Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Adventure 17: 29th March 2005
Monday, March 29, 2005
“Well if he makes himself sick, you can clear it up”, ah hello all, it’s been over a week since my last update. There’s a reason for that, namely that I simply couldn’t be bothered. You see when you have wonderful documentation to write, you can just get carried away on a crest of interesting, challenging work and simply forget the world as we know it….OR…. you can be so bored that you just can’t be arsed to write anything, coz all that’s happened is you’ve written a complete tome of “cut and pasted from on line help” or documentation as I like to call it.Any how it’s Easter, the clocks have gone forward so there must be something to write about, I know I was planning on writing my top 10 things that really annoy me, but as writing top 10 lists of things that really annoy me is one of the things that really annoys me I decided not to! Maybe in a fit of peak I may revisit that.So it’s Monday, normally I hate Monday’s but given that this is a bank holiday Monday, It’s not going too bad. We’ve even managed to get through the day with some reasonable weather which is even better ! Friday 26th March 2005,09:00: I wake up with a start, then suddenly realise it’s Good Friday and I’ve got the day off, now that really is good! That’s actually code for “the weekend has already started, there are jobs to be done”. My mission this weekend is going to be two fold. a. No DIY, and b. No visit’s to Cashbase. Last weekend was excellent from the latter’s point of view, as I managed to successfully not go to cashbase even once. No no, Buy and Queue Ltd, was my saviour (if you could call it that). I only went in for some floor tile adhesive so Mandy could regrout the kitchen in something that didn’t take a week to go a lovely shade of grimy black. You’d think buying some “Grimy Black” grout and adhesive would be the key there, but how stupid am I ? Beige is the colour, apparently, coz it seems to be the only colour they sell. Anyhow having picked that up, I managed to avoid their “discount” card offer, discount card indeed, they should give me one just for turning up at their run down ramshackle excuse for a DIY store. £40 later, I’m back in the car, well you can’t just buy a tub of floor tile adhesive now can you, it wouldn’t be fair. I then spent the next ½ an hour trying to reverse out of the parking space. As I’ve obviously mistaken the car park for a grand prix race circuit, and there are no end of cars (all of them far too small for what the people in them are going to buy from the shop!!)….but I digress.So I’m up, “what are we planning on doing today”, I innocently ask, knowing that all my work is done as far as the downstairs loo goes. “We’re off to Linda’s”, “oh yes why’s that…” I ask knowing what the real answer is. “Well you haven’t seen her new house have you ?”, “err no….” I mutter sarcastically, knowing there’s more to come “and well she needs a few jobs doing”, right the cats out of the bag. 13:00:So we turn up at Linda’s new pad and spend ½ an hour discussing paint schemes and stuff. My first job is to put up a bathroom mirror. A round one, from IKantbearsedtowriteinstructionsyouworkitout, the job looks fairly straight-forward until I get to the instructions…what instructions…precisely, exxxcellent. Basically there’s a diagram of a round circle inside a square with some measurements by it. Like a fool I naturally assume that I have to draw a square around the mirror. You can tell I’m not really with it as the square is completely irrelevant to proceedings, still it looks good to passers by.Luckily in anticipation, I’ve brought most of my power tools and a hammer, “if in doubt hit it”, as I’ve always thought. So I begin drilling my first hole for the mirror fixings which I’m still a bit dubious about. The drill veers off at an angle somewhat different to the normal veering which makes me a little suspicious, sure enough following some informed prodding I discover I’ve hit a pipe or a nail or something metal. This means I have to now move the fixing and try again. 14:00: The mirror is up, the pencil drawn square is looking very impressive. Apparently my next job is to put up a blind in the same bathroom that is too long for the window. hmmm, could be tricky this. So we agree I’ll take it home and mangle it up with my bench saw.15:00: Tie backs, my absolute favourite, but they go up almost straight and without too much of a struggle. Lee is back from work and is the coolest,19 year old there is. Driving his works, Peugeot cabriolet, and moving about with the grace of a large ungraceful thing. “Your easter egg is in the fridge”, brings him down to earth with a bump, it’s really hard being cool if mum still buys you an easter egg. That all stops when you get married, as mum then buys your