Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Why?!?!?!

Does my brain work in such an odd way?!? IT's Christmas morning and by rights I should be asleep enjoying the fact I don't have to get up early, yet here I am awake, typing my blog for something to do.


I could not get my brain to switch off last night and it ended with some very odd dreams that for most of the night felt real and needed sorting out in my brain so I could go to sleep. I put most of the blame on The End of Mr. Y, a very good, if slightly strange book I'm reading at the moment!

Friday, December 21, 2007

Roll on the end of the day!

As that will be when my Christmas holidays start!

To be honest I don't intend on doing much work today but I need to keep my phone and laptop on in case of anything coming through (and the fact I'm someone else's contact on their out of office for today). And since I've got my office set up a little better now I can be doing my blog on a completely separate computer without leaving my desk where my laptop and docking station is set up! The problem is I have done everything I needed to do already!

I've been using the last couple of days to practice homeworking and its been quite enjoyable actually...although I need to make sure I leave the house at some point...I've not crossed the threshold for 3 days at least...

Saturday, December 08, 2007

He's behind you!

Just got back from the Wolsey panto and had a great time! No celebs just fantastic fun and all the performers played their own instruments on stage! Brilliant!

Not bad

All in all not too bad a day so far. Just got up from a nap (to recover from my very early morning) and after a few minutes in the kitchen there's now a quite brown looking chilli bubbling away for a little later.

Had pancakes and crispy bacon for breakfast before popping out to the tip (successful), but failing to find a printer (I only want wireless, I don't need a scanner/copier built in!). Finally managed to get a Christmas tree and back home tidied decorated and hoovered in record time.

Christmas cards all written and we've now watched number 2 of our bumper Hitchcock boxset (we've seen Topaz & Shadow of a Doubt so far)

I can hear K watching Ghostbusters in the other room and once we've eaten we'll be off to see the panto!

Gaming Update

Xbox just had its autumn update and with it came Xbox Originals, stuff that you can download that you might have missed the first time around.

Downloaded Fahrenheit and Pyschonauts and enjoying them both so far. F is a moody mystery thriller so far that starts off with your character clearly under some kind of other control killing a man in a diner bathroom. From there you need to decide whether to mop up the blood, hide the body, escape the diner etc. The action has just shifted to the lead cop and I have been questioning witnesses. Great stuff!

Pyschonauts is a game that I've heard about but not really known what it was about. Simply it is a platformer/collectathon but it seems like there's real effort been put into the story and characters. Its set in a kind of American summer camp setting and so far quite enjoyable...but after playing Super Mario Galaxy (105 stars) the controls don't feel nearly as tight or responsive! Although I suspect that's pretty much going to be the case for everything other than SMG now!

Looking forward to what Christmas has in store gaming wise! I suspect I have Orange Box & Mass Effect coming. I think I may also be getting Link's Crossbow training as well as Pit & Rummikub! Gamerariffic!

So near yet so far

I sit here at 6.50am on a saturday morning wondering what on earth I'm doing out of bed at this hour, let alone updating my blog!

Not sure if its a coincidence but its exactly 6 months gone and 3 months to go. Now we're at this mark I'm allowing myself to get more excited about the whole thing but its still a bt of a rollercoaster to be honest. I imagine having conversations with this new person (sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl) and then I have to remind myself that there is still 3 months to go and they aren't here yet. I don't want to be pessimistic but I know if something goes wrong I will be crushed. A bond has already formed to this person who seems to enjoy annoying K as much as I do! Its hard to put these feelings into words but to be honest March 8th can not come soon enough as far as I'm concerned.

We do still have Christmas to get out of the way first. Due to significant website ordering of presents and the fact that our recycling is collected fortnightly the house is more or less full of cardboard! A trip to the tip is in order today, if only to make room for the tree which we need to put up. Fortunately we have the first of our (very) staggered Christmas's tomorrow (K's dad) so we should be able to start to divest ourselves of presents and make room for the packing that I need to do. In prep for the baby I'll be starting to work from home and currently the conditions for that are less than ideal. The camping equipment, spare bed, and exercise bike are being shipped off to mum's for storage until we move (sometime next year in all likelihood). I still ned to order a van for that...must remember to do that this week!

Luckily work is a little quiet at the moment. A 5 week period means the next set of reporting isn't due until Christmas week and we'll all be off anyway. It does mean January is shaping up to be a nightmare though with back to back reporting for 4 weeks. It should be just the thing to distract though, the baby will be so close and January is very long in money terms as BT are good and pay us early for Christmas. Great in theory but forces you to scrimp throughout January. Speaking of pay it has finally all come together...I've been promoted, got my pay rise as well as my new benefits (health cover, free line rental etc). To be honest I was hoping that it would reinvigorate me and increase my enthusiasm for work but it hasn't really! I think I need to focus on home though so I shouldn't be too worried about work.

In other news I'm typing this blog entry on our new iMac! We needed to replace the old PC before the baby came along and after playing with a mac at the Apple store in Florida I couldn't resist! I personally don't know how they fit it all into the monitor but I know that I absolutely love this keyboard! The only problem is I know need to get a new printer (usb) to connect to this beast. To be honest I quite fancy the look of a wifi one so I can be a bit inventive with the layout of the office. Its going to be weird with my work PC and home PC (oops Mac) next to each other but I can pretend I'm an evil genius with multiple computer screens!