Isn’t it funny how a couple of sunny days can raise the spirits. After the last dismal few weeks I’ve been fairly flying out of the bed in the mornings. Its so much easier waking up to sunshine and blue skies than the pattering of rain on the windows
Having said that I’ve not been sleeping too well lately, although that’s not entirely down to me. Firstly my flatmate has been away on holiday, so I think I’m more conscious of noises in the night. Floorboards that creak or the sound of the neighbours shutting their bedroom doors disturbs me.
The second cause of my disturbed sleep is down to CJ, my latest foster cat. Now he’s always craved a bit of attention and wants picking up or fussing at every opportunity, but in the past few nights CJ had taken to getting under the quilt with me. Now I don’t have any problems with him sleeping on the bed as he’s spotlessly clean, but I wasn’t too sure about him getting under the quilt – more for the fact that I could lay on him in the night or he could possibly have trouble breathing under there.
It started off on Friday night when he woke me up by laying across my neck – now I’ve always been wary of cats doing that, ever since I saw the Stephen King film where the cat creeps up and tries to suck that sleeping kids breath away. So I moved him off and he sort of stuck his head under the duvet cautiously getting further underneath – he stayed there for a good couple of hours before waking me up when he got out
So that’s been the routine since, he follows me up to bed, walks around the edge of the bed a couple of times before vanishing under the covers for the night.
I’ll have to tell Paul the lodger that I’ve had a hot pussy in my bed for the past few nights – he’d never believe me ;O)
31 July 2007
30 July 2007
too many cooks
Well here we are again – is it really a week since I started keeping this thing – time flies :O)
I had quite a good weekend, I bought the decking for my garden path (hopefully this is the end of the spending now), assembled my raised bed made out of the railway sleepers, did loads of stuff around the house, went out to Cambridge and baked a cake!
On the downside, my oven which is coming up to four months old decided to throw a wobbly and started cutting out without warning. The first time it happened on Saturday afternoon, I just thought there had been a power surge because the display panel was flashing.
Last night I had whipped all the cake mix together and had the oven on to pre heat – just as it was coming up to temperature the oven died again. Thankfully I did manage to get it back on again for long enough to bake the cake, but when I later tried cooking my chicken for today’s lunch it took 3 attempts and almost an hour to cook. As you can guess the end result is a little like chewing on a lump of biltong rather than ‘succulent chicken breast in a crispy crumb coating’.
Talking of cooking I noticed in Sainsbury’s at the weekend a range of stuff called ‘2 minute meals’ – basically it’s a whole meal in a plastic sachet that you zap and then eat – I know its probably riddled with additives and e numbers but I was sorely tempted to try it – if only it had been on BOGOF
BOGOF = Buy one get one free
I had quite a good weekend, I bought the decking for my garden path (hopefully this is the end of the spending now), assembled my raised bed made out of the railway sleepers, did loads of stuff around the house, went out to Cambridge and baked a cake!
On the downside, my oven which is coming up to four months old decided to throw a wobbly and started cutting out without warning. The first time it happened on Saturday afternoon, I just thought there had been a power surge because the display panel was flashing.
Last night I had whipped all the cake mix together and had the oven on to pre heat – just as it was coming up to temperature the oven died again. Thankfully I did manage to get it back on again for long enough to bake the cake, but when I later tried cooking my chicken for today’s lunch it took 3 attempts and almost an hour to cook. As you can guess the end result is a little like chewing on a lump of biltong rather than ‘succulent chicken breast in a crispy crumb coating’.
Talking of cooking I noticed in Sainsbury’s at the weekend a range of stuff called ‘2 minute meals’ – basically it’s a whole meal in a plastic sachet that you zap and then eat – I know its probably riddled with additives and e numbers but I was sorely tempted to try it – if only it had been on BOGOF
BOGOF = Buy one get one free
27 July 2007
Car trouble
The battery in my car’s bleeper died yesterday morning – not good.
I drive a Renault Megane (the ‘Shaking dat ass’ one) and you can only open the doors by having this key card thing on you. Now I’ve known for a few weeks that the battery was on its way out, but being too smart to buy a new one, I figured that if I kept removing the battery and huffing on it, I could get at least another couple of months out of it :o(
Unfortunately this time it gave up the ghost totally, I stood there like some common car thief, rattling the handle in the hope I could get in, but it was having none of it. Then I remembered that there is an ‘emergency’ key thing that you can push into a hole in the lock and it should open the doors – that didn’t work either.