kids an easter egg, but I don’t want to give him ideas.Saturday:10:00: We’re off on one of those family days out, to Fisher’s farm to give It it’s full title and some free advertising. Now then apparently it’s a farm and a bit of a kids adventure playground, with some rides etc, this should be good as we all know, rides etc aren’t for the kids at all, they can stroke the sheep if they want to but I want bumper boats!12:00: After driving for what seems an eternity, but was in fact just over an hour, we’ve made it, I nearly managed to park straight but that would be breaking the habit of a life time and no one wants that. The stench of animal poo, is thick and acrid in the air (that’s literary genius for you), and we make our way to the tills. “Two and two please” I say, “Is that two adults and two children ?”, comes the informed reply, not quite sure what else It could be, two adults and two small people pretending to be caterpillars perhaps, but instead of giving the sarcastic reply my brain is screaming at me to use, I simply confirm her suspicions and pay the £10million pound entry fee.13:00: Well we’ve been here an hour and not made it out of the gift shop! Good oh. What is the relevance of rubber snakes at this place, should I be worried ? That’s not strictly true, as we simply breezed through the excuse for a gift shop, they didn’t have any wicker baskets at all !! I can still smell the poo, so then we make our way to the source. There are some Shetland (that should be shitland) ponies (they’re from New Zealand) and there’s one male and two females, I know this I think because the male is soooo very obviously male, either that or he’s the first 5 legged pony, if you catch my drift. A point that Mandy would take great pleasure (this is getting risky) in pointing out to me a bit later on, and adding “and that was when it was soft” to add insult to my possible injury. 13:30: We’re going to make it outside, I’m determined. If we don’t then this may be the last entry…..Nope we did make it. There is a climbing wall which looks interesting though my ankle is just not going to put up with me bending it into different shapes to get up something like that. There’s a bucket load of trampolines, for young and old, ankle again, there’s some bumper boats (wahay!) in a pool about the size of a dinner plate which I can and do, do, though POD insists he’s going to steer and drive….in a circle for the entire time allotted. Then it’s off to the quad bikes, which looks like fun except the attendants (young girl students who couldn’t get a job at Sainsbury’s during the holidays) telling all the people “racing” around at 3 miles an hour to “SLOW DOWN!”, so I’m fairly switched off by that.
14:00: We catch up with Tina, Andy and Rebecca, who’s only 4 so she’s having a whale of a time. We decide it’s time to go on the ghost train, so we queue. I should have known really as it’s the only ride that everyone is queuing for, so I know it’s the good bit…
15:00: Absolutely terrified………I wasn’t….still what can you expect for £30 ? Blood ? The sun is shining and despite the very obvious younger audience of most of the attractions for a 36 year old, we’re having some fun together and it’s not DIY which is an absolute bonus and hey the sun is bloody shining on a bank holiday!!18:00: Made it back home, all is well.
Sunday:
10:30: Easter Sunday !!!! Today we have a charity auction to go to (it’s all go in our house!!). That’s not until 2pm though so there’s some time to kill. We mooch around a bit, doing some bits and pieces, until dinner at 13:00.
14:00: Made it to the auction, where we end up buying, a pub quiz kit, an ultimate movie quiz kit, a clock a bad picture and a cd rack. Not sure what any of them are worth, but at least we did our bit.
Monday:
Can’t remember the times as it’s all a bit of a blur, it being Monday me not being at work is a blessing and I think I’m going to rename every bank holiday “Good Monday”.We got up at 11:30 which was really 10:30 since the clocks had gone forward the previous night. Not sure what time they went forward, and quite why that matters but hey it’s a point.
I manage to cut Linda’s blind down to the slightly smudged pencil line, not entirely sure it’s actually the right size but I can hope.
Unthreaded all the slats which Mandy then had the dubious honour of cutting to the right size with a tool from IK which for once was pretty good. Then we both sat on the carpet rethreading the bloody things.
Next up is Leanne’s PC which has come back fixed from Nobbleyerpc, so I have to install the operating system and office etc which takes most of the rest of the day.
The afternoon / evening is spent delivering said items to said relatives, so Monday has actually been quite a productive day, even if it was for other people. Still you have to give a little to get a little I always reckon.
