Freeedddooommmmm

*he cries in best fake Australian/scottish historically inaccurate impresson* Yes world beware as I'm now released from the office for a week as I'm off to Luxembourg. Well on Monday at least which means for the first time in a long time I am taking some holiday from work to actually go on Holiday.

Maybe I better be careful otherwise before you know it I'll actually be leaving the country more then once every three years :-)

Of course the downside of going on Holiday regardless of whether your going somewhere or not is the mad rush on the last day of work to make sure you've got everything outstanding cleared away. Which I managed..

Or at least I think I managed but if I haven't, theres not much I can do about it right now and I'm sure it will still be there when I get back. Either that or the Monkey will have dealt with it. Yes that's right we have a monkey in the officer who plays cymbals. Admitally only a wind up monkey but still a Monkey. Which adds cool points to the office I'm sure you'll agree :-)

Great story in the news today. Apparently some officials needed a translation of a roadsign into welsh. They sent the email off, got a response and mounted the new sign at the side of the road with the English text and the welsh translation underneath. Two weeks later some welsh speakers pointed out that the welsh text was not the welsh translation of " No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residental site only" . What it actually said was " I'm not in the office at the moment. Please send any work that needs to be translated." Yep thats right they hadn't realised that they had actually recieved an automated out of office email.

I think the only thing you can say in response to that is 'oops'

Later folks!

And for my next trick

Well it wasn't as cold this morning as it has been for the past two days which meant I didn't have to spends five minutes gettign the ice off the car as well there was none. It also meant I was a little less tense on the way into work as it wasn't icey.

Of course this bit of luck paled into insignificance compared with the news on the radio this morning and I'm really sorry if you haven't heard this Scully (which also means I'm the one to break this to you) David Tennant is leaving Doctor who.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!

He was so good as the Doctor and much better then Christopher Eccleston was. Whoever is going to follow on from him is going to have some very big boots to fill. The only small upside to this was he will still be filming the four specials that will be shown in 2009 but when the fifth series returns in 2010 he will not be in the tardis.

There was also some rather odd news as a 8 foot tall lego man washed up on a beach in Brighton today and nobody knows where it came from. Even Legoland say their bemused as their not missing one. You would think some one would notice that their missing a 8 foot tall lego man wouldn't you?

I'm also feeling pleased with myself as I was finally able to solve one of my 'biggist opportunities" that has been facing me over the past two weeks and resolved it in a way that helped us, helped another department, made us look good and strenghtened interdepartmental communications all in one go. Not that I want to have to deal with opportunties like that on a regular basis of course.

It was quieter today too which I was thankful for as it enabled me to get a lot of work done as I always aim to leave nothing or as little as possible outstanding when I go off on Holiday.

There was quite heavy traffic on the way home, fortunately it wasn't heavy enough to force things to come to a complete standstill but it was still pretty close.

I'm aiming to have a fairly quiet night tonight and catch up on some reading. Not terribily exciting I know but I just feel in that kind of mood :-)

Later folks!

Well thats that out of the bag

Well I was planning to try and build up to this and announce what I was doing next week when I was on Holiday whilst I was there on Monday or Tuesday as the first 'blog post' I've ever done from another country, unfortunatly Anonymous who left a comment on Yesterdays let it out of the bag. Now of course Anonymous might have failed to realise that I had a reason not for saying what I was doing so didn't see anything wrong in leaving the comment they did, or they might have been well aware what they were doing which is why they declined to leave their name, draw your own conclusions.

What am I talking about? Well for those of you who haven't seen the comment or realised yet what I'm blathering on about, the thing I will be doing differently next week when I'm on Holiday from work is that for the first time in a long time I'm actually going on Holiday as it were. I'm heading over to Luxembourg for the week to see Engineseer.

It was extremly cold again this morning. I had to spend five minutes scraping ice off the car because it was quite thick but also because I couldn't find where we put the de icer in the garage.

Work was really busy today. Unfortunatly not the nice kind of busy, the things are really busy and your going to have to hussle to get everything done today kind of busy.

It was weird driving to insitute as well as it was the first time I've done the trip in the dark since earlier in the year. Which means I'm going to have to get used to doing lots of night driving again. It didn't help that I got stuck in a huge traffic jam for ages as well.

The classes were okay but to be honest not as good as they usually were. I don't know what it was I just seemed to have real trouble focussing on the lessons which was annoying as Brother H teaches good lessons!

Oh well.

Later folks!

I was wrong today was c c c cold

I woke up this morning, jumped out of bed....

and jumped straight back in. Boy was it cold! In fact so sold I had to spend several minutes scraping the ice off the car before I could go to work. The ice meant I was a bit tense on the way into work as for reasons I'm sure long term readers will understand icey conditions are really not my favourite conditions to drive in.

Still I got to work without any problems and fairly quickly too. Boy I love it when the kids are on half term it really helps the start to your working day if you don't get stuck sitting in traffic.

Work was busy today. Not really really busy mind you, just the right kind of busy to keep you occupied all day but it also seems to let the day go quicker as well.

I'd seen on the news during the day that some parts of the UK had been getting snow today. Snow! and we're still in October! but I had really realised how cold it had gotten outside until I walked out of the building and immediatly started shivering. So I quickly legged it across the car park to get into my car and get that heater cranked up as fast as possible.

Institute tomorrow, which will be weird as I won't be running things. That's all in the hands of Chemistry now. But it will be my last lesson for two weeks?

Why's that? Hmm that would be telling and I'm not going to be doing that yet :-)

Later folks!

Wait theres more!

Well after the Ceral Game it was time for our second activity, carving pumpkins! Which was a lot of fun as I haven't done it in ages. In fact I thnk the last time was at the 'Chineween' activity which was longer ago then I care to remember right now :-)

Don't worry all the insides are being put to good use by our 'hosts' for the evening

There was immense concentration on show by some YSA

Whether or not they were concentrating on their designs or trying to avoid stabbing themselves with the knifes, who can say?
Here are some of the finished pumpkins lined up.
Waiting for the finishing touches. Thats right. Candles!

As you can see some went for a more traditional approach and some well I think it speaks for itself :-)

The Ceral Game

Well are promised some photos from last nights fun and games at our first YSA Family home evening 'under new management' as it were seeing as Engineseer is now off in luxem thing a mig jig.

Okay so first up. The ceral game. Basically you start off with one standard ceral box in the centre of the floor. Each player has to try and pick it up with their teeth.

Like so. The only rule is that your feet are the only part of your body allowed to touch the ground. They don't have to be flat on the floor but they must remain in contact with the floor at all time. Anything else touches the ground your out.

assuming your successful you pick the box up like so. Once everyone has picked the box up a chunk is cut off the top of the box lowering it's height

Like so.
So the box keeps getting smaller and the contestants have to keep going lower and lower
and lower and end up in some postions that look like their practising yoga

see what I mean?

Eventually you will get a winner as everybody else drops out. Either that or you can't cut any more off the box!

ccc cold

This is going to have to be a quick post as our internet connection is playing up so I'm not sure how long it wil lkeep working.

Well the weathermen were correct (for once) and it was actually very cold this morning which meant for the first time in ages I had to wear a jumper to work. It was also weird that with the clocks going back it was actually light when I got up this morning as opposed to it being dark. However the flip side of this is that it's now Dark when I come home from work.

