Ben and Charis came to see us

We had a great time with Ben and Charis, we went out to play in Newbury, and then took them to our favourite restaurant the 'Pot Kiln' in Frilsham, where the food and wine were excellent as always. The usual problem though, Ben and I get carried away choosing fine wines and then reap the consequences when the bill follows!

It rained all weekend, really, so Ben and I played loads of Grand Theft Auto 4, which can be a really fun game. We tend to have more fun when not playing it properly though. It seems that you can walk like a monkey, and jump on people's cars in amusing ways. The way the game world is so open, like Assassins Creed is what I love, and the graphics are not bad at all!

Wow, love the TV!

It arrived on Tuesday, and I have already got it mostly set up and configured. I have watched a DVD or two upscaled on the PS3, plenty of SD material (the quality is certainly good enough even on that), and played Assassins Creed and GTA4 on the PS3.

Finally I have the home cinema experience. I have not seen Blue Ray yet, or cranked the sound up much. We seem to have lost our arial, so I can not tinker with the integrated freeview functionality, or do the software updates yet, I will have to buy another arial.

So far I am totally impressed with both SD and higher, love the colours, and black levels, and just the look of the TV. Tosh ZF is definitely the way to go if you want LCD.

Finally completed Assassins Creed this morning too, what a great game.

Whoops, there is no excuse

I have not blogged for a long, long time. We are only as busy as we ever are, no busier. I suppose it is partially because I got me a nice PS3 round about my birthday time, end of April, and am still definitely addicted to Assassins Creed.

The house is all finished, just some tidying (boarding) to go up in garage, and we are going to have the garden done, landscaped etc. Everything inside the house is peachy though, got our sofa, and dining table.

A couple of weeks ago I finally used my BBQ (incarnation two, the first was ruined in the flood). Great fun, and I love how easy gas BBQ's make it.

We just got back last Saturday from our family holiday in Tuscany (a delayed 60th for my dad). We stayed in the most amazing villa, isolated up in the hills, with incredible views, and a nice pool. I had to buy some excellent wine, this time Nicky knows how much I spent on my special bottle! Pictures of Tuscany are up on Flickr thanks to Nicky.

Friday night we caught up with our Newbury/Thatcham friends, and had a good night out at the pub. Then yesterday Nicky and I had a delayed celebrate our anniversary day out. We went to Cliveden in Maidenhead, amazing house, walked round the grounds. Then I forced her to allow me to buy my new TV in Reading. Ended up getting the Toshiba ZF 40 inch from John Lewis. Got to wait a week now for it to be delivered... booooooo!

Will post impressions once I get hold of it. Meantime, loving the PS3, not sure if Nicky is so keen about the amount of time I spend on it though :-)

Visiting Ben and Charis in Kent

Last weekend we popped down to see Ben and Charis in Canterbury. I can't believe it had been well over a year since we visited them. As per usual we had a great time, thanks guys. Some fabulous food and wine, and what a lovely house to stay in.

We only gibbered a couple of times though, must be growing up a bit! Never did go for that run though Ben, we will have to do it next time. Next time you will have to come up here, we will have sofa's and a dining table by then. We introduced them to Achmed the Dead Terrorist which is always fun.

Urm I bought an iPhone

I got in trouble with Nicky, but it is great I love it. Now I just need the case to arrive so I can stop carrying round the box. As per usual Apple really know how to make their technology. Everything just seems to work. The interface is incredible, and as camera's and 3G are not important to me it is a great fit.

Of course the tie in for 18 months hurts, as does the monthly bill, but having a phone I don't want to dropkick down the stairs is nice for a change.

Wow, dishwasher, wow

Hurray, the dishwasher turned up today, wow, been waiting for that for years, the only thing more exciting would be a new computer or a new TV!!

Wonder if Nicky will let me use it first this time? The house is really starting to take shape, we got our washing machine during the week, and ordered a new table today. It can't be more than a couple of weeks until the sofa turns up.

One thing I can't figure out is we have a bigger house now, but still nowhere to put so many things, I don't recall buying more... how does it work?

Roll on getting this place sorted enough so we can have guests round in comfort.

Gadgets on the horizon

Hmmmm, its been long time since I bought a gadget, and I feel a powerful urge to get some :-) There are so many temptations, top of the list are; a new TV, TFT, probably about 40 inch, sounds system, updated computer, iphone.

