cold

the weather is taunting me. A week ago it looked like the beginning of spring snowdrops had appeared and mornings were mild... Of course the moment I noticed this it snapped back to being winter, and I'm fed up with winter if only because it makes driving difficult.

First there's all the scraping of frost off glass (bah) then there's the road salt (I washed my car on Monday afternoon, by Wednesday morning it looked two-tone again with the lower half of its body caked in white-grey road salt. ik!) and of course the small matter of ice - not on the roads mind you, enough of the salt seems to stay on the tarmac to keep that from happening but every morning this week my windscreen washer jets have been frozen solid and it's a pain... The italians make beautifully designed cars which are pure joy to drive, but they (naturally) do not appear to understand about cold weather.

humph

you're new here aren't you?

I've mentioned haircut stuff before but my regular shearing session hit another first today: there was a new person doing the cutting! scary stuff eh? especially since he appeared to be pretty young and generally new to all this. Naturally scenes of an impending bad-hair week flooded through my mind, because, well, we've all seen the trainee-hairdresser* sketches haven't we?

Since this is the second time I've mentioned it on here I feel I should give some background detail about the hair cut place. as I've said I go there partly out of habit and partly because they all three do a really good job, and for as long as I've been going there there have been three hair-cutty people (they're not hairdressers because the place is too straight forward for that but they're not barbers either because - thanks to the childhood horror stories of my razor-comb wielding father - I'm pathologically terrified of barbers, and none of these people terrify me.) each of the three is very good at cutting my hair and each in very different ways:

first there's owner-bloke: owner-bloke appears to own the place and has the genuine relaxed air of a man who does what he loves for a living and lives pretty well from it, he has a very chilled out dog (who is sometimes there, but never cuts hair as far as I've seen) and the kind of hair which looks cool in a way that appears effortlessly messy but probably isn't.

secondly there's "are-you-keeping-your-sideburns?" lady who (as the name suggests) always without fail asks me if I want to keep my sideburns (in a way which conveys eloquently her opinion that I probably shouldn't.) I like her in spite of our ideological differences and she always does a great job of resisting her obvious temptation to slip with the clippers and shave the offending sideburns off

last but not least is I-used-to-fancy-him who for the first year I was going there never cut my hair once, and always seemed to be much sexier than he actually is. During all that time I thought I kind of fancied him, but it turns out I don't (and besides he's evidently straight) it also turns out that he's really quick cutting my hair: same great finish as the other two but in about two thirds the time.

So yesterday I went in and found I-used-to-fancy-him there stoically trimming away at someone's noggin while working at another chair was a new guy. Change (as I have mentioned) is unsettling to me when it comes to haircuts: this is why I used to make my Mum drive clear across town every couple of weeks as a teenager, and why I now walk half an hour across Edinburgh to go to this place (which is near where I used to live and was once on my walk home from work, but is now quite inexcusably out of my way)

new-guy finished first (of course) and proceeded to do a first rate job of cutting my hair (I don't know why this surprises me but it does: I think I expect anyone who's not done it before to wreck it)... it never ceases to amaze me that people can wave sharp objects deftly about my head in intricate patterns for protracted periods without stabbing me in the skull, and I'm even more amazed each time it happens how great I feel afterward (perhaps it's relief at not having been stabbed with scissors, but more likely it's a looking good - feeling good thing) Somehow though none of the above relaxes my conviction that I *need* to keep going back to the same place, in spite of being objective proof of the existence of other people who can sucessfully cut my hair. weird eh?

*"new-guy" is patently not a trainee, and what he lacked in customer relations finesse (by comparison with his ultra-chilled colleagues he seemed really quite awkward and uncomfortable) he more than made up for in talent: my hair looks the best it has in ages.

clarity, caffiene and mugs

Did I mention that some evil git has stolen my coffee mug? It's most unsettling. Said mug is a large-ish one that my friend James bought me ages ago when we considered anything involving sheep to be the height of humour... or he did at least, but I like it 'cus of the associations (friendly ones not sheeply ones) I brought it to work a couple of years back because the mugs here are too small, and because getting one you'd want to drink out of is rare: teachers are appalling slobs - in 3rd year at university I lived in a flat with six other fellas three of whom were football-playing-second-year-lad-archetypes and another of whom was an economist, you can't imagine the filth that accumulated there over the year (I actually once had an alergic reaction to touching our fridge - my guess was that something on it had mutated and I wouldn't have been surprised if just having it in the kitchen broke several conventions on biological weaponry!) Incredibly though the kitchen area in our staff room here makes the one in that flat seem like a page out of a Magnet catalogue by comparison! - Sheep mug and I make, sorry made about three trips a day through the swamp to the coffee machine together, and being something of a creature of habit I was really thrown last Friday to discover it wasn't on my desk where it always is... someone had rustled my sheep!

badness.

