So Slow Day

Can you hear that......... no neither can I that is the sound of silence after the son is in bed and Mrs Stu and the daughter are out, the silence is just great so I am just surfing on here catching up and enjoying a beer with the cat for company....bliss!

Very slow news day here today as there is not much happening, besides doing the house work, that horrible stuff like cleaning clothes and the house and doing the bits of shopping I needed to pick up the day has really dragged by. Although the kids made up for it by being really louder than usual, surely there must be some law where you are allowed to gag them for a couple of hours or to use sedatives......only joking!

Went to the shops to pick up a few things, drove to the multi storey car park stopping at every red light, parked up, went down the stairs (getting fit not using the lift), got the basket, filled it with the stuff I need, got to the check out, stand in queue......realise money is at home....so put everything back on the shelf, walked back up the stairs, into the car, back home and out again. Repeat the previous but pay at the end, and you will get some idea of what an exciting day I have had today. 

At least it is almost over. hope everybody else has fared better. :)

Mad Cat

What is it with cats are they all mad? We have now had Toby (not my choice of name) three weeks and the more he settles in and goes stir crazy the more mad and hyper he gets! The vet said we can't let him out until he has had his second round of injections so for two more weeks he will use up all his energy dashing around the house like a mad feline, at the moment he is jumping on top and getting behind everything he can to explore including the tv and computer with their mass of wires and important connections he keeps pulling out.

I have been trying to keep him distracted by finding him things to occupy his mind, but that usually involves me getting up and playing some daft game with him and getting clawed in the process. Like the four inch scar he put down my arm the other night! His best toy up to now involved a piece of string that he would just chase around, as long as I walked around with it behind me, but now I have found a new toy that sends him mad a laser pointer, oh what joy to send him scuttling back and forth through the room or up and down the stairs while I sit back and enjoy a nice, ice cold beer!

Which reminds me it's Friday, night so it's time to go open a nice cold one. Hope everybody has fun and has a great weekend.

Here there and everywhere

I never realised on my blog that I had the word verification button turned on! I would go to other blogs and see this silly verification thing and curse it every time I typed something in wrong, not realising that I had it turned on myself....duh! Anyway it is now off so hopefully there will be no further problems with posts. It must of all been linked to google mail going down, me thinks!

G, my daughter has now started up another after school activity she wants to do so now this is her list for this week:-

Monday - Brownies (started this week)

Tuesday - Karate

Wednesday - Swimming

Thursday - Gymnastics Training

Friday - Gymnastics Evening Extravaganza

Saturday - Gymnastics Training (morning), Gymnastics Evening Extravaganza (evening)

I got tired just writing that list, we have not pushed her into anything and have just let her go with the flow and she seems to like everything except the swimming which she wants to stop, but that is the only one we really want her to do. She can swim a fair distance now so at the end of the school year we may stop that one to give her some time to rest.

Then when H, gets up to age it all starts up again we may have to employ people to chauffeur them to all the events they want to do and now Mrs Stu has started karate as well twice a week and me....I'm the unpaid dogsbody around here!

A day at the seaside with pictures

An invaders view

The courtyard

Broken boats

A view from the top

A picof the bay from the castle walls

A boat on the beach

 Walking the walls to the castle loking out towards Wales.

 

The approach to the castle

The pics are a bit jumbled but you get the point of what they are about just a great day out with the kids and Mrs Stu!

OK this is something I have pinched from sasmagicalmysterytour for an inventive Saturday morning, it works the brain anyway.

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit 'random'. The first Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Quotations Page and select 'random quotations'. The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on 'explore the last seven days'. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Picnik (or photoshop or whatever) to put it all together. Then tell us about your album.

5 - comment with the link to your album.

Azadegan, are one of the great unheard of Russian heavy metal bands, styled on the lines of the 80's group Sigue, Sigue, Sputnick! Relatively unheard of outside their St. Petersburg, home they are now taking Russia and the former Eastern Block, countries by storm and their new single 'better thing than to arrive' is undoubtedly about to storm the charts!

Well that's my effort if you can come up with something lets see it then and the link to your page.

ARRRRGGGGHHHHH

Disaster struck on the most enormous magnitude last night, I have not known anything like it since the last piece of the jigsaw went missing, (do people still do jigsaws these days or is it just kids now?). The Sky+ box broke! Now out of all my gadgets I have and use this has to be the hub of the household, that everybody uses, but last night it went down.

