Mayfly

Over at Meish, Meg has resurrected The Mayfly Project – now in its fifth year.

The basic premise is to sum up your year in twenty words or less. That’s it. It makes for fun reading, and it’s quite a challenge to get a year into twenty words.


Phone Theft

According to this story on the BBC, from today you can register your phone’s details online so that if the phone is stolen, you have a better chance of getting it back.

It’s pretty easy to do – although you need the phone’s IMEI number. On O2 you can get this by dialling *#06# (according to their website – it didn’t work on mine,but there we go, that’s O2 for you) or it should be on the phone’s label, just under where the battery goes.

I’ve no idea how good the system will be, but anything that makes phone theft more traceable – and in fact more difficult to get away with – gets my support.

UPDATED : Apparently it’s not a new site or programme, but well, I’m still going to keep the post, as it’s a good thing for people to know about.


Final Stages

Well, the Transit van (technically it’s a Sprinter, but who’s counting?) is now booked for Friday, so we’re just about ready for the final part of the move.

It’s been a fair while coming, to be honest – but I’ll be glad when it’s all out of the way at last.


Movement

Another bloody good journey – I could get used to this, if only I didn’t know it’ll never last. Four hours door-to-door, including a break at Some Services Close To The Edge Of Christendom™. They’re only known by such a long title because I can’t remember exactly where they were, or who ran them. Travelling is not good for the memory, nor for the IQ.

Two Three (my mistake) runs to the dump – and my (now ex) council should be shot for how bad their website is. Look under “dump” or “refuse site” and fuck all comes back. Look under “environmental center” and the story is the same. Look under “civic amenity site” and there we go, the tip I’d wanted to find. Now, why didn’t I think of it as a “civic amenity”? Because that’s not what they should be listed under, according to the e-government and APLaws projects! Twunts.

So now the move is half-complete. Most (if not all) of the high-value gubbins is now moved, thanks to Herself’s idea of hiring a mini combo van for the weekend, which made a lot of sense when it came to shifting stuff about. Far better than a Fiesta…

Next weekend it’s the joys of a high-side Transit or similar, for the big stuff. That’ll be fun then.


Birthday

Oh yes, and Happy Birthday Lori. Hope it’s been a good one, and sorry we didn’t make it to the party. We’ll make up for it at Sevitz’s bash…


Manic

After yesterday’s mad journey up to Manchester, we’ve been packing stuff up for the last twelve hours. Utterly knackered – one load of ex-furniture to the local tip (it was so knackered it wasn’t worth moving it, or trying to find another buyer for the stuff) and a whole bundle of stuff sorted.

Along the way, we’ve decided that I’ve got WAY too many DVDs, books and CDs, which makes life interesting – still, there’s lots of new shelves in Bracknell to fill with that kind of junk. Although I doubt there’ll be anywhere near as much once all this lot has been unloaded and sorted.

The first week of ’05 has been nothing short of insane, what with New Year, new job, new house, and still moving stuff from the old one. Next weekend is going to be the final push on that score – hiring a Transit van to get it all in, and working from there. And after that, with luck, some time to sit down and stop.

It’s a nice thought, but whether it’ll happen or not is another matter entirely…


Observative

Today on the TV news, they talked about charity shops, and did a report on one in particular that specialised in selling second-hand books and music. Since the Tsunami disaster in Asia, they’ve been snowed under with donations and so on. Which is all well and good, obviously – every little helps.

However, when they were doing the report, they showed a man taking a book off the shelves. In a fit of epic bad taste (although I’m pretty sure they didn’t even realise what it was) the book was The Beach by Alex Garland. If you know the book or the film should be cringing right about now.