Comcast

I hate Comcast.  I shall try to refrain from using profanity, but they really are the worst.  They are one of America's biggest cable/internet providers - which translates to one of America's biggest monopolies - which translates to one of America's worst companies for customer satisfaction.  Unfortunately, they are the only provider for both where I am now and where I am moving to - so I had arranged to transfer my service for later in the week when I actually move.  Naturally, I woke up this morning to find that my TV and internet service was not working because they had prematurely discontinued the service.  OK, this should only take a quick phone call to fix.  4 hours later, speaking to multiple people as I kept on being passed off from one department to another, stuck on call waiting for ages, with them unable to work out why my internet service could not be restored, I finally got my full service back.  Extremely pissed off, absolute waste of morning, appalled at how long it took to fix, very wary of whether my service will actually work when I move.  I doubt it.  I had loads of problems with my Comcast service in my old place in Seattle as well - they really do suck.

Boxing

I've definitely drifted away from boxing over the last few years - I'm never going to shell out on one of the big fights that is on PPV, and the televised fights are either poor quality or feature a pair of nobodies.  There may be a bunch of British world champions in the various weight categories currently, but I couldn't care less - and the big names that I would pay attention to have now retired.  But they did televise the Joshua-Klitschko fight from London live here during the afternoon.  And it was surprisingly good - back and forth, a large and loud audience, and a great ending.  I watched the Fury-Klitschko fight, and that was utterly dreadful - so it was really good to actually have a half-decent heavyweight fight.  However, I do think MMA (specifically UFC) has caught up and maybe even eclipsed boxing as the go to one-on-one combat sport, so I think boxing needed a fight like this.  

Spoiled By Spoilers

Oh no.  I did a bad thing today.  A very bad thing, that I regretted instantly.  And something I can’t take back.  I read spoilers for all the episodes of the next (and penultimate) season of Game of Thrones.   Aaaaaaarrrghhhh.  I can’t help myself.  Such weak willpower.  What is wrong with me?  It’s not like I went looking for spoilers, but just happened to encounter them whilst searching for other things.   Stupid.  Stupid.  Stupid.  Fail.

Contracting

Amongst the many other things I’ve been thinking about recently, I’ve been asking myself would I ever consider contracting in my current field?  Most definitely.  The positives – a lot of these positions are home-based so in theory I could live anywhere I wanted in the US, I would have less responsibility and more hands-on work (something that I definitely prefer), I wouldn’t have to deal with the godawful office dynamics and politics of a full-time employee (some of the posturing, maneuvering and promotions at my current place are unbelievable).  The negatives – more work (though that is something I think I can deal with), less job security (but I like to think that I would do a good enough job in a contracting position to be offered the opportunity to switch to full-time if I so desired), no healthcare (so how Trump decides to deal with this has become something I’m very curious about), more isolation (if I was ever to get a home-based position, then I think I would have to get a dog or something to keep me company).  Even without a lot of the job perks, I could probably get an hourly rate that pays more over a year than my current job (I’ve seen what my current reports make, and it is unbelievable relative to their competency).  Something to consider (though probably as a last resort since I’d still rather have a permanent office-based job).

Ch-Ch-Changes

You have to check this out – they’ve finished constructing the apartment building next to where I work, and so these apartments are now available for lease:

http://www.easthowesteps.com/

In particular, note the prices – they are horrendous, but seemingly now the standard for Seattle.  For a 2 bedroom apartment, the CHEAPEST is still over $3000 per month, and that’s with a paltry 818 square feet of space.  That is horrible.  You’re still paying over $1500 per month for the smallest of small studios.  You must be crazy – or a very well paid employee at Amazon headquarters just down the road – to move here.  And we, as neighbors, are going to suffer from the increase in traffic – thank god we have a parking garage at work, because I don’t think the apartment building has a garage which means street parking is only going to get worse.  The most disappointing thing is that we desperately need some more cheap lunchtime eats nearby, and there are retail spaces to lease on the ground floor of this apartment building – but I suspect at the prices they are asking for that nothing affordable will be moving in.  There used to be a great cheap teriyaki place up the road, but that got priced out and has gone; and a bar up the road used to do a good lunchtime pizza deal, but they upped the price and decreased the quality of the pizza so don’t go there anymore.  I don’t mind walking down towards Amazon where there are lots of food trucks (and long lines) to choose from when the weather is nice and I’ve got time, otherwise restricted to just a few mediocre sandwich places nearby or the Thai restaurant on the corner for lunch.  This is when I most miss working in downtown Seattle - when I first moved here I was working just a block away from Pike Place Market and the many, many lunch options there and in downtown.  That was great… and a big shame we moved to where we are now.    

