Mr Saxon goes to Poole: Saturday Evening " really rather different"

Setting out from the chapel, I was determined to follow some of the others as based on my experience in poole the previous night, I wasn't sure if the satnav would not have another problem and this plan worked quite well ( even if I would have given anything to have a passenger to talk too)

However after a badly timed light, I lost the people in front of me which I didn't think would be a issue. But I then became aware that several people had, had the same idea I had but instead were following me! Which was not a comforting thought as I was dependent on the talking little box that had not been proving to be the most dependable of electronic gizmos that weekend!

Fortunately it decided to play nice and got me to the right destination. Meeting up with some of the others from the convention we headed to the waterfront. Now, it's often said that it is easy to pick out church members in a crowd and this was certainly true that night, as we were in a major town on a Saturday night. Plus there was the not so small fact that several people were dressed up in fancy dress. Even Fraggle who was dressed up as jimmy saville, which due to later events ( which if you haven't been living under a rock you will know about ) is probably the last time he will ever dress up like that.

Now I had heard about the "boat" from a previous year so was somewhat looking forward to the trip, and it was a big boat. Even so, I moved to bag a seat on the top deck pretty quickly as it wasn't what you could call a large deck.

Being in a good mood ( and that I hadn't really mentioned to anyone what I was up to that weekend) I decided to have some fun by updating my facebook status update to say words to the effect of " In a change to my usual Saturday night, I am now on a boat"  and didn't say anything else which prompted a great response from one of my friends from work of
" Wait... what???"
he, he, he, he.

I later confused her even more by sending a text message later on that night when we were out to sea ( there was general amusement from people when we found there was phone coverage but no internet access. However would we update facebook :-) by saying "you've heard of snakes on a plane well this is a text from a boat". Her response was somewhat to the point
" All right just what the heck are you up too?"

The trip was a wonderful night, most people spent the night below decks as there was a dance floor, but despite dancing the previous night therew as no way I was going to try dancing on a boat. Besides being out to sea was giving me the opportunity for some fantastic photo opportunities and a sunset that was just awe inspiring; Plus it gave me a chance to talk to some members of the "canon club". And by this I mean that as the average age of the attendee's was somewhat higher then a YSA conference it was reflected in our choice (plus what we could afford of course)  of gizmos and gadgets. Namely a lot of DSLR's, spilt between canon and nikon, hence the canon club and the nikon club.

The president of the canon club ( by virtue she had the best model) proved to be a lot of fun as we spent a lot of time pointing out opportunities to each other for great shots and taking tips from each other. And we both got dozens of great photos of such a awe inspiring sunset . However as soon as the sun went down, it got cold, fast!.

However in another one of those " I really can't believe that just happened/ no one will believe this moments) one of the two ladies who had come back to use my B&B came up to the top deck and satdown, complaining it was cold and suddenly sat down next to me, moments before cheery from earlier reappeared and she came over to say hello. I introduced her to Roch ( the code name for one of the ladies who came back), she asked how she knew me and roch responded that I was one of the ladies who I had taken back to my room, at which point cheery laughed and said well she had got me first by necking with me and sat down on my knee and put her arm round my shoulder in order to keep talking to me and roch.. My first thought was, well this is cosy and my second thought which just made me giggle was, without a picture there's no way anyone is going to believe this.

There was also a attempt to launch several Chinese lanterns, which due to high winds proved ( if you pardon the term) a rather damp squig as even with using a whole box of matches in one go, the lanterns would not stay lit. In the end the two which did light only proved to have a few seconds of flight before being promptly blown into the sea.

The end of the evening ended with me making friends with a group of girls who were primary school teachers, and it was half way through talking with them that Fraggle appeared and I realised to my general astonishment I was actually introducing somebody to him.

But it wasn't long after this I was finally driven below decks by the rapidly dropping temperature. Whilst watching the port approach through one of the side "openings" ( I can't think of a better word right now) I reflected on the weekend and I realised that I was really, really happy. Yes it had been a radical change for me to come so far to a activity and yes it could have backfired. But it hadn't, it hadn't at all. In fact it had really buoyed me up ( one of my friends at work would later comment she hadn't seen me in such a good mood for long time)

By the time I eventually got back to the B&B and climbed into bed, I was feeling very tired but a good kind of tired I hadn't felt since the last YSA conference.

It was proving to be a good weekend.

Mr Saxon goes to Poole: Saturday later afternoon" It's just a weekend of firsts"

Of course the downside of using Satnav is it takes a little while for it to boot up and then figure out where it is but at least it beats trying to drive and read a piece of paper.

But whilst I was waiting for my satnav to boot up, after coming back up from the beach two of the ladies attending the convention waved at me as they passed and offered to let me follow them as we headed to the local meeting house for the evening bbq.

When we arrived I was unsurprised to find and I'm sure any church member will be also unsurprised to hear who was helping with preparing the bbq.

Why the missionaries of course ( it doesn't matter where you go in the world, you go to a church do with food, the elders are sure to appear.)

The two ladies, who shall hence forth be referred to as speed up and laugh a lot ( yes I know I'm struggling for nicknames but c'est la vie) were heading into the chapel when they heard a piece of news that horrified them after afternoon at the beach getting covered in sand and salt. There were no showers!! Quite why they though there would be, I have no idea unless they have a exceptionally well equipped home chapel, but as they were staying with a local church member they had no way of getting one before the evening's trip.

" that's no problem, my B and B is just round the corner you could come there and use my shower". Wait, I thought who just suggested that? Oh wait that was me? There was one of those drawn out moments where I realised what I had just said. I had technically asked two women I had only just met to come back to my room! ( i know I had considered this weekend to be getting out of my comfort zone and doing things I wouldn't usually but I mean come on!)

At which point the two women expressed what can be best described as undying gratitude and immediately wanted to go there straight away.

Leaving the chapel we passed fraggle who was somewhat surprised that we seemed to be leaving straight away and wanted to know where we were going to. One of the girls cheerfully announced that I was taking the two of them back to my room.

The look on his face was really rather funny.

So guiding them back  to my B&B I quickly found out that they had come even further then I had. It seems that a lack of mid singles events in the uk is prompting people to travel rather long distances. They also quickly christened me "tom-tom" as I had to hold their sat nav in my hands in order to get directions.

Fortunately the owners of the B&B had no objections to them quickly using my room to get ready and in case anyone was getting too worried, I waited downstairs in the lounge.

