Afterglow

Right. I promised to blog about more interesting things than my tech-woes didn't I? ...then I buggered off and spent a couple of weeks with assorted visiting guests, doing bits of The Festival, playing tourist in my home town, occasionally hopping in the car* to belt off around the highlands, and hanging out in pubs with friends quite a lot. Plenty to tell you about then. Where to start though?

Well, Festival stuff seems as good a place as any: What have I seen? On the good comedy side it has to be Aeneas Faversham Forever which was - predictably - brilliant, but no gamble as I've been a fan of theirs since back when they were just Improverts. Flip side of that coin would be The Big Value Comedy Show which was a gamble... and not good - one of the four acts didn't show, of the remaining three, we kinda wished two had taken the fourth's lead with only the first being actually funny. I wish I could remember the compere's name as he did a (frankly) heroic job of keeping the night from simply being unpleasant. Away from comedy, I saw a compelling performance of On the Waterfront, (attended by its 93 year old author, which was kinda neat) and then there was the powerful-if-perplexing experience of Dorian Gray which genuinely surprised me since I don't think of myself as a ballet person (let alone a contemporary ballet person) and the whole idea of basing a ballet on the work of an author whose greatest strength is dialogue seemed perverse and fundamentally flawed. It's not, it's genuinely brilliant.

That about sums up my Festival so far, off to something at the Portrait Gallery tonight with the gang, and might catch a last fling show on Saturday night if the mood takes me, then it's Fireworks time Sunday (unless I decide to skip them) and then we start to get our city back from the bloody tourists**

... speaking of <Aussie accent>bloody tourists</Aussie accent> my mate Eric was staying with me for most of the last week, and a very welcome tourist he was too. It's a little inconvenient having such a good friend who lives on the far side of the globe but unsurprisingly we picked right up where we'd left off as soon as he made it through the arrivals gate at EDI. I managed to make a start on returning the favour of playing host/tourguide and flatmate from my month spent in Perth, we did assorted tourist stuff in the city and managed to almost overdose on castles on a whistle-stop tour of the Highlands. Also unsurprisingly Eric got on famously with my crowd here*** which made for a hectic but really fun week socially.

I took a long weekend the weekend before last too, this time so I could hang out with my big bro. We bolted off up to Sutherland and got some implausibly great weather for the few days up there while we alternated between visiting old childhood holiday haunts, and playing in my car, which my brother is now insured on and fell for almost as badly as I have :D I like sharing my toys, although there are a vanishingly small number of people I'd trust behind the wheel of Hobbes.

So that's a skim-reading version of my past couple of weeks, I need to cool off on the car trips for a while because between the Highland trips and my two week road trip round France last month (did I mention that?) I've spent a small fortune on petrol and oil. Actually I'm looking forward to a less hectic few weeks anyway, maybe even getting to spend the odd evening in doing nothing****. Right now though I need to go and get changed for tonight...

*I'm still giddy every time I go anywhere near my car - I'm grinning like a loon now at the thought that it's actually my car... can't imagine that feeling going away any time soon. ...that said nothing has gone expensively wrong with him yet either ;)
**OK, that never actually happens. Tourists are a constant here, but the human tide ebbs significantly after the Fringe ends, though to be fair it's already noticeably less congested around here since the Tattoo finished
***I beamed when on his last day he said: "I don't think I've stopped laughing once since I got here" I really love the way that (on the whole) my friends get on with my other friends
****The other night at the pub Liz paused mid conversation to try and recall when she last did nothing, and realised that it was back in June sometime - I've not been quite that busy but not far off!

did I say two months?

124 days!! Time Machine popped up this morning to tell me it was worried that it hadn't backed up in 124 days, and was there a problem? I thought it must have been confused so I double checked, and my Sad Mac post was back at the start of April... my 'puter broke a third of a year ago.

Anyway seems the brain surgery was a complete success and Flash is back to his old self, so all's well and I can start posting about something more interesting than computer problems. Promise.

:)

Flash!

Ahh ahhh!

He's got a new logic board!

:)

</geeky 80s scifi & Queen reference >*

My beloved 'puter is finally fixed and back with me in full working order. 's got about two months worth of software updates, application patches and back email to download though and I need to sleep so that's all the posting for now.

*unless you got it of course, in which case that song will probably now be stuck in your head all day - a fitting fanfare to my Mac's triumphant return dontchathink? :D

August?

How?

Yes I know I've gone all rubbish again with the posting (or lack thereof) but I'm still missing a limb without my 'puter. The short version of that saga is that so far eBay has failed twice to deliver a replacement, first one turned out to be the wrong Mac and went back, second one never showed up at all (PayPal have my refund listed as "pending") however yesterday an unexpected glimmer of light appeared at the end of the tunnel so fingers crossed I might have Flash back to his old self soon.

In other news I've been on holiday - two weeks' road trip through France with a long stay in the Vendee with Mum & Dad, some floor tiles, a little too much sun for my shins, a long awaited trip to the Marais Poitevin, and of course a visit to the chateau for pancakes! I also stopped off in St Malo all-too-briefly and in Cambridge to see some very good friends I'd neglected, who nonetheless kindly made me barbeque dinners and took me round their lovely city including an evening at an excellent outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I have some pictures of my travels and I'll post some of them when I get my life back Mac sorted.