I even have a license to purchase (small scale) from Nicky, just got to wait a couple of months to see what the finances are like.

Got to get researching.

Woohoo, we are home

We officially got the keys to our house on Friday, and with help from my parents moved in yesterday! It has been a long wait, and we are so excited to be back. The carpet is in, the new fridge freezer has been delivered and is sat in our brand new kitchen.

The dishwasher did not turn up though, so we have to wait until next Saturday, muppets. The washing machine is arriving tomorrow. We have loads of sorting out to do, as per every move, but already this place feels like home. It is redecorated brand new all downstairs, and we are very pleased with it.

Just got to finish sorting stuff a bit more this week, and then hopefully we can have some friends round to celebrate getting back in!

Oh, don't order a dining table from Homebase, we thought we had a good one, but had to take two back, and then when we tested the display model, it was broken too!!! We wasted such a large amount of time when we were supposed to be moving house.

A New Year, hopefully a better one, lets get blogging..

Hi, its a New Year, I should know by the hangover I had last Tuesday, wow, we drank a massive amount of Red Wine at the Castle Pub Newbury. See New Year Photos and others.

It was great to spend some time with the Newbury lot getting drunk on my favourite drink, although consuming that much of it is not a good idea.

Meanwhile, Bertie and Kim moved back into the area just before Christmas, so its great to have them back, with the new addition to their family Baby Alex.

Nicky and I did the usual, travelling the country, first back to Essex to spend a couple of days with her lot, then to Bournemouth for Christmas Eve to spend Christmas with my lot this year. I spent plenty of time with the two dogs, Bella and the puppy Bonny.

Today we were at Zoe and Dave's for Isaac's Christening, and while the service was a little lengthy it was a good day out, nice to see how Isaac and parents are doing. Now we intend to settle down here in Newbury for the next few coming weeks in the lead up to moving back into our little house, see some progress pics taken before Christmas. Apparently we should be back in by around the 24th January, whoopee. I popped in today and there is no kitchen, but the lounge has its first coat of paint, and the laminate floor is down in the hall, kitchen and downstairs toilet.

I'll be back soon with more good news hopefully.

Catch up blog, house, dogs, work

Life has been busy, we are all over the place at weekends visiting, and basically it makes life difficult when you work fullltime during the week and evenings. To get some quality of life back I think we are going to have to be ruthless, and spend some time in our rented house (although we don't much like it) at weekends.

Which brings me on to progress with our actual house. Well since the builders ripped its guts out and declared it dry approximately September 14th ish, they have done, exactly, wait for it......... NOTHING!!!!! Which means we will not be back in until late January at the earliest. Needless to say, we are both a bit down about this. Apparently they are starting the plastering this week, woohoo.

So on to more positive things, I really enjoyed visiting home the other weekend, to see how my parents new black labrador pup Bonny is growing and changing, she is massive now, but so cute, and everything she does is slow motion. She uses her size advantage against Bella their two year old Jack Russel. See some puppy photos here.

On another positive note, I am through my probation period in my new job, and although it is hard work, I enjoy the nature of the work, and feel I am getting the sort of respect I have been working for.

Hopefully the next time I blog more positive news on the house.

Options options options, or lack of

For quite some time now I have been plotting my home entertainment system. Now, if I am honest with myself I cannot afford a new TV right now, but I am planning ahead to perhaps April when I may be able to. Our DVD player broke down, (sound is broken) several months back and I am telling Nicky we will hold off buying a new player because its a waste of time when we can use my Mac Mini... but this raises several questions.

- I do not have Front Row on the mini, so no remote, the machine was just prior to those particular features, does this render the idea impractical?

- will the sound be good enough off a Mac Mini, really we need a proper sound system right ?

So, looks like I need to research more right?

I do like the idea of having iTunes, music, photos and internet etc off the Mini.

Our little house has been declared dry, woohoo!

Nicky and I got the news on Friday.. our house is now dry. That means that the surveyor can draw up a schedule for the rebuilding works, and we have been given a provisional in before Christmas date for getting back home.

The rented accommodation is ok, but we are excited about finally getting to live in the house we worked so hard for.

We are already planning what we are going to do with the place.

Now if I could just get some kind of a lifestyle back and get this insanely demanding project at work finished!!!!

