Some weeks are good, some bad, some fun and some not so. This week has just been tiring. All the stress at the beginning of it seemed to set a pattern that try as I might I couldn't seem to quite break. It got better for sure and by mid week I was at least sleeping soundly enough but it always felt as if I was playing catch up with my sleep. Playing catch-up and never catching up though.

For some reason it seems as if my body doesn't fully recharge just by going to bed a bit earlier. It needs that little lie-in in the morning that i so rarely get except at weekends. Perhaps it is because the weather is getting colder and the nights are drawing in that it is getting harder and harder to get up in the mornings. Not that i don't like this time of year. I actually love it. But colder mornings mean my nice warm bed gets even harder to leave and get up every morning. Plus I know that sooner rather than later it is going to get to the stage that I'm getting up in the dark and coming home in the dark. I really hate that.

But it's Friday. he weekend is here and hopefully a couple of days of an extra hour or two or three in bed will give my body clock that little extra nudge it needs to make next week not so tiring and not so tough. I really hope so because i am tired of feeling tired.

Jack is feeling

Inigo Montoya

A likeable character with a lust for life, you do what gets you by while continually pursuing your own interests.

Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die.

Inigo is a character in The Princess Bride

'Rain and sunshine together make a rainbow.'

A quote from the Fizz tweenies video my daughter has watched so many times she now can play and talk along with the video using her Tweenie dolls to act it out. I swear this girl is going to turn into an even bigger geek than me one day. Anyway one of the things she absolutely loves about that video is the rainbow. But as Jake says 'Where's the rainbow? I've never seen a rainbow' (Yes she has seen it so many times even I can quote from the video now) I don't recall her having seen a rainbow in real life. That changed today and all because of me.

On the way home from work I stopped by the local supermarket to get a few essentials. Essentials including a couple of bottles of Diet Coke. To my Better Half that is. She can't live without her Diet Coke apparently. Anyway I was just about to go throough the doors when I saw the biggest, brightest rainbow I can recall seeing. Immediatly my mind went to my daughter and how she would love to see it. And thanks to the miracle of the mobile she could. I was straight on my mobile to my Better Half to tell her and she immediatly took our daughter to look out of the dining room window to see if they too could see it.

The result? A very excited little girl who once I got home couldn't wait to tell her daddy about the beautiful rainbow she had just seen. Also one very happy me. A simple thought, a simple thing and a happy face results. Life rarely gets better than that.

Who would have thought it? Getting more sleep makes you less tired. A little bit at least. Normally I'm rarely in bed before midnight but yesterday it was 10pm on the dot. I could actually have just fell into bed and slept the moment I got back from work but that would have screwed up my bodyclock totally and I really need to get it back to normal. So I struggled to make it to ten and then just crashed out and slept solidly for 9 and a half hours. Not that much compared to how much I needed but a whole lot better than my normal six or so hours or the four or five I've ebeen used in the past week. Plus it was good sleep. Slept like a baby the whole time.

No strike that expression. I didn't sleep like a baby. Only someone who has never been a parent would call good sleeping sleeping like a baby. Someone who has paid a visit to a house with a baby, saw it sleeping, thought 'how cute' and then gone back to a baby free house. if I had slept like a baby I would have woken up two or three times in the night, screamed blue murder for attention and food until everyone else was awake then crapped in my pants with the most foul disgusting stuff ever to grace this or any other world. I think my Better Half might just have kicked downstairs to sleep on the sofa if I had done that.

So no, I slept like a log. Dead to the world until my alarm woke me this morning. My alarm being my Better Half. For some reason since I got together with her I have lost my ability to wake up just before the alarm goes off while she has gained it. o now she nudges me awake to get me up. It means she does wake up before me but then has the compensation of rolling over to go back to sleep while I get up. And after my good night's sleep was I feeling full of the joys of morning as i woke up? No. A lot less tired and a little more positive for sure but I am never going to like early mornings no matter how many times I have got experience them.

I could have slept all day today. At times it felt as though my mind was even if my body was going through the motions of a normal working day. I suppose that a week of worry and sleepness nights have finally caught up with me. Thankfully it was a worry that has so far not come to pass. My Better Half's gran had the operation and has come through it. She is not out of the woods yet and there is still a ways to go before any of us know how successful an operation it has been but she is still here.