By the time we got back to the chapel the bbq was in full swing, but of course being a church event there was more then enough left over and plenty still cooking on the bbq (where the elders were still firmly on duty). I was wondering outside to find a nice seat to eat my food when I noticed one of the girls who had come to use my shower, in the bishops office, sitting in the dark but she had plugged in her hair dryer so she could dry her hair. I'll just say that again, she was sitting in the bishops office in the dark, drying her hair. I couldn't help but ask why she was drying her hair in the dark. Her answer was short and straight to the point,  she was drying her hair in the dark as this was the only place she had found a free plug and she would feel guilty if she was doing in the light as she would be able to see the picture of President Monson clearly. I looked at the picture she was pointed at on the wall and decided not to mention that in the dark she had actually got it wrong. It wasn't President Monson in the picture frame. It was somebody above him, shall we say :-)

Over dinner there was a lot of general chit chat, and surprisingly enough some mention of Fifty shades of grey... but not in the way you were thinking mind you. Nope, it was more about how it was a sign of the times.  However there was a lot of talk about other things too and I was struck about how friendly everybody was in the poole area. Most church members are usually rather friendly but there was something about the guys and girls down there which seemed to be extra friendly. I wasn't hard to figure out that it was the leadership down there that was the cause of such a welcoming spirit.

However I did find out that our stake seems to be one of the only stakes that seem to consider that once you're 30 you're immediately out of YSA. Most other stakes seem to consider it's 31 and even then you would be "phased out". The abrupt "shown to the door" and no handover to the SA program that I had got was a cause of much surprise to many, which left me in two minds about what had happened, but I quickly shrugged and put it out of my mind. I was having too much fun

And besides it was time for the boat.

Mr Saxon goes to Poole: Saturday afternoon " Goldilocks"

Right so where was i?

On yes, on the way to the beach :-) for the afternoon activities. Of course the problem with coming such a long way to the convention by myself with out anyone else was that I had no one in the car to talk to about the the mornings activities. Which although annoying is something unfortunately I've gotten used to ( much to the bemusement of those in Nottingham stake. Don't know what I'm talking about you're obviously not a long term reader... so go read, you have some catching up to do :-)

Anyway, we had to collect lunch from Van's on a road at the top of the long path down to the beach. Now I wasn't sure what to expect but once again the planning of poole stake came through as they served up what was one of the best convention lunches ever as not only did you get to mix and match you got actual full length baguettes.

So lunch was a opportunity to make some new friends but knowing we were going to the beach I had in rare burst of forward planning had bought a secret weapon.

And what was the secret weapon? Why a blanket. Yes, a blanket. We seems simple but you'd be surprised at how useful it is going to beach when nobody else has taken one.

Now despite the dodgy weather of the morning, it actually started to improve to a extent that we started to get are glimpses of that dodgy round yellow thing in the sky that history tells us used to appear in the English skies from time to time. Now that it turned into a remarkably sunny day mind you, it was more what we referred to as goldilocks weather, just nice enough for fun and games but not so good it would have drawn 100s of people down to the beach. In fact in essence the mid singles had the beach to ourselves.

Well asides from one chalet where a girl had hung a banner declaring it was her mega birthday party, which did leave us feeling a little sorry for her because even though more then a dozen people had turned up in kind of looked puny next to over a 100 mormons.

So after Lunch, it was time for games, and unsurprising it was a Olympic theme, but none of the games were anything like you saw in London this summer.

Don't believe me? Well there was one game where you had to dig a channel down to the sea and flood it with water to get ping pong ball to float down there, a giant game of noughts and crosses where we were playing the role of the noughts and crosses ( it got even more interesting when people could throw people out of squares they wanted). Mind you there was a slight interruption caused by flying child whose brother had helpfully decided she needed some help down from the sea wall the quick way whether she wanted it or not.

One of the most entertaining games was one that was certainly designed to get people up close and personal.  Basically you had to run in pairs, one boy, one girl carrying a inflatable beach ball between you. Sound easy? Well not quite as you weren't allowed to use your hands and basically by the time we had got to the course the sand was so churned up to about knee height even ursan bolt would have trouble getting to jogging speed let alone running.

Mind you as a ice breaker it worked remarkably well even if by the end my parter and I were both exhausted and were laying on the beach, gasping for breath. We had found that the best way to carry the ball between it was pressed between upper chest and neck etc, so when one of my partner's ( who I shall call cheery) came over asking if she was all right the conversation went like this

Friend: Are you all right?
Cheery: Yes, this is saxon
Me: Hi, ( waving one hand in hello in a less then macho manner)
Cheery: We just met 10 minutes ago and we've already necked three times
Friend: WHAT???
Me: Sorry, what?
Cheery: Oh yes and we had a fun time ( she collapsed into giggles)
Friend: He looks a bit tired
Me: Just a bit
Cheery: Oh they all say that
Me: All of them?
Cheery: Only the really lucky ones

At which point she collapsed into hysterics, I promptly did as well and her friend looked on baffled at the two people lying on the sand laughing their heads off.

Of course this little exchange meant that poole is the first convention that I can say I necked with someone :-) But that was nothing with what happened later.

After the games had ended a lot of people decided to go swimming, some fully clothed rather then in swim suits. Fraggle didn't but after one game involving water he was going round with what can be best described as the Mr Darcy look.

Although there was what I can best describe as a heart stopping moment when the official photographer actually waded out to sea with all of his camera gear to film the fun and games and he went out to greater then chest height, All it would have taken was one mis step and several hundreds pounds of gear would be gone.

But all's well that ends well and it all survived. Even if he got thoroughly wet in the process.

With the afternoon drawing to a close it was time to move onto the local chapel for a BBQ and for a rather unexpected bizarre left turn to the weekends events.

Mr Saxon goes to Poole: Saturday Morning " if you go down to the woods today"

The only way to describe the bed in the B&B is "bouncy". Maybe it was just due to me getting used to a memory foam mattress but every time I turned over in it, it felt like I was going to bounce out of the bed. And they must have been some strong springs for me to feel that!

After getting ready and having a rather too long and overly colourful burst of language when I found my missing shaving kit, it was time to go.

Now breakfast was in a place called "georgie porgie's"  a restaurant which I hadn't heard of before but it it sounded interesting and on the plus side I had lucked out and been assigned the "middle" group for breakfast. So not stupidly early but not late enough so I would have to rush.

What I found was what can best be described as the a wonderland of breakfast. Not only was it all you can eat buffet, there was literally every kind of breakfast food you can think of. Ceral's, porridge, juices, plain bread, toast, pastries, bacon, sausages, beans, eggs, boiled, poached and fried..................

Well you get the idea. Basically it was place that left me in two minds. Firstly wishing that we had this place up near geektown and secondly glad that we didn't have a place like this near geektown as if that's how good their breakfast's were their dinners were likely to be as equally good.

So first up for the day was a service project at a local school. Which as it turned out was a primary school with very little in the way of chairs in the main hall but a lot of kids instruments which unsurprisingly with such a grown up group of individuals (no really) lead to a few impromptu renditions.

The service project was to clear a nature trail through the nearby woods for the school, but walking out of the school the heavens opened Badly. I decided discretion ( especially with carrying my camera, yes the case has a water proof case but there's no point tempting fate) was the better part of valor and took shelter with some of the other mid singles under this odd wooden shelter thing.

Other mid singles kept walking and disappeared into the woods. But then the vast majority were still sheltering in the school! Fortunately the rain quickly disappeared and we were able to catch up with the others.