Office Etiquette

I suspect I’ve written about this before, but I’m getting absolutely fed up with the lack of respect that some people show towards working in a cubicle workplace.  From the stink of food, to conducting too loud teleconferences from your desk, to chatting right next to other people’s cubes – it seems to have got significantly worse recently.  And it’s not just my Chinese colleagues (although they are definitely guilty of it).  Someone nearby who is recently back from maternity leave has proven to be one of the worse – and she is American.  She is loud, even though she wears a headset I can overhear both sides of her shallow conversations and teleconferences, and her food absolutely reeks.  Recently, she has been suffering from a cough – and it was so persistent and aggravating that I had to keep walking away from my desk to stop it driving me crazy.  We’ve all suffered from a bad cough at one point or another, but please have the courtesy to not let everyone else working around you suffer as well.  And all this despite my wearing earbuds and listening to podcasts at my desk to try to drown the noise out.  How do I say something to my cubicle neighbor without sounding like a total douche bag?  I’m incapable of being direct like an American, and instead – just like with noisy apartment neighbors – I end up stewing in my misery.  That is no way to live or work.

(Hyper)tension

I appear to be suffering from quite a lot of anxiety at the moment, and I’m not really sure why – it’s certainly impacting my ability to get a good night’s sleep (especially now that sunrise in Seattle is as early as 6 am, and the bedroom blinds are totally ineffective at keeping out the light), and it’s affecting my focus at work, at home (I keep on having to pause and rewind programs because I am just not able to fully concentrate on what’s going on) and at ping pong (where even a new $150 paddle has made little difference in turning my form around).  I suspect it is probably to do with my upcoming move next week – I’ve got most of my stuff boxed up now, and it’s kind of sad seeing all the junk I have, most of which I would probably just dump if I was moving to California.  I’m also somewhat worried about what I’m going to need in my new place – I don’t think it comes with a microwave, but also things like blinds/shades/curtains (which might be a major test of my very limited DIY skills) and whether to get a home security system or (more likely) just get a cheap security camera.  I’ve already ordered some fake security signs!  I’m also not sure if I want to splash out on some new furniture – like a new sofa or a new bed/mattress – because again, if my hope is to move back to California next year then there doesn’t seem any point in getting new furniture now.  I guess I’ll make my decision once I move in.  Inexplicably, I’m also worried that for some reason my move might fall through – like I’ve been fleeced or something unexpected comes up to derail my plans.  I have absolutely no justification for feeling this way – perhaps just because this is the first place in the US I’m going to be renting directly from an individual owner rather than some large realty-owning corporation.  As they say, moving home is one of life’s most stressful events…

Liverpool 1 - 2 Crystal Palace

First Chelsea, then Arsenal and now Liverpool - who would have seen that coming?  The pressure was on with both Hull and Swansea winning yesterday - we can forget about Sunderland and Middlesbrough (sorry Jon!) who are both going down, it's the third relegation spot still up for grabs.  And another big result against a (supposedly) top 4 side.  I don't imagine we'll get a similar result against Spurs during the week, but hopefully Palace have done enough to stay up now.  That's 6 wins out of 8 - a very timely turnaround in form, and justification for getting Big Sam as manager.  If it's about survival rather than playing pretty football, he is one of the best men for the job.  And although moving up to 12th in the table is very falsely flattering, things are looking significantly better than they were 2 months ago.

