Boxing Day 2009

Well, Christmas was a brief affair but good while it lasted. There is a heap of litter now in rubbish sacks. Every family member has their own pile of presents that there isn't room in the house for. I have loads of washing up to do, my least favourite chore. I've had afternoon naps infront of the TV the last two days after eating large Christmas lunches with a couple of glasses of wine. I blame my napping on the wine.
This morning my son asked me to help paint a picture with him, he got a superhero painting set as a stocking present. We started it together but he got bored really quickly and I just carried on with it. I scanned it in when it was dry (it was a watercolour) and will post it on here as soon as I can get a chance, it doesn't all fit on the scanner so he might be missing a toe or something. I like watercolour painting but have never really done it seriously.

Merry Christmas!

Holiday Time

I’ve had a sore throat since yesterday and the sniffles in my nose have gotten worse. I don’t like not feeling well but when you have a cold, you just have to get through the symptoms as best as you can.

This weekend was busy, we went to London to watch the carols and singalong. We took the children up to my parents. And today, well we had to pick a few things up from my wife’s workplace and pop into town. I borrowed a couple of books to read from the library, I don’t normally read fantasy fiction but thought I’d give it a go. I picked up a collection of short stories by Kelley Armstrong and David Eddings’ The Diamond Throne. I also picked up a couple of videogames that were on sale to go through.

I’m working on Wednesday but will try to do as little as possible ;-)

Hurrah for holidays!!

Well, I have one day to work next Wednesday but apart from that, I'm a free man until 6th January, huzzah! There is a lot of snow forecast for the early hours of tomorrow morning, I took tomorrow off to go to church to see my kid's school perform a carol concert. I love watching that sort of thing and this year my daughter is performing a solo guitar piece.  I'd hate to miss that for the sake of a bit of snow. It seems the first snowfall of a season takes everyone by surprise and everything seems to shut down. So I do hope that the school stays open and that the snow isn't too bad for us.
We've another busy weekend this one. We've tickets to watch a Christmas carol concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London again this year. We seem to go every year now and have a box which accommodates 8 people so that there is plenty of room behind us to have some drinks and food whenever we want to. I like singing along with everyone else, my mother inlaw invites guests too, so I'm not sure who else will be coming along. It will be good though I'm sure. Have a great weekend folks, Christmas is not far away now!

Christmas no.1

I’ve heard that a Facebook group has been set up to promote sales for Rage Against The Machine’s song Killing In The Name because there is a feeling that the X Factor is a cynical marketing ploy to artificially push it’s own winner to number 1. I like the Rage Against The Machine song and if I were to purchase one of the songs it would probably be that one. However, I’m not the type who buys singles and especially not at Christmas. The last single I bought at Christmas was probably the charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas?

It did get me thinking though, why not have an alternative alternative? So here is my choice for an alternative Christmas single: Death of Love by Cradle Of Filth. I jest of course but just imagine if my alternative catches on?

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

It’s a busy weekend for us. My children’s school disco was Friday night, so I had to be a taxi. In between journeys I treated us to a Chinese takeaway from a shop we don’t often use. the food was really good though but we ordered way too much! Watching the children leave the disco was funny, all hot, sweaty and tired and covered with fake tattoos. Mummies were all red in the face, also tired. At least it finished at 8pm, early enough to get kids in bed and still have some time afterwards before retiring to bed.

Yesterday we spent much of the day in Oxford. I love walking the narrow backstreets of Oxford, its such an old town with such amazing history. My children were playing Harry Potter as we looked into windows of the jewellery shops: it was just like Diagon Alley with the numbers of people. The gargoyles on the colleges also fascinated them. We actually saw the touring show of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and I have to say it was excellent. The stage sets were great and the car effects were magnificent. I loved the car as a kid and it brought all those memories back to life.

Christmas tree time

Yes, that time of year again. Our tree and lights are now up and I feel a little more festive. I also found out last night that our Wii isn't actually in storage but in its box on the shelf in the lounge. Funny that I've seen the box but assumed it was empty just because my wife said it was. I think she just said that at the time we were talking about a house move before Christmas. That's not happening now, so she's let up a little.
Well, December is racing along as it usually does. We actually went shopping for a few final presents yesterday and my goodness! It was incredibly packed. We thought we'd get there early (tills open from 11am but "browsing time" means some stores open before that). We actually got there at about 10:30 or maybe just before. As it was Sunday, there wasn't much food left in the house so we decided to have a Macdonald's breakfast: it was rammed! We had to find a seat upstairs because it was just so noisy and busy downstairs.
We lasted a couple of hours and even split up to save a bit of time. Then we were all done-in, exhasuted.
I drove home, went upstairs and then fell asleep on the bed for a couple of hours. During which my wife went out again to get a few final items from the local shops. Upshot of the day was that we think we've got most of what we need for this year.
Last night we watched Batman Begins on TV. I haven't seen that film for over a year but I do enjoy it.

Outdated tech

There is a list of technology that is on the verge of extinction in 2010. Here is the list:

• DVD players (not for me, I still only watch DVDs, no Blue Ray for me. I could download a film from Zune but it would be for my Xbox connected screen not the one in my lounge)
•   Fax machine (well, I can’t remember the last fax I sent so its not a surprise to me, I always hated faxing anyway the quality was shocking)
• Analogue TV (no surprise again, with the digital switchover imminent. I have noticed that digital reception is affected by adverse weather and while you could just about watch analogue TV through interference it just becomes impossible to watch digital TV through it because the picture just freezes)
• The landline phone (not for us, again we still rely on our house phone as an alternative to Skype and our cell phones, I have noticed however that we use it a lot less frequently)
• Mobile phone charger (there isn’t an imminent alternative in our household, I’ve heard about these charging mats but have never seen one in real life. A universal connector would be a bonus though)
• Wii remote (I don’t think this will happen so soon, considering the number of Wii consoles out there. I’ve seen a demo of Xbox’s Project Natal and it looks interesting but as far as I’m concerned I like the feel of a controller in my hand)
• Sat-nav (our Sat-nav will still be in use throughout 2010 as I don’t see us buying into smart phones that are muted to replace these, we’re happy with the basic cell phones we have)
• 3G Dongle (I hate 3G anyway, it’s slow and reception is generally poor wherever I go with my work 3G card. I hate the way USB dongles stick out so much. I’m much happier using my Netbook, although I only use it around my home so I can see the need for mobile broadband coverage –I just don’t think 3G is the future)
• The computer mouse (I don’t see this going anywhere, it has survived over a long period and has evolved from the pretty terrible ball to the cool optical variety)
• Chip and Pin cards (I wasn’t aware there was an alternative but Wave and Pay is mentioned, I’m not sure what that is – sounds too prone to false payment to me. I’ve gotten so used to Chip and Pin now that I can hardly remember what life was like before it. I feel more comfortable typing in a pin and carrying a card around.)

Do you have any other ideas of your own? I’ve got a few items we have ditched in the last couple of years:

• scientific calculators (people have phones with calculators on these days, the days of having a block-like calculator with lots of complex scientific functions seem to have gone – at least in my life)
• Personal CD player (move over CD, the MP3 player has probably already made you obsolete)
• VHS video recorder (sorry, another easy target)
• Film-based SLR camera (yep, I can’t remember when I last bought a roll of film)
• 1.3 MP digital cameras (yeah, you can’t buy these now can you? Don’t they give them away free with Happy Meals yet?)
• Tape based voice recorders (the micro cassette variety of voice recorders are surely obsolete. Digital recorders offer hours of record and a lot of MP3 players allow record too now)

Bear with a sore head

I didn’t have such a good weekend this week. I was like a bear with a sore head and probably not very nice to be around for my family. My bad vibe carried over into today as well. Do you think it’s possible to have male PMT? I’m not very happy with myself for being Mr Grumpy.

I brought the advent calendars down from the loft this afternoon. They can go up tonight in preparation for the children to find in the morning. They love opening the windows and finding the chocolate and toys to hang up.

I watched some clips of kids opening their Wii on Youtube. Some of their reactions are hilarious.

Happy Thanksgiving

I know this is late but I hope my US blog friends had a great Thanksgiving. You could say I had an early Thanksgiving, last weekend my brother and his wife flew over to the UK to see the family. I haven’t seen them for a year and I hadn’t seen my folks since August, so it was nice to see the family again on Saturday. I took my children with me but my wife had to take a group of colleagues to a work related exhibition that day. Dad opened some champagne and mom put out some food, I had a beer and a chat with my brother, which was nice. My folks gave my son a Lego box they had kept for 5 years for him until he was old enough. It helped get me, my son, daughter and my brother and his wife laugh about things while we all tried making stuff. We so rarely get together, it was special. After my brother and his wife had left and my kids were in bed, I fell asleep – must have been the alcohol and the journey. I woke up feeling like I was being boiled, I was under a duvet on the sofa fully clothed: it was 10:40.

