Has it been that long?

Hi. Remember me? The entity and sometime blogger generally known as Cathy?

As is plainly evident, blogging has all but ground to a halt around here since I started work at the beginning of September. Now, I know I've whinged a few times since then on this subject, but this time I'm serious.

The lack of updates is due not to lack of life, but to too much of the stuff. Unfortunately, in a doubly damning twist, most of it's not even the interesting kind of surplus that's bloggable (or, at least, bloggable in an interesting way).

I'm struggling for updates, for time to set apart in order to blog, and blogging is becoming less enjoyable as it's feeling like more of a chore. I'm not doing too well even then - in the last three months I've blogged 24 times in total. 24 posts being, incidentally, the sort of figure I'd usually expect for one month. This is depressing, and time management really Isn't Happening, to the extent that the only free time I generally have is a few hours on Sundays (or all day if I'm lucky, but on those occasions I usually have a whole pile of things to get done).

I do realise that posting more than every three or four days isn't mandatory, that winding down my blog slightly doesn't necessarily compromise my integrity - *cough cough* - my, er, whatever, as a blogger, and that readers won't automatically get impatient and abandon me in droves. But, and I think this is the point I've been struggling to grasp, to me it feels second-rate, somehow. I've never been happy with putting out something that I don't feel is up to my standard, and with everything that's gone on I don't feel I've written anything interesting for months and months.

Hear ye, hear ye. Cathy can't cope with blogging.

I have to confess, deserting my weblog is starting to look more and more like a sensible option. I don't want to because I do enjoy it at times, I like having it there, and I'll certainly want to restart once I finish work next August. However, eight months is a hell of a long time in the blogosphere the, um, plural noun encompassing all weblogs and all those who blog (why hasn't someone come up with a better word yet?), and I'd feel like I was starting all over again for the first time. Not a hugely tempting prospect.

For those in need of proof that I'm still alive, though, the linklog's still going strong (still? it's only been a month).

Anyway, life. I'm sure there's been some since last I blogged. The maths course that I was complaining about has improved slightly with respect to the level of difficulty - there was no multiple choice for the last test I did, and it took almost fifteen minutes to complete the test as opposed to the ten for the previous topic test.

I'm being hugely and grossly unfair and employing needless sarcasm about this, aren't I? I'm sorry. It just irritates me when there's wasted potential anywhere, and I still don't feel that this maths course is doing much for me other than using up an hour or two each month. From what I've seen, revision topics are skimmed and new topics are barely covered either.

Okay, I have to admit that this opinion hasn't been researched very thoroughly seeing as I didn't read much of the last workbook (matrices, which are fun and easy as long as you remember which order to do things in) but it did look rather scant. Not to mention the fact that there was at least one question on the test, on eigenvalues, which wasn't covered at all by the workbook.

Sorry. I'll stop moaning. On to other things.

Kevin and I went to the Science Museum at the weekend, it being one of those things that neither of us has done for a very long time. There was intrigue (the workings of early steam engines were surprisingly interesting), discovery (I hadn't known how the Enterprise's Warp Drive actually works), excitement (there are lots of handles to turn and buttons to press which make things move and go whizzing round and round), disappointment (some of the aforementioned handles and buttons didn't work), and humiliation (we both eagerly tried to go into one of the interactive areas before at the last minute spotting the sign that said "Under-8s only").

Afterwards we went to find a cinema and had high hopes of seeing Master And Commander but our plan was unfortunately foiled by the fact that we'd just missed the start of the film by ten minutes in the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square. What they unaccountably failed to mention, however, was that the same film was starting in ten minutes' time in the Odeon cinema on the other side of Leicester Square, an omission which led to us buying tickets for Bright Young Things instead.

However, I thought it was superb, and possibly one of the best films I've ever seen in a cinema. (While impressive, this recommendation isn't quite as incredible as it may appear since I have a record of never seeing really good films at the cinema. Still, it was excellent.)