Ring out the old

Well we're here Boys and Girls. The last day of 2008 and a mere 443 blog posts after I started my new years resolution to make at least one post for every day of the year I was able to and I think you'll agree I smashed that goal good and proper. To put that into perspective with my blogging frequency in previous years, I managed 148 posts in 2007 and only 122 in 2006. This also means that I've managed to make more posts this year that I have done in the past two years combined!

Allow me a brief moment of feeling smug with myself. :-)

Of course I suppose that doing so many posts possibily indicates that I have way too much time on my hands and my social life sucks ( this is a rhetorical statement mind you) but I still like to think it was a good achievement myself.

So I think that keeping the blog up to date is one resolution that will definately be repeated in 2009.

Oh yes, I made some other resolutions didn't I? Hmm, I guess time for some honesty there and admit how I did.

1) Exercise more
This one was going good until I injured my knee and fell out of the routine. The fact Grumpy put the bike in the garage didn't help either. So I think it's safe to say I failed on this one.

2) loose weight.
This one was also going good until I messed up on the exercise one. I don't think I'm any worse off then I was at the beginning of the year but I don't think I'm any better either. So this was is also a fail.

3) Cut back on sugar and caffine.
I kept going on this one a lot longer then one and two, but stresses and various things going on meant I did go back onto the caffine. However I'm nowhere near as bad as I was at the start of the year. So I would call this one a moderate success

4) Keep the blog more up to date.
Well at 443 blog posts I would have to call this one a resounding success.

5) Try and get more people to read my blog and leave comments
Still making progress on this one. I know I am getting a lot more readers ( ahh the wonders of google analytics) comment leaving is still a bit more hit and miss for want of a better term, but it is still better then the start of the year. I would call this one a moderate success.

6) Get Finances under control and start saving.
Much, much better at handling my money. So I would call this one a success.

7) Try to minimize the amount of time I spend wallowing in self pity.
This one is still proving tricky, but I'd like to think that I'm becoming better at handling any big issues, so I'd like to think compared to the start of the year this one was a light success.

8) Make a new friend.
Well my attempts at making friends with new YSA might have hit a major failure recently but I made three new blogging friends, and met a lot of nice people at this years YSA conference. So I would call this one a success as well.

9)Develop a new skill
I've really got the hang of publisher now and I'm very adept at using it. So I would call this one a light success.

10) Broaden my history knowledge by studying about the tudors.
I've read several books so I'm quite up on the history of the tudors now. So I would call this one a success.

So out of ten resolutions that's two fails, two light success, three success's, two moderate success's, one resounding success. So I don't think that was bad going at all.

I didn't get up to much today as it was very cold. Extremely cold in fact, Grumpy had great problems when trying to go out as it was so cold the de-icer froze on his windscreen when we sprayed it on! It froze extremely quickly as well. I hadn't seen anything like it before. I was very glad I didn't have to go into work this morning.

Well I'll be staying in tonight. Boring I know but theres not anything on nearby I want to go to and I certainly don't want to be driving anywhere long distance in this conditions. So I'll probably be seeing in 2009 from the comfort of the lounge in Saxon towers with a glass of Shloer here in geeksville.

Happy New Year everyone where you are. Here's hoping that 2009 will be a great year for you all.

See you in 2009 folks!

Manning the fort

My alarm went off this morning and seemed somewhat louder then usual. In a way it seemed like it had decided to increase it's volume in an attempt to see just how loud it had to get before I tried to smash it!

Still at least the drive into work was extremely easy as the roads were near empty....

Because everyone else was on Christmas Holidays.......

Still looking at the positives, I only have to go in one day before next week and with so few people in instead of my usual four minute walk from the far end of the car park I only had a minute walk as I was able to get a car parking space almost right next to the building.

The day passed a lot quicker then I was expecting, I guess because with the stuff which had built up from last week I had a lot to do and keep my mind focussed. Which was good as there was only one other person in the office and she was on the other side so it would have been awkward to get a conversation going. We also had to crank the radiators up as the office was freezing! It was intriguing to see the difference that was made to the temperatures with a lack of people and computers working away.

Still I was able to get everything done and was able to leave on time, so yaah me! And the roads were also near totally empty on the way home so I was able to get back nice and quick as well.

So New years eve tomorrow. No idea what I'm going to be doing, but I guess that will be half the fun. Admitatily I'll probably just be boring and stay home but it sounds so much more exciting if I say I haven't made up my mind.

Don't you think?

No?

me neither :-)

Later folks and don't forget to tune in tomorrow for the last post of 2008!

Getting to the point

Well where was I before I got resoundly sidetracked by random pictures, buildings, deffkoptas and ipods. oh yes, Roadtrip! Time for a flashback! ( cue waynes world sound for doing flashbacks complete with hand motions, do, do le do, do do le do, do, do, le do)

Yes, yesterday started off fairly early and strangely enough with a rather confused dog as Owen tried to figure out why Engineseer was still here and where he slept. He then started barking at him again but as also wagging his tale at the same time. Grumpys suggestion was maybe Owen could sense the fear and was only barking as he was pleased to have a human he could boss around. Grumpy also suggested that Owen should 'write his own blog' of the view of the world from a Dogs perspective. Stay tuned for that one to see if that actually comes to anything. Although Grumpy did say that he would help Owen with the writing.

After loading up Engineseers car it was time to see him off, well only after he managed to figure out how to fit his chair into the car which was highly amusing to watch. He's selling his car so the old 'batmobile' ( yes could we be anymore geeky? Rhetorical by the way) will soon be gone for good. Ahh all the YSA trips we had in that thing, if that car could talk..... we would probably have had to have it crushed so it didn't spill any secrets!

After Engineseer left to go to the DVLA office in Nottingham ( he's in another country and still can't escape english red tape, he, he, he) it was time for me to pack up and ship out.

After getting to Travellers I removed the blanket from the back seat which Owen usually sits on to find the seat was also covered in Dog Hairs. Yep, Grumpy had forgotten to mention something important. So with a few bad words uttered under my breath such as bother, balderdash and darn I tried to clean the seats as best I could ( disclaimer: actual uttered words may have differed from those displayed here).

Traveller came out and mentioned that her American friend ( or American Guy) was staying at her brothers in Leicester and we would need to go and collect him. We got to Leicester and I discovered that the years may pass, YSA come and go, and People get married but Travellers directional skills are still as bad as ever. It took us nearly an hour and ten minutes to find her brothers house!

Still Fearless arrived pretty soon and we were on our way, somewhat later then planned mind you.

Still on the plus side it was a very straight run even if it was annoying as they had flipping average speed cameras everywhere.

We got to Cambridge and Traveller tried to get directions from her friends on the phone. Which also caused us to experience a few problems as she doesn't drive much herself if at all she wsan't too good at anticipated when to give me directions. For example telling me to stop in the middle of a busy street , not the best instructions in the world) still she has such a cheery personality it's not possible to get cross with her for long. And besides she actively admits that her navigational skills are not so good. She even told me I could say " She couldn't navigate her way out of a paper bag".

Still when we finally got into cambridge city centre, past lots of walls with bikes up againist them underneath signs saying please do not lean bikes againist the walls, her navigational skills seemed to improve considerably as she took us through so many twists and turns and changes of direction that my sense of location was pretty much shot to bits very quickly.

Still we met up with our friends and had a good lunch, then a look round cambridge, followed by some hot choclate in a cafe then finally some games of pool while traveller went to met one of her other friends who was very shy.

Getting out of cambridge lead to a few more problems as trying to navigate in the dark with no help from the back, I ended up on the wrong road, going to bedford. Pulling of the dual carriageway I turned into a small housing estate intending to park up and call Grumpy for help. It was at this point that fearless earned his name as when I pulled up he said " Lets ask those people" and was out of the car in a flash. I looked around expecting to see some people on the pavement or something, but oh no. Fearless had meant he was going to ask the people who lived in the house which I had pulled up near. He ran to their door ad it was answered by a very confused women. She graciousily called her husband who kindy gave Fearless some directions, who then shook the guys hand and was bounded back to the car as quickly as he could. I don't think theres many people these days who would have the guts to knock on a random door for directions. ( you can tell he's a newly returned missionary can't you ? :-)

We made good time back to Leicester where we dropped Fearless and American Guy off at Travellers Brothers. We didn't then however make good time back to hers and due to directional mix up we ended up getting lost again. Still all part of the fun I suppose. As she's now working in Thailand it's very possible that I won't see her until next Christmas now. So it was a bit sad saying goodbye.

