My mind is swirling around like a tornado at the moment.

As always, my feet aren’t touching the ground. I have so much to do that it’s getting to me. I expect to be drinking a great deal of coffee tonight and probably getting to bed about an hour or two before I’m due to get up. The joy!

M met me at one of the sites that are due to handover on Monday to help wrap it up with a few computer systems and making sure that the place was tidy. We spent a couple of hours there and I was grateful for him making the effort to come out. It meant that my soul hadn’t been completely crushed!

C’s aunt and uncle came to visit today. This meant we spent the morning tidying the ground floor of the house to get the place in an acceptable state for visitors. Having this house is a drag sometimes. There are just too many rooms.

The car pickup was successful, but I think that I’ve let some can of worms open in the process. B’s wife, K, isn’t talking to him, part of the root cause is because of him selling the car. I tried to stress to K that he was saving the day - but I don’t think it helped anyway. The not talking has been going on for two days now and I’m feeling bad for taking the car now. Not bad enough to drive back to Yorkshire and give it back, though. I think I know that wouldn’t resolve whatever is going on.

C and LJ missed me like crazy while I was away. I admit that even though it was just a 24 stay away, I was very glad to be home. There’s nothing quite like being surrounded by your family - even if you are sometimes a distant, moody git.

I briefly spoke to P as we was about to walk into a cinema. He said he’d call today - but he hasn’t done so yet. This has caused me to muse over T. It’s been two weeks now - and the last message from here was a shirty IM telling me that she didn’t appreciate the status changing and should she delete my contact? The status changing was me updating my Yahoo! on-line status whenever something of consequence happened on my trip. It was totally unnecessary and I wonder if I was doing it just to wind her up.

Still, I keep thinking that I’ve been somewhat harsh. Even though I tried to tell C what had gone on, she was dismissive of the conversation before I got it going. This was pretty typical and I can’t help but feel how cowardly I made the whole process become. I want to be open and frank about how I feel about everything, but it seems to cause considerable stress. And right now I don’t need stress!

So it’s just P that knows that I’m meant to be packing this in. I need to get some objectivity because I know that I’m started to retract my whole situation. I feel like I’ve been too harsh. Unreasonable to a point. She was sharing her opinions. It was incredibly stupid, naive and arrogant - yet we’re all human.

I’m drawn back to what kicked all of this off - Murakami. In Norwegian Wood, the protagonist moves home and forgets to tell his close female friend for 3 weeks. He tries to get hold of her in a lecture, only to be told she doesn’t want to speak to him right now. That’s kept up for a month, in which time he sent her letters apologising. It dawned on me that I was acting out a 21st century equivalent. With the desire for society to be connected at all times by whatever means - I start to wonder if being incommunicado is even possible any more.

I know that deep down I crave attention, yet paradoxically abhor it when I’m the recipient. I withdraw and move on.

I need to work out what I’m going to do. I suppose that if I make contact, it should be through email rather than IM. And I suppose that I should explain my feelings and why I was hurt.

Or I’ll just maintain my resolve and continue to be cut off. But if I do that, I should really remove T from my contacts and just live with it.

            Embora não seja um grande fanático por carros, não tem como não ficar admirado com algumas maquinas.

            Durante o Fiera Festival vi um sortudo tirando um Lamborghini da garagem. O cara devia ter uns 18 anos e deixou bater umas fotos do carro que era do pai dele.

I’m sick to death of the complete morons who drive cars in my town. After the incident the other night when I was driving I had another near crash tonight, with another idiot pulling his car out right in front of mine. I had to slam my brakes on before the guy norticed me, yet HE started shouting and shaking his fist before I managed to drive past him. What a complete dick! Honestly, people around here need to pay more attention to the roads. Grr!

My daughter has head lice. She had them two weeks ago, I noticed the the day after she started back at school after the summer break and I was devastated! She is 9 1/2 and has NEVER had head lice in the 6 years she has been at school, yet the day she returns after summer she comes home with them. I treated them as soon as I noticed and then treated her head a week later like it said on the bottle, that was Wednesday past. I washed and combed her hair tonight and noticed she still has eggs in her hair and I combed out 5 tiny lice, although after the treatments I didn’t notice anything in her hair! I don’t think I can treat her hair so soon after the last two treatments, so I’ll just have to keep using loads of conditioner and combing and hopefully I’ll get rid of them. The poor thing though, she is so horrified to have them. I really hope I don’t get them, at least in someone elses hair you can see what your doing to remove them. I can’t do that with my own head and I would hate it, arghh!

