I have memories, clouded by sorrow

Ok, so the result of England vs. Germany didn't come as too much of a surprise. After all, we played centre-backs who didn't stay in the centre, a holding midfielder that can't hold the ball, and of our two strikers, one currently isn't striking. Hard to see how such a team could ever progress. Even so, I think 4-1 was a bit generous towards the Germans who weren't really that good - they just made fewer mistakes. My footballing interest shall now revert back to being limited to my ongoing game of Football Manager on the PC (where Glen Johnson plays better for me than he does for England in real life, though Lionel Messi plays worse to balance it all out).

My attempts to Get Things Done over the last couple of days have only been partly successful, as anticipated. My desk in-tray is half emptied, I'm down to 32 Firefox tabs from 38, I'm on 17 emails waiting to be handled instead of 24, and my official To Do list is down to 24 from 36. All well and good, except I required time off work to get that productive. Back to work tomorrow, and no doubt it'll all start mounting up again.

Yesterday was fun: football with the studenty-types in deepest darkest Radford, where even the most pleasant children's playground is a den for pot-smoking fathers watching their children and suspect packages being exchanged by hooded kids on BMXs. 100 minutes of play showed me to be in somewhat better physical shape than I expected, though my playing skills were dire. The slippery surface didn't help much though, in my defence. Still, 'twas all good fun, and hopefully there'll be more of that in the future. (Note to self: n0tasquirrel makes cute squeaking noise when ball is kicked at her. Must test this again next time.)

After that, I had just enough time to get home, get changed, and consume a plate full of junk food, before heading out to enjoy my place on the semi-guest-list - not paying full price, but still paying - for Cradle of Filth and Evil Scarecrow. The latter band played to their home crowd, and did well. Then came the tour support Hansel And Gretel - at least I think that's what they were called, as Googling for names like that just turns up the fairy tale. They were quite funny to look at, if nothing else. The drummer was far too showy for the simplistic beats he was pounding out, though I wouldn't dare say that to him, as he looked like Vin Diesel's bigger brother. He also had to contend with a ride cymbal placed up on the podium behind him for a while, meaning it was located above the microphones that are supposed to be above the cymbals. Weird. After them, CoF came on, and were boooooooooooring. It's hard to say what was so bad, but the sound was dire and the individual performances workmanlike at best. So a few songs in, we went to the pub instead.

This morning, I met up with jen_whitewave and synphony at the pub, which was serving meals with surplus amounts of unidentified vegetables. From there I had Jen graciously take me to the supermarket for fun and adventures, or alternatively about £50 of groceries. Almost as soon as I got back with it all, Chris and Allan invited me to another pub lunch which I unfortunately had to decline, on the grounds of requiring some indoor-time as well as not requiring 2 large meals in one day.

Back to work tomorrow.

I'm considering buying a new computer now, since there seems to be absolutely nothing I can do to get this one to work, and it's coming up to six months that I've been without the ability to play 80% of my games, which is just not good. Anybody got any recommendations? (Which don't involve the words 'Mac' or 'Apple', rlucas666.)

Nothing quite like melodic death metal to help channel one's frustration after one's nation is yet again beaten in predictable fashion at its national sport.