Yet another portion of nonsense scooped from the innards of my instant-messaging program this morning:

Leon: greetings
Leon: have the gods of war been good to you on this fine morn?
Pastamasta: Fie! Only this morning, my finest milk goat was stricken with the curdling plague, and now my favourite smiting-axe is missing from the wall! Aaaarrr!
Pastamasta: May Loki heap a boiling curse upon the miserable thief!
Leon: ah-hahahaahahah, thoust hath only one favorite smiting axe...
Pastamasta: Thoust hath??
Leon: eh?
Pastamasta: Dost thou not mean, "thou hast"?
Leon: no!
Pastamasta: Well, shucks.
Leon: that's how i write it.
Pastamasta: Ahh, now I understand, ignoble one! Thou hast an Icelandic accent, whereas I speak with the tongue of Vinland! Ahahaha!!
Leon: ah-hahahahaha!!!!
Pastamasta: AHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!!!!
Leon: Ah-hahahahahahahahaha! hahahahahahahahahahhahahhahaha! hahahahahaha! hahahahahahahahhahah! hahahahahahahahahahaha! hahahahahahahhahahhahahahahahaha! hahahahaha! hahahahahah! hahahhahahahahahahaha! hahahahahahahahahahhahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pastamasta: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA [repeat for about 30 lines] HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Leon: ow, ok.
Pastamasta: Thou shalt not defeat me, thou Icelandic swineherd's serf!
Leon: ello mate. things well?
Pastamasta: Yeah, not bad.

Viking-themed lunacy is occurring more and more frequently in my office, actually. I don't know why. Vikings are pretty damn cool, but it doesn't really account for senior managers wandering around and bellowing, "Thor's blessings upon thee, steadfast thane," and the like. It's full moon, though, so perhaps that explains it.

Unfortunately, it's a Christmas present for The Missus, who spotted one in a gadget shop the other week and went, "Ooh, those are so coooool" (yes, I do listen occasionally). I only say "unfortunately" because I'd love to have one but it's the sort of thing I'd never buy for myself.

Actually, that pretty much guarantees that she's bought one for me as well, doesn't it? Hmmm.

Anyway, it's credit card-sized and comes with 10 funky tools, including a tiny screwdriver, a small blade and some scissors, which makes it pretty damn cool in my opinion. I tell you what, those Swiss chaps make some excellent spy gear considering their reputation for military neutrality...

Spotted a quote on a consumer forum this morning which pretty much describes my attitude to life perfectly. No idea where it originated, but here it is:

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, "What a ride!"

That about sums it up, really.

How fantastic am I? That's the question I'll have to answer when I have my annual review on Thursday. Yes, it's that time of year again, when all good employees have to figure out a way to say "I'm amazing and the company would fall to pieces in fifteen seconds without me so give me huge wodges of cash, please" without (a) sounding conceited or (b) lying blatantly. I loathe it, I really do. I loathe the very idea that you have to brag, boast and otherwise blow your own trumpet in order to progress. If someone does a good piece of work for me, I make a point of emailing them to say thanks, and copying their manager so they can see that the person is helpful and competent. If we all did that, then the managers would have plenty of material with which to make an assessment.

But no, us poor unhappy serfs, the huddled mass of lowly cogs, we cannot get by if we lack drive and ambition, oh no! We must strive to transform ourselves into big cheeses by the time-honoured method of shoving our noses up the bums of the existing cheeses, and licking patiently until we're accepted into the Big Boys' Club. What a crock of shit. "Ambition" is fast becoming a four-letter word in my dictionary.

Head hurts. Mouth dry. Joints creaking in ghost-ship fashion. Eyeballs scraping inside sockets like shrivelled grapes. Too tired to type with more than one finger.

Memo to self: must avoid Playstation tonight.

Well, I finally succumbed to the inevitable yesterday evening, after days of dithering and much peering into the draughty recesses of my wallet. Yes, I have treated myself to an early Christmas present (in recognition of my own stalwart bravery in the face of the marauding attentions of the Dentist from the Black Lagoon), to wit, the last copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on the shelf at Tesco's. Last night, once the womenfolk were safely abed (around 10pm), I legged it downstairs, rubbing my hands in childish glee, turned on the PS2 and loaded it up.

