Spring TV Choice

Ahhh, the BBC has rolled out its new Spring TV schedule for Saturday nights...

Plenty for Serena and I with the new series of Dr Who and a new "find someone to be in our muscial" show.

I even liked the new lottery show despite being utterly gutted about not reading about the London audition for it!  All that free time on my hands and I missed a TV Quiz Audition 2 miles from my house!

The "Catch-Up" show for the quiz clashes with our trip to Barcelona in June, so I can't even do that one!  Maybe I should look at Deal or No Deal?

PS  If James or Sally could drop me a note of which BSG episodes they have missed I will encode them to disc with the subtitles and pop them in the post.

Back Home

After a week in Edinburgh we are back home.

We had fun and I know Serena will blog and post photos at great length.

It was great to see Gareth in the flesh (as opposed to on my Screen Saver - don't ask!) and we hit it lucky with the weather for most of the stay, which is always a bonus in Edinburgh!

FastStone

A quick thanks to Gareth....
Your tip on the FastStone Image Viewer was a good one!

Back from first set of travels

Well we enjoyed a nice long weekend in York, which will get some serious blog treatment on the family blog soon.

Breakfast with Bill AGAIN today!  Isn't he lucky!

Pleasant Change

Yesterday was refreshing.

I met up with an agent in the morning and didn't leave the session thinking she was a complete prick.  In fact she gave me some REALLY good advice and we had a constructive chat about the market place.  Fingers crossed as always.

Since I was meeting her in a posh hotel, I thought I had better get reasonably well dressed up, so I had a shave, pulled out a smart pair of trousers, wore a shirt and even pulled out my "sports jacket".

I have to say I have missed being dressed up smart!  It was really nice to not feel scruffy!  I need to do that more often.

Although, walking the length of Oxford St in that geer turned our to be rather warmer than I expected for a March morning.

Hot Fuzz

Friday and a gamut of really annoying bullshitters (agents) drove me from the house to the cinema.  It was a toss up between Blood Diamond and Hot Fuzz.

Well I decided that "comedy" over "gritty" was what I needed so I settled down in the Vue Acton (a generic Vue cinema clone) and sat back for what I assumed would be a load of pants.

Oh how wrong could I be.

This film is silly.  This film is daft.  This film was exactly what I needed!

I laughed for the whole two hours.  This is way better than Shaun of the Dead.

GO AND SEE THIS FILM!  (If you are a guy)

I put that caveat at the end as some girls just won't get it as it is sooooo daft!  Others will love it just like I did.

Back to the Beginning

One of the original purposes of this blog was to share my movie reviews with a wider audience and to have an archive of them.  Clearly I haven't done this for a while, mainly because Lauren has prevented us from hitting the cinema.

Anyway I have been using my boredom filled moments to catchup on a few films on Sky Movies that I missed last year, so here are some short reviews.

Stealth:  Popcorn special for the boys (blue bikinis rule).  Beyond that it is crap.  5/10

Revolver: Eh?  I don't get it!  Enjoyable film but far too clever for me!  6/10

Red Eye:  Absolute rubbish!  3/10

Croupier:  Finally something worth watching!  Excellent cast and a great yarn!  7/10

Changing Lanes: Ben Affleck and Samuel L Jackson wasted on a terrible plot about nasty people!  5/10

The Libertine:  Under-rated Johnny Depp film.  Weird but enjoyable!  7/10

Chronicles of Narnia:  A hell of a lot better than I expected.  Something for the kiddies though.  7/10

One more to come, but that gets it's own post.

Great T-shirt

Natalie sent me this....

For some reason I thought of Julian!

Breakfast with Bill

We went out for our weekly breakfast trip to Balans in Chiswick.  I was commenting to Serena that I was fed up of London as I didn't seem to spot any celebrities any more (real or fake ones)!

Of course London decided that this wouldn't do, so we arrived at Balans and found Bill Bailey breakfasting with his family!  He looked pretty rough, but I suspect that is "normal" for him!

Best Freeby Ever!

We're back from Edinburgh and had a bit of fun with British Midland on the way up.

They "lost" our car seat in transit from London and so we complained. I filled out the lost luggage forms and mentioned that we were concerned about how we were going to get Lauren to Maggie and Peter's house.

The girl smiled and pulled out a car seat for us (brand new - still in it's packaging). I told her thanks and asked if we just drop it off on our return leg or give it to the courier who would deliver our lost luggage the next day? She told us that car seat regulations were such that it couldn't be reused, so we could keep it!

That means we have been able to leave one with Maggie and Peter so we don't need to lug it up to Edinburgh again!

Important News

Please read this post on the family blog.

Why so quiet????