Then it started to rain, and I was faced with the choice of
walk back home and see if I can find a battery that will fit or
find somewhere to shelter
I went for the shelter option and spent two minutes huddled under some bush that was alive with spiders, waiting for the shower to pass. Unfortunately with the wind blowing quite strongly the bush didn’t provide much cover and I ended up getting quite wet.
So now I’m damp, running late for work and have the possiblilty of spiders laying eggs in my ears - brilliant.
I reach for the handle for one more try and ‘ker-ching’ it opens
Didn't you just know that was going to happen
I drive a Renault Megane (the ‘Shaking dat ass’ one) and you can only open the doors by having this key card thing on you. Now I’ve known for a few weeks that the battery was on its way out, but being too smart to buy a new one, I figured that if I kept removing the battery and huffing on it, I could get at least another couple of months out of it :o(
Unfortunately this time it gave up the ghost totally, I stood there like some common car thief, rattling the handle in the hope I could get in, but it was having none of it. Then I remembered that there is an ‘emergency’ key thing that you can push into a hole in the lock and it should open the doors – that didn’t work either.
Then it started to rain, and I was faced with the choice of
walk back home and see if I can find a battery that will fit or
find somewhere to shelter
I went for the shelter option and spent two minutes huddled under some bush that was alive with spiders, waiting for the shower to pass. Unfortunately with the wind blowing quite strongly the bush didn’t provide much cover and I ended up getting quite wet.
So now I’m damp, running late for work and have the possiblilty of spiders laying eggs in my ears - brilliant.
I reach for the handle for one more try and ‘ker-ching’ it opens
Didn't you just know that was going to happen
26 July 2007
Think pink
I had an email from one of my mates, part of our daily ritual of around 30 messages back and forth between nine and five :O)
Now B, as we shall call him, is quite well versed in IT – he does loads of clever things with websites and programming, if he recommends something it’s usually a good choice. So anyway, he’s contracting at the minute but his job is coming to an end so he has to return the nice laptop that they had lent him.
The bones of his email were that he has to give the laptop back and he’s been looking at this new one that he really would love to get – he’d added a link at the bottom for me to take a look.
So where does B go for advice, ‘Computer Buyer’, ‘IT World’, some other nerdy tech magazine with pictures of circuit boards in suggestive poses – no. The link was to ‘Shiny Shiny TV – A girls guide to gadgets’ – I kid you not
http://www.shinyshiny.tv/2007/05/toshiba_g40_a_s.html
and then he has the cheek to say that it was the first link that came up on a Google search – yeah right !
Now B, as we shall call him, is quite well versed in IT – he does loads of clever things with websites and programming, if he recommends something it’s usually a good choice. So anyway, he’s contracting at the minute but his job is coming to an end so he has to return the nice laptop that they had lent him.
The bones of his email were that he has to give the laptop back and he’s been looking at this new one that he really would love to get – he’d added a link at the bottom for me to take a look.
So where does B go for advice, ‘Computer Buyer’, ‘IT World’, some other nerdy tech magazine with pictures of circuit boards in suggestive poses – no. The link was to ‘Shiny Shiny TV – A girls guide to gadgets’ – I kid you not
http://www.shinyshiny.tv/2007/05/toshiba_g40_a_s.html
and then he has the cheek to say that it was the first link that came up on a Google search – yeah right !
25 July 2007
Well at last - Part two
Way back in 1984 I bought a book ‘The secret diary of Adrian Mole aged 13¾’ It was the ‘Harry Potter’ of its day and simply one of those books that you had to have. I bought my hardback copy for the princely sum of £5.50 and put it on my bookshelf to read whilst I was on holiday.
The holidays came and went and it stayed on the shelf – a year or so later it went into the top of the wardrobe when I decorated the bedroom and it didn’t get touched again until I moved house in 1998. It was safely packed in a box, transported from South Harrow to Watford and promptly placed in the top of another wardrobe.
In March this year I decided to rent out my front bedroom and as a consequence, had to clear out all the boxes that had been in the top of the wardrobe untouched since the day I moved in.
Its amazing all the stuff that I’d crammed into those boxes – old birthday, Christmas and Valentine cards - ok, not so many of those :o(, editions of newspapers from when we went to war over the Falklands, old C90 cassettes of the chart show illegally taped from Radio 1 on a Sunday afternoon, a bag full of sugar sachets (strange), a 28 year past its sell by date sachet of drinking chocolate (stranger still) and loads of other stuff too personal or embarrassing to list here.
