team on the case right away..


xxC

Being shrink wrapped

This is me totally wrapped in rubber. I wasn't diving; I just like how it feels against my skin. Mmmm, sticky.

We had fun at Blue Hole, NM, learning how to dive in our new drysuits. It is pretty tough, I spent most of the first dive lying on the bottom pathetically kicking up silt, but by the third dive we were starting to get the hang of it. There isn't much to see there, but there are some goldfish and a kind of grotto effect were previous divers have placed little religious icons and toys on the rocky shelves. I failed to find the legendary spongebob squarepants though, that has to be worth another 1200 mile round trip. My left knee is suffering- I don't recommed taking an old injury, wrapping it in sealed rubber and gradually increasing the pressure until fluid is sucked out of the injury and into the overlying skin. It's all creaky now :(. There was a potentially serious incident while we were there- a diver was at 60 feet, got low on air and instead of staying with his group and dealing with it he shot to the surface and popped out like a cork. Scary stuff, I hope he was ok.


This is Andy at Boca Negra canyon, NM, where native Americans carved petroglyphs into the hard black basalt to honour the sacred mountain. In the 1600, Catholic shepards added their own religious symbols, and today a few people have scratched their names into the rock. It throws up an interesting issue- how old does graffiti have to be before it stops being defacing vandalism and starts being sacred art? What if a native american artist just wasn't very good and did a bird that had a wonky beak? Would that still be art or would it be relegated to vandalism? Or doesn't it matter if it is bad or good as long as it is more than 700 years old or so?

NEW WEBSITE

My NEW WEBSITE is now online... but if you clicked through from my homepage you probably knew that already..

chrissieB

It's designed to promote my writing... I figured it was time to try and get somewhere with my more creative pursuits :-).

Any comments on the website, or offers of help to get The Museum produced, drop me a line!

...

I was going to use this space to have a full on rant about the people sat next to me at the hockey yesterday who talked insessant inane shit throughout the whole match, particularly the girl whose feet smelt like they could go lovely with a nice chardonay...

But sometimes things happen that make little inconveniences like that seem so unimportant. My family lost someone we loved and that is a damn sight more upsetting than dealing with some biological weapons grade cheesy feet,

baby fish! baby fish!

One of the platies had two babies (sorry, fry) yesterday. They are so amazing- how can a little fleshy machine 3 mm long actually swim and see and eat? They are also incredible cute. We didn't know that the fish was pregnant, but it's nice to know that the boy fish got his end away (or whatever fish do) before he expired. They were born on our anniversary too, how romantic! Hopefully they will survive and we can watch them grow, they are bigger than the mouths of the other fish so that is a good start. Andy got some neon tetras yesterday too. We wanted black neons but the fish shop has some disease thing going on and the black neons keep dying. The neons are very pretty, sort of iridescent blue and red, but they do clash a bit with the orange platies, dahling.

We are off to the pool tonight, hopefully A can dive without his sinuses exploding. I want to see if I can deploy my marker buoy from the bottom of the pool and freak out the children.

Quicky

So I have recovered from what may have been flu, almost ripping my legs off on a 5 mile ski that was way, way too hard from me, and sliding across the ice on my arse while trying to chase Andy on ice skates. That last one was a lot of fun, actually.

I have been busy writing. My time here is coming to an end (Wyoming, not earth I hope). I could just go and take another soul destroying uni job, but I though I should attempt to get somewhere I want to be first (since apparently if you want to get anywhere in life you have to MAKE it happen).. so I have been busy writing scripts.

I submitted 2 short drama scripts to The Play's the Thing and I am about to send the first episode of The Museum to the BBC, so in about 4 months I should have a rejection from them :(. I genuinely think The Museum is funny, I actually managed to churn out a finished script of sufficient length and I have plenty of ideas for the rest of the series. I'm so rarely confident in my own abilities, but I think if Radio 4 don't want to produce The Museum they are all clearly insane, and I may have to come at them like a laser, like a beam (Sorry, that was for Jacqui).

I am working on a website to promote my writing, I'll try and get it up and running soon and post the link here.