Happy Earth Day

I'm disappointed with myself - I had totally forgotten it was Earth Day today, and so had forgotten that it was also the March for Science today.  Yet another rally bringing out tens/hundreds of thousands of people across the country to protest against one or other of Trump's policies.  I kind of would've quite liked to have joined today's march in Seattle, despite the wet weather, but alas it wasn't to be.  But perhaps what was most surprising to me was that nobody mentioned or spoke about it at work - despite the fact that I work in the pharma/biotech industry, about as scientific a field as you can get.  Perhaps it was too political for our company to encourage it's employee's to attend the march, although in theory the march was supposed to be nonpartisan (it clearly was not).  But I didn't even discuss or overhear anyone talking about attending it - admittedly I'm not the most sociable person at work, but I still would have thought I would hear something if some people were going.  It's a shame, because I strongly support the purpose and mission of the protest - I hate the proposed cuts to agencies like the National Institute of Health and Environmental Protection Agency, I hate having a President who seemingly does not believe in climate change or the safety of vaccines, I hate fake news and "alternative facts", and I hate some of the environmentally-unfriendly administration appointments and executive orders already issued by the great orange one.  And then he has the temerity to issue a statement saying that science is critical to his administration.  Yet another alternative fact methinks.  

More Lake Union

Thanks mainly to the weather, I haven't been out and about too much over recent weekends (this weekend looks to be no exception, but I have got plenty of packing to be getting on with to keep me busy).  But on the occasional weekday when it is dry, I do try to take the opportunity to escape from the office and go for a lunchtime or evening walk.  Here are a few photos from those walks - hopefully not duplicates of ones I've already posted.

Happy Anniversary

Today is the 1 year anniversary of my blog!  365 blog entries.  Good grief!  Given my track record on previous blogs, I didn't think this would last – but here we are, still going (relatively) strong.  I think it has helped enormously that I haven’t really been that busy at work over the last year, meaning that I've had time to compose fairly lengthy posts.  How long I can keep this going, I don’t know – surely at some point I might actually be properly utilized at work!  Fortunately there have been enough news and world events over the last year to comment on, because there is a certain amount of repetitiveness concerning my dreary and monotonous existence that I don’t want to bore you with.  But hey, that’s the way it’s been for way longer than I care to dwell on so at least I've kind of accepted that’s the way of my life for the moment!   But as we start to leave behind the bad weather over the last 6 months, hopefully I’ll start getting out and about a bit more again, so I hope to have more photos and interesting stuff to post.  And of course, expect me to find lots of new things to complain about once I move into my new place!  Thanks for reading.    

Panic at the Disco

How to have your blood pressure raised to dangerously high levels?  By getting a phone call today asking why I haven't returned my keys yet because my lease has ended.  Even though I could have sworn I extended my lease until May 5th, and signed a document to say as much.  So after rushing home early from work to make sure I could access my apartment and speak to someone in the office here, my panic and stress levels quickly dissipated as they had screwed up.  So yes, I am still here and am not getting thrown out early.  As you can imagine, not too impressed by the competency of the people here - watch me get screwed out of my deposit when I move out...

Keeping it real

I could mention the ugly scenes between fascists and anti-fascists in Berkeley, with the fascists particularly emboldened by Trump’s (mostly pre-election) rhetoric.  I could mention the interesting decision of Theresa May to hold an election – in what may be the last opportunity for the public to voice their displeasure with Brexit (if only the opposition had a feasible candidate…).  I could mention any one of the other important news stories going on in the world, in the US, in the UK, in Sports, in the Entertainment world.  But no, instead I’m going with this:

https://twitter.com/WWE/status/854170745676509184/video/1

Yes, nothing beats a classic collapsing ring in wrestling.  It’s been over 5 years since we last saw it and this was definitely one of the better ones, from the teases during the match (it wasn’t like anyone couldn’t see it coming) to the flawless execution – watching the referee going flying out of the ring is what made it for me.  

