I love Queen. The band. "I'm going slightly mad..."

Firstly, a warm welcome to Jay, author of the ever amusing "But Enough About You" blog which I've had as one of my links since pretty much day 1 of starting this blog. For some reason he decided to visit my site last night and subsequently sent me a very kind and muchly appreciated email.

The opening of this email was:

"I blame you for one of the most unproductive mornings I've had in recent times. Believe it or not I sat down and read your entire blog today!... I enjoyed it.

You write well, and at risk of this turning into a mutual wank (don't worry, I know you're straight and in love with TT...) I'll say that I think you have a very good and funny blog too. I'm glad you write a lot...I linked you"

Praise indeed from an undisputed king of blogging (This guy often has around/over 100 comments on his posts!) Thanks Jay, Appreciate it! If you're a good boy I may send you a link to my other blog. It's a little different to this one!

Now, onwards and ever sideways, my ramblings for today:

On my walk into the city I walk past a restaurant, well, I walk past bloody hundreds, but specifically, I walk past one which has a huge sign over the street saying "Eat Here! Tibetan and Sherpa"

For some reason I always visualise this scene in my mind. Imagine a TV studio, the camera is focusing on a couch harbouring two people. 1) Some brave explorer with a frost-bitten, gangreen nose and virtually no teeth. Hair everywhere, chequered shirt. 2) An interviewer, city-slicker-type, immaculate hair, perfect teeth, slick suit - trying to interview Explorer without getting too close:

Interviewer:[NY pure cheese accent] "So, I understand you owe your life to your Sherpa guide?"

Explorer:[Southern US drawl] "Well, hell yeah. If it hadn't been for our Sherpa guide we would have starved on that mountain"

Interviewer: [Tries to feign mock interest, while trying to move the rest of his body in opposite direction] "Really? Tell us more, how exactly did he do that?"

Explorer: [shuffles, probably emitting bad smells] "Well, we were close to starving. Hell yeah boy...[spits]...we nearly died of the starvation on the mountain. If we didn't have that Sherpa we'd all be gonnas now..."

Interviewer: "So how did this Sherpas skills save you from almost certain death on the icy slopes and frozen tundra?" [flashes blinding smile to the camera]

Explorer: "Skills? Hell Boy! He had no SKILLS! We just ate him and then then called for help on the radio...ha ha ha..."

Where the hell does my brain get this stuff from? Is it a scene from a movie I can't recall watching after too much beer/smoke?

Someone, please tell me it is. If it's not then I need to start working immediately. Twice in two days I've began to wonder if I'm going mental.

After meeting TT for lunch in the city I went to the supermarket. We went yesterday and as we struggled down the stairs toward the taxi rank, loaded with shopping I had a brainwave. "Hey TT, since I meet you for lunch every day and it's right next door to this supermarket, why don't I just take a bag of groceries home every day?" I know it sounds obvious looking back on it, but until this point we just habitually done our shopping once a week.

She agreed it would be a good idea so today after meeting her I popped in to see if they had any good offers on. I ended up buying loads of shit that we don't need. It seemed a waste to just buy the sausages and mince that were on special so I bought some of everything on special. I now have a collection of weird looking fruit and vegetables which had labels in the supermarket but I've only now realised weren't labelled on the bags.

Hence, I have no idea on what the hell half the things I bought are. The receipt identifed a couple, but mainly they just show up as "Discounted item - $x.y"

I've identified passion fruit, Longans, Watloks (or something like that). I've looked up recipes involving some of these and I'll be trying my own variations soon. The one I'm really looking forward to is a cocktail/punch I can make with the passion fruit.

On the way home I was feeling pretty happy and I smiled, nodded and said "hello" to every other fellow pedestrian I saw on my street. The success rate was pretty high. Virtually everyone said "hello" back. Some grumpy arses ignored me, but the most unexpected reaction was a girl about 20 or so who just looked at me and burst into tears.

I stopped mid stride, almost fell over, and then asked if she was ok. (yeah, I know, stupid bloody question!) She looked at me, took a huge sniff and said "Nooooooo!!!", immediately started sprinking eye-water, turned, and walked away desperately wiping her eyes. I paused in shock to watch her for a couple of seconds, she turned around and said "Sorry!", got engulfed in tears again, then turned and carried on walking.

Hope it wasn't anything I said.

I'm off to cook a fruit salad now. Yes, cook. I'll explain later.