So this morning I have a new work mug - it's not the same but it's pleasingly weighted and large enough to make walking down to the coffee machine worthwhile again... I'm still hoping my sheep one will turn up unharmed but realistically I think it's gone for good.

On a brighter note last night I had a really great evening with Hamish - we're doing this thing where we meet up once a week and talk to each other about all the projects we each have on the go, kind of a structure for making sure said projects keep current 'cus it gives each of us someone to be accountable to. Anyway one of mine is this new self-promotion CV thing I cooked up (there'll be a tie-in section on here soon so you'll all have to wait and see what it is for now) and I'd run aground doing some of the content that afternoon. Talking about it with Hame was a real shot in the arm because it made me realise that actually I've got all this great content ready to roll, I just needed a slight shift in perspective. Everyone should have friends like that: personal polarisation filters who help you see right through the surface glare... now if you'll excuse me I have to go and be brilliant.

link link link... post original content already!

The catalogue is down this morning so I've had a perfect excuse to catch up with some of my friends'* bloggings and remind myself that I have some really smart and funny friends who live varied and interesting lives... sometimes I take that for granted.

Also in the reminding stakes this morning was Liz's photography - she has the same camera as I recently got and takes very lovely pictures with it...

so as well as being link fodder this morning underlined what I'd already decided about this weekend, which is that I must switch of the TV set and do something less boring instead ;) or to put it in a less 80s-Kids-TV-refernce-ey way, I need to get out and do stuff before I turn into a mindless linking machine!

* I'd advise scrolling down to the posts about Saturday 14th for Liz and Justin giving some of the best examples of what I'm talking about here, there's also much silliness on the LJ friends page, which for me is half the fun, but it's not why I linked to it.

argh!

so the phone just rang and it was my big sis (the one who's younger than me) "great" I thought "I've not spoken to Al in ages!" 'cus I haven't: we've both had a busy month since I forgot her birthday... which happens almost exactly a month before my big bro's birthday (the one who's older than me)...

yup, my sister was calling to find out if I'd died or something because (once again) I have forgotten a sibling's birthday: sorry bro!

[goes off to beat self round the head with a stick]

happy

my friends visited me! yay!

on Thursday afternoon just before I finished work reception emailed up to tell me that the visitors I was expecting had arrived, and sure enough there they both were. Two of my oldest and best friends (James and Caroline) who I've not seen much of since before I moved from Edinburgh, came up to spend a long weekend with me.

On Friday they recovered from their travels while I worked and then we all met up with some of the usual Friday gang for dinner and Improverts which I think James and Caz both enjoyed, I certainly did. It was a little bit 'when worlds collide' for me, and I must confess to being a bit nervous that old and new wouldn't mix but as far as I can tell a good time was had by all.

The weekend itself was gloomy weather so any vague plans we'd had for 'doing stuff' went out of the window in favour of a long chilled out session of just hanging out and catching up: we took a trip to Tesco to stock up on Caz-friendly foods and James-friendly beers (neither of which I'd got) then we plonked ourselves down in the livingroom and relaxed - it was wonderful!

The pair of them have been something of an item on and off for almost as long as I can remember, certainly since school. A few years back they solidified the whole thing by getting engaged and buying a house together, which is great but it did somewhat change the individual friend-dynamics for me, I think this weekend was the first time since then that I've really managed to relate to each of them the way I used to before they became a real couple, best of all I found I really like the new grown-up version of them as a couple, they're fun to be around.

by Monday we'd thoroughly caught up (as well as having consumed far too much very nice ale - I discovered 'Goliath' this weekend, which I love) and inspite of the weather still being grim it was time to leave the house so we went to Glasgow and looked for a coffee jug that would fit under the nozzle on my new espresso machine (which incidentally I also love) we didn't really find one but we did have a great time and got to hang out with Jamie briefly which was great.

Yesterday the sun came out and I took them to New Lanark for a small dose of pretty Scottish scenery, then we got chips in Lanark before I had to drive them to the train station and say goodbye. Hopefully it won't be so long again before we next get to do something like that.

a meme? me?

I'm not usually one for these things but this one's kinda interesting... I don't think I missed anywhere:

I've visited the counties in yellow. Which counties have you visited? made by marnanel map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data by permission of the Ordnance Survey. © Crown copyright 2001.

looks about right to me, the only blue bit I wish was yellow is the Western Isles, must get round to going there