I don't often put on a performance, I believe it's better to let the students do more of the work. But I must admit that when the energy is flowing, performing is addictive and I can understand why actors and comedians get such a buzz out of it.
The right-hand RSI. The left-handed mouse skills are improving, especially now that I've reversed the mouse buttons on all the PCs at work and at home.
The Child-care. On Sunday I was the only parental figure in the house, and the boy wanted to work on his school Physics project - building an electric motor. Actually he wanted me to do the work, but I said I would simply advise him and let him do the real work.
We ended up spending all day building the thing, and it would have taken even longer if I hadn't stepped in and taken over whenever he was making heavy going of it. Often it's quicker to do the sawing/drilling yourself than stand by while a kid makes a mess of it. I don't mind watching students make a dog's breakfast of things when I'm being paid for it at college, but I lack the patience for that at home.
The blog template. The peek-a-boo display of comments is working well. And I've put a cluster map, at the right, of where people click from. Here's a zoomed version showing 4 days of hits:
Most of the clicks would have been guys trawling for HNT boob and bum shots, but you'll notice that one of the hits came from Turkey - that will be mamahog, an English woman who lives in Istanbul and posts about life as a funky Westerner in a (modern) Islamic country.
The TV. When I first came ashore in these Islands all those years ago, I was determined to "live lite", i.e. to avoid becoming weighed down by accumulated possessions, especially heavy contraptions that would limit my options for moving on.
So for a year I had no TV set. Then I succumbed and bought a wee pocket TV with a 1-inch screen. That was good for watching TV in bed under the blankets, but useless for watching sport, because fast-moving tennis-balls and footballs simply disappear from the screen, so you have to use a lot of imagination. Eventually, I cracked and bought a smallish TV set, the sort that some people put in their kitchens. I have used that for ten years. But you have to sit quite close to it - it's no good if you want to lie flat on your back on the floor wearing the light-bending space-age TV glasses.
When hotboy recently mentioned watching David Attenborough's TV wildlife series, I decided it was time to stop making do with a wee TV, and live a little. So last week I splashed out on a 68cm (29-inch) flat screen TV. It's still cheap old CRT technology but it's new to me. It's so heavy, it took 3 people just to lift it out of the box. I built an altar for it out of several coffee tables stacked up. Now the room's a temple to the electronic nipple.
And as soon as I finish this post I'm going to have breakfast then watch one of my favourite films, Trainspotting. I haven't seen it since the year it came out, so I've forgotten most of what happens, but I do remember it's a metaphor for addiction to tea. What a rush! I saw it originally in a crowded cinema - the appalled audience watched in stunned silence while we cackled ourselves hoarse in the back row.
