Thanks to all of you who filled in the survey that I set up in this post. There were a whole mixture of responses - some people like the mixture of a whole bunch of topics, some people prefer them separated, and apparently, for some reason all of you like reading the complaints, the rants, the everyday life stuff. As one person pointed out, people who’ve read this for a long time have been doing so because that’s what I’ve always written about and that’s what they’ve been visiting the site in order to read - which is very flattering. But, as the same person said, other topics I’ve been branching into recently make for an uncomfortable mixture, at least for some readers, which is part of what prompted me to set up the survey in the first place.

I think I’ve cracked it, though: I’ve put a new navigation list in the top left column, in which you can view everything that’s ever posted on here if you select ‘Latest’, or you can choose from the categories ‘Lifeblog’, ‘Music’, ‘Technology’, ‘Jewellery’ or ‘Quotations’ depending on which you want to read. [Those are the categories for the moment - they may be refined later.] There’s my solution for those who read it on the web.

For those who use the RSS feed, I could potentially set up individual feeds for the different categories if people want these [if you do, please leave me a comment]. Someone mentioned that only the RSS headlines are available rather than the full entries, which is puzzling because I’m able to view the full entries via RSS myself - so I don’t really know what to do about that - sorry…

So, in terms of what sort of blog this is: predominantly, it’s staying as a life-blog. Rather than try to make this more ‘professional sounding’, I’ll keep it as it is, not actively promoting it as any kind of professional site, but using it as a kind of hub from which I can mention professional projects such as Pillowfish or button jewellery as and when it’s appropriate, rather than try to incorporate them all into one place. I think this is probably what I was trying to do all along: but now there are Sensible Labels.

Thanks again for all your feedback. I’ll try to add a few more kittens soon, too.

In time-zone limbo, time-related eating and drinking conventions can be abandoned; so while I was obtaining my gin and tonic, Tom went to get a cup of coffee, and a man at the next table to me ordered a quite delicious-looking Greek salad. I think we were there for three hours, at least. Every half hour, there was a time announcement over the tannoy, which I originally misheard and found somewhat overly amusing: ‘The time is now 7.30. The end.’ This led to me childishly giggling at this assumed absurdity every half hour, before realising it was actually ‘The time is now 7.30 PM’ which makes a lot more sense and is not funny at all.

I decided that in order to combat travel-induced feelings of awfulness, I was going to eat as much as possible, just to be on the safe side. After lying down for a rest on a nice, quiet, deserted upstairs balcony for a while [the sort of place I'd seek out as a teenager during youth orchestra concert trips between rehearsals, in order to a) read a book on my own because I didn't know anyone, b) avoid being seen reading a book on my own and thus advertising my loner-like status and c) inadvertently perpetuate the need to do this by avoiding any social interaction with other orchestra members which might eventually lead to knowing people in the orchestra] we went to a Chinese canteen place. I obtained and consumed a large vat of noodle soup [and Tom got more coffee] while the sun set, very redly, and my body clock screamed at me a little bit.

Flight no. 2 was shorter - Minneapolis to Portland - but had the concentrated annoyance factor of the seat in front of me being occupied by a five-year-old girl whose idea of an amusing game [she wasn't upset or scared, merely excitable] was to scream in that loud, shrill, Hollywood-small-child-being-nearly-eaten-by-dinosaurs kind of way, despite her Responsible Adult repeatedly and emphatically telling her not to do it. Fortunately she did stop after about ten minutes after we’d got on the plane, and while we still on the ground. If she hadn’t, I was considering breaking the Telling Other People’s Children Off taboo, which is quite a terrifying thought [although it does seem to scare children more to be told off by strangers than familiar admonishers, so is usually effective..]. To be honest, I can’t work out which would’ve been worse: putting up with the child screaming all the way, or putting up with the anxious uncomfortableness of having overridden another adult’s authority by telling off their child and then knowing they were seething at me for being an interfering cow for the rest of the journey. So it’s really quite convenient that neither happened.

I think we got orange juice on this one. Did we get Pretzels? I don’t remember. The orange juice on US airlines is really very nice though. My memory of the whole journey, and the journey back, is punctuated by brilliant orange-juice-receiving-moments.

Walking through town this morning, passed hairdressers’. Woman was standing outside holding two glasses of wine, or Pimms, or something [in partially opaque coloured plastic wineglasses, so hard to tell], and began talking at me unintelligibly. Obviously would have been rude to ignore her so I stopped, but had no idea what she’d just said except ‘20% off’, so I said, ‘Er, sorry, what did you say?’
‘Hairdressing services,’ she said carefully, as if I was a Very Stupid Person.
‘Erm, no I don’t want a haircut, thanks,’ I said, feeling horribly embarrassed because frankly, I need a haircut and she could see my hair and everything. But I don’t want hairdressing services pressed on me. And then I went away, and heard her saying ‘Oh my GOD‘, presumably because I was a mad, stupid person with crap hair. Oh well.

The plastic glasses of wine-or-Pimms were a nice touch to get people’s attention. But I’m not sure people were actually allowed to have them.

Grah. Why do people have to do things like this? Why can’t they just put a sign up?

In other, better news, I have just eaten a really nice sandwich.

Prior to last month’s trip, my only experiences of airline food were a) a plate of pickles on the way to the Czech Republic and b) ordering a sandwich on a rather short Ryanair flight, which finally arrived - looking sweaty and disgusting - just as we landed, and was immediately sent back for a refund. But flying to America takes ages and ages. There were hours to fill, obviously, and since sometimes eating can alleviate boredom, I decided to try everything. Well, nearly.