Anyway I finally got home nearly 14 hours after I had left it. Still it was fun and it was nice to spend sometime with friends I won't see again for a while. And that's what made the day worth it.

Later folks

If you're gonna steal, steal from the best

Okay I’ll admit that I did ‘borrow’ this idea from one of Brittanys post’s as it seemed quite fun and to be perfectly honest I never get sent these things by email. ( and in my vain attempt at a defence I have a lot of NOW albums in my Itunes library which is why I have some odd songs appear!)

RULES:
1. Put Your iTunes on Shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.
4. Put any comments in brackets after the song name.

1) If someone says, "Is this okay?" you say:
Beat it—Fall out boy. ( I'm actually polite, honest :-)

(2) How would you describe yourself?
Crashed the Wedding- busted ( which I haven't done. I usually just stay home if I don't get invited)

3) What do you like in a girl?
Unforgiveable Sinner- Lene Marlin ( make your own joke here people)

(4) How do you feel today?
Can’t Fight the Moonlight- Le Ann Rimes (hmmm, philosopical feeling I am today very)

5) What is your life's purpose?
The Heart Asks pleasure first (The Piano)—Michael Nyman (no idea what that could mean. Suggestions anyone?)

6) What is your motto?
Feel Good Inc- Gorillaz (well who am I too argue with the ipod)

7) What do you friends think of you?
Loose yourself—Eminem ( especially ironic considering recent events I'm sure you'll agree)

(8) What do you think of your parents?
Push the button - Sugababes (ummm, phone a friend, 50/50, ask the audience)

9) What do you think about very often?
Do you know (I go crazy)—Angel City (I'll take thigns you don't want to hear from a new co-worker for $600)

10) What is 2+2?
Drifting away- Lange (which is more what my mind did in maths class)

11) What do you think of your best friend?
The Creeps (get on the Dance Floor) —Freaks ( umm pass)

12) What do you think of the person you like?
Shut up and Drive- Rihanna ( umm pass again. me brain no workie the good rite know)

13) What is your life story?
I won’t be crying - Infernal (I disagree)

14) What do you want to be when you grow up?
Starship troopers – London Theatre Orchestra ( cool, excuse I'm now off to stomp some bugs! Come on you apes you wanna life forever!)

15) What do you think of when you see the person you like?
This aint a scene – fall out boy ( but it will probably be if I admit that I like you)

(16) What will you dance to at your wedding?
So what - Pink ( well I suppose it's better then now what?)

17) What will they play at your funeral?
Going under- Evanescence ( he, he, he, he, can't stop laughing at this one, he, he, he)

18) What is your hobby/interest?
Perfect – Mason Vs Princess ( in being perfect? I am perfect? or I'm trying to be perfect as something? I'm so confused)

19) What is your biggest fear?
Rock this Party( everybody dance now)- bob Sinclair ( me on dance floor not good thing. I dance the way the hulk moves. Ughhh! Rhythm make me move!)

20) What is your biggest secret?
Explosive - Bond ( That I have explosive or it is explosive?)

21) What do you think of your friends?
Rendez-Vu- Basement Jaxx ( maybe this is a hint to organise another YSA get together?)

22) What song would you play during your first kiss?
Hero – Chad Kroeger feat take my breath away ( oh so many bad jokes... must leave alone..)

23) What will you post this as?
Prediator – Globus ( thats a bit obscure even for me)

Fun!

Even More Random pictures

Yes I'll admit that I am indeed in one of those moods tonight to post some random pictures ( plus attempting to see how many more blog posts I can squeeze in before the end of the year). Well these aren't as random as the preceeding post as they are from our trip to Cambridge yesterday

I have no idea what this building is but I thought it looked interesting
I'm going to take a random guess, totally random mind you and go out on a limb and say this was some kind of church.

On the left LW who shall now be known as " Fearless" for reasons which will become clear when I write the post about yesterdays events and on the right, well M who shall be known as American Guy ( yes I'll admit I was struggling for a name for him as he is only over here for a very short period to visit Traveller)

Traveller ( in the middle) poses with two of her friends who don't have nicknames but all suggestions (nice ones only) accepted.

Random pictures

Of one my latest painting projects. A Ork Dethkopta.

Told you they were random pictures!

Not much of an excuse I know

Well I've just got back from my road trip to Cambridge today and it has been an extremely long day, so unfortunatly as I'm so tied and I have work tomorrow I will not be able to put up a detailed post of what happened today until tomorrow.

Not much of an excuse I know and I know it's the second time in a week I have not done a proper days post. I hope you'll forgive me as you know these two occasions are the exception not the norm.

Tune in tomorrow folks, there will be a proper post then.

I promise.

Taking the high ground

Well the day started with the usual un nerving wait to see exactly what mood the photocopier would be in when it turned on. It once again was still in a good mood but it does seem to be dying a slow and painful death with regards to print quality. This is the problem when it comes to 2nd hand printers and photocopiers. You can't call someone out to service them!

Still I got into the chapel to see something that reminded me of a friends episode. As there was a wedding yesterday one of the benches from the stand had been moved to the back of the chapel and hadn't been moved back. Initially the bishopric and acouple of helpers were planning to move the bench back to it's original postion. But someone suggested rather then doing that why not move the front bench. So that's what they decided to do and somehow ended up with the two smallest priesthood holders in the ward on one end and the two tallest on the other. Whilst they attempted ot move this thing onto the stand, over the pulpit and turn it round 180% degrees. Chaos resulted and all I could think off was the friends episode where ross and co are trying to get a settee up the stairs. This seemed to be almost a carbon copy of this incident and the only thing that was missing was someone calling " Pivot, pivot, pivot".

They managed to make the move, then someone pointed out that there was too much room in what was now the front bench so that should be moved forward. After doing that they decided the next bench needed to be moved as it had too much leg room. And so on and so on. I think they moved five benches in total trying to match them up with the positon of the previous benches by the marks in the carpet. I couldn't help but wonder if they had made a bit of a mountain out of a mole hill with such a simple job. but still, mine is not to reason why :-)

Sacrement was good, if packed as we seemed to have a lot of visitors this morning. I really thought we were going to spill into the cultural hall this morning for the first time ever. But somehow everyone managed to squeeze in.

Despite temptation after speaking to both photoshop and Engineseer, I decided to try and keep the moral high ground and not say anything to the two YSA (or at least the one who was there)who appear to have been using this blog to take the mickey out of me behind my back. Although the temptation was massive at times. If they want to make fun of me behind my back but be all smiles and friendly to me in person theres not a lot I can do about it.

It's been an interesting afternoon as Engineseer is staying here before heading back to meet the rest of his family tomorrow. For some reason Owen started barking at him and wouldn't stop. We have no idea why! Fortunately he calmed down and seemed to accept him by mid afternoon and seemed to want to be best friends with him by the evening. Tap dance also popped round for some help with her DS, which was a lot of fun as she got confused a couple of times with the instructions on brain training. In one of the tests where you have to say the colour of the lettering of the word rather then the colour the word is, for example if Black is spelt in red lettering you say red, she started off by thinking she had to say the word in the box at the top of the screen which was "quit" as it was the option to finish the test. Still she was starting to get the hang of it by the end. She didn't like her other game too much Nintend Dogs so I think she's more likely to get addicted to brain training rather then that.

I gave Engineseer a painting lesson this evening which went really well and he also helped cook Grumpy some tea. Yes I know it's bit rubbish I can't make scrambled eggs but in my defence I can make big meals, like roast dinners, shepherds pie etc. Which I like to think balances that out.... That's my story and I'm sticking to it :-)

I know I've got some comments to respond to. I'll get to that asap.

Roadtrip time tomorrow. I'm off out with Traveller and Friends. Should be an interesting day and with any luck I'll get some photos.

Tune in tomorrow. Same geek life, same geek station

Later folks...