Now the trail was pretty overgrown but we had been issued with lots of tools. Something which once again helped to sum up the difference between guys and gals. Now the different approach can be best summed up basically as

girl: I will carefully clip that plant, that plant and leave that plant as it's not terribly overgrown and isn't a weed or a pest

Guy: I have sharp tool and I can cut things, r'aahhhh!!!

Okay so slightly over emphasised but you get the idea.

They say sometimes if you go down to the woods that you were get a big surprise. Well anyone going into those woods would have been really surprised as most mid singles had switched to using there ponchos which had come in variety of colours such as bright blue, bright yellow and pink! Which did lead to some interesting photos.

Now with so many mid-singles the existing trail was quickly cleared. Which lead us to a problem as it suddenly came to a end, which lead to some confusion as we weren't sure if it was meant to keep going or if it had really ended! With no leaders, and people sent to ask failing to reappear ( cue lots of jokes about Charlie.... don't know what I'm talking about then look it up :-)

But after a little while with so many guys standing around with tools and nothing to do it was almost inevitable that the hacking quickly started again. Which fortunately turned out okay as it really was part of the trail. Although with all of the clearing stuff being chucked back further into the wood we were wondering if this was part of some secret plan to create a self sustaining service project.

Of course the easing of the work meant that we had some chances for impromptu socialising, which was a little bit strange talking to people in a wood wearing multi-coloured pieces of plastic.

Now it was about at this time I happened to check my phone and found that of course with my battery being so low I had actually received a barrage of calls from a friend. Now as to the reason well I won't go into that but suffice to say a damsel in distress was in need of a listening ear. But the start of the conversation proved to be another one of the highly amusing points of the weekend, as it went some like this

Me: I can't talk long as my battery is dying and I'm in a wood

Damsel: In a wood? Are you taking Owen for a walk?

Me: No

Damsel: Where is this wood?

Me: Poole

Damsel:... wait what?

Mr Saxon goes to Poole. Friday Night " Only drunk men and Mormons"

So, previously I may have managed I found satnavs a little annoying. However I am now a through convert as without tap dances satnav I would have got thoroughly, thoroughly lost so many times over the weekend.

Although I did have a little minor panic when trying to leave the B&B when the satnav decided to go off on a trip all by itself. Seriously, I’m not kidding. It was showing movement on the screen and giving directions like I was on the isle of Wight. With nothing else to try I decided on the only option I could think of, an in depth technical IT based solution.

I turned it off and on again.

 Seriously I’m not kidding. I turned it off and on again and boom it was working fine.

Well at least until I got to poole at which point it started to get a little confused based on the postcode the organisers had provided leaving me feeling a little nervous.

However whilst going round a roundabout I suddenly noticed what looked like a whole lot of coaches off to one side and critically two open topped coaches. Now why was this critical I hear you ask? Well I knew that for the nights first activity we would be travelling by open topped bus to a themed dance.

I’ll say that again, in one of the wettest summers we had for years we would be travelling by opened topped buses. So fairly safe in the knowledge that it was likely to be the right place as let’s face it the only people going on these buses would either be mormons or really drunk.

Fortunately I was right and it was the right place. So after registering ( and getting really rather nifty wristband inscribed with the theme “Swifter, Higher, Stronger” I climbed onboard one of the buses. Now I’ll admit I was feeling a little nervous at this point and I wasn’t recognising anyone either by sight let alone name. But I didn’t have to worry. It must have only taken 30 seconds from sitting down until I felt a sudden tap on my shoulder and a friendly hand appear  in greeting.

Then suddenly the man, the myth, the legend that is, was and only will ever be ( hope that’s a good enough build up for him) Fraggle was there.  Although in his typical fraggle style it was more like we had only seen each other the week before not the way too long span it had been.

After accounting for MMT ( mormon mean time of course : - ) the buses set out and unfortunately it did start to rain but I had managed to bag a good seat and our bus had a covered bit at the front so I had bagged a seat outside but just in front of the covered bit that meant I got the benefit of the cover but all the benefits of being outside.

Those on the back row were not quite so lucky and were getting a bit wet. But the organisers anticipating these had given out a large number of free plastic ponchos. Easily solved right? Well not quite, have you ever considering the difficulties of getting a plastic cover over your head whilst on a open topped bus whilst travelling along a motorway? Especially with the girls in question up against a “wall” at the end of the bus?

The expression shrink wrapped springs to mind to describe the end result. It must have made a strange sight to anyone passing by, a open topped bus in the rain with lots of brightly coloured plastics ponchos flying about, with gales of laughter but not a bottle of booze in sight.

The dance was fantastic, even if the main food on offer was not especially to my liking. Fortunately there were hot dogs.

Fraggle was a definite help all evening introducing myself to people as it was more his stomping ground than mine but it was one of the best dances I had been too in sometime. In fact I even danced.

Yes, I’m sure long term readers have read that with a double take. He danced??? Saxon DANCED???!!!!

Yes, ole mr “ I danced the way the incredible hulk walks” actually danced. I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or Fraggle.

Also putting in an appearance was Rec, a former student from Leicester stake who had been studying law and own lives far down south. I’ll admit she seemed to be a little surprised to find me there and let’s face it a hour outside of Leicester would usually be a stretch for me, four hours would be certainly unexpected.

When it was time to get back on the bus it was a sense of déjà vu from work as the first thing everybody did was to take out their mobile phones to try and update facebook!  But there was almost universal complaining as the location of the dance in what can be described as the middle of nowhere meant we were not in a area with anything approaching decent mobile phone coverage.

Yes, those areas still exist!

As you can imagine when we were disembarking from the buses back in poole I could see one or two people in the area looking at the laughing, happy, excited group of young people wondering where the booze was!

The trip back to the B&B was a little anti climatic to a rather exciting day but I didn’t mind. So far everything was going  well.

In fact in hindsight it was going fantastically but you know me, sometimes the blindingly obvious takes time to sink in.

Mr Saxon goes to Poole: Friday afternoon " Drive, drive, drive"

I’m sad to say that I am not without experience of driving to places by myself. However this was going to be one of the longest trips I have ever gone by myself. But I decided before I set out that I would wait until I had hit the halfway point before taking a break. Which was a good and sensible plan.

Which unfortunately did not take into account I ended up on what must be the longest road in the world with no decent service stations or any sort of service stations whatsoever. By the time I got off that road I was so close to Poole that I couldn’t be bothered to stop.

The weather was also switching in what can only be described as bands between rain and sun on a regular basis the further down south I went. I just mentally crossed my fingers that there was good weather around poole as I didn’t want to spend all weekend in wet weather gear.

Asides from that the only other issue I had was my CD wallet slipping down the side of the passenger seat which meant I couldn’t change the CD and was left dealing with the evils of commercial radio.

Which was fine at first but by the time you enter hour three and the same song has come on for what seems like the 12^th time it starts to get a little annoying. Even if you’ve now become thoroughly indoctrinated and are singing along with every word. For example, payphone by Maroon five. I was thoroughly familiar with the words before I even hit Oxford!

