More End of Year Ramblings

I can barely summon the energy to post in these dead days of December, let alone think of anything to write. A large part of the country seems to have ground to a halt. Certainly, nobody seems to be in their offices, as the stats for The Sleaze confirm. During normal UK working hours traffic is dead, usually bored office workers are providing me with a steady stream of visits. Interestingly, traffic from the US seems unaffected. Get back to work you idle Brit bastards! Mind you, I can't talk, I'm off work until next Thursday. In my defence, unlike most of my compatriots, I haven't been obeying the command of the Great God Mammon to go and shop. Instead, I've been laid up shaking off a mild cold and a shoulder injury - every year I look forward to enjoying a Christmas without illness, it's never happened yet. However, when I did finally join the consumer maelstrom today, I found that there wasn't actually anything in the shops. I'm not talking about shopping in the sales, here. I'm talking about trying to do some ordinary everyday grocery shopping. Attempting to get a loaf of bread turned into a major quest. Shelves don't seem to have been replenished since before the Christmas break. Obviously all the delivery drivers and depot staff are off at the sales...

Speaking personally, I've never got the hang of sales. I really can't be arsed with engaging in bare knuckle contests with other shoppers for half price shoes and the like. Let's face it, if they're selling it cheap, it means they haven't sold any during the year at full price, probably because the product is shit. Not only did I have to brave hordes of certifiably insane shoppers today, but I also had to endure driving wind and rain as I struggled my way home. Jesus, what a shitty day! My desultory attempts to rework The Sleaze's page templates haven't amounted to much yet. Attempting to come up with new code which still looks like The Sleaze, whilst also being suitable for embedding php tags in, is slow work. Indeed, the whole idea of converting the site from static HTML to a dynamic script is so daunting that I'm beginning to have serious doubts about it. I just don't have the time, let alone the inclination. Maybe I'll feel differently in the New Year. Right now, I feel about as exhausted and played out as the year itself.