This post pretty much does what it says on the tin, but I felt it appropriate to mark the occasion. For those who aren't already aware of this, I don't like cricket - I love it!! (apologies to the Sky Sports coverage song). Anyone who doesn't understand cricket can stop reading now, before I bore you any further :D

As cricket should be, it was a true team effort with each of the lads contributing vital runs/wickets/catches/run-outs as appropriate at crucial moments, but top performances of the series have to go to Jonathan Trott for a stunning knock of 41 & 119 on his Test debut, and to my new hero Broady who is shaping up to be a true all-rounder scoring 234 runs & 18 wickets, with a best of 5-37. There was a real sense of handing over the baton to our youngest player, as Freddie bows out of test cricket on a high - his stunning run out of the Australian captain was one of the highlights of the match and the series.

Now we have 2 Twenty20s and 7 One dayers to look forward to - I just hope my new number 8 shirt arrives in time!!

Today's Dislikes:
- Work
- Idiots
- Work Idiots
- Know Alls
- Work Know Alls
- Microsoft Outlook
- Laziness (mostly mine)
- The Length of my To Do List
- The Apparent Linearity of Time
- Irresponsible Media Reporting
- Someone at Churchill Insurance Customer Services

Today's Likes:
- Cricket
- Milk
- Blue Skies
- My camera
- Lovely Friends
- Maelstrom Event Pack
- A different someone at Churchill Customer Services

Maelstrom rocked. Slotted 16 times, every muscle in body hurts, loved getting my war on.

Also great to catch up with people, loads of hugs, more new friends, roll on June event.

In addition to this, a guy who is writing a book about the Islands of Britain (provisional title Island Fever, should be out some time in 2010), has asked to use some of my photographs. Nearly fainted with pride, will be properly published, woot, yeay and more details to follow.

And to top it all off it's my birthday tomorrow!

Now I have to finish Artificer dt and start preparing for Crusades which I've just realised is 3 weeks on Friday, zOMG!!

Top Ten Reasons to Make Gay Marriage Illegal


1. Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.


2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.


3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.


4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all like many of the principles on which this great country was founded; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.


5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of marriages like Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.


6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.


7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.


8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.


9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.


10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

I'm starting to think, whilst about to go on my 3rd LRP event of 2009, with potentially another 9 lined up before the year's out, I really ought to stop now. The equivalent of one event a month is enough for anyone, surely? Especially when one of those events takes up a good three months of my year, adding together the build-up and come-down (Yes I do need psychiatric help for Artificer addiction).
Still, not as bad as shazrasha for whom this weekend's voyage beyond the Maelstrom will be her 6th! and it's barely even April!!

I am still majorly in Artificer mode, and the writing I've done since the event (adding together "fanfic", IC letters and poetry) is verging on the 20,000 word mark... A lot of this is just self-indulgent crap, it must be said, but I'm writing fiction again, and this makes me happy. Despite this I still have so much to do for my downtime it isn't even funny...

Love to you all, and thanks for the major support I've received over the past couple of weeks. You guys are all awesome

I need to stop taking things so damn personally.

For those of you that don't already know this, despite appearances I'm actually incredibly sensitive. A throw away remark to someone else, to me can be so deeply hurtful that I'll stress about it for days. Then once I've gotten over it I'll start feeling bad for overreacting.

I think I need therapy...

Well, fortunately yesterday improved, thanks to all you marvelous people. My faith in humanity has been restored.
Not least of all due to the lovely Chiara who kicked my ass into entering International Wildlife Photographer of the Year. That woman seriously does not take "No I couldn't possibly I'm not good enough" for an answer.
So below the cut are my 3 entries - all in the Animal Behavoiur : Birds category.

( Entries )

... are very, very strange. At least the one closest to where I work is.

Now I am by no means a marketing expert, but the little I have gleaned, is that the main purposes of promotions / special offers are as follows :
1/ To get people to come into your shop.
2/ To get people already in your shop to spend more money than they would have otherwise.
3/ To get people to come back to your shop, and spend more money at some future time.

There may possibly be other more secret reasons that I am not aware of, but these I think are the main ones. Now, given these assumptions, and also given the following :
1/ This Subway store is quite out of the way, so no passing trade would see any promotional posters etc in the windows.
2/ There WERE no promotional posters in the windows.
3/ Subway sandwiches cost between £3 and £6 depending on the size and what you have on them

Could somebody now please tell me the logic behind the following offer, as it's been confusing me since lunchtime:
"Buy a large drink for £1.20 and get your sandwich free".

Now as I've already stated, this offer was not publicised, and therefore no-one would know about it until they were actually in the shop. So the sum total achieved by this? My conclusion was that I went into the shop to buy a sandwich, got it cheaper than I was already planning on paying, and got a free drink...

I'm really not at all sure what Subway get out of this deal...

Ok, here's how it works...go to Google and type your first name and then the rest of the question. Make sure the phrase is in quotation marks. Type the first thing that corresponds - or the first one you like as long as it is on the first page.