I made a nice dinner tonight, pictures and details on my food blog

I wrote this on Friday night but couldn’t post it:

So I’m on the way to Yorkshire in a van while listening Katrina and the Waves at 11pm. What the hell is going on?

It’s been a long couple of days, and everybody has been feeling the strain. Only finishing at 6:30 has irritated B and Mel. At least the work is done!

B is driving the van, so I have plenty of thinking time. T has tried to get hold of me more this week. Yesterday I received 2 or 3 IMs as well as a text message. Needless to say she’s telling me she’d like to chat. A change after the other day when 3 got a message saying that she didn’t like this game anymore. I find myself imagining explaining myself. Then I remember that if I did that I’d actually be talking to her which would defeat the whole point. The other thing she mentioned was that she’ll be gone in a month. The whole thing leaves me feeling a little sad, but I am coping fine.

One of the major events of the week is that C’s car essentially blew up near Sittingbourne. I had to call the AA and arrange the pick up. The car was towed home so now we’re sharing a car. Being a person who’s job relies on travel, it’s a pain in the arse so we’ve had to take a look at the finances and consider a new car. After spending an afternoon looking at used cars and feeling dispondant about the whole thing, I decided to take up my brother on his offer of buying his car. So to expediate the matter, I’m going to Sheffield to collect it now.

It’s frustrating that this week has been so hectic. It’s C and LJ’s last week before the school term starts and I’ve barely home. To cap it off I’ll spend half the weekend 250 miles away! Emotionally I’ve probably been a rollercoaster.

Hopefully I’ll catch Phill before next week. I’m not going to hold my breath. It’s just nice to have some resolve.

As it’s been a few days, I’ve forgotten most of what I’ve been up to. I realised a long time ago that my mind is very selective when it comes to remembering events. I wonder why it is. Amusing anecdotes and anything of vague interest just slips out like they were never there. I hope that this blog will help, but if I can’t even retain points of interest for a day or two, what are my chances?

Well, I’m doing this on my phone and my thumbs are tired, so that is it for now.

SATURDAY
30 August 2008

Facebook is like crystal meth. Use it once and you’re addicted. At Darrell’s suggestion/command from Thursday night - “Have a profile up and running by 7am tomorrow” - I was working on the computer Friday morning until 5am. I’m fascinated with the colleagues, college friends and random people I’ve found, and the infinite ways you can search for folks. It could easily be a full-time job just keeping it current. Between writing my web site, writing this blog, building my Facebook page, researching the industry, responding to work opportunities, sending emails and watching porn 15 hours a day on the Internet, how am I supposed to find time to actually work?

The past few days have been productive. There are at least 10 jobs I am applying for tomorrow alone, and these are only the ones I’ve found so far. In short order I’ll find more. The Facebook thing also opens up opportunities to connect with people who would likely be much more difficult, if not impossible, to reach without an agent, a hand-written note from my mother and a decree from the Pope.

Another sojourn today to fun a few errands. In the garage, I put the top down on the BMW with the flip of a single button, marveling at the fine German craftsmanship and technology. I haven’t been this enamored with a German export since three days in Amsterdam last summer, but that’s another story. One moment while I relive some of those memories and reapply… <sigh>

At the library I looked through back issues of the trade papers, feverishly writing down names of all the studio and production company heads I’ll be working with at some point. I wouldn’t really qualify this as a celebrity sighting, but I’m fairly sure one library-goer I saw has made his mark in… um… ‘art films’ of a very specific genre. I use the terms ‘art’ and ‘film’ very loosely. These are the kind of productions that make unconventional use of industrial machinery, law enforcement tools and highway traffic cones. Ouch. Not that I’ve ever seen any of these visual masterpieces. I’ve merely heard about them around the water cooler at Friday night Bible study. So… this dude was scanning the animated films the Children’s section. No snarky remark here. I’m just giving you the facts. In fact, I can see how repeated viewings of Disney’s The Little Mermaid might take his mind off of ‘work’ for a while… at least until Triton starts waving his huge trident all over the place.

Sitting at the worktable with all the other laptop users, I recalled being there a few days earlier and watching one gentleman make a stir when he realized his iPod had been stolen. Turned out he’d plugged it in to charge next to the copy machine (the only accessible outlet available for computers in the library… grrr), then wandered around the library for an hour-and-a-half, only to come back and find it missing. Whaaaat??! Someone at a public venue in a major metropolitan area stole a valuable electronics item that’d been left unattended for an extended period of time? What’re the odds? I departed soon after that because I remembered I’d left the BMW in the parking lot with the top down, keys in the ignition and a sign on it reading “FREE,” and clearly this neighborhood is teeming with untrustworthy thugs. Thank God it was still there when I came out to the lot. Talk about dodging a bullet.

