Well, my coccyx is still very painful... can't sit for more than an hour at most without severe discomfort. I took Simon to the flicks last Saturday and by the time the film was finished, I was very glad to get up. And that was in the "select" screen with the comfy chairs 

The film was good though - we saw "Night at the Museum" and it was just a good, fun, exciting 90 minutes with walking dinosaur skeletons, rampaging mongols, Steve Coogan dressed up as a miniature Roman general, and Ricky Gervais being funny without trying too hard. Simon liked it too. And there was none of the usual horrendous overblown sentimentality which usually mars these efforts. Commendable!

So anyway, for now I'm still pretty much confined to the sofa, reading reading reading and watching DVDs. I've done the whole of the extended version of LotR in the last week

Sso, took Simon to see POTC2 on Friday. We went to the 4.30 show and thank god we did because when we got out (which was around 7.30... it's a pretty long film) the carpark was rammed and people were queuing out of the doors.

It was absolutely great - highly camp and theatrical, lots of swordfighting, injokes, slapstick, and not forgetting Johnny Depp in eyeliner and Orlando Bloom, who looks a lot better with dark hair than as that big blonde nancy, Legolas. Highly enjoyable, and we followed it with a trip to the Spar for reasonably-priced popcorn and then settled down to watch POTC1 at home on DVD. Marvellous!

Pat returned from Wales last night and seemed in a better mood, although I didn't really get a chance to talk to him. I'm off to London this afternoon as we have a meeting tomorrow regarding our new payroll software. You know, god forbid we should use something up to date like video conferencing, no, let's drag everyone to London. So, for what's scheduled to be a 3-hour meeting, Steve (my senior administrator) and I have to leave here at 3pm, stay overnight at a hotel, then return by train after the meeting, for a total of around 27 hours. We were notifed of this at lunchtime last Friday, so we haven't exactly had plenty of time for arrangements >:-[

Not only that, but the girl who was supposed to be booking our train tickets and hotel has phoned in sick, and so far we've only the train tickets (which thankfully arrived in the post this morning.) We're now on the hunt for a hotel, which with Wimbledon on, is looking a bit tricky. Still, if all else fails, the company will have to spring for the Dorchester or something, heheh.

I don't seem to have updated for ages, severe lack of time can take the blame for that one.

The doctor increasing my dosage of amitryptillin (and/or stopping my contraceptive pill) seems to have knocked the migraines on the head (touch wood). Also I've invested in some earplugs which mean I'm sleeping through the night without Pat waking me every half an hour with an especially loud snore. So I'm feeling a lot better.

Things are pretty frantic on Renderosity right now as we've had a real lack of testers for the store. We took on two guys just before New Year who both ended up leaving without really doing any work. one of them, apparently, pulled exactly the same shit about 3 years ago... just goes to show the leopard doesn't change his spots.

Then we took on another two guys in the middle of last month and one of them left without even starting (once he found out that we don't get to keep what we test unless the merchant specifically says so, and I think he was also shocked to find that we only get paid for products released and not every one tested...) plus Caro has slipped a disc or done something else equally painful to her back, and Robert (the other new guy) is just finding his feet so not too quick yet, and Alfons has had the 'flu. So basically I've been keeping the queue afloat on my own, which takes some doing when 40% of products fail testing the first time >:-[

Anyway, things are looking up now as we have a new tester, Alla, who's a fellow Brit, and Alfons is back in the saddle. Let's hope nobody else leaves!

Let's see, what else has happened. It was Grandma's 80th Birthday, so we went down South for that, stopped in a TravelInn in East Grinstead. We were going to meet Mum for a meal on the night before, but she cried off due to her back being a bit iffy. Then we were also going to meet with Lucy on the Saturday morning and do something in Brighton, but unfortunately she got a dose of the flu and had to cry off not only that but also Grandma's party! So we went to Drusillas on the Saturday morning instead, which was fun, although it was bitingly cold.

Grandma's party went well, she was having a good day and was very happy with all her pressies. Pat and I had got her a picture of a Scottish coastline at dawn, as Grandma loves all things Scots since her holiday there a couple of years ago. Mum and the aunties had clubbed together to hire a piper for the afternoon, which Grandma really enjoyed. (Good for her, it set my teeth on edge, and Sara's little lad Oliver howled his head off!)

Unfortunately we didn't get any decent photos as my camera batteries were dying, so the flash didn't work properly. Or possibly the lighting levels confused the camera (it was late afternoon and the sun was shining through the windows at a very low angle.) but good fun was had by all, which is the main thing :-)

The day job is going fine. I don't have as much work to occupy me as I'd ideally like (hence I'm updating LJ in the middle of the day) but things are going pretty smoothly with the team and I'm getting some models and processes in place. Not much to report there, really.

