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Monthly Archives: February 2008
I Use Mouthwash
The foul mood I was in yesterday thankfully disappeared in my sleep last night and I awoke today feeling refreshed. Work didn’t even drive me potty, which was a delightful change.
I’m also noticing that we’re beginning to get our evenings back – the sun is hanging round a little longer, and days are starting to feel like they’re just that little bit more light. Roll on the springtime.
However, the weather is still firmly rooted in winter – -4 this morning, and everything is dusted with a thin frosty layer of ice. I want it to be warm and sunny, so I can use our garden, BBQ and play outside with Aimee and the dog.
I’ve now missed my usual swimming window, yesterday evening, and I’m a bit stuck as to what I can do. My job demands that every third week, I work on-call, and as such I need to be within spitting distance of a computer to fix things, should they go wrong.
Now, I can’t reliably do that if the phone is in a locker and I’m in my shorts in a pool of chlorinated water. Not even the shiny E90 can help me there! So, every third week, I can’t do my swim. This presents a quandary – if I get out of the routine of doing it, I’ll never get back in.
A Paean To The M18
With apologies to, well, everyone, but especially my secondary school English teachers. Sorry.
Oh, Motorway Eighteen!
How I love thee!
Nothing to look at
Not even a tree.
Oh, marathon motorway!
Twenty six miles long
Past Rotherham, and Doncaster
And skipping past Thorne.
From M1 to the 62
Via nowhere at all
Oh little motorway
You’re just too small.
At junction two,
The busiest stretch
The three level stack,
Makes road planners retch.
After three we reduce,
Down to two lanes
Too many lorries
For significant gains.
Four is Ikea
The Doncaster base,
All dull scenery
No life in the place.
Grimsby and Scunthorpe
Exit left, Motorway 1-8-0
Road even more pointless
No reason to go
Betwixt 6 and 7
Only 50 allowed
Two lanes, no more
Road surface too loud.
The end of the road
In the shadow of Drax
Oh Motorway Eighteen
Why is your path so lax?
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Sunday Driver
If there’s one thing I enjoy the most, it’s working my whole Sunday from 7.30am until 6pm. Really, it’s great </sarcasm>.
I really don’t feel like I’ve had any weekend at all. Roll on Friday.
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Rotherham Oakwood Beer Festival
Attended the afternoon and evening sessions today of the Rotherham Oakwood beer festival. I’ve not been to this festival before, but had heard good things about the scale and variety of ales on offer – especially when compared to the Sheffield ‘festival’ which, for the last few years at least, has amounted to 50-60 beers in a hall. Rotherham claim well over 250 ales – not including the variety of wines, ciders and bottled continental beers on offer.
In days gone by, I’d tick off beers I’d tried in the official programme with a pen or pencil, and scribble a score out of 10 next to the beer. I utilised my technological wonder that is my E90 and jotted some notes for each beer along with a score.
Started with one from the Sheffield Brewery Company and tried their “Seven Hills” – a very hoppy light ale which is the sister ale of their “Five Rivers”. I scored it 6/10. Too light in colour and hop-heavy for me.
Then tried the Acorn “Old Moor Porter”, hoping for deep Porter flavours, but instead found it to have a very ‘Bacony’ taste on the tongue and didn’t really enjoy it. 5/10
Posted in booze, diary
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Like A Sieve
I overslept this morning leading me to be a little late for work – things didn’t get any better when I had to retreat home after lunch as Emma was struck with a severe migraine and Aimee was playing up. Got home and put them both to bed – husband and father of the Year, me! 
I’m finding it tricky to find things to write about. I think I’m going to have to start making more notes for an entry during the day, and finish the article off in the evening. The crux of this problem is my terrible short-term memory – like forgetting completely that yesterday was Valentine’s day. If I make some notes during the day, I hopefully won’t run out of things to blab about on here. Continue reading
Dull Thursday
A quiet, dull day. Work was boring. The traffic on the way home across the city was terrible. Nursery were literally locking up as I arrived to take Aimee home. I have to wonder what they’d be doing if I’d been any later…
Spurs made a meal of Slavia Prague, but at least came home with the win and two important away goals. Off to bed soon, tarra. Continue reading
A Chip On My Shoulder
I’ve been Asthmatic ever since I was about 14, and I’ve been on the same combination of medications to keep it in check since about around 19. I’m fairly clued up on my condition, and I pretty-much manage to self-medicate myself. I need the same meds, every month. I’m happy.
