For the first time since 1988, I do not have a job. I was made redundant (finally!) from Searchspace today. I am now free to do whatever I want for a while.

The golden goodbye was very lavish, and I could probably live off it for quite a while without working (as WL is employed and we don’t owe anyone anything). But I’m going to do some housework for two weeks, then get cracking on going back to Searchspace as a contractor. I might also travel somewhere just to get away. Haven’t decided where, though.

I’m grateful that I’m able to not worry about not having a job. I don’t have to worry about not having health insurance as I live in a civilised country that has universal health care free at the point of delivery. I may go stir-crazy, but I’m going to do my best not to.

I’m also going to find a charity that helps jobless people and give them a donation.

If you don’t like snakes, don’t read this one. I guarantee you’ll not sit on the toilet in the same way ever again.

Yes, there’s a clip that shows some very risqu

The guys over in laidoffland like their bacon. This is a fake site, unfortunately, but quite funny. I presume the t-shirts are the only product, and you can’t get a baconwhore to actually drop by your pad and cook your bacon for you. Even if you could, they couldn’t do it in the nude because of the grease spatters. Darn!

If you’ve been laid off anytime you might find Odd Todd’s site interesting–he’s the inspiration for laidoffland.

Came across this entry in Ron’s Log…my friend George Keyes is a member of a group that has a monthly excursion to a restaurant for nude dining. The Yahoo story is here.

They specify no hot soup on the menu…wise.

My friends….I love ’em all (even the ones who haven’t friended me back!)

~chrishansenhome~

Tonight I finally got my PDA talking to my wireless router, and yesterday I got my laptop to see the disk in our desktop, and vice versa. Woohoo!

The more technical oriented among us might feel this isn’t a heck of an accomplishment, but I’ve been struggling for 6 months with these problems.

So raise a glass or something…To Connectivity!

If you woke up and I was in bed with you, what would be your first thought?

Who’da thunk it? The Times of London has printed a gay engagement announcement, according to the BBC. I guess HWMBO and I will have to put one in the Guardian later on this year.

Was going to post this on ‘s entry on Valentine’s Day, but decided it deserved its own entry in mine.

We had a “Valentine’s Day” lunch yesterday at Taro, a Japanese restaurant on Old Compton Street here in London. We wanted to eat in Chinatown, but of course the Dragon parade was going on in the afternoon and every gweilo family that could crowded in to see those quaint Chinese put on their culture show. Oddly enough, I had forgotten that this was CNY weekend (since I’ve been working three days a week my sense of time has decayed).

WL asked me if he should give me his card last night, and I said no. I’d bought mine and filled it out when I stopped in to work yesterday. I laid it on his plate for breakfast this morning. Mine was just a bit sappy, but his was so precious. There was a picture of a dog and cat sitting under a tree, dog’s paw around the cat’s shoulders. The caption read, “And another problem, my love, is that you too are a male.” Inside he wrote, “Fortunately it is not a problem ever since we met.” I’m so lucky.

This afternoon I made two banana breads (as we had some rapidly browning bananas). I used solid shortening rather than vegetable oil, and the batter was pretty lumpy, so I thought it would be two tins of disaster. But they came out really nice on the inside, if a bit tough on the outside.

I gave him a slice when he got home, “Sweets for the sweet.”

This tale is from someone who witnessed a suicide on the El in Chicago. It gives a unique view of how such events happen and the effect on those who witness it.

I’ve found this site, which was obviously created by someone who is either obsessed or who has too much time on his hands. I had trouble learning how to tie my shoelaces because I’m left-handed and I couldn’t tie right-handed very well. It took me well into 1st grade before I could tie them right-handed. My mother wasn’t up to showing me how to tie left-handed, you see. Now this site says that I didn’t have to go through all that heartache.

It’s off to the therapist for another session of parent-bashing, then. I’m still not recovered from the fact that all through school when our gym classes played baseball, I was batting right-handed (and failing to ever hit the ball) and no one told me it was the wrong way round. The last time I played, in high school, the gym teacher noticed that I wasn’t batting well and asked whether I was right- or left-handed. When I told him, he showed me how to bat left-handed and I did very well. Another major-league prospect nipped in the bud by you fascist right-handers!!!

(just kidding…)

(maybe…)

Deutschepost is really on the ball, as a postcard addressed to Hitler is finally delivered to the Bundestag, 60 years too late to catch him alive. The best quote is this:

Deutsche Post marked on the card that the address was incorrect and that the unidentified sender should be informed.

The letter was stamped with, “Mail corrected due to insufficient address – please alert sender. Ascertained address: Deutsche Bundestag, 11011 Berlin,” according to the German DPA press agency.

I wonder who actually sent it….was it a dinner invitation from the Duke of Windsor? Perhaps a billet doux from Sir Oswald Mosely.

Deutschepost remarked that it had no right to remove mail from the system just because the addressee was dead.

The airwaves in the UK are crackling with the news that Prince Charles is to marry Camilla Parker-Bowles in April. Civil ceremony, so no Anglican fuss about remarriage of divorced persons in church. The news reports all imply that the fact that he’s divorced is the problem. It’s not. It’s that her former husband is still living.

Ho-hum. She’ll become a duchess, he’ll be legal, the Archbishop of Canterbury will bless the pair, and all’s well that ends well, I guess.

I wonder if she’ll start opening things and christening ships and such. When Brenda kicks the bucket, she’ll become the Princess Consort. Everyone’s wondering about that, but when he’s King he can issue a decree that will call her anything he likes.

I’m in favour of HRH Princess Horseface, myself.

Saccharine children’s books about God are ripe for satire.

Watch those atmospheric nitrogen levels, now.