A Hectic few days

Well I've finally had a break in the hectic few days that 've had, in order to write up a full blog post. Tomorrow will be interesting as Engineseer is coming to stay and then on Monday I should be going on a road trip with Traveller as one of her friends.



Right where to begin.



Christmas day was good. Owen especially enjoyed it as Santa somehow left two stockings for him. His new favourite game is dropping his squeaky toy down the stairs then chasing after it. We watched The Muppets Christmas carol in the morning, Wallace and Gromit the curse of the were-rabbit in the afternoon, then the Doctor Who Christmas Special and the new Wallace and gromit adventure in the evening. Mid afternoon I got a visit from a secret Santa who left this box of goodies







on the door step. I hope Owen didn't scare them too much as their stealthly approach to the door was somewhat ruined by him charging down the stairs and leaping at the door whilst barking his head off.


Yesterday we went up to the Mechanicus and his clan. I drove up with Tap Dance as Grumpy suggested taking his car to give her a break from driving. It was a pretty good drive even if they have at one point 11 miles of roadworks where the speed is reduced to 50 mph and they have average speed , speed cameras. It's such a boring section of road to drive as it seems to keep going on and on and on and on.


It was a lot of fun playing with my nieces and nephews all day even if I did feel absoutly shattered by the end of it! The Driver clan did join us later in the day as well.


Well we had to brave going into Loughborough this morning as we needed to get a couple of bits. Some bread, milk etc. I also had to go to the Post office to get a new tax disc for the car which has gone up in price again! It may be annoying but I have to get one if I want to drive. I also tried looking in a few shops. The few I did get into they had nothing reduced in the sales that I wanted and in the one shop I really was thinking of buying something I couldn't even get to the section I wanted as the queue curled right the way round the entire shop. I probably would have been in there for an hour!


I also popped into Woolies as I saw the sign saying it shuts in three days. They had very little stock left. So little that they were already taking the large shelving units at the back of the store down. It all looked very sad indeed.


I spent most of the afternoon starting to sort through my room. Again! It's kind of that time when I need to go through everything to see what I could get rid of to slow the creeping of stuff off the bookshelves onto the floor. And it's still as hard as ever as I'm a terrible, terrible horder.

Well chuch tomorrow which should be interesting as I'm facing a bit of a problem. It has become known to me through a certain channel that two if not more of the YSA in Loughborough appear to be reading my blog and then using it as a way of taking the mickey out of me behind my back. Now intially when I found out about this I was extremely upset. I've known that some people may not like my blog but I was okay with that as I envisionised that they would be people who I didn't know. I did not imagine that people who I knew from church would use it to make fun of me and yet still be all smiles when actually talking to me. I'll be honest, I think I'm going to struggle to be as civil to them as I usually am so I think I'm just going to have to play it by ear. Oh and before anyone makes any assumptions the people I am referring to, well I've never reffered to them before.

Okay that's the depressing stuff out of the way. Midwife as was, I'm really going to have to think of a new nickname for her is now engaged as her boyfriend proposed to her on Christmas Day. Congratulations to them both! I was tempted to give them the collective nickname now of " The Theresa's" but I figured that was way too obivous even for me.

Later folks!

Just a quick one

This is actually a very quick post to apologise for the lack of a full length post really. After spending a wonderful day with Family, I am absoutlely shattered right now and not really up to writing a full lgenth post. So please tune in tomorrow where I will be making a proper full length post.

Thanks,

Merry Christmas

Just a very quick post for today to wish one and all a very merry Christmas. Especially the secret Santa who left me a basket of goodies on our doorstep this morning. If by any chance you do read this blog I've just like to say thank you very much and I hope Owen didn't scare you too badly when he shot down the stairs and lept at the door barking his head off.

Oh and the New Wallace and Gromit and the Doctor Who Christmas Special were ace.

Later folks!

Twas the night before Christmas

and all through the house not a creature was stiring asides from Saxon who was busy trying to wrap Christmas presents.

Yes once again I seem to have remembered what I forget every year that although shopping for presents is fun the wrapping of said presents is not so, as being able to wrap presents nicely is not a skill that I can list amongest my talents. Still at least I only have to wrap this many presents once a year.

Well Work was fun if rather quiet. Still at least we were able to knock off for the day early which is always nice. I've only got to go into work next Tuesday just to make sure things are running okay then I don't have to be back in until the following Monday. A nice long Christmas break I'm sure you'll agree.

It also seems that as well as loosing Woolworths, Loughborough might well be about to loose another major shop as the chain Zaavi ( which does DVDs, music, games etc) has gone into administration. If that goes the rushes shopping centre will be three quarters empty, with only a jjb sports, Marks and spencers and a TX maxx left. And it would also only leave us with WH smiths to buy DVDs and music from and they are far from the cheapest shop around!

Well I'm spending tomorrow at home and on boxing day I will be going up with Tapdance to see Speed demon and Multi tasks respective clans which is always a lot of fun.

Anyway, Merry Christmas everybody and heres hoping that Santa brings you everything you asked for.

Later folks!

Be careful what you leave lying around

Staff at a job centre in Birkenhead are now in trouble after one unemployed man visiting the centre happened to see a copy of an alternative version of the 12 days of Christmas that staff had circulated amongst themselves. The alternative gifts are as follows;

Twelve hunting rifles
Eleven spotty youths
Ten fleas a-leaping
Nine screaming babies
Eight P45s
Seven recovering alcoholics
Six DMAs
Five direct payments
Four Fresh Starts
Three crisis loans
Two missed EVs
And a scally in a hoodie

Apparently the man was told that the ‘joke’ was helping staff morale. Although I get the feeling after the witch hunt ends that’s not the only thing it will be doing to the staff. .

In science news it appears that men are more responsive to Caffeine then Women as a study of 668 volunteers showed that an espresso pepped up men after just 10 minutes. Women also become more alert but less so. However they also said that some of this effect might by psychological because decaffeinated coffee also worked to some extent. So what they seem to be saying is that Caffiene may affect men more but it may not but if they think it does it will even though it actually doesn’t. Well money obviously well spent on that study with such a clear and precise set of results.

Work was once again quiet today although over Lunchtime we took the opportunity to play a couple of games. The first was a board game that somebody picked up for a £5, which has a battery powered swamp monster who if awakes travels across the board and can drag players back to the start. You can see the monster in this pic here.

The second was a game called consequences. Everybody sits in a circle and has a piece of paper. You first write down a name of a famous man then fold the paper over. You then write met and pass it onto the person next to you. You then write a Famous womans name down then fold the paper over, then write “ at the” and pass the paper on. You then write a location and fold the paper before writing he said, you pass on and write a phrase, then you fold and write she said before passing on, you then write a phrase that she said, fold then write “ then they” and pass on and finally write a end to the story. Or to put it another way;

Famour man met Famous woman at a location. He said, then she said and then they.

If that's any clearer.

You then pass on the papers one last time and then open and read out to everybody the funny story that has resulted. We all ended up laughing so hard it hurt as the stories turned out to be very funny!

So only one more day to go before its Christmas which does mean only two more sleeps to Christmas. Yaah!! But this does mean I now have some serious wrapping of presents to do as I couldn’t do any at the weekend as no matter how hard I searched I could not find a pair of scissors. We usually have plenty of pairs around but the time comes when I actually need a pair. There are none to be found! It’s good to see that my old friend irony is still up to his old tricks.

Anyway,

Later folks!

Winding Down

It was somewhat comforting to see in the news that even with high level of funding and access to the most cutting edge technology on the planet NASA is not above using simpler more basic options when it comes to experimentation. Basically when trying to see where the water from a drainage hole in the Greenland ice went instead of coming up with high tech underwater probes that would follow the flow of water whilst sending back a steam of data they decided to go with plan B. They used rubber ducks. Yes you read that right; they used a shoal of rubber ducks. However none of these ducks has since reappeared so if you happen to be going past a river or walking past a beach and you see a rubber duck it might be worth a look as you could be helping NASA!