On an unrelated note, Andy and I have been engaged a year today. Tempis Fugis or summat. I ordered him a present but I waited until yesterday so I think the chances of it arriving on time are slim. I won't say what it is incase he reads this. Unlikely I know. He is taking me to Denver on sunday to watch Colorado Avalanche. Go Avs! Assuming he is better, he is pretty snotty today. I feel usurped..

floating upside down isn't a good sign

My favorite fish, the one that trampolined off leaves and had a fascinatingly manoverable *ahem* anal fin, was sick. We decided he was constipated, as he was looking fat and pale and breathing very quickly. After doing a bit of web based research, I discovered a potential cure... Peas!! Full of fibre and fish-friendly! You have to peel them, which I'm not sure is physically possible, but hey, the little guy was worth it.

So I rushed home to get the pan on, only to find him floating upside down just above the gravel. I was very sad. I netted him out and watched hopefully for a bit of 'oy get off' thrashing around, but there was none. After watching him do the toilet bowl free-style, I started cooking, and couldn't balme the frying onions for my watery eyes. It's insane: I've lost relatives and cried less. As Andy pointed out, we had cared for and tried to nurture him. And fed him a huge red flake that probably led to his untimely demise.

We had a mini-wake, well drank some beer anyway. The positive I take from this is that the two females seem healthy, and they hadn't started to eat him. I'm not sure I could have coped with fish canabalism.

On a more positive note, I swam 25m unaided, on my front, and not looking like a, well, dying fish for want of a better analogy. It might not sound like much, but I think it's the furthest I've swam on my front for about 15 years. I have wanted to get good at swimming for a long time, but it's only now that diving is making me more confident that I can try. I was swimming a half decent front crawl, but bloody hell, it's knackering isn't it? You see all those grannys floating serenly around the pool smiling, I wasn't smiling. They must be turbo-charged.

My drysuit literally just turned up- hurray, freezing mountain lakes here we come! That's if I can get into the thing. I hate gearing up as it is - carrying heavy gear, struggling into the wetsuit, struggling to get the tank onto my back. Well, now I have to do all that while wrapped in several layers of restrictive fleece and a plastic body bag. I managed to get the dry hood on with only minor loss of skin and hair, and I felt like all my face was being forced out through a straw. The underware is close fitting, restrictive and hot, and then you have to struggle into the actual drysuit. I stupidly tried to do this in a 70 degree living room, I though A would come home hours later to find me dead from heatstroke. I couldn't quite bring myself to pull the top of the suit over my head, I know for sure I'd never be able to get out without assistance. After about 5 minutes of swearing, pulling and sweating, I finally managed to get the evil thing off. All I have to do now is learn how to put it all on, get my fins on my feet and my tank on my back and figure out how to manipulate small fiddly things like my torch and reel while wearing 5mm thick neoprene gloves. I seriously think coldwater diving is for masochists only.

d'uh...

stupidest thing to say to a 7 month pregnant woman:
'Oh! You're pregnant? I didn't notice. Well, black is very slimming.'

stupidest thing to say to a muslim:
'The bacon soup is very good here.'

I excell myself all the time. To make matters worse, these were both said to the SAME PERSON. She doesn't seem to hate me though, so I think I'm ok.

All the snow is melting and I am very greatful for my enormous boots. They aren't f*ck me boots, more like DON'T F*CK WITH ME boots, which seems appropriate some times.

I'm working hard on my Cambridge application, everyone needs to send good chris vibes to the people at the earth science department and to the sedgewick museum. Unfortunately, A wants to work in Cheltenham. 4 hour round trip each day anyone? No? How about a married couple living in seperate houses? Personally, I'm hoping for an expedious development of practical time travel.

Mmmm.... liquid elephants

I have decided I have a learning difficulty. I'm not talking about the number blindness, it's much more serious that that. It affects my ability to perform important everyday tasks like cooking and shopping. I am gravy-blind . I've been to ths shops for gravy three times, and each time I've come away with a packet of Scandinavian flat bread. I don't know how common this granule-flat bread version of gravy blindness is, but if any educational psychologists out there would like to use me as a test case, I'd be happy to help. Readers, don't under-estimate the debilitating effect a lack of gravy identification skills can have on a life. Imagine all those really dry mince-based meals. Yuck.

