A Bug's Life

Books read (16-23)
Judge Dredd: The Dark Judges, John Wagner (1980-85, 2013) (World Book Night)
British Summertime, Paul Cornell (2012)
Orbitsville, Bob Shaw (1975)
Burn This Book, ed. Toni Morrison (1975-2009, 2009)
Ship of Strangers, Bob Shaw (1978)
Miners In The Sky, Murray Leinster (1967)
Excession, Iain M. Banks (1996)
The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells (1897)

Films watched (44-50) 5 at the cinema, 1 DVD, 1 streamed
Bicycle Thieves
I'm So Excited
Evil Dead (remake)
Dark Habits
The Terminator (rewatch)
Robocop (not a rewatch! Never seen it before!)
Inception (rewatch)

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (12-12)
Michaelangelo: Drawing Blood (theatre, Mumford, Cambridge)
Still no gigs!

Books incoming 0 (read 13/17)
Other than a couple of text books which I do not count for this list. With the 8 read I've made a proper dent in the unread bookshelves this month.

Good: British Summertime, Excession, Robocop.
Weird: Michaelangelo, which turned out to be interpretative dance, and I still had quite a cough, and spent the hours in the theatrically-fogged room trying not to choke while people pulled red sparkly intestines out of naked men.

A theatre thing about Michaelangelo, I thought it was going to be acting but it turned out to be more like interpretative dance. I didn't understand it. There were red sparkly intestines, or perhaps it was a metaphor. They were big on stage fog, and I spent most of my time trying hard not to cough, and not always managing... Michaelangelo didn't seem to draw anything, but he writhed around in a fairly tormented way.

Next theatre thing on the horizon is amateur dramatic version of Alien in London which is probably more my sort of thing :-)

Books read (11-15)
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes (1966)
The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Gene Wolfe (1972)
Anthology of Black Humour, ed. André Breton (1751-1951, 1966)
Advent, James Treadwell (2012)
The Falling Sky, Pippa Goldschmidt (2013)

Novellas read (1)
The Other Christmas Carol, David Wake

Films watched (32-43) 6 at the cinema, 3 DVD, 2 streamed, 1 tv
In The House
Trance
The Late Quartet
Tideland
The Secret In Their Eyes
Take Shelter
The Place Beyond The Pines
Buena Vista Social Club
Iron Sky
Iron Man 3
Elena
Iron Man 3 (rewatch)

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (8-11)
Fast/Slow (film symposium, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge)
Light Show (art, Hayward Gallery, London)
Austentatious (theatre, Jane Austen improv, Leicester Square Theatre, London)
Tom Crean (theatre, Mumford, Cambridge)
No gigs!

Books incoming 4 (two purchases, one loan, one gift) (read 12/17)

Saw this yesterday - the trailers make it look like cute Ryan Gosling doing exciting things on a motorcycle like stunt riding and pulling bank robberies, the reviews said good things about it being a powerful tale of family, fatherhood and fate, and the way a life can turn on a tiny decision and have repercussions down the generations.

Anyone else seen it? I was intrigued by the way some of the action scenes were shot, very jerky, like a series of stills more than the 24 frames per second we're used to. I was trying to work out what effect this had - almost like a comic book? A sort of distancing and switch of genre from the moody closeups of Handsome Ryan being eaten up by emotion and trying not to show it.

Spoilers in comments...

I did longer hours than usual getting the quarterly data out and up, and had a day off yesterday. I did waste some idling at the laptop but also:

