I promised myself I would write atleast one blog a day but I seem to have neglected that promise for over a week:-S So what have I been upto? Well…
Falling’s 21st birthday – I travelled to London on the 2nd for Falling’s birthday. Falling got on the train at York and the first ‘highlight’ of the weekend came when the brakes slammed on just before Doncaster and we came to a sudden stop – little bit of a suprise!:-S
Turns out we actually hit something on the track but it must’ve been tiny as we weren’t derailed (luckily!). The train ended up being over an hour late as whatever we hit had damaged the underside of the carriage we were sitting in so we had to be evacuated to first class (Trust me, it’s not that great!) and after the driver made a temporary repair we carried onto London 10mph (miles per hour) slower than normal.
When we finally got to London we had a great weekend. I think Falling loved what I got her – a picture of these cartoonish cats behaving like humans in a Chocolaterie, it’s one of a limited number of prints by a local artist – you’d have to see it to know what I mean – we were in The Cat Gallery here months back and Falling said she liked that style of art so I filed that piece of information away and got it for her birthday – i think she was suprised I remembered:-)
This was all so long ago now I can’t remember what I was doing after that weekend:-S We’ve been puting all the Christmas decorations up at work – the ‘best dressed desk’ on tuesday wins a prize. My teams theme is Winter Wonderland but it’s not very good. We have no hope of winning but it’s been fun – we’ve hung cotton wool balls from varying lengths of thread to make it look like snow, and the dividers between the desks have sheets of cotton wool along the top like snow too.
Ross and Oliver (I’m printing their names as I can’t think of nicknames and they’re not relations/close friends so I don’t have to protect their identities, lol) have started the craze of making spoon ski dudes. Basically you get a plastic spoon (We got them from the cafeteria), you wrap brightly coloured paper roung the body, make a paper criss-cross scarf, stick a face on the spoon head, and tape skis (made from very large paperclips wrapped in paper) either side of the bottom of the spoon. They’ve also added arms and ski poles. Ross has Woody Allen and Oliver has Nemo from Finding Nemo, lol
My own spoon guy isn’t much of a spoon guy as he has no spoon!lol I have a spoon but it won’t work very well with what i’ve made so I’m going to miss is out. I’ve stapled a picture of the Glasgow Celtic football strip to cardboard and cut it out, then I fixed the head of King Kong to the top, lol. I’ve made the skis and now I just need to figure out how to do the legs – I might use large paperclips again. Although Ross and Oliver seem to have plenty time to mess about in work I never do since I’m on mail sort – but as of monday i’m getting put back on actioning, yey! I’ll tell you all more about my job another time.
I’ve also signed up for the Secret Santa at work – where you draw someone’s name out of a hat (I got a complete stranger) and buy them a present to the value of £10. I got mine Jamie Oliver’s Italy book – I wouldn’t mind it myself although I don’t like cooking. We get our presents on tuesday:-) I’ve also got my team’s Christmas meal on tuesday – you get an hour and a half instead of the regular hour – we’re going for a Chinese meal, lol, as there are hardly any eating establishments near my work, it’s more of an industrial estate.
I helped JP build a cupboard on friday, lol. Despite him and Muffin apologising for me always doing some form of DIY when I visit, I like it. I’m really lazy at home but I seem to enjoy doing DIY for other people, and it’s a good way to practice for when I get my own place. Not to mention the fact that I can recall these favours from JP when I need to;-) So far my list of credentials has grown to: fitting a shower (everything from the plumbing, installing a power switch, and fixing the shower, except adding a new breaker to the Ciruit Box as Muffin won’t let us near electricity!), removing a bath (removing the actual bath and cutting off the water supply to that room), building fences, building sheds (my passion according to the guys at work!), building furniture, laying laminate flooring, tiling, and wallpapering.
