Geekdom here I come

I decided I would try a custom template from those wonderful people at FinalSense yesterday. I choose not to do this originally because once you get into templates and coding then you turn into a complete and utter geek. A geek who has to download and install all the available browsers for your operating system just to make sure your template renders correctly in each.

So now I have a new template and guess what. It renders perfectly in Firefox and Safari but for some reason the divider between the posts doesn't always appear in Internet Explorer.

I am pretending it doesn't bother me and I am not going to let it worry me or spend hours trying to rectify the problem. If this is the case though why am I writing about it here... because its driving me MAD!!!

UPDATE: After of an hour or two of playing around with the HTML Code I finally got it all to line up properly. It is really frustrating when something that shouldn't work works and something that should work not only doesn't but messes up the appearence in other browsers. Why can't we have a standard that works for ALL browsers. The geek is now off to bed happy :)

Yesterday, When I Was Young

A friend asked me recently which song I wanted playing at my funeral. I could think of only one...

Yesterday, when I was young,
The taste of life was sweet, as rain upon my tongue,
I teased at life, as if it were a foolish game,
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame.

The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned,
I always built, alas, on weak and shifting sand,
I lived by night, and shunned the naked light of day,
And only now, I see, how the years ran away.

Yesterday, when I was young,
So many happy songs were waiting to be sung,
So many wild pleasures lay in store for me,
And so much pain, my dazzled eyes refused to see.

I ran so fast that time, and youth at last ran out,
I never stopped to think, what life, was all about,
And every conversation, I can now recall,
Concerned itself with me, and nothing else at all.

Yesterday, the moon was blue,
And every crazy day, brought something new to do,
I used my magic age, as if it were a wand,
And never saw the worst, and the emptiness beyond.

The game of love I played, with arrogance and pride,
And every flame I lit, too quickly, quickly died,
The friends I made, all seemed somehow to drift away,
And only I am left, on stage to end the play.

There are so many songs in me, that won't be sung,
I feel the bitter taste, of tears upon my tongue,
The time has come for me to pay,
For yesterday, when I was young.

How Misanthropic Are You?

I was bored. I do not normally waste time doing online tests to see how my personality quirks affect my life. I already know who I am and what I don't know about my misanthropic tendencies you could right on a postage stamp and still have room for the Queen's head.

...so like I say, I was bored and so I took the test.

You Are 78% Misanthropic

Here's the truth: Most people suck. You are just lucky enough to know it. You're not ready to go live alone in a cave - but you're getting there.

Okay, so tell me something I don't already know!

Try the test for yourself here, but only if your bored of course.

Today Is The First Day...

I haven't blogged in an age and the last few days it has been nagging at me. I've been wondering what to post. I decided to just sit here and write this without thinking and see where it goes...

It has taken me a long time, but I am at a place in my life where I am happy. Not overly so, but on the whole pretty much happy. Every step I have taken has molded me and changed me into who I am today. There are things I regret, but those things have also helped to make who I am right now.

I have looked back at the past and don't know if I could change anything, and even if I could find a better solution now... well, obviously I can't go back.

I think the reason for this is; I have reached a place of forgiveness. Forgiven others for things they have done to me but more importantly, I feel, forgiven me for doing the things I have done to others over the years. Because, even though others may not believe this, I have done them with the best of intentions and I know I always do them with the right motive.

The past is now the past and can't be changed. Tomorrow, however, is tomorrow and we can take it one day at a time and remember what we have done previously and try not to make the same mistakes again.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

Priority

"...never let someone be a priority in your
life, when you are only an option in theirs..."

Outlook

Well my friends are gone and you know my hair is grey,
I ache in all the places that I used to play.
I'm crazy for your love but it's just not coming on,
paying my way every day, now that you've upped and gone.

I was born like this because I had no choice,
I started my life with a rough and broken voice.
And twenty-seven angels from the great beyond,
they tied me to this table to stop me getting along.