Maybe we shouldn't have worried so much. It is such a negative emotion which sucks the energy out of you without giving anything back. Certainly it has done so with my Better Half who looks way more tired than even I feel. She is worried sick about her gran, I am worried about her and really where does that get us? Nowhere. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. Not one little bit of worry is going to change that. Instead we should be looking at the positive side. We should be imaginging her gran with a better quality of life after this operation, with more time to spend with her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. And for herself. God knows she has earned that.

However, as much as my concious mind knows about how pointless worrying is I still tend to do it. The result of it this time is that I am absolutely exhausted. Normally there is some little bit of enegy left in me that I can draw on if necessary. Not at the moment. I seem to be running on empty yet unable to stop. At least until I crash which is what my body feels very close to doing. I need an early night and i think it had better be tonight.

Typical Monday morning at work today. feeling tired, trying to get my mind in gear and working after a weekend of chilling and relaxing when I get a phone call. Now the guy on the other end didn't say he was in India. Not once throughout the whole ten minute conversation that followed did he say where he was. However after the first twenty seconds or so of conversation it was obvious that English wasn't his first language and that he was reading from a prepared script. So obviously some guy in a call centre which from the accent was in India.

It seems strange that companies would pay someone in India to phone or take calls from people in the UK to either be customer support or try and sell you stuff but they do. Not because they are better or worse than call centres in this country on the whole but because it is a whole lot cheaper to pay somewhere there to do the job than someone here. Most of the time you don't even know that the person on the other end is in India. They are hired and trained because they speak good English. They even get training in how to appear English and get English names assigned to them to further this subterfuge.

This guy must have missed that part of the training. In fact he must have missed a whole lot of the training because he was terrible. I could barely understand him, he could barely understand me and the whole point of the call was, so far as I could tell, to gather as much information about me or the company I was working for in return for a renewing a subscription to a free computing magazine which someone once suscribed to but has long since left. A magazine that just gets binned as soon as it arrives.

Now normally I would have just told him to cancel it and hung up. Or if they had called my home just said 'Not interested' and hung up. I don't buy anything from cold callers or give out personal information to someone who just calls up out of the blue. But I was bored, I was tired and I was down. So I played along by giving some totally obvious false and contradicting information to see how far I could push it before he twigged I was talking out of my arse. He didn't. Or if he did he didn't seem to care. It was just a case for him of going through that script as fast as possible and getting some, any answer.

So I upped my salary by 20K, told him I drove a porsche, gave my name as Robbie Williams, made the company out to be virtually a multi-national and he never said anything. Just threw more questions my way which I made up answers to off the top of my head. Fun for a while but by the end of it I was wishing I had just hung up as he just kept on coming with the questions. Did he really believe that i was Diesctor of sales, Head of Security and the Chief programmer and computer buyer? Or was he just at the end of his shift nd trying to keep on target as regards to his calls. God knows or cares.

I don't know. Wait years for one Doctor Who show to come along and now you get two. With Captain Jack no less.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/

Enough to bring a little smile to my face when I am feeling down and can't sleep. I guess there are some compensations to being a sci-fi geek.

My Better Half's gran finally went into hospital today. We have known she was going to need this operation for almost a year now but it still seems to have crept up on us. Perhaps it is because the date has been put back and put back so many times that we were thinking maybe that would be the case this time. She was due to go in last Wenesday but she got a call late Tuesday putting it off untl today. And today she went in.

So now we wait. We wait for a phone call to tell us everything has gone okay. Or it hasn't. There is always the chance she will not make it through the operation. The doctors have told her this. Though she needs the operation, like any major surgery it carries a risk. A risk that has everyone who cares for her thinking what could happen tomorrow.

I have to admit to being worried and scared about tomorrow. Both about what will happen to my Better Half's gran and how my Better Half will take it if something does go wrong. I wish I didn't have to go to work tomorrow but I do. If bad news does come through she will probably text me to call her instead of calling me. I wonder how I will react to that news. Does it sound cold to say I will be more worried and upset about how my Better Half is coping than about what happened to her gran? That is not to say if anything happens I won't be upset. Of all my Better Half's family her gran is probably the only one I have any real closeness to. Yet I have known her only a few years and only in fleeting visits. For my Better half though this is the family member who has been there for her the most.

