The Quiet Road

What’s that? 2009, you say? Blimey! When did that happen?

As is traditional, I’m starting the year a little later than most of you. Just think of it as an extra-long lie-in.

Actually, it’s just that I’ve had some stuff going on in my life that didn’t involve sitting in front of a screen. Good stuff, I should point out, but the blog kind of fell by the wayside as a result. Now that I’m shifting some focus back onto work again, I’ll be screen-bound more often. So let’s see if I can’t get this place up and running while I’m here.

I hope y’all like the (slight) makeover. Just a couple of minor tweaks to the palette and a new header, but it seemed like the right time to run a duster over the place. I’ve done very little browser-testing as it’s mostly been minor changes to a relatively well-tested template. All the same, if you notice any problems let me know what browser / version and OS you’re using as well as what’s wrong with the page. Also, if you think there are any colour clashes, please let me know. I really like the white / yellow text on red background (the metadata / infobox style), but as has been been made clear in the past, my design aesthetic is occasionally idiosyncratic. So if something’s hurting your eyes or giving you headaches, bouts of nausea, nosebleeds, etc… do let me know.

As for where I’ve been? Well, it’s been a memorable few months from my perspective. Most of it great, I’m pleased to say. I’m now sharing my home with the lovely Citizen S, which is by far the biggest — and most positive — change in my life for untold aeons. Wish us well.

Also, I recently received final confirmation that my thesis passed. Yay me! Of course, now that I’ve collected a few more letters after my name, I’m not entirely sure what I want to do with them.

You have to understand, a lot of the things I’d planned to have done by now…? They kind of went the way of this blog for a while. If I’m to be brutally honest about it, I could probably sum up the past few months with the phrase “hanging out with S”. And frankly, I’d be more than happy to have that sum up the next few months too. I can think of few better ways to spend the summer than laying about together, reading books in the sunshine and watching DVDs on the days it rains.

Except. Well, I really need to find time to write in amongst all that laying about. And of course, The Good Citizen has a rather busier schedule than me. There’s exams looming and much studying to be done (S is an architect, but has decided to pick up some alternative skills and qualifications now that the arse has dropped out of the global construction industry).

So yeah, that’s where I’ve been. And that’s why I’m back. Hope it all makes half-sense. And while I do apologise to my regular readers for absconding as I did, with nary a by-your-leave; don’t imagine I feel in the slightest bit guilty for taking a few months off and laughing a lot. Global capitalism, it seems, was happy to continue collapsing without my assistance.