God, I’m so infuriated with the BBC because they have totally butchered one of our finest legends in an attempt to appeal to the Harry Potter brigade. What am I talking about? Merlin of course. I was intrigued when I heard the BBC were going to be doing a new version of the tale because the BBC have an excellent track record with classic tales. The first doubts crept in when I saw how young the cast were and that Arthur and Merlin were the same age. So, so wrong!

You have Prince Arthur himself who has always been a prince by the looks of it, so no being raised as a peasant and pulling the sword out of the stone to reveal the “one true king”. Of course, Excaliber and the Lady of the Lake haven’t even been introduced. Merlin is Arthur’s vassal in this version and magic has been banned from Camelot so he has to use it in secret. What happened to Merlin being Arthur’s mentor and an old man? Guinevere (handly called Gwen) is a black lady’s maid and the daughter of a blacksmith. I have no problem with the colour of her skin but how exactly will Gwen be transformed enough to become Arthur’s queen and eventual betrayer? There is zero chemistry there anyway although the writers seem to be throwing Gwen at Merlin instead. Is the three way love triangle going to be between Arthur and Merlin instead of Lancelot?

The whole thing just infuriates me no end.

Everyone seems to be sick at work just now, including me. My two and a half years of being cold free came to an abrupt end last weekend but I guess it couldn’t last forever, especially considering the bugs floating around at work. Maybe I should wear a mask…

We are so far behind at work, it’s not even funny but as usual no one seems to be doing a thing about it. Not that it is my problem since our team are more or less up-to-date but it is causing a bit of resentment since we are being accused of not being team players. Hey, where were you when we needed help? Yeah, thought so.

My brother and the kids are in Florida and have been for a week which means I’m doing nothing but daydreaming of waffles for breakfast. Man, I loved waffles and cinnamon toast… They sound like they are really enjoying themselves although it is hotter than it should be this time of year. I’m also ashamed to say I’m a tad jealous because this was the holiday I was cheated out of last year. I keep imagining what they are doing and how their wee faces will light up at the Magic Kingdom. It totally sucks having a possessive SIL who seems to think we are incapable of taking proper care of her kids. Anyone need an auntie?

I’m a bad blogger too. Rest assured, I do read your blogs (mainly at work when I shouldn’t be) but can’t comment for obvious reasons.

So much for the effort to blog more but I was way too tired this week thanks to the selfish bastard I have as a neighbour. He had people in on Friday night and I had to put up with hours of loud guitar music and middle-aged men pretending they were rap stars. F**k! Not pleasant! Okay, it was Friday night, not much I could do about it and at least I could sleep in on Saturday morning.

The shit started the same thing on Sunday night and it was a very grumpy Caledonia who had to get up early to go to work on Monday morning. I tried ear plugs (which I really don’t like) and then stuffed a pillow over my head to no avail. As the blowing into the mic continued, I was plotting all sorts of malicious deeds - most of which are unprintable.

At lunch-time, I went on to my council’s website and planned my next phase in Operation Gag Him. I noted with interest that since he was living in a council rented house - it was up to the Housing Dept to keep him under control since he was essentially violating my rights to have a peaceful night’s sleep. They advise to keep a diary of all disturbances and to approach the individual in question. We have spoken to him several times and he simply does not understand the concept that some of us have to go to work in the mornings. He is one of those lazy gits who survive on dole money at taxpayers expense. Leech!

Anyway, I’m going to do the diary thing for the next month and then email the Housing Dept from work. What’s the point of having a posh government e-mail address if you can’t use it in such circumstances? If it gets their attention, so much the better.

Speaking of work, we had a strike on Tuesday about poor pay but I chose to go into work instead because I really don’t believe industrial action will help and we haven’t even had a pay offer yet. The simple truth is we are heading down the recession route and I can’t strike when hundreds of people are losing their jobs all over the place. I’m lucky to be employed and as long as there are criminals, my job is safe. Ironic, eh? I was soon wishing I had stayed at home because we were so busy and I was a one woman show trying to get through the work of three people. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. My efforts to keep everything up-to-date meant my work colleagues were coming into a clean slate the following morning while I would be coming in to take care of the backlog in my own job. I got so worked up, I was actually feeling dizzy. Not good! Oh, and a visit to the dentist in the midst of all this chaos didn’t help, especially the bill I had to pay. As long as this pay squabble goes on, the longer it will be before I can move up a grade and the more money the taxman will get from me (not to mention the student loan company who took £65 out of my performance bonus this month - the last one I will ever get because they scrapped it). I got some of my aggression out when I did the Staff Survey because I was totally brutal in my honesty. Thank God it is anonymous!

