My Own Worst Enemy
You wouldn't believe what I have been doing since the moment I got back to the hotel if I told you. I'm going to tell you anyway, because that's the special kind of idiot I am, but then you kind of figured that would happen, right?Last night I began tinkering with the archives of my blog. After several hours, a virtual machine, a WordPress installation, some custom PHP programming, and many trawls through both filenames and text for “special” characters, I am now fairly confident that I have every blog post I have written since 2003 neatly organised into month folders, converted into markdown syntax, and cleared of all spurious junk.
The next taskwisely being put off for another nightwill be uploading the markdown files into a series of Scrivener repositories, so that I might compile them into year books for the blog. I have no idea how to do that yet, but I at least know that Scrivener can deal with Markdown when compiling booksand apparently it's quite good at it.
To say I am pleased with myself is a colossal understatement. I also understand that nobody else will care. That's fine and dandy. You carry on with your life while I chase pointless endeavours. Just think of all the useful skills I'm developing, that will come in useful, should I ever work as a minion at a publishing housesomething I have no intention of ever doing.
In other news I bought some ridiculously cheap “half strength” wine earlier. If I drink the entire bottle, that will be the same as two large glasses, won't it? Then I'll feel all worldly and invincibleuntil I remember I'm sitting in a hotel room several hundred miles from home on my own, typing inconsequential garbage into a laptop in the dark.
Maybe it's time to switch the hotel room television on?OhI nearly forgot! I had breakfast in the hotel this morning. I woke a little before 7am, and watched the minutes tick by, before deciding that I really should go down for breakfast, after paying for it. Half an hour later I was washed, dressed, and ready to face the worldor at least the pretty blonde girl on the hotel reception desk. She shouted a cheerful good morning, and then I imagined she ducked behind the counter to drop the smile for a few moments, like the Barbie Dolls at the end of Toy Story.
In the “restaurant”, a friendly looking middle aged lady swept her arm across the room, and informed me I could choose any table I wanted. I chose a two seater at the sideout of the way. A very large couple had taken up station in the centre of the restaurant, and a few businessmen were dotted around the outsidemuch as I was. While staring vacantly at the coffee machine dripping coffee into my cup in the self-service area, I suddenly realised that anybody could walk in at any time and take “my” table. Those few moments watching the drips of coffee fall into the cup went on for years. Thankfully nobody walked in.
Breakfast was interesting. It was a typical hotel fried breakfast, only the waitress went through every possible thing you could have on the plate, and asked how many of them you would like. All for a fixed fee. Suddenly I realised why the large couple were here. While it could be argued the breakfast was quite expensive, it hadn't occurred to me that you could eat as much as you like (notice I'm resisting saying “as much as you can”). Apprently many restaurants have had to change their labelling of fixed price meals because “as much as you can” is seen as a challenge by too many people.
After clearing my plate, downing the coffee, and escaping the restaurant, I wandered back to the room and glanced at my watch. 7:40am. Ok. So maybe breakfast didn't take very long then.