The day today

I didn't start the day in the best frame of mind.

Ms Dogwood had a screeching fit, looking for her French vocab booklet this morning, just as we were due to leave the house. Needless to say, I'd reminded her to pack her bag the night before, but it just seems to go in one ear and out the other. I got her out of the door and into the car, and then found out that the reason for the panic was a French test today that she wanted to do some last minute mugging up on before hand. In a free and frank exchange of views I told her that the morning before the test was not the time for revision, and that she probably knew more than she thought she did in any case. I am dreading GCSEs in two years time ...

I swung by the house again en route to Leeds to pick up the cd that I wanted to listen to and had forgotten to pick up from the side in amongst all of the frog marching and screeching. I'm most of the way through the first part of the "Hearts in Atlantis" audio book, and it really is a most evocative tale of small town life in sixties America, and possibly one of Stephen King's better novellas with the fantastical elements nicely understated. I want to get stuck into the Dark Tower series next, as this particular story (and by all accounts most of King's oeuvre) are linked to it in some way.

I got to the office in good time, and it was very quiet with hardly anybody in - I dropped off the lcd monitor that I had collected from the Dudley office the other day, and then got stuck into writing the reports that I had been planning to do on Tuesday before my to-do list took on a life of its own. Only one minor interruption - rebuilding the balance file in the accounts system which seemed to have got out of whack somehow; and one irritation - our email server quarantined a file I sent to an external address because it contained a spreadsheet with a password on it and didn't notify me about it, but I think I've actually had a productive day on the whole.

Lunch was a walk into Leeds for sushi from Little Tokyo, listening to bonkers Japanese popsters Pizzicato Five on my palm mp3 player and enjoying the warm but somewhat overcast weather. I bought some Japanese Golden Pavilion incense from Hippypottermouse (and predictably enough the woman behind the till claimed it was her favourite one, which she always says no matter which one you choose). I browsed in Travelling Man for a bit, looking at a fencing card game that I'd played postally about fifteen years ago but manfully resisted, and then went to look in Gamestation. Pac Pix on DS - wantage! Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas - even more wantage! I'm not playing much xbox at the moment - Doom 3 really needs a darkened room for best effect - but the open endedness of GTA:SA looks fantastic, and I quite fancy being a bro' from da ghetto as a change from the rolled up pastel suited sleeves of Tommy Vercetti in Vice City.

Finally, I had a quick look at the book shelves in the Oxfam shop shop and found a sequel to one of my favourite SF novels - namely "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman, a somewhat more liberal take on the future war genre of "Starship Troopers" and an intriguing conceit of a war governed by the effects of time dilation. The sequel looks at the consequences for the veterans of the war, effectively stranded in a future society that has evolved far beyond them. Looks good.

Now, Mrs Dogwood's home and a pint at the Wharnecliffe Arms is a distinct possibility ... :-)