Glass Half Empty

*poof* So many things happened since last update. Life is busy. Dan is busy. Overbusy, in fact: I'm really looking forward to September, when most of this nonsense will be behind me and all I have to worry about is writing up. And funding, but ... well, we'll deal with that when we have a minute.

This weekend, I went to London for Aquarion and fyrheafoc's housewarming in Hackney, north London. They live on the 17th floor of a rather nice building that can see most of London from the balcony, nice airy flat with slightly scary lifts. There were a few people there I know, and a Good Time Was Had By All. There was much frothing, and drinking, and we played "Eat Poop You Cats" (apologies for the style of the linked site, blue is not a good background colour...). I believe my phrase was the only one to make it around the entire group without being radically chinese-whispersed, which is kinda puzzling, but then it was a geek phrase and a geek group... *shrugs*

On Sunday, we went to Camden Market. Well, we meant to go to Camden Market. Instead, we went to an awesome art shop (Cass Art, in Islington) and Forbidden Planet, then went to Waxy O'Connor's for lunch. Waxy's is an irish pub in Camden, with a tree inside. It's on four levels, goes down forever, and serves great food. Well worth the visit, if you have the time and are in the area.

Then came the time to go home. This was trickier than it should be, because I was trying to get from Piccadilly Circus to Victoria, to catch a train back to Brighton. This is normally fairly simple, but complicated by the fact that of the three underground lines serving Victoria, two of them were closed for heavy maintenance and there was a football match on. In London. Involving Manchester United.

Man. U's fanclub is not small. I had to let three trains pass the hugely overcrowded platform before one arrived that I could get on to. When we reached Victoria, the contents of the previous trains was still on the platform, and we had to step out on to a packed platform. It took us about five minutes to shuffle the length of the platform, packed across the entire width and narrowly avoiding falling on to the track. I have to admit, my opinion of football fans went up a fair way there - no shoving, no shouting, just quiet, orderly, considerate shuffle-walking along the platform and up the escalators.

Still, good weekend. I've realised lately that I seem to treat weekends as days filled with NULL, and get all resentful if people try to make me do things on them, as it takes away my doing-nothing time. Since this is plainly ridiculous, I decided to treat this weekend as filled with a housewarming and good people, and it seems to have worked. The loss of my precious doing-nothing time doesn't seem to be a problem. Cool.

The glass: half-full