Chineween

No I've not finally gone crazy and started to make up totally random words. I thought I would share some photos that I took at our YSA activity on Friday, which was imaginatively titled Chineween by our YSA reps Smooth and bosslady. It was a combination halloween and some Chinese holiday/event party.

and before anyone askes I have no idea whats happened with Bosslady's eyes, it's either the flash or maybe the photograph, *cue dramatic drumroll* reveals her true nature :-) You decide!

and well I don't think that there's anything more I can say about this picture then the picture says itself :-)

Hopefully tthey'll like these two pictures better then the last two I posted that featured them.

benn playing with my photo editing software!

The pumpkin our team carved. Don't ask!

and a couple of random photos to finish!

later!

It’s really is paranoia if no ones out to get you

Well they say that things are sent to try us and that we’ve never given any test that we can’t overcome, etc, etc any other cliché you can think of, and so on. The trouble is knowing these things and accepting them is a whole other matter. Things are slowly but surely getting worse again and I don’t know if I can keep doing this anymore.

Well as I’m sure the ones of you who’ve visited before and can actually understand my inane ramblings we’ll probably guess in about, oh two seconds who’s involved in this and you will be right. To add to the fun Mum appears to have developed a healthy case of paranoia as she rang on Saturday night twice. The first was to check that 141 worked and her number wasn’t registered. She then called back again and wanted to check I was alone before asking me if grumpy had been driving around the town trying to find her house, because she still hasn’t told him where she lives, despite saying she will. So when I asked what she meant, she said she was checking as grumpy had driven past her just as was leaving her car and she was walking into her house. Which if she lived in a cul de sac might be suspicious, but her road is the same road as the entrance to our local co-op, grumpy was just going down to get some batteries and that was all. It was just a coincidence as he had been sleeping all afternoon, that was all. She asked again twice more before she seemed to accept it, and saying “ oh I must be, a bit paranoid”. So that’s where it was left.

So imagine my surprise when Grumpy mentioned the next day that Mum had told him that she had called and claimed it was to ask if he wanted to go for a drink and a talk about things. This absolutely left me flummoxed for a good few seconds and I had absolutely no idea what to say, and finally managed to stammer out an extremely lame sounding “dodging” of the question. So I have no idea why she told him she had rung, unless she’s suddenly decided that I would go and tell grumpy if she calls and what she says. Now I don’t know why she would think that, and quite frankly I’m rather annoyed over it. I don’t want to lie to either of them. There, it’s that simple and I wish that neither of them would put me in that situation yet mum has put me smack bang into the middle of that situation yet again! I’m fed up of having to continually watch what I say in case I screw up and say something I shouldn’t, I don’t know why she just can’t be straight with him as I’m sick to death of being in the middle and it feels like I’m loosing my mind.

It’s like no one feels grasps what it’s like to be being pulled in several different directions at once and trying desperately not to take one side over the others and at the end of the day everyone else in the family ‘has someone’ I they need to talk or at least get a hug. Who do I currently have to get a hug from when I need one, like now ? No one, nadda, zip, not a soul.

I’m still getting zero offers of help from church leaders, in fact I’m starting to worry that grumpy might of scared the home teachers off as we haven’t see them in weeks. I mentioned this frustration to T and apparently J’s response was, well they wouldn’t as it’s all a secret. What is????? What’s a darn secret??? Even if there was the slightest possibility that this was the reason, it would actually be a much situation as the church leaders had all failed to notice that Mum hadn’t come to church in over half a year! Don’t get me wrong though, the YSA are great, their fantastic, it’s me whose sorta the problem at the moment, I still have this deep lingering fear sometimes that maybe the concern isn’t genuine and that it’s just ‘pleasantries’ , now it’s stupid I know, really stupid, but I just can’t seem to shake it and I think that’s probably not helping things at the moment, as I all I can seem to do is laugh and tell people what’s going on in a very joking and matter of fact way, when all I desperately want to do more then anything is to allow myself to break down, to let it out and cry on some one’s shoulder

Everything’s coming to a head now and I don’t know how to do this. I just don’t know, but I hope I can use the small shred of smarts I have and figure it out before I go raving mad.
Later!

Stop the world I wanna get off.

Well I experienced a new kind of rain while driving to institute last night. Not the super mega death rain, I've previously described, this was the annoying persistent rain. Yes it had been raining slowly but steadily all day, so the amount of water on the road surface was horrendous. It didn't help that the vast majority of people seemed completely oblivious to this fact and the reduced visibility, so they kept their speed up. This kicked so much water up into the air, I wasn't sure if it was water or just misty out. How there weren't more accidents, last night I'll never know.