I also saw an advert today for a historian who runs ghost tours and could take up to 30 people overnight to look for ghosts which in his words was a great activity for team building or for a Christmas party….
Ummmm…..What?
Now maybe it’s just me but I wonder how many people when organising a Christmas party would think, I know lets take 29 other people and go on this ghost tour as nothing says Christmas like searching for ghosts. Unless of course your scrooge but then you don’t have to go searching for ghosts. They come to you.

It was ever so nice driving into work this morning as the roads were oh so very quiet as all the kids have broken up from School, so it was a straight run from home all the way into work. Which was a nice change from the usual battle to get through the traffic to work.

It was also quiet in the office, quite a few people have already started their Christmas holiday and more people will start to knock off for Christmas as the week wears on so it will probably be very quiet there by the time we get to Christmas eve.

I was able to pick Grumpy up successfully from the airport last night even if the Car park was an absolute rip off. His plane actually got in early, but then looking at the arrivals board it seemed like more flights were getting in at least ten minutes early. I’m guessing there must have been some really good tailwinds somewhere over Europe.

Grumpy is also due to go and pick up Owen from the Kennels at some point today. Which I’m sure will be fun as he’s likely to be in a mood of half extremely annoyed at us for sticking him in a kennel and half delighted to see us as he’s probably starting to worry we’re not coming back.

Now Grumpy’s back I’m going to have to get used to sharing the telly again. I got a Christmas TV guide from the shop this morning so hopefully there will be lots of cool things on we both want to watch. Apparently one company released a TV guide over a month ago but as most of the schedules weren’t finalised it was just filled with lots of programmes as TBC. So quite why they bothered to release it then I have no idea but I’m sure it makes sense to some massively overpaid marketing buff sitting in a office somewhere.

Later folks

Knifes, guns, shoes? Lightsabers?

Woolworths have made a rather bizarre decision in the midst of their closing down sales as they have now restricted the sale of Toy Lightsabers ( yes that’s right lightsabers) as they feel they pose a danger as they could be mistaken for actual weapons.

Okkaayyyy…….

They think Lightsabers could be mistake for actual weapons? The thought does occur that maybe somebody in woollies has been spending just a bit too much time standing by the solvents in the DIY section. Unless of course there’s some part of youth culture today that I’ve just missed out on. Are there gangs of youths wandering around with actual lightsabers?

The journalist who threw shoes at George bush apparently now has a court date when he will face charges. Apparently the charges are along the lines of “Attacking a head of state” or words to that effect. Which must be a nightmare for Bush as the last thing he probably wants near the end of his term is for someone to be prosecuted for attacking him with shoes, as it’s probably the one thing most people will remember. I’m not sure about the case anyway as it’s not like he actually hit him.

The latest x-factor winner is now the Christmas number one in the charts in an anti-climatic race for number one. What is strange though is that she is at number one with a cover of Hallelujah and then someone else is at number 2 with a cover of hallelujah and the original version of Hallelujah is at number 36 ( I think). So you basically have the same song in the top 40 three times. To quote Harry Hill “ What are the chances of that happening?” Still you’d probably have made a fortune if you had bet on that happening as opposed to betting what will be at Christmas number one as with the x-factor it’s a foregone conclusion these days. Not that I’m advocating betting mind you and I’ll shut up there before I dig myself in any deeper which I do seem to have become especially adept at, at the moment.

Also you may notice a change to how you can leave comments. I have now enabled comment moderation so your comments will not appear immediately and will only appear once I have checked them. I’m sorry if anyone finds this annoying or longwinded but I’ve had enough of getting anonymous comments from people who obviously know me but won’t leave their name. Just to reiterate though I do welcome all comments and I will not reject a post if it is negative if you use an ID or your name. However if you leave a comment which is negative, mean, nasty or a personal attack of accusation I will not approve it if you fail to leave your name. You’re perfectly welcome to your opinions but if you going to be mean and not leave your name I will not show your comment on my blog.

Sorry if that sounds a bit Grumpy or mean but what happened with yesterdays post was the final straw.

Later folks

Digging myself in deep

( this is a modification of yesterdays post. I know I shouldn’t take notice of comments especially those by people who choose to hide behind the badge of anonymous but I have decided that seeing as this anonymous person has accused me of making accusations and obviously knows me and the other person I was referring to, leaving what I said up will lead to more trouble as this anonymous person had obviously decided I am wrong, mistaken and or lying and more trouble is not what I need right now. I am making this modification because I am tired and do not want to be drawn into a slanging match with a unknown party)

I had a feeling it was going to be one of those days when I woke up nearly an hour before my alarm went off and despite my best efforts to get back to sleep I only seemed to manage small snatches of five minutes or so before I woke up again. So as you can imagine I wasn't feeling too happy by the time my alarm went off.

And yet despite waking up early I somehow still managed to leave the house late. Still at least I found my Christmas present from Work works very well as a church bag.

The photocopier was also behaving this morning when I ran the bulletins off surprisingly enough. The bulletins also came out quite clean which made me a bit worried that, that thing is trying to lull me into a false sense of security.

I was also surprising to find a huge pile of Christmas cards for me which massively beat last years total of three.

I have to admit I spent most of the afternoon being busy doing nothing. I know I shouldn't have let what happened get to me but it did and my get up and go, got up and went. Still things improved when I noticed there was a repeat of the Doctor who episode " Turn left" on which quite frankly was one of the best episodes from the last series.

Monday tomorrow and thanks to Christmas it will be a short week this week. Which should be quiet as half the office is already on Holiday.

Anyway, got to leave it there. I'm going to have to leave for the airport to pick up Grumpy shortly.

Later folks

Going out

As much as I would have rather stayed in Bed this morning I had to get up as with Grumpy returning tomorrow I had to get some more food and drink in.

However despite expecting a extremely busy time in town I found it surprisingly quiet which meant I was able to get most of the shopping I needed to get done pretty darn quickly.

I then went across to Coalville to meet up with Tap Dance for Lunch. We went to the KFC there and quite frankly it was incredibily good for the staff that we weren't mystery customers otherwise they would have been in serious trouble. I would accuse them of being monkeys but Monkeys learn quicker!

I've the rest of the day well quite frankly doing lots of nothing as it were. Just sitting back and relaxing. Of course I'll probably regret that come tomorrow night when I think of all the things I was meaning to do but didn't but c'est la vie I guess

I noticed that Nemesis has updated her blog (voice of reason) with a brand new lay out and some rather cool graphics. Which made me ponder if it's not time to update mine as I haven't done it in a while. Yes, I suppose it would be technically stealing her idea but if your going to steal ideas you might as well do so from the best

Only four more days to the most important event of the Month. That's right the Doctor Who Christmas special!

Oh yeah and theres something called Christmas happening as well at the same time :-)

Later folks.

It's oh so quiet

Well we've gotten to that time at work where people are starting to knock off for Christmas and won't be back until the new year. Which is quite amusing as it's always odd to hear people leave the office and rather then say " See you tomorrow" or " See you on Monday" we now get " See you next year". Although I am working up until Christmas eve at least I only have to go in once between Christmas and the new year. I'e only done one year where I had to work everyday between Christmas and New year and believe me when I say, " Never again". Mainly as the rest of the office was off so it gets boring on your own after a while and when you start boring yourself into not listening to yourself you know you've got problems..

:-)

Still it's the weekend now. Just two more days before Grumpy returns and I have to go pick him up at 11.30pm at Night at the airport. I'm so going to need Caffine come Monday Morning and three more days until Owen returns. Who will probably be in a bad mood with us which will only increase when he discovers I had to rearrange the lounge to put the Christmas Decorations up. There's no way for him to get up on the window ledge anymore.

Anyway,

Later folks

Make the bad news stop

I like the new series of Batman films. They are really, really good. Especially the Dark Knight where I can't say if I agree with everyone that Heath ledgers film is definately worth an Oscar but it's darn close. Don't get me wrong the first two Batman films with Michael Keaton in were good but the last film with George clooney was oh so bad and the least said about Arnies " Stay cool bird boy" Mr freeze the better. But Batman Begins and the Dark Knight revitalised the series. However I saw some extremely distressing news today about the next film in the series. Apparently the villian will be the Riddler and they are supposed to be hiring done other then ...... Eddie Murphy.

