Late Nights

I don't understand why The L Word is on so late on a Friday night and why they don't repeat it at any other time of the week. Midnight is too late, especially after a really busy week and a few glasses of wine. Last night was only the second episode I've seen this series and it's been on for weeks already. Consequently, I didn't wake up until 9.30 this morning which means that it's not that long since we had breakfast and it's lunch time already. I love food but hate the thought of missing out a meal at the weekend!

Invasion

I think we have a wasps nest somewhere in the roof. Wasps keep appearing in our bedroom and the spare room upstairs. The problem we have is that this house has a small loft above the master bedroom and from there the roof slopes down in all directions leaving a small space to crawl around in the eves. I've checked as far as I can in both areas, but there isn't much room to move in amongst the beams and old pipes and I'm afraid of crashing through a ceiling. I wasn't see or hear anything in amongst the dirt and the dust before my torch battery died.

I've read that the wasps will die off in the autumn and that the nest won't be reused but with the wife threatening to sleep on the sofa I'm not sure how long we can wait.

A Load of Old Rubbish

In recent month I've become a wee bit obsessive about recycling. The council take garden waste and glass, paper and cans for recycling and I'm trying to reduce the amount we put out to go to landfill. Grass cuttings and other smallish bits from the garden go into our own compost bin along with fruit and veggie peelings, tea bags (of which there are many), egg shells clean bits of cardboard (toilet roll inner tubes etc). I have a box in the garage for all other card and plastics which I take for recycling myself. Last weekend we cleared out the garage and I was rather proud of the fact that out of a car full of rubbish, only one box full went to landfill while the rest went into the designated skips for rubble, wood, cardboard, plastic and green waste for recycling. The wife was cursing a bit at all the running around we were having to do but they keep re-arranging the skips.

Water is my other obsession. Since being on a meter I'm all too aware of flushing water down the drain. So the cold water that comes out of the hot tap before the hot water does is collected in empty 2 litre milk bottles and used to water the garden and I only wash the dishes once each day (yes, water conservation is my excuse). However, the wife has put her foot down at my suggestion to recycle bath water using a bilge pump and a pipe out of the bathroom window. To be fair, I can see where she's coming from.

Rugby

On several occassions in recent times I've seen eight tries scored in a Scotland game. They are usually going the wrong way, rarely do we score them all ourselves. I am really enjoying this world cup! Being realistic, we are going to get beaten by NZ on Sunday and Italy may have beaten us in the Six Nations this year but my boys have been working hard and I have every faith in them. At the beginning I thought I was being optimistic hoping to make it to the next round but now it looks like England are at greater risk of not making the quarter finals than we are! And if Ireland manage to top their group (and it's always nice to see the home nations do well) we will be up against them for the semi's. Wait a minute, didn't we beat Ireland last month? He he.

Let's just hope it's not a case of 'famous last words'!

Court Jester

My desk at work is part of a large open plan office space that we share with a group from a different school. There is one particular student in their group who wanders. He spends ages walking around the floor, weaving in and out of desks, stopping to look out of the windows and generally irritating me. I face the window with my back to everyone so that the only indication I have that someone is approaching is a reflection in the window and nine times out of ten it's him. It's getting to be really annoying. I came out of the toilets today to find him strolling up and down just outside of them. The one amusing thing is that he looks just like Timothy Claypole from Rentaghost (although I don't recall ever seeing the wanderer smile). Unfortunately he's probably too young to remember Rentaghost.

Change

I may have written something similar last year. Or maybe the year before. Regardless, I'm going to write it (again) now.

September always feels like a new beginning to me. Perhaps because for the last 25 or so years my life has revolved around the academic year. Perhaps, in part, it's due to the change in the season. Summer is all but over; the days are cooler (although the weather is better than it has been all summer) and the nights have a chill to them. Flowers are dying off in the garden, the tomatoes are starting to limp in the greenhouse and there are large bare patches in the veggie plot. The roads and car parks are again full of traffic and the campus is soon to be invaded again. And, the next Bank Holiday is Christmas. Despite all that, I love this time of year.

So, my new season's resolution is to blog more and to comment more. Although I'm relatively anonymous around blogland, that shy streak that I struggle with in the real world often crops up around here too. And that's what I'm going to work on.