Body Clock

Last night we stayed up late to watch the 'season finale' of Brothers and Sisters. We caught the first episode while we were on holiday back in June and have said almost every week something like "this is rubbish" or "I don't know why we watch this" but it is so watchable! Every episode left me wanting to know what happened next and now I'm already looking forward to the new series next year. I just hope that now that this has finished we can have ER back, please Channel 4? It's October already! Anyway, because we went to bed late I set my alarm for a bit later this morning - 90 minutes later thinking there was nothing I had to be at work early for. But, by 6.30 I was wide awake and so here I am, at my desk a whole half an hour before I normally would be with my car parked in one of the premium spots by the back door. I'll be asleep on my feet by lunch time though - I'm already onto my second coffee.

 

Sick

Things just haven't been working as they should recently. No internet/phone line for a while, no mobile phone for a day, and now no light in the toilet.

And, two weeks ago the Wife was struck down with a nasty bug which she finally seems to be getting over. Proof: a) it's nearly 9pm and dinner has only just gone in the oven; b) almost a whole bottle of wine has been consumed; c) she's 'harmonising' (her own words) with a fantastic CD she has put together - a bit folky, a bit poppy, a bit rocky - perfect. Oh and d) having been banished during her illness, I'm back in the marital bed tonight!!!

a & b are certainly related. c is a common occurance and d can only be classed as bloody good news!

Edited because the Wife wanted to add that d) is due to a mutual respect for each others germs.

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.

Improvisation

Our big bedroom is a strange shape with sloping ceilings and a fireplace making fitting in furniture slightly difficult. We searched everywhere but couldn't find a wardrobe that would both fit in the space and would be big enough for everything it needs to house. We did however find a bookcase whose width and height was perfect, only it wasn't deep enough. Solution: Buy two bookcases, leave the back panel off one and leave the shelves out and stick them together. Screw in a rail and add in a couple of the shelves, hang a couple of nice doors on the front and you would never know that it isn't a wardrobe.

I just love Ikea flat pack!

Knockers

It seems to have been a day for people knocking at the door telling me what I should be doing - however well meaning they have been.

Firstly, this morning it was a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses wanting to discuss the Sermon on the Mount. Dispite my Catholic upbringing and a basic knowledge of the passage he was threatening me, I declined the offer and managed to escape relatively quickley. Although the Catholic church probably aren't too impressed with my lifestyle I'm guessing that the Jehovah's Witnesses would be even less impressed.

Secondly, I've just had a visit from one of the old guys who lives up the road, the same guy who invited us to see his garden a couple of times last summer (and also told the wife a few weeks ago that the front garden grass needed cutting). This time he had a bunch of very fragrent Sweet Peas for us (or as the wife described them when I took them in to her: they stink)! Knowing that I'm a scientist, he seems to think that I'm interested in things such as different plant propagation methods (I'm not particularly - in fact, I have never had much time for plant biology) and so I've just had a telling off for not knowing that Sweet peas are annuals and therefore how can we have them in our garden if we have not grown them from seed ourselves. I don't know myself, but according to another neighbour they came from France many years ago and have flowered every summer since. They are very nice to look at and don't stink. I don't know why or how, that's just the way it is. And yes, the grass needs cutting again - it's on my to do list!

P.S. I'm still working on that list of 8 facts/habits thing and I will get around to posting it soon.

Out of Hibernation

I'm still here and inspiration for blogging is slowly coming back. More and more over the last few days I've found myself thinking "I should blog that" - although I can't think of any examples right now!

I've been busy out in the real world and since my mom has recently discovered the internet, my online time has been taken up indulging her. It finally stopped raining a couple of weeks ago (the only experience we had of the floods were a few dodgy miles on the motorway as we wound are way up and down the country) and as summer put in an appearance in the last few days, much of my attention is focused on the garden. The cauliflower and broccoli didn't survive the wet weather but everything else seems to be doing well. In fact, I would almost dare to say that I could start to get fed up of courgette, cucumber and beetroot with everything!

Thanks for still dropping by, things will start to get a bit more interesting around here now.

Two Things

1. I know why it hasn't stopped raining for weeks - I bought a new pair of shorts for our holiday. I rarely get my legs out and this is the first new pair I've bought in about five years. Sods law says I'll not get a chance to wear them this summer. (As I type the patio is flooded and at least 1 cabbage and 2 lettuces have got waterlogged and rotted - but thank God we haven't been flooded like other parts of the country).
2. I'm stuck. Tonight is my turn to cook. The wife has cooked all week and quite rightly, can't be bothered tonight. I thought this would be the case but didn't think ahead and so have nothing planned. After making a couple of suggestions that didn't go down too well my only option was to get a take away. "Sounds good" sounded good to me but I then promised to put some thought and some effort into doing something delicious on Sunday (we are out tomorrow). I have less than 48 hours to come up with an idea and then shop. Help!!! (i.e. feel free to let me know your favourite recipe)!

