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Yesterday I had the day off work, in order to see my sister graduate. I'm not sure why I did that. Partly, I suppose, to keep Mum company while she watched the students file onto the stage one by one. Also I did sort of want to, I think she was at mine.

Graduation ceremonies are wonderfully archaic. "I present the following people for degrees/doctorships/whatever," says the head of whatever department it is, and "I admit each and every one of them to have a degree/doctorship/whatever," says the Vice-Chancellor. (The actual chancellor is probably someone famous who lives far away and is only wheeled out of special occasion, the vice-chancellor does all the tedious day-to-day running things.) Then the head of department reads out each name in turn, the student strolls across the stage and shakes the hand of the VC, and wanders off to pick up the actual certificate. And it's all entirely pointless, as by this time everybody has been duly registered and noted in the computer system. But in some strange way, if this Vice Chancellor did not officially recognise them, they wouldn't actually be qualified. It's all steeped in tradition and ritual and entirely pointless.

Ah, good times.

There are bits of pigeon on my windscreen.

Really, it's quite annoying. I've been told in the past that it's impossible to hit pigeons with a car, because they're too stupid to take off and just sit there while you pass right over them. To be fair, I was told this by a stand-up comedian, so it should not have been so surprising that it turned out to be a pile of old tosh. I tried to run harmlessly over the piegon but it was actually clever enough to try to take off. Unfortunately, it was not clever enough to realise that at the speed I was going, and the speed it could take off, it would not clear my windscreen before I hit it.

Now, when I say "bits of pigeon" I don't mean blood and gore. It's just that the windscreen was noticeably dirtier afterwards. I'm probably quite lucky that the thing didn't smash right through. That would have put a damper on the whole weekend.

Oh, because no blog is complete without at least one online quiz completed:

I am Azathoth! Known as the "Blind Idiot God", the center of all cycles known as Azathoth is the great void itself, infinite creation and inescapable oblivion made one. The Great God is without ego, as it has been embodied in a seperate consciousness as Azathoth has cast off the curse of self-awareness. Surrounded by the host of flautist servitors, piping the songs of the unknowable, Azathoth is not to be known by his aspirants. That is the purpose of another God...

Which Great Old One are you?

I ARER TEH BLIWENDS IDSIOTN GDO!!!@!!@

And then I went to university.

... I don't have much to say about that period of my life. It was fun, I really miss it, I met wonderful people who not only were like me but liked me. The wonderful thing about university societies is that everybody there has a common interest. I know that's kind of fundamental to the concept, and built in to the whole thing, but I just think it's really great. People who not only accept who you are, but encourage it. Yay scifi! Yay roleplaying! Yay live-action roleplaying!

Yes, university is where I got hooked on this LARP stuff. Cross-country pantomime. Recreational improv. Whatever you want to call it, it is my vice. It's also my only source of exercise. It gets me out, gets me interacting with real live humans, gives me a social circle and topic of conversation. As hobbies go, I have to say it's one of the better ones.

And then I left university.

It can be easy to get a job when you have a degree, even if it was a third-class one (which is what I got). I know this because the first job I got was easy to get. It was wonderful, though a lot more like school than university ever was, with fixed start times and uniforms and teachers and blackboards. All right, not that last one. And the uniforms were more guidelines, and the teachers were called managers. But the analogy stands. The job was in a wonderful place, with lovely people, and I was happy for nine months. Then the company announced they were losing money and had to make redundancies. Everybody was annoyed, especially me, who was one of them.

Time passed. I got a few short-term jobs in web development (actually, mostly few-day or couple-of-week contracts) to tide me over, and sponged off the state for a while. It was quite depressing. I got another nine-month job with a friend who needed somebody to answer the phones and do a bit of dev on the side; it didn't really work out because, as a friend, he was paying me far too much money. I wasn't actually that upset to leave his employ, as I wasn't enjoying the commute.

More time passed. I got a "temp" job doing filemonkey jobs. It was a bit of a step down in salary, and belts had to be tightened. That lasted about nine months again, before I found my current job and quit. Even though I left of my own volition, I did not fail to notice the unerring tendency for my jobs to last about nine months.

