Two More Wintery Haiku... And Stuff...

In response to my London Snowman Haiku, my sister wrote:

"I passed a drunk-looking snowman at the end of my road on the way home this afternoon. I think part of his bottom had melted and the weight of his head had pulled him over sideways. Write a haiku about that, if you dare!"

Never one to pass up a challenge:

Drunken snowman leans
carousing, merrymaking,
yet frozen (in time).

And then today, when I popped into work to visit the Publishing Expo at Olympia, I saw a few clumps of snow remaining here and there in grassy areas, and composed the following:

Persistent snow clumps
remain as wintry islands
in spring's verdant seas.

Quite pleased with both, though the second is far more poetic.

Today has been quite painful, in more ways than one. I woke up with much the same hip pain as I've had over the last week or so but, after a couple of hours sat at my desk at home, the pain magically transferred to my right shoulder, and has remained there all day, despite numerous attempts to shift it.

I put on one of those heat patches before I left the house, but barely felt anything from it - I assume it was duff - then, at the flat, sat up against the radiator while my father fixed the new light/ceiling fan in the lounge and, earlier this evening, tried Transvasin, one of those 'heat rub creams'. I actually felt the cream more on my hand (and my face, where I'd been leaning on that hand!) even after washing the remaining cream off... so I may end up making an appointment with the Chiropractor next week.

Work at the flat went OK today. The new light is fitted in the lounge, but the spare bulb we had was too large - a larger size than the one we got for the bedroom. Hopefully a similar wattage will be available in the smaller size, as the bulb that's currently fitted (sans the glass dome) is equivalent to an old-style 100 watt bulb.

When I arrived at the flat, I'd expected my parents to be there already, but I had quite a wait for them. Seems my mother went back to hospital for the X-Ray that was interrupted yesterday by a fire (Northwick Park hospital actually made the news because of it!). By the time they arrived, daylight was already much reduced by cloud, so we were using a bedside lamp for light to finish off the fitting.

I'd hoped work on adding the new power points would have started today so it could be finished tomorrow... but that hasn't panned out. Since I have plans for tomorrow night (which may or may not be curtailed by my aches and pains), I asked how much work is likely to be done tomorrow. Since I'm planning to stay at the flat, I'll be needing electricity, so doing some wiring and leaving it exposed and the fusebox switched off ain't going to be an option... So it may transpire that tomorrow's work will be laying the groundwork for the wiring, with the actual wiring to be done sometime between tomorrow and next Thursday, when the carpet gets laid.

The Publishing Expo was pretty small... Far smaller than the one I went to a couple of years ago at the NEC. The show occupied about half of the ground floor (another show occupied the other half, I guess), with talks and panels going on downstairs. One of the exhibitors opined that, were it not for these talks, one would only spend about half an hour at the show. I'd tend to disagree, if only from the freebie-collecting point of view. I walked out with a large stick of rock (courtesy of the Pagesuite people), a pen (someone is always giving away pens!) a mug (from our Printers) and a small packet of mints, alongside the usual bumph one collects at these things. One of my designers went yesterday in her lunchtime, and reported that there weren't many freebies - she'd only managed to score a mousemat. I suspect they tailored everything to the job title on everyone's badges. Sweets were quite freely available, as was booze on a couple of stands, but I guess cool freebies were a bit thin on the ground.

Interestingly, there were two online flatplan solutions... One - Intelligent Flatplan - was pointed out to me by a reader of this very blog. The other - Blinkplan - was new to me, but similarly intriguing. Were it not for the fact that we will, eventually, be forced into using a 'homebrewed' solution that connects with our Accounting systems, either one would be worth investigating. Neither, by the looks of it, have logins that allow users to see but not alter, though both allow flatplans to be exported as PDF. Their solutions to our usual problems (page cuts at the last minute, late sales that aren't communicated by Sales to Production, conflicting promised positions, etc.) are either nonexistent or inelegant... but clearly the developers have been putting lots of effort into their respective products.

Amusingly, the scattered clumps of remaining snow now have lots of company - snow started falling again this evening. In these parts, it's already melting again... but who knows what the night will bring.

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