The food at the W's was as nice as ever. It's so good to have a nice home cooked/prepared meal rather then Grumpys usual way of making dinner. Grabbing something from the freezer and shove that in the oven and cook some frozen veg or sumthing. Anyway, SW came to institute as well because as it's half term, there was no seminary for her to teach. So I took J and G and traveler and J's friend went with SW. ( why can't I think of good codenames for them?). Unsurpringly she beat us there, now I don't mean that in a really sarky way, but it's just with heavy rain or bad driving conditions I don't like to push things while driving, due to me flipping my first car over and it being written off. Sw is a more confident driver and can handle those conditions better

Institute was as great as always. Bro H his usual great selves at teaching the lesson. I have to admit I think I would find the lessons a lot more boring if he wasn't there. Although in one part of the lesson we had to talk to the person sitting next to us and we had to tell them what we were glad about and for some reason I had a complete mental blank and could only think of being glad for having a home cooked dinner that night. I was sitting next to MM, who is either one of these people who always see's the positive in everything or was on something. either way I was jealous :-)

Banana was also there as well and it was very nice to see her. It's not been the same since she stopped coming regularly. There was also a card for A ( I think Nemesis calls her goldilocks or sumthing) as she's leaving soon. So the lesson was good, it was afterwards I displayed my innate ability to act like a pillock at the worst of times. G was going to go home with H, which meant that there would have been a spare place in SW's car, so I thought that meant I could go straight home rather then having to wait for the activity to finish. but when I asked SW she seemed a bit taken back ( just to emphasis this is how I interpreted it and with my powers of utter pillockness I'm fairly certain I got it wrong) and said that she was going right then as she needed to get home as she was receiving a phone call at 10pm. So I may, no wait there was no may about it, snapped at her that it was fine and I would just wait for J to finish. now why I snapped I have no idea, and I really wished I did because I know I shouldn't have and I certainly had no right too. So I waited round for a few more minutes and then the activity seemed to be winding up by itself, so SW said she would take him and I could go. I double checked and she said it was fine, although again to me she seemed ticked off, which after me snapping at her she had every right to be. So there you have it folks, it seems like I've upset SW over a very, very trivial thing. Could I be anymore of a pillock??
(rhetorical question by the way)

I don't know what's up with me at the minute, my get up and go has seemed to have got up and gone. Or maybe it's just because it seems like I'm getting slammed from several different directions at the moment. I just can't seem to get myself going to do anything.

I dunno,

Later.

My get up and go has got up and gone

Well Winter is here. How can I tell this? Well we've started to switch the central heating on in the house. Mind you it's not that effective because grumpy keeps turning the whole system off for some strange and mysterious reason which I'm sure almost makes sense in his head. So by keeping switching the system off, it's starting to get very cold when I get up in the mornings. It always reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, where his mind is frantically trying to get Calvin out of bed, it's pouring with rain outside, and Calvin's wrapped his covers around himself tightly declaring that " I'm not getting up until it's as warm out there as it is in here. If only I could do that :-) Something tells me work would not accept that as a excuse, he, he, he, :-)

We're in the middle of a office move around at work, so I'll be getting a bright new shiny desk shortly. We're also going to be going away for a couple of days to do a 'Team building' exercise thingies. You know the sort. We've just had to fill in one of those personality test thingies as well. The ones where you have a choice of two words and pick which one appeals to you more, there's two statements pick which one you agree with, etc, etc, etc. Although the only thing I could think of the entire time, was that Simpson's episode where homer has to fill one of these things out and gets Bart to do it instead, which leads to homer getting committed to a insane asylum. I'm sure there not going to find me crazy, I'm sure * Starts looking around nervously for men in white coats *

Well it's institute again, and time for me to play Taxi again. Seriously though it's very nice to know that I can get out of the house at least one night a week. I've got a containers to take back to the W's as Traveler made me some extremely nice cookies last week. They were great and as they had sugar and smarties in them I didn't have to share them with Grumpy. Hey a weak justification I know, but it's mine and I'm sticking to it :-) Last week institute got onto marriage just like the fireside. So a class and a fireside on marriage both in the same week. Hmmmmm, Maybe somebody is trying to tell us something??

I saw the new doctor who spin off at the weekend. Torchwood, it's very, very good and I'm really happy we've now got digital so I can watch it on BBC 3, rather then having to struggle to set the video timer to record it when it's shown on BBC2 while i'm at institute. I think it's one of these programmes though that church people will either like or stay as far away as possible from it, as it is a lot more adult then Doctor who.