Needless to say that whilst I was going through the boxes, I found my copy of Adrian Mole, still in the original W.H.Smith bag with the receipt in the front – only the yellowing of the pages a clue as to how long it had been hidden in the box.
So today, twenty three years, two months and eleven days after buying it, I finally finished reading The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole – now quite a lot older than thirteen and three quarters!
And I never did watch the series on the telly, so I didn’t know the ending – not that it really had an ending anyway. The actor who played Adrian Mole is now a nurse working somewhere in Leicestershire apparently – so much for his 15 minutes of fame!
Quick update on the railway sleepers – I took advantage of the sunshine last night and managed to treat two and a half of the six foot ones before running out of preservative. The small ones are nearly dry (as long as you don’t rub them too hard) – I did check on the Cuprinol site and they said it can dry in up to 7 days depending on weather conditions, typical!
And my special fixing bolts are waiting for me at City Link in Hemel Hempstead so I’ve got to head up there this evening to collect them – rush hour on the M1, oh joy!
The holidays came and went and it stayed on the shelf – a year or so later it went into the top of the wardrobe when I decorated the bedroom and it didn’t get touched again until I moved house in 1998. It was safely packed in a box, transported from South Harrow to Watford and promptly placed in the top of another wardrobe.
In March this year I decided to rent out my front bedroom and as a consequence, had to clear out all the boxes that had been in the top of the wardrobe untouched since the day I moved in.
Its amazing all the stuff that I’d crammed into those boxes – old birthday, Christmas and Valentine cards - ok, not so many of those :o(, editions of newspapers from when we went to war over the Falklands, old C90 cassettes of the chart show illegally taped from Radio 1 on a Sunday afternoon, a bag full of sugar sachets (strange), a 28 year past its sell by date sachet of drinking chocolate (stranger still) and loads of other stuff too personal or embarrassing to list here.
Needless to say that whilst I was going through the boxes, I found my copy of Adrian Mole, still in the original W.H.Smith bag with the receipt in the front – only the yellowing of the pages a clue as to how long it had been hidden in the box.
So today, twenty three years, two months and eleven days after buying it, I finally finished reading The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole – now quite a lot older than thirteen and three quarters!
And I never did watch the series on the telly, so I didn’t know the ending – not that it really had an ending anyway. The actor who played Adrian Mole is now a nurse working somewhere in Leicestershire apparently – so much for his 15 minutes of fame!
Quick update on the railway sleepers – I took advantage of the sunshine last night and managed to treat two and a half of the six foot ones before running out of preservative. The small ones are nearly dry (as long as you don’t rub them too hard) – I did check on the Cuprinol site and they said it can dry in up to 7 days depending on weather conditions, typical!
And my special fixing bolts are waiting for me at City Link in Hemel Hempstead so I’ve got to head up there this evening to collect them – rush hour on the M1, oh joy!
24 July 2007
Well at last - Part one
Finally, after nearly 8 weeks of waiting, that rancid witch Charley should get her comeuppance on Friday night and be thrown out of the Big Brother house – hurrah.
Now normally I’m quite a placid and tolerant person but that girl would try the patience of a saint – how on earth the other people in the house managed to put up with her for so long is beyond me. So yes, on Friday night her fifteen minutes of fame will be over and we can forget all about her and her evil mouth – unless of course Big Brother producers decide that the ratings will take too much of a hit if she goes, and they rig it so that she can stay in there – you have been warned !
I think there’s something wrong with glorifying behaviour like hers – sure it gets Channel 4 high ratings figures but would you really want to live next door to her. If this was real life you’d have the police around every five minutes and she’d either be tagged or slapped with an ASBO.
This is the first year that I’ve made a point of not watching the show, apart from on Fridays in the vain hope that the housemates with hear the chorus of ‘Get Charley Out’ and act on it. Ok people have said that she’s a ‘character’ and creates a bit of interest – rubbish, shes a very clever bully who should have gone a month ago but again, because it suited the producers, certain votes got discounted and she stayed in there.
On a lighter note, at least its tried to be sunny today – I’m counting at least 9 hours of sunshine so far and its still only the afternoon :O) It’s good news for those people who were threatened by flooding too, not so good if your three piece suite is floating around your lounge on a lake of sewage though.
And I never thought I’d say it but I think that Gordon Brown has come across as being genuinely concerned for the peoples plight – I’d rather give birth than vote Labour, but he seems to be very genuine and nothing he does or says looks ‘stage managed’ – unlike the days of phoney Tony.
