Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

And another thing - people who put fax numbers at the top of letterheads, and then bury the phone number way, way down. One office round here must have a curiously high incidence of faxless calls to the fax-line, followed a minute and half later by a phone call. All this isn't helped by me having to phone someone who regularly leaves their phone on the fax-only setting, so if you wait long enough, they pick it up.

And the "and another thing" is an in-joke in our family. It comes from a neighbour many years ago. The neighbour was having a row with her husband, and one of the advantages of dodgy 60's semi-detached houses is that the people next door can hear every word of any row (and quite a few of most conversations, and would you please move your bed about half a foot into the room). Anyway, the neighbour was somewhat annoyed at her puritanical husband. However during the argument, she cited my parents as a source for one of her arguments. Both my parents had to try very hard not to shout out that actually that's not what they said. The row continues next door. It abates. But comes the renewal, starting off with "And another thing". Stifled giggles for our side of the party wall.

Ah, childhood memories.

Speaking of faded youth (faded? But I'm not that old, am I? How old am I by the way? Which year is it? Right so I must one, two, three...[quite a few more dots as well]. It's not that old. But it's older than I'd like to be). Anyway, when did snow stop being an excuse to rush to the window crying "It's snowing", and instead become a bloody nuisance? And it's not even like it's proper settling snow, it's just extra clingy rain. Yes, I have just had to pop out, only to come back with snow on my eyelashes and furrowed eyebrows. It's not romantic, it's cold and wet.

The weather of course knows precisely what I'm typing, and is now doing its best to look innocent by being gloriously sunny.

The popping out thing was for the purposes of getting OHP photocopies. My bright idea of using photographs to illustrate my point manages to suitably ignore the problems of low-resolution scanning, newspaper style printing, and then photocopying as well. Some of them would work remarkably well in those psychological tests where one is not allowed to reply "I see an inkblot."

The shop where I got this done was one of the those curious places, where one turns up, helps oneself, does whatever one wants, and then queues up to pay, but only if you feel like it. I know for the most part the sums are not huge, but they could at least put some effort into knowing what is going on. They always seem so surprised when people who have already packed whatever they want walk up and say "X sheets of Y, a couple of Z, and A colour printing on B, half a pound of semtex, oh and three lever arch files: the 3 for 2 ones."

Ok, so they might be surprised by the semtex, but then again they might say they only do 500g packs, and will you be needing a detonator with that?

Hmm, this is quite long this time on a weekday. Oh well.

Coincidentally the room is filled with golden light as they've just opened a new McDonald's next door as a host of heavenly angels appears as the sun is bouncing off a cloud in a very isn't-it-nice-out way.

Picking up the old theme, is it a good sign if, by accident, one manages to open in tabs every page in the Blog subdirectory of my Bookmarks, and having done so (and nearly killed the computer in process), one discovers just how many are erratically updated at best? Defunctdom appears to be contagious, as all the best blogs from way back seem to have petered out (with a few exceptions).

Which vaguely reminds me: did anyone see that painful Saatchi and Saatchi programme which was on a while ago? It was informative, interesting and amusing, but mostly that latter when various advertising people complain that their contagions weren't working. Er, could that be because you stuck an obvious plug for the product on the end? The best virals (the ones that still persist on my computer) are the Honda coxless [office] fours one, because other than the slightly odd sounding URL at the end, nothing suggests any product. Oh and pretty much any other Honda ad ever (the cogs, the lights, the better than Disney), and that Citroen dancing Transformer one, although these aren't virals in this country, but somehow get emailed to people in other countries, and then get emailed back here.

Hmm, I've cleaned up my computer haven't I? As somehow the only other ad I can find is one for Ralph Nader for President, from pre-Bush: The Second Coming. Which given I hadn't a clue who Mr Nader was when I got it (but then I got it from an Australian)...

But as run of the mill forwards round here tend to be either Portuguese builders cementing lampposts into buildings, stuff with boats going badly wrong, or this most recently. And I'll spare you the one from my brother's office, entitled "mass hilarity ensued". He was at least aware that someone managing to print a fax onto A1 wasn't that funny. But then he gets sent all sorts of stuff by actuaries, so he must filter out quite a bit (the actuaries spent far too long being amused by the dwarf-with-dyslexia joke, which admittedly is funny, just not 3 weeks funny).

Actually it was learning difficulties wasn't it? Wouldn't want to put dyslexics down, as that might be rather too self-deprecating.

It's snowing again, and the pretty pink light has turned brown, and now gone.

Television continued. That Adam Hart Davis thing - What Islam did for us, or similar was also quite good. As was getting bored enough to watch part of a film on BBC4. The film, Noi the Albino, didn't quite hold my attention, but it did teach me that in Iceland, egg yolks are red. The egg yolk in question was distinctly egg yolk colour, in a slightly orange yellow way, but apparently Icelandic people call them red, and odd French people call them yellow.

It's really snowing now: proper pillowfight-gone-too-far, overwhelming-by-sheer-numbers, snowing.

And by the time I finish spell checking, it's stopped.

Anyhoo,