It’s Christmas Eve. Finally!
Linda has her three daughters here plus a friend of her eldest girl and they are playing a board game and are then going out to look at Christmas lights which gives me the opportunity to steal away and write my blog and otherwise play on my computer.
I find myself spending more of my spare time on my computer than anything else. I barely watch television anymore although I have started reading semi-regularly again but it has to be something I am really attracted to for it to gain my attention and keep me reading. A typical Gemini as I am, I often lose interest in a book half way through and never finish it.
I have a kindle, an e-reader for those less tech savvy folk, and I have three unfinished books on it at the moment plus another three that I haven’t started yet. My trip to New Zealand which I am embarking on shortly may give me the chance to catch up and clear the queue. Not that I am expecting the Land of the Long White Cloud to be boring, but I may be at a loose end in the evenings and I imagine Kiwi television is hardly brilliant or any better than what we experience here in Australia so reading may fill in any period of downtime that comes along.
I am halfway through a biography of Oliver Cromwell, an interesting man to be sure and an important figure in history as he is of course one of the most influential characters in the formation of modern parliamentary democracy and a remarkable fellow in anyone’s book but it is a very intellectual treatment and it struggled to hold my interest.
I have been fascinated at how a man like Cromwell came from the ranks of the lower gentry and transformed himself into a fearsome parliamentarian, a soldier of genius and a dictator who abolished a monarchy that had stood strongly and proudly for 700 years without anyone being able to stand against him. And after the age of forty! Remarkable.
The book didn’t really quell my curiosity but I may give it another go while I am overseas. A second attempt may yield more to me than the first go round.
I also was halfway through an autobiography of the disgraced cyclist David Miller, a drug treat who was caught and banned for two years before making an apparently clean return to the ranks of professional cycling.
He is a very good writer but his life isn’t actually interesting and it all really seems to be a long winded excuse for why he did what he did. It got a bit tedious but as with the Cromwell biography, it may be worth another look.
My other unfinished kindle book is a story of an ill-fated expedition which climbed Mt McKinley, the highest mountain in the United States, whose members all died in a snowstorm coming down. An interesting read which I barely started but will definitely get back to as those kind of tales appeal to me greatly.
I also bought some books last week. One in particular, about some of the incredible women who have been Queen consorts of England and the power they wielded behind the scenes and sometimes on the front line of history, has had me particularly enthralled.
It has rekindled my interest in medieval English Kings. I have spent the week researching some of the great ones like Henry II, Edward I, III,IV, and Henry V and some quite ordinary ones such as Edward II and Henry VI whose reign ended in a particularly wretched fashion.
Not everyone’s cup of tea but to each his own.
The pre-Christmas period at Canberra Mail Centre ended on a sour note with the failure of management to release the staff early as is the precedent on the last working day before Christmas.
It has left a dirty taste in the mouths of the regular staff especially as the excuse offered turned out to be far from the truth and the manager took the opportunity to go early himself without wishing the staff Merry Christmas.
That’s the way to build morale and get the best out of people. Not! I despair for the future of the corporation as it is being run at the moment. The less said the better as I could go on and on and anyone who has regularly read my blog knows my feelings on the subject and the reasons for me not voicing my opinion on the failings of Australia Post local management more strongly. I will let sleeping dogs lie for now.
So that is all I have to say for the moment. A big day tomorrow of course but it should be quiet here, no big family gatherings for us as some of the family is overseas and others are working or are otherwise celebrating Christmas elsewhere. You have these types of years and I’m sure we will make up for it in 2012.
So to all who have made the effort to read my blog, I thank you. I hardly have the most exciting life and I’m sure there are some who wish they could get the two minutes they spent reading some of my posts back. But I appreciate the support and feedback and hope you might get a laugh occasionally out of my writings as I try to negotiate, awkwardly, through this funny life of mine.
Merry Christmas!
Linda has her three daughters here plus a friend of her eldest girl and they are playing a board game and are then going out to look at Christmas lights which gives me the opportunity to steal away and write my blog and otherwise play on my computer.
I find myself spending more of my spare time on my computer than anything else. I barely watch television anymore although I have started reading semi-regularly again but it has to be something I am really attracted to for it to gain my attention and keep me reading. A typical Gemini as I am, I often lose interest in a book half way through and never finish it.
I have a kindle, an e-reader for those less tech savvy folk, and I have three unfinished books on it at the moment plus another three that I haven’t started yet. My trip to New Zealand which I am embarking on shortly may give me the chance to catch up and clear the queue. Not that I am expecting the Land of the Long White Cloud to be boring, but I may be at a loose end in the evenings and I imagine Kiwi television is hardly brilliant or any better than what we experience here in Australia so reading may fill in any period of downtime that comes along.
I am halfway through a biography of Oliver Cromwell, an interesting man to be sure and an important figure in history as he is of course one of the most influential characters in the formation of modern parliamentary democracy and a remarkable fellow in anyone’s book but it is a very intellectual treatment and it struggled to hold my interest.
I have been fascinated at how a man like Cromwell came from the ranks of the lower gentry and transformed himself into a fearsome parliamentarian, a soldier of genius and a dictator who abolished a monarchy that had stood strongly and proudly for 700 years without anyone being able to stand against him. And after the age of forty! Remarkable.
The book didn’t really quell my curiosity but I may give it another go while I am overseas. A second attempt may yield more to me than the first go round.
I also was halfway through an autobiography of the disgraced cyclist David Miller, a drug treat who was caught and banned for two years before making an apparently clean return to the ranks of professional cycling.
He is a very good writer but his life isn’t actually interesting and it all really seems to be a long winded excuse for why he did what he did. It got a bit tedious but as with the Cromwell biography, it may be worth another look.
My other unfinished kindle book is a story of an ill-fated expedition which climbed Mt McKinley, the highest mountain in the United States, whose members all died in a snowstorm coming down. An interesting read which I barely started but will definitely get back to as those kind of tales appeal to me greatly.
I also bought some books last week. One in particular, about some of the incredible women who have been Queen consorts of England and the power they wielded behind the scenes and sometimes on the front line of history, has had me particularly enthralled.
It has rekindled my interest in medieval English Kings. I have spent the week researching some of the great ones like Henry II, Edward I, III,IV, and Henry V and some quite ordinary ones such as Edward II and Henry VI whose reign ended in a particularly wretched fashion.
Not everyone’s cup of tea but to each his own.
The pre-Christmas period at Canberra Mail Centre ended on a sour note with the failure of management to release the staff early as is the precedent on the last working day before Christmas.
It has left a dirty taste in the mouths of the regular staff especially as the excuse offered turned out to be far from the truth and the manager took the opportunity to go early himself without wishing the staff Merry Christmas.
That’s the way to build morale and get the best out of people. Not! I despair for the future of the corporation as it is being run at the moment. The less said the better as I could go on and on and anyone who has regularly read my blog knows my feelings on the subject and the reasons for me not voicing my opinion on the failings of Australia Post local management more strongly. I will let sleeping dogs lie for now.
So that is all I have to say for the moment. A big day tomorrow of course but it should be quiet here, no big family gatherings for us as some of the family is overseas and others are working or are otherwise celebrating Christmas elsewhere. You have these types of years and I’m sure we will make up for it in 2012.
So to all who have made the effort to read my blog, I thank you. I hardly have the most exciting life and I’m sure there are some who wish they could get the two minutes they spent reading some of my posts back. But I appreciate the support and feedback and hope you might get a laugh occasionally out of my writings as I try to negotiate, awkwardly, through this funny life of mine.
Merry Christmas!
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 