Thank You, Mr. "bathroom"

Why, thank you, Mr. "bathroom" whose valuable feedback on my previous post was as follows:

Cabinets and countertops offer the much-needed storage space in the bathroom to store your toiletries, keep medicines and first-aid box, cleaning milk, moisturizer and deodorants, towels and napkins besides other things that you use daily while showering in your bath. They are powerful accents to your bath décor and help you to define the tone and style of the bathroom wall cabinets and make the best use of the wall and floor surface of the area.

That was most interesting and insightful. Sadly, in my quotation of your comments, I do appear to have accidentally ommitted the URL that you mentioned.

I wonder at the purpose of such a feat.

Yes, the more pages that link to a page with relevant search terms will increase its page rank within Google... But to what end?

To sell bathroom furniture?

It's certainly in a different league to viagra and Swiss watches, I'll give you that.

Hmm. Best guess... To artificially increase the popularlity of such a site so that when people perform a legitimate search in Google (or similar), they arrive on your site... Which I guess contains no real content or products... But would contain a lot of adverts for bathroom furniture. Then you simply sit back and reap the income from the advertising click-throughs.

Bah. What a load of old toilet!

On the Floor with Fate

I guess that it is probably about three months now, since I sat at my computer, searching.

Waiting for that bolt of inspiration to form, to hit me, to sink its undeniable truth before my very eyes.

Searching, I found myself, for some new activity to partake of an evening. "Evening classes", a friend had suggested... Although, by the end of college, I had hoped that I had finished with the minutiae of academia. The forced structure of theoretical learning is not an area I enjoy - at college we had ended up skipping lessons, to learn that which we truly yearned to learn, rather than that they chose to teach.

But it provided a spark, a focal point from which I could expand my search - both the tangible (Google) and the intangible (mental, emotional). Seeking new parameters, adjusting my criteria, challenging Google to give all that it could give, to find something that reached out and grabbed me. I believe the eventual query that led me to my final path was simple - "things to do in [my local town]". I rather fancied... something that I didn't expect to usually do. Something challenging, perhaps something sporty.

As luck would have it, I found something. Not just something that challenged me, though, something that scared me.

Did you ever see that episode of Friends where Chandler and Monica get hitched? That Chandler had tried to learn to dance (despite his unfortunately slippery shoes) always somewhat fascinated me. I'm not entirely sure why. Memories, perhaps, of the times at which I have found myself in a venue at which dancing occurs; the times at which I was happy to lurk at the sidelines, apart from those occasions I found myself dragged reluctantly to the dance floor... But smiling.

I do not feel that I have a great sense of physical skill or co-ordination. To watch me attempt to catch something is like watching a two-year-old juggle - and one which has just swallowed everything in Amy Winehouse's bathroom cabinet, at that.

I mentioned, with some trepidation, my idea to my counsellor.

Well. Bugger me, it only turned out she used to teach the stuff!

Sometimes, things feel almost too coincidental to disregard as mere chance. So I went for it.

I began attending classes that deal in several types of mostly Cuban-inspired dance.

The Lady Luck was smiling when I made that decision. I could not have hoped to meet a selection of more outgoing, friendly, social, and encouraging set of people than these :)

I can find it very difficult... But I also enjoy it immensely :D

Are You Well?

Does anyone else actually remember the Glam Metal Detectives? I remember a sketch with a poor comedian who always resorted to "Anyway... Anyway... Are you well?" after dropping a stinker.

Anyway... Are you well? ;)

How's the cat? Are your plants still alive? Hell, is the cat still alive? Changed the colour of your hair? Are you busy? Did you have to pay the fine you were dodging all the time? Woooah, think I slipped into song there ;)

It felt like time to say something... To say what, I do not know. Is not knowing, so, [clicks tongue] cannot be saying. (Now, there's an obscure reference ;) )

When I think of me blog, I think the word that floats predominently through my mind is "repurpose". Where on Earth I picked up some sort of marketing bollocks-like word like that, I don't know ;) But still, I think I need to "repurpose" it.

I enjoyed blogging about the random things, and I ... "enjoyed" isn't the right word, but could find a sense of... calm?... in posting some of the "bigger" things. I recall someone once said of some of my posts that they were written from the heart, and they were. Some of those sort of thing, just... helped me find my way.

It's certainly been something that's helped me to grow who I am, and that can only be a good thing :) (We-eeell... ;) )

Where now? I'm not sure... There are times I think of things I'd like to blog (especially when you need to climb up on that soapbox and shout to the world ;) ), but then even when I was actively blogging I only got around to blogging around 1% of them ;)

It's getting the balance right, y'know? A blog is a tool, and I need to figure out how I want to use it now. I started a separate blog the other week, but I have a clear idea as to its purpose (it's not anonymous, and its focus is on techy stuff... I've often wanted to voice things on that subject, and then I realised I knew just the medium - contact me privately if you want its details) - unlike my old friend Don't Blame The Stars.

The other thing I'm trying to watch in myself at the moment are the activities I get up to and that I stay in control of them... Two examples from this past week were m' friend trying to persuade me to try (seriously, I think he must have been a drug dealer in a past life) World of Warcraft (aka "that goblin game" in Northern Monkey's lexicon, if my memory serves me correctly) - I'm sure I could play it, and I'm sure I could enjoy it... But right now, I don't want to. Investing that much time in something like that doesn't "do it" for me right now.

Likewise, following on from my "Check out my new HDMI cable!" evening I recently organised for the guys at work (translation: "let's watch a DVD, eat pizza and drink beer!"), one of the others at work helps to run a radio control car club thingy that he invited us for an evening doing last night. Interesting night, and we did it on a night that the club is usually closed, so we had it to ourselves. Nice setup - they have an old warehouse with a few tracks set up in it, monitors around the walls showing race results, PA system... Surprisingly professional... But anyway... It was fun for an evening (plus, pizza and beer were involved again... ;) ) racing someone else's car (uh, and they weren't expecting us to break two of the shells... oops... the cars can do like 30mph, apparently... into a wall... lots of times ;) ) but there's noooo way I'd want to do it more than a couple of times a year, let alone weekly.

On the plus side, they had worked out a penalty system for the evening which meant the first-timers (five of us) could race against the experienced lot (three of them)... Even better was the fact that with that system in place, I won the 1st place trophy ;) (Didn't know they had got some li'l trophies in before that :) )

They also appeared to frown on my "Hey, how quickly can you run 'round the track?" experiment... ;)

...Anyway... (Are you well? ;) )

I want to be careful with any of these activities that they don't block out others. It can become too easy to get distracted and let them control you if you don't properly supervise them, and finding & setting those boundaries for myself can be something I struggle with sometimes. ... Or often ;)

I had some time this evening, and thought I'd sit down and share that good old random splurge with you ;) Hey, it's just like the old days, huh? ;)

So, I'm not "back back" yet, but, I am, probably... Less... not around.. than I was... n't... Erm...

[waves his hand dismissively] I'll play it by ear. ;)

-IM

PS. Can't believe I didn't think to check YouTube before! Shame how the things we enjoy watching when we're young never seem quite the same later in life though...