Table Tennis Fail

My ping pong form is erratic to say the least.  I’m still playing almost 5 times a week, but day-to-day and shot-to-shot I am just too inconsistent.  I can pull off a spectacular winner on one play, and then the next just chunk an easy one into the net.  So very, very frustrating.  A couple of weeks ago I went through a 2-3 day stretch where I was unbeatable, and then Friday and today I wasn’t even capable of winning a single game.  It’s kind of got me down, not just ping pong but the fact that I’ve never really excelled at any sport.  I’ve tried sports like hockey, squash, tennis, badminton, even archery – but nope, useless.  A terrible sense of balance has definitely not helped – part of the reason I can’t skate, roller-blade, ski, golf or ballroom dance.  But the real issue is that I’ve never been particularly fit – I lack, and have always lacked, the strength and stamina to succeed at sports.  I can display the occasional glimpse of amazing skill, but all too rarely and certainly incapable of sustaining it.  This has got me reminiscing about my school days – where I was just too small, weak, unfit and unable to see without my glasses that meant that I was never going to succeed at the physical team sports like football and rugby.  I have a vague recollection of getting lapped in the 1500 meters in the House Athletics competition – how embarrassing for the young me already lacking courage and confidence (though I have other more positive sporting recollections e.g. of a stunning Jan Molby-esque pass in a football game that my PE teacher couldn’t believe was intentional, and a sustained sequence of wicket after wicket when bowling in the cricket nets).  I gravitated towards hockey, though I was never willing or able to step up to playing at university-level (though I’ve still got my newspaper clippings from when my name made it into the sports pages of the Hertfordshire Mercury playing for the Hertford 3rd or 4th hockey team!).  If only I was able to learn to skate, I think I could have made a really good ice hockey player – but alas that wasn’t to be.  So at my age now, here I am resigned to just playing ping pong and occasional other racket sports.  The competitive spirit in me has always been there (as perfectly exemplified by the frustration and stream of profanities emitted during my recent poor ping pong form), but the occasional flash of skill does not make up for the overwhelming sense of sporting mediocrity.  Sad face emoji.  

NBA and NHL

This was the first weekend of NBA (basketball) and NHL (ice hockey) playoffs.  A good time to be a sports fan - I don't generally bother watching much of either sport during the regular season, but I will watch the playoffs.  Basketball especially, which is weird because as recently as say 5 years ago I would probably have told you I hate basketball.  But it has grown on me.  It's a shame Seattle lost their team just before I moved here - going from the Seattle SuperSonics to the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008 - so I've still never seen a NBA game live.  I have seen an NHL game live (the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim), and I have to say that ice hockey is one of those rare sports that is just as good to watch live as it is to watch on TV.  Lots of talk about Seattle getting a basketball team again and a hockey team in the near future, but seems to be mostly talk rather than actual action.  

Top 10

1. Don't Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John and Kiki Dee
2. A Little Bit More by Dr Hook
3. Jeans On by David Dundas
4. In Zaire by Johnny Wakelin
5. Let Em In by Wings
6. Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel by Tavares
7. Now Is The Time by Jimmy James and the Vagabonds
8. Dr Kiss Kiss by 5000 Volts
9. You Should Be Dancing by The Bee Gees
10. Here Comes The Sun by Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel

It was clearly a bad time for music when I was born.

Duke Nukem

It will be interesting to see what goes down in the next few days/weeks in North Korea.  Seattle will be (or already is) the first major US city that could be reached by a nuclear missile fired by North Korea.  Naturally, some of the reprehensible conservative pundits have said that this wouldn’t be a major loss to America.  I don’t find the prospect of an American metropolitan area of approx 4 million people (including myself) being nuked particularly funny.  Hopefully the US has a sufficient missile defense system to prevent that ever happening – but who knows if that would work.  In some ways, I am a little bit conflicted about Trump’s military strategy.  I don’t like the US imposing itself on everyone as the “world’s police” – but I don’t necessarily disagree about the retaliatory strike after Syria used chemical weapons – especially given the total ineffectiveness of the United Nations.  Nonetheless, I find the image of Trump’s small hand hovering over a red nuclear launch button particularly disturbing.  But I don’t think Trump will show the same weakness as Obama did when a foreign government “crosses the line” and actually will address it head on – maybe impulsively, maybe recklessly, but at least something.  When he starts to go after China, perhaps following an incident in the South China Sea, then I really will start to worry.  

