AND SO TO BED

I may do a video today as well.

I am still in the process of getting my music and hi-fi equipment sorted out. If you have been reading here you will know that I bought some top of the range hi-fi equipment by a British company called ARCAM.

This has necessitated me recall being all of my CDs onto an external SATA drive via my Mac Book Pro. The reason for this is that getting up and down in order to change the CD gets tired very quickly and this is the main reason why I have not listened to music to the extent that I used to.

I use a clear wave dongle attached to the MacBook Pro which streams the music perfectly to the ARCAM rDAC which is classed into the ARCAM AV amplifier.

If you are like John you are already bored! All you really need to know is that the sound quality is excellent and that I am once again really enjoy my music.

I am constantly amazed at the changes within me since the seismic shift that took place at the end of 2007. I almost feel that that is when I became alive for real. Sometimes it can make me feel bitter that so much of my life was wasted. I try not to let that overwhelm me. Today I am so happy and content with myself and I therefore cannot really regret the past but I do sometimes feel that to not wake up until one is 48 years old to then find oneself with a fairly decrepit body and realising that one now could enjoy everything that I did not when I was young, if only I were young! I'm not sure if I've written that correctly but I think you probably get the gist of what I'm saying.

Most surprisingly for me I have got into male singers recently. I have never enjoyed male singers. The 1st but I got into a couple of years back is James Blunt but have since added Mumford & Sons, Noah And The Whale, and now Leonard Cohen!

I really thought that men in general did not do emotion and certainly did not sing about it. I could not have been more wrong. I know that part of this is the fact that all of my friends are female and most of my interactions have been with females. Certainly the women that I have known have a rather poor opinion of men and their ability to feel or express themselves. With my experience with John I know that this is not true. I do know however that there is a marked difference between the way that men and women deal with their stuff. Once I understood that John was just different from me in the way that he handled things, I stopped trying to fix him or thinking that there was something wrong with him, or that he was all repressed! It behoves us all to not stereotype and to not think that there is something wrong with another just because they deal with life in a different way.

Mary-Grace is due to have her puppies on the 19th although I will not be at all surprised if they come on the Wednesday before. I have yet to have a litter of Lhasa Apso go full-term. She was only mated the once.

On Sunday evening John and I are going to Birmingham town Hall to see Janis Ian in concert. I am really looking forward to this. I have previously seen Dar Williams, Nanci Griffith, Tangerine Dream, Donna Summer, the LSO. I think that it is about it.

Pain wise it has been difficult recently. Yesterday and so far today, not bad at all but so so tired! In fact, I am going to nap shortly and I have not done that for quite some time.

Swimming is going well again. Although I took some steps to improve matters, I think that nothing I did changed it. I think whatever disc in my neck impinges on the nerves, just stopped. The last time it was bad, really bad, was in '03. It has been on and off ever since but this last period was the worst it has been for a while. Now I am back to just the normal pain!

I may write some more later, or video, but for now I need to go to bed.