Sunday night chit-chat

Or really, Monday morning chit-chat I suppose, since it's after one now.  Oops.  No photo this week but just a quote, one which I really like and printed out and hung up near my desk in work the first time I saw it.

"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes." (attributed to William Gibson, but he apparently says it's from Steven Winterburn - personally I don't care who said it, it's got too much of a ring of truth about it to worry about that.)

If you'd like to, please head over to Half-Dozen Daily to join in with Sunday night chit-chat.

What are you...
Reading
Lots and lots of blog - I spent a few hours today clicking through to places I haven't been before.  Also looked up wikipedia because I saw sriracha sauce mentioned in a recipe and didn't know what it was.  During the course of the next few hours I came across it on no less that three other different websites (and in very different contexts and recipes) - that was strange enough but then when I went to a friend's for dinner this evening, one of the other guests had brought a bottle of it with him (which he generously donated to me).  

Watching
More Mentalist - have made it as far as series 2 now.

Listening to
We listened to good music at my friend's house - her husband put on some internet radio that was playing an oldies/easy listening mix, so all the music I like, Kenny Rogers and everything.  

Baking/cooking
I didn't really cook anything today but the dinner I was invited to was similar to a raclette or fondue in that there was a central grill/machine on the table and each person had a miniature wok and we each could just chose whatever meat, veg and sauce combination we wanted and then 'cook' it on the grill part.  Good fun.

Happy you accomplished this week
I left my comfort zone and attended a party thrown by my upstairs neighbour, even though she was likely to be the only person there.  It was, if I'm honest, pretty boring and I felt kind of out of place, but I'm glad I did it.

Looking forward to next week
Bank holiday tomorrow and given how late I am up, I think I'll be sleeping in.  

Thankful for today
Nice friends

Bonus question: are you musically gifted/talented?  Do you play any instruments? Sing?
I'm not particularly talented but I do sing.  For the past four years I've sung with the Bach association choir in the town I live in and have participated in a couple of project choirs as well.  That's fun, especially if you know the standard is going to be good.  I'm heading off to Halle in east Germany the week after next for the Happy Birthday Handel performance of the Messiah, which I did two years ago as well and is a lot of fun.  I'll see some people as well as the director from the choir I used to sing with in Ireland there, too.  I'm definitely more suited to choir singing than solo though - my voice isn't all that strong and I need the support of the thirty (or three hundred) people around me.  I'm also very partial to a sing-song though and will belt out the old tunes with the best of them then and not much care what it sounds like.  I'm a bit of the opinion that there is nobody who cannot sing - because even people who cannot hold much of a tune can still sound wonderful if they are enjoying it.

I can always tell when I'm coming out of a bad bout of depression, too, because I'll find myself starting to sing randomly again.  Luckily I share an office with someone who doesn't mind too much and will even hum herself a little bit from time to time.  I grew up listening to my dad singing all around the house (he had a wonderful voice and was always the first one sought out to sing at parties) and it was only much later in life that I realised not everyone has that.  

I also had piano lessons for years when I was a kid but I was never very good at that.  I could thump out the notes in the order they were written on the page but I really had no feel for it.  Still plan on having a piano in my house one day, though.  And one Saturday afternoon when I was about 14, I taught myself to play "do, a deer" on the tin whistle.  Now that is a fascinating instrument that I would really like to be able to play properly.  Such a simple thing but people who are good at it can wring the most incredible tunes from one.