C'est la vie I guess.

On the plus side the schools in Nottingham are on half term so the roads were nice and clear this morning.

It was a fairly quiet day at work today, which was nice. It will be even quieter tomorrow as a fair chunk of the offfice will be either out on Business or just plain have the day off.

We did have a YSA FHE tonight and it was a lot of fun. We had a lesson, followed by the 'ceral box' game ( I'll explain tomorrow) pumpkin carving and finally some drink and cake.

I'll post some photos tomorrow.

Later folks!

A star of tomorrow?

Despite the clocks going back last night Owens 'clock' still seemed to be on yesterday time so he woke up and started making a racket at around 6.30ish. Of course I did the only thing I could do in that situation. I rolled over and went back to sleep :-)

Although it wasn't a 'normal' church service today I still had to get in early to photocopy the bulletins which unfortunately proved to be a bit of a struggle as the photcopier jammed once again and unlike the ones at work this one is incredibily complicated to clear. I however don't know how to clear it so I usually have to just leave it as I'm not stupid enough to start fiddling around in the inside fo a machine when I have no idea what I'm doing.

Thats what engineers are for :-)

The Bishop said that it probably keeps jamming as it gets overheated. I'm sure it probably has more to do with it being a very old second hand photocopier.

There was a little bit of excitment half way through the general conference session when a girl fainted and had to be carried out of the chapel for some reason though nearly a dozen people went out with her which I'm sure probably made her extremely embrassed when she came to. It's embrassing enough to faint without waking up to a huge group of people surrounding you and before anybody asks I am speaking from experience there as when I was in the ATC I fainted on a big parade to celebrate VE Day. So I suppose that girl should look on the bright side as embrassing as it was to faint in the chapel at least she didn't faint in front of an entire parade and get carried by some st johns ambulance people into a waiting ambulance.

It was also quite amusing after we finished watching the video as I could see two young lads from a family who were sitting in the rowin front of me. The older lad suddenely smacked his younger brother round the back of the head. There was pause of at least 3 seconds before the younger lad threw himself onto the floor in a dive which was as spectaculer as anything you would see on the football pitch and also in a completly different direction to the one where the blow came from. At which point he let out a ear splitting yell and started to cry very loudly. With acting ability like that maybe he's a star of tomorrow.

I spent most of the afternoon reading mainly as I couldn't resist the temptation and bought myself a new book yesterday which I just haven't been able to put down since. Fortunatly it is a very large book as otherwise I would have finished it yesterday. So yes as well as having a very good memory I can also read very quickly as well.

Well Monday tomorrow which means another week of work to earn the pennies and quite probably another week of 'oppotunities to face'. However it also means I only have another week of work before I take my next batch of time off as well. Which will be nice and fun too as I'm going to be doing something rather different with this time off.

More on that soon.

Anyway,

Later folks!

Stranger things have been known to happen

I was woken up this morning not by my alarm but rather a series of thuds one after the other, followed by a sound of something rushing down the stairs. Followed by some gentle sounds of something coming up the stairs, then a series of thuds again etc. Intrigued I got up and looked out onto the landing to discover Owen now has a new favourite game. He lies down at the top of the stairs and drops his red ball down the stairs. He waits for it to get halfway down then charges after it. He then picks it up at the bottom of the stairs and brings it back up and repeats the whole process. According to Grumpy he discovered this new game earlier in the week and likes to play it every chance he gets.

Well what ever makes him happy

It was also very cold this morning. According to the weathermen and who knows they may be right for once, it's going to start getting very colder this week. Which means I'm going to have to search out all of my jumpers and we're probably going to have the heating on a whole lot this week.

Trying to doing the shopping was also mad. The shops were so packed for some reason. I was tempted as all of the shops now have christmas food on display to start stoking up on some stuff like Mince pies now but when I checked the use by dates they were all mid Novmber?? Why are they selling Christmas food now if it's not going to last until Christmas?

I'm sure it must make sense to some marketing person somewhere.

Church is going to be a little different tomorrow. Rather then all the 'regular' meetings, we're just going to be having a very short sacrement meeting, only half an hour, then we're going to be watching the last session from General conference. As due to time differences we can't watch it 'live' when it's actually broadcast so this is the next best thing. At least it's shown at the chapel and we don't have to go all the way into the stake centre.

We're also apparently supposed to be starting to have YSA Family home evenings again. I say apparently because the new ward rep han't actually confirmed for definite if they will be starting on Monday or not. I'm also not sure if she's planning on trying to have this every week because if she is I think she's going to run smack bang into the same problem Engineseer had. But I guess as the saying goes "time will tell"

anyway,

Later folks!

When you think about it

TV Adverts are really rather silly aren't they? Take for example the toilet duck range of toilet cleaners. You'd buy that product if you were happy with it's cleaning power shouldn't you? Why shoudl your choice of purchase be influenced by the fact that in the advert said product is used by a cartoon duck which seems to have aspirations of being a ninja. Then there's the advert which claims that most toilet cleaners don't really get rid of limescale just bleach it enough to so the toilet looks clean and when they spray a special liquid into the toilet the Limescale shows up. So as far as I'm aware most people don't carry round said special liquid to spray in toilets to show if there's invisable limescale.

But worse then those adverts are the ones which post blindingly obivous warnings in huge text because their obivousily worried that if they don't someone will sue them. For example there is a advert for a surface cleaner which has a doom ladden voice over saying that bacteria can live for a longtime on surfaces. Shows mother preparing a plate of raw chicken legs. She wipes the surface with a cloth then cuts some carrots on the surface before giving one to her baby. At which point when the carrot piece is in the babys hand it morphs into a chicken leg obivously to indicate the fact that as Mother wash the work top properly she might as well as just given the baby a raw chicken leg. Most people would get the symbolism but of course the company must have been worried about those that don't as when the carrot morphs into the chicken leg it says in nice big writing underneath on the screen " Dramatisation". Obivousily to make it clear for those people who believe that carrots can morph into raw chicken on a regular basis that this isn't one of those times.

And then of course there are those adverts that make you cringe. For example a newspaper is giving away free mp3 players to readers to advertise the release of the new James bond film. Cut to guy walking down street listening to his new player whilst 'singing' the Bond theme tune. He bumps into girl who is also singing theme tune and they go in sync and walk down the road at which point everybody in a cafe jumps up starts to join in the singing as well and everybody dances off down the road in a remarkably in sync and non chorographed ( honest guv) dance routine as so often happens in real life and not only ever in High school musical films! I mean maybe it was just my high school but none of the pupils ever seemed to burst into song and dance routines in the middle of class, in a corridor or sports lession :-) If I was walking down the street and everybody in a cafe jumped up and burst into song I would start running the other way very quickly indeed.

Okay, so in case you haven't guessed by this point it was one of those days today. Not a bad one of those days mind you just a rather odd 'one of those days, which I know probably doesn't explain things in the slightist but there you go, it's been a long week and me grasp of the big words is no goody write now.

Which admitally is rather a poor excuse I know but c'est la vie I guess.

