Slight Insomnia??

For some reason I am up very early on a Sunday morning....I lay in bed for the last hour or so thinking about getting up. It was only at 6.45am that I finally got up...strange! Usually I can sleep through anything...there was a time once when vandals wrecked 30 cars in our street and police cars, alarms and helipcopters were chasing them and I remained bliss unaware. Its not as though I am stressed out either, or listless due to no activity, we spent all yesterday doing DIY with more to do today. Its just that I can't seem to switch my brain off!

Oh well, at least I'm doing something vaguely constructive by updating my blog! After this I have a choice of the very scary Resident Evil 4, that has scred teh shit out of me lots of times already) or a more sedate play on City of Heroes....hmmm I think City of Heroes. I'm very close to getting some fancy new powers and I want to try to break through to level 20!

Progress on the kitchen was very good yesterday. Just a little bit of plaster to remove and general prep of te walls ready for coffee liquer paint on them. My dad seemed concerned that we were working too hard on it prior to his arrival! Don't worry Dad, there's still bugger loads to do!

I only have 4 days of work left and its going to be a struggle to stay focussed! Fortunately I'm going to be really busy so that should help. Right am off to get some gaming done before Kath gets up....

Random musings

Ok, so the new coffee table is great, I do love it, really I do, but (you were waiting for that weren’t you?) now that we’re decorating the kitchen it takes up so much space in the living room. All the things that I used to use the floor for are gone forever. Ironing is a pain (need to move the thing), the DVD player has a weird infra-red sensor that works only if its directly pointed at (and the coffee table is in the way). The end of it gets very hot (too near the fire) and I have to move the ‘Cube onto the top of it to play otherwise the controller cable won’t reach!

Having said that I can put post on it (have to carry it through to the dining room otherwise), I can put my feet on it (handy), I can put my drink on it (good for not getting drips on the fireplace) and we can store tonnes of crap in the handy storage boxes underneath. I think the good outweighs the bad.

I guess I’m slightly frustrated by lack of living room space due to major kitchen refurbishment activities. Because of said activities the dining room is a place where few dare to tread…not only is it full of tools for kitchen refurbishment (KR), it also has new cupboards, new worktops, a new floor and a great wodge of underlay (underlay, underlay, heeber, heeber) in it. On top of this it also has a new cooker and a load of current kitchen stuff in it that has been moved while we sort the walls out!

Whoever decided that Artex on walls was a good idea needs a good slap! No, more than a slap in fact but I can’t eloquently put it into words! The nightmare that constantly preys on my mind is the removal of the damn stuff! We’re half off and still half to go and my god has it been hard work! What with coordinating that with the arrival of my specially selected work gang (my mum & dad), the work the gas engineer needs to do and delivery of everything we need (why oh why did we pick a kitchen that wasn’t available in store I’ll never know) its starting to get a little fraught at chez Caple!

The plan is to finish de-Artexing by the weekend so that I have time next week in the evenings to Smoothover and paint it ‘Coffee Liquer’. Crown has a great little tool that allows you to upload pictures of your rooms and change the wall colours! Anyway this activity is so that the kitchen is ready for the arrival of my parents on Good Friday to stay for 4 days to do the kitchen and whatever else. Now, I don’t think we’ve had guests stay for longer than about 3 days yet without me wanting to physically throw them out of the front door, so this might be an interesting situation. I blame the smallness of my house and the fact that there’s nowhere to escape to. This coupled with the overwhelming need to be a good host puts me under more than a little strain.

Coupled with the fact that I’ll have no kitchen and we’ll have to eat out for every meal might mean I am a little short with my parents!! Hopefully my Easter present to them will make them forgive me. Continuing my tradition of Best Present Buyer Ever (self awarded title!), I have arranged a corker of a gift…we’ll have to wait and see the response! Although I hope the tears shown at the 25^th Anniversary will not be repeated! I must remember to ask my mum to bring ‘Mum & Dad’ Monopoly with them when they come so I can beat them by buying childhood memories and charging them outrageous rents (although my record for Monopoly against my mother is less than impressive). The coffee table in the lounge is also excellent for board games (no more kneeling on the floor)!

I just need to focus on the fact that I’m on holiday for 2 and a bit weeks starting in 9 days time. Granted the first 4 days of said holiday will be doing KR but it will be worth it. It’ll also give me time to get a hair cut and drown myself in video games!

Speaking of hair I am very tempted to go really short…I imagine in a few years it’ll be my only option as thinning and receding are taking their toll! I think my brother inherited my dad’s hair which has receded but not thinned significantly but mine is definitely on the way out! It’s also a pain and looks a mess most of the time. The only problem is that my hairdresser doesn’t ever seem to cut it short enough! And I’m too polite to say anything! I must be firm and tell her if I need it cut shorter…I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

Touch me!

I can’t remember if I’ve written anything about my DS. Despite the risk of repeating myself I’m going to mention it briefly again. It’s great!! I think the bets bit for me was watching my mum get slowly hooked to the point where she was asking my Dad to buy her one! Kath seems to enjoy fiddling about with it as well. My only concern is that there seems to be nothing decent game-wise coming out for it in the near future. I guess Nintendo were forced to release it early so that it could get a march over Sony’s PSP which is due to be released at some point in the future (I think its been delayed a couple of times already). I can’t say I’ve ever been attracted to the Playstation family of products and the PSP (Playstation Portable) hasn’t really changed that.

Lousy Smarch weather

It always amazes me how we are so unprepared in this country for the snow! I suppose that because it happens so infrequently that we don't ever put anything in place to handle it. Oh well...here's a nice picture of my back yard when we had some snow.

I've got a few other pictures that I might post later.

I'm currently enjoying a free friday afternoon...thats what happens when you do 12 hour days in the rest of the week! Trudged through the snow to go to Tesco and now am back home...2 hours later and the 2 inches we had this morning is gone in the sunshine. Feel a bit foolish for annoying Kathryn until she came home early. Relented and phoned her to tell her it had all gone so she could stay at work....a mistake you may say, dear reader, but the guil she'd have felt means that staying at work on a friday afternoon is preferable!

More great furniture!

Anyone for coffee?

The delightful furniture!