Sky+ is like a video recorder but a whole lot more, you can record live two channels at once, you have the weeks ahead viewing guide at your finger tips, where you can set reminders to record and even series link all the epsodes to record soyou don't have to set it everytime it is on. You can fast forward through the advrts, there is this and just so much more. You can watch something from your recorded stuff while two programs are recording, you can rewind tv if you misheard something or missed that all important Aussie cricketer getting out your abe to rewind it and watch it again and again. 

Anyway it was on the telephone to Sky, to try and resolve the problem because all our recorded stuff we could not see as it was not letting us get into our planner and when I had been put on hold, I was finally put through to somebody in India to resolve the issues and she was great except for what happened. She tried several things I had to do while using the handset and trying to reboot the system but to no avail and then she said the last option was to do a full reboot that would lose everything recorded on it.AAAAAARGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

This did resolve the issue and got it up and going again but everything was gone! Every single episode we had not had chance to see, including six episodes of Lost we had not got around to watching yet, now i am going to have to buy the series to find out what happens as we have seen every episodes up to now and I knowit is as confusing as anything but we have watched it this far and just need to see the conclusion.

Well I hope everybody has a good weekend....me I am going to enjoy a nice beer and watch that movie classic Alien vs Predator!

p.s. Toby, is back and fit and well...minus his balls!

YIKES!!!

It's cross your legs time for the blokes out there, the females will all have a sly smile on their face after I tell you this. The adopted cat Toby, has to have his balls cut off! When we got him from the animal sanctuary we had been told he had been sorted out in that department but it was not to be. We had not checked because they told us he had been done. 

They were not sure when we got him if he had, had any of his injections so we got him in to be sorted and get a health check and when the vet checked he still had his balls. We called up the place where we got him and they said when they got him they were unsure as the bloke who brought him in said he had been done when obviously he had not. They never had a problem with this and said bring him back and they will sort him out...ouch!

He has now gone back to the rescue home and the house is now quiet with Little H asking a million times where has the cat gone and you give him an answer and then five minutes later you get the same question, the joy of kids. The trip to Conwy is on hold tomorrow now as we have to pick the cat up and we have now changed it until Saturday after Little G, does her gymnastics class.

Poor Toby!

Wednesday mumblings!

I have taken three days off this week, using up the last of my annual leave before it finishes at the end of March, to spend some time with the kids and the wife during the half term holidays here right now. Today was spent at Chester Zoo for a few hours. We try to take them once a year to try and broaden their horizons and to try and teach them about the animals. H, who is two only wanted to see the crocodiles and that was all he would talk about going there,  when he got there he was excited about every animal there from the small to the large. Lots of new buildings and habitats have been altered since last time to make it more like the animals natural habitat. It took 30 minutes to queue up to get in as everybody had the same idea as us to try and entertain the kids for the day. It was a good day all and all and the kids loved it so that was great and H, came away with his toy crocodile from the gift shop and G, got a fossil!

Toby, the cat, is coming on great since we got him ten days ago, nothing seems to phase him at the moment except the vacuum cleaner, he just gets on great with everybody except when he gets these destructive times which usually lasts about 30 minutes, but as I've said before I think this is because he still can't go out. The only really annoying thing at the moment is when any wires are hanging down or your doing anything with a wire attached he thinks it is a big gane and tries his best to get to it to pull and play with. He especially likes headphone wires to pull on at the moment, even when they are in my ear and attached to my ipod!

A miracle in English cricket!

Two English cricketers both score a century in the same innings.....a miracle....bring on the Aussies!

That is all.

The week ahead

It's been a rather quiet weekend over here all in all with nothing much happening, the most exciting thing that came my way this weekend was changing the headlight bulb over on the car and what an awkward bastard that turned out to be! It had this little fiddly spring clip that needed removing first and if your ands were bigger than a babies then you had no chance whatsoever of doing it. What should of been a two minute job ended up been a 30 minute swear induced session. Damn you car designers!

Only got two days in work this week...yippppeee. It's the school half term so I am taking some time off to do things with the kids. We have nothing planned yet apart from a visit to Conwy, in Wales. I have not been there in such a long time it's going to be great to go again. You see if you go to the link it's a great big old castle and although now it has fallen down a bit it has been made safe for visitors to explore and return to their childhood once more and reenact being a knight in Medieval times repelling all the Welsh who tried o attack the English. Anyway that is in my mind of what I want to do, the wife on the other hand may want to do something completely different there!

Weekend

It's the weekend and usual it is going to be one of those big fat boring ones. We should rerally be going out for a meal being Valentines Day but with two kids that is a little impossible right now, so we will have to try and spend some time together tonight once the kids are in bed. It's amazing how little time we get together these days, due to work and the kids after school activities but when we do it is great.

