Be Excellent To Each Other

Something like that.

Several selection boxes are great, aren't they?[/quote]

No, I received chocolates, but next year I may make a giant bar-a-day calendar

(for a month, not a whole year!)

Nothing personal Mimi, you're free to enjoy whatever you enjoy. With that said:

For me, tradition can piss off. Doing something because people have done the same thing before is meaningless. Someone did something once, and then they do it again, and then because you've done it twice, you do it a third time. Then you do it every year forever just BECAUSE and not for any practical reason. The fact people attach meaning to shit people used to do baffles me. You do shit every day, can you imagine people getting sentimental about it in years to come? WHY.

We live in a democracy, heralded as the best form of government. But after we elect a prime minister and ruling party, he has to get in a car and go and ask the fucking queen if it's ok to form a government. Not because she might say no. There's no fucking chance of the old hag saying no. She's meaningless, pointless, and irrelevent in the modern world. We do it because it's 'tradition', with loads of needless, wasteful pomp and ceremony with horses and carriages and people dressed up as if it's still the fucking 1600s. News flash: It's 2012. We need to wake up and modernise with the times. The longer a stupid tradition is held, the more epic and sacred it illogically becomes, just because someone did it once, ages ago.

Tradition has its place I think. It's a form of connection to the past and to others, some common ground.

Speaking as a person of the present day, I couldn't give a shit whether the future feels a connection with me or not. I'll be dead, and I'll cease to care. If I have an interest in how shit used to be, there are history books.

I'm not exactly big on tradition myself. And whilst some traditions are clearly barking I'll can't help but agree that some others (like Christmas for example, or building snowmen when it snows, saying cheers that sort of thing) just feel nice and people enjoy them. The notion that nobody questions tradition is just bollocks, traditions fall by the wayside all the time when they are deemed inappropriate or if people simply stop enjoying them.

As for the original question: all I can remember is being thrashed on the squash court, which was how I was spending most Friday evenings back then. There might have been a pub crawl in the evening, judging by email archives, but I'm not sure I went on it. I think I did get up early and put on the episode of 'Frasier' about taking a leap on February 29th (with hilarious consequences) too.

I was still living in a shit house in Oxford (the one which would later have a rat problem), and was working for social services.

Anyhow: I'm expecting a whole load of southern belles to come and propose to me today, but I think the storms are keeping them away.

"I got me a storm, in mah panties"

I read that as trashed and thought "fuck, I need to get in with this crowd".

I liked that so much I actually nommed it "properly".

Looking into my email account, the only notable thing I did on that day was order a Domino’s. For one

Now I want Domino's.

[edit]Although, in fairness, I always want Domino's. Even if I've just had Domino's.

I was incredibly stressed out, as we were about two weeks away from moving into property we owned for the first ever time. I was still working as a technical analyst (phone monkey) on the helpdesk at the time. Of course, now I don't work for that company at all, even though I'm in the same building.

Christ, it feels like æons ago.

My brother's girlfriend's sister has proposed to her fella today. Either she's being traditional or she was just sick of waiting to be asked.

I was celebrating Darryl's 16th(4th) birthday in pizza hut with his two month old daughter.

He's 20(5) today and on his way back from Kenya tonight. That's the second birthday in a row he's been away, he'd just started his basic training last year. He'll be away next year too, he turns 21 during his tour of Afghanistan.

Darryl was a dad at 4? That's sick - you should be ashamed.

Or amazed!

If it was a friday, then I probably would have been working from home, possibly nipping out to buy any exciting new Wii releases at "lunchtime".
Not much exciting going on in my emails, but I requested to have my YouSendIt password reset, and the magnets I ordered were shipped (I don't remember what I wanted them for).
Every day was a party.

According to Mrs. Grim... I bought her that necklace because it was ten years since our first date.

And here we are again.

Four years ago I was living at a friend's house in Tennessee. I didn't keep a diary, relying more on photographs and sinister Facebook to provide a log of that time. I think I either cycled to the nearby Shiloh battlefield to explore some more parts of it or went into Corinth to use the resources in the National Park Service's reading room in their visitor centre. In the UK I had a rented house in Bicester, and had spent several months temping for the council before taking the opportunity to spend 10 weeks in the US researching the Civil War and rethinking my life. Some of the material I got on the trip was used in my maiden speech to a lecture group I'm in.