Now unlike other activities accommodation wasn’t provided for this weekend but after much use of google fu I had managed to find a room in a nice little B& B for only £70 for two nights. But as it was turned out rather than B&B it turned out to be more just B as the conference provided breakfast and anyway I had to leave each morning before breakfast was served anyway much to the confusion/bafflement of the owners.

Anyway, the room as it turned out was a little small and in the very top of the B&B so it was a little bit like the reverse evolution of man walking up the stairs as the roof closed in. Also the ensuite was more of a walk in closet, as in take one step in and the shower is right in front of you, one half step to the right and your at the basin and turn 90% to the right at there’s the toilet.

Still considering the price I wasn’t complaining and I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be spending too much time in there anyway ( which turned out to a stunningly accurate assessment as it turned out).

So, with a little time to kill before the start of activities in the evening I decided to spend it, in the most constructive way I could after such a long drive.

I had a snooze 

Mr Saxon goes to Poole : Prologue

It was raining, but lets face it for most of the summer it’s been raining of course, but then again for most of the summer I hadn’t finished loading my car, (a curiously difficult job as it turned out because when you’re going by yourself anywhere you tend to just keep throwing stuff in as you have the room until you have no more room because lets face it you don’t have to worry about leaving room for anyone else) ready for a long tripe then I had ever attempted before by myself.

A roughly four hour trip to be precise all the way “ dowwwnnn south!” . My goal? The town of poole. The reason? The pool multi-stake Mid singles conference. Why so far?

Well since being shown the door from YSA there hasn’t been much to do churchwise as the single adults program in the stake is nonexistent as far as I’m aware.  So I have gone from going to one activity a week to well basically being going from Sunday to Sunday with no contact from anyone.

So as they say getting out of your comfort zone is good thing I figured that going to the far end of the country ( and I mean that literally) was getting about as far out of my comfort zone as I could get.

Still there was a little voice going “ What are you doing????? Are you really considering going to the far end of the country to a weekend convention where at best you will know one person???”

Still, for once that little voice was very, very quiet  and I took a deep breath started the car and pulled out of the close determined to give it a try because well??? Why the heck not? It would be good to get to know new people, I hadn’t been to any fun activities in a while and I was certain for once I had everything I could possibly need packed into the car to cover all possible eventualities.

As I drove off I’m sure if inanimate objects could laugh my shaving kit still in the bathroom would have been laughing it’s backside off

Greetings! It's been a while

Ok, so I know it's been a while. But I've been busy, what with everything that I've been up to during the last month.

I know I keep saying it, but I will try and do better and I've decided the best way to do that would be to treat you to one of my epics about what I got up to over one long weekend.

But this is no YSA conference oh no. It was my first ever mid-single conference.

It's a little Tale called Mr Saxon goes to Poole.

Enjoy!

What's good for the goose

Fifty shades of grey continues in it's request for global domination ( or at least domination of our office) as at least another three people ( girls unsurprisingly) have started reading it.

It now seems to be rarer to find a girls desk without a copy rather then with one.

Of course some of the guys are now darkly muttering ( in that we're going to moan and whine about it but not really do anything about it at all way) about double standards as they wanted to know if it would be acceptable if they sat there reading a copy of nuts or zoo at their desk as the girls can get away with reading this series of books.

But you can't help but admit the author is rather lucky as she's now earning something like a million pounds a day.

Nice work if you can get it.

Still at least moaning about literature ( wait I shouldn't really say literature as that would mean I'm classifying zoo and nuts as reading material as opposed to the picture books they actually are) keeps are minds of the weather.

It's warm and muggy and it's wet. Because it's raining, a lot. The news have said we're supposed to get about two months worth of rain in the next two days or something stupid like that.

Meanwhile the people who suggested the hose pipe bans earlier in the year are simply sitting back and probably declaring
" Well we got that wrong didn't we?"

Later folks

Shades of grey

One of the girls at work today was talking about the Fifty shades of grey series and about how her local library had no copies left as they were all currently booked out.

She asked if anyone knew of a library that would likely still have a copy.

Everybody thought deeply and I suddenly realised there was a obivous answer.

" Salt Lake City"  I advised her before realising that nobody outside of the church would get probably that joke.

Yes along with what seems like a fair chunk of the rest of the female population a fair number of the girls at work are rapidly becoming obessed with the Fifty Shades of grey series.

Why? Well I guess that would be something you would have to ask someone who has actually read the darn things. Althought the best summing up I heard of the whole series occured when I was in waterstones and I heard a customer ask a staff member what she knew about the books. The staff member's response was as direct as it was helpful.

" It's a series of naughty books that are badly written but everyone is reading for some reason"

Still Ab from my team at work helpfully pointed out that the books could still have their uses even for me, as despite having it for over a month now only one person at church has noticed my new car and even then they asked if Grumpy had decided to upgrade! Her suggestion was to leave a copy of the back window shelf and she was sure that, people would then certainly notice the car without fail.

I pointed out the small flaw in the plan about then having to explain what I was doing with the book to begin with. Her response was to point out she never said it was a perfect plan but at least they would have noticed the car.

Of course one of the guys happened to point that if the series had been aimed at men, he was sure that there would be outcry about how this was degrading to women.

Ab simply replied that yes of course it would have been, but it was aimed at women so "jobs a good un".

anyway,

Later folks

A walk in the countryside

A long way to go

Little and Large

In/out

This is pretty cool

there's a logic there

To celebrate summer "arriving" and as a motivational event work is arranging for a ice cream van to come on site all day tomorrow.

We have to pay for our own ice creams mind you and you have to admire the ice cream man for the hours he has chosen to be on site. He will be there round about the time the first people are due to have their morning breaks and will leave at around the time the last of the afternoon breaks are over.

So this means that technically people could have a ice cream in every break and their lunchtime. Whether the supply of ice cream will hold on mind you is quite another.

Grumpy however suggested with a fair amount of logic that if we get a ice cream man to celebrate summer arriving surely we should get a hotdog man during winter.

Regardless of who will be coming on or off site, it's been a very warm and sticky couple of days. Which of course meaning we're in england means people have switched from moaning about the nasty and miserable weather to moaning about the fact that it's too warm.

C'est la vie I guess.

Later folks

of course if it was the other way around

With my KA going ot the great junkyard in the sky ( or near coventry in this case) I'm found myself having to cope with some of the ever so fun government forms that most of us are forced to use from time to time.

The first form seemed to be very simple as it was part of the car's logbook. You feel in your details on the form, the details of the person you sold the car too and send the form off. four to six weeks later you get back a form confirming your no longer registered owner of the car.

Sound simple right? Well if you don't get the confirmation it gives you precise instructions to follow that are only on the back of the form that you have to send that off.

I'll just say that again in case you missed it. You have to send a form off and if you don't get confirmation they have received the form you have to follow the precise instructions on the back of the form you have sent off.

The second form I have been dealing with is one to get some money back as my tax disc wasn't due to run out for another month.

