more about my hols

So yesterday I talked about my computing woes at my dad's, what about the rest of it?

Well, mixed bag, really.

I mentioned a while back about my diet that I was hoping my dad would notice I'd lost weight. Well, he didn't spontaneously mention it, but on the Sunday we went out to give the dog a quick walk (if the computer stuff hadn't been so horrible I'd hoped we would go out on a proper walk) and I basically asked him directly if he'd noticed.

His reply was yes, but not in an instantaneous way, more that he'd been left wondering if I had. For example, he said it was fairly noticeable "from behind" (whatever that means) and in my face (which is one of the places I've noticed myself). Also, he'd noticed I was eating smaller meals and avoiding deserts.

One of the big things that annoys me about my dad is that he is really crap at empathy. By that I mean, if he wants to discuss something with you he'll approach it in much the same way the bull of legend might interact with a china shop. Which is to say he's about as subtle as a house brick through a plate glass window.

And of course, my weight is one of the things he occasionally tries to "talk to me" ("at me" would probably be more accurate) about. And yet whenever I visit him he feeds me these giant meals that have enough calories in to feed a small nation.

And of course I instantly regretted mentioning anything because he saw that as the ideal opportunity to start "advising" (that is, trying to force stuff on) me. So, for example, he tried saying something about snacks and lettuce. I cut both of these off quite abruptly, but they really get tot eh heart of what annoys me about him.

I mean, I've lost something in the order of one and a half stone across a couple f months and haven't collapsed or made myself ill or anything, so I clearly know what I'm doing and yet he feels the need (nay, the right) to start telling me what and how I should be doing what I've already been doing quite successfully, thank you very much.

Sorry, got a bit carried away there.

For the second part of the holiday I stayed in a Travelodge and, as discussed beforehand, I had two basic aims:

1. Watch loads of anime; and
2. Do lots of walking.

So did I succeed?

Well there's an old adage that no plan survives contact with the enemy, and that proved very true here.

Number 1 failed because I'd made a critical error before my holiday. Basically, a while back the sound stopped working on my laptop and I only remembered this literally the night before I left.

The laptop had vista on it and has proven to be something of a problem child. Only now I've got copies Windows 7, so I decided to install that and it totally cured the sound problem (yet another huge tick in Windows 7's good books). However, the majority of anime I was taking is region 1 and I generally use a program called DVD Region Free to get around this.

However, the old version I had didn't seem to work with windows 7 (it really is very old) and so I installed a newer trial version. This works fine, but it turns out that being a trial version it will only let you watch 15 minutes before closing what you're watching down and prompting you to buy it.

Watching stuff in 15 minute chunks proved to be beyond annoying, so I abandoned the anime in favour of watching some regular TV box sets I'd also taken with me (I will by the program, but it didn't seem safe using the free wifi to do it). I got through 3 sets:

• The final season of Lost;
• Season 3 of 30Rockp;
• Season 1 of Breaking Bad.

All of which I'm sure I'll review or talk about later, but still, it meant no anime, but I did still do a good chunk of watching stuff.

And that's a big post again, so more later.