Tired of browsing

I reckon a lot of blokes reading this will identify with the phenomenon known in the Good Plates family as "shopping fatigue".

In my mind a good shopping trip is a decisive one: a surgical strike, if you will.  The commodity is not just identified.  It is quantified, costed and its whereabouts are determined as closely as possible without actually entering a shop.  Then all that's left to do is go there and get it.  Job done.

When you have to shop cooperatively (e.g. in a marriage), however, it doesn't always work that way.  I love Mrs G dearly and I mean this only as a general observation on the differing approaches that men and women take to shopping, but I don't deal well with the shopping trip in which the objectives and time frame are not well defined.

Further lessons in communication

The household is a little closer to complete.  We have TV.

We’ve been in this house for six months and the TV is finally working properly, through a newly effective connection to the antenna on the roof.  Setting up the TV is one of the things I like to get done on the first day of a move, so having this fixed feels like another “moving in” step to me.

It’s also a kind of freedom.  For the last six months we’ve had to either settle for whatever had a clear channel or switch off.  Now all the channels are there, and we can choose whether or not to watch them.

Secrets and milestones

The Great Orion Nebula, M42

Among the books which have made a lasting impression on me are the Hitch Hiker’s Guide novels by Douglas Adams. While certainly not the first to combine science fiction and humour, these stories were so memorable and popular that Adams was compelled to make a lot of what he wrote subsequently either an extension or a reinterpretation of them. I’m not sure whether I would be happy being the victim of such success or whether I’d find it creatively confining.

Anyway, if you know that I’m a fan of this material, and have some familiarity with it yourself, it should not be surprising that the prospect of turning 42 years old tomorrow has me slightly bemused.

I can't shake the sense that it's filled with hidden meaning, that it's somehow special.  Indeed, will I wake up tomorrow somehow magically knowing the great question of life, the universe and everything, thus rendering the answer "42" meaningful?

Dude, where's my city?

This I can accept - but it doesn't look like this anymore!

Today I had the very great luxury of travelling to Melbourne for a work-related web-authoring course.

Not only was there pleasure in learning something new and not having to be at work all day, but it's also pretty great to spend 2 hours travelling each way on a train.  You kind of forget, but train journeys are enormously relaxing and, if you have minions, the opportunity to bury your head in a book for a couple of hours without being interrupted by someone who deserves your attention (apart from a conductor wanting to check your ticket) is pure gold.

Along with the pleasure of the journey, though, a couple of other things struck me about today's experiences.

Firstly, in this day and age it seems silly that I had to spend four hours travelling to take part in a four hour course when, had I had the opportunity to complete it via self-directed distance learning, I could have done the course in half the time or less, and I wouldn't have lost all that productive time at my desk.  Yes, I know, I'm thinking like a manager, but I don't think it's an unreasonable point.

Secondly, it's twenty years or so since I last lived in Melbourne, but who the hell said it was OK to change the city that much?