Various
Jersey
Last weekend I took part in the International Choir Festival of Jersey, 2006 with the Cavendish Singers. CS is the chamber choir of the John Lewis Partnership Music Society, and I sing (second) bass. We also took with us members of the Cavendish Ensemble (the JLP orchestra) and gave two concerts with them on the Friday. Saturday was competition day; we didn’t win – that was an honour reserved for Les Chansonelles, who were extremely good indeed and had even choreographed one of their songs – but it was a lot of fun and I did manage to get one ice cream. I brought home (amongst other things) some apple brandy, apparently a Jersey speciality, but haven’t tried it yet. I’ll probably wait for my parents to return from Canada and share it with them.
DB2
This week I will be attending a three-day course on “DB2 SQL performance and tuning” which should prove useful, and probably interesting too. I’ve been nagging to go on the course for a little while, and having asked for DBA advice on a few bits of work in the last four months or so I have already got my hands on some useful tools for looking at SQL performance, so hopefully this will formalise some of the knowledge I have picked up in scraps. Then there’s a two-day course on Strobe, which is a profiler tool for finding out where time is being spent in a program. After this week I should never have any excuse for writing inefficient code…
Labyrinth
Next month I’m going to a masked ball. It is very exciting and I’m looking forward to it muchly, but I haven’t got myself a mask yet. In theory, I could make one, but I’m lazy, have very little arty-crafty talent and am quite busy anyway, so I will probably just buy one. One factor I need to consider, however, is the problem of my glasses. I have never really contemplated getting contact lenses, as I have just assumed that the whole idea of putting anything in my eye would freak me out. I’m now wondering whether it would be that bad. I must have an eye test very soon anyway, as it’s been 3.5 years since my last one! so I’ll try to go to the optician in Victoria after work one day this week or next week, and ask about the possibility of getting some lenses sufficiently in advance of this ball for me to have got used to wearing them by then.
If I don’t get lenses I will have to wear glasses; fortunately I have found a few masks which are specifically noted as being “suitable for gentlemen who wear spectacles”. They have big long noses and are really rather cool, but I’m wondering how easy it would be to eat with a proboscis that size. I might link to some pics later, but right now I’m going to watch Torchwood.
Hullo
Yes, you should get contact lenses! They’re great! And don’t worry about being squeamish about the eye thing, it’s really not bad at all. I was very very squeamish about eyes, and actually hit the optician when he went to put the lens in. But after about a week they’re easy to put in, you stop being squeamish, you don’t even feel the soft ones, and, best of all, you have all-round vision! And (when you need glasses as strong as yours or mine) everything looks so BIG! And so much more JOYOUS!
Ahem will stop rhapsodising about contacts now. But I’d get them, they’re cool. And you’ll look cool. And you’ll be able to pick a mask on the basis of whatever you want rather than whatever you think you might be able to wear. Much more fun :-)
Comment by Possibly Polly — 23rd October, 2006 @ 2:38 pm