Beautiful South to split

Well, after 19 years together the best band in Hull has split due to musical similarities... ah well. At least I met them once in the Grafton when I was at Uni there and had a nice chat about the Tigers (Hull City AFC for those that don't know).

The first snow of winter

BHAG update

Since I mentioned that I'm not making any resolutions this year, but am instead setting some BHAGs, I thought it was time to give an update. I've been working out physically, and have so far lost 30 lbs, but this isn't one of my BHAGs. One of my BHAGs involves making a presentation at a certain event, and given that it's been a long while since I've made a presentation to a group larger than will fit in a conference room (maybe 10 years), I've decided to work on those skills. So tonight I am going to be attending a meeting of Toastmasters, and I'll see if it can help me hone my presentation skills.

Surrealism at the store

So I was at Target last night, purchasing some groceries (ok, it was a SuperTarget). At the checkout the guy had an issue with the carrots that I was purchasing as they didn't have the little sticker on them to let him know what code to enter into the register. He turned to the cashier at the next desk and asked "What's the code for carrots?", to which the reply was "What color are they?". There was a moment of stunned silence while we both tried to process this request. "Orange, what other color would they be?" was the response. The 2nd cashier looked over "Oh carrots, I thought you said pears"...

Farewell Rose video

Ok, another Doctor Who video, for those who lament the end of the relationship between the Doctor and Rose. It's done well, timed nicely with the music.

KLF and the Timelords

I actually own a copy of this on vinyl (dating myself there), I came across the video for the song on youtube, those have got to be the worst daleks I've ever seen :)

South Park Simon

Finally, I've been immortalized. Here I am as envisioned by the creators of South Park. Ok, I went to this site and did it myself ;)

Goodbye Great Aunt Eve

One of my maternal great aunts - Evelyn Westaway - passed away today. Here's a picture of her holding Gwyneth from 4 years ago. She always used to have chocolate and jigsaws for us when we'd come over, and strangely, for a Yorkshire woman, she loved baseball...

A rare picture of me

I don't usually post many pictures of myself (in fact this is the second one on the blog), but since there was a nice picture of Gwyneth and her cousin Jesse taken this morning, just because I happen to be in the middle of it doesn't necessarily spoil it. ;)

No resolutions here

I don't really believe in new years resolutions, which is why I started the whole weight loss thing back in December, if I'd waited until now it would have probably been the same as for everyone else, lip service for a few days then forget about it. Therefore I'm not bothering with any resolutions this year.

This doesn't mean that I don't have any goals for this year, in fact I do have two rather larger BHAGs for this year (Big Hairy Audacious Goals as defined by Jim Collins in his 1992 book Built to Last, or Big Hairy Ass Goals as defined by Craig Adams of AMP in 1997 (my former manager)). One of these is a professional goal, that I'm going to try to accomplish in April, failing that in August, the other is a personal goal that I'll be attempting to accomplish in October, but I'll know by May whether or not it's a realistic possibility... What are they? Well, you may well ask, but I'm not going to tell. Rather like a birthday wish only works if you don't tell, I'm going to let you know if and when I accomplish my goals. There are other, more realistic goals that I have, but these 2 are the real 'leap out of a plane' ones that I'm going to do my very best to do, and if I don't make it on one or both, I want to at least know that I tried, and that's my promise to myself.