It also seemed quite easy until it advised me that there would be a 6 week delay before I would get any refund. that's six weeks. Two weeks more then the number of weeks I will get refunded.

Can you imagine if it were the other way round when it comes to buying a tax disc? Hey you're tax disc runs out in August but you know you can give us the money for a new one in about six weeks or so?

But then again I suppose considering the tax department are only seeming to be sorting out the tax year from three years ago nothing should be surprising.

Later folks

The ad's keep getting interupted by a tv program

Grumpy pointed out last night that the ad breaks on tv seem to be getting longer and longer. In one hour program we had five ad breaks alone!

However he also noticed that on one channel each ad break was consisted of on average 12 ad's alone. It used to be ad breaks gave you just enough time to go to the loo before quickly scuttling back to your favourite chair before the program started again.

Now you can go to the loo, get yourself a drink and in some cases fix yourself a sandwich if you so wanted before settling backdown in your favourite chair with time to spare.

We have found that we are keeping to the digital channels these days more and more as seeing as we don't like soaps, some homegrown dramas and are not that really bothered about reality shows or the latest celebrity talent thing ama jig there's not much on.

Of course there are some notable exceptions.

The tv series castle being one of them. Yes the premise behind it, is pretty much totally unbelievable but they seem to get that and never pretend it's anything else then a lot of fun.

CSI however now seems to be the totally other end of the scale as it's now totally unbelievable but they don't seem willing to accept that for a minute and that the series seems to have reached the end of the line.

Come to think of it, it's been a while since we've watched any of the csi's.

never mind,

I'm sure I was doing something more constructive...... I hope.

Later folks

Trying to tell you something

Sometimes you have to wonder if the universe gives you signs. Like you finally find your sunglasses just in time for the sun to disappear for the rest of the year. Or you go out with a umbrella, and thick overcoat to find yourself melting as the sun blazes away all day.

So you have to wonder what the universe was trying to tell the new president of France as not only was he soaked to the skin and ending up looking like a drowned rat during a inauguration cermany his plane was then hit by lightning!

I'm sure you will agree a memorable start for all of the wrong reasons!

It's been a little bit of a strange week at work as I have been doing a run of late shifts. But in our teams case "lates" are quite as late as everybody elses "lates" ( still with me ? :-) There just late enough from our regulat shifts to throw you off just ever so slightly.

Still it could be worse I suppose :-)

We've also started to prepare for the olympics as I think it's safe to say it will prove to be the most interesting time we've experienced since that volcano errupted!

But at least it will keep life interesting.

Later folks!

A old un, but a good/true un

There's a old joke that if you have a rather busy holiday that you say " I need a holiday to get over that holiday".

But after the past four days this week I'm certainly feeling like that right now as it's quite literally been all go.

However the most signficant thing to happen was that I had to say goodbye to a old freind who is now rusting in peace. And no that's not a spelling error.

Yes, my faithful little green KA that has served me faithfully for more then six years has gone to that great junkyard in the sky. Or to be more accurate a junkyard near coventry as it decided it was time to fail it's MOT in dramatic style.

To the surprise of none of the junkyard companies I spoke to ( must be some sort of design flaw I guess) it had corroded underneath to such a extent that to repair it, by welding would have cost far in excess of what the car was worth.

and that was before the problems with the power steering which they found.

But I can't complain really as it was 12 years old even if it didn't look it. Seriously you couldn't see anything wrong with it at all. Which meant it looked a little sad as it disappeared down the road on the back of a truck.

Which confused Owen no end as to why we didn't seem concerned someone had taken my car.

Still at least with Grumpys car free it's not going to prove a massive obstacle getting back and forth to work.

Although when somebody asked if I was planning to buy a new car or use Grumpys car for the foreseeable future, I could honestly answer no and no......

I know what you are thinking? But how will get to work without buying a car and yet say he's not going to be using Grumpys car for the foreseeable future but then say he's using it? What is he up too????

Place your bets now folks :-)

Grumpy and I also spent a large chunk of Friday afternoon attempting to overcome the evil forces of that place that tries to bamboozle and confuse people to the point of insanity.

Yes, that;s right. We were putting together ikea furniture.

With my wardrobe together we just need to get the new light fitted and that should be it.

I'll admit a rather long time after I started but c'est la vie.

Which is rapidly becoming my motto right now.

Later folks!

Question of the day

How do you know if the weather has a sense of humour?

That's easy take the month of April, the month where large swathes of the country were declared to be in drought and hit with hose pipe bans ( although nothing about filling up buckets of water and throwing them around your garden all day long mind you).

This was also the month that was one if the wettest April on record.

Seriously the weather's theme for this week has seemed to be rain, rain and a little bit of rain thrown in for good measure.

Asides from one day when there were bright blue skies and sunshine which was rather confusing.

But at least it's the Bank Holiday weekend now which means one thing and one thing only.

More rain!

Later folks

Maybe people shouldn't give them ideas

Rain, rain, rain and to make a change a little more rain

It's been raining just a little bit.

Actually saying a little bit is like saying water is a little bit wet. Quite literally it has not stopped raining apart from a 5 minute or so period.

Which meant Grumpy and Owen have got very wet today. Twice! Whilst out on his walk. I also got very simply by moving between the car, the minibus and then into the office.

Plus with the wind it's been a very cold, wet and generally all round yucky day.

Which is apparently the technical term for it. Or so I'm told.

Still despite the bad weather the important thing is tomorrow I get to go and see the new Avengers movie. Mind you I'm refusing to call it "avengers assemble". What marketing genius thought of that idea? Because if you know about the avengers you know the significance of "avengers assemble" so you don't need that as a clue to what the film is about and if you don't know about them then the title is going to mean nothing asides from being a bit of a mouthful.

Later folks

Shouldn't you be happy that they are reading a book and leave it at that?

Okay, I've seen an article that not only got me seething but made me wonder about Nemesis's response as this does feel under her purview after all.

Apparently public libraries have had to withdraw a number of long standing childrens books after some parents complained the books were racist, blasphemous, violent or otherwise unsuitable.

So who is on this short list for warping childrens minds?

Roald Dahl was top of the list which for some stories, okay maybe they have a point with some of the stories but others no. Unless Matilda has been accused of encouraging children not to listen to authority figures.

But his books have been joined by the nutcracker and Ali Babba and the 40 thieves as too sinister or frightening for children. I would have thought the Nutcracker would have had complaints about it being confusing rather then Sinister.

And the list goes on. Tintin has been accused of racism and joining him facing this charge is Babar. That's right Babar the elephant. We apparently have racist elephants. Maybe it was a character trait that never came out in the tv cartoon.

The racism charge has apparently coming about as they are both accused of exposing children ethnic stereotypes. Tintin in his trip to the congo and Babar in meeting "savage cannibals". No comments though if it would have been fine for him to meet " perfectly nice and civil cannibals".

Babar is the only elephant to face the racism charge as two elephants, one black, one grey having a dispute were accused of being racist.

