bitful

So tonight I was coming home from work, totally absorbed by the book I'm reading (A Spot of Bother), I got off the train and walked along the platform to the exit, instinctively. A gesture you don't think about because you repeat it every day.
Most people were walking the opposite direction, so I realised I [...]

Air France, said the reservation. And the check-in counter, and the boarding pass.
And the crew's uniforms at the gate. One of them looked at my boarding pass, then projected "Le six" across the queue to her colleague entering boarding pass numbers into a machine.
So imagine my surprise when the terminal bus delivered me in front [...]

I owe you an explanation, don't I?
Weeks without a proper post on these pages, apart from Word of the Day, My Week on the Web and sometimes 7 Things I Did Not Know Last Week.
Not a lack of time per se, but rather a shift in priorities.
A new position at work that's briliant and absorbs [...]

When I heard Barclays was releasing a three-in-one Credit, Oyster (London transport) and OneTouch (cashless purchases under ten pounds by waving the card on a reader) OnePulse Barclaycard, I was the first in line to get it.
The accompanying leaflet showed the logos of some of the retailers that will be accepting OneTouch payments soon: Books [...]

I've had Yahoo! Mail account for as long as I can remember, and I've always been very happy with it.
I've also had a Gmail account since the time they were still only in invitation-only beta. I forward all my other mail to it so it acts as a searchable permanent reference. I also set [...]

I am trying to save the world, but they sure do not make my life easy.
The kitchen scales batteries had gone. It cost nine pounds to replace them. New scales, batteries included, cost as little as nine pound 99. I insisted in buying the batteries instead. Yes, I know there are scales that run without [...]

It was not without apprehension that last Saturday I set off to go visit my mother in Italy. She had been ill for a while, was taken to hospital for six weeks of tests last spring, but they could not find anything wrong. She was ill again recently, and this time the local hospital sent [...]

The father of a friend of mine is dying of lung cancer.
He was always bursting with energy, one of those people who can possibly get on your nerves because they keep you constantly on your toes, but who leave an indelible mark with their humour (and the way they cook fish).
He was the incredibly strong [...]

By Jove I think I've cracked it!
Last week I wrote about planning to clean a bit every day. Ten minutes every day, to be precise.
So:

on Monday night I cleaned the kitchen
on Tuesday night I dusted everywhere
on Wednesday night I cleaned the bathroom
on Thursday I cleaned our desks in the office
on Friday I mopped kitchen and [...]

I overcome (but only slightly) my laziness to paste an email Dr B. sent to his friends yesterday to comment on the last issue of David Hoyle's Magazine that we went to see on Monday night:
Well that was fun. For those that missed it David Hoyle was back on form last night - we had [...]

I have already written about how two days into my holiday my mobile phone reset itself and all data was wiped out.
I saw this as a sign to let go and try not to make a note of absolutely everything, and also told myself that I might not need to keep a food diary any [...]

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IMG_1264.jpg, originally uploaded by astrx.

If you've been paying attention, you'll have noticed that lately I've been enjoying getting rid of things.
What you see in this picture from Flickr is for me (at the moment [...]

Dr B. and I live in a medium-sized two-bedroom flat. And we never clean.
I like keeping it tidy, but do not like cleaning. He likes it being tidy, and does not like cleaning. But that might be stating the obvious, as who on earth likes cleaning?
Every so often I decide it is time to get [...]

Two days into my holiday my mobile phone reset itself and was wiped out.
I back up all my contacts daily with my desktop and online once a month, so information was not lost and easily retrievable away from home.
However, my notes on how much I had spent so far, on what, and how to split [...]

This graph shows all the music I have listened to in the past six months in a pretty visualisation.
Click on the picture to view it at Flickr, then click on 'All Sizes' and select the original picture for maximum detail.
From lastgraph via plasticbag.

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I have always preferred sparingly furnished rooms - probably a reaction to my parents' house where whole rooms were dedicated to collect clutter.
However, I am guilty of buying cheap throwaway clothes, mostly at charity shops, some at H&M.
This means that once a year I take half of my clothes back, so last night I took [...]

It should come to no surprise to all who know me well that whenever I am under duress I develop a fixation about one thing.
[UPDATE 11 Sept 2007 at 08:29 - of course above I meant to write 'under distress'. You can tell I'm under stress, right? And funny how I realised my mistake on [...]

So now I'm told that my mother has been in hospital for a week. Same medical problems she had a few months ago. She is waiting to hear what they think she has this time, hopefully in a few days and not after weeks like last time.
I could not sleep last night, snoozed on the [...]

I have been away for a bit (500+ photos for the brave and bored among you, at NYC Flickr Photoset and Iceland Flickr Photoset).
When I came back I was told that a friend had died while I was away. I went through the week in a bit of a stupor, not quite believing that it [...]

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Broken glasses with sticky tape, originally uploaded by bitful.

I broke my spectacles one week before going on holiday.
I was due my annual checkup anyway, so I went to have my eyes tested - for [...]

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The contents of our fridge, originally uploaded by bitful.

I am considering buying a new compact digital camera for a forthcoming trip, and was not too impressed with anything that's on the market at the [...]

I was searching for info on how to dump entries into a database via a csv file (or something like that), and Google's autocomplete revealed that the world is a sad, sad place.

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How to [...]

Last night we went to see David Hoyle's 'Magazine' at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. I'd declined an invite the previous week, and I had to see why so many people are raving about the artist formerly known as the Divine David.
Well yes, he's smart. And very eloquent, which for once is a very welcome change [...]

This morning at 7.30 I was exactly forty and a half years old.
Which means that that moment on I am closer to being forty-one than I'll ever be to forty again.
Strangely, the thought does not worry me at all. I seem to focus all my worry on how on earth I am going to cope [...]

Starting this morning at 8am, Big Ben is not going to chime for a few weeks while maintenance work is carried out.
I am told that at night we can sometimes hear the bongs from our flat. But at night I am sleeping and don't hear a thing. And how can Dr B. hear Big Ben [...]

There's this song I've been humming to musically well-read (or should that be 'well-listened'?) friends for a while now, to see if they could help me put a title and performer on it, and to tell me where I might possibly know it from.
Either I'm bad at humming, or my friends are a bit crap, [...]

There seems to be a trend around to persuade people to stop eating reduced-calorie processed food and eat a pretty much everything in moderate amounts. You know it when it get to read about it in Metro (Wednesday's issue, page 11, I'll be damned if I ever manage find a Metro article online to link [...]

Last night Dr B. found out his credit card had been used for a value of around five thousand pounds.
He was quickly on the phone with Nationwide who were most helpful and will refund the lot, so no worries really, but he now swears he's never going to use cards in a restaurant again (you [...]

I recently found out that Facebook should not be used as a platform for work-related interaction.
I was at the gym on my lunch break when a colleague's status update came through on my mobile:
(Name) is wondering why oh why drivers choose the last possible moment to take the J6…
I thought 'computer drivers' (we were at [...]

I have spent the few spare moments during the last twelve days reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Those were the very moments I would have blogged instead, which explains the lack of posts lately.
I have enjoyed immensely the book itself. I have just put it down and am still feeling a bit emotional [...]