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January

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

Well the first month of 2012 is nearly over. We are drawing closer to the wedding all the time and plans are back in motion again. I’ve made some work on the main invitations, which we just need to finalise the wording of and make minor tweaks to now. I’ve also upgraded my home system to a bit newer spec. It’s still not quite the system I had hoped for (and i5 or i7) however I’ve managed to make the change to a quad core systems with a good MB and high memory and it has had a noticable improvement on the speed. Ideally I’d like to add an SSD to the system next, however given current prices of these I may have to leave that for quite a while yet.

I did finally buy some new shoes (well..technically boots) yesterday however, which I like. They are (generally) comfortable, however the higher back with solid leather is grating on my left foot a little, particuarly whilst driving, so I’ll have to hope I can break that in before too long.

Boots

My new boots from Next

 Sarah and I have both been enjoying playing Elder Scrolls: Skyrim quite a lot lately. It’s been a really enjoyable game and one of the best games I’ve played lately for overall experience. There are a huge number of side quests – so there is plenty to keep you occupied, there is an overall story arch which plays quite well, the game feels relatively immersive, and as a major extra boon to me – there a nice little extras you can do as a bit of a break from just battling – such as crafting things, smithing, enchanting, alchemy etc which just feels to make the story a lot more complete and life encompassing to me. I would highly recommend this game to anyone, however you’ll need a lot of time to fully complete it – which can only be a good thing for value.

Speaking of games we’ve been using a lot lately. Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012 for the XBox kinect has been a wonderful work out/exercise game. It really gets me shattered after half an hour of continual work out and it really feels to push you (if you choose hard enough settings). I’m really glad we bought that ‘game’ as I’m hoping it will start to have real benefits to my health. We try to make use of it for at least half an hour two to three times a week.

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Busy busy busy

Friday, October 28th, 2011

Well its been a very busy few weeks at work lately. A lot of deadlines all due very soon. So apologies for the gap in my blogs.

I was toying with the idea of starting vlogging lately, but I think I might not bother as I can’t see myself having the time to edit all the video footage on a regular basis. I would like to get some recordings of something though to practice video editing on just out of interest and .. well.. fun I suppose :-)

It’s also been a very baby filled time since coming back from France. We went across to see our friends Andy and Vicky who are expecting (I think the baby is due today in fact) to have a catch up dinner with them which was lovely. Its great to see them again as I don’t see them very often since Andy left Kalamazoo. Sarah and Greg also announced they were expecting recently, which was wonderful news, so we went across to see them for dinner to have a good catch up too. It would also be nice to have them over to ours sometime soon, as it has been quite a while now since we last had them over.

I’ve had a bit of a gaming marathon lately at home with the LAN parties. We usually have one weekend every few months when myself, Phil, Stuart and Sar all get together for a big gaming session, however we’ve been working through Borderlands (my second play through the game, but the first time for the group). Sarah decided not to join us for this as she has a lot of studying to do at the moment, so it was just myself, Stuart and Phil. But luckily this game scales itself very well for the idea of having 3 people instead of 4. So we’ve had 3 weekends in a row of gaming, which has been great fun. I really enjoy having the house bustling with people, even if it does mean I get a bit less sleep over the weekend than I was expecting :-) This weekend however Sarah and I are heading back up north to see my family to celebrate my fathers birthday! I’m not really certain what the plans are for this weekend yet, it might be quite a quiet one, but we would still love to see my dad for his birthday rather than just send something through the post.

Mits has had his first episode with big fireworks. There were a few quite grand and loud fireworks going off quite close to home on Wednesday to celebrate Diwali. Whilst these were great to watch at the start, I suddenly wondered where Mits was in case he was out and worried about the noise, so I popped out to the garden to see Mits shoot out from under a bush at the back of the garden and dash behind the shed. As I tried to go get him there he lept over the fence before I could get especially close to the shed, and hid underneath my car on the drive on the otherside of the fence, so I managed to fish him out from underneath and spent a little while reassuring him back inside, and locked the cat flap for the rest of the night. Unfortunately all this meant that I missed the rest of the fireworks (even some very big ones – it sounded like anyway) but at least I managed to calm Mits down and get him purring again.