Anyhow it's the weekend now so two whole days all to myself and who knows. I might even get something constructive done this weekend too :-)

Later folks

The end of my first Car

Well whilst searching through the box of photos, random shots of YSA activites and my room at uni were not the only thing I found. Some of you might remember I talked about the accident I had which resulted in the writing off of my first car. Well in said box I also found some photos of after the accident when the recovery people well recovered the car strangely enough.

and just let me re-emphasis this did not happened recently. It happened several years ago now, before anyone gets worried.

Random photos

I was busy sorting through some stuff this evening when I came across another box of photos. Yes I took just as many photos when I had one of the 'old fashioned' cameras with film as when I've had a digital one. Here are a few random photos from the box I found. Make your own captions for this one folks
This a view of my room in my third year of uni in student halls of residence.

and a view of the room from the other direction

This is me back when I was 13 and in the ATC.

and this is a shot of the show they put on in the millenium dome when it was open.

see told you they would be random photos.

I don't know

If was with some bemusement today that I read that the government has decided that in an attempt to decrease the number of underage pregnacies and rising STD levels that all school kids will have to now undergo complusary sex education. Not a bad thing for teenagers I'll agree but what bemused me was the fact that somebody thinks it's a good idea to start these lessons as soon as they get into primary school. Then in what seemed like a frantic attempt to stop certain groups of people throwing a fit they explained that the lessons given to five year olds would not be to the same standard as the lessons given to teenagers and the "'Sex and relationships' " lessons for the younger pupils would focus on things like relationships and teaching children the names to different parts of the bodies.

This whole thing smacks of an idea somewhat thought up in a boardroom in an attempt to be PC and hasn't thought this through in the slightist. There is no need to given sex education to five year olds! At least leave it till people are 10. What ever happened to letting Kids be kids. For goodness sake when we had biology lessons in high school when we were 12/13 most people couldn't sit through the lessons with our giggling so how they think five year olds will manage I have no idea. I have a distrubing vision of a lot of young kids having conversations far too grown up for their age.

And as for the relationship part that's even more funny. When your that young your friendships tend to last for as long as it takes for someone to refuse not to let you play with their toy or lend you a crayon or give you their cookie. They don't need lessons on 'relationships'. Even teenagers aren't old enough to have 'proper' relationships especially once they discover members of the opposite sex. One of my friends in High school and I use that term loosely as he was really just a bully who forced he way into our group of friends and took over by intermidating all of us , at the time none of us realised what was happening as we were in awe that a 'cool kid' wanted to hang out with us and none of us stopped to wonder wh a 'cool kid' would want to hang out with us ( yes I was that geeky even in high school) but I digress, well he used to go through girls quicker then well a quick thing goes through quick things ( it's been a long day I can't think of anything and I'm sure you can insert your own cliche there). I think his record for longest lasting girl was two months and the shortest was 4 minutes mainly as she refused to go behind the cricket pavilion straight away to 'snog him' I just used to watch all this with complete confusion wondering why the bad guy was getting all the girls and how he still got girls even though they all knew what he was like. See I didn't understand relationships then ( and probably don't now to be honest but then which male says they can completely understand females anyway) and I was in my early teens. I dread to think what it would have been like if someone had tried to teach me about relationships when I was five! Probably would have stopped me from talking to a girl ever again!

Anyway,

I had to fill up with petrol this morning and it was all the way down to 97.9 pence! Which probably means that the government will hit us with a fuel duty rise any second now.

Work was interesting today, especially the meeting we had this afternoon which was two hours long but still fun as I got to hear about lots of thinhs we'll be doing in the future. But of course as it's the future I can't talk about it. The other downside is some of these things sound very cool ineed but I'm going to have to wait a long time as the authors haven't even started writing them yet!

Well I suppose I can wait, after all I do have one or two books knocking around the house I could read in stead :-) Or to be honest three or four bookcases full of books I could read.

Yes the attempt to thin out my library did not go so well.

oh well,

maybe next time.

Later folks!

The Librarian king is dead. Long live the Librarian king

Yes my run in charge of the insititute class has now finished as they have called a new Class President. Chemistry who you may remember is one of the new students who started studying at Leicester this year is now our new class president which means I'm back to just being the Librarian. Oh well it was fun whilst it lasted.

Also they actually remembered to 'publically' release Engineseer as well. Only two months after they 'officially released him' mind you :-) but at least they remembered to do it.

Asides from that it's been a pretty standard day. Work was very busy but nothing out of the ordinary. Just the same old, same old really.

Which unfortunately seems to becoming the norm for this week rather then the exception. Which is annoying in the sense that it gets very hard to write blog posts when nothing interesting happens.

Oh well,

Maybe something interesting will happen tomorrow :-)

Later folks!

whatever

Hmmm. It's a bit hard to write a post today maybe as has happened before it's been a pretty standard day where not much has happened at all.

Still I do need to write a post as I am still aiming to keep to my goal of writing at least one post every day I am able too. Which hopefully I will be able to keep as theres not much more of the year to go is there?

Of course I have the horrible feeling I could have just fated myself there. Lets hope not hey?

Well it's institute tomorrow and yet again I am still in charge. The Sectutary also texted me to say that she's not going to be there for the next two weeks as well. Which will casue a problem in two weeks time but more on that story nearer the time :-) It's just so weird to be the Liberarian and be running things everyweek. I have to admit I am surprised it is taking them this long to decide on a new class president but I guess it will take as long as it needs too.

I think I'm going to have to find out one of our spare blankets soon as it's starting to get cold in the mornings, well either that or set the central heating to come on earlier and I'm sure Grumpy would rather we go with the more environmentally friendly (cough he means cheaper cough, cough) option of using more blankets rather then the heating.

anyway,

Later folks!

Well that would be Winter kicking in

I woke up this morning feeling somewhat confused as it was still Dark outside. A quick check of my alarm clock showed I had set it to the right time so that could only mean that we've reached that part of the year where I have to get up when it's still dark.

Oh joy ( he says in his best sarcastic tone).

Of course Grumpy took great delight in pointing out ( well yelling basically from his room) that he could stay in bed as long as he wanted as he's retired. At which point Owen decided to prove him wrong by taking a running jump into Grumpys room and landing almost smack centre on him.

He, he, he.. That will will teach him.

It was still dark enough when I set out for me to have to turn my lights, so the gloomy skies along with the heavy wind coupled with the fact it's a Monday didn't really give the most happy joyful start to the day.

Still things did get better when I got to work. There's something about getting into a nice Warm office with lots of light and nice thick windows which you can watch the wind and rain through.

It turned into one of those days where we seemed to have no end of weird conversations. Most of the people who bike into work seemed determined to swap stories about who had the hardest time getting into work with the rain and wind and how much it slowed them down. Although the guy who 'won' for the best problem story almost got hit by a very low flying flock of pigions. He admited he was glad that it wasn't a flock of Toucans ( old office joke don't ask) otherwise he would have been a goner and no I don't know what the odds are for a flock of toucans suddenly appearing in the centre of Nottingham. I did point out that if they had, had been toucans yes his day and his life would have ended in a rather sucky way but at least it would have provided an interesting change for the local version of csi.

We then got onto the photo which was taken on Friday and put up on Facebook by one of my colleagues and the main comment was about the lack of reaction from people, either regarding the glasses or the Monkey. In fact some people from the office next door had walked through with no comment on Friday in the slightist. Which possibily either means because it was Friday people were expecting odd things to happen, People think we're just that odd as a department or people just really don't take that much notice of us at all. Still when all's said and done I don't think theres many offices who have a much fun as we do.