Deja Vu

I'm reading a novel at the moment (Restless by William Boyd) that seems eerily familiar to me.  I can't decide whether it's because I've read it before, whether I've seen the TV adaption or whether it is just too generic a spy novel.  It's really bugging me.  Either way, for a novel that won the Costa Book Award (a supposedly prestigious literary award) I don't think it's that good, though not bad - but certainly inferior to the masterpieces by John Le Carre.  All the more disappointing, because one of his other novels - Any Human Heart - is absolutely terrific.  He is also the author of one of the post-Ian Fleming Bond novels - but I'm only a Bond film aficionado and haven't read any of the books.  Perhaps I will one day.  

PC Fun

It must be time to retire my old laptop.  Since getting the Windows 10 update, it has been getting gradually slower and slower and slower.  It now takes an absolute age to load up, and an absolute age to download anything.  And when there is a Windows update being done in the background, then my laptop can be relied upon to simply grind to a halt.  Last night, iTunes stopped working as well – not for the first time.  Then I had to go through the rigmarole of uninstalling all the Apple software and then re-installing everything.  With the speeds that was taking, I was up until the early hours sorting things out – and on a weekday with work the next day.  Not good.  It doesn’t surprise me that a Microsoft operating system and Apple software hardly make for the most compatible of friends.  I obviously don’t want to lose all the stuff on my laptop, so I think I need to backup all my photos, music etc. before it officially dies and I lose everything.  Though, realistically, it’s less likely to break on its own accord than I am to smash it with a hammer or throw it out of the window as I get increasingly frustrated at how slow it is.      

PS If you told me I had to involuntarily give up my airplane seat, you would also have to drag me off kicking and screaming.  What a disgrace.  Overbooking is clearly a thing, because I’ve been on plenty of US domestic flights where they’ve tried to tempt people to transfer to a later flight.  It would take a considerable amount of money/upgrades for me to oblige – but that’s just chump change to these airlines.  The airline industry is despicable – from the ever-decreasing seating size to having to shell out ever-increasing amounts of money on basic customer needs like food and baggage.  Sadly only when there is decent market competition do you get decent customer service – and regrettably the US domestic airline market is mostly monopolized.  

Rainbow

With the occasional sun break between the relentless rain, I've been seeing lots of rainbows over the last few months.  But is it normal that whenever I see a rainbow I can't help but whistle the Rainbow theme tune?  Probably not.  Simple pleasures for simple minds.

No Currant Bun

I was reading somewhere that Seattle has had just 10 or 11 sunny days since October 1st.  And you wonder why I eventually want to move back to Southern California?!  It has been a miserable winter, particularly with regards the amount of rainfall.  And the forecast still doesn’t look any better, with hardly any sunshine in the forecast for the next 15 days.  On Friday, a windstorm hit our region – which knocked out power for a few hours (and took me a while to realize that as there I was sitting in my car wondering why my garage door wouldn’t open!).  Apparently it is very rare that we get windstorms here at this time of year, so just another sign of the anomalous weather we seem to be getting this year.  After a so-so day yesterday which I wasted on going through all the stuff in my spare room rather than go outside, today we are back to the norm with rain and storms.  This probably means a spectacularly poor summer in store, even though I’m finally going to live somewhere where I will actually have some decent outdoor space.  Oh well…    

Sunset

This looked much better on my camera screen than it does on my computer - but I've done some jiggery pokery with the contrast and brightness to try to make it better.