Now normally I’m quite a placid and tolerant person but that girl would try the patience of a saint – how on earth the other people in the house managed to put up with her for so long is beyond me. So yes, on Friday night her fifteen minutes of fame will be over and we can forget all about her and her evil mouth – unless of course Big Brother producers decide that the ratings will take too much of a hit if she goes, and they rig it so that she can stay in there – you have been warned !
I think there’s something wrong with glorifying behaviour like hers – sure it gets Channel 4 high ratings figures but would you really want to live next door to her. If this was real life you’d have the police around every five minutes and she’d either be tagged or slapped with an ASBO.
This is the first year that I’ve made a point of not watching the show, apart from on Fridays in the vain hope that the housemates with hear the chorus of ‘Get Charley Out’ and act on it. Ok people have said that she’s a ‘character’ and creates a bit of interest – rubbish, shes a very clever bully who should have gone a month ago but again, because it suited the producers, certain votes got discounted and she stayed in there.
On a lighter note, at least its tried to be sunny today – I’m counting at least 9 hours of sunshine so far and its still only the afternoon :O) It’s good news for those people who were threatened by flooding too, not so good if your three piece suite is floating around your lounge on a lake of sewage though.
And I never thought I’d say it but I think that Gordon Brown has come across as being genuinely concerned for the peoples plight – I’d rather give birth than vote Labour, but he seems to be very genuine and nothing he does or says looks ‘stage managed’ – unlike the days of phoney Tony.
23 July 2007
Monday blues
Monday already - where do the weekends go to ?
Still all in all it wasn't a bad weekend - I managed to get a fair amount of work done in the garden which is my ongoing project. I went to Ayletts in St Albans to buy some railway sleepers with which I'm hoping to build a raised flower bed next to my new patio. I opted to buy new ones rather than reclaimed sleepers basically because old ones start leaking tar all over the place when they get warm and you don't want that on your clothes !
I did two trips to the garden centre (not wishing to risk damaging the suspension by putting too many in there - I've given Renault far too much of my cash so far this year !) , after that I went to B&Q to get some timber preserver to treat the joins where I'm having to cut the ends.
Now I'm sure that the stuff that I bought is very good, but unfortunately it flicks off the brush like nobodys business - it seemed no matter how careful I was to make sure that I didn't splatter, I ended up looking like some ginger person caught in a heat wave. Thankfully a quick shower and copious amounts of IKEA body scrub did the trick and returned my skin to its usual pasty palour - not that I have anything against freckles, but antique oak is just SO not my colour!
So after I finished painting the sleepers I got around to reading the instructions on the tin (like all professional DIY'ers do ) - now it seems like this preserver is going to take up to 5 days to dry properly and could remain slightly damp for a number of weeks - bugger ! So much for getting it finished for next weekend :O(
Talking of the damp, I've just been watching the evening news - my thoughts go out to all those people who's homes have been decimated by the flooding - makes my wet garden pale into insignificance really
Still all in all it wasn't a bad weekend - I managed to get a fair amount of work done in the garden which is my ongoing project. I went to Ayletts in St Albans to buy some railway sleepers with which I'm hoping to build a raised flower bed next to my new patio. I opted to buy new ones rather than reclaimed sleepers basically because old ones start leaking tar all over the place when they get warm and you don't want that on your clothes !
I did two trips to the garden centre (not wishing to risk damaging the suspension by putting too many in there - I've given Renault far too much of my cash so far this year !) , after that I went to B&Q to get some timber preserver to treat the joins where I'm having to cut the ends.
Now I'm sure that the stuff that I bought is very good, but unfortunately it flicks off the brush like nobodys business - it seemed no matter how careful I was to make sure that I didn't splatter, I ended up looking like some ginger person caught in a heat wave. Thankfully a quick shower and copious amounts of IKEA body scrub did the trick and returned my skin to its usual pasty palour - not that I have anything against freckles, but antique oak is just SO not my colour!
So after I finished painting the sleepers I got around to reading the instructions on the tin (like all professional DIY'ers do ) - now it seems like this preserver is going to take up to 5 days to dry properly and could remain slightly damp for a number of weeks - bugger ! So much for getting it finished for next weekend :O(
Talking of the damp, I've just been watching the evening news - my thoughts go out to all those people who's homes have been decimated by the flooding - makes my wet garden pale into insignificance really
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