This week was a very stressful one workwise. However, at the same time I pulled off something quite successful. I devised a workshop, led the facilitators and facilitated the wrap up session at the end of the afternoon. Everyone who attended said how well organised and run it was. My line manager even said how impressed he was with how I’d driven the whole thing. Some weeks just end on a high don’t they? There’s always a balance though and I think the next few weeks are going to be tough, with a lot of work to get through by mid January. I’m also looking forward to a break from work at Christmas.

Get well soon, Ronnie

I learned this evening the news that Dio has stomach cancer. I hope he slays the dragon quickly! Dio sang in his own bands Elf and Dio, but has also been a vocalist in Rainbow and Black Sabbath and latterly the band Heaven and Hell with his Black Sabbath bandmates. Dio has an incredible range to his voice and I love the mythology he employs in his lyrics. There’s a taste of his solo work in the video below.

I'm listening to...

Getting fatter again

My weight gain has been noticeable to me over the last 12 months. I’m going to have to deal with it more effectively, I have got to take control. Otherwise I’m going to end up having a heart attack or something. It’s very difficult to keep an eye on everything when you’re stressed and got a lot on your mind and when you’re generally depressed like I have been. Everything is gradual, you hardly notice it on a daily basis but the effects are cumulative. I try to tell myself that I’m not as big as some guys I see but comparing my size to others has never been helpful to me. I’m quite petit for a guy and am not tall, so comparisons are pretty meaningless. Packing the Wii away has meant that I have no real tracker of my weight: Wii Fit was great for tracking my weight – its just a shame the activities weren’t compelling enough for me in it.

Blog changes

I’ve made a few visible changes to the blog. Hope you like them, please vote over on the right side panel. I’d appreciate it if you could change the name of this blog in your links. I might also change the address to http://tortoisefeathers.blogspot.com but because I’m not sure what the effect of that will be, I don’t want to change anything like that just at the moment.

Change change change

It’s more the lack of change that is the issue for my personal life. I don’t mean my romantic life, rather things like the desire to make some changes but not having the time or energy to actually make the change. I need to change my job or career and we need to move house. Both of these things take a lot of energy and careful consideration. They are big things around which lots of important smaller things happen, like they have heavy gravity. Gravity is the problem: you need a lot of thrust to break out of Earth’s gravity and that’s what I’m lacking in my life: thrust to break out of my current gravity. The problem is more difficult because I have two gravitational things to change, my job and my house. Does anyone have any advice on how I should manage this predicament? I’m just floundering at the moment, I’m paddling but just not getting anywhere. I’m also worried about the recession: if I quit my job, what happens if I can’t get anything else? How would we cope without my income as the main breadwinner? I guess the other side of the coin is that at the moment, is it better to have stability and a steady income, even though I’m not happy at work? So many considerations! It’s overwhelming! I can’t see the wood for the trees, if you know what I mean.

 

Happy Halloween!

Whatever you’re doing, I hope you have a great time. My children are excited and I’m exhausted after battling through crowds in the shops today. Suddenly, it doesn’t feel like there is a recession on at all. The shops were rammed with people, don’t know if they were buying though but there was certainly a lot of hustle and bustle and a feeling of Christmas coming. Funny how Christmas has more feeling in leaner times. The Christmas gift market had lots of great gifts but we were just browsing. I was tempted to buy a bottle or two of Caribbean Punch but I didn’t in the end, my wife was worried there would be too much ginger in it and she doesn’t much like ginger. I don’t mind it so much.

It’s been a hell of a busy week at work this past week. I did get a bit of time back on Friday afternoon though, so that was good.

We ate in a restaurant for lunch today. I couldn’t believe the bill when it arrived. Don’t get me wrong - the food was lovely. However, first of all my son’s plate had to be sent back because it arrived with beef instead of chicken. Then my wife’s had to go back because she got pasta instead of brown rice with her meatballs. My wife did at least get a complimentary drink out of it but even so. It was just short of 60 pounds, we usually eat out for less than half of that. I would have felt more cheated if the food hadn’t been good. I’m just not sure it was THAT good. We also had to queue a few minutes for a table. There was a much bigger queue on our way out. I’m really surprised how popular the place was. My wife and I shared a plate of nachos, the kids had ice cream and we had two rounds of drinks. I guess it all adds up, we normally just have mains plus drinks. Probably won’t be going there again any time soon.

Halloween is coming

Halloween is in 7 days time. How will you be celebrating this Celtic New Year? An adult Halloween party with apple bobbing games and toffee apples followed by some dark rituals? A night at home with a scary movie? A party with friends in a public bar? At a party for children, taking them Trick or Treating or playing games? Dressing up in costume? I will be attending a family bonfire with our children. It should be a fun evening if its not raining and will involve the traditional games and roasting marshmallows on sticks above the fire. Hope you have a good one, whatever you're doing.

Poetry practice

I haven’t done very much creative writing over the last 12 years. I’ve started to practice writing again recently but not compulsively. I thought I’d share with you a draft of a poem I’m working on. What do you think? I can’t work out why the first line is indented. It’s annoying but nothing I can do about it.

The Unexpected

It's funny, life
The unexpected happens
Like air under plastic
You think it's flat, move your hand
Revealing the bubble

I used to potter through life
In my teens, my twenties
When I didn't know who I was
Now I'm dad, hubby, home owner, pension payer
Once impossible
Now reality

How did that happen?
Where was I?
When did my hair go thin?
When did my face lose its youth?
When did I get stale?

I don't recognise the face
In portraits I take
While on the train
Or at home, between emails
A middle aged man stares back
Dull, with middle class mores

Dream dream dream

I had an anxiety dream last night. I was asked to give a presentation using PowerPoint. It’s something I’ve done a lot of in my career. But this time I couldn’t find the file on my computer. I was looking in all the usual places but just couldn’t find it.

The people in the audience wanted to get up for a comfort break but I refused to let them take a break, saying that my presentation was about to start – I even rapped on the table with a paperweight to get their attention. But instead of starting I carried on looking at Windows Explorer sifting through my folders and subfolders to no avail.

I think I had this dream because we have a new filing system at work I find confusing and I had to write some notes up for my boss, who was giving a presentation. It just shows that you can’t always leave work when you leave work, if you see what I mean.

Weekends

I was just musing, what if weekends didn't exist? What if, the powers of economic determination forced everbody in the working world to accept, as the 'norm', a 7 day week? The only days off work being those taken through holiday. What would that do to holiday days? If it was the case that we got the same number of days for holiday as we get for weekends would that be so bad? It would be like taking a weekend whenever you wanted. Who invented weekends anyhow? There must have come a point between the cavemen and the businessmen of today when somebody said, "Hang on. We're working our employees into the ground with this 7 day week, let's give 'em a couple of days to make 'em feel like they've got a life". Why only 2 days for a weekend? Who decided that particular regimen? I'd prefer to work 3 days and rest 4 days. I'm sure I would be a better worker, the reduced week would ensure I made every minute count. How many employees can truly say every minute counts with a 5 day week?

Saturday Musings

Just finished a nose bleed. It's neither a common experience but at the same time it's the third or so in the last three months. Slightly alarming is the way it gushes out. I think I may have high blood pressure, due to stress. It clots up pretty quick though so it's not like I'm losing much blood or anything. I'm not alarmed by my own blood, obviously though I prefer not to see it. I have donated blood in the past, maybe I should donate again, they do always welcome volunteers. It's good blood as far as I'm concerned. Speaking of blood, has anyone seen True Blood? Channel 4 here has started showing the first season over here and I've missed 3 episodes so far, if its any good I might watch them using the 4 On Demand service on the internet.
Not much else to report. I have been finding it difficult again to think of something to write about. I borrowed a book from the library that is about writing. Maybe it will free up some thoughts and help me to write again. We shall see, I've a story I started using Google Docs earlier in the year, maybe I'll pick that up again and add more to it.

A cold

I have caught a cold. It developed on Thursday evening and got worse on Friday. Today I feel pretty dreadful. I hope it’s not swine flu, doesn’t feel like flu but is pretty unpleasant nonetheless. I don’t do colds very well, I think my asthma makes them feel worse.

Life v Work

My wife and I have alternately had to work late this week. We meet in the middle somewhere. I often feel like I wanted to talk about something but we missed each other because she was one place and I another.

Pity we can’t work together and see more of each other. Does it work for couples who work together all the time? Or do you think it just gets complicated with other problems to have to deal with?

Does anybody have an easy life? Really?