Or have a Monkey with cymbals.

Later afternoon someone sent round a link to a site which if you put your name, birthdate, place of birth and time of birth(don't ask me why they need that last one) it will create your own astrology chart for you. Mind you not a full one, in order to get the full 30 page( how many?) report you would have to pay 35 dollars. So everyone pretty quickly wanted the link to get their own to see how accurate these things are.

Well I have to admit I don't go for these things but the description it came back with was surprisingly accurate in one part. Apparently my rising Sign which is 01 degrees scorpio ( again don't ask me what the heck that means) says

"You tend to be quiet, reserved, secretive and, at times, quite difficult to understand. Others notice your deep emotions and feelings and wonder how to draw you out. Stubborn and tough, you fight for any position you believe in. You are very resourceful and formidable when you become angered or upset about something. You enjoy living life at the cutting edge -- for you life must be experienced intensely and totally. Quite courageous, you are willing to take calculated risks. Easily hurt by others, you often strike back with bitter sarcasm. Sensitive and curious, you are concerned with the deeper mysteries of human psychology. Once you have become interested in any subject, you pursue it with total fanaticism. "

which probably describes me pretty well, asides from the living life at the cutting edge part.

However the rest of the horoscope proved to be fairly inaccurate ( gee a randomly generated astrology chart off the internet is inaccurate what are the odds) as it also described me as;

• More than a bit of a showoff, you love to be the center of attention!
• Very theatrical, you live life on a grand scale wherever and whenever possible.
• You have hair-trigger reactions to specific stimuli
• you are known for being impulsive, careless, reckless, foolhardy, rash and daring.
• The most extreme ideals will be pursued with gusto

Five points that are not really part of my personality at all.

Another line which people found as funny as I did when I read it out was

"Try to avoid using your well-known seductive charm"

One of my Colleagues pointed out that maybe my seductive charm comes from being a Menace to society ( I explained this well known church cliche to them at one point and they all found it hysterically funny.)

My response was that if I really did have well-known seductive charm I probably wouldn't be a Menaceto society!

Still reading the horoscope did remind me of the first time I meant Kitty at university. She had the amazing talent to be able to look into someones eyes and give a complete 'measure' of the person for want of a better term. It really spooked me when she did that to me as nobody had been able to read me like that for a very long time. In fact I don't know if I've met anyone whose been able to read me like that since.

It starting raining very heavily mid afternoon which mean by hometime the roads were a absolute nightmare as there was lots of water on the roads, which meant lots of water mist and the like which is my 2nd most hated set of driving conditions. I was rather glad to get home I can tell you.

anyway, I'm not up to much this evening, which is sad I know but I feel like having one of those evenings where you just kick back and relax.

Later folks!

Isn't it good to see that their cutting the amount of red tape in the NHS

Before anybody asks I have not made this story up!

I read today that Doctors are being given tips to help them diagnose when someone is….

Dead.

Yes you read that right, ‘experts’ have decided that there is enough ambiguity in diagnosing death that Doctors need guidance.

The reports authors said Diagnosing Death could be difficult. The new guidance for the first time clearly spells out when it is appropriate to diagnose death.

The guidelines say the definition of death should be regarded as the irreversible loss of the capacity for consciousness, combined with irreversible loss of the capacity to breathe.

Well I’m sure we’ll all have more confidence in our doctors now that they have the guidelines which tell them if we’re no longer breathing that they can diagnoise that we've died. Otherwise who knows how they would have been able to tell.

There are somethings Men are just not supposed to understand

It was another one of those mornings where it seemed really, really hard to get out of bed. Which was strange in the sense that I don't usually get them on a weekend, usually a weekday.

Anyway I got to church early to do the bulletins as usual but unfortunatly the photocopier also decided it was going to have one of those mornings as well and decided to jam after only doing two thirds of them which was very frustrating as I simply didn't have the time to be able to clear it and go and lay the bulletins out in the chapel. Someone said it probably keeps jamming as I run 40 off bulletins off each Sunday. I'm not entirely convinced it doesn't have more to do with the fact that it's a cheap very old second hand photocopier.

Sacrement was interesting, especially as in a change to the 'normal' order of things rather then have a full intermediate hymn the Priesthood sang a musical item instead. Now usually I don't enjoy getting up and singing but it's always fun singing with the rest of the priesthood because as we have so many priesthood holders it always sounds good collectively even if it would sound terribly individually :-)

Sunday school was... Interesting I think is the best word for it. Physics was on fine form today, although to be fair it's not that he intentionally sets out to annoy the teacher it's just his unique sense of humour. For example the teacher asked " So what happened when Jesus healed the people in Jerusalum?" Physics response " They got better" . Although the teacher should have seen that answer coming a mile away. At one point in the lesson she asked us all to think of six things that we all really really wanted. One of the girls said a new handbag which lead to the girls having a discussion which although it was in English totally confused the men in the room. As the teacher remarked how she wanted this really nice handbag which could also be worn as a backpack. So one of the girls asked why didn't she just buy a backpack to begin with. But we were then told then it wouldn't be a handbag as it couldn't be carried. But we then pointed out that they were talking about a handbag that they would wear as a backpack and carry which is the same thing they could do with a backpack. But again we were told they didn't want a backpack which although the same size and could do the same things as a handbag it wouldn't be handbag. A point we were assured that was most important. At which point most of the guys gave up and we decided that as men maybe there are just somethings we are not supposed to understand.

At the end of the lesson Our teacher was talking to one of the YSA who had left to go to uni but decided it wasn't for her and had come home. The teacher was telling this girl that her daughter GF was now the ward YSA rep ( and she had also told somebody last week that as her daughter was now ward rep the YSA would finally be sorted out as it had been disorganised for a very long time. I refrained from commenting last week in Engineseers defence) and she was glad that this girl had come home as it meant there was a normal person for her to speak to in the ward YSA. Me and physics looked at each other and I challenged her saying " Excuse me?" as I really wasn't going to let that one go. She paused, looked at us and said " Oh I don't relate well to boys" and went back to talking to the girls. I decided to leave the classroom at that point, before I got wound up or said anything I might later regret.

I got home to discover Dinner was going to be late as the oven door had fallen off! So Grumpy and I had to spent nearly 45 minutes getting the darn thing to fit back on. Owen was very intrigued as to what we were doing so it got hard to concentrate on trying to fix the door when his head suddenly appeared over your shoulder.

Anyway, Monday tomorrow. So another week of work beckons with many 'opportunities' to be had I'm sure.

As long as their easier then last weeks ones I won't mine at all :-)

later folks

Sales, sales everywhere

Well it looks like bad sales are starting to bite for retail shops as it seemed every shop I went into today was having some kind of a sale or another. I have to admit that it was tempting to get a couple of box sets whilst I was in zavi but I resisted. I'm trying to save money plus they'll be even cheaper in a couple of months.

I saw in the news thats Madonnas getting divorced and that it's turning into a real nasty case as she's apparently claiming her husband was very mean to her and said amongist other things that she looked like a granny in those revealing outfits when compared to the dancers she had on stage and also that she couldn't act. Hmm.... Well the first point may have been mean but she is old enough to be a granny and as for the second point, well we all knew that anyway.