My current job is a little over an hour's drive from my home. It's not a bad commute, I've had worse and some people I know do that every day. But I have a secret weapon: The job is, in fact, only 20 minutes from my Mum's house.

So, this is the state of my life at the moment. I am "living" in Manchester, but spending most weeknights in my old room at Mum's place. It is very important to me that I have not moved home, not at all. I grow a trifle uneasy, though, as the magical Ninth Month approaches fast and work appears to be slowing down (as evidenced by my ability to write a blog and also keep insanely up-to-date with various online Q&A sites).

Still, can't be helped, and the only thing to do is knuckle down and try to make myself indispensible. I have been told that you should not do this, as it also means you will never be promoted, but I for one do not wish to be promoted. Promotion means management. I am a follower, not a leader.

That is all for now. Now that my life story has been told, I suspect this blog will become somewhat more sporadic. Unless more interesting things happen. But you'll know about those when they happen.

Adding blog is so easy, I'm loving this. Go to page, type new post. Fantastic.

So anyway, I promised to write more on my life today, so here it is. I don't have time for much though.

Through my schooling I drew constantly. Really, really constantly. On every available surface. It surprised a lot of people, then, when I didn't pick Art as one of my GCSEs.

A quick side-note on GCSEs (secondary education, 11-16 years old): At our school we took Maths, English, Physics, Chemistry, Biology compulsorily. Then we had to pick one language (French, Spanish, German), one Humanity (Geography, History, etc), one Art (Art, Drama, Music) and a fourth subject from the whole range of optionals. I picked French, Spanish, Geography and Drama.

I didn't take Art because the Art teacher scared me - and also I didn't relish the prospect of having my work judged. If I had it over again, I'd take Art instead of Spanish (learning two very similar languages at once was a really bad idea). But that's life.

Having skipped Art at GCSE, I didn't feel I could take it at A-level (16-18), and thus I couldn't do it for a degree course. So I went to university doing Computer Science.

I really have to go now. More later. CAN YOU WAIT??!?!?!!

Things are slightly more clear now. From the few blogs that I've skimmed, I notice that they tend to rely on people knowing who you are. I'd like to avoid that, so I shall begin by filling in a quick summary of my life so far, which is more or less necessary to understand where I am.

I was never one of the cool kids. I had a close-knit circle of friends thoughout my school life, and always considered myself lucky that I didn't have one of those families that moved around the country a lot. In fact, I lived in the same house between the ages of two and eighteen. I'm still sort of half living there at the moment. More on that later.

Much of the time this isolation worked, I like to think, in my favour. I never had to really worry about the respect and approval if my peers, because there were about four of them and they were all in the same boat. Also, in later years, I actually wasn't cool enough to be offered cigarettes or such like. While the cool kids spent their afterschool time up the road smoking up, I was in the fifth form centre playing AD&D.

I didn't think of it as such at the time, but looking back I realise that I had the occasional problem with bullies (actually, two that I can remember). I never felt threatened or intimidated by them, but was quite upset that they didn't seem to like me. Casual disinterest from the majority of the school population I could handle, but these people were going out of their way to let me know they didn't like me. Most of the time I dealt with this by making them love me (update: link does not work perfectly due to name tag being inside the BLOGITEMTITLE part of the template, and titles just aren't requested any more. See July 10 on that page).

That's enough for today. More tomorrow. Side note: I'm wondering how long it will take Mark Wilkin to link me in from Pagga. Apparently he linked Bacony in within a month of its creation, despite the fact that she had made her blog private and told no-one save her parents of its existence. We think perhaps that is his super-power. My blog is public, though, and I have mentioned his name and his website, so perhaps it will be even quicker.

FIRTS POSTS! YAAAAY!!@!@!!@!@!

Alright, perhaps I shouldn't be so impressed by getting the first posts. Mostly because this is my blog and nobody else can posts. But there is such a thing as force of habit.

I'll write something more informative when I work out what this is all in aid of.