Took two full bags to the charity shop, and came back with only two DVDs
Dismantled three large cardboard boxes to the point where they fit in the recycling bin. Broke the polystyrene inserts similarly to fit in the bin, which made very loud noises and perturbed the cat.
Went through the stuff under the kitchen table with the cleaner, who claims be be very good at just throwing things out, but in most cases she agreed that someone must want it if I could find the right home and it would be a shame to throw it out. She went away with a few train set pieces from Dad's aging set to show to her Friend Who Knows About That Sort Of Thing.
Read the gas/electric meters and submitted the readings
Turned the heating off because it's bloody April, damnit!
Couple of social planning emails
Walked 10.8 miles
- along Milton Road, where the cherry trees are just blooming and saying a shy "Hello!" to Spring, and the birches have their hands dug firmly in their overcoat pockets and their shoulders hunched against the cold and say "Not convinced iz Spring come back later"
- visited sphyg and E who slept a lot
- did light shopping of a tedious special diet/specialist shop/boring food nature (which also sells Booja Booja chocolates)
- and bought coffee from chap in market. My special tedious cereal now smells of coffee :-)
Did a load of laundry and hung it to dry
Went to cinema with S: The Place Beyond The Pines
Came back to dry laundry and brought it upstairs

With all that walking I still didn't manage to spot car numberplate 745. I hope one still exists, somewhere.

I think Saturday will have fewer, bigger things (possibly including Do All The Ironing then complain that wrists hurt), and prepare for Monday, as on Sunday I'm off out to London for Light Show and Austentatious and hopefully avoiding the crowds of the marathon. "And feed ozymandias_cat," says ozymandias_cat. Okay, I will put that on my list. "Also hamsters!" say the live_gerbils. Doctor Who goes on the list too (as it is important to include these things) though I see it is at 6:45 today because it leaps around the tv schedules in time (if not in space).

A.
The vending machine has Skittles!
*buys Skittles*
The vending machine has no Skittles

B.
The vending machine has no Skittles!
*fills machine with Skittles*
The vending machine has Skittles

rpt

Whoops, got home yesterday from work and had a quick nap for 3 hours, then slept through the night for another 9 hours. Did an 8 hour day today and sleepy again. Still, I have Friday off as time in lieu. Hope I don't sleep through it!

Books read (9-10)
The Collapsium, Wil McCarthy (2000)
Seraphina, Rachel Hartman (2012)

Films watched (20-31) 4 at the cinema, 6 DVD, 2 streamed
5 Broken Cameras
Mama
Silver Linings Playbook
Hugo
Mulholland Drive
Robot & Frank
Gran Torino
Bad Lieutenant
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Nirvana
Cloud Atlas
Dredd

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (4-7)
Simon Munnery: Fylm-Makker (comedy, London)
Man Ray: Portraits (art, National Portrait Gallery, London)
Bright Club (amateur science comedy night at the Portland Arms, worth a visit)
Richard Herring: Talking Cock (comedy, Cambridge - embrace your penis! )
and I had a ticket for The Beat but was ill and couldn't go.

Books incoming 2 (both new purchases) (read 9/12)

*peers at films and gig list* Hmm, it's no wonder I didn't read much in March.

Loads of good films and gigs, I wasn't keen on Mama but most of the rest of the films were good to very good, with some awesome moments. But I have a long list of chores to get through this afternoon so less descriptions from me today...

Snowing again - I had planned on a couple of nice long walks today but instead I might test out the treadmill.

First I need to wait for my nail to dry. One tore, and I painted it with nail glue (like superglue) to try to save it, went to make breakfast (carefully), and then did the rookie mistake of touching it with a finger to see if it was dry. After 10 mins it was not dry, I now have blodgy glue (which still might not fix the nail) and a weird-feeling fingertip. Luckily I glued it while my hair dying was at the 'put conditioner in and leave for a while' stage, not the 'put the dye in and leave for no longer than 15 minutes'. When it has dried I can finish getting dressed and out and cat-feeding. Kitten came downstairs yesterday with polystyrene balls stuck to him, I think a big white squeaky monster might have been killed upstairs.

EDIT: Today I was sitting on the sofa at kittenhouse. To my left was the doorhandle, which had a rubber pompom attched to it by an elastic cord. Kitten was launching himself from the far end of the sofa, poinging off my lap, pouncing and catching the pompom, then running away with it across my lap to the far end of the sofa until the inevitable happened and the pompom was released to snap back to the door. Or my face. Whichever was closest.

A meme!
How this works:
You comment, I give you an age (please tell me how old you currently are - I don't know all of your ages) and you fill out the meme questions with what applied to you back then, and now.

( 18 )

***
( 42 )