Name search continues

My brainstorming for a new blog name goes on. I have a few I’d like to share to get your opinions on possibly:

• Inn of Intensity
• Mundanity
• Mundane Review
• Tortoise Feathers
• Blog Tank
• Mood Tank
• Frantic Wagon
• Future Warp
• Fact Worryer
• The FW Station
• Mangle Wangle
• Wangle Dangle
• Furtive Murtive
• Cone Zone
• Bloggo Mondo
• Bloggo Blanco
• MojoDojo
• A Fistful of Blog
• Swing Top Blog
• Double Hinged
• Unhinged in Rio
• Footprints in Mud
• Cuckoos Nest
• Twist Your Risk
• Thought Traveller
• Bubblewrap Brain Blog
• FW5020

Some of the above might already be blog names, I haven’t checked any of them out. Do any strike you as good or appropriate for me? Let me know.

The longer the search goes on, the less sure I am that Furtive Wangler is wrong for me.

She wolf?

I don’t know what you think of the Shakira single She Wolf? Catchy but a weird video and odd movement.

Time for a name change

I want to get a new name for my blog. I didn’t really think too hard about the current name and have kind of regretted it ever since.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Leonard Cohen collapses on stage

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Leonard Cohen collapses on stage 

Leonard Cohen writes songs with wonderful lyrics. I sometimes feel that cover versions are better than his originals but then again sometimes his voice hits me with powerful sincerity and I “get it”. I love Jennifer Warnes’ cd Famous Blue Raincoat in which she sings a variety of songs he wrote, Jennifer Warnes has what I think is one of the most underrated female voices ever.

Leonard Cohen’s album I’m Your Man is probably my favourite of his.

I hope Leonard makes a full recovery.

Weekend thoughts

A sequel to The Da Vinci Code was published this week, I didn’t read the first book but my wife did buy a copy of it. She gave up after a few pages. It is weird how extraordinarily popular a book can become even though (I bet) a large percentage of its buyers never finish it. I don’t know why but I don’t normally buy or read books that sell millions:

• chicken soup for the soul
• men are from mars women are from venus
• the da vinci code
• 7 habits of highly effective people
• how to win friends and influence people

Have you ever bought a really popular book that failed to live up to its promise?

Wild horses

Wow! One of my favourite songs.

Blog history

I spent a few minutes today looking at some old bookmarks I’d stored of blogs I found and read. It’s sad the number of blogs that have been removed or just not updated for years by their owners. I wonder what’s happened to the people? What percentage are still blogging but with another identity? Or perhaps there is a percentage who have moved their activity onto Facebook or another medium.

I like the bloggers who keep going. It shows a commitment to the medium. Gives it some kind of validity.

A little music for Monday

A great song and one close to my heart with the line “libraries gave us power”. Hope you’re having a good Monday.

Another weekend flies by

Well yes, the fact is that time seems to be speeding up. I seem to have less time each week. I constantly worry about time slipping away from me. I can’t think of what I’ve been doing and when I do get five minutes to sit down and blog I get sucked into web browsing and looking stuff up.

This weekend has been pretty good and relaxing. Nothing special has happened but that’s ok. We’re still sleeping with the windows open and it is starting to get chilly at night, good job we’ve got our big bed cover on now. It’s lovely and furry (without being fur) and is quite heavy. After half an hour or so I have to kick part of it off – I like to keep my feet uncovered to help regulate the temperature of the rest of my body. Funny how I’m always covered up by morning, even my feet.

I’ve been eating way too much recently, it will be difficult but I’ve got to start reducing my intake. I did cook a nice Chinese curry last night. I prefer home cooked food and it often doesn’t take as long to prepare as I think it might. If I find any good, simple recipes I’ll post them here to share.

Penultimate day of school holidays

It was the penultimate day of the school holidays today. Today and tomorrow are daddy days for me and the kids. Mummy has started back at work, so it’s just the three of us. Last year we spent this day in ZSL the London Zoo and this year we decided to visit the London Aquarium (now called Sea Life or something like that) and the Natural History Museum.

Hope you enjoy the photos below. We walked from Waterloo Station past the London Eye to the aquarium. I didn’t take any photos in the aquarium, I don’t like flash photography when animals are close. What annoys me is that people just ignore the warnings when there are clear signs saying not to use flash. We walked over the bridge past the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. Then a tube ride to the NHM. What a fine building it is, there are lots of stone creatures or gargoyles on the outside making it look like a cathedral. Inside there is a entrance hall and a cast of a diplodocus skeleton.

After visiting the dinosaur hall we visited an exhibition about the human body. The kids enjoyed it because there were lots of buttons to press, lights to turn on and off, levers to pull and plenty of interactive learning exhibits. The ones on perception and optical illusions were very good. I looked closely at a human brain and spinal cord in one case: the spine and brain stem are really like a trunk cable, lots of interwoven electrical cables. I found it surprising how it made me think of computer cables carrying data and that’s exactly what it does of course.

We had a full day and were all tired by the time we left to catch the train back home. As tomorrow is the final day of the holidays we’ll probably take it nice and easy, not quite sure what we’ll do but we’ll have fun. My parents leave to visit my brother in the USA this week, he lives in Massachusetts.

 

 

Final Bank Holiday

Today is the final Bank Holiday Monday of the year. No more free holidays for us here in the UK. I spent it in a fairly uneventful way. It usually goes like that, it kind of marks the End of Summer – so I feel both sad that summer has gone but also glad that I have Halloween, Bonfire Night and Christmas to look forward to.

I’ve been sorting out my iTunes Library and playing with the my son and his Go Gos in the back yard (see the video), they are these odd shaped little characters. They look like bits that fell out of a board game, except there are hundreds of different ones.

I’m composing this on my new Netbook, got it set up and working in minutes: all good so far. I hope to be posting a bit more frequently now that it is much simpler and convenient to do so. Got to get my money’s worth!

New Netbook

I've been wanting to get a replacement for my PC for a while. I have it set up in our bedroom, which isn't ideal but there is nowhere else really in our tiny house. The fan in my PC is quite noisy and it is rather slow and frustrating. So I was thinking of a laptop. But then we got some Costco vouchers and there was 30 pounds off a Toshiba Netbook NB200 10G, so I decided to take the plunge and get one. They are dinky and really light and will hopefully do everything I need without costing the Earth.

The Hobbit

I'm reading this book to my children on a frequent basis as their bedtime story with dad. I have to admit to probably enjoying it more than they are but what a great storyteller Tolkien is. I'd love to write a story as well as that.
It's the film noir season on TV and the channel we watch a lot is showing some old black and white American film noir films from the 50s. I love watching old films, they just have so much character and charm. Great actors too, classics like James Stewart. We're also watching some of the old Doctor films with Dirk Bogarde, good clean fun.

Cameraphone

I wanted to blog about the phenomenon that is the cameraphone or mobile phone with camera. They are very common these days, even low priced phones seem to offer the built in camera. Whilst the quality of the lens doesn't really compare to an average digital camera , the cameraphone does offer the advantage of being one multi-functional device that is small enough to keep in a small pocket. For me it allows me to take snaps of the average everyday stuff that I would normally not have any record of. Things like how I looked on a certain day, how long my hair was, whether I was clean shaven or not and how I'm aging month by month. Other things can be recorded too, like points in a routine journey. There is something about being about to quickly record something seemingly quite trivial at the time yet with age gains something. Maybe I'm talking rubbish. If I were to take my digital camera out with me I might have some better photos but it's not always the photographic quality I'm looking to capture. Does this make any sense? Maybe some examples would help...

 

Ok so not the greatest examples but over the last few years I've owned a cameraphone I've collected over 600 snapshots.

Back in the saddle

We had a great time away in Boscombe. I didn't take as many photographs as I thought I would and what I have shot is spread between my digital camera, video camcorder and cameraphone. Our apartment was at the top of a big house, so we had a few stairs to climb and their was a slightly odd smell to the room with the double bed my wife and I shared. Other than that it was pleasant. The town itself was the same as I remember but the beach was fantastic. Lots of sand, so we just set up wind breaks and lazed around watching and playing with the kids as they built castles or buried themselves. The fresh sea water was exhilarating to say the least! I only managed waist-depth before getting too chilly, surprising since the air temperature was hot and the sun was blazing. My daughter managed to enjoy herself in the water with her inflatable.
Now I'm back I miss having all the time to do other stuff. Instead work again takes priority. Gloom!

The Day Is Here!

I can't quite believe it but the day has finally arrived. We're leaving later today for our holiday. Still got packing to do but I think travelling light is the best option, we're only away for a week. The important thing is to pack a range of clothes for unpredictable weather. And pack things like camera, reading book, portable game system and a game or two, drawing book and notebook plus pens and pencils. That's just my list! The kids will no doubt want to empty the contents of their rooms to take with them.

Last time at the seaside we took a mallet, which came in very handy with bashing in the windbreak. It's lovely just sitting on the beach watching the kids play in the sand and the wash of the sea. We have some binoculars somewhere, I'll have to try and find those.

Bye bye my friends, I hope you have nice weeks too.

