Ageing (dis)gracefully!
Reflecting On 2009
Dec 31st
So it’s New Years Eve 2009.. a year that has probably been the biggest of my life. This is because the month of June saw the arrival of my daughter, Amelia.
Nothing quite prepares you for fatherhood and it’s been a rollercoaster of an experience so far. The nights of lost sleep during her first 2 months were pure hell on earth, but we pulled through and by 4 months the little tike was going down by 7pm and usually not getting up again until 6am. She is breast fed, and we started weaning her at 5 months. She now has 3 meals a day and generally only has the breast at night before bed. Quite an achievement and I am so proud of both her and Lucy.
The developing stages of a baby are brilliant. I love how things change and how they learn things so quickly. One day she is can’t do something, and the next day she is a pro at it. Rolling herself from her back to her front was one such milestone. Picking things up and holding them and then eventually manipulating them with her hands was another. As was the first time she managed to get onto all fours and crawl (kind of, she goes backwards!). She is growing up fast and it is so great to witness what new things she can do.
Amelia is now 7 months old and has a great little personality already. She smiles at almost everyone she meets (she takes after her mother there I think!) and doesn’t seem to have any fear.
Christmas this year was great. We were sat around Lucys parents dining table, as we have done every year since we’ve been together. Seeing Amelia sat there in her high chair was bizarre though! It suddenly struck me that I am a father. This seems to happen every now and then. It’s not that I don’t know I am a father, it’s that something happens to affirm it.
Roll on 2010, I can’t wait!
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Dec 20th
My beautiful 6 month old daughter, Miss Santa Amelia Lawrence Claus!
Merry Christmas!!! 
Neverland
Dec 12th
I took a flip HD camcorder to the Marillion Weekend in Holland earlier this year. I filmed most of the Sunday night gig without even realising it! I spent the gig next to one of the bars, drinking copious amounts of a beer called ‘Jupiler’. Most of the footage is through my drunken eyes …sadly, it also has some of my very own backing vocals!
The original plan was to put all of this (plus other weekend footage) onto a DVD and distribute it to the guys I spent the weekend with. I have been incredibly tardy with this though (6 month old baby, thats my excuse!), so have uploaded another clip to youtube.
This is the last 6 or so minutes of Neverland, complete with one of the best audience appreciations to a song I have ever witnessed. The hairs were stood up on the back of my neck at the time! My friend Leigh sums it up very well in the last 30 or so seconds of the video!
Bonus Time
Nov 16th
Just got confirmation of a performance related bonus in work. It got me thinking though … when I got my last big bonus about three years ago, it caused a monumental upset at home.
I was very very drunk one night. I knew the bonus was on the horizon and under the heavy influence of alcohol I told Lucy that when it came through, I would buy an engagement ring and propose. I was drunk and to this day I have no memory of this conversation.
Fast forward a few weeks, the bonus comes through and I go buy a nice shiny laptop. Lucy cries for about a week solid. After a few days I get to the bottom of the issue, apologise etc but there isnt much consoling her. She had gotten her hopes up big time, and me, being the nasty bastard that I am, dashed those hopes.
I did get a ring and got down on one knee about 6 months later, she said yes and we married the following year, so all ended well. I also eventually sold the laptop as it symbolised a pretty shitty few weeks. I actually felt guilty when using it!
So, its bonus time again and my thoughts are already turning to what I can buy. Im stopping myself though ..much easier in the long run if I let Lucy decide what we do with it! Im proper under the thumb arent I?! 
iTunes Skipping
Nov 10th
I have recently had a problem with music skipping when played through iTunes on Windows. I’d play a tune and it would stop, skip etc and make the music virtually unlistenable!
After a bit of troubleshooting and a bit of googling I resolved the problem, but thought i’d blog it incase anyone else has the same issue.
- Close iTunes
- Goto Start>Control Panel>Quicktime
- Select the ‘Audio’ tab
- Amend ‘Play Audio Using’ to ‘Safe mode (waveOut only).
According to the various threads and pages I trawled through from google, this should solve the problem, however it didn’t for me. If it doesn’t for you, try the following in the same ‘Audio’ tab of Quicktime:
- Adjust ‘Audio Output Device Latency (msec)’ to a 66.000 (Default is 33.0000)
This was in Windows 7, but I have had the same problem in XP and Vista in the past. Figured if I blogged it at least I could come back and get the solution if I ever forgot (like I did today and ended up googling for ages!).
Marillion Weekend – Day 2
Nov 7th
I woke up in a grotty hotel in Amsterdam after approximately five hours of sleep/drunken unconsciousness. As I opened my eyes my thoughts immediately turned to how I was feeling. I had drunk a heck of a lot the night before and not had my traditional pre-emptive hangover cure (food!) at the end of the night. Surely I would be hanging?
However, I sat up and felt fine. I got up and felt fine. I took a shower, I felt fine! It was bloody brilliant!
Leigh, also as unaffected by last nights antics as myself, helped me rearrange the room back into it’s original ‘twin’ layout and we then met Ian & John downstairs for breakfast. When I say breakfast, I had a bread roll, some cold meat and a bit of cheese. I ended up slapping it all together and eating it like a sandwich. I hate continental breakfasts! I’d have a good old English fry up any day of the week!
We then sat around for about 30 minutes, drinking Orange Juice and Coffee, discussing the night before and deciding a plan of action for the coming day. We knew we had to be back at the airport to catch our bus for around midday, so decided we would take a tram into central Amsterdam and wander around.
Wandering around the murky backstreets was quite fun. We walked past lots of the establishments you would expect to find in Amsterdam such as the sex shops, cafes with the distinct smell of cannabis emanating from them, X rated cinemas, and Leigh’s personal favourite, a Pizza shop that miraculously had a smell of pizza coming from it! 
Domain Renewed
Nov 5th
I’ve been getting a lot of renewal notices for danlawrence.co.uk recently. I was actually contemplating not renewing at all as this blog is fairly stagnant these days and I could easily move it over to some free wordpress hosting with one of their .wordpress.com domain names … then it dawned on me…. both mine and Lucys email addresses run through this domain! doh!
So – renewed for another 2 years!
