Ageing (dis)gracefully!
Archive for February, 2009
T-Minus 4 Months
Feb 22nd
It’s four Months to go until Baby Lawrence makes its grand entrance to the big wide world!
Lots of things to be thought about, but one of these is it’s bedroom. We live in a 3 bedroom house, the smallest bedroom is my home office and the other spare room is where the baby is going to go. It’s a modest size, easily classed as a double. The problem is that it has been used as a general dumping ground for the last 18 months… loads of crap in there. It also had a gigantic fitted wardrobe spanning its back wall. It took up a lot of space!
We’ve had a clearout of the crap and on Wednesday evening I set about dismantling the wardrobe. It took a good few hours as it was literally attached to the wall. Got there in the end though and on Thursday morning at the crack of dawn I was in the garage, sawing bits of it up so it could all fit in my car to go to the tip/recycling centre.
This weekend I have finished clearing the room. It’s now completely empty. I’ve had the polyfilla out and have filled in the holes left by the wardrobe and will be sanding them down tomorrow. The painting will then commence. We have gone for a light yellow colour called ‘Lemon Ice’. Nice and neutral as we don’t know if we are gonna have a little girl or a little boy.
We also went looking for a cot bed and associated bedroom furniture today. We decided on a great little bedding set featuring various farmyard animals (great for a Somerset baby!) and found an ideal cot bed, but we haven’t bought anything yet as we want to make sure we get the furniture to match it.
It’s nice to start preparing the room, makes me feel like a Dad already 
Revenue Raiser
Feb 16th
I got clocked speeding about a month ago. 38mph in a 30mph limit. Naughty me.
The result of it is I have to go on some kind of speed awareness course to avoid any points on my licence. Going on the course also negates the £60 fixed penalty, but the course costs £60 ..so it’s no different really.
I can’t help but feel pissed off at all this though. Yes, I was in the wrong, but the place they chose to put a mobile speed camera is ridiculous to say the least. It was on a section leaving town, up over a motorway bridge, just at the point the speed limit changes from 30mph to 40mph.
Ok, the rules of the road say don’t accelerate before you pass the sign that says the limit has changed, but FFS … it was metres away… I kid you not. It’s also hardly an accident blackspot, I guarantee that the camera probably clocked every single person that passed it that day.
I have 2 words for it – ‘Revenue Raiser’.
Fully Paid Up
Feb 14th
Just checked my online banking and am pleased to see that I am now fully paid up for the Marillion Weekend in March!
The last payment (coach transfer from the airport to the weekend site and back) went out yesterday. All thats left now is spending/beer money, and I did a few overtime shifts last month which should cover that nicely.
We are going out to Holland a day early and staying in Amsterdam for the night, flights were cheaper on the Thursday and the difference in price to flights on a the Friday was about the same as a night in a cheap hotel over there! There is also a Marillion tribute band playing in Amsterdam that night, so am sure we will end up at that gig!
I really can’t wait! Not quite sure how my liver is going to cope with 4 nights in a row of heavy drinking though!
I know, I could not drink ….. but where would be the fun in that? 
A Trip Down Memory Lane
Feb 13th
After getting back in touch with some relatives I haven’t seen properly in the best part of twenty years, i’ve gotten a little nostalgic.
I went up into the loft this afternoon to find a box of old photo’s that my mum gave to me when I moved out years ago and looking through the photo’s has put me in a very reflective mood.
My core family is pretty small. Mum and Dad split up when I was quite young and we ended up moving from a small seaside town in Wales to the delights of Weston Super Mare in England. The distance ensured that any contact with family was minimal (on both my Mum and Dad’s side) and quickly fizzled out completely. Obviously, contact has been there with my Dad, and we have seen a lot of him, Hayley (his wife) and our brother and sister from his second marriage, William & Charlotte.
On my mums side, especially since the grandparents died, there has been zero contact … it’s a bit weird really. That side in particular seem more than happy to never speak to each other again. Quite sad really.
Anyway, it’s a very bizarre, but very nice feeling to realise once again that there is legitimate family out there. Closely linked family aswell, none of this 3rd cousins removed bollocks.
The knock on effect of leafing through the old photos today is that it has really made me wonder what life would have been like if we hadn’t moved from Wales. Don’t get me wrong, I have no regrets, I am very happy wih the way my life has turned out, but it still makes me wonder.
I shall continue reflecting
ADSL2+ – The Verdict
Feb 12th
As blogged below, I was going to get onto Sky about moving me over to ADSL2+.
It was quite difficult to get done, primarily as the numpty I spoke to at Sky had absolutely no idea what I was requesting. I seemed to know more about my connection than he did. He didn’t even know what G.DMT was!
It turns out that Sky have 3 tiers of technical support, and that your call to them goes through to tier 1 ..effectively call takers who work through simple problems vis a script. I obviously deviated from their script.
Nevertheless! I got the switch done in the end and even though the result of it hasn’t been as great as I had hoped, I am still happy with it. My synch speed has improved by around 1mb at peak times and nearly 2mb at quiet times.
I am downloading at the moment, and the speed of the download is thus:
Considering my top speed was around 700/800k beforehand, I have gained quite a bit. Overall it’s been a worthwhile excercise.
The Power Of Facebook
Feb 12th
I’ve had the experience on Facebook of finding yourself back in touch with friends you haven’t seen or spoken to in donkeys years. Over the last few days though, it’s happened to a few long lost (to me) family members!
It’s easy to knock Facebook. Infact I was reading an article on the BBC website the other day that has hundreds of comments on it, saying how much of a waste of time it actually is. All no doubt written by people who have never used the site!
This proves exactly what Facebooks strong point is. I wouldn’t be back in touch with these family members without it.