Looking forward

4 more working days to go until I take a week off. We're heading down to the South coast. We have an apartment from Saturday to Saturday. I can't wait to be somewhere else, enjoying a new experience and chilling out on the beach etc. There are lots of events happening in Bournemouth next week, like candles in the park, fireworks from the pier, roar on the shore and other stuff that should keep us all well-amused.

Work has been pretty horrible the last few months, so I sort of wish I had taken more time off but I didn't so I shall do my best to enjoy the time away from it that I have.

I plan to take a lot of photos while I'm away so I hope to be posting up a few more pics when I'm back.

Long Weekend

I had Thursday and Friday on leave, so we went from London's Soho on Thursday down to Brighton on Saturday, with an overnight stay in Eastbourne. We didn't play pinball as in the Pinball Wizard song however!

The weather on Friday was delightful, I actually got burned on my head - for some silly reason I didn't wear a hat that day - I think it was because there was some wind that cooled me down. Pictures below show how nice the beach at Eastbourne is.

 

Brighton was cooler but we had the best of the weather, getting there reasonably early and doing what we wanted to get done. It was the weekend of the Gay Pride festival, so the train station was continually pouring people out of it - I've never seen so many people in Brighton. The kids wanted rainbow flags, so we bought them one each to wave.

Oxford

We had a busy family day on Saturday. A trip to the theatre in Oxford proved to be an interesting experience. Knowing how bad traffic congestion and parking can be we took the Park & Ride, leaving the car on the outskirts and catching the bus into the city. The city centre was absolutely rammed with people. There were the usual beggars, buskers and other street sellers but the worst thing was, as my wife put it, "it's like walking through a landfill site". She was referring to the bins, they were all full to overflowing and were overflowing. Mainly with fast food packaging, it was quite disgusting. We had an hour to spend before the show, I suggested a small restaurant I knew down a side street. My wife didn't think there would be any seats at Saturday lunchtime but we tried and were very pleased to find that despite the main thoroughfare being crowded to bursting that the Thai restaurant was not particularly busy. We got seats without waiting and were served with excellent food very quickly. The theatre production wasn't so great, it was a kids show and my son enjoyed it but my daughter wasn't at all bothered. There were quite a few adults asleep around us, so that gives you some idea how bad it was. I took some photographs, so here they are - they are all looking up because the ground level view was so disgusting.

 

 

 

June

Well I couldn't let June go by without a blog post could I?
I've been a bit depressed lately, hence my lack of blog activity. Hope you all understand. I'll be back when I've recovered a bit more of myself.

An expensive month in prospect

I completed my job application and was totally fed up by the amount of time it took up outside of work hours - I felt cheated that it was taking my free time but what else can I do? I stopped at a Post Office in a village I've driven through many times to post it. I have never called in at that Post Office before but it was truly lovely, that might sound like a strange thing to say about a Post Office but it was set way back from the road and had a small pond outside. Inside it was kind of a general store/Post Office and sold practically everything you might need from a village store. They even sold sweets in big jars, I love that excitement of seeing big sweet jars come down from a high shelf to be shaken out into the weighing scales. The village is really nice and has lots of trees, it just had a good feeling about it.
Monday of this week was a Bank Holiday, which meant a day off from work. The weather was really good, so I decided to try and put up the tent I bought last year. It was the first time we have tried to erect it. It's a 4 person family tent and has an inner (bedroom) tent that you can divide into two. I hope the prediction of a hot summer is right, I hope to take the family to a camp site at some point. The tent took a bit longer to erect that I thought it might and it only just fitted width-wise into our garden - so it's comfortably large. I just need to work on my wife because she's not keen on camping, I love it (for a few days) because it's such an alternative way of life.
I've been hoping to replace my slow, ageing PC with a new laptop this month but yesterday I had to get some new tyres. I've been driving around with a screw in my front tyre for a few weeks and it has been praying on my mind. I eventually got it sorted but I needed two new tyres. They aren't cheap are they? They also called me up during changing my tyres to say I need new brake pads urgently. Also I have my MOT and annual service check in just over a week, so I won't be able to afford my new laptop this month and next month I'll be paying for our family holiday - so basically bye bye laptop until August/September and by then I'll be thinking of Christmas. I'm also considering selling my car for a smaller, cheaper model - I'll let you know how that goes.
Today, I have a day off from work. We're going to see Monsters vs Aliens with the kids after lunch, for lunch we're going to a nice pub that sells good food and this evening just the two of us are going to go and see a Swedish horror film called Let The Right One In - fortunately we managed to get a babysitter. Don't know how scary the movie is meant to be because I haven't read any reviews of it.

Eurovision 2009

Well another year and another Eurovision has come and gone. I just didn't feel as excited about it this year, don't know why that is. I did watch it and score the acts alongside my daughter who was doing the same. The UK song did well, within the top 5 I think - I wasn't paying too much attention to our entry because I thought the song was rubbish. There were much better songs, I thought the song from Malta deserved to win but it didn't really come anywhere near. The German song was catchy but having Dita von Teese on stage with them was a bit too gimmicky. I thought there were about 5 songs that would have made ideal winners, Turkey was the only one I liked that came close. The runaway song of the night was from Norway, I didn't think it was bad but I didn't think it was the strongest song either. The voting this year was shaken up a bit, or it appeared that way, so the political voting wasn't quite as blatant as it was in previous years.
In other news, I saw Derren Brown on Tuesday night last week. It is amazing what he can do with his mind games, I'm glad though that I didn't go up onstage. He does use a lot of the audience, I'm just not that susceptible to his screening, I'm always in the half that deselect themselves.
In film news, I'd like to go and see the new Star Trek and Wolverine movies but I don't think I'll get the chance to see them before DVD. I also missed the Watchmen film too.
Tomorrow I have the day off from work. There's a couple of things I need to do. Complete a job application, watch my son's sports day at school and collect a piece of mail from the post office. I hope the weather is fine for my son's class sports day. I'd like to cheer him on but tomorrow is the only day I could get, so I really hope the weather is kind and it still goes ahead. The forecast is "chance of rain", which gives me hope that there is a chance it might not rain.

More videos

I think I'm getting the hang of these video things, here are a couple more I shot on the beach.

A day out

We had a day trip to Brighton yesterday. It was nice to see the sea, we live so from it that I forget what it's like. I have a couple more videos. We were walking on the beach just after 10am and surprisingly it was pretty quiet, it was lovely. I have a couple more videos to post.

Take the stairs

Tara has made me remember another thing this week. Speaking of how she influenced someone to take the stairs, I was reminded of an advertising campaign I really liked by The British Heart Foundation, the campaign was called The Big Red Fight Back and featured groovy posters that were designed in an art style used for wartime propoganda. The one I was reminded of was about stairs being your friend, an image of the poster is above. I thought the campaign was a great idea.

Movies I watched this weekend

It's an older film now but I watched Re-Animator last night. It made me laugh with the over-the-top gore and silly plot. As a fan of gore horror, I enjoyed it and the acting was brilliant.
I also watched Girl From Next Door which starred Emile Hirsch and Elisha Cuthbert. In honesty, it was a film I watched only to see Elisha Cuthbert. It turned out to be quite different from what I was expecting and not in a good way. As the film closed I just thought what a wasted opportunity it was to have such a good cast and still to end up with such indifferent fodder. The cast looking great is about the only thing it is worth watching for.

Childhood memory

Tara's trespassing post reminded me of one of my earliest childhood memories, not about the act of trespass though.

It was in my pre-nursery/pre-school years so I must have been under 5. The airforce did recruitment open days every year in our town, they had a couple of planes, a mobile caravan and various other events and displays in an area of the town. My mum must have thought I would be interested to see a jet plane up close. They had two sets of narrow stairs up to the jet's cockpit and there were a lot of guys crowding in on both sides. Somehow my mum managed to get up the stairs carrying me and I don't know if I was a special case or not but she was allowed to sit me in the pilot's seat. Great! What a treat! Then it all went wrong for me. Seems such a silly thing now but the guys were all crowding around and were interested in the flight joystick, that's where their focus was - I think an airforce man was moving it around and telling the other guys about it while I sat quietly. Being an infant I was naturally curious, so as soon as he let go of it I grabbed hold of it. It must have been amusing because all the guys erupted into laughter. That cockpit turned into a pit of hell as all the attention turned on my young self. I was probably a bit frightened when they all started laughing and it was really laughing at nothing but my infant curiosity however I remember crying and wanting desperately for my mum to remove me from the cockpit. What should have been an enjoyable experience became something much less pleasurable.
It was an experience that has stayed in my memory for a long time. I often have to talk to groups of people for work, often times they are strangers to me and I have no problem doing that. I am in control and am confident. However, when I find I am suddenly the centre of attention in situations where I haven't been warned or haven't instigated it, I hate it. The simplest example of this is when I join a group of friends at a pub or restaurant and they are already there and seated. They might be talking and laughing about something completely not related to me but as I walk in and hear their laughter, my sensitivity is "are they laughing at me?". I am suddenly thrown into the limelight and I dislike it intensely - I much prefer to be part of the group from the beginning or walk in with someone else. We all have insecurities, this is mine.