But racism wasn't the only issue on the cards. Two monsters in the unsurprisingly named "two monsters" book were accused of using aggressive language unsuitable for young ears ( and eyes obivously)

And this agressive language " Twit" and "dumbo". Which must mean these parents never let their kids watch any soap operas ( imagine the fainting if the parents watched a episode of hollyoaks).

Not even critically lauded books that have been turned into tv shows have escaped complaints as horrible histories which aims to "take the stuffiness out of history" has been accused of celebrating and trivalising violence, while another complaint about it's sister series Horrible Science feared it would encourage children to perform dangerous experiments.

Well as long as they haven't bought little johnny his own particle accelerator it shouldn't be too dangerous.

and depressingly the list keeps going with the Big ugly monster being accused of damaging childrens self esteem and Flabby Cat and Slobby Dog being accused of giving negative messages about Obesity.

So there you have it, Libraries and reading can not win. People complain that kids don't read enough and when they do, we complain about it.

Maybe it we fill the childrens sections with copies of the latest celebrities autobiographies and copies of heat. Everyone will be happy....

well asides from the people mourning the breakdown of western civilisation but no one listens much to them these days anyway.

141 and counting

I was reminded today of a comment Nemesis made when she was over here in the uk ( yes this comes from quite a well ago but you know me and my memory :-) about petrol being more exspensive then certain items on the black market.

Well I was a little shocked to realise that the average price of petrol round geektown has hit the depressing heights of £1.41 !

I can remember when 80 pence seemed liek a lot. Heck I can remember the howls of outrage when it passed the £1 mark and now we're closing in on the £1.50 mark! as the airport petrol station is on £1.44.

anyway,

Later folks

The light at the end of the tunnel

well after what seems like one of the longest and most drawn out decoration jobs in history my room is almost complete.

And sooner then expected too as the guy who is coming to fit the new flooring and curtain rail due to weather putting a lot of his outside jobs on hold is now coming tomorrow. Which had prompted a fair amount of running around like a lunatic as I've tried to get the last few bits in order ready to remove everything from my room ready for the new floor to go in.

So tomorrow morning is going to start with a very early start to get rid of the old bed and chest of drawers, then it's a full day at work before returning home to put together my new bed and new chest of drawers.

Which I fully expect will mean I won't be able to find anything for the new few days but c'est la vie.

And then starts the full task of trying to decided what's going to go back into my room. It's time for another sort through and a trip to the charity shop methinks

Later folks

Ally McBeal High school edition

At the weekend Grumpy and I ( well more Grumpy then me as he was manning the stand most of the day) helped out TapDance by taking some of her pictures to a art and craft fair to see if well we could see them basically.

You could dress it up in all sorts of flowerly language but that's it in a nutshell basically.

Anyway this show was at my old high school. Well kind of.

Basically during the time I went there many years ago they knocked the old school down and put a new one up in it's place and this did this by basically building the new school up on one side of the campus whilst the old one was still up and they then knocked the old one down.

As the meerkat would say "seemples"

Although they left the swimming pool and sports hall where they were, which means the site is now very different but strangely familiar.

So in the new school we use of the new ideas which is supposed to apparently help reduce bullying by having uni sex toilets ala Ally McBeal and it doesn't end there.

The said toilets right on the main corridor and are open plan. So all of the cubicles and wash basin are in plain sight.

Now maybe the "kids" today are comfortable in sharing bathrooms in that way and maybe that's something if they had tried "back in my day" might even have worked. But having a open plan toilet right off the main corridor?

That would be too weird even for me.

Later folks

Well read

Our team manager was recently amused to note after a quick morning walk round to check on the team the rather different selection of reading material that different members of the team had.

In fact she decided that in fact we were probably the best "read" team in the building as she noted that among the reading material we had a magazine on pool, a book of cake making, a guide to giving up smoking, a copy of the telegraph, a magazine on canoeing, a magazine on golf, a magazine on photography ( guess who that one belonged too :-) a copy of the hunger games and a book of mental puzzles.

Which to put into perspective you need to compare the next nearest teams reading material which consisted of one copy of the Sun newspaper, one copy of Heat and one copy of inside soap.

And just in case anyone was wondering the reading material is for Breaks and lunch only, cause we sure as heck don't have time to read it anytime else.

I also had a big surprise last night as I realised I had what can only be described as a masssive "d'oh!" moment as I had it fixed in my head Elder Enginseer was due back in May. Well he wasn't as he is actually now home.

And how did I find this out? How else do you find anything out these days? Facebook!

later folks

The power of physics

Feeling slightly depressed the other day at going from YSA to SA, physics took it upon himself to cheer me up in his only usual unique way by listing what he saw as one of the main benefits of the move up, or as he put it back on my birthday " Becoming super old".

He pointed out that I have technically gone from having three letters as a identifier to only having two. He then proceeded to point out that this obivously meant it was good thing become super old as going from three to two means I have got a free 33% boost in efficiency.

Which set me off into a complete fit of the giggles as he reminded in his own way yet again that church can actually be fun sometimes :-)

Still, it's only a couple of weeks before the new avengers movie is out and boy have I been looking forward to this one. Plus it's directed by Joss whedon so my expectations are really high.

I am also considering to go and watch the movie battleship. There my expectations are nowhere near as high but who knows. It could be fun.

Anyway,

Later folks

Postive proof

Sometimes it's hard to deny that the weather seems to have a sense of humour.

Take today for instance. We've just had a four day bank holiday weekend where the weather could be described at best as "miserable" and what happens this morning when everybody is getting ready to go back to work?

Why what else? Lots and lots of sunshine.

And of course lets not forget the chaos that resulted from a four day closure and the subsquent backlog of requests to deal with.

Ok, Chaos might be too strong a word. Yes it was busy but it was also quite entertaining as well.

Which lets face it was good as it kept me out of trouble.

Later folks

Irony, irony,

Okay, so we've got hose pipe bans over large chunks of the country and it's now a Bank holiday weekend.

So can you guess what the weather has decided to do???

Yeap, it's raining. Not really heavily mind you, or in a fascinating throwing it down it kind of way that makes you glad of the roof over your head.

Nope it's that boring kind fo rain which is best described as a drizzle.

And I've managed to write eight lines so far just describing rain! So, not breaking the whole geek stereotype here am I?

Still, it's the easter weekend which means I get four days rather then the usual two before I have to go back to work.

and who knows I might even manage to do something constructive.

Hosing Around

Well across large swathes of the uk a hose pipe band has come into effect.

If you ignore the irony of the fact we live on a island surrounded by water and yet in certain parts of the country we're critically short of it, it's a laudable idea trying to save water by restricting the use of hose pipes.

Asides from the fact that it only applies to hose pipes, so if you really want to, you could spent all day flinging buckets of water over your garden and nobody could do a thing.

It would be pointless and you'd end up with a flooded garden but hey at least that will "stick it to the man" hey?

