One of those days...

I love Halloween but today has totally not got me in the mood for trick or treating and partying. Hopefully somewhere between leaving work and getting home I can work up some enthusiasm...

Halloween is awesome

Oh yes. I think I mentioned it last year in my blog.
Very much looking forward to what I think is my first ever fancy dress party on Friday (hosted by Stu and Lorraine). I'm going as a Starfleet officer and Laura is going as a tavern wench. Hopefully we can get in some trick or treating with the kids before we go :-)
Here's the first pumpkin of the season:

An Dunan

I don't know if everyone has a special place or if it's just me. I guess a lot of people do though. Up until a couple of nights ago I had no idea what mine was called. I could tell you where it was and now I know it's called "An Dunan".
An Dunan is a rock outcropping near Ardfernal on the Isle of Jura - on my map I've marked it with a blue arrow.

 

We went to the Isle of Jura a few times when I was younger and stayed in Ardfernal.
The area just to the left of the red arrows is a hill covered in a wood which you have to cross to get to the other side.
This is a picture of the cottage we stayed in last time we were there. The picture was taken from part way up the hill on my way over.

Getting over the hill isn't easy going - this is Laura half way up just before she headed back to the cottage ;-)

 

 

 

This is the view from the top of the hill towards the Paps of Jura.

 

 

 

This is the view from the hill down towards An Dunan. The part of the map inbetween the two red arrows is a flat plain with a small beach at either end and the land to the right of the red arrows is another hill covered with trees. I remember when me and my brothers brought our friends to Jura and we played some kind of hide and seek in this big area which was pretty awesome.

This is the view from on top of An Dunan back towards the hill I'd just crossed. When I'm on top of An Dunan I feel like I'm stood somewhere that no one else has been for a very long time. My research revealed that An Dunan means "little fort" and in fact somewhere between 700BC and 500AD, this rock formation was used as a "fort". I haven't found out exactly what that means - whether it was just a good place for looking out to sea or if there was some kind of structure there (although I suspect the former of the two.)

Relaxed but bored

I've enjoyed my time off work and I'm thoroughly relaxed now. The only problem is that the last few days have been pretty boring. I kind of feel like I should have been out doing more but a lack of forward planning meant that there wasn't much to do.
Looking forward to Laura and the kids getting back :-)

itv.com watch again

I'm just watching Adrenaline Junkie on itv.com's watch again service and their service is officially lame. The programmes are low resolution and you are forced to watch the adverts. How on earth do they think this will discourage people from illegally downloading these programmes in high resolution and with no adverts?
The fact that bbc and itv are providing these services is a step in the right direction but they sure aren't there yet.

Oh yeah!

Nearly the end of my working day and then it's sweet sweet relaxation time :-D

Two new tyres and a wheel alignment later...

I had a flat tyre when I left work yesterday so I went to get it replaced today. Turns out my wheels were out of alignment and I needed both front tyres replacing. Gotta love car maintenance :-(

The best insult ever?

Cerys was causing trouble the other night. I can't remember exactly what she was doing but Laura ended up calling her a "spellcheck".
I have to admit that "spellcheck" is possibly the best insult I've ever heard :-)

The good part of traffic

When I woke up this morning, for some reason I had some of the songs from the Buffy musical episode going round in my head. The episode is a work of genius although can probably only be really appreciated if you've watched the whole run of Buffy up to that point.
Anyway, the good thing about being stuck in traffic for an hour before work is that I got to listen to the entire soundtrack for that episode before I got in :-)

Bookmarks

Since uni I've always been careful to backup my bookmarks everytime I rebuild a machine. It got even more difficult once I had a pc at home, a laptop and a machine at work.
I've been meaning for ages to sort them all out and I finally got round to starting today. There's loads of duplicates and loads of dead links but what's interesting is some of the really weird stuff that I can't even contemplate why I thought it was worth bookmarking.
Seriously, did I think I would forget that Tesco sell flowers? I've no idea when that particular bookmark got added but I haven't bought flowers from Tesco in a while (I prefer actual florists) and if I was desperate, I'm pretty sure I don't need to check my bookmarks for suggestions...

Smiling

Oh yes, I am smiling this morning. There's actually a few good reasons the least of which are my boss not being in this morning and my 3 day week :-D

Gaming

Had a great night at gaming last night. To start we played a game called Colossal Arena which involved fights between monsters which we influenced the results of but also bet on. The person with the most successful bets being the winner. It was close between me and Chooi but I pipped him at the post.
Next we played a game called Mona Lisa Mysteries which was questionably random but fairly short and fun enough. We had no idea who would win due to the randomness but I stormed home to victory in the end.
Finally we played Shadow Hunters in which a team of 2 hunters were pitted against 2 shadow creatures. There were also 3 neutral characters who had their own agendas. This is a fairly brutal game in which everybody starts off hidden so you dont know who to attack but in the end (and after some awesome bluffing from andy) we hunters managed to work out where the shadows were and Richard(hunter) took out Chooi(shadow) before I made the final blow and destoryed Andy. Along with the victorious hunters were victorious neutral characters Dean (who just needed to assist the hunters) and Toby (who just had to survive). Sadly John fell by the wayside while we were still trying to work out who was who.
I had a really good evening and played some good new games :-)