It's been a while....

It has been a few weeks since my last update. I'm afraid a lot has been going on and it has mainly been all work related, hence the lack of time to look at blogs and blog about social stuff.

We're having a new fence in the garden this week. A nice man from the Czech Republic is doing the handiwork for us. I'm so bad at DIY that this was the best option to have the work done quickly, I usually take too long and end up not doing the job properly.

We have a long weekend here in the UK, Good Friday and Easter Monday. The weather has been a bit grim, grey and drizzly. My wife and daughter went to the seaside but the shops were shut and the weather defeated them. As I write this, they're currently on their way home. My son has been ill this week. So I stayed home with him, mainly playing Mario Kart.

This afternoon, I set up Twitter - you can read my Tweets just over there -> somewhere.

Friday 13th

Its Comic Relief Day today, a great institution. There'll be plenty of silliness in places of work and education today. My daughter and son have gone to school wearing red clothes because paying a pound to charity means they can dress in non-school uniform. My daughter is also wearing her red wig - she looks a bit like Annie or Shirley Temple or Ronald MacDonald. I hope they raise a record amount of money because everyone needs cheering up in these hard times.

What else has been on my radar recently:

• Jade Goody - she has cervical cancer and it has spread, which effectively means that she is not going to recover. She became a celebrity after appearing on Big Brother 3 in 2002 and has since remained in the public eye due to some rocky professional and personal experiences. I haven't yet formed a solid opinion about Jade, I have heard criticism of her fund raising for her children however I'm not sure I wouldn't do exactly the same if I had to
• Spring-like weather - despite sometimes feeling very cold, the weather recently has definitely been changing more to mild and it makes me happy to think of Spring coming
• Colds - along with the weather change it is bringing the family down with coughs and colds as usual
• Swimming - I actually managed to swim 3 widths in the pool on Tuesday so I think I'm making good progress, I'm actually sad when the time comes to end the session, there are some nice people also attending the class so its nice in a social way too

That's about it for now. Hope today is a good day for everyone, despite the date! Have a great weekend!

Here it is, March...

My wife has lost a ticket. One of those times when we win something and the ticket goes missing. Actually, its not our winning ticket, she runs a syndicate. How can a ticket just disappear? Well, it has and cannot be found - believe me, we tried. It has gone into the ether, the thin air. So apparently has the 75 pounds along with it. To each person in the syndicate it is a small amount but any win is a win and it just so happens that a ticket with a Post-It note attached to it decided to get itself lost on the very week the ticket was actually worth more than it cost. So frustrating!

I'm feeling slightly more upbeat than usual this Sunday evening, next week I'm off work and instead am attending a course. I'll probably end up feeling really tired and stressed because there are exams at the end of it but really just lately I'll take any excuse to do something different.

This weekend I actually managed to sit down and catalogue our movies. I was supposed to be working but the computer was on and yadda yadda I ended up doing the cataloguing and then couldn't find the willpower to stop. So, do you want to know how many films there are? It's frankly disturbing but we have over 430 films ranging from the 40s to the 00s. That's 32 days and 11 hours worth of back-to-back movie going. Sheesh!

Well bless my soul! In the course of me writing this the ticket has turned up! It was in the smallest crack between the computer desk and the chest of drawers - but right at the back. How it got there is still a mystery but at least the ticket has been found and my wife avoids the embarrassment of having to explain about the loss. She found it, as I'm working on my computer upstairs.

My swimming is going quite well. I am starting to enjoy the water and I didn't ever think I'd feel that way. I can see myself actually swimming soon, it is just a matter of time and patience. I never thought I'd be able to. I think I'm so determined to conquer my fears this time that it will come eventually.

What happened to February?

The month is slipping by fast. The weather is getting a bit milder, so I feel more upbeat about that. It was a downer feeling so cold and the dark nights are moving further back.

I heard this news story about the final bag of Woolworth's Pick & Mix sweets being sold through e-Bay for charity. Great idea but shame about Woolies closing, I just thought that store had so many retail outlets that its presence on the high street was rock solid. Just goes to show that you can't take anything for granted.

Last week I had some time off from work and it was great, it's just such a pity that I had to return to work. It was nice not to have to do anything but spend time with the kids. We had great fun unlocking extra tracks and karts on Mario Kart Wii. We did buy a camcorder, so I hope to put up some videos at some point - when I've worked out how to do it and what to record.

We went out last night for our last Chinese meal for hopefully a while (need to lose a few pounds again). We also played a game of ten pin bowling with friends and their kids. It was a pleasant night out but I didn't sleep very well - I think it was the feeling of returning to work and the food lodged in my belly.

In other news, I've started looking out for a new job. Not sure what I want to do yet but I'm scanning regularly.

More of the white stuff

I was back from my travels North last night. And this morning I was awoken by my wife at 5:20am, she was getting up and looking out of the window. Fresh snow had fallen, I actually thought it looked worse than it had done on Sunday night. Here is a photo from back of the house looking to the garden.

Weather

The weather on Sunday turned bitterly cold, wind from Northern Russia I think. Then late in the afternoon and overnight the snow fell. Several inches on our town and as usual a bit of snow has brought everything to a near standstill. The schools closed in large numbers. My own kid's school was open but it too had closed by lunchtime. Here is a shot of the road I was waiting on - the traffic was slow but it was at least moving, except for this shot I was actually waiting at traffic lights.

I love the snow when I don't have to travel in it. I might have to travel further North today or tomorrow and the snow was moving in that direction. Last night the snow turned to ice around here, I think that's worse than the snow.

John Martyn, a hero passes away

My calendar now has a photograph of the lovely Cristina Scabbia from Lacuna Coil on it, man she's gorgeous!

Since my last post, one of my all time heroes has sadly died this week. Singer and songwriter John Martyn passed away, his songs were of great comfort to me. They always brightened my mood. He was one of those artists that didn't ever compromise, so some of the music is not so easy to get into - you have to absorb it and let it wash over you but once you get it, it is some of the most beautiful music you'll ever hear. Thanks John, Rest In Peace.

I'm now booked on an adult swim class on Tuesday evenings. This was one of my New Year's resolutions and I didn't want to mention it before in case it never got off the ground but now the money has been paid and I start this week - or next, depending on if I have to work in another part of the country on Wednesday or not, I might have to travel this Tuesday night. So, I'm feeling both a bit terrified and happy that I'm doing something about it. At least my son is still learning to swim, my daughter is already an excellent swimmer. I wish I'd done it sooner but I guess its never to late to learn something new.

Blurry

Doesn't time fly? January is going by in a bit of blur. I missed a friend's birthday a couple of weeks ago, just didn't get around to making the extra effort required; she moved away and I don't see her very often. I do feel bad about it though.

The weather varies here from very cold and dry to mildly cold and very wet. I think I prefer it dry and cold. It's the kind of weather that makes you just feel like coming home from work and getting into bed as soon as you can to keep warm together. I'm drinking lots of hot beverages. Watching the news every night is a bit depressing, hearing about companies laying off hundreds of employees and closing branches. We'd like to move house this year and I don't know how we're going to achieve it. Last year we only had a short holiday away form home for a few days; this year I wanted to go away again but I don't think we will - moving house is going to take precedence - my work is going to get very stressful with a big change coming up and I selfishly wanted to go somewhere to relieve myself of the stress of it. Just as well we're staying home, with the added expense of a holiday, it might have just added to all the stress rather than relieve it. There is so much preparation to get done if we're to move house this year I don't know how we're going to get it done.

It's Chinese New Year tomorrow and to celebrate we had a Chinese takeaway tonight for tea. I could only eat half of what was on my plate - it was so filling! I love Chinese food though.

Obama-tron

Lots of excitement in the States over the inauguration of a new President. It is a remarkable thing that America has achieved. I really do hope that he is able to make a difference to the lives of hard working, ordinary Americans. I can only remember one black UK politician off the top of my head. I expect that people will forget Obama's ethnicity as soon as Washington's political machine starts churning. It does feel like history is in the making though, I think you can be much more hopeful and optimistic when you have a young, good looking leader for your country. You know he has a lot of energy to contribute. Good luck President Obama.

Here I am

Its funny how sometimes in your life you can be in a time of change, with lots of uncertainties and stuff happening all around you and people you know being affected, and in the middle of it all you have thoughts of great clarity. Just when you'd expect your thinking to be muddled or distracted. Its as if the world keeps turning but you see yourself from the outside of a spinning world and you realise that the world is a big place and you do anything (within reason) or lead a life anywhere you choose. I feel that 2009 is going to be a creative year and a year of change for me.

First post of the year

My Christmas holiday is over tonight because tomorrow I return to work. I've had quite a bit of time off this Christmas - or at least it feels that way because I had to take a couple of extra days this week because my children's school started back later than other schools.