It took us a long time to build that cupboard – it was actually quite complicated! We started at 7ish and didn’t finish until 1:30 in the morning (six and a half hours people!). I did talk on the phone to Soul for about 20mins in the middle though, and we had to redo some bits we’d put the wrong way round, lol, but it does take a long time because of all the little fiddly bits that you have to do. It’s a beautiful Nordic style cupboard, a vibrant reddish brown colour, and it smells lovely!lol
Yesterday (after only 6 hours sleep and aching hands from all the diy) I helped dad take some tree trunks to the dump (rubbish tip? refuse recycling centre? or whatever is the proper term for it). Two were a customer’s (My dad is a self-employed Gardener) and the rest were JP’s. They were all heavy, especially the two from the customer – definately a two man job. We also took lots of concrete and broken patio slabs we needed to get rid of, then in the afternoon we went to a nursery he does the grounds for and cut down some trees that were getting tangled up with telegraph wires. Dad actually had the folding ladder close on his wrist so he’s still in a bit of pain – the force was strong enough to break the strap on the silver watch he was wearing:-S I cut the rest down with a bow saw after that as dad wasn’t able to use the chainsaw because of the pain when he tried to lift things, and I don’t like using the chainsaw really.
We stopped when the light levels got too low and went home to get changed: we were going for Christmas dinner with my sister and her fiance, their bairn and the fiances parents. We ended up being late thanks to mum who decided to go shopping on the busiest shopping day of the year and dad was struggling to find a cash machine (atm) that wasn’t empty. We found one at a petrol station en route to the pub/restaurant but it swallowed dad’s card and I had to look up the helpine number for his bank on my mobile’s internet. Thankfully they stopped the card and when he checked his account this morning no money had been taken (The machine had said ‘processing’ just before it decided to reboot and eat his card).
We had a nice meal, except for the fact that Baby kept crying at the waitress, lol. We then went back to ours and dad got out the karaoke machine he got for his 50th last month. I don’t normally sing in public but alcohol helps, so me, my sister and here fiance were belting out the likes of the BeeGees Massachusetts and Britney Spear’s Hit Me Baby One More Time aswell as many other golden oldies. Dad caught us on the video function of his digital camera much to my embarrassment this morning:-S
I’m okay today, I got off lightly after last night’s revelling – I only had headache but I took some paracetamol and four glasses of water so I’m all better now – Falling is jetting off to our brothers in arms, the good old US of A. She’s going to New York with her mum to do some shopping and see the sights. She comes back on Christmas Eve. I hope she takes lots of photos, especially of Central Park – it looks so big on the map. One day I will go to America with Falling hopefully…
Well, Glasgow Celtic are Playing Inverness Caley Thistle today – the game actually kicked off 25 minutes ago but I wanted to finish this. JP has loaned us Madagascar which I’m looking forward to watching later as I haven’t seen it yet. When I get paid on wednesday(I’m trying to stretch that £6 in the bank until then) i’m going to get some ‘gifts to the famil
y’ such as War of The Worlds and Star Wars etc. I’ve seen them all but I haven’t bought films in so long.
I rarely buy anything for myself and yet I always run out of money?! It’s my curse I’m sure. I was taking a look at the Maplin Electronics website the other day and they are selling a book about micro-controllers so I was thinking of getting that as a Christmas treat to myself. Micro-controllers can take instructions like a sort of mini computer and they are used to make robots among lots of other useful things (The book says “a toaster that tells you when your toast is ready”, lol). Admittedly I don’t know alot about them but that’s why I want to learn, and the kit comes with one for you to practice on so watch this space.
Stomach’s growling and the first half of the match will be over soon so I’ll leave you for now. Hope whoever reads this enjoyed my update. I’ll try to post regularly again I promise. I have my last Spanish class of the year on tuesday (we’re having a party, woohoo!) and i’m meeting Soul to swap Christmas gifts on wednesday. I also have to post out all the Christmas cards Falling and I wrote:-S
See you later alligator.