Four years later, I have my own house in the same town and have been working properly for the council for just under four years. I rose quite quickly in the first few years too. You know what happened to the aforementioned relationship, so we won't go into that. I have a whole new group of friends, and have nurturing old ones. Today, it's a standard Monday at work. Will probably spend the evening watching 'Game of Thrones' or planning my holiday.

Happy Leap Day everyone!

I was working as an interviewer for a national social research company, which involved a lot of evening and weekend work as I had to interview people in their homes, and therefore when they were not at work. I was pretty depressed, though not clinically, as the pay was low, the work was not rewarding, and driving 30 or 40 miles only to get no answer at a door, or a refusal to participate, was pretty soul destroying. The only advantage was that I was at home a lot during the day, so was able to spend a lot of time with my grandaughter, whom my wife was looking after when my daughter-in-law returned to work.

No clues on FB or gmail so it was probably an unremarkable day in what was a very good year.

Today I shall go to the dentists and then spend the day at work looking for a new job

4 years ago my wife would have been 4 months pregnant with my eldest. I'd have been working in a job I hated while looking for a new one and I would have probably also been in regular contact with a friend who I am no longer friends with.

Today I shall be doing some filming for work and then I shall spend the rest of the day looking for a new job.

If I'd had known this thread would pop up again, I'd have planned something special today to talk about.

I dealt with a live outage caused by the timezone bug I mentioned the other day:

Take a look at @PenLlawen's Tweet: https://twitter.com/PenLlawen/status/17 ... 17025?s=09

And then I guess this happened: "Odd sound mix from the living room: @SistaCrumpet is listening to Daydream Believer whilst murdering people in the face in F.3.A.R."

Oh, and the only pic I took all day was this

I didn't go to the music quiz. I'll see if I can find out why.

I did. Nothing special happened

Here's Bits and Bobs from that day: viewtopic.php?style=19&p=643174#p643174

Remindme! 06:00 29 February 2020

Life was very different, then.

Just a bit.

Yup

Now bowling scores are up, mini golf scores are down.

Looks like i was working down in Reading... not interesting either

I was still living in Stoke, Joans was getting up to us a couple of times a week. I hated one of my jobs and I was doing a part time MSc.

More importantly it was Darryl's 20th (5th!) Birthday, but he was in the army, so it is unlikely I spent it with him.

Glad we're moving so far away from that life now.

I was working full time.

I would have been pregnant with Olly (due first week of June) - still vomiting several times a day, tired, heartburn etc.

I was panicking about bandwidth issues on one of my client's sites.

I was complaining on facebook that it looked like I had two black eyes - probably the tiredness.

Genuinely no idea.

Were you not at that quiz?

Was that that quiz?
Blimin eck.

Nope. It was me, you, Dave, Other Dave, JBR, and Kat.

Oh THAT quiz. Crikey.

A small, but perfectly formed, group. I remember it, it will surprise no one to hear.

Really? It's not slipped your mind as the years have passed?

I can't imagine why

They're using the old theme on the PM programme today in honour of the Leap Year. Every time I hear it I think of sitting down for dinner as a kid, arguing about the news, and can almost smell Dad's burnt risotto.

Bloody cleek. Explain thyself!

Selling my car and preparing to leave the USA.

Is that why we stopped quizzing? So that history wouldn't repeat itself this time?

Mmm , not really sure what i did in 2012.. not really happy times then, in the middle of my divorce and stuff..

I thought I'd drag this one back a day early as it's the weekend tomorrow and it may pass people by.

So, four years ago I made my wife dinner before I left for work, it seems, although I can't fathom what it could have been or why I did it - and now I do - Mrs Grim... was in hospital. I gave £20 to Ovarian Cancer (no idea, but unrelated to Mrs Grim...) and my friend asked me where The Ring was, which is a pub we've been to about a billion times since.

I was still working for the market research company, I was probably still enjoying it, and it might have been about the time one of my best friends joined the company (which lead, ultimately, to its downfall).

I bought (or pre-ordered) Mortal Kombat XL.

To help me out in four years time:

Did this work, Kern?