We also recently went out on duty with St John’s to cover the Birmingham Half Marathon. It was quite a nice relaxed event. We got a moderate number of people into our station, all with sore knees – as you might expect at a marathon, and we sorted pretty much all of them up with Ice Packs and bandages and a lot of them got back on their way quite soon after (one against suggestion, but then we can’t prevent them from continuing if they want to). Only 2 people had to drop out at our station – unfortunately for them. One due to a previous injury of a dislocated knee that was giving a lot of complaint again, and another person who was quite dehydrated as well as sore who took our suggestion to call an end to the non-competative marathon for themselves :-)

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26th Birthday

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

Thank you everyone for a wonderful 26th Birthday. I had a wonderful time down in Birmingham and back up north with family. The celebrations kicked off on Thursday night with a trip out to Island Cocktail Bar in Birmingham with friends. We were only planning for a short night out (maybe ending around 8pm) however ended up staying out until near 11pm. We worked through quite a few cocktails that evening – with my list being: Eton Mess, Lynchburg Lemonade, Vesper, Brandy Alexander, Bon Bon, Ain’t No Don, Caphrinah, Manhattan, followed by a few Jamesons at Scruffy Murpheys Bar. Quite a few friends from work and outside of work came to join us for drinks, as Sarah passed her latest ACCA examination just before the drinks began – so a great night all round. There are quite a few pictures of the drinks on the photos section of the website.

Next celebration day was a quiet one on the Friday evening, when my people from my team at work came out for a curry at Yassers in Stirchley. We had a lovely meal (although the food seemed a little more rushed than usual at this meal) and some soft drinks and some laughter, before finishing quite early/respectably at 6:45pm – which worked out wonderful for us as we needed to head up north that evening, so we quickly headed home, picked up Mits and loaded the car with our bags before heading around to Sarah’s parents house to meet them and guide them up north. This was to be the first time Sarah’s parents came up north to meet my family (they had met my parents a few times before when they had been down in Birmingham however). The journey up was pretty unexceptional. As the sun set it became a little harder to tell which car behind me was John’s car, however we managed to keep together quite well for the journey and never got separated. When we got up north we had a few drinks before bed time. I was feeling quite shattered by this point after several days of poor sleep. John and Eileen had the spare room at parents house (which Sarah and I usually use) and Sarah and I slept downstairs on an airbed. I took the chance in the evening to check out some of the TVs I had been watching on eBuyer with a view to buying when I knew what money I had spare from my birthday – and rather typically, all the TVs I had been interested in had either sold out or their offer had ended that Friday and they had become prohibitively expensive again. However a new TV came on the offer boards that seemed very good however there was only 1 in stock. So I was aware on the Saturday morning that I would need to order it as soon as possible if I were to want to buy it. Saturday morning after opening all the cards and knowing what money I had to play with I quickly ordered the television set with free 5 working days delivery, only to receive an email that evening around 7pm to say ‘Happy Birthday from eBuyer’ and offer me free next day delivery (valid for 1 week only), so I quickly changed my order details to use this free next day delivery. The website lists the TV as due to arrive today – but we shall have to see since it doesnt list it as being posted yet, so it might not arrive until tomorrow.

Saturday was my actual birthday and I got to open all my cards and my present from Sarah’s parents. Sarah had given me a sneeky extra present on the Thursday night – a selection of bath bombs and creams from Lush :-) These are currently in my trousers draw at home making everything smell nice. Sarah’s parents bought me a years membership to the MG Owners Club so we’re entitled to go on the rallys and special events that they hold for members. We also get access and discounts from the MGOC spares store – however most of the prices of items on there are much higher than other internet sources anyway – so unfortunately there is no real bonus there. I’m going to be looking through the members club website soon though to see what upcoming events there are and any Sarah and I might like to attend. :-)