Thinking big random thoughts

One question Grumpy posed this week which I couldn't answer

" Why do compact camera's come in multiple colours but DSLR's all come in one colour?"

Any ideas anyone?

Did you know you could make waves in custard?

It's time to duck

s

Cake by Candle Light

And everyone's head rotates 360

Okay, lets be honest. Facebook is a massive time wasting tool. It can sometimes be fun, sometimes education and sometimes informative but if we're all honest the thing it is best at is wasting out time.

However tonight has been one of those times that it has actually been quite informative as for once my usual encyclopedic knowledge of what was on the tv failed and I missed a program on bbc 2 regarding Mitt Romney. Which as you have probably already guessed was not focussing on his political views.

Looking at facebook however a vast majority of people from church did not as they reactions are currently ranging from annoyed to their heads doing full 360 degree exocist twists from their rage.

One of the best responses so far has been written by a former member of our ward and you can see it here;
http://bycommonconsent.com/2012/03/27/dear-bbc/

Now I did try to look at the program on the BBC Iplayer but it's not yet available but I did find a rather amusing step by step commentary on the program where apparently at one point whilst in the MTC in utah the presenter asked a group of missionaries what criticisms they had about the church.

Talk about asking a question you are never going to get a answer too.

Later folks

We know one of them is owen.....

And stop

One Man and his dog

It's not a hot dog, it's a half dog

I can beat you if we're racing this way

Watching the world go by

Old John

Sunbathing. Good enough for Humans, good enough for the Deer

Do you think he saw us? No Ideer

I remember when

Grumpy was watching a repeat of the detective drama Torch of Frost which we found very amusing as one scene featured some characters leaving a petrol station where the petrol cost all of 54.9!

Which is nothing compared to the current price of petrol at the local petrol station which is 135.9 which means we are in the region of £6 per gallon which for my american readers is $9.42 in your money.

Flipping that the average us price per gallon is £2.47.

Which is why you live in the USA you will get very little sympathy from English people about your petrol almost reaching $4 per gallon.

Later folks

A long way to go

Bubble and Strife

Feeling blue!

What do you see?

Going round the bend

Leaping

Twisting twister

Hot and cold

Colds and I don't get along.

That's mainly because when I get a cold I tend to be stereotypically male and act like it's full blown man flu and that I'm dying, etc, etc.

Which is why I was glad to get rid of my last cold. What I was not glad of was managing to get another even worse one just over a week later!

So back to acting like it's the end of the world, generally mopping around feeling very sorry for myself and copious amounts of lemsips and hope that this cold goes bye, bye very quickly.

Although I am not the only one under the weather at the moment as no less then three of my team are off ill with ailments ranging from man flu ( yes it's sad and pitiful how badly that condition takes down men I know :-) to a broken rib!

So we ae slightly short handed but at least it keeps life interesting.

Later folks!

Dream on

Sometimes at work our conversations can take a somewhat bizare turn as well, sometimes after spending most of the working day with the same people 5 days out of 7 you can run out of sensible conversations.

Well today the conversation turned to dreams and it was going quite well until one guy admitted that he had a dream featuring one of the girls from the team.

Which lead to a awkward pause where everybody was wondering where he was going with this. I'm sure the manager was hoping that it wasn't going straight to HR.

Anyway he proceeded to explain that he had a dream where he was in a shop and this girl ( who is a great sportsman and outsdoor man. She can usually be found paddling up or down some river or another but I digress.) was trying to sell him a wetsuit with matching gloves and boots promising that they would keep him dry.

There was another awkward pause. What would the girl say to this? Would she think the lad was crazy? Would she be weirded out? Would she be straight on the phone to HR?

Well as it turned out she was annoyed............

Because in her words "she would never get it wrong that a wetsuit keeps you dry because it doesn't, that's what a drysuit is for" and then told him if he was going to dream about her selling stuff to him, he needed to make sure he got it right.

which left the rest of else equally amused and baffled.

later folks

bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Drop, drop

Drip, drip

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

Ganging up

A long way up

Flowers in springtime

Down at the bottom of the garden

It's almost spring so that means.....

Well I am throughly exhausted today as I have spent most of the day decorating.

Yes the long delayed project of decorating my room is gathering pace as I have not only not painted the ceiling, but also painted all of the walls as well.

And if that wasn't enough we are also in the process of redecorating the office into a new art/hobby room.

That lead in turn to Grumpy and Tap Dance spending most of the afternoon cleaning out the garage.

Hopefully one more weekend will lead to the painting being all finished and I can get the new flooring done.

And once that is done it will be time for a complete overhaul of all of the furnishings as well. New bed, wardrobe, dresser, the works.

2012 is looking better already.

Later folks

Just in case you have a little bit of spare change hanging around

Well after being quiet for sometime it's appears the scientists of we've got nothing better to do university rather than doing something useful have actually been encouraging the enconomists at the university to also set their minds to things which are really not much use of all.

For example wonder how much the annual fees at Hogwarts would cost you? Well wonder no more as it apparently it would cost you £26,816.

Quite how they arrived at that figure, they don't explain. Or explain why they came to this conclusion in GBP rather than galleons.

Also are you struggling to keep a pesky rebellion under control whilst ruling you galactic empire in a galaxy, far, far away? Well you need a death star! And what would one of this megalithic orbital weapons set you back? Why all of the iron in the earths core plus a mere £543,511,248,000,000,060 in spare change.

Best start saving then :-)

Later folks

Please stop talking

From my new desk ( my 9th by my reckoning in just over two years we don't half move around a lot at work :-) at work I've been finding that I've been learning a awful lot about some of my other team mates that I didn't know before.

For example one of the girls has a surprising fascination with history which I didn't know about before. Even if some of her queries would make a history teacher shudder. For example one line she came out with today was
" Did Henry 8th get so married so many times because he liked the ladies?"

Another one of the guys seems to have developed the severe ability of not only sticking his foot in his mouth, but getting both feet in there and ramming them down his throat.

Even worst then I can do sometimes and that's saying something.

But it's more interesting that I seem to be learning so much as I have been in this team almost a year after all.

It just goes to show, you never know quite as much about the people you work with as you think you do.

Later folks

Excuses, excuses, and more excuses

Okay, so hands up for confusion time once again. I have had a little bit of a unexpected sabbatical when it comes to blog posting but I do have a good reason.

Basically I have been working on my new photography portfolio website and so this has been absorbing a surprising amount of my time which meant unfortunatly something had to give and in this case it was blogging.

So sorry about that :-)

Fortunatly the website is nearing it's official launch, which means I will have a lot more time for blogging and things as a website is always a lot more work when you first start then when it's up and running.

Or at least that's one I'm hoping.

Later folks

Footprints in the snow

Charge!!!!

A wintery sunset

I'm sure that was a pond here somewhere

It's still confusing for little dogs

Owen likes to talk on the telephone.

And by talk, I mean when Tap Dance rings up he always drops whatever he is doing and runs over to whoever has the phone and sets there giving the old puppy dog eyes until the phone his held to his ear and he can "chat" with her.

