Got up, which wasn’t quite a big a challenge as it normally is on a Saturday, not sure why. Walked the dog. Took her to the vet, her weight is coming down nicely now. Tried to find people in so I could do some more re-checks. Only managed one fairly old cat (the owner answered the phone, not the cat).

Did the shopping. Went into town, failed to buy anything. Went to mothers, via the cat check. Delivered to her, two bottles of wine, an electric blanket and a dressing gown. Obtained, five empty bottles of wine, some spicy nuts, some bake shake stuff and a fruit cake. a fair exchange is no robbery.

Came back and did the accounts. I had a statement from one of the long term investments from Sun Life. In thirteen years I’ve made an average of 1.7% a year. In today’s markets that’s actually probably quite good. Going back all those years though it probably isn’t. Anyway I’ll give it another thirteen and see if they improve.

Bath and curry time (in that order, but not at the same time). Sarah’s tomorrow, so take the dog out first thing.

Working heavily in two areas I really don’t like, physics and maths. Which is surprising as I’m pretty good at both physics and maths. Spent the day basically trying to find out why a flat object travelling a couple of centimetres above a completely flat surface was randomly bouncing in the air. It turns out after god knows how many hours they are touching, this is because the physics library we are using has a margin of 4cm’s. This means any two surfaces which are within 8cm’s of each other are actually randomly touching. Great. Managed to sort some of it, but it’s going to be a real pain I just know it.

Went for a run again. Picked up the dog from doggy daycare, she is now asleep on the couch next to me. I’ve been doing research into springs, exciting evening for sure. Did a little bit of Japanese but didn’t get beyond writing down the new words on flashcards. I’m owed time again so will do a session tomorrow morning.

Today I fixed a couple of issues I was having yesterday. Actually I fixed something I had spent several hours on yesterday in about five minutes this morning. As usual though, you fix one problem and another one come along. I hope that one takes five minutes tomorrow morning. It’s to do with constraints, they just aren’t working how I want. I don’t really want to use them at all but looks like I will have to.

Finally went out for a run, which is the first time in almost a month due to the worlds longest cold. That, thankfully has now almost vanished. Jamie still has some sort of sinus infection.

I did some more Japanese, finished unit 4, so 6 units to go before we set off. Well that’s the plan anyway.

So this morning started off rather oddly. Sir Terry was on Radio 2 and I was drifting in and out of conciousness. He had a few girls on called I think, ‘The Sugar Girls’. They were very good. One of them played the Ukulele. Now here is the strange thing, they were on the radio. So what appeared in my mind? Well, one girl with a ukulele and another with a giant hand puppet. Not sure why there were only two at this stage. They then performed their song in the corridor of a pub, while the safe door kept getting in their way. Also it descended into a cartoon style where this rabbit was being tossed up a tree by various animals until you saw a baby balanced on a branch. As I said, my mind works in mysterious ways.

Anyway, I fed this mind a couple of cups of coffee to kick start it into some kind of normality. I then had breakfast and got up. Proceeded to make a rather bad job of sanding the dining room door frame. Time was cracking on as we had a dinner date with Jamie’s dad. Jamie gave the dog a disappointing walk and I tidied up.

We went to Jamie’s dads. Actually we went via the ring road rather than through Downend, which reminded me why I have a VXR rather than a Fiesta, it really is one of the last bastions of speed left in Bristol, I think it’s perfectly natural to be doing 70MPH in second gear. I never broke the speed limit once, but I was doing 0-70 in around 6.5 seconds, it was fun.

Anyway, at Jamie’s dads, Jamie spent the bulk of his time connected to a phone and talking to his sister. It’s no wonder I say I wouldn’t go on holiday with her to Japan, I’d feel like a very disconnected third wheel, I’d have to kill her.

His step mum was talking to me about a very dull CD she had on from ‘Munford and Sons’, I was dying for her to ask me what sort of music I liked, so I could reply, ‘Well I’ve just bought the new Huduken CD but I think after touring with Pendulum I think they sound too similar and much prefer it when they were more grime influenced’…but she didn’t.

We had beef, it was very nice.

His grandad was there, who is always good value. He didn’t disappoint. I think we are now both members of UKIP.

Came home, had a bath and watched the grand prix. Racing was dull, but controversy was high, so good fun.

Short week this week, good I can get some more DIY in.

So woke up after a rather bizarre dream. Was it erotic and sexual? Well, depends on your preferences. I dreamt an entire Maths A level paper. I don’t mean I just dreamt thinking about taking the exam, no, I dreamt every bloody question, and I did all the working out. Worse part was that I couldn’t answer most of it, not surprising considering I’ve never done A level maths. So my brain is now capable of conjuring up exam papers. Looking forward to A level physics tonight and may be next week A home economics, at least then I can eat something. Obviously spending far too much time reading bloody vehicle dynamics books.

Went shopping. Did a couple of animal rechecks and that really was about it. Oh, did some more paint stripping of that bloody door frame. Still not finished.

Anyway, quick bath, glass of wine, then on with the curry.

Again I wasn’t exactly too spritely up this morning. After I’d blown out about 3 gallons of snot it was back on to physics stuff. Got really stuck into it all today and once again did far more hours than I should of. But did squeeze in some extra Japanese. I’m still going through my flash cards each time and trying to remember all the words, it must be about 180 by now.

Nothing else done really. I managed to tank the pppoe connection by plugging the notebook into the Draytek and trying to look at the the current line status. It seems okay, but according to the Zen logs it’s been doing a resync every couple of days. I’m not losing any signel though so just something to keep an eye on. I want to see if the built in reset I’ve added to pfSense will kick the modem back online. Will have to wait to 4AM to find out.

Oh, so that’s no access to this before 4AM and no email for me either. Still I’m after a quiet night now. It’s torture porn night. Actually it’s the second half of the second Twilight film.

The sim card for my old Galaxy S turned up. My hacking attempts were successful and I managed to unlock it, so as a fallback I can use that one in Japan if I get a data sim.