Archive for November, 2007
We have come to the conclusion that we will never be able to afford a bigger house, ever. In light of this we have made the decision to spend as much as we can afford on doing up the current family abode. The waiting has gone on too long. The tiles have been smashed from the walls and the wallpaper removed from the kitchen. That makes it official.
In fact, much of the plaster that was being held in place by the wallpaper has been removed too, so there ends all plans for our naive budget to control the madness.
Our plans are to do up the kitchen with new worktops and cupboard doors, replace the bathroom, put up a new fence and tidy up the garden and basically replace our bedroom with another one. The current bedroom has a kitchen worktop in it which the original owners somewhat bafflingly decided would be a good idea. It isn’t. It’s one of those things that you look at when you buy the house and think ‘Yeah, we could just get rid of that’, and then you don’t.
I’m mostly looking forward to the garden changes, though that will need to wait for warmer weather so that the grass isn’t frozen solid. The plans include a fence to keep the dog in. At the moment you need to go with him while he pees so that he doesn’t jump over the crappy old fence and run away to scare children and shag lady dogs. Then he comes back at 4am and cries on the doorstep. It’s just not responsible dog owning, and frankly a pain in the arse.
November 28th, 2007
This is a post for the purposes of testing poster, as written by the industrious Alex.
November 24th, 2007
Last night my two-year old son was fully indoctrinated into the spirit of Christmas consumerism.
There was a Christmas market at the local primary school, complete with Santa’s grotto for which we patiently queued for a surprisingly long time indeed. He learned Santa’s name straight off the bat, pointing at him, smiling and saying “Santa!” a lot. This was a huge improvement on last year’s tears.
Santa then gave him a selection box and the bond was formed. The kind of unbreakable childhood bond that can only be forged with lots of free shit, delivered on a predictable schedule.
His first words when he woke up this morning were “Santa Chockit” (Which is “Santa Chocolate” in his dialect of elvish).
Santa himself seemed particularly on the ball by knowing his name and street without having to ask. He even inquired about how we were doing and proceeded to strike up a conversation with us. It was a bit embarrassing since Santa’s white beard and wig managed to cover his entire face, even his nose. Neither of us had the faintest idea about who he was, yet he clearly knew us. Sorry Santa.
November 23rd, 2007
Ever have one of those days when you have one thing to do but end up dealing with a hundred unexpected ones instead? That’s the day I’m having now. Nearly over, but I can now start on what I was going to do this morning.
And randomly, weewar looks good.
November 21st, 2007
There’s only one thing worse than having a cold, and that’s being surrounded by other people who have colds. You can try to avoid it, but sooner or later you just know that the germs are going to get you.
Right now there’s only one person in my office sensible enough to have stayed at home. Two people in close proximity are looking miserable and periodically coughing or blowing their noses. If I need to go to the toilet, my only route takes me straight though a patch of air with a high probability of being a cloud of germs.
Blokes tend to get a bad rep when it comes to being ill. ‘Man flu’ they call it. A woman carries on regardless while a man is completely incapacitated by the sniffles - that’s the stereotype. I don’t think I fit that description though. If I have a cold I don’t really complain much more than the missus does. What I am bad for though, is a complete lack of sympathy. For the past few days I have lived my life in a different room to her as much as it’s physically possible to do so. I want clean air. I do not want a cold.
In retaliation, she taunts me with her germs by telling me she sneezed whilst making one of the two cups of tea, and can’t remember which one she was making at the time. She hides snot-laden tissues under cushions. For fucks sake.
Last night I went to bed much later than her meaning that she was asleep when I got there. She had managed to sprawl immovably acroll the whole matress meaning that it was impossible for me to sleep in a physically separate area of the bed. She was even breathing on my pillow.
Today, I hope to buy some vitamin C. The big 1000mg tablets you get in the long tube that look like they’re meant for horses.
I will not catch this cold.
I will NOT catch this cold.
November 20th, 2007
The missus has been getting into mystery shopping. Generally you go into a shop to try on some clothes, ask for a different size and then return the clothes a little later. For that, you collect about a tenner and get to feel like a secret agent.
Yesterday though was a good one. She had to drop into a show-home on a new housing development and pretend to be in the market for a £430,000 house. So we all went and pretended to be rich folk. I wanted to wear an Asda uniform with a ‘part time’ badge just for a laugh but I didn’t have one so our little lad was buttoned into a shirt and wooly tank-top and ordered not to dribble down it. Gotta look the part.
First we saw the £425k show-home and I have to be honest I wasn’t very impressed. For 425 I was expecting to see a marble fountain in the hallway but instead there was a large number of disappointingly small looking rooms. So we expressed our disappointment through the medium of our acting talent. Also known as lying for money.
This allowed the nice lady to convince us to take a look at the £450,000 one along the street. I gotta say - I want that house. For an extra 25, you get a whole lotta extra home. Oh, how the other half live.
The problem with all this though is that by the end of it we’d actually convinced ourselves that we were going to buy the thing. Never mind that the mortgage payments would eclipse my monthly wages before you’d even mentioned council tax. We were in the car planning what to do with the top floor and where the TV should go. It was only when we got back home to our own little castle that we fully realised that it was just pretend and that we were probably going to have to cancel the second visit that we probably shouldn’t have arranged with the nice lady, who we now felt sorry for (She was excited by our enthusiasm to buy).
Oh well. At least we get to decide what to spend our tenner on.
November 19th, 2007
So the missus decided to buy a pair of pedometers, one for each of us. This is good because I’m incredibly unhealthy. It’s also good because we’re quite competitive which means we now compete for dog-walking rights instead of trying to avoid it.
Anything that stops me being a lazy bugger has to be a good thing.
The pedometer itself is quite a neat wee thing. It seems surprisingly cheat-resistant. You can shake it all you like and it just kinda knows that you’re cheating. Walk around though and it becomes spookily accurate, and proclaims me half as fit as I should be at the end of each day.
Well, I say ’spookily accurate’ but it does tend to miss some things. For example it doesn’t tell
if I’m carrying shopping, or have a two-year-old child sitting on my shoulders, upping my calorie count.
Another thing it can’t tell is that I’ve just got out of bed, or am on my way to bed because it’s not attached to me at that point. That’s a good 30 steps going unrecorded right there. In fact, I left the heating on last night and got up again to put it off - that’s easily 100 unrecorded steps reflecting badly on my health.
And then there are the calories used by exercise such as breathing and pumping blood about with your heart. Or eating chips.
Ha. Stupid pedometer. I am the fittest.
November 13th, 2007
I’ve lost track of the number of times this blog has been restarted. It’s very old anyway. I have an enormous SQL dump of the oldest posts and a blogger account with some more.
One day, perhaps I’ll integrate them into this new version.
Anyway - new hosting, new blogging software, ah let’s just call it a new blog, eh?
November 13th, 2007
