boglin

Recommend a 500GB external hard drive please!

link stolen from cavalorn - J.K. Rowling's Commencement Address at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.

I thought it was going to be a quiet weekend...I'm not too sure of that now.

It didn't take me as long as normal to get home from work - I didn't think it odd at the time - the cars parked up in the petrol stations, queued up at the side of the road. Idiots, panic buying, I thought. One of them just parked up at the traffic lights - car empty - hadn't even put his hazard lights on.

lupercal was fine when I got home. We were thinking about going walking this weekend. We had dinner. We watched TV - there wasn't anything on the news. Friday - the end of a long week. I went to get some beer.

I just thought the kids at the top of the road were stoned. They're always there, on a Friday night, hanging around outside the shops. I thought it was just a friendly hug - some gang thing. It wasn't until I came out of the off-licence that I realised what was going on. I'd have done something, honest to God I would - but it was too late by then. There wasn't anything I could do. I got in the car and drove home.

That's an hour and a half ago now. We've closed the curtains, turned off the lights. We've left the TV on, though the volume's right down - low enough that we can hear them outside. Not bitten though. I'm shaking - I'm not sure what else to write. We're losing chanels now. News 24's gone down. It looks like the only thing we can watch is QI.

One of the cats is missing - we don't think They can get in through the cat flap so we're going to leave it open. We're not sure whether to stay down here or go upstairs.

I'm really scared.

Well, actually I don't.

If you see this, and there isn't a post that follows in a couple of minutes time then you'll probably discover I've removed you from my friends list.

It's *really* nothing personal. It's for one of the following reasons...

I don't think you're reading my LJ at all - this isn't a vindictive "Ah! You don't read me so I shall remove you!". I just kind of want to know who I'm talking to in a way - and if I'm not talking to you, then I might as well be realistic about it. It could be that you don't read often, but pop by every now and again, if so then let me know - it would be nice if you did as there's a couple of people I've removed which has made me a little sad to realise I'm so out of touch with you.

I don't think you're reading LJ at all. Full stop. In this case, thinking I'm talking to you on LJ is a stupid idea, and I need to make sure if I need to talk to you, I talk to you in some other way.

I just don't know you at all - either IRL or online really - we've never interacted, or haven't done in a long while, and this is a journal rather than a blog, and I want to keep it with people who I feel I know.

And then there are a couple of names I've removed because they're not there anymore. Difficult one, really, but it's possibly best to remember folks in a different way.

If I am bad and wrong to have taken you off, give me a shout.

[Poll #1195947]

I didn't know this yesterday, but two horses also died at Aintree on Friday, in the Topham Chase.

In The High Grass was 7 years old. Time to Sell was 9. Both were destroyed after falling - In The High Grass fell the 8th fence, and Time To Sell only made it to the 2nd - the Chair.

Only 12 of the 29 horses who set out managed to finish this race. In Saturday's race, of the 40 who ran, only 15 got all of the way round.

So I suppose we can count our blessings that out of the 37 horses that fell or were pulled up in these two races, only 3 of them died, eh?

Details of the other races held at Aintree this weekend are here. Looking at the results it's the Topham and the National that are by far the most catastrophic. The latter can only be expected, with the horses being expected to race a distance of over 4 miles and jump 30 fences - between just over 4' to 5'2"

In the past 10 years, 32 horses have died in the Grand National meeting.

Not me, but this is the place I ride at in Cumbria, and these are the bestest horses evah!