Soaps

I used to watch soaps when I was a kid.
Then I realised how completely pointless and boring they are. The same storylines are constantly recycled for new characters. If a character stays in a soap for too long then they are guarenteed to fall in love, cheat or be cheated on, break up, rinse, repeat.*
It's actually possible to watch soaps from 5.30pm until 9pm on a Monday and it truly boggles the mind. In a world where awesome Sci-fi like Firefly and dark fantasy like Moonlight can be cancelled in a heartbeat. Shows that have great stories and interesting, evolving characters and for some reason the networks would rather air shows that have the same story over and over again with characters that are wooden and disposable.
*It occurs to me that this might be why they're called "Soaps"

Kids today

I'm pretty certain that when I was 4 years old (and my parents can feel free to contradict me on this), I walked places. I don't understand the culture we've adopted whereby we have "buggy boards" so that our kids don't have to walk. You can see how lazyness has infected kids with those roller-shoes you see them wearing. I can see a future version of ourselves looking more like the wheelers from Oz....

Bah

This was my first week back on weight watchers and despite sticking to it every day of the week (except Saturday where I had saved up the maximum points allowed and had a game of squash to offset the curry/beer) somehow I've managed to put on 2lbs. I'm a bit gutted but I'll stick with it because I know that sticking with WW is a guarenteed way to lose weight. They do say that your weight loss is always a week behind so in theory, that 2lbs gain was from the week before last and I can assure you that I wasn't counting points that week ;-)

Wibble

This morning is stupidly busy at work. Ben is away for a couple of days and Cliff is down in Basingstoke. My weekend was ok. Russ was quite ill so we didn't end up going out to town but we did go for a tasty curry in Sale and a pint at the JP Joule afterwards. Laura is away next week with the kids so I've booked a few days off work for pure relaxation. Can't wait!

Walk the walk

Oh yes, Cerys is pretty much walking now. She still crawls a bit, I think that's mostly because she wants stuff on the floor so crawling is just easier. Also she can't stand up without pulling herself up so once she's down, she won't get up again until she passes a convenient pulling up place.
It's weird really, she's been a long time coming compared to Anya but every child is different and they all get there in the end. Likewise, her speech is behind what Anya was doing at her age but I'm sure she'll get there.
She's far more "rough and tumble" than Anya. Anya will cry at almost anything and gets incredibly scared trying new things at the park whereas Cerys throws herself head first at anything and its really fun play-wrestling with her. I have a feeling that she'll be more of a tomboy and into alternative fashions whereas I can see Anya being a bit more girly and mainstream.
Honestly, I guess it's way too early to say but time will tell. The long and short of it is that it's great having two very different girls who I'll be able to enjoy different things with. Having said that, if they aren't both gamers and computer experts then I'll be very surprised ;-)

Ten minutes to go

It's at times like this that Hiro's powers would be handy. Just concentrate and Yata! it's 5 o'clock. Have a good weekend everyone. I will be mostly getting very drunk in Manchester for the first time in far too long :-p

Yawn

Today is thoroughly boring and is taking far too long to become the past.
I can't help but think of the phrase "don't wish your life away" but I think it only applies if you have a job that is interesting and challenging on a daily basis. I have the odd day like that but mostly it's either boring (like today) or stupidly stressful...

Sleep

So I guess I'm not sleeping very well at the moment. I've never really had a problem sleeping but since last wednesday it's been a nightmare. The only way I get a good nights sleep now is by taking a couple of Nytol before bed but even then it takes a while for me to drift off and it makes it difficult to wake up in the morning.
I've no idea why it's started happening but there you go.

Rofl

Just had to say, as of yesterday it's officially "two quilts" time of year. That said, I just heard the ice cream man go jingling past our house. I suppose you can eat ice cream anytime of year but it just sounded wrong ;-)

Sorted old blogs

I had a look at my old blogs today and they were totally screwed so I apologise if anyone has been trying to read them. I've sorted them out now anyway.
I just read through the first few pages of entries from before anyone even started reading my blog and it's weird to see the difference. Back then I used to write about anything and everything. I would write about my friends lives, my relationship with Laura and really I appear to not be worried at all about pissing anyone off.
Nowadays I rarely write here and it's usually not very interesting when I do but maybe I should take a leaf out of the book of "younger me" and just start writing what I want. I'm fairly sure no one reads this anymore anyway since I haven't had a comment in a long time...
Just in case anyone is reading this, I want to echo a sentiment from my old blog that I just read. Wherever you are now, whatever you're doing, pick up the phone and ring someone and tell them you love them. Whether it's a friend or someone in your family, just do it. Don't stop to think about it. Do it now!

It's started

Yesterday was the first proper autumn downpour and today was just the same. This means that it now takes me about 15 minutes longer to get to work every day if I set off at about half 7. If I wait until about 7:45 then I will be late for work (I start at 8:30) even though my journey to work only takes half an hour on a sunny day :-(