Big, big mistake.

I staggered up to bed at about 4am, having ignored my brain's increasingly insistent "aargh" signals for the previous three hours (a tendency for which I am regularly berated by The Missus, with some justification), and having paused only for loo breaks and an emergency coffee at 1:30. The game is enormous. As a previous player of GTA: Vice City, itself a game of rather generous proportions, I was truly staggered by the sheer size of the "world" of San Andreas, and this was before I'd even explored a tenth of it. The level of graphical detail has improved noticeably since the previous incarnations, to the point where it begins to become truly immersive. The real killer, though, is the intricate gaming detail itself, where almost any object can be interacted with in highly specific ways, where individual buildings can be explored, where you can go into a bar and have a game of pool or use a videogame machine (proper, playable games-within-games), where you can commandeer your own gang and where you even have 'manageable' relationships with individual characters. It's completely mind-blowing.

There are, of course, those who are opposed to the GTA series on the moral grounds that they glamorise violence, and I think there is a definite validity to this viewpoint when children are involved. However, adults (a group in which I reluctantly include myself) are big and clever enough to be able to tell game from reality, and for those adults who don't mind the odd bit of fake blood on the tarmac (which is no worse, after all, than what we would see at the movies), this game promises months of enjoyment.

Now I need to figure out how to play it in my sleep.

Have just returned from yet another visit to the dentist, which is happening all too often for my comfort these days. Nothing major this time, just a "scale and polish", as they innocuously call the operation, a title which belies its power to cause astonishing pain to those undergoing it. They don't even get a dentist per se to do the work, they offload it onto the "hygienist", and there's a novel use of the word, since the woman in question was hardly hygienic this afternoon. She had a cold, or other nasal maladjustment, which was making her snort and sniff and wipe her rather hairy nostrils on her sleeve every few seconds. So picture this woman rummaging about in the dim and grungy lower cavities of my skull, and all the while making small snuffling noises, like a determined badger excavating a really tight burrow. Meanwhile, I'm pinned helplessly beneath with my jaw wedged open by unnecessarily large and solid metal clamps, as though I were an apprehensive laboratory python about to be force-fed a whole pig, and hoping, praying, please God please God sweet Jesus don't let her virus-laden nasal fluids drip into my mouth. Luckily, they didn't, but I swear I was mere seconds away from some horrendous disease. National Health Service, my arse.

A smidgeon of excitement in an otherwise dishwater day - a chap has just been thrown out of the office for being drunk. At least, I assume he's drunk; his shambolic gait, ruddy countenance and wildly rolling eyes suggest that he's had more than his fair share of the foaming beery substances at lunchtime, but I suppose it could always be the canteen coffee. At any rate, a bunch of us have been standing by the window watching this poor fool being ejected with kind but firm pressure from the main revolving door, whence he followed a gentle parabola to the grass of the front lawn, and then meandered off apparently muttering naughty words. I imagine he'll be asked to clear his desk tomorrow (if he bothers coming back, that is); the company has a low tolerance for that sort of thing. Poor bugger, think I, this place is enough to drive anyone to drink sometimes. Ah, well, musn't dawdle, it's back to the server statistics report for me. [swigs surreptitiously from hip flask]

An email has just done the office rounds asking for the correct spelling of the word "ratatouille". The chap who was doing the asking was plumping for "rattatuie" but was pretty sure that that was wrong. The answers which came back included:

• ratatouie
• ratattuie
• rattattuey
• ratatooey
• ratoteuile (yes, really)

I've told him the right answer but I don't think he believes me.

(Oh God, I really hope "ratatouille" is the right answer now...)

The linguistic abilities of the wee Sarah continue to astound. Suddenly, in the space of the last week or so, she's started stringing two or occasionally three words together quite confidently. She's done it sporadically before (usually "more" followed by a noun of choice), but now it's every other utterance. "Shoes socks on", "daddy's car", "Sarah bed sleep", "jacket off", "in a minute", "thankyou mummy", "there it is" and "Sarah grumpy" are some of the favourites. We can hold proper little conversations now - it's wonderful. This morning, as I was taking her to nursery, we had the following:

Sarah: Look birds!
Me: Where are the birds?
Sarah: Sky!
Me: Where?
Sarah: [pointing] There up.
Me: Wow.
Sarah: Wowww.
Me: What are they doing?
Sarah: Flying birds! [flapping motions]
Me: Yes, well done!
Sarah: [clapping hands] Sarah clever.