The holidays were good for me, I felt we spent a bunch of time together as a family and my wife and I even got to spend some a couple of nights alone together (a first since our daughter was born eight years ago). I saw two pantomimes, attended a carol concert and a wedding. I even had the luxury of not having to get up early in the mornings. All that has to change tomorrow.

I know its the season but I don't want to make any resolutions yet, there are a number of important things I want to do this year but I feel if I put them "out there" I may just end up not doing them. I'm looking at the calendar infront of me and the face of Kat Von D from LA Ink is watching me. I wouldn't want to make her any promises infront of her that I can't keep!

2008 End Thoughts

End of the year for 2008. Tomorrow is a new day, as they say. I was considering relationships recently. I attended a wedding on the 22nd December, it was by candlelight and I guess you could say it was romantic. It was a civil ceremony, the participants were gay, I don't know if they were disappointed by not having a church or not - I disagree with eclesiastical law here (even if I can't spell it!). In the speech there was quite a few mentions of compromise and sharing and the two were linked closely together. What makes love's bonds so strong? Common interests and companionship yes but I also think there needs to be a physical dimension for me; a feeling of pleasure through being close or intimate with the one you love. My wife and I were joking (at least I think she was joking) about a novelty gift she saw in a gift shop recently - it was a wife's bat for beating away her husband's morning advances. Where is this post going and what's the reason for it? I'm not sure. I guess I'm saying that each of us has a different set of needs and a loving relationship blossoms when we find a partner who both has needs we can satisfy happily and who in turn happily satisfies the majority of our own needs. The tricky thing is that needs are diverse in type and they change over time, that'll be where the compromise and sharing comes in. Boy, love is hard and complex.

I shall raise my glass to all my readers tonight and wish you a hopeful and peaceful New Year. God bless.

Post-Christmas Doldrums

Between Christmas and New Year I tend to feel a bit low. It's the knowledge that I'll be returning to work soon and that all of the Christmas celebrations will be over. There is such a chill in the air here outside that it feels much colder than it normally does and we don't even have the excitement of having snow on the ground. The shops are full of sales and people lapping up the items but we're kind of stuck between wanting to do stuff with the kids but not wanting to keep dragging them around the shops. I'd like them to remember more from their childhood than boring shopping trips. It's so cold though. Yesterday we sat in the car watching the kids in a local play park, it was freezing. In my low spirited mood I'm more inclined to stay at home and watch films or play videogames but that's not possible as a parent. At least, not until after bed time. Ughh! I wish there were more things to do as a family around here - or that I was in a better mood to find something more interesting for them.

My Christmas present this year was a box set ultimate collectors edition of James Bond films - all of the films with an extra disk per film of extras, excellent! I also got a scarf, some socks, some skin care smellies and a Game voucher. I haven't got anything in mind yet for a game so I will probably wait until something comes along that I think would be good.

I watched the film SAW this week, I thought it was good and obviously open for a sequel, I have SAW II so I'll probably watch that some time soon as well.

A couple of things borrowed from the public library recently: Fallout 3 (Xbox 360) and Hell Boy II The Golden Army. I'm a big fan of the first Hellboy movie so am looking forward to watching the sequel.

December Song

It has been a lively last few weeks, I've had to do quite a bit of travelling for work hence my lack of posts and lack of time in general. Work in general has been more than a little distracting lately anyway, there is big change on the way and I don't know if I want to stay to go through it all. I've lived through several big changes already and I'm starting to get "change fatigue" - I don't think it actually improves things either, so its all a big waste of time.

I'm set for Christmas, more or less, and I'm actually starting to feel a little bit excited for the children. I was at my children's school's Christmas carol concert in the church and almost welled up the children sang so lovely. My daughter played guitar and recorder in a group at the front of the church. I was very proud of her. Actually, the end of the longest school term on Friday was great for a number of reasons:

• I began my holiday (apart from Christmas Eve when I'm working)
• It was the last day of school term, so the holidays were starting
• My children were both in the church to sing carols and I was there to watch
• The church was a lot warmer because they had installed heaters this year
• My daughter was performing music
• My children were feeling better (they have had time off being sick from school this week - my son missed one of his chances to perform for parents in the school nativity - I had taken the day off, I was upset not to be able to see him but glad I could be at home to look after him)
• My daughter won the Citizenship Cup for the term by being a good citizen in her school (she's been longing to win it forever)
• My son won the Child of the Week certificate for his humorous and entertaining performance of the cockerel in the nativity play (shame I missed the second performance but lots of parents who saw him said he was brilliant)
• My daughter came home with a gold certificate for house points and my son came home with a silver certificate for house points he had earned

I was very pleasantly surprised by all of this good news from the school, it made me forget about my worries at work and focus in on my family, which is what life should be all about.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year. I hope you spend some quality time with your loved ones this Christmas.

Saturday Night

We're well into the weekend now, it is early Saturday evening and I'm starting to think about getting ready to bath and put the kids to bed. I have snatched a few minutes from domesticity to write this.  You see, this weekend my wife is away with a large group of women who have descended to a large cottage in the forest to eat, drink, dance and have facials. Oh and taste champagne as well, did I mention that? Yeah, so while she's been living it up since Friday afternoon, I've been home with the kids. It's not so bad, there are times when I wished that they could be nicer to each other and times when they are just so moody - but outside of THOSE times we have fun. Today, I had to take my son for his swimming class, so we up relatively early and after swimming I had a bill to pay and we took a trip to the library. Then I had to take my daughter to a friend who was having a party, while she did that I took the boy to the supermarket to get some food. I bought us some root vegetables and hot dogs because for tea I made:

Vegetable and Hotdog Hash! Swede, parsnip, savoy cabbage, potato, sweet potato boiled mashed and fried with lovely hotdog sausages. I loved it, the kids weren't too fond, except for the sausages that my daughter picked out. That's the trouble with kids, you go to great lengths to try something different, buy fresh seasonal veg, chop it up, cook it up and deliver it right to where they sit and then they pick what you knew they would eat and disregard the stuff that would do them some good. At least I can say I tried. Its just a good thing I had a backup cooking in the oven (frozen pizza). That picture was from the recipe although I have to say mine looked almost exactly the same.

Since my wife is enjoying herself, this evening I have plans for my own fun. Last Christmas we got a gaming chair from my mother in-law. It was a very strange choice of gift but who am I to quarrel? I rarely get the chance to get it out but tonight is the night; oh yeah baby! I've bought some beer with a hint of lime that's chilling nicely in the fridge and I have a bag of nuts to consume while I play videogames until I fall asleep.

It may not be champagne tasting and a facial, but I'll be home, warm and cosy. Oh crap, it still doesn't sound as much fun as my wife's weekend! I should get some friends, I really should....

Fitness Freak

I'm generally not fit. I have been trying to spend some time these last couple of weeks on Wii Fit. I bought some running shoes at the weekend:

I found a new discount sports shop on my local trading estate and its great - I got these shoes for only 11 pounds. For the length of time I spend running each week they are just right, they probably wouldn't be any good for your marathon runner but for me they'll do.

My Wii Fit age is around about my real age on average - it was 37 this week, which is -3 years: so that isn't too shabby is it?

Award Time

Hey, I've been given an award by Mrs Hairy Woman! Thanks so much. I would nominate 10 other bloggers but I don't know that many!

Back To Monday

In some ways, the familiarity of a return to work after a weekend is a nice thing but mainly it just reinforces the sense of oppression I feel in having to perform a function from 9 to 5 to earn enough money to maintain a home and sustain a quality of life. When its cold, wet and grey outside it just doesn't make it any easier. Its one of those weeks when Monday could have got off to a better, cleaner start, rather than moody silence.

This weekend I had the chance to laze in bed on Sunday morning, great! I watched the Stallone version of Judge Dredd. I was watching it to really give it another chance; I've seen it before and it didn't spark my interest. However, this time I thought that while it could have been cast better and the storyline made too many concessions to Hollywood, overall I enjoyed it better than I thought I would. The motorbikes the judges ride were laughable though, they should be fearsome machines but in the film they come across as no more fearsome than a Shop-Mobility cart!

It was a bit of a film-frenzy for me this weekend actually, as I watched Hot Fuzz and Daredevil. Three films I enjoyed the second time around more than the first; that's what these all have in common. It's good to have films on DVD in your closet so that you can go back to them and re-watch. Tonight, I'll be recording the film Underworld off the TV, I have a VHS copy but since our videoplayer is under the bed now we don't bother watching videos anymore. It's a bit of a shame I know but over the last couple of years we have been downsizing - the TV has become an LCD flatscreen and we have got rid of the DTV receiver (incorporated into the TV) and the video player: so we are nice and light with only a DVD player attached (aside from the Wii and Xbox360 consoles - but they're hidden away almost out of sight). I have considered converting my VHS tapes into DVDs but the time it would involve makes it cheaper to just replace the tapes with DVDs when I see them on sale and to be fair, there are not that many I really and truly miss.

