On this European night out on the brink, the cafés and the bars still stink.

I still feel like a hamster running late on his wheel. Friday I handed the on-call phone and 3G card to my boss with great pleasure. In the evening I went to the Penderels Oak for the Wikipedia meet. It was OBVIOUSLY INSANE of us to attempt meeting in a pub in the city on a Friday straight after work, but somehow we managed a productive evening.

No talks, just chatting in a pub and sorting out important Cabal business. I have to arrange a serious meeting over a few hours with various people over Wikipedia 1.0, which appears to be a project that will eat our arses if we don't work out damn soon how to get a good stable version to emerge from the wiki process. hairyears wandered by and appears to have signed himself up to make Windows Installer files (MSIs) for MediaWiki and its dependencies (Apache, MySQL, PHP) — so that approval for a wiki is easier to get past the pointyhairs ("Look, it runs on Windows! Four button clicks!") and the box can later be converted to Linux for a notable speed increase ...

Saturday we went to annoy the Scientologists for Lisa McPherson Day. (Lisa McPherson tried to leave Scientology, so they tied her to a bed where she died of dehydration.) We have had some problem with the Church of Scientology and David Blunkett's gibberingly insane fine new law for protecting the public dignity of religions; in their rôle as the pathological behaviour tester of the legal system, the Church decided us demonstrating against them offended their religion. We got some advice from Liberty and worked out the most conservative and boring way to demonstrate. So for five demonstrators and four or five Scientologists, we had six police present observing the proceedings. I was on the boom box, repeating the same thirty seconds of soundbites for about two hours (with arkady taking over for a while). We gave away lots of leaflets. By far the most popular was $cientology Costs A Mint, which sets out the price list as a running total.

In the evening, we made another trip to Fucking Lakeside to argue with Ikea. They came yesterday and delivered everything except the couch and the bed frame. Today we got the couch and sofa and arranged their delivery and a refund of the first delivery. This is only a moral victory, as we spent the money on a taxi back, but returning the pain is just fine by me.

Sunday we get a couch and a bed. Apart from assembling the latter (and boy do Ikea beds suck to assemble ... I took down and rebuilt redcountess's Melbourne one twice, though it seems like more), it should be that thing I haven't had much of lately: a day of relative leisure.

Today's quote apropos of nothing: "I have never worn coloured condoms and never plan to. I'd feel like my dick had joined TISM."

I feel fine to be dancin', baby.

Aaand exhale. Today I slept until twelve, spent the early afternoon idly reading LiveJournal, then the Ikea delivery arrived and we set up a sofa and a coffee table. Then we ordered truly remarkable quantities of pizza, some beers and a bottle of white wine and are sitting remarkably contentedly watching Mastermind whilst online via wireless. The bed can wait until tomorrow.