Doctor Who?

This post was going to be about the weather but once I got started I just couldn't stop. Actually I forced myself to stop because I could go on for hours on this topic

More often than not I get frustrated during my drive home from work but today I was early enough to be ahead of most of the traffic. The potential was there for a relaxing half hour. It wasn't to be. Gillian McKeith (note the deliberate omission of her 'title') was on the radio advertising her latest TV programme. I may have ranted about the woman before on here but today saw me waiting at traffic lights in the middle of a city centre landmark yelling my head off at the radio and almost missing the green light.

She's not just irritating. She's frightening. And not in the way she would like to be! Some of the garbage she comes out with, dressed up as science, is just plain wrong. For example, today she was talking about how important a healthy, nutritionally balanced diet is. Now that makes perfect sense and I would never argue with that. But she followed up by saying that, as part of that diet, tea (ordinary black tea) should be ditched in favour of the likes of nettle tea because it contains various essential vitamins. So tell me please, if I am eating a balanced diet why should my delicious morning cuppas, which provide me with a good dose of antioxidants along with a splash of calcium and various other goodies found in milk, need to be replaced with crap that tastes like dish-water which provides nothing more than my balanced diet does.

And does a balanced diet really mean not eating protein and carbohydrates at the same time? As for smoothies for breakfast, why? The types of fruit she recommends for her smoothies are far too expensive, just eat a balanced diet! As for quick and easy (3 mins to make according to the 'good doctor'), by the time you've prepared the fruit, blended it and washed up I've had my tea and (wholemeal) toast and am half way to work.

It's crap. Everything she says is crap. And I have been known to stand beside her products in the supermarket and tell the wife, and anyone else within earshot, just how crap her over priced products are. Even the recipes she was talking about today contain various beans I have never heard of. I despair that people spend money on these sorts of products. Head round to the fresh fruit and veg aisle - it's cheaper, healthier and you won't be lining her pockets!

Home and Away

I've not been completely lost, life has been storming ahead and I've been running behind. Apart from a holiday. The wife and I decided to escape to the other end of the country (via a short visit to my mum conveniently situated half way down - 420 miles might not seem like a long journey to some but here it is literally from the north east to the south west corner of the country. The journey was made that much more enjoyable by the compilation CD's the wife had put together beforehand). So here is Cornwall in pictures:

Tintagel and the remains of the castle which, according to legend was the home of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Or his birthplace. Or something like that. History/mythology never was my strong point and I was too busy looking at the ocean to take notes.



The harbour in the lovely little village of Boscastle - site of the huge floods in 2004. The shops on the main street had markers showing the height of the water and it reached the ceiling on the ground floor and whole buildings were destroyed. Work was still ongoing on deepening the river bed and this photo was taken two days before the town flooded again. Fortunately this time the water only reached 3ft and the town returned to business and usual the following day.



New York, straight on, 3000 miles.



At the end of the scariest lane I have ever driven down we were rewarded with views like this. The photo doesn't do it justice, the sea was so blue. After a stroll in the sunshine we had a bargain lunch in the hotel perched on the headland and just as we were leaving the rain started. I stopped the car and jumped out to snap this, getting soaked in the process:
This picture doesn't do it justice either, it was stunning, even in the rain.

It was a great week and just what the two of us needed. It's the first holiday with just the two of us for four years and although it rained a bit (the risk you take holidaying in England) we also managed to dump the coats and get some sun.

Good Neighbours

Our house is on a corner plot, at the entrance to a small cul de sac. Since the old guy who lives at the other end told the wife that the grass needed cutting a few weeks ago I've been trying to keep on top of it. Just as I was finishing the front lawn another old guy who lives a few doors up stopped and introduced himself (he seems to pride himself on knowing all the goings on in the road but can't be too good at it as he didn't realise we had bought the place and thought I was cutting the grass for the old lady). I was hot and sweaty and the wife was waiting for me to finish so that we could go shopping. Having been grilled for my details (husband, job, birth place etc) I think I was only half way through his life story when the wife came to see what was takinging me so long. Hours we were there for. So long in fact that my nose got sunburnt.

Apparently he knows Bill Gates but I wasn't really listening to closely. The woman in the house across the road was in her bedroom trying on different clothes. With the curtains open. And three of us stood in front of her. Next time I'm cutting the grass it'll be head down and mow.

