Tag: slice of life

February has been a shit month

February 29, 2008 admin

The month is over and I'm glad it is. Looking back on it, February has been a shockingly bad month. Craptaculous, even. Katy was sick. Tokyo was cancelled. We both had a case of the grumps. The fridge decided to pack it in and blew up^† and now the laptop is showing signs of imminent total graphics controller failure.

I can only say:

^†We had a power cut last Wednesday that was supposed to last 2 hours but ended up lasting about 15. When the power came back on, it did something that the fridge didn't like. It started making a really loud clicking noise and was pronounced dead the following evening when we realized that everything in the freezer had defrosted. It's not too bad – we managed to salvage most of the meat by making huuuuuuuuuge meals and keeping stuff in the office fridge. We only lost about £70 worth of food (an average weekly shop). The really annoying thing though is that even though it's all under warranty, they can't send an engineer over until next Tuesday. So yeah. No fridge. Fun…..

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Weekend update

February 4, 2008 admin

Last week felt like a long one, and the weekend wasn't long enough to compensate for it. Katy felt it more than I did because she had to go into relationship counseling mode for Donna and Will and Jules and Sarah. She should start charging for it. There was work drama on top of the relationship drama (thankfully neither involving her directly). Still, she got caught up in the middle of it trying to make things better for other people. In the end, it left her wrung out.

Stephane arrived on thursday. He's crashing at ours until he gets his flat situation sorted out. We think he's going to like living in the UK, even though his waistline is going to take a serious beating. I know, I've had the same thing happen to me for the same reasons: it's so much easier to find safe foods to eat that you kinda sorta go mad at first. Stephane left Tescos with half a dozen little boxes of goodies that are so good but so bad :)

I'm starting to get things ready for my trip to Tokyo on wednesday. I need to pack and make some flight-friendly food. I also need to get some directions sorted out on how to get from Narita airport to my hotel, but that should be fairly easy to do.

I've booked the services of a volunteer guide organization to show me around town on the 8th to the 10th. It's a service that's coordinated by the Tourism Office of Japan. They're called goodwill guides, and are mostly housewives and students that take gaijin tourists around the major cities. They don't charge anything beyond the price of admissions to the places they're taking you and travel fare for the guides (and a meal if you're having one). Cheap at twice the price for the peace of mind of having a native that speaks the language :)

I'm looking forward to being there (though the 12 hour flight is going to be a pain) but at the same time, I'm a bit distraught at leaving the girl for 10 days. Le poo. I'll just have to take her with me next time I go there.

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Board Chow

January 23, 2008 admin

I was browsing when all of a sudden, the letter 't' decided that it become stuck on my keyboard, even though I hadn't even touched the damn thing. I had to do a hard shutdown of my laptop because I couldn't do anything else.

I flipped my keyboard and shook it on my desk. A rather distressing amount of board chow rained on my desk… Granted, I've been working with this keyboard for about 3 years now without ever cleaning it.

I dare you to flip your keyboard and give it a shake to see what rains out of it.

Um, ew?

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Making it more difficult than it should be

January 22, 2008 admin

We went to Starbucks last weekend. I just wanted a cup of tea. The dialogue went something like this:

Me: I'd like a cup of tea please
Starbucks Zombie: what size?
Me: Medium
SZ: what kind?
Me: um, English breakfast?
SZ: one bag or two?
Me: um, two?
SZ: room for milk?
Me: buh?

I ordered something for Katy as well. I always feel like a bit of a berk when I say “I'd like a grande one-shot decaf skinny caramel macchiato with whipped cream”. Makes me feel dirty, somehow.

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The outside coming in

January 22, 2008 admin 1 Comment

There's a snippet of one of Dennis Leary's stand up routines where he talks about his kids and describes the “dangerous quiet” – the one where it's too quiet, the one where you find your kids giving the dog a bath in the toilet…

I have encountered my own version of the dangerous quiet this morning. The Kitten of Doom is normally vocal, demanding and rambunctious. This morning, all was quiet in the house. Nothing was stirring. Except the dead vole that was being batted around the living room and being happily disemboweled on the rug.

It would seem that the big fluffball is bringing presents back to the little one (who hasn't mastered the art of the catflap yet and isn't going outsite). If the kitten can't go outside, the outside will come to the kitten, apparently.

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No real content post

January 17, 2008 admin 1 Comment

Things are finally settling down on the home front. We've opened the cat flap so that the large grumpy beast we call a cat can go out and do cat-like things (usually involving getting rained on and walking back into the house with muddy paws). The little toxic waste we call a kitten is settling in. She's still farting, but at least they're starting to not smell as bad. She's taken to sleeping on the bed with us at night. She's an attention whore, but a cute one so it's all good.

I went to see the Terracotta Army exhibition at the British Museum last Sunday evening. It was a very interesting outing. I knew that the first Emperor of China had created over 7000 clay soldiers, but I didn't know he'd also included city administrators, acrobats, strong men, horses and carriages. Apparently, there are hypotheses that say that the central burial mound, which remains unopened, contains a recreation of the landscape of China (with a pearl-encrusted sky and mercury rivers). Toxic, but sweet!

We're going to do a bit of home reorganization this weekend. We've sold the large blue Ikea sofabed and we're going to move the office into the guest bedroom. We're also going to go visit some flats for sbourge. He's under the optimistic impression that he can rent a flat in less than a week so we're going to do some of the leg work for him while he's playing in Montreal.