More than her mum, more than her dad, more than anyone her gran gave her much needed love when she was growing up and through her bad times. She feels such a close connection with her that if something does happen she will be totally devestated. And I will be devastated by seeing my Better Half's reaction to it. In saying that everything could turn out fine. We could be worrying about something that is years down the line. Still I am praying for the best and preparing for the worst.

Jack is feeling

I was going to put up my latest 'Banners Of Triumph' in this post. The icons that have won various icon contests I have entered over the past couple of weeks. Just to show what a fantastic icon maker I am. However for everyone that places I produce many more that people just hate. Some are a few votes short of placing but more are lucky to scrape a vote or two. Thing is i must be a terrible judge of what makes a good icon because I quite like most of them. Not surprising since I make them usually to my own personal taste but also some are also very personal to me. Not that anyone else might see that since they don't and won't know the story behind many of the images I choose when given an opportunity to choose.

So here are some of the ones that didn't make the grade with the voters but which i like anyway.

( Losers But Loved )

I thought I was organised today. With Christmas just ten weeks away and speeding towards us like a train gathering speed I decided a few days ago to break the habit of a lifetime and try and get all my presents bought before the beginning of December. That really goes against what I used to do. My target in previous years, especially before I met my Better Half, was to get it all done in the week after my Birthday. Since that is a couple of weeks before Christmas it may be seen as cutting things fine but I liked to see it as concentrating the mind.

I'm not one for shopping solo at the best of times but add in a seathing , mass of humanity all intent it seems on buying everything and anything with the merest hint of Christmas about it and there is incentive enough to get in and out as quick as you can. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am and her is your present. But once you have a child then suddenly the shopping and the planning and the thinking about what they would like seems to increase a hundredfold. And the cost.

So to spread it out and to reduce the stress I want it all over before that big rush. And what better way than to do some of that online. Less stress, some great discounts and no carting stuff back from the shops. That is why a few days ago I ordered my first few things for my Better half. I know roughly what I am getting her and will get it a bit at a time in the next six or so weeks. Hurray for organised me. Or amybe not for tofday my even more organised Better half casually drops into the conversation the fact that she has got, wrapped and put away her presents for me for both my birthday and Christmas so now is the time to get the daughter presents sorted. At least the bits she hasn't already done. I'm just going to have to admit that no matter how hard I try I'm never going to be more organised than her.

A sad day at work today. A woman I work with was called up by her mum midmorning to tell her that her grandad had died. She had been expecting it. Just yesterday she was telling us that the hospital had warned them it might happen. She accepted it and said his passing would be a blessing since he was in so much pain. However as I know from personal experience knowing that and accepting it before the inevitable happens does not lessen the pain that you feel when it actually happens. It is still a shock, those first few words still cut through the core of your being and tear at your soul.

Seeing that despair sweep across her face as she was told the news wasn't nice to watch. It made me think of the time I had been told that. How I had felt and how she must be feeling something similar. Mine was face to face and in my own home. For that I am grateful. If it had happened a scant few days earlier I would have been told at school with no-one there to comfort me or who understood what I was feeling and the person who had gone. For some reason I feel it is important to have someone like that there at those times.

And the thing is I know that sooner or later I or my Better Half will have to take a call like that either at home or work. We both have close relatives with health problems who could be here years or gone tomorrow. Though I have seen enough of this life to know that there is no guarantee that you might not lose anyone close to you a lot sooner than you think. Things happen, people die and we never truly expect it. I just don't want to hear that in a phone call.

Given my family live hundreds of miles away though if, when it happens that will be how I learn about it though. I understand now why my mum hated the phone ringing late at night. Late being after 9pm. There was a part of her that thought that no-one would call at that time unless something was wrong and every time it did I could see the tension in her. She never did get any bad news at that time of night but it never stopped that fear in her and it hasn't stopped me feeling some of it too if the phone rings late. Because one day it will be that call.