I worked the rest of the evening. Exciting, right? Tomorrow I’d like to try to head to the ocean just to sit and watch the waves roll in for a while. Turn my brain off a bit and recharge.

Just bought my new bike finally after the old one got stolen two months ago.

With no car now this is my main mode of transportation besides my feet.

Love it.

Enfin il a fait beau ce WE!!

Malgré les 28 bons degrés, et tous nos amis sirotant leur Sangria au bord de la piscine, nous avons quand même enfourché nos motos pour une balade dans les bois … entraînement oblige!

Pas toujours évident les montées en dévers, comme vous pouvez le voir ci-contre … hm!

Nous en avons également profité pour faire une petite séance de shooting afin de vous faire partager des photos toutes toutes récentes…

Encore une ci-dessous pour le fun … d’autres suivront. Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre

31 Août 2008

Never does a woman feel more alone than when she has car trouble.

My Chevy Malibu (2002-2008) has been on a steady decline almost from the day I bought it through a dealership in Cherry Hill, NJ.

The first problem struck me as a minor headache: The CD player didn’t work. At the time I told myself that this particular component wasn’t integral to the workings of the car. All I had to do was take the car to a dealer where I live and have the defective instrument replaced. I had a nagging suspicion, though, that a broken CD player in a new car indicated sloppy quality control. If one self-contained unit wasn’t functional, what did that bode for the rest of the car?

Shortly after the end of our first year together, my Malibu needed a new battery. Over the years it has needed four new tires, a new key and a transmission overhaul. All this on top of fixing — and I use the word “fixing” in the least committed sense of the word — a chronic engine overheating problem that to this day is to my car what my father’s diabetes is to his body: A problem to be managed but never definitively solved.

The air conditioning stopped working at the beginning of the summer. Of course, I might have used up the Freon because I had to drive with the air conditioning on all the time: The sole working fan ran only when I had the air on.

Ignore trouble at your own peril

I had a warning a couple of weeks ago when I came to a traffic light on an exit ramp off the George Washington Bridge onto the Henry Hudson Parkway. As I was making my left-hand turn, the engine seized up. I stepped on the accelerator and nothing happened. I managed to pull over to the side of the road, beneath the bridge itself. I had $80 worth of chicken thighs and cutlets on the seat next to me. I put the flashers on. What to do next? Think fast!

Depend on no one but yourself.

I pressed down on the accelerator. The car moved. I still thought about calling my son to come find me, but that seemed unnecessary as long as I could limp home. Which is what I did.

Don’t trouble trouble and trouble won’t trouble you?

I asked friends for recommendations and they gave me them. But here’s where I went wrong. I didn’t actually do anything This kind of inaction is what helped bring about the levy disaster in New Orleans three years ago. It’s what let the U.S.S. Cole turn into 9/11 and Rwanda into a bloodbath.

Over extrapolating, am I? I’m just saying that it’s the extraordinary activist personality that can distinguish between a one-off and a precursor. As for myself, I know I will keep muddling through any given situation until I simply can’t move. I was hoping the car would take me from Point A to Point B. Indefinitely. That’s just dumb.

The turning point for me came this morning. Ready to head home after a weekend with my parents, I put the key in the ignition. The engine turned over without enthusiasm. I drove the car over to a filling station for gas and, with its belly full, it started up well enough. But my sixth sense told me not to stop anywhere between Cherry Hill and Riverdale. I didn’t trust the car to start up three times in a row.

I was right. I turned the key and nada. Now the car is sitting in front of Riverdale Farm Fruit and Vegetable. It is not drivable.

My friends, if ever I announce my candidacy for any executive office, do not vote for me. My talent for seeing into the future is grossly undermined by my desire to wait for the inevitably bad outcome before taking action. I have learned that it’s fine to hope for the best, but it’s better still to best one’s own delusional tendency to think that trouble will take care of itself. Satisfactorily. In due time. Eventually.

Honda ANF Inova 125cc

Antes que comece a circular na internet especulações a respeito da “Nova Honda Biz 2009″, o motokando.com preparou uma reflexão a respeito deste modelo Honda que certamente deverá vir com muitas melhorias para 2009.

Estes dois exemplos de motocicletas Honda Inova 125  e Honda Air Blade 110  podem traduzir as tendências para os lançamentos Honda 2009, certamente terão influência para a produção de novos modelos.

As foto em questão são da Honda Air Blade 110 ( branca) e da Biz Européia(laranja), que por sinal é muito melhor do que a nossa, e que foi “forçada” a inovar, a melhorar suas especificações para não perder mercado. Falaremos dela mais abaixo.