We went out for a meal with grandparents, both parents, and Andy and Gem on the Saturday evening at a pub called the Maypole in Warley. It was a lovely meal out and we had a great catch up with Andy and Gem, which was wonderful as we don’t get to see them very often, and a lot has been going on lately – particuarly in Andy’s life. Earlier on the Saturday before the meal we took advantage of the glorious sunny day and went out to Howarth and Skipton to have a look around the two towns with John and Eileen. I also passed the MGF keys across to mum and dad for the weekend to let them enjoy it whilst we were up. Sunday was a similar day with us heading across to Holmfirth to look around ‘The Last of the Summer Wine’ country, before heading home for the evening and a quick trip out to mum and dad’s regular Sunday night bar to finish the weekend.

We managed to get home just before midnight on the Sunday evening, and get straight to bed to try to catch up on a little bit of sleep – which seems to have worked a bit as I don’t feel too bad today. As to whether the new 32″ 1080p HD TV will arrive today or not remains to be seen.

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Conducting and fleas

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

Well it’s been a fun, busy week already – and there is lots more yet to come.

I took choir rehearsal this Monday and conducted the choir for the whole evening as our musical director was on holiday. It was a great experience and enjoyable once I got going but I was quite worried about it beforehand. I’ve sung with choirs for years and have always been involved in music, but I’ve never had to conduct and carefully construct a piece with all voices before. I was mostly worried about identifying faults and picking out where they were coming from and how but that seemed to go quite well and I think we really made some great progress on the pieces we went over. I was working mostly on the dynamics and the small details of the pieces (like observing the rests correctly) with some of our music – and I really hope everyone sings it next week how they were doing at the end of this Monday as I think it sounds a lot better. I’ve also had a lot of positive feedback from the evening so I’m hoping the choir enjoyed my conducting also. I managed to take some recordings of myself to review later and see how things went from an observers point of view – however the battery would only last for 30 minutes of continual recording before powering off. So I only managed to get 2 x 30 min recordings (the first 30 mins of each half), but I hope that is enough to review.

Mits recently seems to have made friends with a hedgehog (we assume) as he came home with some quite large fleas – bigger than regular cat fleas. This wasn’t too bad in itself as it made them easy to spot, identify and even pick some out manually. However we picked up some household sprays, some cat shampoo, and some tablets for him and had a thorough flea removal evening. Mits actually did very well with the bath considering. He obviously didn’t like it, but he trusts us enough that he didn’t put up a massive fight about it, and even seemed to make a little bit of a game about being dried with the towel. The bath alone managed to wash off a few of the fleas and got rid of all the dirt and cases from his fur. The chemicals in the shampoo must have worked quite well too as all the fleas seemed to flee (no pun) to his face, which must have been itchy for him, but allowed us to pick them out very easily. We then gave him some 1 treatment flea tablets designed to kill all fleas on him within 24 hours, and gave him a spray down with some flea killer spray, before going over all the house with a household flea killer. The next morning Mits seemed a heck of a lot cleaner than usual, there were no signs of fleas any more, and he seems a lot more active and less lethargic than he was the day before. He got another dose of the flea tablets the day after to be certain they had all gone, however he seems to be fully in the clear now.

Now I have my birthday celebrations for the rest of this week to look forward to. I’m heading out for drinks with friends tomorrow night for the evening (although probably not making it a late one since its a working day the morning after), then on Friday I’m going for a curry with my team from work. Just a small, quick, quiet get together which will likely be finished by 7:00, then I’m heading up north that evening in convoy with Sarah’s parents who are joining us for the weekend. Followed by a meal out with family on the Saturday evening, and maybe even a small brothers get together on the Sunday if it can be arranged.

I’m hoping to put all my birthday money towards a Full HD 32″ TV for the office to act as a computer monitor, second TV for LAN party nights, and a good alternative television in the house for us or for guests when they come over to stay. However this is dependant upon how much extra I will have to put towards the TV as I still have a summer holiday coming up, a repair job I know needs doing to the car before its MOT in October, and retaxing of the car to be done at the end of the month. – It’s all go :-)

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