I've been getting really bad at personal blogging lately. Last year, I didn't get started again till February, but this year I'm a week later again. That said, I've got good reasons...
First and foremost, I've been doing quite a bit since the new year started. My girlfriend and I have already had quite a few evenings out - including a trip to the opera uptown and another to see Harrow School's production of The Rivals (one of my favourite plays ever since I studied it in school, though any version featuring Peter Bowles and Penelope Keith - as Sir Anthony Absolute and Mrs. Malaprop, respectively - is pretty hard to beat), and we have even more on the way.
On the former excursion, I will note only that the ENO's production of La Traviata was probably very good... but I found the whole thing of 'opera being sung in English' incredibly distracting, so I shall have to organise a trip to a proper, grown-up (ie. Italian) opera at some point. On the latter, it's worth remembering that Harrow is a boys' school... meaning that all the roles were played by boys - no drafting in girls from the local comp to wear the frilly frocks. It was very well done - I liked everything up to and including the scene changes (which didn't always go according to plan, going by the look one of the stage hands gave when a chair was left uncollected, forcing his return to the stage) - though the kid who played Sir Anthony played him permanently manic, while the distinguished Mr Bowles played him as both 'Absolute' mellowness and 'Absolute' rage... and I do feel that Sir Anthony encompasses both absolutes. There was one moment when Lydia Languish fluffed 'her' lines dramatically, but the rest of the cast rallied round and got everything moving again.
Probably the biggest thing is that we've already booked this year's holiday - a trip to Chicago. Originally, this was going to be specifically for a particular event that's on in the outskirts of the city around the time of my birthday, but certain obligations and necessities made that impractical. Having discussed going to Chicago, however, we didn't feel like letting the matter rest there, and so we looked at alternative dates and made a booking for later in the year.
As it turns out, missing out on the big event means that we'll be actually in the city rather than about thirty miles out (neither of us drive, and public transport is a bit random at that sort of distance), closer to all kinds of cool stuff... and I'll hopefully have an opportunity to meet an old acquaintance from a writing group I was a member of over a decade ago. We've kept in touch on and off, and I'd been intending to visit Chicago for years (having had several conversations about it, years ago, with my best friend, who felt that there just wasn't enough to Chicago to make it the only destination) so it'll be cool to finally do that.
Before that rolls around, though, we'll be going on a trip to Cornwall with my girlfriend's family... which could be interesting, given the recent (pre-Christmas) news of her sister's engagement. And at some point (probably before that) we need to arrange for my folks to meet the not-quite-in-laws... because that's a thing, obviously. And at some point (probably before that) we need to arrange to visit my sister and family at their home. All in all, it's shaping up to be a busy old year, even if there isn't necessarily a great deal happening from week to week.
Work, meanwhile, has been a bit on the dull side, in between frantic periods where ill-judged deadlines coincide. More and more, I'm remembering the old saying "people don't quit jobs, they leave managers", largely because the my immediate manager is 'problematic' and the MD, while fun, can become distracting to the point where just about everyone wishes he'd go home early, or go to a meeting, just so they can get their work done in peace.
The 'problematic' manager is, in some ways, the opposite. One of my colleagues observed - out loud, speaking with the head of accounts - that she's probably "more hands-on when she's not in the office". I hoped he'd add that she's also almost impossible to get hold of whenever it's critical, but I suspect he has some sense of self-preservation, and when the head of accounts describes a comment you make about your boss as "interesting" it's probably wisest to shut the fuck up.
In other news... There's been rather a drought of good TV lately. Loads of shows seem to be taking a mid-season break - that most annoying and insidious of US Television inventions, where one show gets put on hold so they can show something else which is, all too often, a bit shit.
On the subject of shows that aren't that great, I started watching 'The Mysteries of Laura' but gave up after two episodes because the premise is ridiculous and, while it was intermittently funny, its implausibility tended to overshadow everything else. Last Friday, I watched the first of BBC3's 'I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse', hoping for an adventure game show... Sadly, it turned out to be an attempt to create an actual TV show based on the idea posited ironically by Charlie Brooker in 'Dead Set' about seven years ago: Big Brother, surrounded by zombies.
Making matters even more low-brow and pointless, they seem to have deliberately assembled a crowd of the most stereotypical wasters possible, specifically to create 'tension' of the sort that will quickly build into tantrums... while an army of extras have the time of their lives pretending to be zombies outside. I tried to explain the show to a colleague on Monday and, after a few moments consideration, he reached the conclusion that it probably could have been better if they'd selected movie buffs and gamers for the show: the sorts of people who would actually appreciate the setting, rather than treat it - for example - as a sad opportunity to relate the tale of camping out (in several senses of the phrase) for days to meet Lady Gaga for an audience far greater than they would have accomplished in their lifetime, were it not for the involvement in a TV show.
Each time a new 'housemate' introduced themselves - via a short, pithy monologue delivered, apparently, to a webcam in their bedroom - I opined that they needed to be the first to die. I gather from the trailer for this weeks, that there will be a causualty ("one touch from a zombie is all it takes" in this show, so it's not as if there will be screaming and viscera... beyond those 'challenges' where they have to scoop around in the insides of a rubber corpse for a vital item)... and I really don't care who it is.
It could have been something great, like The Adventure Game or The Crystal Maze... Instead, it's the BBC ripping off a Channel 4/Channel 5 show and adding a largely pointless gimmick.
I've also been lurking on eBay again, buying some pretty cool and hard to find stuff - something I haven't done for many years - largely thanks to a pretty big tax rebate... Shame it took me most of a year to finish the damned thing...