Decided we have adopted a mad cat or do all cats have weird personalities? One minute he is a nice cute cat sleeping peacefully and the next minute he is running across the sofa diving on my head trying to scratch my eye out, I have a nice war wound scratch under my eye right now. I think it's because we can't let him out at the moment as he has to get use to us and he needs his injections before he ventures out into the big bad world out there.

Hope everybody has a great weekend.

Chips, wonderful chips!

It's that time of year again when the only award that matters is announced, yes folks it's the best chippy in the country award details can be found here.

People go on about all the health foods and the like but when it comes down to it at the end of the day there is no beating a fresh, hot, golden chip and a nice piece of fish. Yes, all the other foods are great and have their positves, you need your fruit and veg but when your to lazy and just can't be bothered doing anything or your coming home from the pub what better than a bag of chips to fill you up.

We found a good one and we stick to it, living in a city we have lots of fish and chip shops but we always tend to go to one because they just cook it right and not left to stand for ages as unlike in Australia, ours are not usually cooked to order but cooked and kept warm. 

Horrific

Up here in the cold of England, it is so difficult to contemplate the huge loss of life and damage to everything that is happening in Australia right now.  My wife being an Aussie, has been on the phone to her brother in law out in Hoddles Creek and although the fire never reached them it was a very worrying few hours when the wind might of changed at any time and brought the inferno on top of them. 

My sister in law got herself out, the kids and the horses down to Lilydale to relative safety, while my brother in law stayed. After seeing all the news coverage and everything he now agrees that if it gets close again he will be out of the area as fast as possible, way before it gets close. All the people who died in cars while trying to escape it was horrific and to listen to peoples accounts of what happened,  makes your heart go out to everybody.

There is not much we can do up here but the wife being from Melbourne has donated to the Red Cross.

New addition

Don't ask me why it's underlined I hit a key on the keyboard and now I can't remove it....damn you line!

Meet Toby, he is the newest member to our clan. We adopted him this weekend and up to now he is an one year old terror causing havoc. He is locked in the kitchen at night, but this morning I found him looking into my eyes in bed at 4.30am this morning, how he got out of the kitchen i will never know!

Next time gag the boy!

Must remember next time when I take my two year old son swimming to gag him. We had finished swimming and got showered  and the changing rooms were fairly full with most of the cubicles having people in them getting changed as you do. So I quickly wrapped him in a towel while I got dressed, I go to towel him down and as I am doing it he shouts out at the top of his voice as I am drying him "Stop touching my willy!". It is not really something you want your son to say these days as everything is taken out of context and it is so easy for someone to tag you something when you are not.

Next time I'll staple his lips together!

An announcement.......

IT SNOWED.......

Well the country shut up shop today with all London's heathrow airport closed and all London buses stopped due to the conditions that the snow brought with it It is a once in a twenty year thing when it hits our fair shores and it is free as everything else that you get these days you have to pay for. There were two crashed on the way to work as people can not drive over here unless it is dry and sunny.

 It was great enjoying a hour out in the snow with the kids tonight making a snowman, complete with stones for eyes and a carrot for the nose. The snowman has been taken down and rolled into the back garden and reassembled due to a snowman not been sacred in this country and liable to have it's head kicked in by some hooded scroat as soon as your back is turned!

I have a very unfair advantage when it comes to snowball fights as i have to admit i make a great snowball, I squeeze the snow so hard together when I make it that it has it's positives and it's negatives, the positive being when it hits it hurts a lot, but when it misses it doesn't break up and then it is used on me, which hurts a lot!

Only thing about tonight instead of being inside a nice heated house I have to venture out to do the weekly shop.....any offers of help out there to do it instead.

Another post this is getting a habit!

It has been trying very hard to snow here today just a little flutter here and there, there is a big snow storn being blown over from Russia at the moment heading towards us and the weathermen say that there is going to be a good few cm's/inches of fall. In the next few hours if it does hit then we might as well close up the country as even a light snow shower stops everything in it's tracks, but we will have to wait and see as the weathermen always get it wrong.

I am in a minority of adults in what people of 'my age' think as I just love the stuff, I think it's great acting a kid again and building snowmen and throwing snowballs, all the while tring to avoid the yellow snow!

Went into central Manchester today as the Chinese, celebrated the new year by bringing out the dragon. We took georgina and little hayden down to see it and he was mesmerised by this giant dragon running around in front of the town hall to the beat of the drums and the loud firecrackers going off it was a good way to kill a couple of hours on a Sunday. As soon as I have got the pics and worked out how to post some pics on here then I will post a couple.

Hope everybody else had a great weekend.