I honestly cannot think of anything that has happened recently or that has grabbed my attention on the news that I thought - let's chat about that!
Yes I am being a bit apathetic, but then I am a bit p'd off with not finding a job which I put down to a combination of arsehole agents and a quiet market!
So mainly I have been spending heaps of quality time with Lauren and keeping Serena sane (see her post).

I do read your blogs, and I have even dropped the odd comment in here and there, but generally it is a "quiet news month"!

Wind!

Those of you who were here over New Year will remember my neighbour Brendon's attempts to repair our border fence (owned by him).  He ended up doing a good job replacing the duff panel, but unfortunately today's 70 mph gusts of wind have buggered the rest of the fence nicely!

 

You can also see our little 10' shrub/tree thingummy has come a cropper...  I think he can be salvaged though.

Renewal Time

January is car insurance renewal month and I usually spend a fun few hours searching the web and talking to a few other groups who offer special discounts.

Well this year I am amazed!  Both Serena's and my renewal quotes from our existing insurerers were the lowest quotes I can find by quite a substantial margin!  That has never happened before.

Looks like a double straight renewal!  Keeps it simple!

Return of the Musketeers

As blogged by Sally, this New Year saw the first get together of me with all my oldest friends for many years.

Alex, Julian, James and I have known each other since we were 8 (although I have known James since he was 4) and we have been good friends since 3rd year at St Peter's (aged 13).

You can compare these photos to another from my album when I get round to scanning it in, unless the above three pay me £20 each not to!!!!

Here is another of the four of us from New Year's Eve.

Note for Sally:

Click the pictures to open the big version. Then right click the big picture and choose Save Picture As.

Highlights of Serena's Job

I read this article and I had to laugh!

The End

It's the end of lots of things today...

My last day in NAG after 7 Years, 2 Months and 20 Days.
My last day of free broadband at work with none at home.
My last day of having no money (it's been an expensive month and payday + bonus can't come quickly enough tomorrow).
My last chance to "borrow" some stationary.
My last chance to get the best of the Krispy Kremes.
My last chance to post the bloody Christmas Cards.
You get the idea!

Time for a proper ramble

OK, so I have been too busy recently to ramble properly and random posts don't always please my audience!

So what has been keeping me busy?

Well I have caught up on some of my Sky+ backlog. I finished all the series of Spooks and am up to date with Torchwood.

Spooks is still my favourite thing on TV (well it isn't on any more, but you get my meaning) and Torchwood is a bit odd! I think I like it. It is a bit gruesome and I probably won't tire of the lesbian kisses for a while, but John Barrowman's lead character annoys the crap out of me! I hope we get some decent character based plotlines soon for him, as he is a bit too mysterious and gung-ho for my tastes - we need a few teasers to keep us going. The one teaser we got was something along the lines of "I need to talk to a certain Doctor I know about why I can't die". OK - great so we can hope for a cross-over with Doctor Who... except Russell T Davis (producer of both) has flatly denied that there will be any crossovers.

What else... Christmas shopping clearly! That is all done now. Although I need to get our Chrissie cards posted!

PC wise... I haven't had time to play NWN2 and haven't had an internet connection to play WoW on, so I actually have been trying Company of Heroes.

Hubert bought it for me for my birthday otherwise I would have ignored it. I gave up on RTS games after Red Alert but since this one fell into my lap for free I thought I would give it a go.

It's fun in small doses! The graphics are great and the mechanism of resource management works well enough that you can pretty much ignore it.

I have learned from my mistakes too. The computer cannot be beaten on more than 2 fronts at once (as the interface doesn't allow you to jump between your troops quickly enough to react to the enemy on 3 fronts). It is better to defend your key structures and then concentrate your attacks on one front at a time. Sure this takes much more time, but you take a hell of a lot fewer casualties. I suspect that as I progress through the game I won't have the luxury of taking my time, but for now the game has a fairly kind learning curve and doesn't punish you too much for ignorant mistakes!
Sure, I won't charge an MG emplacement again from the front! Stick one man in cover in front of it to draw fire and set the rest on flanking manoeuvers (remembering that grenades are your friends)!

Anyway I have some MI to create before lunch, so I'll write more later.

It's a date

Sky spaketh and the magic of broadband will be restored on 20th December. (Caveated with a "We are very busy so please allow an extra three days before calling our support line".) Since we are heading to York on the 21st I reckon our chances of testing the supposed 16 Meg service before Christmas are limited!

We also got their modded Netgear router and immediately changed all the default settings to something more appropriate! Imagine setting the SSID as SKYABCDE (ABCDE were 5 random numbers) - how uncooth! Also WEP encryption - this isn't the Dark Ages anymore!

I reckon I'll sell our £100 top of the range bit of kit. They still go for £75+ on EBay.

3 months too late

Looks like Ofcom finally pulled their finger out!