Of course I could be judging harshly. He might well pull an incredibile dramatic understated performance out of the bag but the phrases, The Nutty Professor, Norbert, Starship Dave and Pluto Nash followed by the words, Danger, Danger keep passing through my head.

And the bad news doesn't stop there.

Cadburys have tried to pull a fast one by removing Time outs, Picnics, Dreams and Crunchies from their Cadburys heroes tins of sweet and replaced them with just two Bournvilles and Toffee eclairs. Now they claim that their market research team found that people wanted the four choclates dropped and replaced by these two. That claim falls down on two points. One they've tried to do this secretly and not announce it when I'm sure if everybody had been claiming for these other choclates they would have made a huge marketing thing out of it and two it's still 2008 not some year in the 1930s.

Parents of a young Lad were also furious today that a shop refused to make a birthday cake with their sons name on as the shop claimed they had the right to refuse adding anything to the cake which they considered inappropriate. The childs name " Adolf Hitler Campbell" I kid you not. Their son is so not going to thank them when he grows up.

Most pointless news story of the day probably goes to the Mail which had a story that Katie Holmes was looking gaunt, worn out and had bags under her eyes. Shock, Horror, Gasp! Imagine the world wide surprise at the news that a mother of a two year old can look worn out and tired...... Wait a second..

Okay rant about the days news over.

Asides from that it's been a fairly good day. I was able to get a lot done and stay on top of a rather large amount of emails. Tis the season and all that. I also booked my Christmas Holiday off. I'm only going to have to go in once between Christmas and New Years, Yaah! That will be good. Speaking of New years though I have no idea what I'm doing for New years eve. Oh well, I guess I'll see closer the time.

I did find out that theres a wedding at our chapel on the 27th December. Whose it is I have no idea so I think I can safely assume at this point that I'm not invited. Although I already know what Grumpy will probably say. " Look at it this way, one less person to invite when you get married". Speaking of whom, I have only three more days of the house to myself. Better make the most of it while I can.

Tap Dance also popped round this evening to help me put some boxes back in the loft. She also happened to look in the airing cupboard and was not impressed. She decided she was going to clean it out for us which made me feel very guilty as she cleaned the kitchen out last week whilst waiting for the guy to come and fix the side of the house. Still the cupboard looks much more tidy now then it did. I guess this is what comes of only have men in a house. Everything starts to get a bit messy.

Oh one last thing. If anyone's stuck for something to get someone for Christmas 2010 you could always get them a shuttle from Nasa as that's when they'll be selling them up. Mind you, you will need $42 million and a climate controlled indoor display to put it in. So it's not exactly a cheap stock filler.

Later folks!

Just what every geek needs

Well I thought the bag I got yesterday as our official Christmas Present from work was cool but what I got today for my secret santa present was so much cooler. I got a model of Doctor Who's sonic screw driver. When you press the button it even lights up and make the noise and everything. It will take pride of place on my desk alongside my model of Ramilies class star fort, a Model of a Cow playing hockey ( don't ask me it came from a kinder egg!) and a model I have of WALL E. Yes my desk is really that geeky. Of course I suppose there is always the possibility that I might start driving the other people in the office mad by playing with my new toy but if that happens I'll just point the finger of blame at the secret santa who got it for me. Not that I would be able to point the finger directly at them as I don't know who they are but you get what I mean.

We also had our departmental Christmas lunch which was very nice even if I accidentally made our office manager think I was mad at her. As she suddenly turned round and asked me what I would be doing on Christmas day as I didn't celebrate christmas. Slightly flumoxed as I haven't heard somebody said that in a long time I explained that we did celebrate Christmas, at which point she seemed surprised that we did as she then said we didn't give presents to each other! At which point I was totally bemused as that's the first time I'd heard anybody say the church doesn't celebrate christmas as we don't give presents to each other. It was at this point that she told my look of bafflement for one of being upset and quickly started apologising. I assured her however that I was offended in the slightist and she shouldn't worry.

Woolworths is now officially closing on the 5th January. So long woolies it's a shame your going as nobody else does pick and mix sweets like you :-)

It was weird tonight as I didn't have institute but at least I was able to watch the Big bang theory. Yes a show about a group of geeky lads, who have problems in not acting geeky all the time and have little to no success with the ladies. I can't see why or how I could relate to that show in anyway what so ever.

And on that less then convincing note I'll call it a night

Later folks!

Well it could be worse

I haven't coming down with the vomiting bug that seems to have affected the rest of the office. Hurray! However what I have come down with is a awful cold, and I mean a really stinking cold which feels like my noise has more been welded up rather then just blocked and I've realised that's probably far more information then any of you needed to know. Still on the plus side at least the lemsips are helping.

So as you can imagine work was a bit of a long haul today. Still at least it was quiet so I was able to concentrate on things to take my mind off the cold. On the plus side we did get our 'official' christmas presents from the company today which are ever so nice leather bags. Just ever so nice, normal leather bags nothing geeky about them. It was amusing when they were giving them out as the boss sent round an email explaining we were getting the same as everyone in the other divisions this year and he apologised if anyone was disappointed at the lack of alcholic content in this years presents( as the others usually get wine for Christmas), so I couldn't resist saying when they gave me my bag with the straighist face I could muster that I was disappointed at the lack of alcholic content in this years present. Two of my colleagues looked very confused, whilst another burst into a fit of the giggles.

We're also having our Christmas lunch tomorrow, followed by the exchange of secret Santa gifts which should be a lot of fun.

It was not fun trying to get home as I got stuck in a traffic jam. After three quarters of an hour I finally got to a turn off the road I was on, but the other way home meant I had to go nearly all the way back to work to get on the other road. It's somewhat annoying when it only takes you five minutes to travel back the distance it took you 45 minutes to cover i nthe first place.

Tapdance popped round again this evening to use the computer and cooked toad in the hole for me as well, which was very nice as I haven't had that in ages either. Now I wonder if I can persude her to cook Shepherds pie as well :-)

Well it will be weird tomorrow night as theres no institute. I'll have to remember to get right instead of left otherwise I will be off to Leicester for no reason!

Oh and the really cool thing that I did and can't mention. Well it's inspired me to do something else really cool as well. But I can't say what that is either otherwise it will spoil the surprise of the first really cool thing.

I just hope it's worth all the build up and the recipiants will like it.

Here's hoping.

Later folks.

Slow motion

I don't know what it was about this morning but I found it really hard to get up and when I finally managed that I just seemed to be unable to wake up and just seemed to be going in super slow motiooonnnn as the fog really didn't not want to dispurse from my brain.

Still I eventually managed to wake up properly which was helped by the fact when I went out to the car I forgot to put my coat or a jumper on and was just wearing my work shirt. Boy that woke me quickly!

I managed to get to work fairly quickly, traffic is starting to ease which makes me wonder fi the Christmas Holidays are already starting to kick in. Not that I'm complaining in the least mind you.

There's also a bug going round the office which seems to be quite nasty. One person went home ill and another one was looking a bit pale by the end of the day. I'm just hoping that I don't catch it.

Asides from that it was quite a busy day at work as the Christmas rush is still in full swing. Still only one more week and it will start to die away.

It was awkward getting home as the car had iced up but not that much. So as it was a very thin layer of ice the scraper was next to useless as it just couldn't 'dig in'. So I had to sit there for a while with the heater going before the windscreen cleared.

However the drive home was fairly smooth and on the plus side I didn't have to make tea tonight as Tap dance popped round and cooked me spaghetti bolonaise which was awesome as I haven't had it in so long. She's going to pop round to cook me toad in the hole at some point later this week as well.

I did find out that she's not able to pick Grumpy up when he comes back on Sunday. Which means Muggins here is going to have to do it as based on what happened last time and the fact his plane doesn't land until 11.30pm I have the feeling I ain't going to be getting to bed until very early Monday morning.

I foresee the usuage of something with caffine in on Monday at work.

anyway,

Later!

Dinner!

I just realised that despite me mentioning that I would do it earlier in the week I forgot to post any of the photos from this years Christmas Institute dinner. Well here they are now!

Holly and Trevor were among the first to arrive.
More YSA arrive, eager for dinner!

Whilst in the Kitchen EP gets it ready.