One Year

I can't believe that it's a whole year since we moved into this house. Looking at the old photos, the inside is barely recognisable (apart from the bathroom and the upstairs; and there are still bits falling off the roof - but they'll get done eventually). However, the biggest transformation has been in the back garden. The flower beds are kind of bare, but we're in the process of getting rid of all the overgrown stuff and putting some sensible plants that we like (like the little osteospermum with pretty flowers that close up when they get cold - so cute!).

Back in March the veggie plot was a load of stones covering some very, very compacted mud. And now it looks like this:



What can't be seen in the picture is the tomatoes, cucumber and peppers in the Greenhouse (Mark II). There is also a couple of large bins of potatoes behind the greenhouse and a small patch with some spinach and rocket in. Any available space will be filled with more of the same and any unlabelled pockets are radishes, which are taking over the world. Those pots along side the greenhouse are our herb collection.

It all makes dinner time so exciting!

The Wife's Life

I've been working from home again today (although I did actually do some work today) and The Wife was doing her tax return. Since she is self employed and also in the last year has started renting out property it sounded as though it was getting a little heated. The upshot is, that the tax man owes her and it looks as though he will do next year as well. She is quite comfortable with this.

In celebration I took her to the walk-in clinic this afternoon. 25 days ago when the wife was working in the garden she'went over on her ankle' and it is still bruised and swollen (being the dutiful partner I am, at the time I tried for days to get her to have it seen but she can be a little bit stubborn). Anyway, they don't think it's broken but as it's over 2 weeks since the accident they can't x-ray it. (They said that if it was broken it would probably be more painful, it's probably a sprain). I don't think she told the nurse that her gardening boots have two inch heals!

Homeward Bound

As I type, the wife is heading home and I can't wait until she gets here (I'm 'working at home' so that I can tidy the place up welcome her home). She often tells me that I have a bit of an obsessive personality and that has been evident this week without her. Not checking taps are off or doors are locked multiple times, but watching videos. There has been nothing on the TV so I dug out my Bad Girls collection and started at the very beginning. By bed time last night I only had two episodes of series 2 left. And, because I remembered what happened at the end of the series, I stayed up and watched them. 23 episodes in three days (evenings only, I'm not quite sad enough not to find better things to fill my days with). I had forgotten just how good a programme it was back in the early days, before it got a bit too far fetched.

Anyway, back to reality. I just wish my wife would sometimes drive a little bit faster!

It's Oh So Quiet

The wife has gone away for a few days with her daughter and granddaughter leaving me and the dog home alone. All the dog has done for the last 24 hours is sit by the front door pining (and I'm feel like he looks - lonely). Apart from when I went to bed last night and then he sat at the foot of the bed looking at me as if to say "no, you can't go to sleep, the boss isn't here. What are you doing? Go and get her!"
It's the first time in our six year history that the wife has gone and left me at home and the place seems very, very quiet without her. I also don't really see the point in cooking just for one - why waste all that electricity on putting the oven/hob on for just myself when the takeaway down the road have theirs on anyway!

Dunched

Last week I got stuck in traffic on my way to work so got there too late to get parked in my usual little car park on campus. The only option was the large, council run car park near by (which costs twice as much per hour and where the ticket machines always reject at least half the coins I try to feed it). It being the first time I'd parked my new, bigger car in a proper car park I walked around it ensuring that I was within the white lines and checked the time on the ticket before heading into work. On getting back to the car later that day I spotted one of these:

Along side this was a scrap of paper onto which someone had scribbled the words "you were dunched by a Picasso" followed by a registration number. Slowly, it dawned on me that something had happened to my shiny new car and on walking round to the passenger side discovered exactly what. The door and front wing are no longer quite so shiny and are slightly bent and twisted. Since some kind person (I'm guessing not the driver involved) left the reg number I contacted the local police. One week later I'm still waiting to hear if they contacted the other driver and what he (I'm assuming it's a he, it makes me feel better) had to say and if he/his insurance company will pay for the repairs. Now I know it's not a serious incident, but it should be easy to sort - they have to speak to just one person and by doing so could save me a few hundred quid in repair bills.

As for the £30 parking fine, I've appealed (assuming that the jolt of the collision caused the ticket to slide down the dash and out of view) and all I have to do now is send them the ticket to prove that there were 20 mins between the penalty notice being issued and the ticket expiring. Oh and I've also lost the cost of the theatre ticket for the show I missed while I was waiting for the police. Did I mention that one week on I (and my insurance company) am still waiting to hear back from the police.

One week after getting the car, this has, quite literally, taken the shine off it.