About half an hour after take-off we received a drink [I had orange juice] and a mini packet of pretzels. Pretzels are strange: I wouldn’t say I like them, wouldn’t say I dislike them, but when there are some near me I cannot stop eating them. I do wonder whether they are infused with some kind of addictive chemical. Anyway, this was more than tolerable; I’d give it a rating of Quite Good.

The main meal was a choice between chicken or pasta. I had the pasta, and realised halfway through eating it that it tasted almost exactly the same as something called a ‘Snack Stop’ which I bought in bulk during my first year of university because it was 20p for two packets at KwikSave. Snack Stops were like a very slightly posher version of a Pot Noodle: tiny pasta twists in powdered, dehydrated cheese and herb sauce, to which one added boiling water, left to stand for two minutes and then ate from the plastic pot it came in, if one had, for example, woken up too late to cook lunch before a lecture. Or was too hungover to cook food. Or, was hiding in one’s room from certain people, for many and varied reasons, and needed to cook things without going into the kitchen and getting caught.

Anyway: like Snack Stops, the pasta on the plane was pretty disgusting. But due to the nostalgia element, I kind of enjoyed it.

We were also provided with some wine [which was OK], a bread roll and a piece of cheese, some ’salad’ [I think it had been salad once; or, the ingredients comprising it had once been ingredients with which someone might make a salad, but probably weren't by the time they were actually combined] and a Really Scary Looking Cake, which I ignored.

Afterwards there were jugs of luke-warm tea and coffee; I overheard a flight attendant tell someone that they were running out of the tea due to an unexpectedly high number of English people on the plane.

I don’t actually remember any further food on the plane itself - by the time we landed in Minneapolis to wait for the connecting flight, our bodies were expecting it to be 2am and I was feeling fairly strange. It was 6pm local time. I decided that the only sensible thing to do would be to find somewhere that would sell me a gin and tonic, and drink it. So that is exactly what I did.

Right, OK, I really am going to write another post soon. Possibly tomorrow morning, but recently various distractions have occurred, as quasi-predicted*. Here’s a taster: it’s going to be about airline food.

*Distractions List: Octave fiddle strings, Recording, Search Engine Optimisation, Boys, Etsy, Pearls, Wikipedia, Food, Dishes, Laundry, Supermarket, Tidying, Trying to find stuff after I’d tidied it, Crumhorn, Recorder repertoire, Buttons, Synthesiser, Pub, Crisps, V8 Juice.

No thanks to the UK Highways Agency, we finally got home at about 1am a few days ago [Thursday?]. It should have been sooner, but, after a lot of signs crying wolf about apparently non-existent ‘incidents’ which we were supposed to slow down for at several points while travelling up the M1, there was suddenly a diversion off the A64 through Tadcaster. This would have been just a mild annoyance had it not been for that fact that just as we were approaching the end of the diversion, the end of Tadcaster and the way back to the A64, suddenly a Highways Agency van pulled up in front of our car, blocking the road [the car in front of us got through! Gah!]. A man got out and indicated that we should take a road that a) went back the way we had come, into Tadcaster and back south, and b) had large ‘No Entry’ road signs all over it. Then he threw lots of traffic cones across the road in front of us. It appeared that they intended to trap a small sample of traffic in Tadcaster. Ordinarily, if I had, say, nothing to do with the rest of my life, this would be fine, but a) we were trying to get home and b) it was so late that both of the Tadcaster breweries and all their associated pubs were closed.

In the end we took some back roads through some very small villages [including a very Vikingy-sounding one called Ozendyke which I had never heard of and isn't even on the map] and eventually got back to a road that we were reasonably certain went back to York. Don’t know what happened to the other few cars behind us. Not much solidarity for their fellow Diverted Traffic. Hmph. They may still be trapped in Tadcaster.

What the Highways Agency thought they were playing at I have no idea, but I wasn’t very impressed.

But anyway, this was mainly supposed to be an Oregon report and has so far been a rant about UK traffic control. More details about the trip over to America will follow; I intend to cover several topics including Airline Food, What It Is Like Being In Minneapolis Airport For Ages, Jetlag, American Supermarkets and Their Customer Service, and General Stuff About What Happened. I say intend. I will attempt to do this, but large amounts of catching-up-on-stuff-I-haven’t-done-while-away are also happening. So it might take a while. Hopefully absolutely nothing interesting will happen to me until I’ve finished, so that I don’t get sidetracked. But no promises.

Am in the US at the moment - for the first time ever. The only computing facility I have with me is an iPod, which isn’t really encouraging me to write long, detailed accounts of every day given that typing is performed with one finger. There are some brief updates on my Twitter page though. Will write more essay-like entries upon return. Stopping now, though: finger is sore.

I am writing this on an iPod. Wooo!
Gratuitously testing teeny slab of technology in every way possible. I even logged into Second Life on it earlier. Ludicrous.

Yesterday I went into the same pub wearing the same hat. A different man-standing-at-the-bar looked at my hat for a few seconds, and then carefully enunciated, twice: ‘With a cherry on top.’ I don’t know why.

Thanks for all your survey responses so far - the main trend I’ve noticed is several - apparently independent - requests for more kittens on the site.

So here are some kittens.

This is one of my sister’s photos from ages ago, which I have stolen from her old website archive. There are several more, but since my Pictures of Kittens collection is a little limited, I’m going to drip-feed them to you.