In our new house

So, we moved in just over a week ago to our temporary rented accomodation, and had some help from our friends to speed things up. The place is ok, especially as its only for a while, (hopefully no more than four months). We are near our Newbury friends, all within a road or two, so should be good for film nights and pub nights.

We got the internet connected yesterday, so hopefully I will get time to keep things updated.

I have dropped off the radar for a while as I am working on a big project and the deadline is rapidly approaching, I have been putting in some serious hours on that recently, so lets hope it gets me somewhere.

We popped round to our little ohuse to see how things were looking and to keep the garden ticking over. The plasterboard is mostly off, and everything is stripped back... its amazing what just two inches of flood water can do :-(

Anyhow, will post again soon when there is more news.

Great Weekend at my sisters housewarming

This weekend Nicky and I went down to Bournemouth for my sisters housewarming party. Heidi and Ben have almost finished doing up their new house. Ben has a full size pool table in his back garden!

All my family were there pretty much including mum and dad with Bella. I drank my first cider in about 15 years, and it was ok, not been sick on it for a long time so its drinkable again :-) Thanks Heidi and Ben for a good time.

Aurelia also introduced me to Midlake The Trials of Occupanther, which I am enjoying at the moment.

Bad News and Good News

Well, our surveyor is decent, seems like he's good at his job. The good news is he says they will probably not need to dig our block and beam concrete floor up, which means it cold be as little as three months until we get all sorted. The bad news is we definitely need to get out until that time :-(

We are still enjoying having our own little castle, with a decent sized garden for a new house, and intend to come back while in our rented accomodation to keep things ticking over in the garden.

At least this house move is a smaller scale one, as e can leave loads of stuff upstairs, which will be sealed of while it becomes a building site.

Oh, why is nothing ever simple in life?

Bad News

So, as you are aware, we decided to move house, and worked very hard to find and afford something, well, unfortunately a week after we moved into our brand new house, we were flooded. We are now looking for rental accomodation for the 6 months it will take builders etc to fix everything, how depressing!!!

On top of that, no internet at home :-( Will blog whenever I find time.

Oh woe is me!

We are probably moving on Friday

I say probably because although we have exchanged contracts, I am convinced after the crazy ride we have had that something could still go wrong... lets hope not. Details will be following in either email or letter form soon. We are only moving up the road, to a slightly bigger house with its own little garden.

The biggest problems we saw were I believe some incompetence in the way of forms being lost in the post on more than one occasion, misinformation, lack of communication, and Newbury council being short staffed (apparently). These things and some buyers who were desperate to get in here, and somewhat naive. Oh I almost forgot BT, unbelievable, I have not even got the energy to explain quite how incompetent they seem to be on so many levels. Call centres in India really do not help things along very much either.

Anyhow, we will be without internet for a week or so after moving, but I can check my emails daytimes at work, and we are reachable on our mobiles. Hope we'll be settled in for a housewarming party sometime in the summer.

Great Sci Fi books, Hyperion / Endymion

I never did blog about it at the time of reading, but Hyperion by Dan Simmons is a great book! Featuring one of the best Scifi Fi creations of all time, 'the Shrike', read to find out if you have not already.

Well a year or two later I am now reading Endymion, and although my memory might not serve me, I think I am enjoying it even more. I can't seem to put it down, especially when my favourite character the Shrike is featuring. Great secrets seem to unfold with every chapter. Its a brilliant book, wish I had written it.

Oh the disappointment of Bond

Nicky and I finally watched the new Bond last week. After all the hype from everyone else on this one I expected it to be excellent. As it was, I was glad I didn't go to the cinema to see it. Disappointing...

I was right in my opinion before watching it, Daniel Craig is just not Bond material. He is not sophisticated enough, and he just does not look right.

So the list stands as all time best = Connery, second best = Brosnan.

They made the wrong choice in Craig, and the film was not action packed enough.

There, I've said it.

Finally, I saw Spiderman 3

About a month after all the Newbury Lot went to see Spiderman 3, I finally got to go and see it with Nicky.

An expensive trip, but well worth it. The special effects were amazing, especially the Sand Man. However the film was flawed! They tried to fit too much in, and they included some really poor acting from the female news reported that should never have been in there.

In my opinion it should have been Sandman and the Goblin in this one, and maybe Rhino and Venom in a fourth film.

Still, I was so impressed by those effects, they looked real. Not long now we will not be able to tell the difference.