1. Wonder how you can shoe-horn a link into one of your posts
2. Realise that with his greater guest-week experience, your co-guest has chosen a much better theme than you
3. Get over your theme-envy by just stealing his theme (sorry Lyle!)
4. Have another website you want to promote. This is pretty essential really as it’s quite hard to be a link-whore without anything to link to. For this example, I’ve gone to the trouble of quitting my secure, reasonably paid coding job and starting my own software company; you might find that it’s possible to become a link-whore without such extreme measures
5. Spend the time leading up to when you want to link-whore attending May Balls and going to Frankfurt for the weekend, rather than finishing off the site you want to promote. It may help to consult Lyle’s recent missive on being busy if you’re having trouble making things hectic enough.
6. Point out to everyone that there’s this really cool fledgling company called MCQN developing some easy-to-use backup software for home users.
7. Ask them all really, really nicely if they’ll help you out by filling out this short survey.
8. Hope everyone is too merry from the cocktails to mind too much 😉
9. Wonder if you’ll be invited back

I mentioned yesterday that one of the things leading up to May Week was The Bumps. Not a very descriptive name, is it? Well, once you know what it entails, it is quite descriptive, but I remember not having a clue what it was about when I first heard of it, so I thought it might be nice to elaborate on my “strange week-long rowing competition”.
Of course, it involves rowing. That is the sport in Cambridge, despite being the place where the rules of (association) football were first agreed upon. The week before May Week hosts the University Bumps, a contest between the rowing crews of the university colleges; not to be confused with the Town Bumps, a similar contest between the crews of the non-university rowing clubs held later in the year.
Unfortunately, the rowing bumps are nothing like the bumps you get at birthday parties. If they were, it would undoubtedly be easier for us non-rowers to get to grips with. Instead, it comprises a set of rules basically to get round the fact that the river Cam is only wide enough for one rowing boat at a time, and it’s quite hard to race if there’s no way to overtake the people in front.
So, the boats all line up about a length or so apart, and when the cannon is fired to signal the start of the race, each boat tries to catch and bump (bow getting ahead of stern is also counted as a bump) the boat in front whilst not getting bumped by the boat behind.
When a “bump” occurs, the two boats involved pull over to the side of the river, and their race is over – largely a good thing, as the race is run at sprint pace and you don’t really want to sprint the whole mile or two of the course. The boats will then swap positions for the race on the next day; there are daily races for a week, and the rankings are then held over ’til next year, so the aim is to climb the rankings as best as one can.
With boats dropping out of the race once a bump occurs, the following boat then has a lot of water to make up to catch the boat three in front, but if they manage to pull it off the same swapping rules apply and they gain three places in one go.
All that remains is for the crew of the bumping (as opposed to the bumped) boat to collect some willow branches from the banks of the river to wear in their hair to signal their success as they row back into town.
I guess as a way of turning a procession into a race it works quite well. Has anyone got Bernie Ecclestone’s email address? I think Schumacher would look quite good with bits of armco or sponsor’s hoarding stuck to his helmet…

1. Decide that for once you’re settled in life, and not really looking for anything to change
2. Listen to some tosspot who says “The best way to handle SAD is to keep busy“
3. Run round like a pillock for 12 months, having approximately 8 weekends free out of 52
4. Come close to a complete breakdown of all things nervous, mental, and physical
5. Decide that life needs to calm down, that domestic peace and quiet can be a good thing, and that will suit you nicely for a while, starting ASAP
6. Have a house with at least one spare room
7. Lose Filofax/Diary and thus all track of what’s happening in the next couple of months
8. While away for weekend (see post below about expensive wardrobes for slightly more details) start something that may or may not massively affect domestic life.
9. Even if it doesn’t massively affect life, make sure that it’s going to require a large amount of head-space, which is currently unavailable
10. Also while away for the weekend, receive a text message saying “I’ve seperated from my husband – can I stay in your spare room for a while?“
11. Say Yes.
12. Survive on a bare minimum of sleep
13. Realise the house needs tidying a bit before friend moves in over the weekend
14. Go out tonight with different friend, thus shortening available house-tidying time by 50%
15. Stress

It’ll all work out in the end, I’m sure – and almost certainly for the better. But dear lord, it’s getting complicated at the moment.
Oh, and then I’m also looking after Uborka while the Gruesome Twosome are off on holiday next week.
Note to self : “Calm life down” ≠ “Adding more stress to the mix”