the Daily Grind: February 2004 Archives

So far, no attack of the jet lag; it has been a long day, but a sunny one, and as midnight approaches I'm beginning to falter, so it's shortly to bed for me. I'm already eating all the wrong things in all the right ways, but my conscience is nowhere to speak of and I don't really have anything against occasional enjoyment. In any case, all is well; wishing you all a sleepy, but happy, hello from the Strip.

The exchange rate between the Pound and the Greenback stands at $1.86, which is just ridiculous. If I actually had a significant amount of money to spend, I'd probably lose all control in Los Angeles next week; a Brit-apparent with a charge card, an empty suitcase, a feeble US dollar, and a comfortable daytime temperature of 18 C... it's like smoking atop a pile of high-nitrate fertiliser.

As it stands, there's only a couple of things I'd like to pick up while there on the merchandise front, and nothing overly expensive - unless I experience a failure of inertia during my just-taking-a-look at the Apple Store - though if there's a chance in hell of me getting back here, I'll certainly take it because a) hot damn!, b) it's about time I stole another menu, and c) I miss real, hot and sour buffalo wings with chunky blue-cheese dip (not to mention Linda's $4 fudge cake, which is the size of my forearm and now a steal at £2.14).

It seems like a good idea to take my running gear with me, especially given my anticipated change in diet, and this time I'll be staying between Valencia - first weekend only - and Pasadena, both of which are pretty good for running around in. Alas, my knowledge of West Hollywood gaïety is limited, but unless things have changed, I think I'm prepared to go the week without subjecting myself to whistles and camp, openly leering "Hellos!" from beneath tilted sunglasses at the streetside cafés. It's a different planet, not a bad one, but not something I'm likely to face without my friends, all long since departed to places elsewhere.

I realise that I've been silent for quite a bit longer than four days in the past, but this trend seems likely to continue, what with looming assessments that are the fortune of every Ph.D. student in their final year. One comes this Monday, another in a month, and in there too is some necessary travel, three separate talks to give (one in front of more people than I can count), and a backlog of wet work that has to be done as soon as possible, and in a highly ordered manner. Which all really screws with my sense of comfort, perhaps not enormously, but more so than most things.

I'm not closing up shop yet, so entries will be forthcoming for those that care, just not as often as I would like. If everyone depended on RSS feeds to browse*, then this wouldn't matter so much to me, as you'd immediately know if I'd made a recent update, but most of my few regulars don't, simply dropping in to see if things have changed every now and again.

On that front a lack of entries is just pants; I don't want to drive you away until I'm quite ready.

This is simply notice to say that there will be less hot action here than usual, but (pause - mmm, that was a good orange!) all is well, if busy, and if I seem to be ignoring you more than is usual on iChat, just assume I'm a typical, rude Englishman and take it less to heart than you might otherwise. Unless you're English, in which case taking it to heart is probably a worthwhile exercise.

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*wtf?! RSS? Huh? Was? Qué? Bu-bu-bu-bah?
Quick lesson in RSS
RSS reader for OS X
RSS reader for Winboxes
And my RSS feed: http://stairs.happenchance.com/index.xml
   ...paste the above address into an RSS reader, not a regular browser

This might seem too utterly irrelevant to even be worth mentioning, but I just took a bath. Not to imply that I am a hygiene-impaired, lost minion of the black lagoon whose natural odour is of so esteemed a rankness that it is sought out by the nouveau-Indiana-Joneses of this world to imbue their 47-ingredient black-magic potions with the kind of stain removing power that you can only find in Persil Non-Biological (said potions are usually volunteered by an exceptionally cunning and ugly witch who lives in a dark cave on the Kindia plains of Guinea with too highly sophisticated an appreciation of schadenfreud for her own good - seen my birth-mother lately? Call me.).

Only that I've managed to shower almost exclusively for much of these last two years, and had forgotten how relaxing it can be to sit in a pool of scalding water and to stew in your own filth for half an hour. It has left me exhausted, but my aching muscles feel so much better; good medicine begins at home. It looks like an early night is in order.

The last two times that I jumped on the Cruiser - no, nothing like that, it's the popular name for the non-stop service between London King's Cross and Cambridge - we had bird hits.

You've seen smoke trails in wind tunnels, seen the wonderful, fluidic behaviour of moving air over solid objects; it hugs things. Smashing into a pigeon, an event I hereby entitle a smigeon (almost at risk of a homonym), is like spectacularly bursting your favourite feather-pillow all over the shop. Except that it can be wet, and a little gooey.

It is most exciting when you're in the first carriage... and the vents are open.