1. Google ''[your name] needs'':
K needs more friends (hmmm, having issues keeping up with all the ones I’ve already got…)

2. Google ''[your name] looks”:
K looks magic in black

3. Google ''[your name] likes'':
K likes it hot, spicy and complicated (ROFLMAO!)

4. Google ''[your name] says'':
K says F*#@ it

5. Google "[your name] wants"
K wants To Remind You It’s Senior Night at 850.

6. Google ''[your name] does'':
K does not stem BMD decline in postmenopausal women.

7. Google ''[your name] hates'':
K hates sandwiches!

8. Google ''[your name] can'':
K can still pitch shoes

9. Google ''[your name] goes'':
K goes high tech

10. Google ''[your name] is'':
K is proving to be neither red nor blue, but rather a truly purple policy

11. Google ''[your name] loves'':
K loves Obama (true!)



Incidentally, whilst doing the above I accidently stumbled on the following:

http://www.slideshare.net/mzkagan/what-the-fk-social-media

which may be of interest to invisible_al. At least, I would be interested to hear his opinions on it's accuracy...

Well, I'm chilling out at my parent's house this weekend after a crazy fortnight. Am happy to report being still in pjs despite that fact that it's afternoon.
Meanwhile shazrasha is off gallavanting at a Maelstrom player event I now wish I'd gone to... (the sensible part of my brain is telling me that would have been crazy)

In other news, this week we had a lovely dinner at the abode of trevor_davies and his equally lovely wife. As a recommendation, if you go to dinner and Trev and Lesley's, you will get two desserts, but will be pissing yourself laughing so hard it may well be a challenge to eat either of them...

Oh and I must recommend Bee Movie, which I watched for the second time last night. Dreamworks just seem to be getting better and better.

I love words. Some of you may have noticed this from the fact that I use a lot of them, a lot of the time. I particularly like big and complicated words, words that sound nice, old-fashioned words and words with interesting meanings.

I have a lot of words I really like for various different reasons, but my favourite word has to be "undermine". I like it because it is very, very literal and conjures a lovely mental image.

un⋅der⋅mine
   /ˌʌndərˈmaɪn or, especially for 1, 2, 4, ˈʌndərˌmaɪn/[uhn-der-mahyn or, especially for 1, 2, 4, uhn-der-mahyn]
–verb (used with object), -mined, -min⋅ing.
1. to injure or destroy by insidious activity or imperceptible stages, sometimes tending toward a sudden dramatic effect.
2. to attack by indirect, secret, or underhand means; attempt to subvert by stealth.
3. to make an excavation under; dig or tunnel beneath, as a military stronghold.
4. to weaken or cause to collapse by removing underlying support, as by digging away or eroding the foundation.
Extract from Dictionary.com

I now invite you to do two things :
1/ Share with me your favourite word(s) and explain what about them appeals to you
2/ If you aren't already, sign up to receive "Word of the Day" email from Dictionary.com, and share with me the fun of words! They also have interesting podcasts on the etymology and derivation of words, for anyone who's as geeky as I am interested

I would love all of your opinions on this set of photographs

I'm doing quite a bit of editing on them, so any suggestions will be most appreciated.

Have to admit to being somewhat hacked off.

Now I'm sure when Royal Mail used to put one of their lovely red "sorry you were out" cards through the letterbox, they generally used to say leave about 3 - 4 hours before collecting. This was good, it meant I could get stuff posted to me, receive a card (usually about 10am ish) then on arriving home from work pop down the road to the sorting office (it's open until 6:15)

But lately, it seems that they've been putting "leave 24 hours before collecting" which means I have to wait an extra day for whatever extravagant internet-shopping goody I've spent too much on this time.

Probably not that important in the grand scheme of things, but I find it minorly irritating...

...No pun intended in reference to titles of recent LARP games

So I have decided to make a concerted effort to start using my lj again. And various other projects that seem to have fallen by the wayside, plus, hopefully some new ones.

My 10 days Artificer / Futility holiday ended today with me going back to work. This may or may not have been a good thing. Normality, whilst mostly overrated, is something that needed to be dealt with at some point. However, I suspect that in addition to not actually achieving anything productive today, I may in fact have had the effect of negative work on my office. Mainly due to distracting other people from working as well as not doing any myself. It will take few days I think, good job my boss is on holiday and we're not insanely busy at the moment.

Artificer, whilst emotionally draining, was pure unadulterated joy. I won't go into specifics, because anyone who is that interested has already read my thoughts on the forum. But I will say that it has had a very similar effect as last Artificer - to inspire me, and to give me a bloody good kick up the backside. A sharp reminder of the things which actually matter to you is always welcome...

Taking the week after off, whilst extravagent and shockingly self-indulgent was I think a wise move.

And then, I enjoyed a lovely weekend's photography with some lovely people.

So today, I awake refreshed, and whilst not quite back into work mode, have ideas, thoughts and feelings whooshing around my head again. For too long in recent memory, I have been quite frankly, boring and unsociable. Not anymore...

Watch this space. Stuff may happen.

So having spent the last 26 years detesting history with a fiery, fiery passion (I put this down to some very poor and unenthusiastic teaching), after the aquisition of Sky television (and with it a number of history channels...), and some unconscious gentle prodding of my curiosity from wiserabbit I've come to the conclusion that it's actually fascinating.

After a two hour special on the "Lost Book of Nostradamus" several weeks ago, followed by "Cities of the Underworld" and then on to last weekend's Artificer, where my interest in heraldry was piqued by an equally interesting document, I'm officially hooked.

So, I think I've got a lot of catching up to do....

Off to Amazon for a long overdue purchase I think

This is also up on Flickr and linked from the Artificer Forums, so please feel free to ignore if you've already seen

( Isana's Legacy )

This is oddly fitting....

http://www.europe-nikon.com/product/en_GB/products/broad/1436/overview.html

It is shiny.


That is all.