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So, rather embarrassingly I have reached the age of 35 (and 17 years of driving) without being able to reverse park a car.

I don’t know why this is. I am not thick. While not a terribly confident driver, I am competent (mostly). I also have issues copying techniques as a mirror image during my martial arts class, so potentially there’s maybe a co-ordination issue going on in my brain.

Anyway, since selling the folding camper, there is now a space in front of our garage. The driveway is narrow and involves reversing round from a weird angle and squeezing between the wall of the house and a large hedge.

Last night, I finally managed to park it (okay, I did about a 10 point turn to get it in, but let’s not get picky), so I send Akra a triumphant text in which it appears my typing is as bad as my driving: “YAY! I managed to park the cat!”

WTF?

Some trips you plan meticulously, others you get promised home-made marshmallows and hammock space if you can only get on a plane to southern Spain with two days notice.

Of course, said people don’t always warn you that the marshmallows explode…

… and then other people steal your hammock!

But with plenty of good company, sun, and copious alcohol, you can’t really complain too much, can you?

I’ve got a lot of things bombing around my head at the moment, all vying for equal attention. As I’ve mentioned in the previous post, I may (or may not) be coming up for grading soon in the martial art I’m learning. I’ve been doing some extra training to try and gain some focus and get me up to speed.

At the same time, I’ve just started an awesome creative writing class called The Discovery Wonkshop led by Lani Diane Rich over at StoryWonk. It’s all geared around the pre-writing discovery process of writing a novel and even after only one class has kicked my brain into creative mode.

Our first assignment is to create a soundtrack for our story, so I have been spending the last couple of evenings with Spotify, Last.fm and a bottle of wine (as Lani says, “Best Homework EVER!”). I have spent a ridiculous amount of money on iTunes and somehow seem to have ended up with 6 hours of music in my soundtrack. I might need to prune a little.

All good, and all very exciting. Except I’ve just realised that it’s my martial arts class tonight so I need to flip back out of ‘daydreamy plot mode’ back into ‘fighting mode’ and in between find my ‘competent parent mojo’. I think my lead character is going to end up with a split-personality disorder.

Send help. Send chocolate.

This was said to me this morning in a mock-exasperated voice by an elderly gentleman. He wasn’t cross, and I hadn’t just mown him over – on the contrary, I was patiently standing out of his way to allow him through our local GP’s surgery door ahead of me. It made me smile.

I have spent the last seven weeks slowed down, but now the kids are back at school and I am going fast. I am not in a hurry, I just rather enjoy the sensation of stretching my legs and walking at speed, rather than having to match my pace to people half my height who like to go the scenic route. I am enjoying grabbing my bike out of the garage and speeding down little pathways where I would normally have to crawl past the holiday pedestrians. I like the feel of the breeze in my face and the sense of freedom. I’m relishing in the chance to busy myself round the house, cleaning and tidying, making the space mine again.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you can get just as much enjoyment taking the time to speed up to smell the roses. Just so long as you take care to not knock anyone over on the way.

It’s been a funny ol’ week.

A mixture of crappy weather, a variant form of man-flu that had jumped the gender divide, a spontaneously bursting knee vein and running out of witty replies for concerned bruise viewers had left me without much oomph or inclination to do anything much. The week has mostly passed me by in a flurry of “not a lot” and “sort of staring out the window while intending to do something in a minute or two” – any commentary has been strictly of the 140 characters or less variety and I completely messed up my Project 365 by not actually taking any photographs for two days.

Still, it seems to be turning around. Last night, I took and passed my first two martial art grades and this morning the cold seems to have subsided a bit. We’re even due some sunshine tomorrow, remember that?!

Now all I have to do is catch up with all the chores I didn’t do at the beginning of the week. Then again… maybe I’ll stay lazy for a bit longer…

meh

As you were…

Everything I’ve seen of Project Natal looks amazing. I’m particularly impressed with the video excerpt of Peter Molyneux’s character that responds to and expresses moods in a very realistic way.

I’m not a huge Microsoft fan, but I would totally buy an Xbox for this. It will also be extremely interesting to see how Nintendo and Sony respond with their next generation consoles.

I got my TAM London booking confirmation earlier today, so I’m feeling a bit more confident that the payment hasn’t got lost in the depths of Google Checkout.

So, I have been chatting to merialc and we have plans afoot for a pre-TAM mini meet on the Friday evening. She apparently knows the area fairly well, and is on recon duty to find us a suitable venue.

Would anyone else with TAM tickets like to join us for a meal before the event? It’d be nice to get to know some people before the start of the conference.

Firstly, and most importantly, today is five years since Li’l Bhaji made an appearance. He had his big party on Saturday and had a fab time, so tonight is (yet another!) family trip to McDonalds for dinner. Thank goodness Akra’s favourite food is a little more sophisticated as his birthday is next Saturday and I think I may sob if I have to eat another McNugget quite so soon.

Word deprivation is going … erm… slowly. Okay, I’m going completely insane and it’s not helping my addiction to spider solitaire any. If I get a sudden burst of creativity I’ll probably tell it to go away until I’ve managed to get out all the heart cards or something. I’m sure this wasn’t the point of the exercise.

I did slightly bend the no reading the internet rules to book tickets for TAM London as Google Checkout wasn’t playing nice and I needed to access the message boards to work out what was going wrong. I did eventually manage to register at last, though …. SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!