On the brighter side, my power cable arrived on Wednesday and I was back on my lovely Mac after having to use my old laptop for a few days. I also managed to kill my hard drive at work - oops! But, I did get a lovely new replacement. It’s not a Mac but at least it is faster than the other fossil.

So, now I have a load of TV shows to catch up on iTunes, although last night’s episode of Supernatural was being a tad stubborn. LOL! I’ve got my manager at work addicted to this show and I have to transfer the new eps on my Touch so she can watch them at work at lunchtime. I’m thinking I’m losing out on a good blackmail deal here, it’s a good job I have integrity.

Oh, and I’ve disabled registrations on the blog because I’m not comfortable with strangers reading my private posts. Yeah, I know, technically you are all strangers since I don’t really know any of you, but some folks are stranger than others. If I ever do write private posts and you wanna read them, leave a comment or use the contact form and I’ll add you manually. If I’ve friended you on LJ, don’t bother because the posts will appear there anyway, unless you have a burning desire to leave comments on both places.

There is nothing like having to resort to your ancient Windows laptop to take the shine off the whole internet experience. There I was on Friday night, downloading the first episode of Supernatural’s new season (legally I might add) when I noticed my battery was running low on my Mac. I reached for my power adaptor, plugged into the wall, heard a worrying crackle sound and watched as the LED died on the cable. Hmmmm…. I was hoping it was a fuse but I tried every fuse in the house with no luck. The power cable is dead as a dodo.

I’ve been having bother with a dodgy wall socket for the past few weeks and thought the problem had been resolved. My brother took it off the wall and checked all the wires thoroughly before giving it a clean bill of health. It seemed to be okay after that, then I noticed my hair dryer plug was getting hot again after use. I really should have listened to my instincts and plugged my power cable into a different socket and the poor thing probably would’ve survived to live another day. Alas, I was too anxious to watch the new SPN episode and ignored the sound advice. Result: one dead power cable and one pretty useless Mac because the battery is almost down.

Being the canny person I am, I transferred the episode to my old laptop only to discover the green screen of death on iTunes. Somewhere along the line, technology has moved on in the Apple world and my old laptop graphics card has resigned itself to defeat. Not to be thwarted, I went online and tried every hint I found to no avail. My laptop officially sucks big time but I already knew that when I realised it wasn’t even good enough to play The Sims 2. The laptop was bought from my brother before the wonders of Apple were revealed to me.

Again, not to be thwarted in my endeavour, I transferred the episode to my iPod Touch where it played perfectly, although I did have to sacrifice all the other content on it. Not to worry, as soon as the Mac is back with a new power cable, I can restore it all. Methinks there is some irony in there somewhere when you think a tiny wee iPod can play a TV show better than a big laptop.

Not only that, since the Ancient one has been resigned to the shelf for the past few months, I’ve obviously missed a few updates and it has spent all weekend downloading them. I’m so frustrated with it, I’m going to scream. How many fracking updates do Microsoft need? Oh, wait, stupid question.

No Prison Break eps as planned, no Sims adventures… Oh, Mac, how I miss thee…

It was an exciting Tuesday for all us Apple seeds (what are Apple followers called anyway?). I dutifully trotted over to the Apple website to drool over the new iPods (all flavours) and was relieved the Touch hadn’t changed all that much since mine is still brand new. Nothing worse than having a brand new toy and wishing you had waited for the new cooler version! Thankfully, I’m still against getting an iPhone because of the stupid limitations placed by O2. I am not going to add money each month to my phone if I don’t need it and that surely contravenes the very idea of PAYG. (Note to self: top up your phone, girl!)

