Moving House

Time to move house again. This time is always a little bit strange: no-one ever warns you that starting university actually commits you to moving more or less every year, seemingly inexplicably, for the foreseeable future. Maybe most people avoid this and my friends are the exception, but it seems that the majority of my friends (myself included) can't stick in one house for more than a year. Renovations cause us to be evicted, people leave, people join, requirements change, and we remain nomads. 2 years is the longest I've ever lived in a house since I left my family home, and I don't really remember one of those due to my workload and a healthy dosage of white Russians made with Finlandia. Since I went to university, I've called around 45 different beds around the world mine, and as such, I find myself in a weird state: on one hand, I never quite feel settled, but on the other hand, the sofa I'm curled up on now feels as much like my own bed as any other has ever been. I am in our lounge, wrapped in my duvet with my laptop, surrounded by boxes and bags of all the things I've grown used to having around over the past year, and I'm more than a little bit nostalgic. It's been an amazing year, Oxford is beautiful, my friends are awesome, and the next year promises to be even more exciting. I do love moving house. There's something about the chance to begin anew that I am utterly addicted to. I am watching Spaced again. It never, ever gets old. I thought I was bored with it, but it turns out that I'd just forgotten how brilliant it is.

Lazy

This weekend was a lazy one. There were tons of things available to do but Kristy and I both decided to write it off and do as little as possible for a change. In Winter, I worried that I wasn't doing enough, but now it seems that I can't find a quiet weekend! I guess I am back to my old ways. Can't complain! I did get to see the latest Harry Potter movie. I confess to being a bit of a Potter fanboy, so I was always going to like it, but I was very impressed. It's a well put together film with impressive effects and, as always with the Potter movies, the casting is spot on. I haven't read the book in a while and this one didn't really stick in my mind so I can't vouch for its faithfulness (something that people seem to be complaining about) but it's certainly a good addition to the series. I'm not looking forward to the final film - the book was a bit of a departure from what I enjoyed about the series and got a bit too serious. I am currently in the middle of packing to move house. I hate this stuff - putting my life into boxes is something that I would very much like to be rid of. Sigh. At least the new house is nice. Can't wait to get it over with!

Holiday

People have often said to me that if they didn't have a job they wouldn't know what to do with themselves. That's something that I've never understood. I heard, a few years back, that the total hours of film released in the cinema now exceeds the average human lifespan, and I'm quite sure that you couldn't get close to reading even half of the books ever written in one lifetime, so that's me busied up for life right there, and I haven't even started on videogames. I hear some people even get bored on holiday. That's definitely not me. I'd be on holiday all the time if I had the chance! I swear I could lie on a beach all day and I'd never get bored of it. This holiday we couldn't afford to get anywhere hot so we decided to stay at home and pretend, and mercifully Britain decided to play too and gave us 29 degree sunny days for most of the week. Hooray for that! I didn't get round to getting much of a tan though, we were too busy doing other things: mostly eating. Can't complain! I am pleasantly surprised, however, to find that I'm looking forward to getting back to work. As much as I love the time off, I do like having problems to solve and I can't wait to get back to that. I feel refreshed and productive again. It was really nice to think like a human instead of a computer for a week though: I wish I could do more of that.

Running

I went for a run today! This is worthy of an exclamation mark because I am outrageously unfit. I'm sort of trying to change that, I think. I'm not too sure what my motives are. What's post-worthy about this is the funky little iPhone app that I used to track my little run. It's called TrailGuru. You run with the app running on your phone, and when you're done you upload it to the website and it plots your route and does all this clever stuff with it. Here is the breakdown. Now, the stats aren't impressive in any way, so don't look too hard at what the numbers actually are, but instead, try to be impressed that you can see them. The Co-Op is 200m higher up than my house. That's information that I didn't know. I'm not too sure that I needed to know, but I think it's fantastic that I can find out. I don't know if I'll manage to keep on running but I did enjoy it and I am a bit fat, so I'll try. If I do any running that's worth shouting about I might even post the routes up here again.

Todo

You may be surprised to hear that I'm organised in any sense of the word, but actually, I am. I'm enough of a loser to keep a todo list on my phone of not only all the things I have to do, but all the movies I have to watch, and books I have to read. Until recently, it was not in a very good state. I assumed that it was normal for someone who looks at a computer screen all day to be unable to read or focus on anything for long after a day's work, but it turns out, I actually just needed glasses. £200-worth of eyewear later, I am able to enjoy everything again and my eyes never hurt late into the night like they used to, so I've been back on the media wagon.

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Stuff's different

Written 03/04/09, on a bus that should have had a wifi connection, but, depressingly, didn't. Dear reader, what a terrible host I've become. Back in the days when I was traveling I was a good blogger, doing my best to keep to some kind of publishing schedule and, I like to think, writing stuff worth reading, but now it seems that I've fallen into inactivity. I'd like to make this something more than a 'sorry for the lack of updates' post, so let me tell you how this all works.

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