Tuesday is looming and we know what that means, back to “work”, back to the drudgery and documentation. Still the kids are off which is pleasing Mandy I can tell ;-))
“Well if he makes himself sick, you can clear it up”, ah hello all, it’s been over a week since my last update. There’s a reason for that, namely that I simply couldn’t be bothered. You see when you have wonderful documentation to write, you can just get carried away on a crest of interesting, challenging work and simply forget the world as we know it….OR…. you can be so bored that you just can’t be arsed to write anything, coz all that’s happened is you’ve written a complete tome of “cut and pasted from on line help” or documentation as I like to call it.Any how it’s Easter, the clocks have gone forward so there must be something to write about, I know I was planning on writing my top 10 things that really annoy me, but as writing top 10 lists of things that really annoy me is one of the things that really annoys me I decided not to! Maybe in a fit of peak I may revisit that.So it’s Monday, normally I hate Monday’s but given that this is a bank holiday Monday, It’s not going too bad. We’ve even managed to get through the day with some reasonable weather which is even better ! Friday 26th March 2005,09:00: I wake up with a start, then suddenly realise it’s Good Friday and I’ve got the day off, now that really is good! That’s actually code for “the weekend has already started, there are jobs to be done”. My mission this weekend is going to be two fold. a. No DIY, and b. No visit’s to Cashbase. Last weekend was excellent from the latter’s point of view, as I managed to successfully not go to cashbase even once. No no, Buy and Queue Ltd, was my saviour (if you could call it that). I only went in for some floor tile adhesive so Mandy could regrout the kitchen in something that didn’t take a week to go a lovely shade of grimy black. You’d think buying some “Grimy Black” grout and adhesive would be the key there, but how stupid am I ? Beige is the colour, apparently, coz it seems to be the only colour they sell. Anyhow having picked that up, I managed to avoid their “discount” card offer, discount card indeed, they should give me one just for turning up at their run down ramshackle excuse for a DIY store. £40 later, I’m back in the car, well you can’t just buy a tub of floor tile adhesive now can you, it wouldn’t be fair. I then spent the next ½ an hour trying to reverse out of the parking space. As I’ve obviously mistaken the car park for a grand prix race circuit, and there are no end of cars (all of them far too small for what the people in them are going to buy from the shop!!)….but I digress.So I’m up, “what are we planning on doing today”, I innocently ask, knowing that all my work is done as far as the downstairs loo goes. “We’re off to Linda’s”, “oh yes why’s that…” I ask knowing what the real answer is. “Well you haven’t seen her new house have you ?”, “err no….” I mutter sarcastically, knowing there’s more to come “and well she needs a few jobs doing”, right the cats out of the bag. 13:00:So we turn up at Linda’s new pad and spend ½ an hour discussing paint schemes and stuff. My first job is to put up a bathroom mirror. A round one, from IKantbearsedtowriteinstructionsyouworkitout, the job looks fairly straight-forward until I get to the instructions…what instructions…precisely, exxxcellent. Basically there’s a diagram of a round circle inside a square with some measurements by it. Like a fool I naturally assume that I have to draw a square around the mirror. You can tell I’m not really with it as the square is completely irrelevant to proceedings, still it looks good to passers by.Luckily in anticipation, I’ve brought most of my power tools and a hammer, “if in doubt hit it”, as I’ve always thought. So I begin drilling my first hole for the mirror fixings which I’m still a bit dubious about. The drill veers off at an angle somewhat different to the normal veering which makes me a little suspicious, sure enough following some informed prodding I discover I’ve hit a pipe or a nail or something metal. This means I have to now move the fixing and try again. 14:00: The mirror is up, the pencil drawn square is looking very impressive. Apparently my next job is to put up a blind in the same bathroom that is too long for the window. hmmm, could be tricky this. So we agree I’ll take it home and mangle it up with my bench saw.15:00: Tie backs, my absolute favourite, but they go up almost straight and without too much of a struggle. Lee is back from work and is the coolest,19 year old there is. Driving his works, Peugeot cabriolet, and moving about with the grace of a large ungraceful thing. “Your easter egg is in the fridge”, brings him down to earth with a bump, it’s really hard being cool if mum still buys you an easter egg. That all stops when you get married, as mum then buys your kids an easter egg, but I don’t want to give him ideas.Saturday:10:00: We’re off on one of those family days out, to Fisher’s farm to give It it’s full title and some free advertising. Now then apparently it’s a farm and a bit of a kids adventure playground, with some rides etc, this should be good as we all know, rides etc aren’t for the kids at all, they can stroke the sheep if they want to but I want bumper boats!12:00: After driving for what seems an eternity, but was in fact just over an hour, we’ve made it, I nearly managed to park straight but that would be breaking the habit of a life time and no one wants that. The stench of animal poo, is thick and acrid in the air (that’s literary genius for you), and we make our way to the tills. “Two and two please” I say, “Is that two adults and two children ?”, comes the informed reply, not quite sure what else It could be, two adults and two small people pretending to be caterpillars perhaps, but instead of giving the sarcastic reply my brain is screaming at me to use, I simply confirm her suspicions and pay the £10million pound entry fee.13:00: Well we’ve been here an hour and not made it out of the gift shop! Good oh. What is the relevance of rubber snakes at this place, should I be worried ? That’s not strictly true, as we simply breezed through the excuse for a gift shop, they didn’t have any wicker baskets at all !! I can still smell the poo, so then we make our way to the source. There are some Shetland (that should be shitland) ponies (they’re from New Zealand) and there’s one male and two females, I know this I think because the male is soooo very obviously male, either that or he’s the first 5 legged pony, if you catch my drift. A point that Mandy would take great pleasure (this is getting risky) in pointing out to me a bit later on, and adding “and that was when it was soft” to add insult to my possible injury. 13:30: We’re going to make it outside, I’m determined. If we don’t then this may be the last entry…..Nope we did make it. There is a climbing wall which looks interesting though my ankle is just not going to put up with me bending it into different shapes to get up something like that. There’s a bucket load of trampolines, for young and old, ankle again, there’s some bumper boats (wahay!) in a pool about the size of a dinner plate which I can and do, do, though POD insists he’s going to steer and drive….in a circle for the entire time allotted. Then it’s off to the quad bikes, which looks like fun except the attendants (young girl students who couldn’t get a job at Sainsbury’s during the holidays) telling all the people “racing” around at 3 miles an hour to “SLOW DOWN!”, so I’m fairly switched off by that.
14:00: We catch up with Tina, Andy and Rebecca, who’s only 4 so she’s having a whale of a time. We decide it’s time to go on the ghost train, so we queue. I should have known really as it’s the only ride that everyone is queuing for, so I know it’s the good bit…
15:00: Absolutely terrified………I wasn’t….still what can you expect for £30 ? Blood ? The sun is shining and despite the very obvious younger audience of most of the attractions for a 36 year old, we’re having some fun together and it’s not DIY which is an absolute bonus and hey the sun is bloody shining on a bank holiday!!18:00: Made it back home, all is well.
Sunday:
10:30: Easter Sunday !!!! Today we have a charity auction to go to (it’s all go in our house!!). That’s not until 2pm though so there’s some time to kill. We mooch around a bit, doing some bits and pieces, until dinner at 13:00.
14:00: Made it to the auction, where we end up buying, a pub quiz kit, an ultimate movie quiz kit, a clock a bad picture and a cd rack. Not sure what any of them are worth, but at least we did our bit.
Monday:
Can’t remember the times as it’s all a bit of a blur, it being Monday me not being at work is a blessing and I think I’m going to rename every bank holiday “Good Monday”.We got up at 11:30 which was really 10:30 since the clocks had gone forward the previous night. Not sure what time they went forward, and quite why that matters but hey it’s a point.
I manage to cut Linda’s blind down to the slightly smudged pencil line, not entirely sure it’s actually the right size but I can hope.
Unthreaded all the slats which Mandy then had the dubious honour of cutting to the right size with a tool from IK which for once was pretty good. Then we both sat on the carpet rethreading the bloody things.
Next up is Leanne’s PC which has come back fixed from Nobbleyerpc, so I have to install the operating system and office etc which takes most of the rest of the day.
The afternoon / evening is spent delivering said items to said relatives, so Monday has actually been quite a productive day, even if it was for other people. Still you have to give a little to get a little I always reckon.
Tuesday is looming and we know what that means, back to “work”, back to the drudgery and documentation. Still the kids are off which is pleasing Mandy I can tell ;-))
# posted by cre8 @ 3:16 PM 
