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Christmas approaches

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

Well I guess it’s been long enough that I really should put another post online. I’m sorry I don’t do it more often, but to be honest I get such little feedback about my blogs (and never any comments – that aren’t spam which I filter off before they can even get on the site properly) that it almost feels pointless updating reguarly. But I know there are some people who read it from time to time and I find it quite nice to look back on occasionally as a kind of online diary, so here comes the next installment :-)

Sarah and I went to see Lacuna Coil in Birmingham at the HMV institute in early November which was great to see. I’ve never been to such an intimate gig before. I was probably only about 10 paces away from the stage, and I wasn’t even that close to the front. The front row were only just over an arms reach of a distance away. I put a few pictures of this online on the same evening (my new phone has a nice link in to let me upload almost as soon as I take the photo, if I choose to – which has proven very useful for whilst I was away in France on holiday and for a lot of other smallish events, allowing me to at least keep the photos section of my website very up to date).
St John’s is still going very well too. We’ve been a few more duties, one fireworks night in Rubery – Birmingham and I’ve also been to a Christmas Tree lighting in Bournville, which was pleasant. I’ve not had any significant incidents really happen whilst I’ve been on duty yet (and lets hope it stays that way for the patients sake). The busiest incidents I’ve had have been the Half Marathon through Birmingham where people were coming in with injured knees, which was mostly just a quick treatment with an ice pack and a compression bandage.

I’ve been growing facial hair during November – not for Movember this time, more for my own curiosity of how it might look and how it would grow on me – which has been coming along surprisingly well. I’m sure I wasn’t this hairy last year when I was doing Movember. Now I’m at the spot of trying to decide if I should keep it or get rid of it. I might keep it for a while to see how it plays out, but if it does start to irritate, annoy or itch me then it may have to go. Plus I’m not sure how it would play out with SJA duties as I would imagine it might become an infection control issue. I’m really not sure though as it would be washed with the face and being blond mine will never grow long.

Sarah has already bought our tickets to go to Download 2012 as the lineup has already started to be announced and they have some pretty big names going along. Steve from work is also going to the festival and are going 2 days before the gigs start (when the campsite opens) so we’ve made an agreement that if they can set up our tent for us, so we arent miles away from the arena, then in exchange they can use our tent for the first 2 days (before we arrive) and when we arrive we’ll bring resupplies of various things with us so they dont have to worry about keeping things cold or taking 5 days worth of stuff with them (although I would imagine they will have some emergency items incase anything were to prevent Sarah and I getting there). The risk with Download 2012 is how close it is to the wedding – being in early June.

Also Sarah and I have ordered our joint Christmas present for each other – I’m not going to spoil the surprise to …us… just yet (although we obviously already know). However we are going to collect the XBox from Sarah’s parents house later today, as we had it delivered there so someone could receive the delivery as these always happen during working hours when we are ..well…at work :-)

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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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Birthday coming up soon

Monday, August 8th, 2011

Only 12 more days until my birthday now :-) I’m going out for drinks on the Thursday of next week, then heading out for a meal on the Friday evening, driving up north to see family Friday evening and then a meal out with family on the Saturday – so I’m certainly getting my times worth for my birthday this year (it would appear :-D ). I’ll be taking a lot of pictures on the different days and will upload them to the website (especially since uploading to the website is a built in feature of my phone now). Looking forward to everything at the moment though – I’ll have to make sure not to go too mad with any of the days however as I dont want to undo all of the hard work I’ve put into dieting so far. I’ve lost a whole BMI point since I started checking my measurements (which wasnt at the start of the diet) and have lost around 1st in weight since that time too, so all in all I think it is going rather well :-) I am getting the occasional craving (usually for creamy items – like Mac&Cheese – which I don’t even usually eat – and Spagetti Carbonara) but they aren’t especially powerful cravings so I’m not finding it too bad keeping away from them. I’m also happy to have found (a while ago) that the ‘Zero’ versions of soft drinks are allowed in the diet too. I always used to drink zero anyway so I really like the flavours and they almost add in a dessert/treats feel to the diet without actually adding on a load of calories.

Sarah and I have signed up for our first couple of St John duties, the first of which is coming up at the end of the month as we are coving the second half of the cricket at Edgebaston cricket ground on Saturday 27th August. I’m a little nervous about our first duty – I mean, I think we are medically prepared for it and everything, but it’s still the daunting task of getting used to how we are supposed to react to certain situations with regards to ‘red tape’ and dealing with real situations rather than example situations in which everyone is co-operative and happy to sit down or lay on the floor :-) Still – I shall let you know how it goes. I’m looking at picking up a pair of steel toe capped boots if possible too to prevent anyone standing on my toes or anything :-) Sarah’s dad mentioned that he may have a couple of spare pairs from when he worked at Triplex (glass factory) so I’ll have to check his shoe size :-D We also have our AED (Automated External Defibrillator) training here at work this Wednesday which should be interesting. It’s a SJA course too – so once I have passed the course for work it will also count towards my training with SJA. Sarah is also on the course here at work too so will get it marked as completed for her too :-)

We also have the next LAN party coming up at the end of the month too. Stu and Phil will be back over with their PS3s and TVs to play Brink in 4 player over the Sunday evening through to the bank holiday Monday (28th – 29th August) which should be good fun. Its been a little while since our last LAN party – however with Sarah having an accountancy exam at the end of this week, and my birthday being the weekend after – this is the closest we could arrange one (which is handy as we’ll also be going on holiday to France during September, so that will be a more difficult month to try to plan a LAN party in :-)

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