My old Peorth pendant.

The one I thought had been lost/stolen/confiscated.

Went in to set up the PS2 in Mum’s library and there it was. Lying by her mirror.

Now ordinarily Mum would have pegged that as mine instantly she found it and phoned me up to ask about it, see if I wanted her to send it down. That thing has been missing for nigh on 4 years now, and yet here it is. Coincidence or what? I’m not sure whether she found it when I lost it and just didn’t think to mention it or whether it has turned up recently.

I left it where it was. I’m not sure what I want to do about that, apart from feel bemusedly amused.

I like running in the rain.

I generate a lot of heat when I exercise. I do it on the bike – I do it even more when I’m running. I like the Dun Run so much because it’s at night, when the sun’s away and it’s cooler. I prefer cycling in Spring and Autumn because I don’t overheat.

Yesterday I went running in the rain. The nasty, twisty route over rocks and planks, despite my better judgement. It was nice. I did the whole thing without stopping, except ever so briefly to take off my jacket so that the rain could hit my skin. I was steaming, great clouds of vapour coming off me and dispersing as the intermittent breeze boffed at me with pugel sticks made of cotton wool and spider feathers.

I did it in the same time it usually takes me to do the easy route that avoids twists and soft sand by taking the old railway track.

I am also discovering how to make my hair look like muppet feathers. Serious muppet feathers, not Big Bird muppet feathers. This I like. Although I think I’m going to have it cut by a professional in order to facilitate this.

“I’d like you to cut my hair to look like Mortimer, please.”

“Yerwhat?”

Do you think if I take in a copy of Secret War and point at Daisy and tell them I want to look like that during the day (I’m pretty sure Dell ‘Otto modelled her on Angelina Jolie in Hackers) and a copy of Mortimer and Arabel for my personal look (one gets the normal eye, the other gets the black) they’ll understand what I mean?

Frood is taking me to see X3! On its first night! So that none of my rotten teasing friends can go on about how crap it is or how good it is before I get to see it! We’ve got tickets and everyfink!

I’m so excited!

Dahling!

I may use that sig when I’ve got siggy up and running and it chooses it from one of the many random quotes I have in there (along with the one I want as a bumper sticker: “Seven decapitations in one week. Don’t you just hate those who take head and don’t give it?”) but I didn’t originate the quote.

That, RainTurtle, comes from Neils Bohr. I’d hate for anyone to think I’m guilty of quote-napping.

Keith, if you’re reading this, do be a dear and correct the little blighter. It’s rudeness by proxy.

For my more ‘normal’ readers, who aren’t involved in the world of weird: ignore all this. The rest of it isn’t worth reading unless you’re of the bent that gets the joke. It’s all a bit…

Stick in the mud.

Last night I turned on to BBC4 to watch a new programme called Never Mind the Full Stops, a panel game for the grammatical pedants amongst us.

Actually, to be accurate, I ran down and had a quick shower after watching The Pedant’s Revolt so I missed the start.

I came back to discover them embarking on a round about euphemisms and what they called ‘cacophonisms’. I think they meant dysphemisms. Having watched the rest of the round I wouldn’t be at all surprised as they didn’t seem to have a clue.

May I just point out that substituting ‘foul’ for ‘disgusting’ is not using a euphemism: it’s employing a synonym. A euphemism for disgusting would be ‘an acquired taste’.

I think I will have to write to the BBC and complain. This was supposed to be a panel show the likes of which John Humphries would enjoy. It was, euphemistically, lacking in preparation and in need of slightly greater expertise. Dysphemistically it was a demolition derby of incorrect word usage and smug hypocrisy from five people who talked a good game but obviously didn’t really understand the rules.

It has been an interesting couple of weeks, training wise. Life on the weird front has been largely intro- and retrospective. Interesting to look back at how things have moved on. But I’ll deal with that elsewhere later. I have some interesting thoughts on why Loki may be a shifter par excellence but he ain’t got my Old Man beat by any stretch of the imagination — and this has implications for old One Eye as well.

They’re not just my Uncles, after all.

But I will note that the Peanut Gallery has become quite involved with the physical side of life again since I moved. They’d pretty much left me to get on with it while I was in Devon, trusting me to make my own decisions as the physical work of cycling to work was enough. Now that I’m up here and driving to work the tech team — and by inference the PG — are being much more proactive.

So, boys and girls, this week I have mostly been learning to run on narrow, twisty, uneven, stony paths. Apparently this is something to do with body-space awareness. I was alright until this involved running over a rocky mound and straight down onto a plank over a stream with a fair drop on either side.

“Run? Over that? Me? You’ve got to be fucking…. Waaaaah!”