Now I bid you farewell, I just don't know when I'll be back,
I'm moving out tomorrow to that place right down the track.
But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone,
I won't be speaking sweetly just droning on and on.

Monday Morning

It's Monday morning and the weekend is over. I am in one of those Monday morning and can't be bothered moods. A friend has just texted me to say that she can't be bothered going into work today, nothing wrong she just doesn't want to go in. So I guess I am not the only one.

It made me wonder just how much of our lives we spend doing things that, if we had a choice, we just wouldn't want to do. Work, shopping, the daily drudge of life. Would we be happier if we could just do exactly what we wanted to do whenever we wanted to do it. Would that be better or even worse and a total bore?

Were we happier as cavemen? Surviving day to day rather than working for all the luxuries in life that we just have to have. Did the caveman feel the same on Monday mornings?

As humans are we ever happy with our lot in life?

Today I have so many questions but not many answers!

Four In The Morning

It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat

It is indeed Four In The Morning and I'm lying awake again unable to get back to sleep. Some people count sheep when they can't sleep, I seem to lay in bed and contemplate what to write on here.

I was working late last night and as such was not having my evening meal until way past my usual time. I couldn't be bothered cooking so decided to stop off for a Chinese take-away. The particular place I called in to I had not visited since 1991 and as I was in the area thought why not. It was an old favourite of mine and it proved to be a very strange experience.

The woman who used to run the place was still there but had been relegated to the fryer while the little kids who used to be running around in the back where now taking the orders and dealing with the customers. This gave me a real feeling of tempus fugit.

I know time moves on but this Chinese lady seemed to have aged a lot more than the seventeen years between my visits. She had put on a little weight and didn't seem quite as "with it" as she did all those years ago when she did single handed what it now took three of her children to undertake.

I kept looking at her hoping she would recognise me but she must have served thousands of people over the years and there was no way she would have remembered me. But I wanted her to. I wanted to know how she thought I had changed over the intervening years... but it wasn't to be.

The experience gave me a real feeling of nostalgia.

I spent many years of my life living in this area and I bet there is no one there today who even remembers me being there. The building I used to live in has been knocked down and most of the people will have moved away.

I even remembered the day of my sixteenth birthday. Walking to school through the local park and experiencing a feeling of total "wonderment" with the world. A feeling of total contentment that I have never felt since and had only felt once previously to that.

Images, memories and feelings from the years spent living in the area were flooding into my head as I stood and waited for my order...

...A girl I once knew...

...An old departed family pet...

...asthma I developed and outgrew in the space of a few months.

Why did I remember so much about the area and the people who lived there but there was no one there to remember me? Too many times one of these many thoughts just ended in what if...

Maybe, sometimes, it doesn't pay to dwell too long in the past.

In My Day

I was chatting with a friend the other day while her kids were playing around the house. While she was chatting to me she kept jumping up and down to see what the kids were up to at such an alarming rate that it started me thinking of how things have changed over the years. As a child I was very much left to get on with life. My mother didn't run around after me like mothers seem to these days.

I survived being born to a mother who smoked and drank while she carried me. She took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Once I was born the trauma really started. My baby cot was covered with bright colored lead-based paint. I had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when I rode my bike, I had no helmet.

As a child, I rode in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun. I drank water from the garden hosepipe and not from a bottle. I shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this.

I ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but I wasn't overweight because I was always playing out! I would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as I was back when the streetlights came on my mother was ok with it.

No one was able to reach me all day. And I was OK.

I would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then ride down a hill, only to find out I forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, I learned to solve the problem.

I didn't have a Playstation, Nintendo, X-box, or any video games at all, no five hundred channels on Cable TV, no DVD or video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phone, no text messaging, no personal computer, no Internet or Internet chat rooms...

I HAD FRIENDS and we went outside!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth. We played with worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. Made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out any eyes. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Local teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

The generations who grew up in this fashion produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years has seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it!

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?

White Rabbits

White Rabbits, White Rabbits, White Rabbits.

It's now over a month since Christmas and New Year, just how scary a thought is that?