At least, if I had a competent GP surgery, I would be. I always, always seem to struggle to get my GP’s (I’ve moved around the country a bit, so I’ve had a few) to understand this. The doc I saw in Grimsby got the combination just right, when I was about 19 – and I’ve been perfectly happy on this medication ever since. Every GP since has been a nightmare.
If you’re Asthmatic, you usually have to attend what most practices refer to as their ‘Asthma Clinic’ every 3-6 months. This is probably some scheme dreamed up to release some NHS funding to the practice, but in reality is a complete and utter waste of time. What makes it more tricky, is that most surgeries start getting arsey and refuse to issue prescriptions if you don’t attend ‘Asthma Clinic’. So, every once in a while, I’ve got to book time off work to go to one of these ridiculous sessions.
Aimee Jane, 1 Year, 3 Months and 2 Days
The speed with which Aimee is picking up things these days is frankly quite scary. It seems that she’s doing something new virtually everyday. I first noticed it a week or so ago, when she suddenly started saying “Bye-bye” to me and blowing me a kiss when I left for work in the morning.
This morning, whilst she was drinking her morning milk (not formula milk, normal milk) she picked up Emma’s mobile. As she always does, she puts it to the side of her face and starts saying “Hiya! Hiya!” into the phone – this isn’t new – what was, was her looking and pointing at the display (the phone wallpaper is, of course, a photo of her) and saying, with some surprise in her voice – “Baba!”. She’s self-aware, and recognizes herself.
It carries on too – with her pointing at me and saying “Dada” and at Emma and saying “Mama”. When I got home from work, she was still up – and did some amazing – at least in my very rose-tinted ‘Daddy’ glasses – things.
Aimee loves CBeebies’ ‘In The Night Garden’, along with most of the rest of the UK under 4 population, and she has some Night Garden toys. I asked her to fetch me Igglepiggle, and she went straight across the room, picked up her Igglepiggle doll and brought him straight to me. She repeated this with her Makka-Pakka and Upsy-Daisy dolls, and her teddy bear. She recognizes the names and has associated them with the dolls!
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Fitness, Limited
Discovered why our terrestrial TV reception has been so poor recently. Our aerial sits atop a pole on our chimney stack, ‘cept when I looked through one of the skylights in the office, I could see that the pole had snapped in half and the aerial itself was hanging by the coaxial cable just inches above the roof tiles! Must get an aerial guy in to sort that out.
Speaking of the roof, also had a quote in from a roofing company to ‘fix’ the roof – there’s quite a few slipped tiles, some hanging precariously to the edge of the roof, ready to fall off – and some rather alarming looking ‘holes’ are forming in the roof. I fear that it’s only a matter of time before nature takes over. The guy says £190 will fix it all. I think we’ll get a 2nd opinion and see what’s what.
Went swimming again this evening. After doing some reading up, I decided to give Ponds Forge a try, but having left work late I soon gave up on that idea after seeing the ginormous queue for the Ponds Forge car park. The new multi-story next to the Ibis looked like it was closed, plus it’s about 4 quid for 2 hours parking, so I diverted back up to Hillsborough.
Swimming With The Monster
Woke early, for a Sunday, at around 8.30ish. We’re off swimming together this morning – the first time I’ve been swimming with Aimee since the holiday. Emma figured that the earlier we got there, the quieter it’d be, so we aimed to get there for half 9.
Got to the leisure centre and was confronted with a worrying sight – a full carpark. Had to park all the way round the back. This didn’t bode well for the ‘busyness’ of the pool – and, indeed, it was pretty packed inside – even at half 9! Nevertheless, Aimee thoroughly enjoyed it – especially the underwater jacuzzi-style jets and the slide in the baby pool! She wasn’t at all impressed when it was time to go home.
Like yesterday, today has been a fairly warm, mild day – it feels like Spring a couple of months early. With this in mind, I stopped off at Halfords on the way home to get a wash mitt to wash the car with. Aimee was fairly zonked by the time we’d got home, so whilst she slept, and while Emma knocked up a lunchtime fry-up I gave the car its first wash of 2008. Sparkling clean!
Gave the leather cleaner and feed stuff a go too, we’ll see how well, or not, it works in the coming days. Car looks great when cleaned up, and I use it as an opportunity to have a quick spin for 20 minutes. It’s days like today when I remember why I bought the car. Great. Now, if only there wasn’t that pissing dent…
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