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.

Its a little delayed, but I thought I'd say thanks

Thanks to Nicky for organising my surprise 30th birthday weekend, and thanks to everyone for travelling to spend the day with us. The most amazing thing was that Nicky kept it all secret, although I am not the most observant person... sneaky women :-)

It really meant a great deal to me to see everyone, especially as I had been complaining for weeks how I never saw my friends anymore, now we are all grown up with busy lives.

Cheers Everyone!

Wedding Anniversary Number Three

As hard to believe as it seems to me, three years have now gone by (well on Friday) since Nicky and I got married. We repeated last years events we enjoyed them so much. We headed up to Stratford Upon Avon again, for fine food, rowing and Shakespeare.

This time we saw Ian McKellan in King Lear, it was excellent, everything I expected. We have really been very lucky two years running, last year it was Patrick Stewart in Anthony and Cleopatra. To have seen two of the greats in Shakespeares home town in quality productions is great.

Before the play we had fine food and wine, then after the show pudding back at the hotel.

Marvellous.

A very tame Reading Beer Festival this year

Wow, we must be getting old, it was the tamest Beer Festival we have been to yet. We drank plenty, all day long, but just did not seem to get drunk. Was great to have the usual crowd there, although we were missing a few due to weddings etc.

On the plus side Rosspo, Darth Limpet, Chudplug, Bert and I did all wear tweed, and Chudplug and I bought pipes for the occasion. As per usual the pictures are up on flickr-rossputin, and flickr-theplugs.

Roll on Newbury Beer Festival now, when we will have to try to get back into the drinking games :-)

A little update on our busy lives

A few months ago, I blogged about getting a new job. I am still loving it, nice little company, great location, interesting work, cups of tea made for me all day, marvellous.

Well, after a long difficult search Nicky has a new job now also, she is finally leaving Francis Bailey Primary School after eight years teaching there. Nicky will be starting a new job at John Rankin in September, so now hopefully her life will be easier knowing what the future holds.

On the house front, we accepted an offer on ours, and then found a nice new place just up the road. We made an offer on that and had it accepted, so fingers crossed, it could all go smoothly.

Updates to follow soon.

My rapidly approaching 30th birthday

Oh dear, I am almost 30, scary! On the plus side I am milking it for all it is worth, I have already been to Center Parcs, am off to the Reading Beer Festival in a couple of weeks, and this weekend went home to Bournemouth to spend some time with my family. I got a fantastic golf set, my first one. I can't wait to get out there and swing my new clubs.

Thanks everyone :-)

Centre Parcs

Alas, the long awaited Centre Parcs visit is over. The Newbury lot, Rosspo, Darth Lipmet Chudplug and partners plus myself and Nicky paid for the Exclusive Accomodation this time, with hottub, steam room and sauna facilities. It was marvellous, we had wine and Champagne in the tub. The rapids were excellent as per usual. I won an archery competition, wow, first time I have won anything for ages.

Thanks to everyone for my birthday pressies, so much Belgian Beer it will take me ages to drink it all, and I even got an authentic Pauwel Kwack testtube glass thingy!

We videotaped a cake-off between Joey and Rosspo, both cakes tasted very good. Photos are here!

Amiga Emulation, marvellous

Yep, I could be considered late jumping onto the bandwagon, I just never got round to it, well, finally I set up WinUAE, and started playing some of my favourite old Amiga games. I need to get hold of a load more, but for now I have 'Menace' and 'Arkanoid' working, and they are as playable as ever. Its relatively painless getting WinUAE up and running, but if you want a really simple solution, simply look up 'Amiga Forever' on your search engine of choice.

My little sister is going to love playing Menace again after all these years.

We got tickets to see the police.. wow!

Excellent news, Nicky and I are going to see The Police at twickenham with Mr and Mrs Plug.. (The Chudlings). As its my 30th this year, as mentioned in my previous post.. it seems fitting that we struck it lucky and not only did they reform, but we got tickets to see them.

Added to this, I am doing the Reading Beer Festival is rapidly approaching, 6th of May I think.. so much to look forward to right now.

Centre Parcs is just around the corner

Hurray, only a couple of weeks to go now, I can't wait, we have booked Centre Parcs over the Easter weekend, with swanky accomodation including a hottub. Darth Limpet and I are going to be celebrating our 30th birthday there.

We are just about to book our activities, lets hope there is more Greco Roman wrestling 'strictly torso dude'.. and drinking!

A little update

So I mentioned before that I was job hunting, well.. no more, finally some 6 weeks after I started the search I got me a new job. What's more its away from London, so no more ridiculous commute, hurray!

Its with a small company in Hungerford, and everything about it just felt right, I like the technologies, the location and the people, I hope it works out.

I will be sad to leave VNU behind, but the time is right to move on to the next stage of my career. I just have to get through the remaining 6 weeks of my notice period.. half way now!

So now Nicky and I just have to find a new house! Hope thats gonna be easy.

So now, its time to watch a cheesy horror film.. 'Last Cannibal World' and crack open a bottle of wine.

Well, back from Dubai.. boo, there's no sun here

Nicky and I just got back from our holiday in Dubai, see pictures at Flickr. We had a great time staying with our friends Tina and Kent. If the rent were a little cheaper, and there were more footpaths I would be out there to live in a flash, (12 months of sunshine).

So now its back to the UK, and getting the house ready to put on the market and on going career change trauma.. oh why is life never easy?

On the up side, I bought myself a Nintendo DS and it is great fun, looking to get more than just the one game though, only have Brain Age or whatever its called.

On the other up side Supreme Commander should be joining my collection of PC games tomorrow if all goes according to plan :-)

Fantastic Christmas break

So, despite a massive amount of free time from 11th December until 3rd January, an almost total silence in blog land... sorry, I was pretty much playing golf, or Oblivion, and after Christmas Medieval Total War 2. I had a brilliant holiday, as I had been saving up my holiday at work due to many busy project launches.

Hair update.. sadly the locks of the hairy Rossputin are no longer with us, as they were at the recieving end of too much abuse :-) I got called Lego Man, Playmobile man, The Hulk, Superman, and probably far worse things I can not remember! I am now more like Tintin again.

So a new year.. my resolutions, how am I doing?

- give blood (not yet)
- get fit (trying in between fighting off colds and travelling all over as per usual)
- address my work life balance (yep, doing pretty well on this one)
- couple of hobbies with Nicky (French, Squash) (we are still keen on these)

Its all up in the air right now, we are tidying the house up to put it on the market, and I am considering my career options, basically everything may change, watch this space

Second post so soon?

For a good reason, while we are on the subject of New Years Resolutions, lets add another 'getting organised'... its time I did just that, thanks to my continually disorganised state, see (Nicky is my Oracle/calendar/contact book), I have just let a close friend of mine down.. I was supposed to go to Breakpoint in Germany in April with him (sorry Emanuel), but have already booked and paid for a joint birthday celebration. Muppet!

So what organiser software to use? My phone I suppose, and SyncML... more details to follow.

First post of the New Year... 2007...

What will it hold? Probably going to move house, try to keep my resolutions :

- Give Blood
- Get Fit
- Don't take any bullshit

.. thats probably it for now.

Christmas was great, and the New Year at Darth Limpet's place, we dressed up as James Bond, and did some horse racing. Drank some great wine, and got lots of nice pressies. Including the main reason why 90% of my time has been spent in front of my PC... Medieval Total War 2, the best game since Rome Total War. Wow!!!

Got to finish Total War in time for Supreme Commander, which is coming soon :-)