House viewings are us, well me anyway. Saw two places today. Both were absolutely superb. I could've gone for both! I decided to go with the one which was a lovely top floor apartment(subject to reference checks clearing), one road off the high road but still within walking distance of the Northern line. This was in slight contrast to the other which was on the ground floor, albeit cheaper however just as good. I prefer being on the top floor.

It's funny, as soon as I walked in, I knew it, put my deposit down and started the ball rolling. Weird how certain you can be. Hopefully all that is now required, is for my reference checks to clear. I have enough time, to move out, to move in, and more importantly prepare my move out to ensure I get my last deposit without stress or anxiety. The more things I can cross off the list, the better, I guess. I've got exams, a wedding, incoming oversees visit, product release and surely the unexpected which surely or hopefully I can deal with!

I even went back to the office in London, Liverpool street to fetch a payslip in my draw for these reference checks. I'm on my way back home now, get some rest, perhaps watch a movie, do some reading and things should be ok.

As i was reaching for the sweetener to put in my tea, someone at work told me that using sweetener can cause cancer, ie it's a carcinogenic. She said, that I should listen to her and take it on board. She said its not natural and that pure sugar is better. While sweetener, in particular aspartame is a chemical, it's a human specifically engineered one, not reacting with the body's natural metabolism, which effectively ignores the substance in the body, causing no sugar-insulin spike, not tooth decay and low or no calorific count. Its regulated and approved for human consumption by the FDA like many substances we create and pass as not bring dangerous when consumed.. So, that said, I read a book about the history of Cancer(Tge empower of all Maladies), and the NCI(National Cancer Institute) was mentioned as the governing body to all is known about Cancer and this prompted me to see what they say about this claim. As it stands, neither the NCI not FDA, both which have conducted many tests both varied, short and long term,can find any indication that aspartame causes cancer. But don't take it from me, read up on it here:

American Cancer Agency

Sure everything must be taken is moderation, otherwise there are bound to be problems. Just because we've specifically engineered Aspartame doesn't mean it's bad. That like saying because we invented air travel, that's bad. We are exceptional beings, smart and ambitious and we can do anything, even prevent tooth decay but substituting sugar. Just goes to show, you must live your own life and yield to advice, and quietly evaluate it yourself, I guess.

So I started a strange ritual lately. Just before I goto bed, I start the stop watch on my watch and when I wake up I stop it. It let me see how much sleep, on average.

That's about it from me today...

So it's Friday. It's a good day. Been working rather productively over the last day or so. Yesterday was the 1 month point until it's the end of my tenancy, so it's kinda exciting but fairly anxious about finding a new, bigger place. Unfortunately looks like I might have to extend my budget somewhat...but on the plus side - I get a much nicer place for it.

When for a run this week from Liverpool street to Waterloo station, really like running next to the Thames - it's 6 km but I kinda struggled. I'm left with the words, "pace yourself" in my head as near the end I was quickly tapering off. Still, felt good having done it.

Finished watching Limitless last night. I dunno if being limitless via a drug is that cool. Wait. It is cool. But then my boring, practical and logical mind says no dude, reality is better. Blast it, wont even let me dream irrationally :-)

Bringing my iPad into the office today because its got a list of properties that I've bookmarked for viewing: I used a iPad app to look for new places, pretty cool actually. Also I've found a good tool to create UML diagrams which I'm trying to be competent at drawing so I can uniformly describe business objects and relationships between them. No, it's not as boring as it sounds.

I have been in a fairly dire position of having no coffee in the house lately. Must have been out for like 2 weeks or something. Thing about me and single living though is, that if I don't have something right now and it's not like the end of the world because of it, I'm cool with it - I don't mind, I'll just kinda just wait until I come around. Solitude, singularity and above all stress-free bliss. That is a requirement.

So I'm back to having funky strange dreams again. I had three last night I know that, but can't for the life of me remember what any were about. But there was three, that in sure of - How wacky is that. Maybe I'm just going batty. That's not it. I woke up maybe 3 times and maybe had a dream after falling asleep each time. Heck, I dunno!

Listening to the Black Keys lately, yeah, I like 'em. A good balance between calm and fidgety. That's where my post title came from, though I mixed it up abit: Black doors and silver keys.

Why? I dunno.

So today I tried to be productive, but I just got myself involved in unplanned work which took most if the day. When the day did end, I stuck around and tried to catch up, it's 21:51 now, I've just left the office..it's ok, really. Dome might think that staying late in the office is real weird but I do it do infrequently and only when I want to. Today I rested the company Guitar on my lap and strummed it in between work. It was cool plus I made real headway. The city is buzzing when I get outside, and as I walked down the black painted city with its high reds, low and bright whites, blues, green and I though how as the people grow up, move on, how the city just stays the same and how if you think you change the city, you don't - the next batch of Liverpool bankers and other suits will take over and the city just watches, like me, walking through it on my way home.

I got a house viewing tomorrow. Let's see how that goes.

The sucky thing about working late is having limited evening time but then again, my evening time do far as been pretty relaxed, doing exactly what I want, what I love. Am I so lucky? Yes.

So I figure I need stop ordering take out. It's like the 7th day I'm doing this. There is this Italian place that makes a a real wicked spaghetti bolegnase dish - I've ordered that at least 3 times now and sometimes I mix that up with a lasagne - its gotta stop. Still, I'm not eating Dominos pizza... and when you're out and down like I was being sick and all, not getting exercise and eating fatty food ain't do good.

I'm going running today, spent my lunch break yesterday in an outdoor shop, looking like a browser - its a look, an art perhaps, it's also a preventative measure against those helpful shop employees. Sometimes I think they're bored and are just bursting to tell someone something about what they know... I used to be like that. Now I just shut the hell up. But I found a cool runners shop near it and I found done running caps which I might get one today as I kinda like running with a peak cap - but these are rather special - they wick the sweat and wetness away and breath well. I guess also, now that my hair is growing a bit longer, it's a way to keep it together. I kinda might let it go again - I saw some pics of me with long hair and it was kinda hippy lookin' but hey what you gonna do, right?

I started to watch Limitless last night(as part of the movies I downloaded from anytime+ the weekend prior) but it got late around 22:44 so I canned it for perhaps tonight's viewing pleasure.

I was in HMV also during my lunch break and was this close to buying a new XBox game for a bargain price and then a strange thing happened to me again. I decided that even though it was cheap and a bargain - buying it wasn't necessary so I didn't. I know that a new game reduced my overall time I have in the evening and I kinda want to do other things and don't want conflicts.

Speaking of conflicts, I've got exams coming up for this years module, I haven't done that great this year(in getting bored) but if I do well in the exams, all is forgotten and everything is done and won so I need to work on this in the evenings.

Bob Dylan is still featuring pretty heavily in my tube playlist and Jimi Hendrix but the latter is kinda a new addition to me new playlist - he normally, like Bob Dylan, gets his own playlist.

I'm kinda getting a little unsettled at work, don't know for sure what it is but I hope this general anxiousness passes. Im in need for a project; JSP is my current one(to make websites)

A couple of days back, we set up the XBox up again on our new TV at work and discovered how cool kinects voice and swipe gestures are. In short - very cool so much so that I might even try it in the future - getting a Kinect that is, maybe even a new box(if I need one).

I don't even know how my run is going to go today but I'm looking forward to it.

PS: The image in this post is an attempt to simulate and model a motorbike accident my colleague saw using his lunch(cous cous and lentils) to show up the effect of loose gravel.

I thought that was kinda cool.