I bought some rooibos tea yesterday. I have fancied some for a while, but I've resisted because I find it vaguely unsettling. I couldn't figure out why, but the first time I drank it I went 'yuck', but afterwards I quite fancied another cup. I am enjoying some right now, but I finally realised why it bothers me. It smells like the elephant house a chester zoo. Go sniff some, close your eyes and you'll think you are surrounded by dirty straw.

I saw yellow snow yesterday, I thought it was just the stuff of myths and legends. It was almost as exciting as seeing tumbleweed for the first time. I saw two types- one was a kind of jageddy line (poor dog!) and the second was a deep yellow well into unknown depths.

I feel good today, it's sunny and not too cold, and I walked in listening to Nevermind by Nirvana. It's amazing how the right music at the right time can make you feel so good. I love that about it.

Maybe I should do some work now....

Happy New Year!

So I've been skiving off for three weeks of fun. I had a really nice Christmas/ New Year/ Birthday. If I can remove myself from my jetlagged stupor long enough I can tell you about it.

Andy and I spent Christmas with my parents', which is always really nice because they get excited and argue over who has the most presents and let me eat Guillian Chocolate Starfish (but no hotdog flavoured water) for breakfast. They bought dive knives for me and Andy, and dad visibly winced every time I took mine out of its sheath. I think the potential it has for cutting me out of fishing line or fending off an angry shark might be outweighed by the likelyhood of me impaling myself on it. Nice bit of kit though, oh I do like my gadgets :).

We managed to see a few family and friends this time, and it was nice that Andy got on with Beccy and Mark, it's always good when you can tell your friends aren't thinking 'god what a pr*ck' when they meet your significant other. I even got up to see Jacqui in Scotland. Thankfully, most of the flood waters have receeded so I didn't need to swim there clutching my shiney new dive knife between my teeth. We chatted and drank wine, and she dragged me up a bloody big hill. On the plus side, I discovered I'm not as unfit as I thought, on the minus it was freezing. The wind was so strong it was hard to walk, and much to Jacqui's relief I couldn't talk because everytime I opened my mouth my teeth instantly froze. Which is suprisingly painful. We also had a mammoth Mighty Boosh watching session. I won't be able to hear the phrase 'fiery biscuits' without thinking fondly of her. Although, to be fair, it doesn't come up too often.

We spent New Year at Andy's nan's house. She is very lovely, but I must be getting old to enjoy seeing in the new year sipping sherry and watching hootenany. I am now thinking fondly of bouncing up and down with hundreds of drunk 15 year olds to auld lang syn then some random cartoon theme tune in Stairways back in t'day. I'm not that old- you can't see my wrinkles when I look miserable.

On my birthday we went for a meal. Charley got in touch just in time, which was brilliant because I didn't think I'd manage to see him. We went for a greek (risking the 'food lottery') and I drank to much, but I think a good time was had by all.

My favorite comment of the night was from Adam : This is the first time I've seen you wearing clothes that don't have gortex written on them.' It's so nice when people notice you have made an effort :-P.

I'm now back in Laramie where it is all snowy and lovely. If you like retenal burns and frost bite. It's about minus lots out there. I'm trying to defrost a fish for tea, no bloody chance. Actually it's quite nice because there is no wind chill right now. I am using it as an excuse not to go running though- hopefully we'll get to go skiing soon.

Damn, I've inadvertantly stayed in work until after night fall. Bad things happen to people who go out after dark here, even people wearing sleeping bags with arm holes and snow boots gauranteed to keep your feet alive after even the hardiest of your huskies has kicked the bucket.

I'm going out for a walk, I may be some time. 'Bout 15 minutes usually.

***************************

Most random jetlagged/insomniac thought: could I market an adult version of pin the tail on the donkey called 'p**t in the c**t'? I disgust myself, I really do.