Oil Stains

I was doing quite a bit of laundry today - including all my bed linen.  And as I was putting the fitted sheet back on my bed, I noticed that it was covered in quite a lot of what looks like oil stains.  Like the kind of marks that get left on your clothes when you spill some oily food on them.  These spots definitely weren't there before.  This isn't the first time I've seen something similar on some of my stuff when it comes out of the laundry, which I why I've got loads of stain remover, but never to this extent before.  Weird.  I wonder if something is wrong with the washer or drier?  Either way, it's kind of annoying - especially on clothes when I only notice the stain on my top after I've been wearing it most of the day...

Home Sweet Home

Welcome to my new home in a month’s time!  (These photos I saved from the ad).  Yes, in an unexpected and very quick turn of events – I signed a lease on a new place to live this morning.  I replied to 4 ads on Wednesday, and got 3 replies back to set up viewings on Thursday.  I had low expectations – none of the places seemed particularly enticing and all seemingly had faults, but I wanted to at least look at a few.  So, the very first one I looked at ended up being the only one I looked at!  I was lucky – I was the first person to reply to the ad (thanks to an early teleconference I was in the office very early and able to reply to the ad very early) and hence the first person to look at the place.  I got on well with the landlord – a retired guy who lives in a nearby house – and so I got first dibs.  And my first impressions were good – I didn’t dislike the place.  So in an unexpectedly impulsive decision on my part, I decided to go for it.  A decision I hope not to regret, although the omens are good because apparently there was a LOT of interest in the house and I wasn’t the only one interested in it (I forgot to bring my checkbook with me, so whilst I rushed home to retrieve it some more people viewed the place after me and also completed the application for it!).  And so, here we are!  It is almost the exact opposite from where I am now – I’ll be going from an apartment surrounded my annoying neighbors to a detached house (described in the ad as a cottage – but I wouldn’t call it that since it has 2 levels and no thatched roof!) with no neighbors.  I don’t see noise being much of an issue anymore – especially as it is also set back a long way from the road and not even near a main road!  You can’t even see it on Google Maps, just the driveway.  It’s substantially bigger than where I am now – for example 3 bedrooms instead of 2, and more living space (hopefully enough space for a pool table?).  However, the rent is only $20 more per month than what I would’ve had to pay to stay where I was.  And the commute shouldn’t be worse than where I am now – closer to work by distance, but more local roads to deal with.  Of course I have some concerns – for example it’s not the easiest place to access and it is a bit isolated (so I wonder if I should get a home security system?), and I imagine if we get another winter of snow and ice then the roads and the dirt driveway might be a real issue (fingers crossed for a mild winter!).  But I’m happy/anxious/excited to be moving – I wobbled a lot over my prospects of moving, and I think I would have had an enormous amount of regret if I hadn’t – especially come the summer months and all the prospective issues then – so I do feel a big sense of relief.  Fingers crossed it works out.  

Patio Furniture

I currently have some interesting items on my patio/balcony that do not belong to me - a pine cone, a "white pebble eraser" and a lipstick-shaped foam thing.  I have no idea how any of these got here - maybe a bird dropped them there, maybe a disgruntled neighbor (perhaps annoyed by the sound of my wind chimes) threw them up there, maybe kids had something to do with it (I'm wondering whether the foam thing might be a projectile from one of their toy guns).  But none of them are small enough to be an accident.  And all of them are big enough to crack a window.  Weird.

Podcast Recommendation

It’s easy to bingewatch television, where you steam through several episodes of a show at one sitting and/or steam through an entire series over just the course of a few days.  That’s how I managed to clear up some of my DVR space, though sadly that has now filled itself up again with all the junk I currently record.  But I’ve never bingelistened to a podcast, until now.  I got through the podcast S-Town in just a few days – it was only 7 episodes long, but very addictive, very atmospheric, very twisty (no spoilers here – just to say things change drastically at the end of the second episode) and highly recommended.  It was touted as the next big thing from the makers of the Serial podcast, I actually think this is far superior to the typical true crime podcast – with almost a novelistic quality to the setting and set of characters, yet these are real people and real events that happened.  You will probably finish the podcast like me with a ton of unanswered questions, including questions on the ethics of whether the podcast and certain aspects of the podcast should even have been released.  But definitely worth listening to if you don’t mind some rather coarse language in a strong Alabama accent.  

