Ageing (dis)gracefully!
Archive for December, 2007
A New Years Resolution
Dec 29th
Last year I made a new years resolution and actually stuck to it! It was to stop having a lunchtime pint every day at work! I can recall maybe 2 exceptions to this rule in 2007, both for special circumstances, but I have otherwise stuck to this resolution!
This year I am going to roll out a classic … I want to lose weight. I can already hear the sniggers as I type this, and I have already spoken to several doubters (including Lucy!) who think it will be a flash in the pan, but it has only made me more determined.
I like having targets so it makes it slightly easier that we have our wedding in April as a goal to work towards. This will definately motivate me!
The plan?
Well I already know I hate going to the gym …I am far too self conscious to by exerting myself to the brightest shade of red that a human has ever been – with an audience! I’d actually love the gym if I was the only one there! SO – over the next couple of months (starting next week) I intend to buy a few cheapy bits of gym equipment and put them in our garage. The garage will become a temporary home gym.
I am currently 14 stone (ish) and should really be 12 (ish). I am really not bothered about losing the weight as such, I have no problem with my size, my problem is where the weight is! Namely, my big belly and my saggy man boobs! …oh and I have a fat arse aswell! 
Of course, I will try and improve my diet and will stop drinking beer at home but excercise is quite obviously the best way to lose weight, so a combination of all of these things should help.
Stay tuned to this blog, as I will report my progress and prove all you doubters wrong!
Boxing Day
Dec 28th
Lucys parents had been working on Xmas day, so we had planned an alternative Xmas on Boxing Day!
As I was back on nights that night, I stayed in bed until 11:30am. I might not have needed to sleep in that late, but it ensured I wasn’t going to be up and awake for 24+ hours! It would just be 21 hours instead! …………*groan*………
Lucy went out to her parents first and I got ready slowly with a cup of tea and some music and followed her out at about 1pm.
We had a lovely Xmas lunch with a prawn cocktail starter, turkey and all the trimmings and some lovely Xmas pud to round things off. Very enjoyable.
We opened presents after dinner. Both myself and lucy got the obligatory deadorants/smellies etc but our main present was something very practical and useful – a Water Butt. It’s basically a large tank that connects to your drainpipes and collects rainwater, so when you water the garden, you are essentially recycling water and saving on your own water bill! ideal!
Unfortunately I had to work on Boxing Day, so at 6:30pm I got in the car and made my way there for another 12 hours of ‘fun!’.
Christmas 2007:
Xmas Day: crap as I was tired beyond belief all day.
Boxing Day: much better as I wasn’t so tired ….but not very nice to go and do a 12 hour shift after it! 
Hopefully I won’t be on the Xmas rota next year! 
Christmas Day
Dec 27th
After seemingly months of buildup, christmas has yet again passed in a flash.
I have to admit to not really enjoying it this year, purely as I was working over most of the festive period. I was on nights on xmas eve into xmas day, and didn’t get home and into bed until gone 7am on xmas morning. I was pretty determined to get by on as little sleep as possible though so that I could at least try and enjoy the day. I certainly didn’t want to spend half of it in bed.
I ended up getting up @ about 9:30am and the lack of sleep unfortunately set the tone for the rest of the day. After a quick wake up cuppa me and Lucy opened the presents we had bought each other. We had already set a budget of £50 each to avoid either of us unecessarily spending too much. I still remember our first xmas together when I went WAY over the top with presents …more than a little embarrasing.
I got Lucy a digital camera (as requested!) and a few other bits and pieces. It was originally just going to be the camera, as that had taken me to the limit of the £50 budget, but it felt a bit stingy to only give one present across so I nipped into town one morning last week and picked up a few gifty type items.
My main present was a bit of a surprise. Lucy had somehow dug out a photo I had taken at a recent Marillion gig and had it printed onto a large canvas for me. I was absolutely speechless when I opened it. Easily one of the best presents I have ever had and yet again she has shown how thoughtful she can be as far as presents go. She may not like my taste in music, but she sure as hell supports my ‘passion’ in it. The below picture really doesn’t do it justice, it looks stunning.
I particularly liked this photo because Steve Hogarth (Marillions frontman) appeared to be looking directly at my camera when I took the pic! So it is that much more special as its more or less posed for!
We ate a roast pork dinner on xmas day, we skipped on the Turkey as we knew we were going to be having that at lucys folks on Boxing Day as that was going to be our proper Christmas Day due to everyone working. After this I simply could not keep my head up so went and had a lay down for an hour. Tiredness is something I have become accustomed to since moving to 12 hour nights, but every now and then I get kicked in the nuts with it, and this was definately one of those times.
Lucys dad popped in after he finished work, and thankfully I was a bit more awake at this point. We had some nibbles and I tried some different cheeses with crackers/biscuits. Have never had ‘Stilton’ before for example, and really liked it! I then drank fairly consistently until 10pm ….with no effect whatsoever due to how tired I was! Not that I wanted to get hammered or anything, but a little merry on Christmas Day would have been nice! It wasn’t happening though.
