254 Pages

That's either a lot of pages or not very many ...

And of course, everything makes more sense with context.

In a story driven book, it can be a pleasant collection of short stories. I've really enjoyed a few of those collections, especially :

Anne McCaffrey's Get Off The Unicorn;
Heinlein
Larry Niven with the Known Space short stories
And many more too.

It can be the length of a novel with a good story which rattles through its tale and leaves you very satisfied by the end (Man Plus was an excellent 215 pages), or the length of a short story that has been thrashed out far beyond what it should have been (like the various Mass Effect books).

It could be part of a series of books which just keep getting better as the series goes on with the cliffhanger at the end of one book leaving you eager for the next and cursing the wait until you get your mitts on it.

(And then there are the books that start around this mark but then fester, grow and mutate into pretty crummy books. Yep, I'm looking at you Mr Weber with the Honorverse that went on too long).

254 pages is about what you get in computer magazines now, it's a far cry from the 1000 or so you might have got with your PCW mag or Computer (spit) Shopper where you got a massive doorstop which was excellent for a variety of reasons : many adverts that were worth reading and collapsed the price down. The last time I bought a Computer Shopper (yep, I know, never again), it was 4 times the price and a quarter of the size. And one reason I got it was to find out about computer bits sellers. The ads in these mags are actually useful ...

But the reduction in ads in recent times for those mags is probably a sad reflection of the industry, where instead of huge numbers of suppliers, the bad ones have died leaving fewer suppliers to fight for your business. Margins are tough and so is the business. Means we get stuff cheaper though :-).

The 254 pages refers to none of those though - but I am going to tease it out some more ... cos I'm like that :-).

Yep. Evil.

And I will be wearing that other t-shirt at some point.

After having a bit of a collapse last week, I'm actually much better this week. I'm not back to as good as I have been lately, not yet. But a lot of the angry red has been reclaimed by Healthy Pasty White. Not fixed yet and I could very easily set it back again by being careless. But it is a good sign that my outsides have been reclaiming the bad again. Gives more hope.

Good signs. Must see if I can keep that improvement going with things like drinking lots of water to balance the hot muggy conditions we have here at the moment.

And no, 254 pages is probably not how long my doctor's notes are. I have mixed feelings about missing seeing them last week. On one side, I made a promise which I didn't manage to keep. On the other, I was so heavily affected by the allergy problems that an allergy test would have been a waste of time ... again.

Wonder if 254 is anywhere near to the number of orders I've put in with That Delivery Place Which Does Not Pay Taxes. I think you know who I mean there. They're big and the EU branch is based in the tax haven that is Luxembourg. I put in an order for Something Large and the delivery option I chose said to expect it Friday or Saturday when I'd have a chance to be in to accept it.

Imagine my surprise when an email pops up saying that it was arriving today ... when I was committed all day at work. Cue an email to the customer service people, who allegedly acted and moved delivery back to Friday. Nah. It still came today as a happy surprise with a knock on the door around 8pm ish.

254 pages ?

That's how many pages are in the book for the Lego Le Mans car.

It is in its box, silently taunting me. I can hear Vroom Vroom noises in my mind. Yep. And it's not the neighbour with the deliberately broken exhaust either.

It's going to be so tough to resist the temptation to put it together ahead of the Le Mans 24 hour race, which is 10 days away.

There ! Such a tease tonight. And I am so completely unrepentant.

And I'll leave it there before another group of people joins that list of those who are going to hunt me down and murder me in my sleep for deeds done. My current boss will probably do that if we go through with the idea to get him a Metal Earth kit (DEFINITELY!) or a Nanoblock Titanic (cos - reasons) for his leaving gift.