Chilli!

As Kit relates, too, we made a fab chilli con carne (and, using Quorn mince, a ‘chilli non carne’ for Paul). Recipe as below (feel free to steal, adapt etc.):

AUGUST CHILLI
serves 8

1 225g tin chopped tomato
1 5-portion bottle “sundried tomato” pasta sauce
4 medium tomatoes, thinly sliced
1 tube double concentrate tomato paste
1 tube chilli paste
1 200g tin kidney beans
6 cloves garlic
12 medium closed-cup mushrooms, sliced
1 tblspn herbes de provence
6 mild green chilli peppers, sliced and de-seeded
1 small drop of “Da Bomb” mother-of-all-chilli-sauces (who dares burns)
2 teaspoons monosodium glutamate
pinch of salt
500g lean beef mince
250g quorn mince
olive oil

Fry the mince, and, in a separate pan, the quorn – in a little olive oil. Toast the garlic (again, olive oil) in a separate pan, add the mushrooms, and fry until cooked. Meanwhile, mix together the remaining ingredients in a large pan over a medium heat, stirring frequently. Add the cooked mushrooms and garlic to the tomato/chilli sauce, and heat for a further 5-10 minutes. Pour 2/3 of the sauce over the beef mince, and the remaining 1/3 over the quorn mince, and stir in. Serve with fajitas, tacos, or whatever else you like. Also tastes great re-heated, or with a little Worcester sauce added (not vegetarian, so don’t add it to the quorn pan!).

Without a doubt, Kit and I’s best chilli to date. Not hot enough to injure anybody… Bryn, who considers a medium curry “hot”, went back for seconds… but well-rounded, fruity (if substituting “Da Bomb”, use a good-quality chilli sauce), and warming. Brought my nose-end out in a sweat, and left us all sitting around in a mild chilli-induced euphoria. Fantastic.

Reb Leaves The Country!

It turns out that Reb (my ex-) was trying to get in touch with me to tell me that she was leaving the country: she’d decided on Saturday night that she wanted to tell me that today (Tuesday) she’d be leaving the UK to go and work for six months in Benidorm, returning for a few weeks in January before (if she can get a visa sorted out) moving to Egypt.

This is good for two reasons:

(a) This is something she’s wanted to do pretty-much since I met her, six years ago. She suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder, which causes her to become depressed during shorter days as a result of a dependency upon sunlight to make ‘happy chemicals’ in the brain. Moving to more equatorial regions – at least for the winter – should make her a happier bunny.

(b) I no longer have to share a country with her. Seriously, it’s a great relief. I’m sure that folks in Preston will be glad to hear this news, too. Apparently she had a party to commemorate her leaving. I wonder if I can organise one, too, to celebrate that she’s gone.

But I suppose that’s excessively harsh. When I spoke to her on the phone on Sunday I didn’t even for a moment get a compulsion to put a spear through her chest and skewer her to a tree, and I even smiled at the fact that we were talking (and not just at the fact that she was leaving).

She said that she misses me. I said that I was glad that I didn’t miss her, because she’d caused me enough self-abuse in my lifetime. She changed the subject.

Eventful

Been excessively busy this last week: lots and lots of work. Pulled a 16-and-a-half hour work day on Wednesday, fixing the entire network where my co-workers were unable to. It’s a lot nicer now. In other news, I won an eBay auction for a copy of the 1974 edition of Parker Games “Careers” board game, which is fab, and Claire, Bryn, Paul, Kit and I have been playing it all week.

Three Rings schedule looks tighter and tighter. Having some doubts about getting it to a stable 1.0 release by next weekend, the deadline.

Tonight, sometime after midnight, my awful ex-, Reb (if you ever hear me complain about my ex-, it’s undoubtedly her) dropped me two text messages out of the blue asking if I’m awake and to call her, in capitals (followed by two “X”s, which I take to be kisses). I can’t be arsed. I’ll drop her a text in the morning and find out what she wants.

Right now, I’m going to coax Claire to bed for rumpy-pumpy. ;-)

A Vasectospectacular Mistake

So this Brazillian man with a ear infection goes in for surgery, and, as a result of his sore ear, mis-hears the name announced in the doctor’s waiting room, and accidentality gets a vasectomy.

What? Didn’t he think anything of it when the doctor applied a local anaesthetic to the area under his balls and produced a scalpel? Apparently, he thought that the doctor knew best and that the infection must have travelled down that far. And didn’t think to ask. It’s a weird world.