Oh had a moment of 'got nothing better to do' this afternoon whilst waiting for paint to dry and I mean that literally so I spent sometime searching through facebook. Which did lead to the interesting discovery that one of my former class mates is actually now a glamour model! Other interesting things discovered were two old friends and they accepted friends requests which means I'm all the way up to 110 friends. Yah! I rock. I also discovered that one of my work colleagues posted a photo of the whole department when we decided to have a mess around on Friday afternoon. I don't know what will be weirder to explain. The fake glasses or the Monkey on the Arch Deacon of designs shoulder.

And no I'm not going to explain that one at all :-)

Well It's church tomorrow so I have to sign off now and prepare the bulletins.

Later folks!

Another week gone

Well as the saying goes, that as that. It's Friday! The end of another week and another week close to the end of the year. Which is now approaching scarily fast. Time just seems to fly by so quickly these days, where does it all go?

And I've just realised with that sentence I've made myself sound very, very old :-)

Anyway, it was a fairly quiet day at work to day which was a nice way to round things out after the rather hectic week we've had. Still it was nice to leave at 5.30 knowing that thats it for this week and I have two whole days before I have to be back again.

Can you tell I've been looking forward to the weekend?

later folks!

Friday Forums photos

Oops! I was just reading some posts when I realised I promised to post some pictures from last Fridays Friday forum and totally forgot to do so. So with out further a do here they are.

Aspiring Angel ( who assures me she will shortly be restarting her blog) waits in her quiz room waiting for the first victim ehh I mean contestant to try to answer her riddles as part of the Mental game.
And here the first contestant is now.
In the cultural hall we had two physical games. The first involved shooting hoops with a basketball. ( by the way the carpet is only a temporary one. It does have a wooden floor)
The second involved one constestant guiding another round a maze of chairs whilst blindfolded carrying a egg on a spoon ( or at least thats what I heard it was, don't ask me I was just organising it! wait.....)


Ah now onto our most talked about game of the evening. Kmcr's Mystery game. Genius in it's simplicity evil in it's Entirety. Just to remind anyone who has forgot. The game involved two team members having to peel two oranges as fast as possible using only their teeth.
Cordelia gets ready to fact the challenge of the mystery game!
Cordelia peels her orange as banana looks on glad she didn't volunteer!
Chemistry gets ready for the next visitors to his skill game.
Which involved them having to guide a remote control car round this track. Yes I know it's a bit cheap to use chairs but it's not like we had the budget of the actual TV series! To make it more interesting, i.e fun to watch the person guiding the car was blindfolded and had to rely on directions from their team mates.
Finally each team selected a member to go into the 'crystal dome'. Where they had to collect as many gold pieces of paper as they could in the time avalabile. Of course to make it just like the crystal dome we borrowed as many industrial fans as we could law our hands on. Yes that is tissue paper flying around the room! KmcR is standing there to keep an eye on things to make sure theres no cheating!

Finally after the fun and games it was time for food. 75 YSA eat a lot of food! 19 Pizzas, six full size cakes, three bottles of squash and 8 boxs of chips !

All in all. A very fun night

Reserving judgement

I'm a geek. Yes not exactly news to my regular readers I know but bear with me I am going somewhere with this. So being a geek or uber geek I'm always interested in big sci-fi and fantasy news. And you don't get much bigger in Sci-fi then Star Trek. Which is why I was very interested today to see the first pictures released from the new Star trek film. Apparently it's a prequel to the orginal series but will still feature the characters from the original show but when they were 'young; and yes that... does include...... the one and only......James T Kirk ( sorry thats my very bad attept and attempting to write in a stereotypical impresson of the way Kirk spoke).

So heres a picture of the 'new' cast of old characters. From left to Right, Chekhov, the man himself James T kirk, Scotty, Dr Mcoy, Sulu and Uhura). So in the star trek 'timeline' this move will be a prequel to the orginal series but set after the enterprise series. So I guess that makes it a prequel squel to the prequel but only prequel to the original.

I'm going to try and reserve judgement until I actually see the film. I think it's going to be one of those films though that will either work really well. Or it won't.

Right geeky things aside as it were, it's been another allright day. It was once again, very very busy at work but we were able to handle it fine. We did experience some technical problems today IT wise. The IT departments initial assessment described the problem in two words which I'm sure you can guess. But they managed to fix it though which is good. Although they wouldn't say if the problem was solved by them turning things off and on again :-)

later folks!

99.9

Yah! the price of petrol has now fallen all the way 'down' to 99.9 pence. Of course the irony is this only happened later in the day after I had filled up with petrol first thing this morning.

D'oh!

Oh well. C'est la vie I guess.

Work was extremely busy today as we had lots more problems come our way today. It is turning into one of those weeks in spades. Oh well at least it keeps life interesting. I've also been encouraged to not think of things as 'problems' but rather as 'opportunities' which I know sounds a little silly when you put it like that but it's amazing the difference it makes when you do try that. It does seems easier to come up with solutions. Well at least it did to the 'opportunities' that I experienced today :-)

Insitute was also interesting although I got there quite later then usual. In part due to traffic and in part to a last minute clear out of the back of the car just in case I had to give anybody a life home like I did last week, as I didn't want to get another lecture from any of them about the state of my car.

Anyway it turned out that it was un needed as everyone had a lift home so it was just me by myself again on the drive home.

Regardless of that it was another very good set of lessons as Bro H is a very good teacher and even if you've done the course before you always pick up new stuff everytime he teaches.

Anyway just two more days to the weekend.

Later folks!

Stay tuned

Well I've had one of those evenings where technology has really, really not been working with me and instead has seemed to be as uncoperative as possible. Still I think I've got it sorted out and stay tuned for more on that particuler story tomorrow if everything works out.

I managed to leave on time for work this morning and made sure I remembered my pass this time. I still can't believe I forgot it yesterday. That's the whole point of why I wear it round my neck so it should be hard to forget. G'ah!

Anyway it was one of those days at work where the problems seemed to be coming thick and fast. I was able to sort out most of the really awkward ones, the others well they could wait till we have the time to sort them out as we're very, very busy right now.

Institute tomorrow. It should be interesting to get the classes view on how the Friday forum went. Hopefully they all enjoyed it and as far as I'm aware I'm still running things as theres still no new class president.

Theres not many classes where the librerains in charge is there?

Later folks!

Learn something new everyday

Regular readers will know I'm not overly fond of Mondays and as the days are now drawing in it just seems to be getting harder and harder to get out of bed each morning. Still after throwing myself out of bed I managed to get things together fairly quickly, well at least by the standards that I usually move each morning. I even managed to leave a couple of minutes earlier then usual so I was feeling quite pleased with myself as I headed off down the road. Maybe today was going to be a very good day, even my security pass that I hang round my neck was catching on the seat belt as usual. I did one very quick look down and realised why it wasn't catching. I wasn't wearing it.

One quick reverse later I was back at the house running inside to find my pass then bolted out the door again, leaving Owen looking very confused as to why I had left, come back then left again!

