oh dear...

... another one of those "where did the last 10 years go" moment. Just watched Claire Danes being interviewed on The Daily Show and she was looking much older than I'd thought she was - my thought process went "she was in Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCarprio and she was really young then - it can't have been more than 5 years ago that it came out"....

... so I've just looked on imdb and it came out in 1996! That's just plain scary...

ouch...

... well, today I had, what I can only call, my first proper clarinet practice: The first eight Demnitz studies for 20 mins and then the first three bars of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet for a further 20 mins.

by the end I was able to play those three bars at 84 bpm, with the right tonguing, phrasing etc... the correct speed is 120 bpm... oh well - practice makes perfect!

I now hurt, so am going to sit down for the rest of the evening...

whatever you think of him...

... I can't think of another time when the whole of the House of Commons will rise to their feet and give a standing ovation to an MP, let alone an outgoing PM...

new lappy!

lots of excitement over the weekend, but right now I only have the brain to be happy about the lappy! I haven't quite got the whole wifi thing working as yet, so am sat on the floor in the hall, connected directly to the router!

am slowly getting used to where the keys are (the home, end etc have all changed!) and am also getting a bit confused by the fact that it's so quite - I keep thinking it's about to shut down!

most importantly I have Civ2 installed already!

going to sleep soon, as have been up and awake since 9am waiting for lappy to come (it was due to come between 9 and 5, and arrived at 6.45.... oh well - not really that surprising!

tomorrow I'll probably digest all the cool politics that's been happening, but Radio4 said that Hewett has been sacked, so it's looking up!

also - check out Sian's blog for a fab description of Saturday!

UPDATE: still no wifi, but my printer is working - Yay! slowly but surely....!

UPDATE 2: mmm... spoke to soon - the test page printed, and half of the page I was looking to print - then the printer kind of got confused....

exciting few days!

it all kicks off with meeting Sian at Euston at 7.30 tonight. We're going to have a chilled evening watching DVDs and knitting (the bobble for a Jayne-hat!).

tomorrow we're going to a showing of Serenity at Leicester Square Odeon (in aid of Equality Now) in the morning and then at some point go up to Brum. This is because I need to be in Manchester on Sunday morning (too early to get a train from London) as I'm going to the Labour Leadership Conference!

then I'm either coming back to London on Sunday evening, or going to stay at Jules and Keith's in Liverpool and coming down on Monday. Then my lappy is being picked up on Monday afternoon and my lovely insurance company are going to give me a new one, that actually works!

not quite sure what I'm more excited about - very close one!

irrepressible

went to a fab debate tonight hosted by Amnesty International's Irrepressible campaign titled "Some People Think the Internet is a Bad Thing". It was great - very broad ranging and a really interesting panel (both live and virtual), including a the BBC Technology Editor, a blogger who was in jail in Iran for 5 years, someone from TOR and many others.

it was broadcast as a webcast live, and as of tomorrow you should be able to watch it here.

anyway, Sailing By is now on, so it's time for bed!

UPDATE: They've included the Q&A at the end (listed as Debate on the site), so you can see me asking a question!

tone!

have just finished 20 mins or so of clarinet practice and for at least 5 mins of that I had, what I would consider to be, decent tone! Not great tone - decent, but worth a celebration as it's the first time that I've been semi-pleased with how I've sounded!

also - sight-reading has come on a bit and I'm now almost comfortable in the third register!