I don’t think I’m going to manage a Super Randonneur series this year. Which is a shame. I wanted to do that, but I need to get my saddle sorted out and I can’t do that until the house has sold and my bank account is no longer blaring a high-level alarm every time I buy tea bags (or anything else for that matter).

I did put my Audax sticker on Shackleton, though.

A reasonably good time was had by all. It was smaller, friendlier, less hectic, less stressful and generally nicer than the big National one. In my opinion, anyway, and I’m always right.

Thanks to the silly little rune reading man who thought my tattoo was a serpent and broken spear:

“I’ve never seen a serpent and broken spear like that before.”

“It’s a double disc and z-rod.”

“They don’t look like that.”

“This one does. It is from Norrie’s Plaque. It was found on a silver lozenge at Windygates on the back of Largo law.”

“Oh. I wondered why it looked familiar…”

He also opined that I should have had my bindrune barcode done in blue and gold. I didn’t know you could get tattoo inks in gold.

Surprisingly (I mean that in a good way) good to see Sally and Mad Mick and John and Karen and Kitty and even my stalker, Pete Jennings.

OK. So it probably is just coincidence that he’s at every damn conference I go to. But he is at every damn conference I go to. I went to his talk on Practical Runes this time, but it was really aimed more at complete beginners. Plus I got the distinct impression he was either holding back and hiding it, or being funnelled into a particular method of working and perceiving them.

Still. He and I share the same opinion of Ralph Blum, so that’s okay.

When did everyone move to Fife and the surrounding area? I had no idea that Mick was just down the road from me. It was nice seeing people again. Being able to talk to them face to face. Have an actual conversation with actual people about actual weird shit. I hadn’t really realised how isolated I had become. How much of an outsider. I’d started getting reluctant to talk to people because I can’t talk to anyone about weird shit any more without someone from the PG getting a word in and I have a tendency to lose friends before they get as far as becoming friends.

This weekend was no exception, but Sally, I think (hope) is one of those who can see past that and not take it personally.

Although I did think it was a bit rough to bring her nephew along for his introduction to paganism and introduce him to me.

I think the talk on the psychology of the witch hunters was probably quite good but it was after lunch and it was dark and warm in there so I fell asleep. I was on best behaviour and I think I managed not to offend anyone. So that was good.

Think the shorter cloak looked better, though Gac. The Spring-Heeled Jack look suited you.

For the full report of the Round the Forth Cycle Challenge, venture forth and take yourself to The Club. Take your shoes off before you go in, though. We’ve just cleaned the carpets after the latest spambot attack.

All in all a pretty good day: nice to have a cycle ride with Frood that someone else had organised. Made me hanker after Critical Massing the Forth Bridge again. Not that it would make much difference with the congestion the toll plaza replacement is causing.

Bloody hurt today though. My shoulders have frozen up completely with muscling Shackleton up that hill out of Bo’ness.

As I was saying yesterday about the spawn of Bill Gates’s loins…

Today I have spent a good couple of hours wrestling with Excel. The problem is simple: I have to produce around 90 letters requiring the same address to be displayed in 3 places, and a few other bits of standard but variable text (e.g. date received). The obvious solution is the mail merge.

The names and addresses on these letters also have to be recorded on a spreadsheet. It seems silly, even downright ridiculous for me to type in all these addresses only for someone else to type them in again. Unfortunately the format of the recording spreadsheet is such that the whole address is in one cell, and my mail merge has each line of the address in a different cell for formatting reasons.

Luckily Excel 2003 has a couple of methods of merging cells, including the CONCATENATE function. I didn’t use this, preferring to use the =A2&” “&B2; version.

Unfortunately, when I went into the cell to edit a tiny error in the formula, the cell ceased displaying the results of the formula and displayed the formula itself instead. Turning the formula auditor on it told me only that the contents of the cell were a constant.

Excel had ceased recognising the formula as a formula.

Googling this error didn’t turn up much, although I did find this, which suggested there is a limit on the number of cell references Excel can handle. I didn’t buy this. Not in this instance. I only have 40 rows.

For those of you who are caught in the same dilemma, please check the formatting setting on your cells. Mine had mysteriously been set to text, which did not take effect until I edited the formula. I can only assume this was the cause of the problem as setting the cell formatting to general resolved it and my cells are displaying lovely addresses again.

My brain is somewhat fried right now.

Every so often I get a ticket that opens up so much fun stuff that it’s impossible to resist the temptation to hang on to the open line once the chit’s been signed off.

I know I shouldn’t. But it’s like kipple. Even though I know it’s a bad idea and I’ll regret it later I can’t help myself.

So now I get to go to the PF con with a semi-fried brain and boy are the PG gonna have fun with that one.