The wedding over the weekend was good. It was different as well, because it's the first wedding I've been too in years which hasn't actually taken place at one of our churches. It was initially in a registry office out in March, and I now have a extremely healthy respect for the distance that the members of March branch have to travel to get to the stake centre in Leicester. We then moved onto a hotel for the wedding reception and the disco in the evening. It was a very good day.

well that's all I can think of today.

later!

Rogue's gallery

So in case any of you were wondering who exactly this lot are, these pics are of the 'active memebers' of the ward YSA, minus one or possibily two people who didin't turn up to the fireside. Click on the pics to see large versions of them!

and now for something completely different

I was messing around with my digital camera and decided to take some random images. So allow me to introduce inky Dog and inky teddy. So called as they were in the incubator with me when I was born. So yes folks thats right their both as old as me. Scary init?

Living in 2006

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2006 when...

1 You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting yourcoffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile.

12. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this listAND NOW U R LAUGHING at yourself.

Go on, forward this to your friends. You know you want to.

Round and round and round we go, where this is gonna stop no one knows!

It might have sucked to be Robinson Crusoe. Stranded on a desert island miles and miles from civilization but at least he had one or two advantages. No work, could always get a good spot on the beach for sunbathing and there was absolutely no annoying family members around to drive you so crazy you want to KNOCK THEIR HEADS TOGETHER IN A EFFORT TO GET SOME SENSE BACK INTO THEIR HEADS!

Guess what everybody, I'm currently feeling a bit stressed. Well it's my half sister E's wedding on Saturday and as far as I'm aware to this point Mum still hasn't told Grumpy that she's not going and yet he keep's asking me if she is. I really don't want to get in the line of fire here so I keep trying to avoid the question as I really, really don't want to be the one who has to tell him. I'm also worried that she might not tell him at all, and so he'll find out some other way which will seriously set him off, especially as the pair of them are actually communicating fairly okay at the moment. Oh well, I guess we'll see what happens there.

We had a YSA fireside on Sunday. Wow lots of activities, and now firesides. Anyone would think we had a pair of quite keen YSA ward reps. Oh wait! We do! Although both Boss lady and Smooth really, really need to work on their salesmanship. This is how their sold it in the YSA Sunday school class,

" We have a fireside tonight. We won't tell you what it's about or you'll probably not turn up"

See what I mean? For those of you who haven't been able to figure it out yet through that 'interesting' selling pitch, the fireside was about Marriage and relationships. Actually near enough the entire Loughborough YSA turned up, I think at most we were missing one or two people. It was at the Mcreynolds house as in M + S not the Stake President and yet again the 'curse' held firm. I got their okay but got totally lost on the way home and ended up going on a magical mystery tour of the countryside.

Okay, to be honest the main reason I got there with no problems getting there was that I was following Engineseer who has Satnav. The only problem was that he seemed to forget that I didn't have a handy gizmo to warn me when a corner or intersection was coming up. So following him was a hair raising experience to say the least.

Well it's institute again tonight, and hopefully, touch wood, pleads with Fate etc, I'll get to stay for the whole night this time. as I missed it last week due to all of the 'technical problems'. :-)

well that's all for now.

later!

A week I would rather forget

I always wonder when seeing the equations that scientists work on to see if they can prove that life on other planets exist if they bother to also work out the chances of these races having those own equivalent of sod/Murphy/irony.

Yes in case you haven't guessed I have had what most rank as one of the worst weeks ever. Don't believe me? Well lets review the last seven days shall we children?

I put my car in for a service and they then discover that the oil sump has gone porous and is leaking. It has to be replaced so the bill for the sump and service comes to £450.

I go to a YSA activity at engineseer's which has been organized by boss lady. As the car was still in the garage he had to come and pick me up. However absolutely nobody else turns up, including Boss lady who had organized the whole thing .

my watch strap breaks.

The best of my two rear tires gets a very bad puncture and goes completely flat. I change it for the spare but I'm going to have to go and buy a new tire.

The car insurance was due. After much searching I finally find the best quote at £560, although I can pay monthly fortunately enough.

due to a miscommunication ( not blaming anyone in case they read these, just one of those things) the W's mum didn't realize I would be coming for dinner on Wednesday when I was being the taxi for them so they didn't do any dinner for me. did get a nice mousse though.

