Curry

Just made an egg and veggie curry from one of Tesco's 99p packs of "seasonal vegetables". Carrots - lots of carrots - turnip, onions and leek. Slowly stirfried the onions and leek in ghee with some garlic and chilli, in a wok, while boiling the root veggies for just a few minutes so they're still crunchy. Add a jar of Sharwood's Madras sauce - yes, I'm lazy - to the wok, the drained veggies and 6 boiled eggs, shelled and quartered. Simmer for a few min, add some onion pickle for a bit of extra bite. And it's bloody delicious. I'm actually getting quite good at this! Shame that squaddie decided to head off rather than share it with me, fuelled only by a few chocolate chip cookies. I don't know how he's losing weight, but he is. Must be the misery-and-depression diet. Worked for me. Still is.

He was staying over here after last night's little trip to the Electric Ballroom with Stef, Elvis, Ian, Jebbo, Dom and jamesb, over briefly from Dublin. First a quick few in the World's End. I aimed to get us there late as Stef is nearly as unpunctual as I - and Neil and I arrived there 2min after them. At 10:12, for a 9:30 drink. :¬) Two miserable old bastards such as Neil and I are currently isn't a winning combination for a night out but our spirits quickly lifted once we were out.

Then off to the EB. No queue, for once, and Stef produced an entire pack of membership cards, in names such as Jane Doe. Good planning - except his mum apparently gets a fair bit of post she is really not interested in *G*. Encountered a few of you lot in there - bootpunk, for a longer natter than we usually get. We have shared bitter experiences to bond over, and we did. I should have listened to him when he first told me, more than two years ago. CJ, we must talk more! Later on I spotted a rapidly-moving mock2 but wasn't fast enough to stop him, and a happily bouncing glitchdrei. Finally right at the end an utterly trashed delomelas.

Good night. I might even venture Slimeswards tonight, after X Electrical's Xmas party.

"One continuous scream of misery" - in installments

Mitcham has its bonuses. After going to the doc's for my flu jab (after which I feel distinctly suboptimal) I finally got round to visiting Hoo Hing, the oriental-foods superstore nearby. Loads of interesting Chinese and Japanese stuff, much of it veggie and really cheap. I think I shall be back.

Then get some doorkeys cut to replace those lost in the other week's little fiasco¹, and into the bank to open a special account to hold the sponsorship money donated so far for the Great Head-Shaving Fund. If you haven't paid yet, cough up! Nearly £300 in there so far.

Home for a rest; the inoculation has really knocked the stuffing out of me. And half the doorkeys don't work. Wonderful.

Then off up town to Skeptics in the Pub for Alberto Bona's one-man play "I, Caravaggio". A crap turnout - there were only about eight of us - but the show was great fun and very educational. SITP regular Kim was conscripted as Jesus to show how one composition worked and Camilla became the angel who miraculously showed the illiterate St Matthew how to write the Gospel. Here's a reasonable writeup of a previous performance.

This was all over by 9:45, including a long question-and-answer session, so I (accompanied by an apprehensive Camilla) made my way up to the Xmas 'Ton at the Barley Mow, where the lovely flickgc showered me in presents, bless her. Thanks! Camilla was pleased to discover cardboardnewman and others she knows from SITP; I may yet induce her to visit again.

---

¹ Aaargh. "Fiasco." Name of a café in the bus terminal in Oslo, where I regularly used to go for a final coffee with Kjersti before getting the bus back to the airport. Meep.

M2K4

Beagle2 is on its way to Mars - and NASA wants to drum up interest in the coverage. So it's produced 3 movie-style trailers to promote the event - "Mars: Bringer of War", "M2K4: The Search for Water" and "6 Minutes into the Unknown".

There are version in both Quicktime and Windows Media.

They're really kinda cool.