2008: retrospective

Rapidly: making lists before 2009 - there's not a reason for it, it just keeps the list-making ability sharp during the merriment. gotta keep the skillz.
Planning: to see the new year in with a cup of tea. if only it was twinings, that's some good first-footing tea.

2008 was the year of:

zero punctuation
twitter
the acer aspire one
louis the dog
paris
broken windows
the lumix lx2 (it's got a leica lens, you know)
anguaji.net
this blog, and the many side-blogs (like standing stones, you can't count them all and get the same number twice)
prince caspian
thai-envy
the xbox
clumsy accidents
bittorrent
linux
old friends
new friends
in-the-middle friends
crazy ex-friends
the end of coco v
the birth of bewick house
the resurrection of tilleys
obama ambivalence
stephen fry
nation
the dalai lama 2008 desk calender
zen preparation
real christmas tree with twinkling lights
photographs of you - my favourite piece of handmade music thus far
reason 3.0.4
(only just) reason 4
cubase betrayal
the fujitsu monster of beth's room
10yrgay
mobil mania: sek660i lgkf600 sew200i sez760
flickr
comedy gold
the high road
dogwalking
the flu
collecting and storing for later use
giving up smoking
hypothetical teetotalism
losing weight
wifi/3g/HSPDA
list making

i hope 2009 is many things, but mostly i hope it'll be the year of:

staying smoke-free (mostly)
remaining relatively teetotal
saving up money
the sony psp
louis the dog v2.0
this blog (and all who sail in her)
more making music and getting out it out there
losing weight once and for all
zen discipline
365 photos - the one photo a day project
better health

here's to another year! good/bad/indifferent -- it's all the same, really.

happy new year all - all the best! and look up "first footing"

-- beth x

Midnight Feast

Wishing, Hoping, Praying: New Year celebrations could take place in about a week's time, instead of tomorrow.
Singing: the festive grumpy song.
Listening To: the silence of a gas fire that's gone to the great hearth in the sky.

and a merry yulemas to you, gentle reader, wherever you may be located on the map. i, for one, had a very quiet christmas filled with maltesers, the latest terry pratchett hardback, old friends, and having to take tinsel off the dog every five minutes. all in all, quite exhausting, really. quiet christmasses are the hardest.

and now i'm trying to think of a way around new year. it's not easy, as almost everybody's heard of it...

Plotting: and scheming, too. oh, yes.
Wondering: about PSPs, and MIDI keyboards, and gerbils.

The Mirror Pool/Indus

Listening To: this hideous year slowly grinding over into next year
Reading: Woody Allen. Again.

winter solstice, i always feel, could be summed up by the colours grey and white, and whatever colour that strange bleak feeling is that you get while looking at a leafless tree branch against a light sky (a sort of grey-ey brown, i think). i'm celebrating it while the folks are out of the house by listening to Dead Can Dance, looking at our spectacular christmas tree lights wink on and off, and occasionally playing Assassin's Creed on the Xbox. all this while the dog sleeps peacefully on the chair. i don't get many perfect moments nowadays, but this could be one.

in other news, i've been smokeless for nearly 14 days now (except for two half-tabs in the first 7 days, which do not count, as all fiendish nicotine addicts will agree with - it's really not the same. no, really. you can't reset your quitting date every time you have a small setback, otherwise you'd just start smoking 20 a day again out of sheer frustration) and (sorry for that really long bracket-based interlude) i sort of feel good for it. thank god for the flu - i was so sick i went through withdrawal without a moment's discomfort, although it was probably part of why i was so sick. but i do feel cleaner, and i feel psychologically healthier for it, and i'd rather not go back on myself if i can help it - this is something i've wanted to do for no little time. soon, i plan to cut back on drinking (which luckily won't be too much of an issue as i don't drink all that often, although when i do, i kinda make up for it) and naturally, i plan on some sort of more rigid fitness regime once i've stopped chewing at the wallpaper out of boredom.

during all this, i'm going to throw myself back into Zen practice... and come the new year i may dig out that Soto group in Heaton. or i may not. i'm more of a Steven Seagal-esque maverick, lone-wolf Buddhist, who doesn't play by anyone's rules. not even her own.

ah, and now my favourite track is on so i'm going to go listen to it and ignore that particular part of my head that wants me to light up a cigarette to it.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little: christmas tree.
Snuffling Up: the scent of christmas tree.
Wrenching: the dog away from the christmas tree.

QI

Listening To: the voice in my head, it's singing christmas songs to me
Dosed Up On: nurofen, paracetemol, stephen fry, pineapple, anadin

consumption-like illness has struck the happy bloghome, just in time for christmas. feeling no better after four days (in fact, significantly worse as boredom has set in like something that sets in).

worryingly, i seem to have lost the dog under all the duvets.

pineapplepineapplepineapple. i have a wicked temperature, which is sort of fun if you watch the pretty lights for a while, but it hasn't helped my irritability at seemingly having given up smoking. actually, having such a bad chest has made me wonder how painful lung cancer could be, so i'm thinking of not resuming my nicotine habit once i'm fit and well - although i make no apologies for my mood in the coming weeks... i don't think i've got any friends who know me untainted by smoking, so it's going to be quite scary, really.

anyhoo. i'm off to find the dog, he's bound to be under these blankies somewhere....

Little Plastic Castle

Listening For: the sounds of the gasfirerepairman a-knocking at the a-door.
Watching: Family Guy, mostly.
Also Watching: Absolute Power (season 1)

so very often, musicians practicing in a room turns into chinese food with a beer. it's a funny old world.

Wishing: that i had the energy to change my damn strings. and clean the guitar. and the switches on the guitar.

Pulse State

Listening To: the happy fizz, crackle and rumble of a coal fire in its initial stages.

the buns of doom: episode 1. my buns are freezing. yesterday they were not quite so freezing. some day, they may be freezing in a recording studio while i cut a new album or in fact excercising in a new york gym. i wonder if it's the right time to twitter my buns? best lay claim to this whizz-bang idea before someone else does.

weekend staying in and making music was great, and went just as planned. as was expected, i'm sick of the track now of course, and wondering when i can slice and dice it into another track, but we'll have to wait and see. go have a little listen if you want to be so chilled your armchair (or computer chair, or coffee shop stool) engulfs you in a hemp-soaked ambience. i just can't seem to drum up more than chilled energy at the moment, but i'm drowning myself in Future Sound Of London, so everything's going to come out pretty spiky soon.

Ponderment: why do my fires always threaten to go out, so that i can't leave them for the first two hours of setting?
Wishing I Could: do this in the front room, but the gas fire has finally handed in the towel and you can see your breath in there.

Smash The Pinata

Listening To: Winston Churchill chuckling in a self-satisfactory manner.
Gazing Fondly Upon: sleeping dog, lying.