I don't want to blog today.

Is that how you spell it? I don't care enough to check.

Anyway, I was wide awake til about 4 or 5 in the morning last night, presumably because I had drunk a cup of coffee in the morning and a cup of tea in the evening. I normally have no caffeine whatsoever.

It wasn't all bad because I didn't have that horrible tired-but-can't-sleep feeling; I was just wide awake. So I did my work. Quite well, too!

I was wondering if it has such a strong effect because I used to drink a lot of caffeine then went straight to having none. Would that make it worse? I don't know.

Blogger tells me that they have scheduled outage at 2PM PDT. I don't know what any of that means apart from 2pm. I can imagine 'scheduled outage' being something that Toby would make up to use when he's telling me that he's going to be out at a particular time.

I've become a bit addicted to this website which showcases the most beautifully designed websites it can find - 10 for every month since some time in 2005. Look at the archives to find the previous months.

It's not just the flair with which the designs are executed but simple things like the layout. A lot of it's done in flash but I think you could take some of the simpler layout stuff and do it in normal (whatever that is).

Here's a picture of my Dad being a lizard. It was a funny evening:


In a little bit we are going to go and see my Mum and Dad for a cup of tea. And that will be the most eventful thing that has happened all day. Toby has been working on some little designs and I have been finishing The Constant Gardener. Which was good. But in some ways I wish it had a cheesy ending where you get to read about justice being served to all the villains.

Tomorrow, my sister is coming round and we are going to watch the whole of series four of Scrubs. I think. Although I have to do some work, having not done it last week. When I was writing my dissertation, I realised that it was going to come together at the last minute so I should enjoy the times when I wasn't writing, free of guilt. Then I went on a course in June this year where they said that if you're a last minute person, you always will be, so just plan to have time and energy available at the last minute. It's a nice thing to realise. So I'm feeling very un-guilty about having done nice things on holiday so far and I feel much better about actually doing the work itself.

I'm reading The Constant Gardener by John le Carre. It's good. You probably all know that as everyone else read it last year. I didn't feel much sympathy for any of the characters for the first quarter of the book though, which was a bit odd. It's all so shrouded in secrecy that you don't know whether any sympathy you may have is misplaced. But it's ok now because it's all starting to unfold. As these things do.

What meaning do you bring to this picture?



I just watched a programme on some of the symbolism associated with The Da Vinci Code (not just the film, the real stuff too.) It made me a bit sad because the program ended saying that there wasn't any symbolism/pattern/extra meaning behind various works of art.

BUT THERE MIGHT BE! Who knows what was in the artist's head? And what about the meaning that readers bring to the text? It was not a very soulful programme, I thought.

I hate The Daily Mail because it pretends to be good journalism and it isn't. I don't mind The Sun and The Mirror so much because it's obvious that they're full of rubbish but everything about The Mail (layout, photograph style, banners, language) makes it appear decent.

Blogger is being wierd.

Life with Tobes is funny and fun.

I am making Lemon Surprise Pudding in a minute and, as Delia says, the suprise is that there's a lemony sauce underneath the spongey pudding. I don't think that's a very big surprise but maybe it was to the first person who made it.

I also need to make a summer pudding to use up some defrosted berries that I've got. Summer Puddings always remind me of the opening to The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. Daisy's mother dies of pre-eclampsia whilst making something like a summer pudding. It's horrible in a way because the raspberry juice is like blood and the bread is like her soft white skin. It's a sad book, I think. It's really a kitchen sink movement style book based on Daisy's experience of domesticity. It starts with love, passion even, between the summer pudding lady and her husband but ends with nothing.

From In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman

It is perhaps strange and perhaps not so strange that this breed of racism goes unchallenged in many (most? all?) countries.

Some obvious comments we all enjoy making are on the subjects of the choice of president, the gung-ho foreign policy, globalisation, insincere cheerfulness, apparent arrogance/ignorance, bible-bashing... These obvious comments do, of course, have obvious roots which we can all remember with self-righteousness in our own heads.

I at least dislike, if not despise, all of the above but there are surely a couple of important points to bear in mind:

1. Not all Americans reflect all of these criticisms in their everyday lives. Obviously. In fact, I haven't met one American whose life reflects any of these aspects significantly. Just as we would hope to avoid judging Muslims, Scots, Germans, etc. on the grounds of their countries' actions, perhaps we should think twice before doing so to Americans.

2. There are some understandable reasons behind the stuff we like to criticise. Look at Britain in the first few hundred years of being an established country and power. (When I say understandable, I do not mean correct!)

This might be a silly thing to get on my soap box about - America doesn't really need defending: it's quite big. It is just that this racism seems to have been over-looked and I'm a bit concerned about the impact that this might have have on our pure and tolerant hearts and minds (!) and about the negativity Americans may have aimed at them through no fault of their own.

Done.

10 minutes to go before I fail to post every day on just the second day...quick!

So, as I promised, a tribute to Abbey. Although perhaps it will be a bit shorter than I intended with the deadline looming and all.

Anti-Americanism is an interesting form of racism. I'll leave that comment hanging because I have no time to unpick it. Suffice to say, though, that most of us are anti-American in some way.

Well, if you fit into that bracket at all, you need to meet my friend Abbey (who is an American). She is all American but in such a way that you have to repent for all your anti-Americanism. She wants you to have a nice day and will make sure that you do.

So there you go. Hope that sounds like a tribute because it really is.

Hope I make it before midnight...agh, the suspense!

Working that extra week in August is paying off now! I've got a two week half term holiday and it's already great. I'm staying with my friend Abbey who I will write more about when I can post a picture of her. It will be a tribute to Abbey.

Anyways, I am resolving to write every day of the holidays unless I stay away from home.

That is it.

Just to confirm, I won't be 40 soon. I was making a point.

Matt is over and we're talking about blogs. Toby's is nice to look back on but I think mine will just be boring when I read it in the future.

Life is flying by very quick. October already. It's nearly half-term. Kerazy. And apparently it keeps getting quicker. Which is quite a scary thought considering how much quicker it's started going in the last few years. I will actually be 40 soon.

Oh well