Asides from that less then stellar start to the day I got to work in pretty good time and eve nhad enough spare time before the start of the day to use the computers in the canteen to quickly check my blog. To discover that I had used a word to describe someone in my post from Saturday that I hadn't realised it also had another totally different (and more vulgar) meaning in addition to the one I was aware of. In case anyone I did change it as soon as I could and please rest assured if I had known about the other meaning I would never have used it so I'm sorry if I offended any of my regular readers. I had now removed said word from the post.

But I suppose as the saying goes you learn something new everyday and I guess that certainly qualifies :-) I'll remember not to use it in future.

Anyway work was good as I was able to get a lot done for a Monday which are usually really, really busy. So I was feeling pretty pleased with myself by the end of the day.

Grumpy and Owen were already out by the time I got home. They have a training class on Monday nights. I'm not sure how much difference it is making with Owen but Grumpy seems sure that there is some and I guess as he spends more time with Owen then me he will be the one to know :-)

I'm having a fairly easy night tonight. I've started to reorganise my bookshelves again in the vain hope that I might find some more room. I'm a terrible horder when it comes to books and I really struggle to part with any but unfortunatly as Grumpy won't let me get another book case I'm getting to that point where I have no choice.

The trouble is I have no idea what to get rid of though :-(

anyway later folks!

Can't get that out of my head

I heard the new Britney spears song last night and unfortunatly it proved to be all too hideously catchy and I now just can't that darn song out of my head. Which did get my to ponder why all the most catchy songs which have come out recently are totally inappropriate for guys to sing yet their just as likely to get the song stuck in their heads as girls.

Admitally that was a rather strange thing to waste time pondering but to be honest it's been one of those days.

I was actually able to get the bulletins photocopied this morning without the darn photocopier breaking on me. Yaah!!!

It was about time that thing worked right. Of course knowing my luck this probably means that it will have broken again by next week.

We know have a married couple assigned to be responsible/advise the YSA which is the first time we've had that in Loughborough. We've also had a new YSA rep called. GF will now be our rep. She seemed a mite surprised when they announced it in sacrement. I guess they've decided to only go with one rep from now on as the YSA is smaller then it used to be. Some other people also seemed surprised at the call as she is one of the youngest YSA but I guess there was a reason she was called and we will see it sooner or later :-) Plus this means she will have to start coming to institute otherwise it will be hard for her to encourage the rest of us to go when she doesn't!

J Alfred has now moved back into the Loughborough ward. So along with the other new student who will be studying aeronatuical engineering one whole row of the YSA class was what you might call 'covering most of the angles'. As between the Lads we had degrees or were in the process of studying Law, History, IT, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering to degree level.

Anyway asides from that it's been a pretty quiet day. I spent most of the afternoon reading mainly as I didn't feel like doing anything else.

Sad I know.

Anyway it's Monday tomorrow. So another week of hard work to earn more pennies. We haven't go anything major planned this week so that should mean that I'll only have to deal with the usual unexpected customer service issues.

and no one expects the customer service issues!

No wait that's the spanish inquistion.

Anyway,

Later folks!

Ready or not

Sorry about the lack of a 'proper' blog post yesterday. As I went to the Friday forum straight from work and then didn't get home till gone Midnight there kinda wasn't time to do one.

Fortunatly it seems that all of our hard work last night paid off. Everything seemed to go okay and everybody seemed happy with the activity afterwards.

What really surprised us was the number of people who turned up. There was in the region of seventy by the end of the night which was double the attendence there had been at Friday forums. I guess as it was the last one ever a lot of people want to turn up to say 'goodbye'.

I did take a lot of photos and I will post them tomorrow. Our broadband seems to be running a little slowly tonight for some reason.

I was conducting as I'm far too chivalrous for my own good. I as feeling more nervous then when I had to give that talk! Especially as I was only expecting the average number of people and the chapel just kept filling up. I think I did okay and I think I made sense. Although I did seem to be the butt of a joke from some of the YSA from peterborough as they made a comment to me in passing in the corridor afterwards and refused to explain what they meant. I simply shrugged it off as the guy who made it is a bit of a Muppet.

I was delighted to see not only Cordelia attending but Banana as well, which was fantastic as I haven't see her in ages.

The activity was " Return to the Crystal maze" If you don't know what the crystal maze was Wiklipedia it! If you do know what it is your probably showing your age :-)

We had five games in total. One mental, one skill, one mystery and two physical.

KMcr's game she came up with was genius in it's simplicity but evil in it's entirity. Basically two members of each team had to peel a orange as quickly as possible using their teeth and only their teeth. Angel ran a 'mental' game where one team member had to answer her riddles, Chemistry ran a skills game where one team member had to guide a remote control car round a track whilst blindfolded relying on directions from the rest of his team. D and J ran a physical game in the cultural hall using basketballs and finally J ran another physical game using eggs! I honestly didn't ask what he was intending to do before hand as I didn't know if I would like the answer :-)

We even had our own version of the crystal dome. With lots of tissue paper and half a dozen industrial size fans! It was absoultely mental!

There was pizza for after the activity as you can imagine we had to order so much we had to set it out down the length of the stage to enable everyone to get to it.

After the activity had ended we had to help Bro H clear up. But I didn't mind as myself and EP were feeling quite smug with ourselves as everything had gone well.

Of course as we did such a good job theres always the danger they might ask us to organise another activity. But lets hope that doesn't occur to them hey?

later folks!

More email Funnies

Or to put it another way times when you might feel inclined to use the odd swear word or two

Random

One of the side benefits of my job is that the conversation can be even more random then usual. I mean there aren't many offices where you can go from having a conversation between people about whether a character from the latest piece of artwork is anatomically correct or looks like she has had surgery, to a conversation about reviews, to a conversation about painting, to a conversation about adverts, to a conversation with a visitor, then to a conversation about whether or not a photo someone just sent round as part of a 'joke email' is actually really and how that girl can wear that dress without it falling down.

But they weren't the most random conversations of the day, That honour belong to a conversation about me telling one of my co workers about how one of the students I gave a lift home last night starting berating me for the state of my car and somehow ended after someone else mishearing me with jokes about me buying a mail order bride and someone asking could I get him one at the same time and see if they would do a bulk discount!

It was one of those rather strange days.

In spades.

Which is rather a strange saying and I have no idea why I sued it...hmmm?? Where was I?

The new 'zombie drama' version of Big brother is just sounding better and better. Not only does Davina stay as herself and get bumped off, Former big brother housemates also make appearances as well. Oh I hope this means they get bumped off too! Either that or the zombies will just turn and shamble away to proove that they do have some taste :-)

Well it's the Friday Forum tomorrow. I hope it goes okay, but if it doesn't I guess I can always try and use the defence that I'm just the Liberian and it's all the class presidents fault. Not that we actually have a class president right now but I'll just hope however I'm claiming ignorance too doesn't know that.

anyway,

later folks!

The credit crunch hits Britain

Windows 2008
The new iphone
London 2012 with Stuart Hall

Does one want fries with that?

Do you think she didn't approve?

Email funnies 1

Gallent or stupid? Hard to say.

Trying to be a gentleman can have it's disavantages sometimes. With Friday forum fast approaching as Leicester still without a class president someone needs to conduct. EP asked if I could conduct as she gets nervous. Honestly she's not the only one but far from it for me to ignore the cry of a lady in distress. So thats right muggins here will be the one conducting and the one having to get up in front of several stakes worth of people. I'n not nervous at that prospect..... honest.