Jack is feeling

Three years yesterday I was sitting on a soaked sofa. It didn't start out soaked. As me and my Better Half were curled up on it watching Friends it was a perfectly dry sofa. Then halfway through it wasn't. It was a very wet one because her waters had just broke taking us both by surprise. My daughter wasn't die for three more weeks but impatient as her mother she had decided to come out early. maybe she just didn't like Friends but she was coming out whether we were ready or not.

of course we weren't. I must admit there was a little panic when we realised what had happened. Panic, fear, excitement and a multitude of other emotions are churning inside me.Part of that was just the though that my daughter was coming. Now! However there was also some fear because we both knew it was going to be a carsarian birth. The baby was facing the wrong way and in fact we had an appointment to see if they could do a last minute 'manipilation' to turn her the right way. That wasn't happening now,

I have to admit that the night that followed was both the happiest and the most scary night I have ever had. Few times have come even close and nothing has equalled it for the highs and lows I went through. But we did get through it and three years later my daughter has celebrated her third birthday. It has been a very good day. From the sheer wonder on her face as she came downstairs and saw balloons everywhere to the delight on her face as she tore open her presents. The first birthday she has really done that. It is something I will always treasure these moments.

Besides the balloons (so little cost for so much joy) her favourite things about today seem to have been the cake (chocolate of course), her Dora the Explorer backpack (geek in training) and the mini trampoline (she loves to bounce). Boy does she love to bounce. In the end we had to drag her off she loved it so much.

Today has been a good day.

I was watching CSI a few weeks back when, as part of the plot, it was mentioned that people have no memories before the age of three. Everything before that is just a blank. I'm remembering that now because tomorrow is my daughter's third birtday. I know that suddenly on your third birthday you don't remember every little detail that happens from then on but it got me thinking. If by some freak occtence I or her mother suddenly vanished from her life how long before she forgot us? How long before before we were just people in an old photo who were only what other people told her we were. That scares me for so many reasons.

Not that it is going to happen. Still if it is true then sometime in the coming months she is going to make her first, proper memory. A memory that in twenty years time she could be thinking back to as the earliest thing she remembers. Just thinking about that makes me wonder what it will be. It also makes me wish that I was the one who could decide what that memory was. If I could it would be something happy, something with us in it, a day or a moment where we were all laughing and happy and she could think back on and know she was loved for as long as she could remember.

But of course I don't get to choose the memory. No-one does but her subconcious. One day soon it is just going to experience something which is going to turn what is now short term memory into long term memory. The only way I can influence what that is, or rather how she will think back on it is to make sure that every day she knows she is loved. That every day she can laugh at something oe that when something bad, however big or small that something may be, I am there to comfort and hold her, hug her and make her feel better. After all that is my job and it is a job I love.

So more icon banners. I seem to have hit a rich vein of form as icons seem to go. or I just got lucky. Which is closer to the truth than I would wish as the past few icons I have done that I have really like have mostly been accidents that I have just stumbled upon while trying to create something else entirely. What started out as the attempt at one thing ended up at something even better by the addition of a few random elements. Much like my life really. I never expected to be where I am now when I started from where I was. Not living in this place, not living with this person, notbasically doing what I am doing. Yet I am and it is fantastic.

However like in life I also realise that with icons the more I practice the luckier I get. And so long as i enjoy the practicing what the hell, might as well do it a lot.

( The Stuff That Won )

I hate Dirty Dancing. I would say that in an ideal world I would never have to see that movie ever again as for some reason it just sets my teeth on edge. But I can't. Because in my ideal world I would still have my Better Half and she absolutely, totally adores that movie. Adores it so much that I bought it on DVD for her quite a while back. And since I don't want to change a thing about her since everything that she is makes her her then I suppose I will have to put up with that movie for the rest of my life. A very small sacrafice since she has to put up with things like my Star Wars obsession as well.

The thing is she is watching the movie right now. On tv, complete with ad breaks. Did I mention I bought her the DVD? I think I did. Yet whenever that movie pops up on tv she still feels the need to watch it on tv. I mean she could pop the DVD in and watch it ad free but doesn't. i could go off on a rant about that but then I remember that there are certain films I do that with too. Films and series I have on DVD too. For some bizarre reason I might not be thinking about watching them on dvd at the moment but if I stumble acrioss them channel hopping I just have to watch them. Strange.