Halloween Breakdown

The Halloween party was very cool. It was held by a family I've only been out with once but they are very nice. They live out in the country and have the most amazing large garden - I think several generations of their family bought it together and now co-habit in different parts of the house: ideal, I'd love to do that - it would be great for baby-sitters! Our host had such a great authentic bullet shot in the centre of her brow, even the bruising and brain stuff around the entry hole looked awesome. The fire took a long while to get going and it was such a cold night, the kids went indoors to keep warm. After a lot of fanning and (eventually) a rag soaked in petrol, it kicked into life and was lovely and roaring. I love the radiant heat from a good outdoor blaze. The baked potatoes were eventually found after a bit of raking through the ashes and most were perfectly cooked, I had one half that was perfect and the other half a little underdone - but then cooking outdoors is not an exact science. All in all we had a great evening, I liked the part where us men stood around the fire grumbling about cars breaking down and how garages seem to apply charges quite arbitrarily.

The film I chase eventually was Freddy vs Jason. I was laughing at it because it was so NOT a scary movie. If you've seen the parody Scary Movie it wasn't dissimilar. Oh well, you live and learn.

I have been reading the book I bought recently, it is volume one of a collection of Judge Dredd stories. He's a character from a comic titled 2000 AD, I don't think it's around any more. It does have me reminisce about the comics I used to read as a kid in the 1970s. I started with Beano and moved on to Krazy Comic and then Cheeky. My dad used to buy me comics like Battle, Warlord and Victor (more for his own entertainment I think). For some time I have been trying to remember one title I used to enjoy and this morning I looked it up on the Internet - isn't the web great for recalling memories from childhood? The comic in my memory was called Bullet and it featured a special agent called Fireball, he was a guy with a moustache (like one I am currently growing incidentally, more about that another time). I remember it so vividly because I sent off to join the Fireball club, I received a red plastic wallet and special story card to put inside and I got the Fireball pendant of which I was very proud. It was a large black plastic thing with embossed gold flames and I think an F in the middle, although I might not have remembered that part exactly. I loved British comics back in the 1970s and wish they would make a return.

Happy Halloween!

I've been looking forward to today for a few weeks. I have the day off from work! Spending some time with my family this morning and then we're all going out to our friends house for a Halloween party this afternoon. I hope you all have a great time today whatever you're doing.

I have been recording a ton of scary films on our DVD Recorder so there is no shortage of horror flicks to choose from. Here are just a few ideas:

• Creep
• Descent
• Saw and Saw II
• 28 Days Later
• Blade Trinity
• Halloween
• The Fog
• Freddy v Jason
• Ju-On (original Japanese The Grudge)
• Blair Witch Project (but avoid the 2nd film)
• Reanimator
• Resident Evil (and Resident Evil Apocalypse)
• Scanners
• Evil Dead
• Hellraiser
• Constantine
• The Fly

Wet and cold

It's been a very wet and dim day today. It rained heavily whilst I was picking my kids up from school. Yuck, I hate getting into a car all wet: I hate it when the windows steam up - does anyone else have the same trouble that I do with de-misting windows? I never know how to adjust my temperature and fan speeds - is it better to blow cold or blow hot? The aircon sorts it out pretty quick but it can get too cold in winter to have that on. One of life's little conundrums...

Aside from the weather, several things at home have taken up my thoughts and some of my time. A shed clear out at the weekend required a couple of trips to the dump. I hate going to the dump. I hate filling up my boot with stuff, especially when spiders can run off and hide in my car. I'm not a huge fan of creepy crawlies, as you can tell. The washing machine has been spraying water on the floor behind the box it sits in. So our kitchen floor is very damp underneath the lino and we can't use the washing machine until the new tube is fitted - another little job for me.

I've been playing a lot of music on my iPod. Getting into tracks in my collection that I haven't heard for a long while. It's funny how your memory of certain tracks places them above others until you go back and listen again. My tastes have certainly changed quite a bit over the course of fifteen years. What's more noticeable for me now I have iTunes is how much easier it is to listen to a wider selection of songs by not having to select a CD each time, now I can just rely on iTunes to select tracks for me. I love the serendipity of hearing a John Lee Hooker track just before an In Flames track. I love loads of styles in music so I could never restrict myself socially to one interest group. Although I do like the baggy trousers and dark colours of the metal followers but those styles wouldn't suit me.

What's Happening?

I'm not a frequent watcher of the news, I confess. I don't watch it enough. I like to catch up in general but I don't really pay much attention to the details. Certain subjects turn me off - finance, business, politics and economy being the main offenders. As you can imagine I've been turned off a lot lately, the US and UK economies seem to be on the brink of collapse. It is very worrying for poor dumb folk like me who haven't got a clue when it comes to finance. I just struggle by and try to make the most of what I have without taking risks - what I really mean is that in the day-to-day I don't understand what risks actually exist: in short, I take a lot of that stuff for granted.

Better for me to stick my head up my arse and keep listening to the music I love. I'm experiencing a new level of musical happiness with iTunes and my iPod. It must be one of the finest inventions of the 20th century. I've set up a complicated arrangement of smart playlists which have had the desired effect: basically, I wanted to experience my music collection as though I were listening to it for the first time. The way iTunes has put the songs next to each other in ways I would never have thought of is just stunning. The way I have configured it as well means I have my favourite songs cropping up when I least expect them, which makes them all the more enjoyable - just like when you're driving and a favourite comes on the radio that you can sing along to.

Hope everyone is well. The autumn weather is cold and wet and we are considering putting the fake fir throw on the bed to keep us warm and snug.

LHC Switched On

In honour of the successful switch-on, I thought this was not bad and quite educational: The LHC Rap (which surpassed 2 million views today)

 

Chrome and Don't You Just Hate It When...

With this post, I have surpassed the total number of posts I made in August (2). Just felt like saying that.

I've downloaded the new Google browser Chrome and have to say I like it's minimalist functional take on a browser. It is sort of becoming my browser of choice already.

Last but not least a minor annoyance:

do you know the bags of pasta that you buy that provide you with a strip of tape to reseal the bag? Don't you just hate it when the tape loses its stickiness and the bag just unrolls open? The other thing I hate about those bags is that they make opening the bag so difficult that the force required to open them usually rips it down the side, thus rendering the strip of sticky tape useless because of the gap down the side.

Driving and Eating Skittles

I called at the garage on the way home tonight. It's not my usual but I was low on petrol and as I have a long journey tomorrow again I thought I would get what I needed this evening instead of tomorrow. This particular garage has some sweets that I like - called Black Jacks and Fruit Salad. I also picked up a travel pack of Skittles. Sweets help keep me alert because sometimes when I'm driving for a long time I need some stimulation to avoid getting sleepy and just to keep focused on driving situations. Skittles were a bad choice because I am so addicted. It is impossible for me to have a Skittle and forget the rest. I am even now munching on a multi-coloured handful. I think there is one colour of Skittles that contains a substance banned in the US. Even more reason not to throw them down my neck like I am doing now. And yet I still continue to eat! How much fool am I?

The Rise of iTunes

We've used iTunes for probably 2 or 3 years now but it's only in the last two weeks that I have started the big project of putting all my music into it. I haven't finished yet and have over 9,500 songs (26 days) in my library. I've gotten several boxes of old CDs from my loft and have ripped them onto our external hard disk. I was always worried about not having the capacity to store my music on our hard disk but the external hard disk eliminates that worry.

iTunes has some great features, coverflow for instance. It's funny how coverflow draws you in and just the act of browsing covers is pleasurable. iTunes sometimes doesn't associate any artwork to an album, so I have to look for the cover on the web - Google image search is the best thing for this I've found. The browse library feature is interesting because it shows you how the Gracenote database assigns a genre to your music, examining this I can see that many classifications are not what I would have chosen. It's good fun to see your music collection sliced up into someone else's categories. Just a shame that it is going to take such a long time to work through correcting incorrect categorisations. I do like the smart playlists feature that you can use to create rules that automatically selects songs for you, another way you can "find" songs you haven't listened to in ages.

Frightfest

I've been recording Film4's Frightfest films to watch at my leisure, a series of horror films to tie in with the festival in London. I'm looking forward to Re-Animator, Day Of The Dead, Dawn Of The Dead, 28 Days Later, The Blair Witch Project, The Descent, Vault of Horror and Ju-On 1 and 2 (The Japanese, and best, version of The Grudge). I haven't been to the film festival in London but some of the films look really good. This is one of the problems with having a full time job - not enough time off to enjoy life outside of work.

I don't have a all consuming dark nature to watch so many horror films - its just that the season is on and I'm taking advantage: it will take me a few weeks to watch them all and by then it will be Halloween: something else to look forward to! Let's face it, the English Summer is now over so there isn't much else to look forward to but Halloween and then Christmas.