Of course this does mean when we get phone calls from other people Owen still rushes over wanting to talk. Which is tempting especially when we get calls from telemarketers ( that would confuse them).

It also got very confusing the other night when Tap Dance was here and someone called for her. We passed the phone to her Owen immediately rushed over wanting to talk and that suddenly backed off looking at her rather confused obivously trying to figure out if Tap Dance was here who was on the phone?

anyway,

Later folks

Cold, cold, cold and yes more cold

Well winter is certainly here, somewhat late really as lets face it we are in February already!

Wait how did that happen? We're in February where did January go?

Anyway, it's been cold today. Very cold as a matter of fact, that it took the car nearly ten minutes to warm up on the journey home before my teeth actually managed to stop chattering, and I was still wearing my suit jacket.

And lets not forget according to the weathermen it's actually supposed to get even colder overnight.

So heating on all night me thinks, otherwise theres no way whatsoever that I'm going to be able to drag myself out of bed in the morning.

anyway,

Later folks

Probably too true

I was reminded of a theory that was put forward at church once for why so many church members seem to be addicted to chocolate.

in one word it's down to stress.

The theory went that as Church members we don't have most of the other ways of the world as it were to relieve stress. We don't smoke, we don't go out for a beer at the end of the day, we don't have tea or coffee and a lot of people don't drink coke.

So what does that leave us?

Yes, chocolate...

That's assuming your not one of the people who don't go by the reason that we don't drink tea or coffee because of the caffene, then I guess your really left with nothing and need to go and invest in a stress ball :-)

Later folks

Not your usual formation flypast

In and out

Grumpy and I noticed when we were out and about today what seems to be the latest "in thing" among ( and I hesitate to use the term as it will make me seem really old) the youth hanging around town in groups.

And what is this latest in thing? The latest must have that all youths must get to be in with the in crowd? Hoodies? Hat's? Leather jackets? Nope, nope and nope again.

No, the latest in thing seems to scooters. And in case you were wondering, I don't mean the motorised kind that you see a lot in italy. No I mean the kind you ride on with one foot, holding the handles and pushing along with your other foot.

Which looks a little stupid if I'm honest as there's just something you loose in the terms of coolness using a scooter say compared to using something like a skateboard or even a bike.

But then again I suppose when I was that age, the "in things" probably looked just as stupid.

What we really found amusing was after seeing a large gang of kids riding around on their scooters in the car park of the supermarket, on our way out we saw a family with a little girl with her own scooter which was bright pink with yellow sunflowers on. I could just imagine the "cool kids" faces as the little girl rode past.

anyway,

Later folks

It's only time

Thanks to a rather major accident on the nearby motorway which shut it, a rather large traffic jam built up alongside the aiport rather quickly with traffic queuing both ways the full length of the airport and then some.

And as I'm sure you'll know airports are big places so, that was a heck of a lot of cars. Of course the only thing that made this huge traffic jam even more entertaining was that it occured at the end of the day at the height of rush hour!

Fortunatly for me, I was only stuck in traffic for twenty minutes before I could get to place where I could cut across country and get back to geektown, which although annoying wasn't the end of world.

Some other members of my team weren't so lucky and it took them nearly two hours to get home!

See another great example of why facebook is useful as without it, I wouldn't have know that until Monday. Wait that's not useful................ :-)

In fact come to think of it, I wonder what would have happened if facebook rather then wilkipedia had gone dark for one day. Would western civilisation had been able to survive? How would we have know if our friends had liked their lunch ? Or had been woken up early? Think of the fake non existant cakes and the electronic fake farmers crops that would have gone unharvested!

anyway,

Later folks

Forget the Monkey it's now a evil Bunny

One of the girls at work likes to decorate her desk and some of the others as well using stuffed toys. She has recently added a new toy to one of the bank of desks, which was a stuffed rabbit.

So far, so good, so cute, etc, etc.

But well the cute bunny has started taking on a rather creepy aspect, as throughout the day one of the ears started to bend over, the head started to tilt to one side, we noticed that due to the fur one of the eyes seemed bigger then the other and slowly but surely one of the arms started to raise as if it were pointing, ala evil monkey from Family guy.

At first it was funny, but it slowly started to get even very creepy, especially when you felt it was actually looking at you. Which meant the bunny spent all day being turned round and round on the spot.

It actually ended the day sitting in one of the empty desks with a headset on looking at a computer screeb, I'm no sure who put it there mind you.

At least I hope somebody put it there otherwise it's just got even more creepy.

Later folks

Time, time and more time

Well with the broadband back up to full capacity we have discovered a small downside to now having such fast connection speeds.

We can now play the games on facebook.

And play them we have been.

Which has been tremendous fun but has been best summed up by Grumpy as being a tremendous waste of time.... just before he spent a hour playing a game introduced to him by Tap Dance mind you.

I've found some of the news coverage about Mitt romney tremdously amusing at the moment, as you can tell that most people are trying to stay away from making points about the church with such obivous effort that it's blindinly obivous thats what their doing. And even when they have mentioned the church it's been very funny as they've usually tried to make huge stories out of nothing. For example one news story mentioned that he had given millions to church. Well my immediate thought was, hmm successful multi-millionaire businessman so that would be tithing wouldn't it? And of course with the publication of his tax records thats obivously what it was but do you think they made a news story of that. Ohhh no..... course not.

anyway,

Later folks

Lets hope it does not come in threes

okay so 2012 might not be proving to be the most awe inspiring, luck filled year ever so far at least it's going better for me then some others.

Long term readers might remeber me mentioning a few days ago that one of my friends at work had a unforunate experience of the dangers of taking the short cut from the 1st floor to the ground floor of her house. Well her luck isn't improving as she had a rather unfortunate encounter at work when she returned after recovering from her last fall, with a bunch of wiring.

Which has started a debate as to whether or not she might be urgent need of a stunt double, because if she proves the old adage that things come in threes, she might not survive a 3rd "fall".

And said discussion also proved that working in customer service can lead to you having a very dark and twisted sense of humour :-)

later folks

Bowing to the inevitable

Well after trying to get the internet connect working again upstairs and failing totally, we've now had to accept the inevitable and move the computer downstairs and set it up in a corner of the living room

So we've now got our full broadband capacity back, but it's going to make things a bit interested when somebody wants to use the TV and someone else wants to use the computer at the same time.

But as always c'est la vie :-)

And lets not forget Owen who is now totally confused and wondering why not only is the computer downstairs but why it's on a table this time and not on the floor like last time.

With the moving of the computer it looks like the office is going to be turned into a hobby room, which should be a rather interesting idea.

If we can decide what's going to be in there mind you. We've moved plenty of stuff out already included the old filing cabinet ( which was almost as big as me) which is now waiting on the front lawn to be collected by soem scrap metal merchants and is no doubt confusing the neighbours.

Well it shouldn't be anymore confusing mind you then when we had a toilet out there.

Anyway,

Later folks