With everyone present the food is served.

everyone gets down to their most pressing question of the night. Just what did I get in my cracker?

and it just wouldn't be a the same if I didn't get some shots of the food for those readers who like to see the food ( cough, Nemesis, Cough, cough)

and the main meal itself. I was intrigued to see that one of our American studentsw as totally confused by the parsnips? Are parsnips only an English vegetable or do you have them in the USA?

Later folks

Cheap as chips

I've spent most of this evening decorating the house for Christmas as Tap dance popped round and helped me to get all of the decorations down from the loft. Now I think it looks really nice but from the outside it looks like we're a little cheap. Mainly because we haven't got any decorations outside of the House unlike a large percentage of the rest of the estate who seem to be in a unoffical competition for how many decorations they can squeeze onto the outside of their houses and lawns. For example the house directly across from us has fibre optic lights running along the edge of the roof and around the garage, lights in the trees, a illuminated tree three large santas and what I think is another reindeer. And thats one of the most tastefully decorated houses around.

Oh well, if anyone asks I guess we can claim that we're believers in the old saying 'Everything in moderation'.

I only had to do a very light shop for me today, so I was able to go into town a lot later. It was still fairly busy but not as bad as last week. This was probably down to the huge downpour of rain which meant you got very wet if you walked anywhere.

I also passed by woolies which is now almost certainly doomed as they've started the closing down sale. Which meant the store looked a sorry sight as most of the aisles had been stripped by bargain hunters so there was very little left.

After I got the decorations done I sat down to watch some TV and with it being Christmas there was only one thing I could watch from all the choices available. The Muppets Christmas Carol! It is such a good film and I remember going to see it at the cinema when it first came out which to be perfectly honest is longer ago then I care to remember.

Later folks!

now I don't think thats supposed to come off

I was somewhat concerned this morning when going out to the garage to find in the passageway between the house and the garage what looked like a large piece of plastic . Due to it's size I was sure it could have only come off the side of the house but after doing a quick check I couldn't see anything missing. Mind you it was still a bit darkish at the time so I was using a torch. Of course the problem was I wasn't able to do anything at that point as I had to get to work. Fortunately Tap dance was able to help out and she got in contact with the people who did the last lot of work on the house who were able to come round and fix it. It turns out it wasn't anything important. Just a small plastic cover to stop creepy crawlies getting in udner the facia. Still it was a bit worrying for a while there. Regardless of what it is, it's never comforting when something drops off the side of your house!

Still Work was good today and I was able to get everything cleared away, which means I'll only have to deal with stuff that comes in over the weekend on Monday rather then any hold overs from this week.

Oh that really cool thing I was waiting for has arrived. I still can't say what it is but it turned out better then I had hoped.

Well it's the weekend now. Time to sit back, relax, enjoy myself and feel pleased in the knowledge that I don't have to brave the crowds as my shopping is done!

Later folks

Bouncing Around

The cold mornings are making getting up so much more difficult to do right now. Of course once my alarm goes off, I suppose theres nothing to stop me lieing there for a few minutes but that's always a dangerous plan as all it would take is for me to close my eyes for a couple of moments and then I would probably be reallllyyy late for work.

Still that hasn't happened yet and I have no intention of letting it happen. Even if I have to throw myself out of bed every morning.

Work was good, if a bit quiet as a lot of people were out of the office again. I was also able to get the project I'm working on finished, so it's now being passed over to the production guys who will lay it out and make it look all neat and cool. I can't wait to see how it looks once it's finished.

Also the very cool thing that I mentioned I did back on the 3rd December, well it's on it's way and should be here very soon. Of course I can't talk about i, which I want to but If I do I'll spoil the surprise which I don't want to do. Suffice to say I think it's really cool and I hope the intended recipiants will like it too.

Hometeaching tonight was interesting... We managed to see one person on our list, the other two were out, so we left a card and we found the last one has moved house. So that's the 2nd person from our list who we got an old address for. Oh well, at least Chemistry and I tried and hopefully someone at Church will know where he lives now.

One more day until the weekend..

Later folks!

Return of the caption competition

Title says it all folks. Please leave your suggestions for a caption to this photo!

That was silly

I get to work this morning all bright and raring to go or at least as bright as I can be first thing in the morning. I park the car get my bag out of the boot, put on my coat and go to lock the car. And I can't find my car keys, anywhere! Which was really stupid as I knew I had them, otherwise I wouldn't have got to work ( well d'uh!) but I could find them anywhere. Not in my pockets, not in my coat, not in my bag, not in the boot. I was really starting to panic at this point and didn't know what to do. I picked my phone up from the roof of the car where I had placed it when I had gotten out and what do you know! Yes Muppet here at put his phone down on top of his car keys.

D'oH!!!

Oh well, at least I'll know to check under anything I've put down first if I can't find them again.

It seemed to be a slightly longer day then usual but I guess that was in part down to the fact that I was alone in my sector of the office today and time seems to pass very slowly when you have no one to talk to. Well at least my day was livened up by the worlds worst cold caller. I could be wrong but I'm sure calling some one, offering your services and then asking them what they make is not the best way to do sales cold calling.

Still at least I was able to leave slightly early so I could make my way across to the Stake Centre for the christmas meal. Which was prepared by EP and she did a great job, it was really nice ( photos to follow soon). You could also see the difference in the kitchen with regards to the different cooking styles between guys and Girls. Last year when it was me and Engineseer we were spread out here there and everywhere across the Kitchen. Ep was tightly focussed around the cookers and everything was extremely tidy.

She did say she wanted to do the washing up herself but I got someone to distract her whilst I made a start on it. Yes I know I'm a sucker and I'm too nice for my own good, but I wanted to do something nice for my friend as she had been cooking all afternoon and I wanted to show I appreciated her hard work.

It was also quite nice after institute as EP and I were able to have a long talk about things and how much Leicester institute has changed. It was nice to be able to talk about it with someone and realise I'm not the only one whose feeling on the outside of things a bit at the moment.

Chemistry and I are going hometeaching tomorrow. We're hoping to improve on last Months performance. But even if we only see one person it will still be worth it.

Later folks!

The ice just keeps getting thicker

That dastardly ice! It completly wrongfooted me this morning as it wasn't cold last night in the slightist when I went to bed in fact it was raining extremely hard. However during somepoint between then and my alarm going off it got very cold very quickly so when I went out to the car this morning I found it covered in a thick sheet of ice. It was so thick it took 20 minutes to clean the car off with a combination of de icer and scraper thats not to mention the problems I had getting into the car itself as the door was all but iced shut and the lock was iced over too.

I then had to move the bin out to the front which was complicated by the ice all over that as well, not to mention the neighbours putting their bin in our place! Which lead to several moments of frustation as I tried to squeeze the bin into the remaining gap. Which may or may not have been accompanied by some not rather good language such as " Blast, Dang and gosh " (bloggers note: actual language may have varied from that displayed here :-)

Of course this meant I was running late by the time I finally pulled out of the driver I was running late and of course this meant only one thing was going to happen. Yes I ran into a traffic jam caused by some new roadworks. I then ran into another traffic jam at another set of traffic lights which by that point I was wondering if someone was trying to tell me something about the day ahead.

However somehow and I'm still to sure how I was able to get to work with about two minutes to spare, which I took to be a good sign and that maybe the day wasn't going to be a total loss.

And I was right I was able to get a lot done even with the Christmas rush picking up. It was also quite quiet as well as a few people were off sick and another couple off on a business trip to the USA. We were also talking about if people should be nervous due to that old saying " Things come in three's" as one persons fractured their arm and another fractured her big toe last night on the bus. So we're kinda hoping we're not going to end up proving this old saying right!

I'm going to be in for a quiet day tomorrow though as the rest of the Sales and marketing team will either be working from home or going to see a client. So it will just be me in the office. Still I guess that makes me the boss of our area by default :-)

Well it's the institute christmas dinner tomorrow which should be fun. It's the girls turn to cook this year as Engineseer and I did it last year. Mind you they did try to get the lads to do the washing up saying it was only fair as the girls would be cooking. They obivousily forgot that's not how it happened last year as Engineseer and I both cooked and washed up.

