Cake. Pies. Pizza. Good wishes… Every time we have a birthday at work we colleagues get the benefit of the celebrant's largesse; it's great.

Yesterday's and today's celebrations put my recent kilogramme of biscuits to shame: yesterday 3 large pre-sliced cakes; today pies, pizza, chicken nuggets, other foodstuffs, and the remains of yesterday's cakes!

At the 10am daily brew time I chanced an arm – being Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday it seemed appropriate to alert the birthday boy thus: "Brew time ma'am!" I curtseyed too. Badly though, I'm out of practice.

It was received well.

I found a personal limit yesterday; 9 pieces of cake, sized small as they were, is indeed too much.

Perhaps I should have used the title 'plentiful', a good couple of days.

I hold a healthy amount of respect for our local Conservative councillors: approachable, local people; all with local interests at heart. All turn out to community-organised events. If not pillars of our community then friends of it, with a deep understanding of what makes it tick.

At a national level though, Conservatives seem completely, irredeemably, incompetent. If not morally-bankrupt, they're providing us with a useful template, a solid foundation for future generations to build misery on.

Speaking of foolish people, my life tends to run along a series of streaks. 'Cold Toilet Seat' and 'Blogging' are just 2 I could mention. Here's a good one though:

Days I haven't made a complete arse of myself: 0.

It reset today.

(Not telling.)

Yesterday afternoon the Labour Party's local local election candidate called round. Not specifically to my home of course…

Ruby dog barks at pretty-much everyone who calls now. I ask her to "Wait", close the living room door, and answer the front door – safe in the knowledge Ruby can observe from the relative comfort of the front window.

Yesterday though, yesterday unfolded a little differently.

I got up, asked Ruby to "Wait", closed the door, answered the front door and no sooner had I said "Hello. Sorry to say I'm not voting for you but I wish you every success, especially at the national level…" than Ruby shot past me, out of the door!

She wouldn't come back, ran next door, into the road, up the street and then waited. I followed, no shoes. As I closed in, all the while telling her to "come here", she sat, until something made her decision and she ran across the road and along the path we usually start the walk at.

3/4 of the way along she nosed about in the grass, all the while keeping what she must have thought a safe distance from me.

Eventually though as I waited and calmed down she came to me, I let her pause a moment to reestablish something-or-other, trust maybe, and picked her up.

I took 3 things away from this situation:

1. Shouting at a newly-escaped dog fails,
2. It's surprisingly hard to walk on the pavements (US: sidewalks) around here shod only in socks, even the thick ones I wore yesterday,
3. People who call unannounced at your door will walk away when presented with a situation it's easier to pass on to someone else.

I'm not inclined to test the next candidates out in a similar fashion. But it did cross my mind to.

I probably quit Medium in 2011; I've not been back there since. Being totally frank about the entire process it became hard work keeping engaged, maintaining the daily routine, sustaining the decision-making, the triaging process…

It wasn't a conscious decision to quit Medium; far from it in fact. The positive benefits of maintaining oversight demonstrably outweigh the later feelings of 'what-if I'd…'

I occasionally tell people an amusing-to-me anecdote associated with a wedding reception invite. It ably illustrates if not why I left Medium then what happened afterwards.

We got a wedding invite late in 2015; used it as an excuse to leave the girls at home and relax.

Well, the process started off calmly-enough but descended into farce – thankfully before we left home.

I had nothing to wear, not shirts anyway. Call me lazy, but I'd simply not bothered to buy new smart clothes for a few years. My wife promised to shop for me, she'd pick something suitable; my fashion sense isn't the best, see?

All she needed: my collar size. So I told her and the next day an SMS indicated a shirt awaited my arrival home from work…

A very nice shirt too.

I went upstairs to try it on. And there my comfortable existence fell apart…

I believed, Believed, BELIEVED I was still a size 14-1/2" collar.

No.

16" neck. 40" chest. Still short-of-leg though; that and the waist measurement remain mine.