Dating Agency Stupidity

I saw this dating site today (don’t ask how I came across that in my daily webtrawl)… the page in question has two major flaws:

1. Why would a dating company offer a “lifetime membership”? If they were truly any good at what they did – i.e. matchmaking – then shouldn’t you not-need to be a member for very long before you find Mr./Miss. Right and sail away into the sunset? Surely the best dating agencies don’t need to offer memberships that cover more than one date, because they’re that good at matching people up?
2. I don’t think they meant for their legal agreement (see for yourself) to read “TERMS AGREEMENT GOES HERE”. Whooops!

Anyway, it made me smile. And my headache’s almost better now. Shame I’ve got almost no work done today.

How Am I Supposed To Feel?

After my stressy-rant the other day, Claire, Kit and Paul started tidying up Claire and my flat. My suspicions – that they were doing this to try to make my life a little less stressful – were confirmed by Claire one evening.

They mean well, but I can’t help but feel that instead of having lots of things to do and little motivation, I now have somewhat fewer things to do and little motivation. I’m not sure whether that’s an improvement or not. I guess it is. More prominently, for awhile I felt guilty: like by my blog entry I’d, like, emotionally blackmailed them into doing it. I mean: tidying my flat? I don’t know.

Claire’s not feeling well and has taken an early night, but I can’t sleep again.

I do feel a lot better though. I guess my friends’ efforts really have helped. It makes me happy to have friends who care. It makes the corners of my eyes twitch and my stomach try to swallow my heart, all by themselves. I guess this is what friends are for.

I’m going to check if Claire’s asleep and take her some more painkillers if she’s not. Then I think I’ll take a walk, then try to get some sleep.

To friendship.

Progress!

Working late. I’ve got Club 977 (best 80’s cheese on the ‘net!) playing as loud as this computer goes, slamming out code at a rate more productive than I’ve been all week. Finally got past a bug that’d been troubling me for days. Phew! Just in time for a meeting tomorrow!

I’ve been getting a lot of concerned attention after my post, “Stress!”, earlier (I didn’t think I had so many avid readers). Thanks, all of you; you concern means a lot, but really – I’ll be okay: I land on my feet, remember! Just need to get my head down and get on with some stuff, that’s all, and a little bit of de-stressing onto the web was good, too.

A few more lines of code, methinks, before Claire arrives (she’s kindly giving me lifts to and from work while I’m being a lazy bugger and not sorting out my bike, the star).

Take care, y’all;

Stress

Things that are causing me excess stress and reduced sleep:

WORK

  • I’m writing program features that have been paid for, but may never be used.
  • I can’t keep a pcAnywhere connection to the client open for more than a few minutes.
  • I’ve been abandoned to sort out the database replication by myself.
  • A colleague insists upon demonstrating how stressed they are about their upcoming deadline, as if I needed reminding about mine (I’m already past it, and the client keeps phoning me to tell me all about it).
  • Pulling extra hours isn’t actually getting that much more work done.

HOME

  • I still have lots of Three Rings to go, most notably a file-storing system, and I can’t find a way to focus on it.
  • I have heaps of laundry to do…
  • …oughta tidy up, too…
  • …and sort some things out with the bank, with my parents, with the Dept. of Comp. Sci…

But, above it all – the killer:

  • I can’t find the motivation to get on with any of it, and it’s all building up into a mammoth heap of incompleteness.

End of rant.

Equilibre – Theatre For Horse-Lovers And Other Wierdos

Just got back from seeing Equilibre (horse theatre thingy) with Claire. What can I say? Great music, brilliant dancing, some very impressive singing, the second best use of stagecraft (circumstances given) that I’ve ever seen, the work of a director with great imagination, impressive horseplay…

…but I can’t help but feel that I’ve come away from it missing something. Perhaps I just didn’t ‘get it’, but I did find it difficult to follow the plot, or, at times, even find one at all. Perhaps something to do with the fact that, of the four languages used during the show, I understood only the third-most frequently used.

Still: if you like horses, and you’d like to see them trot their stuff alongside opera singers on stilts, gypsies dancing with a horse skull, and flame-flinging people from earlier in my journal, this is the show for you. If, however, you don’t speak either Italian or Romany and don’t like horses, don’t bother.

They’re performing all of this week. Tickets £10 adults, £6 children.