Still I guess the guys will probably end up doing it anyway. As we're nice like that :-)

Anyway,

Later folks!

Wet and windy

Well it's Monday which means the start of another week and the usual attempts to drag myself out of bed this morning whilst wondering why we can't have three day weekends instead!

Still after some breakfast I was feeling much more awake. Then I felt really awake when I left the house as it was flipping cold outside! However the run into work was fairly normal which did lead me to hope it was going to be a good day.

and it was. It was also a busy day mind you but I was expecting that as the Christmas rush has now kicked in with the usual queries, orders and people who keep sending us queries as they start to get really paranoid about whether or not their order will arrive before Christmas. Still never a dull moment when the christmas rush kicks in.

Although I had a huge amount of emails to answer I was still able to get some work done on my project which now means I should finish in within the next day or two. As you can imagine I'm feeling quite pleased with myself right now.

Trying to drive home was a absolute nightmare. There was lots of water on the roads, so you were getting reflection from other cars lights, there was wind and lots and lots of light rain which mean there was tons of water mist which in turn meant it got almost impossible to see the road at times!

Still I got home in one piece, if not necessarily at peace. More rather stressed from the horrible driving conditions but c'est la vie I suppose :-)

Anyway I'm off to do something constructive otherwise I will be tempted to start playing tetris again on facebook as I've been knocked down to second in the placings.

I will not get competitive about this, I will not get competitive about this, I will not get competitive about this, I will not get competitive about this, I will not get competitive about this, I will not get competitive about this,....................


Later folks!

Putting some light on the subject

Well another sign that christmas is almost upon us happened today as lots of people started started putting their christmas decorations up in the usual " lets try and get everyone to look at our house and outdo the neighbours by stuffing as many Lights as possible on the outside of the House."

After the short break yesterday, the icey conditions returned with a vengence this morning as there was just basically ice everywhere! It took me ten minutes to clean the ice of the car which was so thick it was in two layers, I had to scrap the first one off by hand to get to the second one so I could put some de icer one otherwise it didn't work at all. Somewhat ironically when I finally started the car the radio came on straight away as it was already set to on and the song itwas playing seemed to be very fitting for the conditions. The song? Why Break the ice by Britney spears :-)

So due to the length of time cleaning the car I was running late when I got to church so I had to rush through copying the bulletins as quickly as possible. fortunately the photocopier decided to play nice this morning as if it had been in a bad mood Iwould have been in trouble.

Still I was able to get into the chapel early enough to grab a seat next to one of the heaters. Yes it was a little bit noisey with the humming but at least I was warm all the way through sacrement.

Something annoying happened at the start of sunday school. One of the guys who shall remain nameless but I've had problems with before bought in a huge stack of bulletins and suddenely gave them to me saying " I collected these in the chapel, you put them out so I thought you should have them back otherwise the chapel is just being left untidy" ( or words to this effect, I can't remember the exact sentence) then he sat down with a smirk on his face. I managed to throttle down my first impluse to yell at him what the point of that little exercise was. There might have been a small possibility he did it out of the goodness of his heart I suppose but it more felt like a attempt to embrass me/ points scoring exercise in front of the rest of the class. I'm starting to get really fed up of this guy, I don't know why he's taken a dislike to me but I'm finding things hard enough YSA wise right now with out having him having goes at me.

Still Grumpys response when I told him the story did make me smile. He suggested that if he tries that again to simply smile and respond " Well seeing as you are doing such a good job picking the bulletins up, I'll ask the bishopric if I can assign you to do that job every week".

Grumpys spent most of the afternoon charging round the house try to find everything he needs for his holiday. There was a bit of a panic when he lost some tablets he needed, so we were both frantically searching for them, him cause he needed them and me well I wasn't going to get any peace and quiet till he found them :-) We did find them and most female readers won't be surprised to know that they were in the most obivous place possible and also it was the one place we hadn't checked. Yes he'd put a jumper down on top of them on the bed and it was the only thing we hadn't moved!

Still he was a lot happier once he found them and I was able to go back to my reading. Just in time for the home teachers to arrive. Owen's seems to have got used to them now although he is still totally confused when they leave with a word of prayer as he can't seem to figure out what we're doing. To night whilst the Home teachers were praying, he went up to one in the middle of the prayer and stuck his head through the gap in their arms trying to see what he was up to. Fortunatly the Hoem teacher was able to stop himself from giggling.

Well Work tomorrow, so a nice new week of oppotunities ahead! That as I should get my project finished which is actually turning out rather well indeed.

Later folks!

Warming up

Well the icey weather seems to have taken a break today as the temperatures got all the way up to 5 degrees!

We spent longer then usual in town as Grumpy had a whole list of things he needed to get for his Holiday, so he had to visit a lot of different shops. Why he couldn't have done this yesterday rather then waiting for today when it was a lot busier I have no idea.

I saw something quite amusing today. Theres a TV series called the Sarah Connor Chronicles which is basically a TV spin off from the Terminator series. I saw that the plot of the latest episode involved a terminator being sent back in time to assasinate the governor of Califonia! I bet which ever writer came up with that idea thought they were oh so clever :-)

I've also just finished reading a series of books by John Birmingham which is a 'alternate' history. An experiement by a ship accompanying a UN naval task force in 2030 goes horribily wrong and the task force is thrown through a dimensional wormhole not only to an 'alternate earth' but back to 1942 in that Earths history arriving during the battle for Midway. With no way to get home chaos ensures as all sides scramble to seize the new technology and with knowledge of what 'will happen' events quickly take radical turns. The Russians withdraw from the war and start to make their own plans, Japan invades Australia before invading Hawai and Germany attempts an Invasion of the Uk. Although the bulk of the ships end up in allied hands several are scattered across the world, with the Germany seizing one, the Russians another and the Japan find a third fused into a mountainside in the phillipines. This leads to a world of mongrel technology borne years early and a race that all sides are now capable to winning. The race for the atom bomb! Seriousily this series of books is very cool indeed.

Church tomorrow. We're going to be getting a new member of the bishopric very soon as Brother Scott is about to move back to the USA, so it will be interesting to see what happens there.

Anyway thats all for now.

Later folks!

Well it must have seemed like a good idea at the time

Looking at the news today, several news items caught my eye. One of which was that Britney spears hates her boobs as she considers them 'too big' after she almost had a 'wardrobe malfunction' and spilled out of her dress the other evening and is considering a breast reduction operation. Apparently the idea of not wearing dresses that are that lot cut obivousily has not occured to her.

It was nice to get up later then usual during the 'working week' as it were as I had today off to go shopping. Although Owen was waiting outside my door looking most confused as to why I hadn't gone to work.

Grumpy suggested that we go to a new shopping centre in Derby called Westfields. Now I say 'new' but that might be a relative term in this case as it might have been there a while but we rarely go into Derby so it was new to us.

I had read that there was a 50% sale off in Woolworths so I wanted to pop in to see if I could pick up and good bargains. Now I saw the signs outside the shop which were everywhere advertising the 50% sale. As you can see here.
Spotted the problem yet? Well it took me a couple of minutes to spot it and I also had to point it out to Grumpy. The problem, that little tiny bit of writing i nthe top right hand corner. Which says " Up to" So the full advertisment doesn't say all stock now 50% off which you read it as due to the huge 50% writing, it actually says all stock now up to 50% off. Most of the items in the store only had discounts of 10% or 20%. I don't think I actually saw anything which was 50% off. As you can imagine lots of people were complaining that the whole thing was a big con!

Still asides from that, I managed to get all of my shopping done which is good as I won't have to face the crowds at the weekend now.

I saw another items in the news about these guys!

Apparently they were an experiment mounted on a ballon that had been sent into the stratsophere. Local school were encouraged to design 'suits' for the teddys to keep them warm on their journey and each one was also wired up with sensors to see how effective each suit was. Which I just think was an awesome experiment and I wish we could have done something like this when we were at school.

Oh and in case you were wondering all four teddy bears were returned safely to Earth.

Oh and the last news items to catch my eye was this photo. I suppose depending on your point of view who could show the band girls aloud preparing for a TV show or it shows that their transformation into mermaids is almost complete :-)


later folks!