I'm thankful no fly-on-the-wall documentary team was shadowing me that day; to see me first manfully then not-quite so manfully struggling with that obviously too-small-for-me shirt, first to fail to pull the sleeves up my arms, then to fail to fasten any buttons… And then to spend the longest 2 minutes of my life attempting (and finally succeeding right at the point my sense of reason was screaming at me to shout downstairs) to inch first one then the other sleeve down…

No longer Medium.

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Cheap, clickbait post? Yeah, why not? Fashionable, isn't it. I probably deserve your scorn simply for staying Large.

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If you don't understand this, don't worry.

A colleague and his partner are there right now, starting their first full day. I was there 24 years ago, didn't enjoy the daytimes much; it's a city that's best viewed in the dark, both literally and of the mindset.

My recollection is of air-conditioned, windowless rooms, filled with people dully feeding slot machines and shouting nonsense at the gaming tables. The nightlife is a different matter though. Loud, brash, spectacular.

From a quick look at Google Earth the area around my memories seems to have been extensively redeveloped. I'm no longer sure I'd like to revisit; memories, you know?

I'm pleased to see the volcano opposite Harrah's remains, just up The Strip from the down-a-gap-between-2-buildings Travelodge we stopped in; no longer a Travelodge, I'm not even sure if the building exists.

Thanks for provoking the memories nameless-for-blogging-purposes man. Take it easy though, your 4 hours' sleep may not be quite enough to tackle Death Valley. Mind you, if you're man-enough to wake up her indoors to send her my best wishes for a great holiday at that hour you'll probably do just fine.

Water!

The girls and mummy are having a slumber party this evening; pyjamas, sleeping bags, popcorn and, of course an age-appropriate scary movie.

I was invited; an honourary girl for the evening. One snag though, I don't possess pyjamas. No-one ever bought me a onesie, despite multiple threats to…

For laughs and giggles, mummy suggested I should come downstairs dressed only in my gaudy boxer shorts – hey I've more than the one pair dontchaknow!

So I did.

Not a one of them, not even Ruby dog (also an invitee) expected how I'd present myself…

A giggle from daughter 1 (nearly 9), a look of shock from daughter 2 (6-1/3) and no tut my wife… a success, I think.

In other news; I really didn't anticipate my waist-to-cranial ratio had changed so much over the years!

In a hurry to leave the house this morning, head befuddled by sleep, I failed in one important detail. Important.

The orientation of my new, gaudily-coloured boxer shorts unfortunately precludes my ability to pee stood up. I'm also imagining the wind blowing unfettered where it ought not to…

The good news: my work toilet seat streak remains cold; unblemished by recent prior other-arse occupancy.

It's the small things in life…

A metric shed-load, nay airship-hangar-load of people suffer from a life-shortening condition. It's talked about, occasionally examined in detail, but doesn't get as big a press as, say, diabetes, cancer, dementia or, the recent fashionable killer, motor neurone disease (ALS.)*

From a Guardian article:

"Do you get enough sleep? Of course you don’t. Very few people with busy jobs, young children or smartphones do."

I don't. I don't need a sleep app to tell me I don't. I don't have the will to do anything about it.

But wait!

The article shows me that I'm a throwback, an artifact of a time long-past when scientists, pseudo-statisticians and armchair statisticians (politicians!) didn't rule our lives. Wine is good for you one month and bad for you the next. Chocolate. Beef. Chicken. MSG. Sugar. Salt. Fast food. Life after 30 will be next…

Moderation is the key, understanding when you've had enough, knowing when it's OK to conform… and when it isn't.

Sleep 8 hours? It'd be nice. Sleep a continuous 8? Pressure!

No longer.

A question I must ask myself:

"How do I now regulate my 2 periods of sleep to get the best out of them?"

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*The Ice Bucket Challenge made a short-term impact. 'Twas tempered only by my certain knowledge that most used the thing as a social event, and that it made enemies of other, more-established charities. Envy.