So, I toddled off to download the new version of iTunes and was very impressed with the new set up and the addition of Genius but it so needs to learn my tastes. (Spice Girls, Aaron Carter, I think not!). I tried to update my Touch with the new 2.1 firmware but Apple wasn’t playing and I gave up. I managed to do it tonight so all was not lost. I’m not seeing any immediate changes yet but haven’t really explored much.

Back to iTunes, I belatedly noticed that NBC and Apple have sorted out their differences and nearly set my laptop flying in my excitement. Why the all the fuss? NBC equals Battlestar Galactica!! I’ve sorely missed this show thanks to the tiff between Virginmedia and Sky which has left us without Sky One for over a year now. Stuff your channels, mate, the internet rules.

I was all set to call my boss and tell her I didn’t have time to come to work this week because I had a whole lot of catching up to do. Fortunately, a shower calmed me down and I realised a major download of the show would be a waste of money considering the arrival of the DVDs next month. But, oh, the temptation…

Not only that, it is available in HD and I had to go and run the software update on my Mac to get ready for it. To be honest, I’m not that bothered about HD and can hardly tell the difference between that and normal half the time.

I’m so happy I got a US iTunes account though. I’m downloading Prison Break the day after it airs in the US and will be doing the same next week when Supernatural starts. No more waiting months on a show crossing the pond and no more bloody loud adverts!

(Damn, I just updated WP and have to do it again!)

I seem to have gone off milk. As a typical British person (I do confess to being British on the odd occasion), I love drinking tea but over the past few weeks, I’ve taken a couple of sips and ended up pouring it down the sink. I actually thought it was the tea I’d lost interest in but it is definitely the milk.

I’ve never been a milk fan and when I was growing up, my mum had to find all sorts of devious ways to make sure I got it in my diet in some way or the other. Getting up for school in the morning, I always made my brother pour milk on his cereal first so he would get the dreaded cream always present at the top of the full fat stuff. When I was in primary school, we got free full fat milk every morning in these little bottles that stank to high heaven. You had to drink it - no excuses. The only way I could drink it, was to shake it really hard and down it in one go while trying not to breath.

When we got older, my mum switched to semi-skimmed milk which I could tolerate much better - no dreaded cream. I still can’t eat anything with cream. I became a vegetarian when I was about fifteen and haven’t eaten meat or fish since so I was always careful to get protein from other sources and wasn’t ready to become a vegan. I’m not a nut fan at all so most of my preferred meals were Italian based as it is so easy to convert pasta, lasagne or whatever to a vegetarian dish. My mum was very sceptical about my choice and was convinced I was going to be constantly sick because I wasn’t a total carnivore like her. The truth was I was never into meat and often used to leave it on my plate and don’t even get me started on how disgusting I found fish. I’ve never had any ill-effects from not eating meat and got the last laugh when everyone began panicking about Mad Cow Disease.

Getting back to the milk issue, I still don’t think I could be a vegan but there have been a few signs that I may be subconsciously moving towards it. A couple of years ago, I started using soya milk in my cereals and that meant my only source of cow’s milk was in my tea which I only drank at night. Cutting out milk from my diet would be so easy but there are other dairy products, like cheese, that I would find harder giving up. I don’t like eggs much either so that wouldn’t be much of a problem. Then, of course, you have all the food products that contain dairy in some form or another and I’m not sure I could really dedicate myself to finding alternatives.

One of my work colleagues is a breast cancer survivor, and she has done a lot of research into different types of foods and does not touch dairy if she can help it. She’s not completely strict and if she can’t find anything alternative to eat when on holiday, she will eat dairy. She’s told me a few things in regard to dairy which have scared me to death and really made me think. I’ve done research on milk and all the crap it contains which hasn’t helped either. (Do yourself a favour and don’t just accept all the “milk is good for you” campaigns because they are all lies.)

So, what do I do? Is this just a temporary thing because I always liked my tea milky and I may just wake up next week dying for a cup of tea? Or, am I just going to end up drinking herbal all the time which I already do during the day at work? I guess the best thing is to just go with the flow and see where it leads.