Ups and downs.

Today started amazingly. I had the realisation this morning that while I want to get fit this year, the mere thought is not enough. So I downloaded the Rocky IV soundtrack to my iPod, put the training montage on repeat (by Vince DiCola of course), and somehow this gave me the stamina that I severely lack, to jog to Lewiston. By most standards it's not a massive feat but I'm pretty unfit. Strangely, after ten minutes or so of finishing I felt great, and was very optimistic about my day at work. It did start well, with some really friendly customers who gave me some awesome sales. However, it ended up being a very annoying day. There was countless problems that customers had, most of them created by some colleague being incapable of a simple procedure, creating massive problems and confusion when we have to fix it. There was a customer who was complaining about his cheap bog-standard laptop being precisely as described and when I gave him advice on how to prolong battery life and make it run faster he sneered that I was talking rubbish and stormed out declaring that he would never shop with us again and I was useless etc. However this illiterate pile of dirt had blown into the store, I brushed it away and carried on.

At my break I got a phonecall from Matt; his metal festival on Saturday has now been cancelled due to the venue all of a sudden kicking him in the balls by cancelling all upcoming shows, leaving him hundreds of pounds out of pocket and owing bands money for travel and accomodation. I was gutted for myself as I was really looking forward to the weekend down in Edinburgh and doing photos, but I was mortified for Matt as, along with the money, he has put months of planning into it and now it's all gone, completely through no fault of his own.

There were still some cool customers but today at least they were overshadowed by the annoyances and frustration. When the time came to close, I had to get a taxi to get my bus and I was sent the coolest taxi driver ever. He was listening to ZZ Top pretty loud and I commented on how good the sound system was: the speakers were incredible for car ones. He was clearly chuffed with my praise as he told me they were hardly on before cranking the volume up to ear-splitting levels as we hurtled through town. With my ears now bleeding he calmly declared "good driving music" as La Grange hit the main riff.

I did very little this evening; I heard about the North Korea vs. Portugal match. I did sky+ it but I can't bring myself to watch the horrific 7-0 defeat. I caught the last while of the Spain vs. Honduras and it was ridiculously boring.

All in all it's been a fairly mixed day, I'm really disappointed about Edinburgh, like I said, largely because of all the work Matt had put into it.

Song of the day is difficult to pick as I've had Training Montage stuck in my head all day, but I'll go for the other song that I listened to on my way to work. I may have been spotted singing along to it on the dual carriageway. It's by Oingo Boingo, my favourite band, led by Danny Elfman who is now famous as a composer, writing the Simpsons Theme, Spiderman, and almost everything Tim Burton does. Grey Matter's from their 1982 album, pretty much halfway through their 23 year span.

G