Rain, rain and more rain. Again. Autumn has definitely arrived and this year seems to be the wettest so far. Mind you that is not saying much since I have only experienced three autumns here. Given that the first one of those was a couple of months after moving here and we were stuck in the flat at the time really I have only last year year to compare it with. So I don't know if this is a normal autumn and it is usually this wet or if last year was the norm and it is supposed to be drier.

I suppose that when you grow up and live in the same town or city for much of your life you just naturally absorb what it is like to live there. The weather is just normal no matter how hot or cold it is. t is what you are used to and what you are used to is what is normal. It is just a normal that varies depending what county or country you happen to have been placed in by fate. I know that when my Better Half first moved to my home town she noticed it was colder and windier than she was used to while I never really noticed.

What I do wonder is how long it will be until the weather here is what is normal. How long before I get used to how it is here and am able to tell if this is a wet year or a dry year? I am actually hoping that is supposed to be this wet in the autumn. I like rain, I like that little bite of cold that you get in the mornings, the mist that seems to form a ring of cloud around the hills first thing. Warm summers, wet springs and autumns and cold winters would be my perfect seasons. So far we have had had three out of four of those this year. here is hoping for a cold, snowy winter. Once I've enjoyed this autumn of course.

TV rots the brain. I never thought I'd say that given how much tv I used to watch but then I would never have thought that the channel that is on most in this house is Nick Jr. A fantastic channel for a toddler which has helped her to count, sing and edutain her but for anyone who has reached voting age it drfinitely rots your brain. Or at least it feels like that when you have seen the same episodes of thesame programs so many times even you can start to speak along with the characters.

To stem the rot whenever i am watching a programme with my daughter I have to look beyond what would be obvious to her and think about some subtext in the show. Something the writers are outting in that would go beyond what a two year old would think. Or maybe I'm just imaging that. probably but at least it helps when it is repeat number 23. Though even that has become annoying.

An example is Little Bear Stories. On the surface a nice cute cartoon starring a cute little bear and all his animal friends. No violence just stories of imagination and friendship. Unless of course you look deeper. The most obvious thing is that little bear is naked in every single episode. Okay so he is a bear. And bears have fur. Yet he lives in a house with Mother Bear and Father Bear who are both dressed all the time like characters out of Little House On The Prairie (God I hated that show). All his relatives that come to visit are wearing clothes. All the pictures of his parents as little bears themselves show them wearing clothes. So why is he never wearing clothes? For some bizarre reason that drives me potty every time i see that show.

Plus the fact that every single animal in it, no matter what it is, can speak and talk and think just like us. Which makes me think that either every character in the show is a vegetarian or there is some very dark scenes we don't get to see. They had a duck talking about giving Little Bear chicken soup one time which is almost cannibilism. And just imagine Mother bear going out to get some eggs and the hens screaming 'Don't take my babies, you monster!' If you think the things through that actually appear in kids cartoons they are potentially the most violent things on TV. Forget the Sopranos, ban Little Bear stories.

Or maybe I just think too much about these things. Probably.

Today the council decided to give everyone in town a new boat. Or at least that what they appeared to do if you were my daughter. To the rest of us these 'boats' looked very much like black, plastic baskets. Almost the same as the ones at my local supermarket except a black instead of green and a little bigger. However my daughter associates plastic baskets with boats. probably becausewe have a large plastic laundry basket that she puts a cushion in and sits in to watch the tv on occassion. Don't ask me why she just does it.

Thing is this basket is rather smaller than that. And she is getting bigger. Still my baby girl but given she is three years old next week still a little too big to sit in what is essentially a plastic shopping basket. She has to hunch her knees a little bit but she still insists on sitting in it and calling it her boat. Guess that is her speedboat while the bigger one is her yaught. Such is the imagination of a child.

The actual purpose of these baskets is that they are supposed to be used for recycling any glass. I have to admit that since I moved here I have noticed that this council is serious about its recycling policy. We already get the opportunity to put plastic and paper out for weekly recycling collection and now it is glass. Not that there is much glass in this house. At least not the kind we are going to throw out. A quick look through the cupboards revealed the only glass containers we have are one containing pasta sauces or coffee. The reason being that when it comes to squeezable or shakeable in my containers I prefer to squeeze. probably some metaphor in that but I'm not going down that path.