If anyone needs me I'll just be hiding under the desk hoping Friday never comes..

All joking asides however everything seems to be on track for the Friday forum to go great and we want it to being the last one and all. EP has also come up with a plan to have a 'proper' crystal dome involving lots of cuts strips of paper and several rather large fans.

It will be fun and probably enough to give any health and safety official nightmares :-)

Work was okay today, even if it took what seemed like a horendeously long time to drag myself out of bed this morning. As there was a national managers meeting on we had a lot of vistors coming through the office today. Which meant it was busy but it was fun. It's nice to be able to help people in person for a change as opposed to only speaking to them on the phone.

I had to bring three people back from instute tonight. I was dropping one of them off at JH's house where Nemesis used to live and I realised with a start the last time I was there was the night Nemesis left! My doesn't time fly?

Well only two more days to the weekend and one more day to the Friday forum. Lets hope everything goes okay. Especially as I'm in charge !

No pressure, no pressure at all.....

Now how much room is there under that desk?

later folks :-)

Anaylising Analytics

I’m aware that of my readership I have a vocal minority yet a silent majority.

How do I know this?

Why by the marvels of google analytics.

Of course analytics is more meant for websites rather then blogs but it’s still fun to read even if I have no idea what a lot of things mean.

So for example since I started using Google analytics I have had 3.506 visits from 47 countries.

In order the top ten countries for visitors are UK, USA, Luxembourg ( gee wonder who that is : - ), Canada, Australia, Ireland, Mexico, Spain, Colombia and Italy

Breaking down the UK into the top ten locations for visitors, Nottingham, London, Ilkeston, Leicester, Plymouth, Nuneaton, Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds, Smethwick(wherever that is!).

Breaking down Luxembourg into locations for visitors you get, Luxembourg ( gee what are the odds) and Strassen strangely enough.

Then breaking down USA into locations for visitors you get Washington, Utah, Virginia, California, Connecticut, Arizona, Tennessee, New York, Texas and Idaho.

So in total there have been 3506 visits to my site since I started using analytics, with 9,282 page views, 2.65 average pages viewed per visit, a 67.03% bounce rate, 00.05:43 avg time on site and 19.65% new visits.

Now I have no idea what a large chunk of that means or why I would even want to know this but if it’s on the internet it must be true : - )

Plus it gives me no clue how to use this to increase the size of my vocal readership or any clue as to why I’ve just bothered rambling on about this. But I guess I just wanted to say to my silent readership that I know your there (mwah, ha, ha, ha all right that’s enough ) and I do appreciate your continued readership. It is helping me to keep writing.

Later folks!

As you asked

Well seeing as Drat asked in his comment on the post “ice ice baby” I thought I would expand on what happened when I wrote off my 1st car.

It was a Red Ford Fiesta and it happened back when I used to work for a different department at my company. This job meant I was on rotating shift patterns so I was on my way to work on a Saturday morning.

I suppose with the benefit of hindsight it was lucky this cold snap hit on a Saturday otherwise there would have been a lot more problems on the roads then there were.

The cold snap had hit the previous night and had been unexpected to no gritters had gritted the road the previous night. This combined with the right cold conditions the night before meant there was a lot of ice on the roads and not just normal ice but black ice as well. Of course I only know all this with the benefit of Hindsight, that morning I had no way of knowing this especially as the car had iced over so there was no indication to me that there was ice around and certainly no indication that as I started out for work I was heading directly towards a corner that had a sheet of Black Ice in the worst possible place.

In reference to Drats comment I wasn’t going to fast, in fact I was well within the speed limit for that stretch of road which probably helped me out.

When I hit the Ice I was going into the corner, I think I must have hit the edge of one side of the road, rebounded across the road whilst the car span 180 degrees at which point I encountered the other side of the road where the wheels dug into the verge. This particular corner went round the edge of a boggy field which was actually lower then the road and there was a slope. So as the car wheels had dug into the verge there was still enough power from the spinning to cause the car to flip and go down into the field. It rolled I think about one and a half times before coming to rest roof down.

Now again figuring out what happened was easy with the benefit of Hindsight. In fact it took me far longer to write that explanation that it took for it to happen. It was literally over in seconds, if that. It all happened far too quickly for me to react at all. There was just a sensation of spinning, and turning over and the realisation that something had just gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Three things occurred to me at that moment, firstly I was upside down, secondly the radio was still playing and thirdly the engine was still running, which immediately jolted me into action as I realised that, that couldn’t be good. I turned the engine off, then the radio and finally there was silence apart from the creak of metal as the car continued to rock gently. I knew I had to get out of there but I shouldn’t move just yet. I slowly did a quick check of all my toes, then my feet, then my legs, then my fingers etc. To my reliever everything responded and there was no pain. I decided that the risk of moving was greatly outweighed by the risk of staying in an upside down car with a full tank of petrol.

So I undid my seat belt and which point I realised that I had been so concentrated on trying to get out and releasing my seat belt I had forgotten the one thing which was blindly obvious. I was upside down and I hadn’t braced myself.

Bang…

I managed to get my arms up to protect my head and neck but the rest of me fell full length again the roof of the car and there’s not many times you can say that. I did a quick check and realised that getting out might not be as easy as I imagined. The car was at a angle face down as it were, this field was very wet and very boggy. So yes it complicated matters but it probably helped to absorb most of the impact. The windscreen was face down to the ground, the passenger side door was also buried into the ground. The boot was pointing sky high and I could see daylight but I didn’t dare climb back down the car if I could avoid it as I had no idea what that would do or if it would unbalance things making them worse. That left the drivers side door. I was also getting wet at this point as the sunroof had smashed and water was starting to leak in. Not much mind you before anyone gets any images of the car sinking!

I tried the door and to my relief I heard it unlock I pulled the door handle and tried to open it and it did. For about two centimetres then it stuck. What I didn’t know at this time as I couldn’t see was the car had dug itself in at the bottom of the slope. This meant the drivers side was very close to the slope jamming the door. The Fiesta was only a three door, drivers side, passenger side and boot in case anyone was wondering why I didn’t try the back doors.

I realised I could be in serious trouble here. I tried the door again and it moved a fraction more, I was starting to have visions at this point of having to be cut out of the car by the Fire brigade when I heard voices. Not the usual voices in my head : - )Two drivers from the other direction had been passing and had almost driven by thinking the upside car in the middle of the field was a result of somebody’s drink driving the previous night when they realised the lights were still on so decided to stop to investigate.

When they realised I was still in there they initially advised that I shouldn’t move but I assured them I was fine and that I just needed to get out. I also might have used one or two words to emphasis my urgent desire to get out of the car which probably would get me into a lot of trouble if I ever use it round my parents. With a combination of me pushing and them pulling and kicking the door I was able to squeeze out of the car. I sat down at the top of the slope whilst they rang for an ambulance, feeling slightly bemused and feeling like a age had just passed where I’m sure it was only less then five minutes.

The police arrived and parked and one of the officers slipped on some ice as he was getting out of the car. He gingerly walked across the road, smiled and said
“ Let me guess what happened”
The ambulance then arrived and they checked me out, saying I seemed fine but I could go to hospital if I wanted. I politely declined the request as everything seemed okay.