On the way to institute the car started to excessively rev, even when I've come to a stop. I had to call the RAC out who discovered that a important throttle sensor in the engine had gone, so the car needed to go into a garage asap. I had to leave institute early and the W's with Bro H who gave them a lift home.

My local garages idea of fitting a car in for a emergency/urgent repair would be to see it next Wednesday.

I had to take the car to the original dealer for them to fix. Costs £150

I discover that they had given me the wrong MOT certificate, so the Car had the MOT six months before it needed to. All I get from them is basically 'oops sorry' .

Discussed all of the problems with the Car with them and the impression it has given of their business. Only response I get from then on this is " nothing we can do It's just wear and tear" They miss the point.

Grumpy has managed to loose the invitation, wedding present list, and directions to my half sisters wedding. Yet he's refusing to ring and ask for the details as he doesn't want to admit he screwed up

The light bulb blew in my bedroom and we currently have no spares. Last night I had to get ready for bed in the dark using a touch.

I opened a bottle of sprite and it quite literally 'blew up.' most of the kitchen tops, floor, and me end up covered in sprite. Despite my best efforts the floor is now very sticky.

The insurance company have some managed to insure the car twice. Once in my name with Grumpy as a named driver, and once in Mums name.

despite leaving 20 minutes early for work so I could catch up on some work that I couldn't do yesterday as I couldn't get to work with the car being broken, I got stuck in a huge traffic jam which meant I actually arrived 20 minutes later then usual.

making grumpy's lunch I discovered that he's been helping himself to stuff in the fridge, so no fillings left for my sandwiches

I only have one other thing to say. Arggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what have I done to deserve all this.

I think I'll do the only sensible grown up thing that I can do. I'll go back to bed and hide under the duvet.

later!

I will get something constructive done; it’s just at this rate it will take about 40 years.

This is a backdated post by the way in case anyone gets real confused. It should have bee posted last sunday, but the computer decided not to co operate :-)


Well which of these is the most heavy?

A) Car b) house C) the pile of work I will have waiting for me when I return to work tomorrow.

Well I have the depressing feeling it ain’t gonna be A or B. Yes I know the posting on the blog front has been less then stellar this week, but I figured after yet again failing to do half of the constructive tasks I had planned because I was seduced by the brain rotting selection of shows on digital TV, subjecting you to several days of describing in detail the complete lack of things I managed to get done would not do my chances of actually keeping the handful of regular visitors I actually have interested and visiting this blog. However a number of slightly interesting and events did crop up and I will do my best to bore you with them………………now.

The digital channels. Some of the stuff is good, other stuff is complete tosh, especially the stuff they play mid morning. One channel in particular is apparently a highly rated comedy channel playing 24 hours a day. However this is only if you pay for the channels. On freeview the channel only plays 9am to 6pm and you get the same shows , Less then perfect, 8 simply rules, home improvement and scrubs playing in a loop. Which is annoying but obviously as they only have a finite number of these shows sooner or later then going to have to start again. Which means they have long since given up even attempting to show the shows in order. Which does make for some entertaining viewing. In a way.
BE WARNED SPOILERS AHEAD
The actor who played the Dad in 8 simple rules died, but the show continued for a little while and introduced two new characters, the grandfather and CJ who dropped out of the army, went back to college then got a job teaching at the local school . So watching all of the episodes they show in the order their showing them in can mean that this happens, The dads alive, he’s dead, he’s alive again, Cj is working at the school, he’s just arrived, he’s finished his college course, He’s just started it, he hasn’t arrived, the Dad’s alive again, etc, etc, etc. There’s a similar theme with scrubs. She’s pregnant, now she isn’t, she’s just had the baby, she had the baby ages ago, she’s pregnant again. etc, etc, etc. Although I have got over the new and shinyness syndrome of having the freeview channels after I found myself watching Judge Judy and may have then spent a few minutes running around the house gibbing insanely to myself about “ What am I doing” as I realised I was quite probably rotting the few shreds of brain I actually have left.

The car, or as I am currently referring to it as “ Money pit on wheels” until I have actually worked through some of my spitting rage and anger went it for it’s service and as you may have guessed something went wrong. It came through it’s service fine apart from the one tiny problem of the oil sump going porous and leaking oil. So it had to be replaced. Suffice to say with the service and the sump being done together it was as expensive as it sounds. Fortunately as I have a credit card for emergencies it’s not going to hurt as much as it would have paying ‘cash’, but I am going to be paying it off for two or three months now. Oh well. Although one word of advice for everyone, if someone you know owns a car and they’ve just had to pay out a lot of money to get it fixed, saying things like “ Ouch, that’s bad” or “ That was unlucky is fine” Telling the person, “ Oh well that’s part of owning a car “ is a bad idea as not only is it obvious and a little condescending it does sound like you been sent by Sod to gleefully rub it in their faces. However if you insist in telling them this, I would try and make sure that there are n sharp objects within easy reach of the person J

LDS Linkup update. 21 friends still, only 3 comments. CP has now signed up to the service now and is up to 35 friends and eight comments within two weeks. Am I bitter, no of course not. Now excuse me while I go and crawl under the table and cry.