So if I did put out my glass for collection it would probably be mostly coffee jars. I wonder what the binmen would say about that? Then again if my neighbours did it theirs would probably be wine bottles. Thats the problem with the recycling bags nad baskets. It gives the neighbours and opportunity to see what you are throwing out and so make wild and totally wrong guesses about your lifestyle. I know I'm guilty of that too but then nosiness can be fun sometimes. Hence why we love livejournal.

If you say something with a straight enough face and say you are doing it to counter something really bad then it seems you can get away with something just as bad. At least that is the conclusion I have come to after reading the paper today. Two stories, two explanations about why something you know is bad is really good just jumped out at me. The first was about drinking more beer and the second was about nuclear power. No they were not the bad things. hey were the good things. Let me explain...

First the beer. Apparently a German brewery is testing and is close to start selling a beer they have christened NicoShot. Yes as the name suggests this is a beer that has nicotine in it. The story put out by this brewery is that it is meant to wean smokers off their cigarettes and give them something to satisfy their nicotine cravings now that smoking is being banned in more and more public places. Drink the beer, lessen the cravings and hey presto a more enjoyable way to give up smoking. Right.

Let's just examine this again from a more cynical point of view. A brewery is making a beer that has two of the most addictive drugs out there in it. Nicotine and alcohol. And they say it is not meant to make the beer more addictive. How could you not believe them. Quite easily really. Plus of course they don't say that drinking more and smoking less isn't quite the healthy lifestyle they are so glibly trying to convince people it is. Reduce your chances of cancer but die of cirrhosis of the liver. Not quite the catchy marketing slogan is it?

Still for sheer cheek the British government has that brewery beats hands down. Remember this a government where most of the those now in power vehemently disagreed with nuclear power and nuclear weapons when they were in opposition. Even as little as a year ago Tony Blair was saying nuclear power was too expensive and not viable enough to expand. But today, lo and behold, there comes a statement that they are looking into the idea of nuclear energy.

Now if they had the guts to say the real reason why you might understand if not agree. However, they are trying to make out they are only turning to nuclear energy because of the effects of global warming. That nuclear energy is the 'green' alternative. That to cut the dangers from that we and everyone else have to ditch the coal and the oil and go nuclear to produce a nicer safer planet. Pull the other one Tony, it's got bells on it.

For some reason I'm feeling better today. Less tired, less looking towards the past and more appreciating what I have now. Maybe it is because I realise could, would and should are just thoughts that bring you down not raise you up. Or to explain them could have, would have and should have.

The first two could have and would have have plagued me as long as I can remember. Maybe that is because I just think too much, worry too much. I don't mean the good thinking, the intelligent kind of thinking. I'm talking about the bad thinking. Going over a situation or what has been said a thousand times to see if there is anything different I could have done or would have done if I just knew what I know then now. That is not good. It stops you just relaxing and being yourself because you never think yourself is good enough. That is both for everyone else and yourself.

To tell the truth the first part of that, being good enough for someone else, shouldn't be the most important thing in your life. In my life. That is because you can never be good enough for everyone. It is simply an impossibility. Everybody is different and in trying to please everyone you ultimately please no-one. Least of all yourself. And that is what i need to do more. I need to realise that what I am is me. That I do my best in what I can do and that the person who I look in the mirror and see is someone I actually like. Not someone who doesn't have to live in this body may like but me. That is hard. But not as hard as it was.

The last thing, should have, is something which used to tear me up at one time in my life. By should have I mean thinking what I should have got from life rather than what I do have. I should have a a father who loved me, I should have a better job, I should have more recognition. Fortunately I realised earlier than with the other two that obsessing over what I should have was far too negative and unhealthy. That way lies bitterness and a type of person I just don't want to be. Rather than complain about what I should have I'm finding it so much better to appreciate what I do have. To be positive instead of negative.

For example today I was colouring in with my daughter (and yes I was enjoying it) when she suddenly stopped looked up at me and just stroked my hand as if to comfort me. Then kissed it and said 'Love you, Daddy' Just three little words and a kiss from her and I felt so good. o happy at what I had. Just thinking through the good things I do have in my life made me realise what else I have to be grateful for. I could have then looked at the bad things. Rgere was a me not so long ago that would have done that. Looked for the worst to bring myself down. Not today.

It took a long time but I think 'm beginning to learn.


Jack is feeling