Well I guess it's a improvement

There was no ice this morning and it wasn't even that cold. Hurrah! Well no not really as the weather null zone which seems to protect the area around geektown was doing it's usual efficient job of making sure we didn't get the same weather as everybody else. So rather then intense blizzards we got a rather nasty rain storm instead which was leaving lots of water on the roads, which i nturn meant lots of water mist and having to have your windscreen wipers going at full pelt in order to see the road.

Of course this did lead to the realisation that I'm never going to be happy with the weather and I should just shut up and bear it!

Still Work was once again good if a little busier today then it has been for the rest of the week, which meant I had very little time to spare for the project I'm currently doing. Which was annoying on one hand as it's a lot of fun but on the other hand I've almost finished stage one of it so I'm doing much better then I was hoping for at this stage.

I have tomorrow off! I decided to take a day off so I could go and do some christmas shopping. Which should be fun and also not as busy as trying to shop on a Saturday. Or at least I hope so. Still with any luck I should be able to get most if not all of what I've got left to do, done.

For those of you who haven't noticed down on the left of my Blog I now have a 2nd 'follower'. Of course thanks to the wonders of Google anayltics I knew that I had visitors and that there are some of you out there, but it's nice to get 'official' confirmation as it were. I will be adding the Shiners(who are from my ward) blog to my blog roll as soon as they make their first post so keep yours eyes out for that.

Anyway,

That's all for today folks.

Later!

Ice, ice, go away

I'm really not liking all the cie at the moment. As people know ice is my least favourite driving condition and even a little ice can put me in a tense, uptight mood when faced with the drive into work. So you can imagine what I was feeling this morning when I could see patches of ice on the road in our street before even getting into the car.

To say I was a little tense by the time I got into work would be a understatement.

Still it was a good day and theres nothing like a nice warm office to help you de tense as rapidly as possible. Plus I was once again able to get loads done and work on that project again as well as spend ages in a important meeting. So I was feeling quite pleased with myself by the end of the day.

Still one did cause me to start to tense up again was reports of heavy snow expected overnight. I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope that the weather dead zone that usually seems to surround geektown does it's usual magic.

Institute was good, it was quite a full class. Even Social turned up which was a surprise. However I didn't get a chance to talk to her as she was busy talking and greeting everyone else and I couldn't get a opening as it were to interject myself into any of the conversation. Now the paranoria in me would suggest that maybe she still doesn't want to talk to me and I'm just going to have to accept that. But the more logical side suggests to me that I'm just too polite for my own good sometimes and as it's donemost of the time to me at church I have everyright to butt into conversations too. As for the truth of the matter? Well I guess that will have to be one of those unanswered questions.

I was starting to feel a little sorry for myself as I'm starting to find it very hard with Institute and YSA at the moment. With Cordelia and Engineseer gone, I don't have any really close friends on the same level as those too right now in Loughborough or institute. I'm trying, but theres just so many new people and they seem to be forming their own cliques and I'm just starting to get this feeling that I'm slowly going back to being a outsider again no matter how hard I try. It was at this point that my inner voice as it were decided to jump in and tell me to shut up moaning because as the sarcastic saying at works goes " Have a moan, that will solve everything won't it?". With only one more week at Institute before Christmas it's unlikely I will be able to turn things around this side of the new year, so I should just get on with things I guess. 2009 will be a new year and I'll just have to keep the faith things will get better.

Speaking of Friends however, I did do something quite cool last night, which I can't/won't go into details about as it will spoil the surprise. Suffice to say I'm quite pleased with myself and I hope the people involved will like it.

Anyway enough moaning and groaning about things. Time to call it a night as it will soon be tomorrow and fresh oppotunities await!

Later folks

Isn't it ironic?

Well I had a feeling it was going to be another one of those days when I got up and that feeling wasn't proven to be wrong. It was fairly cold but not as cold as it was yesterday as I didn't have to spend ten minutes de icing the car. However it started to get colder and colder and then it started snowing. Yes snowing! It went from clear skies to blizzard like in a matter of moments which I didn't enjoy in the slightist as I had to navigate a huge hill and I could barely see where the road was. Still I managed to get through it okay and got to work.

However my next challenge was getting from the car to the car park as the snow had hit so suddenly that no one had a chance to put any grit down. So it was a bit of a slushy/icey mess, so it took me a lot longer to walk across the car park then usual as I really, really didn't want to go flying. Mind you I was somewhat confused to see someone mowing the lawn at the company across the street from ours. Apparently he had been doing it during the height of the snow fall!

The snow quickly disappeared as is it's want nowadays and although you couldn't really call them blue skies then did lighten quite a bit.

Work was also enjoyable as I was able to get quite a bit done and have some time to work on that new project that I've just started which is great fun.

However the one problem I had all day was that I got the theme music to the great escape stuck in my head. Quite why that music, I have no idea! I foolishly happened to mention this out loud, so a couple of my colleagues decided with great delight that the best way to help would be for them to start humming the great escape theme as well. Still I and irony had the last laugh as one they had started humming it they couldn't get it out of their heads either!

Getting home from work was somewhat problematic as a car decided to break down right in the middle of the roadworks on the main road out of Nottingham which effectively 'locked' the road for nearly 40 minutes and guess where muggins here was? Yeap that's right, smack bang in the middle of it where it's impossible to turn around unless your feeling totally suicidal. Still at least dinner was ready and dishd up as soon as I walked through the door.

Grumpy is starting to get his stuff ready as he's about to go on Holiday to the Czech republic to see my Brother and his family. He's looking forward to it, although it did use that as an excuse to eat a lot of mince pies over the past couple of days as he said that he was simply eating the mince pies he would have eaten during the time he's on holiday, now instead.

I'm hiding the next box of mince pieces until at least Christmas eve.

Later folks!

Now that's cold

Trying to get up on a Monday morning can be hard enough sometimes. When you get up and immediatly feel so cold that you want to jump straight back into bed even with the heating having been on for half an hour before you get up, you can't help but get the feeling it's going to be one of those days. After managing to bang my toe on the door, and drop a bit of toast butter side down onto the floor, things were certainly not looking up when I got to the car and found that somehow there was some ice on the inside of the windscreen so I had to wait ten minutes whilst the heater ran to get the windscreen to de ice and demist both inside and out.

Of course being aware of how icey it was, I was already feeling pretty tense because as regular readers will know I do not like driving in icey conditions. Still I actually forgot all about that as I ran into another huge traffic jam. Which was caused by a broken down car in the worst possible place, this in turn lead me to reflect on why cars always seem to break down in the worst possible places. Is it fate? Bad luck? The cars getting their own back? Or the fact that I was stuck in a traffic jam for a very long time which was moving very slowly and my thoughts were starting to wander just a little bit.

Still I finally managed to get to work, but I was running very late and I only had three minutes to get into the office. Still in my rush to get into the office I managed to drop my keys under the car and had to struggle around to fish them out. Mind you this did set me off into a fit of the giggles that there wasn't much more to go wrong and this Monday morning was definately living up to the stereotype. Once I managed to stop laughing I went into the office feeling much better, as you really can't feel very down after a fit of the giggles can you?

Fortunately the rest fo the day went a heck of a lot better then the morning had gone. I was able to get loads done and I'm doing a new project which a awful lot of fun as I'm able to use all my background knowledge and come up with lots of cool ideas too. We also had some new books arrive from the printers and that's always fun too.

Oh Grumpy has just been asking what Owen's codename was on here and when I explained he doesn't have one, he said that was unfair to Owen as everyone else had one and I should come up with one for him. So far the suggestions have been fidget, Highly Sprung, and Spring. If anybody else has any suggestions please feel free to chip in.

I've also just seen the new trailer for the Doctor Who Christmas special. It looks great!

I also found whilst tiding up at the weekend my dvd boxset of " From the Earth to the moon" which is a historical drama all about the Apollo space Program. It's very good and I forgot how much I liked the title music. I went on I-tunes to see if I could find it and guess what. They don't have it! Soundtracks for everyother HBO series except that one. Flipping typical. Apparently you can get a soundtrack CD somewhere but whether or not I can find it will be another matter entirely.

Anyway, that's all for today.

Later Folks!