Is it only wednesday!??!?!

With only 3 and a half weeks left of work, days are dragging. Difficult to be motivated now that I'm leaving and won't be around to see anything through - difficult even to drag myself into the office on time. This is leaving me feeling mostly idle, or certainly rev'ing at a lower rpm than everyone else at work, which causes some tension. The tension seems to be entirely within me, and pulls between wanting to be professional and get on with work (and not to let my team-mates down), and wanting to just sit back and fiddle my time away doing very little. The end result is a string of unsatisfying days, which is definitely dragging me down. Tough times.

Had a wonderful time last weekend, borrowing a friend's Smart Roadster for the drive to and from Devon - what a great car! Very small, but feels so quick and sporty. Having a turbo, with a turbo pressure guage mounted on the dash, is great fun. After a few hundred miles in it, I could easily be persuaded to get one of my own :) Unfortunately, the weather in Devon was typically English - grey, drizzly, and sub-20 degrees. Looking at photos of our trip to the same part of Devon in July 2003, I can see that we had some very similar weather.

Yesterday, though, the sun returned to London after a fortnight's absence (presumably shining somewhere else in the world) and we had a barbie to mark the last night in the UK for our Brisbanite visitors. Nothing like tending a chock-full barbie with plenty of beer and wine on hand, good company, and a balmy evening. Looking forward to hopefully keeping that up once we get to Oz! I've always been a charcoal barbie man, but I can see myself getting into gas-fired Aussie barbie style once we're over there. I'm still tempted to maintain a cheap charcoal barbie on the side for old-time's sake, and to preserve my Englishness!

I'm still fighting my way through The Algebraist - it's a good book, but it's not great, and not one
of his best. I've tried to avoid reading reviews of books and music before I've made up my own mind, but after writing that last blog entry I thought I'd see what the Guardian had to say. They were pretty bang on with their review.

...and for a pretty comprehensive review website, check out metacritic for games, music, film and books.