keeping up...

it's pretty hard to keep up with everything, i'm finding... especially when your kids are obviously colluding to keep you awake practically all night every night... our two-year-old, who never stirs, was up nearly the whole night last night... it was a laugh a minute, i can tell you. i've also got a nasty cold that is manifesting itself in one big hacking cough and constantly blocked sinuses. adding to the joy of being alive.

the office is moving from 'still' to 'stone cold silence'. even pins being dropped has been banned. there's the ubiqituous key-tapping hum - maybe that'll be the tinnitus of the future.

it was valentines yesterday, and we exchanged cards. poll out-classed me by making hers. but both of us failed to get the heart-felt message written - but i guess recognizing that is pretty much the same as having written it in the first place. we cooked together - poll made a chorizo and butter bean bake and i made pudding - aunt sally, a 'deconstructed apple charlotte', the recipe said. our oven is basically a nuclear installation in disguise, so when i checked it ten minutes early it was obviously burnt across the top, and looking like it had self-deconstructed in the cooking process... tasted alright with enough cream though.

moved on to Louis Sachar's 'Holes' now. finished 'The Vesusius Club' about a week ago. it was ok - a simply entwined Edwardian adventure tale. i thought it might develop the humour, but it stayed at pretty much the same level it reached from the first few pages. i've actually just finished 'Holes' today. it was a quick, kids-book read - along the same lines as Paul Coehlo's 'The Alchemist', but more down-to-earth and readable. i actually thought it might be going along the same lines as Magnus Mills' 'The Restraint of Beasts' initially, but no.