Train Girl Fantasy

Take a look at the thread on Train Girl Fantasies that Andy has accidentally started. Participate! Tell us all about your Train Girl Fantasies. We all know you’ve had them.

Last night I fixed eight or so of the bugs that Paul and Kit found in my software project the night before. They’ve promised not to find any more before I’ve had a chance to fix these ones.

Kit’s Rant

I agree with Kit’s rant:

I learn today that the funding may be cut *again* to the Nightline here is Aberystwyth. I don’t care what the reasoning is – cutting the funding anymore is plain dangerous.

Its lie after lie in the Union. I have seen little in five long years that has actually impressed me about the way it operates or the people involved (bar a few notable exceptions). Its a lie and an illusion to sit and pretend that cutting all budgets evenly is fair. Its actually lazy. That’s all – its the simplest “no brainer” approach to finance ever. I mean look at it another way – would a company do that? I know some have – but clever ones do not. They look where the money is being spent, and they look toward efficiencies. They also look for people who are misusing, under-using or inappropriately / inefficiently using their funds. You don’t simply hack money from everyone and expect them to cope.

Until now we have simply been a soft target. Time and time again they have cut our funds and received nothing but us working harder and harder to make ends meet. We have ended up funding things ourselves, supplying our own resources or equipment. This has to stop here and now. We are going to have to fight and push this back. The tide needs stopping here and now – as else we are simply not going to exist anymore.

Words are easy, action more difficult – but we have a load of strengths the union hasn’t got. We need to persuade them to cut somewhere else instead of us – yes its that bad, but I am afraid I see an even straight line cut as being an insult to the 2600 hours of open time (let alone meeting and organisational time) we put in. No other club and society is open *anything* like that long, or does anything for every other student.

I am bloody annoyed.

Current Mood: infuriatedinfuriated
Current Music: My fishtank filtration units

From my understanding, Nightline provides a listening ear to every student at the university for at least 12 hours, every night during termtime, run entirely by volunteer students – the money is spent on such necessities as a phone bill and publicity materials. No other student-run organisation on campus: the sports teams, the clubs and societies, etc., provides a service which is accessible to all, and saves lives. It’s outrageous that the Union don’t see the importance of things like this until they’re gone.

Bugger. Now I’m pissed-off, too.

Now Where Did I Put My House?

Did anybody see the story about the American who had their house stolen this weekend? That’s a fantastic theft to pull off. Wish I’d thought of it first. Ah well.

Also this weekend, a man is killed in a collision between a car and a train. Not particularly noteworthy under normal circumstances, I know, but the train in question is a tourist attraction – a one-third scale steam train with a top speed of 15mph, and the car was a Ford Escort, probably about the same size as the steam engine and weighing about half as much. It takes a special kind of bad driver to get struck on a level crossing at which the trains go barely fast enough to outrun a sprinting child.

Enough newssurfing – back to work;

Saddles

As if Adam’s Bike Saddle Problems weren’t bad enough, somebody’s stolen mine! While left parked outside my house, somebody came along in the night and swiped the seat of my bike! I’m not in the slightest bit pleased.

Claire‘s not feeling well. Kit and I are keeping our eyes out for any good placebos. I need to go in to the office today. And, yes, I am aware that it’s Sunday. If Claire’s not up to it, I might have to find an alternative that bumming a lift from her. Hmm…

Edit, 17th September 2007: This post seems to be a hot blogspam target, presumably because it’s the fourth Google hit when searching for “bumming saddles” or some other nonsense reason. Comments closed.

Banks

It seems that NatWest now only open during the hours at which I am at work. Yet somehow I’m expected to deposit my paycheque. This makes no sense.

Mostly, I’ve been watching Futurama and drinking good beer. On Saturday, Claire and I went up to a forest North of Dolgellau and ate sandwiches and failed to find climbable trees. And I twisted my ankle. In any case, after a week of working late and coming home to evenings with everybody-in-Aber-I-know, it was good to spend some time alone with her.

I should be coding Three Rings, or Kit will shout at me. Better get on.

Helpless

I can’t sleep.

For the last week or so, I’ve talked a little every day or two with a really good friend of mine who is, unfortunately, going through some problems at the moment. They’d been quite understating and evasive about talking about them at length until yesterday, when they suddenly revealed to me quite how difficult they’re finding their life, of late.

What scared me more than how bad their situation is is that I honestly don’t know what I can do or say to help them. I’ve tried everything I can think of and it’s beginning to upset me that I don’t know what else to try.

I still can’t sleep.