Institute this week and as if I’m not good enough projecting the image of looser, I got a helping hand with the activity after the lesson. We had to try and draw two other people and they draw us etc. So not only did everyone see my terrible drawing skills I then compounded the very bad drawing I did of one girl by then forgetting her name. In the words of that great 20 and 21st century philosophy Homer J Simpson D’OOOHH. I did have dinner at the Ws as I was off and had to let Dad borrow the car so he could pop to the doctors straight after work. It was still fun despite going on a magical mystery tour on the way back when we discovered that the off ramp for their junction was shut. But oh well.

Well that’s about it for now I have some more ramblings, but I’m sure I’ll get to them tomorrow.

Later!

and I thought last time was bad!

My two words of the week.

Ouch and Expensive.

Yes folks it has been one heck of a expensive week for yours truly. Firstly the cars service and subsequent oil sump replacement cost £450. Then one of the rear tires was punctured. So I'm going to have to buy a new tire and finally I had to sort out the car insurance which will be £560 for the year. However there is still a drop of £1000 since the last time I tried to get insurance with me as the main driver. Also I don't have to pay all of it in one go, I can pay installments monthly thank goodness!! So now you see why my two words of the week are Ouch and expensive!

Well I'm playing taxi again tonight. Yes it's Institute time again!! Ya!! It's actually turning into the highlight of my week at the moment, which I think demonstrates how boring things are in my life at the moment. Doesn't it?

It's been raining quite heavily here all day, so my feet are likely to get very, very wet on my way to the car. We're about to have a office move here at work and yes before you ask I am indeed drawing a mental blank. For some strange reason I am finding it really, really difficult to say anything. Maybe because at the minute I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop as it were. I'm really not in the correct frame of mind to go into it here, but regular readers really wouldn't need three guesses to correctly guess who is one of the main people involved.

If I'm in the right frame of mind I'll try and explain tomorrow.

later!

in a holding pattern

Okay,

This is just a quick blog post and isn't actually a proper blog post. confused? Well let me explain. I did write a nice long blog entry but due to the computer at home being cranky. I couldn't post it. So this is just a quick post, which I will replace latter with the actual blog post, so the blog post I wrote at home will still be in it's correct 'place'.

Confused??

me too.

from the mists of time

Well I went back to the Doctors again today, as my knee was still hurting.
Well goods news first, as the pain as been lessening in my knee she's not that concerned, and doesn't want to refer me to the psycio as it isn't that bad and is improving. Besides apparently he has a 6 month waiting list. That’s right Six whole months and hopefully at the rate it's been improving it should be okay by then. Downside, I have to keep an eye on 'it' as it were because she fairly certain I’ve damaged some ligaments in my knee which is what's causing the pain. If my knee doesn't get any better I'm going to have to go back and she's going to have to refer me anyway. So keep your fingers crossed for me guys

Well I'm not in work this week. I have the whole week off. Ya!!!! Yes yours truly, managed to mess up his calculations for time in lieu good and proper so I had much, much more then I thought and as it's a use it or loose it deal, I decided to opt to use it :-) Tough choice right? Now all I've got to do is to think of something constructive to do. Isn't life tough :-)

Well we go a new TV. A all new, all singing, all dancing digital one with the digital channels built in. ( okay I might be fibbing about the all singing and all dancing part but that would be groovy though to have a TV that could do that right? although it might be a bit hard to see a clear picture and oh look I'm rambling again). Of course ironically instead of now sitting there and gripping that there are three things I wanna watch on at the same time, there’s now like 12 or 15 instead. Argghhhhh!!!!!! Oh well I suppose it's another one of those " Just can't win scenarios"

Institute was as good as ever last week. We've had a new student join the class. She's an American and is over here for a year studying Victorian history. The cars going in for it’s major service at the end of this week. It’s going to be expensive but can’t be avoided. L Unless I want the engine to fall out of it, and I’ve been told that’s never good.

oh well, can't think of much else to say for now.
so later!