We went up to school on Wednesday for the parent/teacher meeting, and Simon's teacher is very pleased with his overall progress. His attitude and effort got full marks from her, "a huge improvement" over his previous behavioural report in October. His literacy and numeracy are still far below his age group, but he has shown definite improvement there too, and seems more confident with reading and writing. The learning support assistant was there and we've arranged for her to give Simon a general comprehension test which should tell us if he has dyslexia or just general learning difficulties. She hasn't yet decided whether to put him in for his SATS or not. He could have a reader for the science one, and Maths should be okay reading-wise as it's just figures, but his English one, obviously he can't have a reader for since that would defeat the object.

So we're very pleased with how he's been doing and he's had a fiver and a takeaway pizza as a reward :-) If only his behaviour at home was as good as at school, I'd be ecstatic. He can still be very selfish at times.

I went to the cinema last night to watch Mirrormask, [Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean] which was fantastic. I'd resigned myself to seeing it on DVD, so I was over the moon when the big multiplex cinema picked it up. I hadn't realised before going that the real-world scenes were set in Brighton; plenty of shots where the two piers are in the background. All the cast were well-suited, especially Stephanie Leonidas, who plays Helena, the protagonist. She played it exactly right, not that horrible self-concious over-acting which you tend to get from teenage actors. The puppetry-type stuff (I'm sure it's a long way from puppets but I don't know what else to call it) was fantastic. It's like seeing a Sandman cover come to life. It's an excellent film, and my enjoyment was heightened by the luxury of being on my own and therefore not having to deal with requests for drinks, popcorn and visits to the toilet halfway through.

Well, that's about everything, and it's my lunchtime, so hey ho.

Haven't updated since Friday, so I'll do it now while waiting for a Poser render... which is a render to promote a product which I promised someone days ago, but my PC hasn't been co-operating.

Having installed my new hard drive last week, I was hoping that my problems would be over, but no... same old shit, freezing unexpectedly (usually in Poser but once or twice during games of Geneforge) and sudden resets without user intervention or warning. Then on Saturday I started hearing a funny noise from the case, kind of whirring in cycles. Difficult to describe, but anyway, it sounded like the fan was really labouring. So on Monday Pat went out and got me a new fan and put it in, and all is going good so far, no crashes yet, so fingers crossed that was it.

The weekend was very quiet, as Pat is doing a cash-in-hand electrical job for Jenny, the lady who runs our local Chinese restaurant. She and her husband have just opened another takeaway and they needed the lights rewiring. Of course, what was supposed to be a quick afternoon's work has blossomed into a week's, as Pat discovered that the wiring probably dates from the 1940s and hasn't been touched since, and is thus falling to bits, but hey, it's a cash job and it alleviates the boredom for him.

However this did mean I had Simon on my own all weekend, which wasn't too bad on Saturday as the weather was okay and we had the car, so he was happy with a shopping trip and playing out. On Sunday though, Pat took the car, and it pissed down all bloody day, so Simon was very bored and grouchy. I sat down to watch LotR again - taking advantage of Pat being out as he is not into it at all - but Simon nearly drove me insane with incessant questions. What's that? Who's he? What's he doing now? Are they any orcs in England? Well how do you know there aren't, are they in Scotland? Did there used to be, maybe when cavemen were around? Why's that man all slimy? Why's he talk like that?... on and on and fucking on...

So I sent him off to watch Cartoon Network upstairs while I watched episode 3 in peace.

I really have enjoyed the series incredibly, a lot more than I expected. I was pleasantly surprised with The Two Towers, because I always felt the book was the most boring of the trilogy, and had to force myself to keep at it in some parts. Part of it was the overblown dialogue that Tolkein used, full of manly bonding and all that, and probably part of it was my complete lack of knowledge of, and disinterest in, warfare and tactics. Now I'm a bit more knowledgable about and appreciative of these things, I can understand much more of the story and be interested in the politics and motives behind, for e.g., Theoden's decision to retreat to Helm's Deep. Whereas, when I read the book, I was just like, "Yeah yeah, get on with it, I want to know where Frodo and Sam have got to!"

Interestingly, when reading the book's I always felt guilty that I didn't take Frodo to heart as much as I "should" have done, he was after all the main character and surely I should have been most invested in his survival. But I never really felt I understood his motivations or knew him as a person. And this hasn't actually changed on viewing the films, I still felt we never really got inside Frodo, except for a very few scenes - just before entering the volcano, when he tells Sam that he's "naked in the dark" - but by that time, my emotions are more caught up with Aragorn and Arwen, and Sam - and haven't much left over to care about Frodo. If he'd actually ended up falling in the volcano and detsroying the Ring that way (shades of Terminator 2 there), I would have said "Oh well, at least he got the job done, never mind eh."