Tapdance and speed demon also appeared as I had called them at somepoint to let them know what was going on. We then had to rush home to find my breakdown cover details as we were going to have to organise recovery of the Car.

It took them a while to arrive as I wasn’t the only one who had encountered ice that morning. The recovery guys admitted I was there fourth recovery of the morning. In fact someone else had encountered ice on the same road and came off the road just over the horizon.

The car looked quite sorry when she was turned back onto her wheels. She was a pretty good car and hadn’t caused me that many problems unlike some of my later cars. I’d had a small hope admitally quite stupidly that she might be okay but I now knew she was a write off from the way the roof was bashed up. It also seemed that when she rolled she took the brunt of the impact on the passenger side of the roof, which combined with the low speed and the boggy field is probably what allowed me to walk away.

Due to work I had to organise getting a new car pretty quickly. In fact I ended up with another Ford Fiesta, which was also red and was also the same reg ( i.e. started with the same letter) so do the casual observer there was no difference and if I didn’t say they would be none the wiser.

I had problems trying to get the contents of the car back the recovery people. Despite having been the one driving, it was my cover that recovered the car, having the MOT certificate, insurance certificate, proof of ownership and being able to tell them everything that was in the car when I went there they said they won’t give the contents to me as the car was registered to my Mum. However if I were to bring a letter from her saying it was okay for me to collect the contents they would give them to me. It didn’t have to be a signed letter mine you or even a hand written one, one printed off from the computer would be fine.

Yeah, they hadn’t thought that set of procedures through at all had they?

I stayed with the new Fiesta for a couple of years I think, if I’ve remembered that correctly until I reached that point you do with all old cars that the cost of repairs outweighs the benefit of simply buying another car. She needed £400 of welding to pass her next MOT!

So at which point I traded her in for my current car, my KA which to be honest is probably going to be reaching the ‘trade in’ point soon.

anyway,

later folks!

One of them days

I've been sitting here yet again struggling to think of something to write but the words just haven't been coming. Today has just seemed like a groundhog day in the extreme and I just seem to be having them far too often at present.

It's probably not helping that I still have this bug and it's just seems to be draining my energy something cronic right now and of course when I get low on energy I tend to lie around doing a lot of thinking and when I start thinking I start wondering and when I start wondering I usually end by brooding and when I'm brooding I can start to feel depressed and when I'm depressed I feel low on energy and the whole entertaining little cycle starts again.

Sorry, I know I'm not being my usual 'Happy' self today.

I think part of the problem right now is that I've not got a 'project' for want of a better term to keep my full attention. Yes Top secret project one is still on the go and I still do my painting but I've got to a point now where neither of them are stretching me too much right now and that's bad because if I don't have something to keep my attention I do tend to brood big time. So I'm trying to think of a new project which will tie into one of my interests or something new which will keep my attention. Any suggestions anyone?

I suppose if I'm honest my dejected mood right now is also down to the amount of couples that seem to be around right now both at work and YSA wise. Don't get me wrong I'm happy for all of them and glad they have relationships, it justs highlights the fact that I don't have one. Which I know is again an example of me being sad and brooding on things I shouldn't do but that's what happens if I have too much time to myself to 'analyise things'.

Oh well as they say these things are sent to try us and I'll just have to keep plodding along even though the road seems all too long right now with no goal in sight...........

Wow I really am feeling sorry for myself right now aren't I? I really need to shake this cough and cold so I can shake this brooding and feeling of no energy.

Either that or take a stupidly large amount of sugar and caffine every day until the bug goes away.

Later folks!

Ice Ice baby

I don't like Monday mornings at the best of times and this morning was no exception. I got up late, didn't have time for Breakfast and rushed outside to the car to discovered the windscreen was iced up. Yes you read that right we're in the second week of October and we've already got ice! This meant I had to make a frantic search for the de icer in the garage then had a fraught journey to work as driving in Icey Conditions, really really puts me on edge. This is because for those of you who don't know when I had my first car I had an encounter with a patch of black ice which meant I wrote the car off. Not only did i go off the road the darn thing also rolled over! Fortunatly the worse I suffered was a pulled muscle in my neck although I didn't help myself when in a effort to get out of the car I unbuckled my seatbelt and had one of those moments that stretched out when I realised that was a remarkably stupid idea as I was upside down and hadn't braced myself at all.

Yes you guessed it. Bang!

Anyway enough of the flashbacks. Work was quite good, asides from lots of people are coming down with coughs and colds right now. If the canteen could sell lemsips their'd probably make a fortune right now.

I got home to find Grumpy in a bad mood. Apparently Owen had been a real pain today not only did he rip some post up he also managed to break his collar. Although he didn't explain how Owen did that as they were on their way out to their training lesson.

Anyway that's all for today. I've got to go and do some prep for this weeks Friday forum.

Later folks!

Bleugh

Well it seems that I just can't shake this winter bug as I've now developed a full on cold as well! Bleugh, I hate feeling sick!

Feeling under the weather I decided to forgo going to the stake centre to watch the general conference and decided to watch it online instead. Not the most social way of watching the conference I admit but I thought people would have got annoyed with me sitting there coughing and sniffing the whole way through.

Owen was most confused whilst I was watching though as he was trying to figure out where the voices were coming from as we don't usually watch stuff on the computer!

Asides from watching the conference online I've been taking it easy and making sure I take some lemsips. As I wouldn't mind this cold disappearing very, veery quickly.

I wouldn't mind at all

Twas a dark and stormy night

I'm currently sitting in Grumpys office whilst writing this post. It's extremely wet and windy outside right now. It's the kind of weather that makes you glad that someone invented central heating. Yes that's right we're barely into October and we're already having to start using the heating as it's getting that cold already! Maybe this means that theres a chance we might actually get some decent snow this year as opposed to the small amount we usually get.

Owens been a real pain all day. For some reason he's just seemed to be in one of those moods. We also got back from shopping to find that he's moved from hiding the post to ripping some of it up. Grumpy was most annoyed, especially as Owen had only ripped up the junk mail and left the bills alone!

I saw the new series Merlin for the first time tonight. It was good, much better then Robin Hood. Which I suppose is only to be expected considering they have Richard Wilson, John Hurt and Antony Head all appeared as characters. They also had Michelle Ryan appearing as the bad 'guy'.

And she was a lot better in this then she was in 'Bionic Woman'. However she probably was handicapped in that by them shoe horing in the 'annoying kid sister'.

However watching this did remind me (and yes I know this was a slightly odd that watching this program reminded me of this but as my memory is darn near photographic sometimes you'd be surprised at what I can remember), of a time in my final year at uni I was sitting in the hall common room with the other guys from the hall and one of them made a reference to one of the actresses and said she was in his 'top five'. When we asked what he meant he explained he meant who he thought were the 'top five' actresses he liked on TV. The other guys rattled off their top five then I did. There was a stunned silence in the room, one of the other guys asked me why I had joined in. I asked him what he meant, he then replied that he thought I wouldn't rate actresses like that as I was a Mormon. I simply smiled and replied " Yes, Mormon not monk". As the saying goes if you look once your a Man, look twice your not an Elder"

Physics response to that saying when we said this one time whilst travelling to General conference

" thats right. Which is why you make sure your one look is a nice and long one"

Later folks!