I ended up watching ‘The Most Shocking Celebrity Moments Of The 90’s’ on Five until gone midnight before going to sleep.
A very different Christmas day, although it can never top the day I spent Xmas on my own (2003) for being the worst!
To Be Continued! (bet you can’t chuffing wait!!!)
Knocking Noise Fixed!
Dec 17th
Took my car into a garage this morning so they could check out the knocking noise that was coming from the front end. As suspected, and blogged a couple of weeks ago, it was the droplinks that needed replacing.
Thankfully it didn’t cost too much @ £58 and I had the car back within 4 hours. Infact, the garage had already taken it for a test drive and phoned me back with their diagnosis within 20 mins of me dropping the car off! So I shall definately be using them in the future. Much better customer service!
Afterwards they even showed me the old parts and explained how they worked and where they were worn etc. Went straight over my head, but it’s nice to be spoken to like that instead of the way the last garage treated me.
Driving the car without the knocking noise is so much nicer. It seems smoother aswell. I was that pleased that I treated the car to a trip through the carwash on the way home.
Honeymoon Booked!
Dec 16th
Just booked our honeymoon! We are going to Prague!
I have been looking at destinations for a couple of weeks now, and always had the idea we would go somewhere traditionally romantic such as Paris, Barcelona, Venice, Vienna etc. Prague is not a location I would associate with romance, but then that could quite easily be because I didn’t know much about Prague at all!
(excerpt from wikipedia.org)
“Situated on the River Vltava in central Bohemia, Prague has been the political, cultural, and economic center of the Czech state for over 1100 years.
Prague is widely considered to be one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and is among the most visited cities on the continent”
Looks like a lovely place though and I have booked us a 4 star hotel that sounds pretty much perfect. I won’t go into too much detail as Lucy wants to be suprised by it, so will keep those details away from her eyes incase she stumbles upon this blog entry!
I booked the hotel and flights myself as through a tour operator they were quite a bit dearer. Booking flights with EasyJet has saved us over £130! and we have the added welcome bonus of not having to pick up a connection in Frankfurt! These are direct flights!
All I have to sort out now is transfers from the airport to the hotel, and after a few enquiries it seems this can be done relatively cheaply.
Anyway – another item to tick off the wedding list! Now it’s on to the invitations ….
New Phone!
Dec 15th
The contract on my mobile was up for renewal so I have been looking around for a new phone. Not one of the phones that Vodafone could offer me were of any interest so I started to look at other providers and what they could offer.
I was initially very attracted to the Blackberry as I really liked the idea of more featured ‘portable’ internet access, not to mention its sat nav capability. I couldn’t find a deal I was happy with though. There is a limit to the amount I would be prepared to pay on a monthly contract for a phone, and the Blackberry surpassed it.
The new Apple iPhone was also a possiblity, until I realised that aswell as signing up to an 18 month contract, you also had to pay £269 for the phone! Sod that!
I then stumbled upon the phone I eventually chose – the LG Viewty (KU990). It’s a touch screen based phone that has been dubbed as an ‘iPhone killer’. Infact, I don’t think it’s as good as an iPhone, but its still very very good!
As well as a swanky touch screen, it also boasts a load of other cutting edge features. It is one of only a couple of phones on the market that boast a 5 megapixel camera! I have only taken a handful of pictures so far, but the quality has been exceptional. It has an automatic/manual 3x focus aswell as red eye reduction and image stabliser. The latter will be of enormous benefit at any gigs I goto …as a good 50% of all photos I take at gigs are blurred due to not being hold the camera steady in a crowd!
It can also play video and music and this can be from the phones internal memory or via an SD Micro addon card ..of which is expandable upto 2GB, something I intend to get in the new year.
A big selling point for me is that you can view the real internet, as opposed to being restricted to WAP. You can scroll around the page either with your finger or the little stylus provided with the phone. The screen is big enough to make things very readable, and if you are having problems you can still zoom in and out. I’ll definately be making use of this feature!
The only slight downside is that I am very anxious about scratching the touch screen, so have kept the protective LCD plastic strip on the front. This unfortunately makes the phone look very cheap and tacky …….i’m sure i’ll lighten up and remove it eventually though!
I’m still getting to grips with it, so there are still loads of features I have yet to test out, but I can definately say that I am very happy with it.
Suits You!
Dec 15th
We went to Yeovil this morning with my best man, Lucys Dad & Lucys brother for an appointment at the place we are hiring the wedding suits from. The appointment was to get the three of them measured up, and also let them try on the suits they will be wearing.
All went well & everyone looked good which was a bit of a relief. I really liked the suit, so it would have been a bit of a bugger to have to change things had the others not looked right. In effect, it’s another item to be ticked off the to-do list.
Seeing them with their suits on made the wedding seem more real than it has before. Things are definately ramping up a gear at the moment!
Next item on the agenda is the honeymoon and I hope to have this booked by early next week. We are looking at a city break of some kind. Neither of us want a beach holiday, we’d rather it was in a traditionally romantic setting/place considering it is the honeymoon. I’m thinking Rome, Barcelona, Vienna ..somewhere a bit different to our usual idea of a holiday destination.