A Roundup for August so far

We bought ourselves a DVD Recorder recently and for me its been like discovering video recorders again for the first time. I'm recording quite a few films and even though I thought our DVD collection was good, it's improving with the films I'm recording. I'm pleasantly surprised that so many great films are shown on TV: The Thomas Crown Affair (Steve McQueen version), Wargames, Unbreakable, Day of the Dead, Hellboy and The Mummy to name but a few in the last couple of weeks. This week I see that The Descent, X2, The Blair Witch Project, Terminator 2 and 28 Days Later are on. We did watch a strange horror film from the 1970s last week called Incense For The Damned, a vampire tale very heavily edited at the start - so much that it was quite comical. Not a film I could recommend unless you have some time to kill.

My wife bought me a nice surprise last week: Guitar Hero III for the Wii. My daughter and I have been flexing our fingers and rocking out in the sitting room. It's a great game and the controller works fantastically well. The music is great too.

I finished reading Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and now I'm reading the 4th in the Op Centre series (Acts of War), it's a very exciting read. I've also begun the first volume of the complete Judge Dredd comic strips. I always remember seeing a drawing of Judge Dredd on his motorcycle and thinking that his bike was really cool. It had spikes on the wheels and it was the first time I had ever seen that.

Team GB are doing well in the Olympics considering we are such a small nation. I've enjoyed watching the coverage on the TV.

Wall-E

We took the children to watch this film today at the cinema. It was my wife's idea. There was a short animated film at the beginning about a magician and his rabbit. My 5 year old son absolutely loved it, laughed his head off he did! That was great. The main attraction was Wall-E. I've been aware of the hype recently, everywhere I go or every advert I watch seems to have the robot depicted somewhere. I had only read one brief review of the film before watching it but I think my wife was more exposed to it than I. The story is about man filling Earth up with junk and blasting off into space for a massive exodus vacation while the Wall-E robots clean the Earth up and make it habitable once more. However, as time goes by the vacation turns out to be much, much longer - like 700 years! By then, everyone's bones have gotten smaller since they just sit around on hover chairs constantly watching their personal screens infront of their noses. They get their daily nutrition from big drink cartons that robots are only to happy to supply after the slightest request. Meanwhile, Wall-E has been on Earth keeping it clean as the sole robot of his type. He has made a home for himself and a cockroach. His world is changed when he falls in love with another robot dropped off on Earth to check for signs of vegetation capable of sustaining human life. This other robot is super-sophisticated compared to Wall-E but somehow they fall in love and have to save humanity from the comfort and sloth of life on board the big pleasure cruiser. I thought the best part of the film was the scale of the worlds created by the animators. The detail was incredible, always is with Pixar, but on such a scale it was fascinated viewing. Particularly the first half hour on Earth which was mainly just Wall-E without talking. To keep the audience engaged for such a length of time without any dialogue in the script, was truly a magnificent feat in itself. My wife had read a review talking about it being the best film ever made (or words to that effect). It's certainly not that, but I thought it was a very enjoyable film and one for both adults and children to enjoy.

Work, Work and More Work!

I haven't mentioned this before but since the end of Spring I've been doing two jobs: trying to keep my own job going as well as looking after some of my managers stuff while he works on a new big project. Stepping up into a managers shoes is probably good experience for me, career-wise. However, the financial rewards aren't that great and in terms of what takes my time these days, you could say that I'm losing out on leisure time big style. This is the main reason I've not been here very often this year. Its a sad fact I'm afraid. I will try to be here more often because the work-life balance has to be in place, right? Next week, I have some time off, so I will be looking forward to relaxing.

A few months ago, I was browsing in a book shop and I saw a book that I knew a friend of mine would enjoy. I wasn't sure if he had it already but I bought it anyway - it called out to me. I put it on a shelf at home and forgot about it. Before I had thought about it more than a couple of times, my friend's birthday was upon me and I took it into town to post to him, luckily I had some free time on that day. It turns out that my friend enjoyed the book, he hadn't got it already and so it all turned out well. I like it when things like that happen, I rarely see something I know for a fact someone will like and buy it in advance of their birthday. I should do more of this, it would save worrying about what to get for someone near to their birthday.

Here comes the rain again

It absolutely heaved it down with rain this morning, I could even hear thunder. It has stopped now and the sun has come out. I wonder what this afternoon has in store?

Forgot to mention that yesterday we had a shopping trip and spent far too much. I got a couple of Wii games for the kids stockings this Christmas and I picked up a bargain DVD of John Carpenter's The Thing, a film I've always enjoyed when its been on the TV but never owned.

Bad Habits

On the food front, I've started to slip with my healthier eating - one too many burgers and chocolate thingies. I hope I can stop myself before going any further down this road because if I don't stop I'll just put back all the weight I lost.

I had a good idea today but I've completely forgotten what it was! It was a business idea or something like that, I was thinking of just changing the business model for it and reaping the rewards financially. I've forgotten what IT was though! Typical!

The good news is that we finally managed to see someone about getting a better savings plan this weekend. She was good, our fear was that she would be just trying to sell more of a particular financial product to make up sales figures for the month but instead she actually went on the web and looked at competitors rates and told us honestly what she thought. She accepted that some of our money was best left with a competitor. I hope we get her again when we need advice. She was also good with the kids, who decided to go a bit loopy.

On Saturday we watched the annual Roald Dahl street procession. There were the usual great models - this year the theme was The Twits.

Glasto Nearly Upon Us

According to the Glastonbury Festival countdown clock right now as I type there are 11 hours and 1 minute until the festival gates open. I've never been to Glastonbury Festival but I do have some fond memories of some of the performances I've seen from the TV coverage. It's good that they cover it on TV nowadays, when I was younger it was never broadcast on TV - it might have been on the radio I suppose, but I never heard it if it was.

I did attend a festival for a few years running in the early/mid 90s. The music lineup was really good and I saw some great acts. But the downside was that I didn't have any friends to go with and so I felt a bit lonely on my own, as everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves with friends and generally having a big party, staying up into the early hours, sleeping most of the day etc. I have some good photographs I took of the people and one day I'll have to scan them in and post them up here. I was afraid of being in my tent alone at night, having the stuff in my tent stolen and all sorts of violent thoughts go through your mind. But there are some really nice things too: the people are generally very friendly, you see lots of people with weird and wonderful tattoos and piercings, strange looking hairstyles and clothes - and you get to see some strange behaviours too - whether drug induced or not. I would recommend at least trying one music festival out during your lifetime.

I hope the weather stays dry for the people this year.

A Sunday in June

I've found this month a difficult one to blog. Quite a lot of things are happening this month, my daughter's birthday for one. She received an early present from her grandma. A new bicycle, it's bigger than her old favourite and its quite heavy. The saddle is as low as it can get and she can't reach the floor properly when she sits on it, her tiptoes do but not the whole of her feet. Yesterday, we found a great place to cycle: it's a track between two villages that used to be a railway line but is now a special track for cyclists. Some traces of the railway still exist, like the platforms but they are all grassed over and you can barely tell. It was a great place to try the new bike out. My daughter has fits of tears when she has to learn something new, she fell into a patch of stinging nettles and stung the side of her hand. I didn't think she would get back on the bike after that but she eventually did. Her next challenge was to push off and get herself going without me holding the saddle. After several miles and lots of tears and coaching she eventually did it and instantly brightened up. We went from despair to triumph and almost over-confidence instantly!

I was woken up with some excitement in the house on Sunday. I had completely forgotten it was Father's Day. The family congregated around me as I groggily woke up and found their expectant faces eager for me to wake up and seize the day. I didn't feel like seizing anything except more sleep but I tried to hide my tiredness. I was given some really nice gifts and it was a lovely surprise, I love my family. I couldn't go back to sleep but by the evening I was good for nothing, all that running after my daughter on her bicycle.

Oh Sunny Day

Unusually for England in June, the weather hasn't been so bad so far. Sunday and Monday were absolutely lovely. Let's hope it continues a bit longer than forecast (Thursday and on to the weekend doesn't look so good). This week I finally converted my Club Nintendo stars into something useful - points to spend in the Wii shop. We don't make a lot of use of the Wii's online potential: sometimes looking at news and the weather channels, sometimes playing strangers at Wii Chess, sometimes entering Mii competitions and judging other entrants and sometimes playing multiplayer races on Mariokart Wii. This week though, I used the stars I've earned through buying games and converted them into Wii Points Cards and have accumulated the 500 points needed to download the Internet Channel. This is a web browser on the Wii. So I can watch You Tube on my TV and read blogs and so on. There are also games sites that allow you to play free online Flash games on the Wii. I don't think I'll be writing much on the Internet Channel though because typing on the Wii is a bit like trying to type with one finger on a keyboard your not used to: painful.