Typical Me

Well, it will be one month tomorrow until my current lease expires.  And I still haven’t found somewhere new to live.  And it is stressing me out.  Big time.  I’m still caught somewhere between wanting to move and not wanting to move.  I scan the ads for places to rent all the time now, but even those that might be of interest I find something in either the photos or description that puts up red flags for me.  I don’t know.  I want to move away from Seattle next year, so is the time and effort (and expense) of a short term move now worth it?  This is a perfect microcosm of why I don’t actually own my house yet (and, arguably, many more aspects of my life) – never getting that balance right of short-term versus long-term plans and desires, and then never following through on those plans and regretting my choices and my indecision.  Undeniably, my apartment is hellish during summer – from the noise of neighbors and kids to how hot my apartment gets, and everything in between.  But a lot of things are symptomatic of my habit of staying at home too much – I need to get out more, and staying put might give me the push to do just that.  Also, with the money saved from not moving (most of the places I would consider moving to are up to $500 more rent a month, plus however much it would cost to actually move) could be spent on going away on weekend excursions.  That sounds good to me.  But I think I really need somewhere nicer to live, and a better quality of home life – and I mean REALLY need, for the sake of my sanity and mental health.  I think I’m going to give myself 1 more week to find somewhere.  If I can’t, then I’ll see if I can stay put.  That might not even be a possibility – I’ve already signed documentation confirming my move-out date – in which case I’ll have to take what I can get.  We shall see.  At times like this I can’t help but reflect on the past.  How things would have been different had I not been laid off in San Diego at the end of 2005.  That was the last time I was truly happy with my job and where I lived – I actually had my signed lease renewal in my possession on the day I was laid off.  I wonder if I will ever feel that way again?!  

Padres

The San Diego Padres - my baseball team - got blown out 14-3 by the LA Dodgers in their opening game of the season.  I suspect it will be a very long and very disappointing season.  Again.  They haven't made the playoffs now for about 11 years.  I don't have high hopes for the Seattle Mariners either, who also lost today - but I might at least try to go see them one time, as I haven't been to see a live game for quite some time.

Wrestlemania

It is the biggest weekend in wrestling this weekend - Wrestlemania!  The immature child in me still somewhat enjoys the pantomime spectacle of "professional" wrestling, but not enough for me to actually spend my money on pay-per-view events like Wrestlemania.  Instead, I'll read the online recaps and opinion pieces later - and I might catch some of Monday Night Raw tomorrow.  But my interest has been slowly waning over the years -  albeit probably too slowly for a supposedly mature adult!  But a good wrestling match is still a good wrestling match, regardless of whether I'm a teenager or a 40 year-old, and I still appreciate a good promo or story-line - although this is a lot rarer nowadays, since we're a long way past the glory days of wrestling.  It is kind of sad to see a 55-year old broken-down Undertaker still competing (if you've seen the film The Wrestler, you know what I mean).  It is also, coincidentally, the opening weekend of baseball.  I'd much rather watch a wrestling match than the dreary monotony of a baseball game.  America's favorite pastime is well past it's prime.  

April Foo(tbal)l's Day

Chelsea 1-2 Palace.  I thought it might be a very unfunny April Fool's Day joke, but no Palace actually beat the champions elect, at their home ground no less.  For the second season in a row.  Miracles do happen - especially when you look at the stats from the game with the amount of possession and amount of chances Chelsea had.  Big Sam has definitely instilled some steel and some character that the Palace team didn't have before.  And to think I doubted his credentials (which secretly I still do).  Sadly Hull also won so the gap is still the same to the bottom 3.  But now an awful lot of other teams are in danger of getting dragged into the dogfight if things get tighter.  But hopefully they won't - Sunderland and Boro look doomed, which just leaves one other to go down - hopefully Swansea or Hull.  As long as Palace keep on winning, I don't care who goes down.