Isn't life a ........

It's 4 months since I poked the keyboard in blog mode - why have there been NO letters of protest? Oh, I remember now, no one actually reads this stuff - is that why I stopped? Can't remember. The other thing I couldn't remember was my login to blogger.com - nearly gave up after trying all my known aliases - I was at the point of saying sod it when it all came back to me. Isn't life a little tease?

I'm feeling a bit low currently. Someone who I am very fond of and hoped would become a good friend (I'm talking mates here, not lovers OK?) has made it plain by her refusal to respond (yes, it is a she - that's not illegal is it?) that I am not to be admitted to her friends circle - but to be kept at arms length until a favour is needed and then pushed away again. If only real life was as easy as MySpace - where with a click of the mouse you can turn someone you've never met and don't know anything about into a 'friend'. Isn't life a bitch?

Major embarrassment at work. I organised a World Cup competition (very complicated, entrants had to forecast the scores in every one of the 64 games and earned points for how near they were to the actual score). I do it every 2 years (World Cup and European Championships) and it's controlled by an amazingly complicated spreadsheet that calculates everything once the results are fed in. It's such a complex sheet (hidden cells with nested functions, macros etc) that I have to spend an evening working out what it does whenever I dust it off - and I wrote it!!!! That was years ago when I was a fair bit cleverer than I am now. Anyway, we had 132 entries - each paying 2 pounds (sterling) and each night I would update the spreadsheet and next day publish the current points table at work so people could see how they were doing.

After halfway I began to figure prominently on the leaderboard. With a week to go I was on top spot and then just pulled away. I won my own competition having been in charge of the data and the device for calculating the points. How dodgy did that look? I'd bought a trophy and ended up keeping it myself as well as collecting a healthy cash prize. When I gave the second prize (£40) to a delighted runner-up she gave me a bottle of wine as a thank you for organising the competition. I said "Don't be silly. I WON the thing - I don't want a gift from the runner-up" but I was forced to accept that too. Isn't life bizarre?

And now a commercial. Darkhorse Radio is the best indie music show in the UK (and probably the world - but I can't officially claim that yet, the survey is still being processed). You can hear it at
www.DarkhorseRadio.com
at the bottom of every show is a 'Play' button. Click on that and enjoy a rich variety of excellent music from independent artists - the best from around the world. It's FREE - you don't need an iPod!!! It's played over the internet not the radio and it's bloody good! Maybe I should mention that it's my podcast. If you send me an email I'll tell you how to have it delivered into iTunes automatically. Isn't life a delight?