Houston, we have a...

...BANANA.

Brain completely trashed. Sleepdep ftw. From New Year at aidan_skinner (Aidan is lovely and got me Mario Kart DS for my birthday - YEAY! - and it was a very nice party and quite quiet), with about 3-4 hours sleep at best, pointed the car roughly 300 miles south to Birmingham. Busy roads, but heaven - NO HGVs. British drivers are still astoundingly shit though - GET BACK IN THE INSIDE LANE!

Arrived to find jenova_red had prepared a roast and nice dinner, and had a nice evening of playing Trivial Pursuit and finding that the 1983 original edition really does predate us all in terms of sensible general knowledge (and on history questions, there's a good chance that the answer will be "Adolf Hitler"), being overtired and WoW before crashing, but overheating and perhaps succeeding in getting maybe 3-4 hours of restless sleep over the whole night (including waking up to attempt to play Trauma Centre at 4am, which was kinda amusing but not very successful). Jen did get me past the annoying level yesterday evening (which I can now play in "Challenge" mode without feeling like I cannot progress in the game) and the following level was very easy.

Tuesday was jenova_red's birthday. She may not be as old as I said she was. In fact, I may have lied. Happily she actually got the gift I ordered for her on time, party thanks to being taken to the post office to collect it. Do postmen actually DELIVER the mail anymore? There was a lack of Birthday vibe in some way - it's something I'm used to myself having a directly-post-Christmas birthday, but I don't really see how it's possible to make it happen for other people given the preceding week.

Managed to pull myself together sufficiently to drive to 'nam when mr_pete arrived home early from work (with spooky confirmation instruction via the TV, which was just odd. And cool. And very disturbing in a Big Brother kind of way).

Went to 'nam, collected ninjagirl, and went to the Norwood and ate foods. Discussion of home travel was already beginning, which given the amount of sleep I had was probably not going to happen without more. Optimistically, I thought I might actually GET more sleep, so we decided to leave early in the morning. Anyway; after dinner and meeting MORE GOTHS! we went to deliver vital HUGS to frag_ and sarah_mum, and found a surprise anti_girl there. Whilst Pete amused himself with a dog, we were suitably crude for a while, but it was unfortunately necessary to head off home again whilst I had enough power to operate heavy machinery relatively safely. Siani and Hanka sang the "buttsex" song. Small goths do in fact fit 2 to a seat in the RX. This may not be related.

After half-dozing on a DVD player box, bedtime was declared, and I tried to sleep. Knowing I had about 5 hours before I had to get up, my brain kept on saying "MUST GO TO SLEEP!" Loudly. So I didn't sleep. Anyway, I appear to have rested enough that one coffee provided the necessary energy to maintain "normal" motorway speeds for the whole of the M6, resulting in a 3 1/2 hour drive back despite choosing the wrong direction on the M6 initially. I've now also rested enough to have found Siani's kitty feet were in the footwell of the car all along.

I should be sleeping. I tried and my brain said "You ought to be sleeping, you know". Really loudly.

Having done this drive, of course, we have more down-south stuff next week; I really do need to sleep, catch up on some work in the meantime, tidy the house a bit. The chickens and cat are all fine for being abandoned for a couple of days with only shelter and food, though the cat REALLY wanted my attention. I will, of course, be donating to countb's memorial donation http://www.justgiving.com/countb - It seems many people have done so already so this may seem like a redundant reminder, but I've been AFK for a few days.

May edit entry as brain recovers.

Also, 2007 can just fucking well leave my friends alone, kthxbye?

Public Transport

Trying to make sense of the utter joke that is the UK public transport system.

The trains, the SIMPLE train options, are insanely expensive. All I want to do is get from Carlisle to Cheltenham or Sidcup.

This should be cheaper than my environmentally unfriendly car.

It bloody well isn't. And even if it is possible to get it close to cheaper, it gets really complicated to try and work out what trains work, how much they cost. If I put Carlisle-London it's cheap. London to Sidcup is cheap. So why is it that forward planning and booking Carlisle to Sidcup costs considerably more, not less?

As far as I can tell, the trains have one role. To make me want to use the car.