Falling down and out of steam....

A strange day for me today....

I didn't really do anything - which I hate on a Saturday - cos I love Saturdays and normally try and pack them full with stuff...

I was up at 5:45 but did virtually nothing...this week on the jukebox I've been mostly listening to Alice Cooper - on Tuesday I selected 100 tracks from across the 24 studio albums and saved them as a playlist on the machine....I listened to the last 12 songs this morning and moved on...

I'd decided I'd sort out our photos as we have a bit of a backlog - five or six holidays' worth over the last year which have never been sorted and put into the album - not that we ever show them to anyone....

We are both reasonable photographers though and have a collection which stretches back to when we first met in 1979/80. But, recently, we've tended to put off the task of choosing the best ones and putting them into the albums - maybe it's too much of a chore but I'd like to think we'll get round to it soon...

Anyway, all I managed to do was write the locations on the front of each packet and put them away again in the bag....and then went back to bed around 7:30....

A couple of hours later, I did the usual Saturday morning run to Patisserie Florentin and fetched the croissants - no photos of them this week though...

Then I kind of ran out of steam...

Last night I sent some "news" stories to webmeister Craig to update the Crispycat site - funny how it used to be the focus of my attention till I started this journal...

Today I changed the link to Crispycat to have it go direct to the music page so visitors from this blog can stream songs and, possibly, order some CDs...there are around 30 tracks for people to listen to there...including seven of the eight songs I think I'll be playing on the 25th at Lamb's House....

Mid-morning Anne went off to the nearby Mall while I played through the proposed set - sounded ok but a bit flat after Thursday's performance - I really prefer not to play solo with one acoustic - I'm just not good enough and people can't get the true sound of CBQ - I prefer to play with others (even if they happen to be me on a backing track)...

I phoned Andy and Jamie and arranged our first rehearsal for Monday night - we'll need to concentrate on Jamie's songs first, as his gig's a week tomorrow and Andy's never played any of his songs before...

Tomorrow, Jamie and I may head to "Leithstock", an all day event down at the Shore at Leith Market - quite a few OOTB'ers are playing sets to promote the upcoming week of gigs at Lamb's House and I think there may be a couple of open slots so we may get to play - Jamie's going to Fringe Sunday at the Meadows (a big park just south of the city centre) tomorrow too with his kids - might tag along to that and then we've got Anne's mum's for tea...

In the afternoon today, we went round to Anne's sister Jane's for a visit (I left Anne there and came back to finalise and rehearse my set - and ended up falling asleep on the settee with Meg the Black Cat lying on my legs)... I took a few photos of their new extension and the kids, Oliver and Kitty - two lovely wee children...



Even though the digital camera is crap compared to my "real" camera, the results are so easy to post up, that's all I get round to - "real" photos require developing, scanning, cropping, etc etc - as a result, the photos in the journal aren't as great as they could be - but, as I'm writing it everyday, the digicam's the best method to get stuff up...

I suppose I should bite the bullet and get a very expensive digital camera (the one I use cost £25 and doesn't even have a viewscreen)...

In the evening we watched a pirate DVD of "Madagascar" borrowed from Jane. Quite funny, with the usual jokes aimed at the children-accompanying-grown-ups. Main message seemed to be it's not ok to eat mammals (especially if you're a lion and your best friend is a zebra) but eating fish is fine...I liked the penguins the best...

Some of the biggest laughs came inadvertantly as we were met with the sight of the bobbing heads of people making their way to and from their seats - it must have been pirated in a cinema...

I spent a couple of hours upstairs working on the computer (listening to, amongst other things, Coldplay's "X&Y" - a great album - I'm certainly not a member of the "Make Coldplay History" brigade) and then went back down for the first "Premiership Highlights" show of the new season which started today...

Away from the big money, in the Bell's 1st Division, another disappointing day for the now not quite so mighty Queen of the South as they could only manage a goaless draw at home to newly promoted Brechin City...by all accounts Queen's missed a barrel-load of sitters and then nearly lost a goal right at the end...

Still at least they're off the bottom spot but they now have two tough away games in a row...

Finally, I saw a story on the news today, in amongst all the hot air about the plight of the people stranded at Heathrow, about a woman whose son was killed on active duty in Iraq. She's camping outside President Bush's ranch in Texas (he's there on holiday).

It just so happens, there's an excellent post on the Cunning Realist's site today (see my links) regarding this same story and I'd urge you to take a look...

My meanderings are inconsequential and basically a "what I did today" piece of pish in comparison with the Realist's superbly argued pieces - but then I am a musician/artist and not a prose writer, political or otherwise - please do take a look for a few moments... http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/

Hmm...bit of a long post for a day spent doing virtually nothing...but then, bit of a big blog for a life doing precisely the same....