As cold as ice

Today, despite the temperature never getting above freezing, we went out on a kayak trip to the river Teith. This was a pretty tame river with no real large rapids, but given the temperature that was fine with me as it lessened the chance of me capsizing and going into the water. Getting changed into our kayaking kit and onto the river required a fair bit of will power, but we managed it. Paddling kept most of me nice and warm, but my hands were bloody freezing. All of us had ice forming on our helmets and paddles. My hands managed to get some warmth and blood back into them after about 15 minutes of paddling. We paddled for about an hour until the get out. It was a real relief to get out and warm up, but overall I had quite a fun paddle - it is nicer when it's a bit warmer though.

[PS - I apologise for the dullness of this post]

The turnaround?

With the recent spate of piracy does that mean we'll see the accompanying downturn in global temperatures?

Candle in the wind

After the loss of our manager earlier in the week it seems that Watford have also lost our lifetime president Elton John. He'd previously voiced concerns over the running of the club and mismanagement of the clubs finances and I think his leaving is a reaction to that. It's a shame to see an end to Sir Elton official association with the club as he's had good run being chairman and owner on a couple of occasions. I'm not building too good an impression of current club chairman Graham Simpson at the moment.

We've now got former player Malky MacKay as our caretaker manager, so we'll see how he does today in the game against Swansea.

Bye by-election

Following all the US election excitement of earlier in the week I thought I'd live blog the Glenrothes by-election result as it comes in - can you just feel the tension and excitement of such a historic world event! Then I thought "Nah, don't be stupid". However the current state of play looks like Labour have held the seat after earlier predictions of an SNP win. It looks like Gordon's back on the up.

[Update: I said I wouldn't live blog but I'm still up and the result is in: Labour have won with a total of 19946 votes, beating the SNP by over 6000 votes. Turnout was 52% which is down by 4% from the last general election (so the excitement over the US elections hasn't really turned around voter apathy over here then.) It was a very poor show for the Conservative and Lib Dem with only 1381 and 947 votes respectively - that really is impressively bad going, although I don't really know if either party's been campaigning very hard for this one.]

SLifer

After reading this CV post the other day I decided to get into the whole virtual world thing by signing up to Second Life. I have no idea what to use it for at the moment, but someday these kind of virtual worlds may become the normal way to access material and communicate online, so I may as well start now and get to grips with it. So far I've had a very quick walk, and fly, around the island you find yourself on when you sign up, but probably the most important thing I've done is making the jeans my avatar's wearing a little baggier. I have no idea how to use, or do, anything in the Second Life world yet, so I'll need to do a lot of exploring and testing. I won't give away my avatar's name (which is one think that you don't have complete freedom to chose) just yet as I'm not sure if I'll keep it, but when I'm comfortable with a name I'll let you know. Any other Second Lifers out there let me know.

Headless hornets

Shock news just in! Watford manager Aidy Boothroyd has left the club after three and a half year in charge (they say by mutual consent, but I expect there was a bit of pushing from the board). He's done very well for us in his time, taking us to the Premiership two seasons ago and leading us to a couple of decent cup runs, but recent form has been his downfall. Last season we were doing very well for the first half, leading the table for a while, but fell away completely at the end to only just finish in the last play-off spot. This season we've been managing to score quite a few goals, but unfortunately we've been conceding even more leaving us sitting in 21st position just above the relegation spot (although the mid-table is still pretty tightly packed, so it's not a disastrous place to be). It is, however, quite telling that we've only won 12 out of 48 league matches since last November! There's probably not much more that Aidy could do for the club, so now might well be the right time for him to move on. A new manager could give the team a bit more impetus like Tottenham over the last week (although there's an equal probability that it could fail miserably). But Aidy deserves a lot of praise for what he's done for us, so he will be missed. [It should be noted that my views may not reflect the beliefs of proper Watford supporters who follow the club more avidly than my weekly check of their results on the internet.]

Worst dressed

Last night saw one of my poorest efforts at a halloween costume. In the last few years I've put in the token effort of being a zombie/person who's been brutally attacked/someone with a case of mild radiation poisoning - this generally involved ripping up old clothes and adding fake blood and bruises. However this year, the halloween party I was going to involved a more specific theme than just your regular halloweenyness - it was a distopian future, sci-fi, cyber-noir party. Thinking up a costume required a bit more effort and couldn't really just involve ripping up some clothes. In the end I turned up to the party in what I'd been wearing for the rest of the day (see I said it was a poor, indeed non-existant, effort), but I did have some make-up. My one idea from earlier in the week had been to go as HAL 9000 (the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey), so with my make up kit I went about trying to transform myself. I added a large red HAL-style eye to my forehead. I leave it to others to assess the effectiveness of this make-up and whether I convinced them that I was a psychotic computer, or whether I just looked like I had a very large spot on my face.