I've started looking into things to do and places to see for when I visit Tokyo in February. It promises to be an interesting trip. I only wish that Katy could come with me :( On the other hand, it gives us a reason to go together at some later date :)

Next weekend sees us in Londondinium. Still need to book the hotel for that…

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The americanization of the British airwaves

January 8, 2008 admin 3 Comments

It seems that every popular american TV show is getting a Brit counterpart: UK's next top model, Biggest Loser UK, Pimp my ride UK, Queer eye for the straight guy UK, The Apprentice UK, and the list goes on. Hell, there are even rumours of a Law & Order UK spin-off.

My favouritest US->UK program ever has to be My Super Sweet 16 UK though. Only there can you hear a public school boy say in his best home counties accent Fo' Shizzle, it must be said.

Gotta love it.

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The weekend can't come soon enough

December 7, 2007 admin

I don't know why, but I'm so tired today I can't think straight. It's been a loooong week and, at times, not a very good one. I think that I've caught whatever bug took Katy down last week. Hopefully, it won't be as bad. I feel like I haven't had a good night's sleep in too long and it's making me a bit braindead. I've been staring at my screen trying to fire up enough neurons to start some debugging, but it's not working. I just want to go home and go to bed. Sadly, the universe doesn't work that way.

Fooey.

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Not a morning person

December 4, 2007 admin 2 Comments

I'll be the first to admit that I am not a morning person.

Seriously, I'm not.

My normal morning routine is to snuggle next to Katy until the snooze button has been smacked a few times, then go downstairs to make tea and get breakfast ready. I'll watch the news, wave Katy off to work and then sometimes make myself another cup of tea while I check my email. I'll get dressed and mosey on off to work.

This, I find, is a gentle way to get ready for work.

Giving a shit-covered cat a shower at 7:30 in the morning is not, I repeat, not a preferred way to start the day. It happens to rank quite highly in my most-unpleasant-things-to-do-before-tea list of badness…

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Long weekend update

November 19, 2007 admin

Katy and I had a very productive weekend. We'd both taken Friday off to go into town and finish up the last of our xmas shopping. People look at us like we're insane when we mention that all our shopping is done. It's not our fault – we were forced into it. And think, Katy's folks' shopping is not only done and completed, but also already all gift-wrapped. Scary!

I'd managed to book myself an appointment at my optometrist on Friday afternoon. The good news is that my eyesight is stable and as good as they can make it and my eyes are in good shape. The bad news is that my eyesight is just about borderline to drive. As in, it would probably come down to the DVLA eye exam to determine if I can drive or not. Not the news I wanted to hear, really. I'd hoped they could have tweaked my prescription just enough to allow me to drive, but that's not possible. Meh. I'll see if I start taking driving lessons anyway in the new year and hope for the best. Coming back home was a nightmare. We were stuck in rush hour Cambs traffic for well over an hour (for a journey that normally takes about 20 minutes) and then we finally made it home in time for Donna and Will to come over for dinner.

On Saturday, we went to Saffron Walden to go have a look at the new Adnams Wine Cellar that opened there. It's not as big as the main one in Southwold, but it was still interesting enough to pick up a few bottles of wine. We also stopped by the butchers there and couldn't resist walking away with 4 kilos of prime Scottish beef. Half of that is in braising steak form and the other half of that is cubed (and already marinating to be turned into a steak and strong Suffolk Ale pie tonight – watch this space!)

I took some pictures of the pussy cat.

He's such a grumpy animal, it's not even funny. This morning, even, he bit me while I was trying to get some stinging nettles and other flora seed pods out of his fur. He's also a crap guard cat. When we came back from grocery shopping on Saturday, I opened the front door and heard a cat bell jingling about upstairs. Nothing unusual about that. Except that the cat that was jingling about wasn't ours, but some unknown black & white spotted cat that we've seen before in the village. He'd simply wandered in using the cat flap and was having a mosey around the house. He seemed a bit shocked to see us because he bolted out the front door as soon as he saw me :)

We had to go into Cambs against our better judgement to go meet a friend of Katy's who was in town for a College dinner. Even taking the Park & Ride, it was insane. It was so crowded as to be unpleasant. It'll only get worse for the silly season. In that sense, I'm glad we don't need to go into town again for shopping. Our trip into town threw a bit of a spanner in our dinner plans and we ended up eating at 8pm. Not good. We'd planned to make nachos and pizza again but – gasp! – I'd done something silly and bought flavoured tortilla chips instead of the plain ones we needed. That wouldn't have been so bad if the flavoured ones didn't have garlic in them. Our food crisis was thankfully solved by a quick trip to the Sawston Budgeon's (we called to make sure they had some. They had, yay!). Homemade nachos? They rock.

Sunday was a slob day. We decided to take a break from the gym and spent as much of the day dressed down as we could. We decorated the house with xmas lights and put up our “tree”:

I'm also inordinately proud of the fact that I finally fixed the damn lock on the front door. The thing was getting so loose that the whole cylinder was wobbling when we were trying to lock or unlock the door. I had to take the backplate off and tighten all the screws holding everything in place but, thanks to that and a bit of WD40, it feels like a new lock. This makes me happy. It'd been getting on my nerves for weeks now.

We did the usual weekend stuff (dishes, laundry, tidying up, etc) and we also did something that I hope will become a staple of our weekends: we played a round of cribbage :) I've been teaching Katy and her parents how to play. Katy's a natural. I keep (jokingly) commenting that she's picking up the game too quickly for my liking.

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