See, she's getting conceited already. Little showoff.

For some reason which temporarily escapes me, I've agreed to go to a pub quiz this evening. Normally, this would be a good thing; my general knowledge is relatively good, and my uncommon knowledge (i.e. of bizarre, outlandish and mostly useless facts) is widely regarded to be encyclopaedic. However, this is going to be a sports quiz, and my knowledge of that particular field, haha, of endeavour is widely regarded to be an extra-tiny version of bugger all. This means that I'm going to be displaying my astounding sporting ineptitude in front of a packed pub of local worthies, not to mention four of my workmates. I feel a serious embarrassment session coming on.

P.S. What's the longest jump distance ever achieved in tiddlywinks? Go on, have a guess.

So I turned up back home yesterday evening after a hard day's beating the crap out of recalcitrant computers, to find a mouth-watering smell wafting from the kitchen, and a slightly dishevelled and lightly gravy-encrusted Missus looking very smug and pleased with herself. Apparently, she'd been cooking. Yes, really. To put this in perspective, the last time The Missus cooked an evening meal for the two of us was in 2002. It's that rare. But, by Shiva and his many-armed wife, it smelled GOOD.

There was some confusion as to the exact identity of the dish in question, because she kept alternating between calling it "shepherd's pie" and "cottage pie". Now, many of you will have tried both shepherd's pie and cottage pie, and may not even have noticed a difference or, indeed, realised that they are in fact quite different dishes. Basically, shepherd's pie is made with lamb, appropriately enough, whereas cottage pie is made with beef, presumably because cows live in cottages. (At least, rural cows do; I imagine that your average urban cow has a cramped little bedsit above a chip shop.)

Anyway, the pie was gorgeous. I mean, seriously gorgeous. It was the kind of pie that reminds you that, even though the English generally get the rough end of the stick when it comes to national culinary reputations, very occasionally they come up with something simple yet heavenly which is an instant classic. Yum.

However.

"Shepherd's pie" is a bit troubling, when you think about it. Surely, mincing up your woolly charges and turning them into tasty meals would not, one would think, be a key element of the job description. I've checked up on this. All the employment assistance websites agree that, when interviewing for the position of shepherd, one of the key things to remember is not to mention your predilection for slaughtering the sheep and coating them with a layer of delicious fluffy mashed potato, before baking them in a deep dish for 45 minutes at 190 degrees.

Oh, and it was a cottage pie, by the way. The little bits of thatching should have clued me up, really.

What is it with this piece of chewing gum? I've taken to using so-called "dental gum" after breakfast (my dentist says I have to take better care of my teeth, so I'm only following orders) but I've come up against an odd phenomenon, which is this: I never actually seem to get around to taking the chewed lump out of my mouth. It just sits there. I mean, it's not as if there's much flavour left, is it? And let's face it, what little there is is hardly a gastronome's delight. It's sort of minty, with a hint of cloves and a mildly unpleasant aftertaste of trichlorophenol, hardly anything to write a glowing restaurant review about. And yet, the damn thing is still in there. It'll still be there at lunchtime, at this rate. I'm just sitting at my desk, typing away, and all the while masticating doggedly, like a cow with a really stubborn bit of cud which refuses to go quietly.

Yes, okay, I admit it. I have been slack. I am slacker than the jaw of a hillbilly yokel with mandibular atrophy. I am the very model of a modern major slacker. And what's worse, I have no particularly good excuse. True, I have been coughing up lovely big chunks of lung detritus for the past week, but then that is nothing new for me; true, young Sarah has been waking up four or five times per night and demanding "milk", "cuddle", or for some new, unknown and fairly worrying reason, "beans", but again, this is more or less standard practice these days and does not warrant a call to the local press.

Sorry.