the winner, in the red corner

I very nearly attended three social things today. Firstly, having almost slept properly for more than five hours and having got up sufficiently early and been sufficiently organised in the morning to make it into the town centre by eight, I attended a coffee/cake/meetup thing to meet some nice cycling internet people. Despite feeling relatively fresh and perky (and being further perked by the nippiness of the morning) I look completely knackered in a photograph and only had a coffee when the compatible-flavour muffin/cakelets available sounded a bit too rich and sugary to be a viable breakfast-foodstuff. Secondly, TFP and I popped out to meet Cairo Boy the Hon. Master Findhorn and former colleague Duns for a pizza-lunch, which I acceded to when it turned out that the potential third event (office winter festive social occasion #2 (informal)) wasn't an equivalent to that a couple of years ago (where everyone sat down and had something to eat before swapping presents and drinking heavily) but was instead a mere visit to a pub which happened to sell food for those that wanted it but which was probably not likely to be immediately partaken of by all attendees upon arrival. As the secret-santa-present-distribution had already occurred as everyone completed their packing for our departmental transfer over the weekend the likelihood was that people would just be going to the pub to do pub-related things such as drink and steadily increase the volumes of their voices. I was planning to head up for a coffee-drinking-timesworth of attendance but discovered (when checking that all my vital bicycle components were still attached following an incident of apparent bicycle sabotage in a nearby car park last night) that a spoke had snapped during the day, necessitating a gentle trundle on quiet roads to a bicycle-shop and thence a gentle trundle along quiet roads (but which turned out to be extremely icy in the case of Warriston Road, though the nice arch of icicles on the underside of the bridge carrying the cycle path over the road was a nice sight) home. Having never previously suffered from broken spokes it's odd to have had two in the space of seven months (though on different wheels) and hopefully does not indicate that problems other people seem to have (such as wheel rims being worn thin enough by brakes to bulge or pop) might finally start occurring to me too.