Now when reading the books, I never gave two tin shits about any character really, only Sam, who I identified with - I felt he was a bit of a Bilbo character - and having read The Hobbit aged 10 and totally imprinted on Bilbo, I suppose in some ways the idea of Frodo was "Usurper! Bilbo is the true archetypal hobbit, so bugger off with your mooning about and whining!" It's hard to tell if Tolkein intended this or not - maybe he deliberately made Frodo a sort of ambiguous character so that he could build up the suspense of "will Frodo be corrupted by the Ring". Of course, if I had the books I could reread them and then make a judgement, but sadly they got left with Paul when we split up. And I don't want to go and re-buy them now, because I'll end up looking like some uncultured pleb who's only bought them because they saw the films. And I'm a terrible snob like that :-D

Anyway, in the course of the films, I did come to care immensely what became of all the characters, although it pissed me off that Gimli was providing constant comic relief. Aragorn, though, became a much more sympathetic character than I had ever seen him as before, although this was somewhat offset by Legolas being reduced in stature by virtue of too much prancing.

All things considered, a fucking bonanza of cinematographic excellence. What I'd really like to do is get totally stoned and then watch all three, one after another, but my chances of that are approximately zero considering Pat's lacklustre reaction...

Oh and here are some good pics on R'osity:
Legolas (most amusing)
Aragorn by Scott King

Anyway, my render now finished - actually my fourth redone render - so I'd better go to bed.

Oh, and go England!

My left middle nail extension started coming loose last week, so I thought, fuck it, I'll have them taken off - I can't really afford another £30 to have them repaired again.

I've never had nail extensions before getting this lot in February (which have been repaired once). They're acrylics.

No fucker told me it takes around 3 hours to soak acrylic nails off.

So I spent all Saturday evening with my hands in a plastic tub of eye-watering chemicals (some form of white spirit is my guess) which slowly turned from liquid into what I can only describe as goop, as the acrylic basically melted and dissolved into it. Leaving my poor hands and nails looking rather the worse for wear, I'm afraid. Countless applications of hand cream later, the skin looks alright, but the nails are fucked. I've had to trim them right down and paint silver over the top to hide the white spots. Going to start taking calcium supplements.

Next time I'll have silk tips done, they're a lot easier to get off apparently.

So, what with Casualty being deposed by the shite that is Eurovision, and me with my hands in a dish of goop for the evening, we settled down to watch the first episode of LotR, which I picked up from the bargain video bin at Morrisons a couple of weeks ago. It's sad to admit that we're probably the last people on the planet to have watched this.

I must say that having DVDs has definitely spoiled me - I got quite tetchy at the sound quality at the beginning, but this was probably just our VCR needing a clean to be honest.

I was afraid that all the hype would prove unfounded and I'd be left cold again, in much the same way that I couldn't give a fuck about 4 Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, The Full Monty, et al. However my fears were groundless and I have to say it's one of the most stunning pieces of cinematography I've watched in years. The direction is tops - Jackson clearly deserved all those oscars. Nice to see a good strong English cast as well, including our very own Sheffield lad, Sean Bean. Shame about Cate Blanchett as Galadriel though, as I personally find her insipid.

Certainly several moments had me on the edge of my seat, and the "Whoops, there goes my tub of goop" moment was the bit in Rivendell when Bilbo meets Frodo again and makes a grab for the Ring.

Considering that I can't normally sit still for films - I find it hard to watch a TV programme which goes on for more than an hour - it's a stunning Kaz accolade that when this finished, I couldn't believe it was over, and wanted another 3 hours straight away. In fact it's probably a good thing that I don't own the second and third films yet, otherwise I can see I would have been up til dawn watching them!

Pat, bless his heart, is not really into fantasy stuff and all the media attention and hype have pretty much passed him by. He's never read the books - in fact I don't think he'd even really heard of them until the films were made. So at the end of this film, he said, "That can't be the end, he hasn't chucked the fucking ring in!" I just cracked up - it was like total outrage, as if the films should have a subtitle: "LotR 1 - The Fellowship of the Ring - Frodo doesn't chuck the fucking ring in yet" followed of course by "LotR 2 - The Two Towers - Nope, still got it." and "LotR 3 - The Return of the King - Finally! Frodo chucks the fucking ring away."

Of course that reminded me of "Am still not King yet" so I had to go and find and re-read the VSDs this morning, which gave me an hour or so of chuckles.

So, of course now I need to get the next two films, the dilemma being should I get the next two on video (cheap) or buy the boxed DVD set (expensive, but with extra footage and all that malarkey, plus a nice box)? Buying a boxed set might put me in the camp of "People who obsess over LotR to the extent of learning Elvish" or it might say "Serious about good films"... Will have to see if I can get a good deal on a box set somewhere.

I've also been toying with buying the box set of X-Men and X2 - even though I already have X2 on DVD. But that is mainly because I have a silly schoogirl crush on Hugh Jackman... *blush*

Well better get off to bed because it's back to work tomorrow. Hope they haven't made too many people redundant while I've been off... :-S