Thursday, November 12
Figured I should blog - we bought
a new Medion Netbook and I'm trying it out. It's pretty cool but oddly hard to type on the slightly smaller keyboard. Also some of the keys are a bit squished up. But all things considered it's very neat. Ever since I bought my first laptop, Brian, almost ten years ago I've thought Medion PCs were good. Brian still works, though some of his keys aren't very responsive. But they seem like decent PCs. Plus they're cheap and they give you all the discs with the software on, unlike some people...
Probably lots of things have happened since I last blogged. Mainly it's been taken up with stress and people being ill. Rob's still coughing from his germs, and I caught some germs and was off work for a few days. I've been back at work since Tuesday though still headachey and a bit coughy. But hey. It probably wasn't Swine Flu. There are a lot of germs around at the moment. :)
Watched a lot of
Stargate lately. While I was ill I realised I hadn't watched Series 10 - had forgotten I'd been given it! So I've watched most of that now. And I'm still enjoying Stargate Universe, though it's pretty slow going. And I wish there were some proper aliens. From what they said there won't be - Stargate's always been best with a good bad guy (if that's not a contradiction in terms!) like the Goa'uld or the Wraith. Oh well. Telford is so evil. Booo!!!
The germs prevented us from going to a firework display for November 5th so we bought some rockets and sparklers and had a display in the garden.
Ali, Mat and her sister came, and my brother John was there too. Felt ill by the end of it but it was good fun.
We bought the
Fallout 3 Game of the Year edition (John has our original copy), which has all the addons. Tried playing the Point Lookout addon though I think perhaps it would be easier at a higher level (went there at level 6) with better gear! I may have to leave and return later.
Anyway, should probably go and make lunch etc for tomorrow...
Wednesday, October 28
Yesterday I saw the largest collection of medieval artillery shot found on a battlefield in Europe. Amazingly, it was
found right here in Leicestershire, at Bosworth. But even Richard III's guns, ranging from hand guns to cannon, weren't able to save him from Henry Tudor. Oddly, the announcement about these lead balls was overshadowed by various comments about how it meant the battle wasn't where we thought it was. It's kind of sad that the news that was
supposed to be the big news has hardly made the news at all.
I mean, no-one knows where the battle took place, apart from it happened somewhere near Dadlington. That the finds were recovered only 2 miles away from the Battlefield Centre means it was pretty well located, all things considered. And they still don't know exactly where the battle took place. The evidence of artillery might show where the rout happened, but battles are big things. Unfortunately for the project (a project that only took place because no-one knew where the battle happened!) it's hard to locate 2 hours of history that took place over 500 years ago...
In other news, we went to Southend for the weekend for my mum's birthday. Had a good time, though my dad's not particularly well.
Wednesday, October 21
I have voluntarily exiled myself to the spare bed - Rob's 'virus' kept us both awake all last night. I have been grumpy all day. This week has sort of gone downhill from Monday. I met a very interesting archaeologist on Monday. I suppose you kind of forget, when you do things every day, that the job you do is actually very interesting. I mean, I do find it very interesting, just sometimes the sheer quantity of things and having to do so many of the
boring parts as well makes you forget. Anyway, the interesting archaeologist, well... he was particularly interesting because he was going to do some geophysical survey work the next day for
Alan Garner! Okay, maybe it's not that interesting, but I did find it very interesting at the time. I remember reading his books when I was small. :)
We were supposed to be going out to see the
Renato D'Aiello Band this evening but what with Rob being ill, and me being very tired and generally bleugh, we sent
Ali and Mat instead. Who knows if they enjoyed it, hehe. I have no idea what the band's like, I booked it because of the heavy saxophone element, thinking Rob would like it. All our plans are a bit hazy at the moment. We were supposed to be going to Southend for a long weekend since it's my Mum's birthday. Don't know if we'll make it now.
He's been ill ages now. Poor little Rob. Aaah...
Not much else to say except
Jenson Button Rocks! The Brazilian GP on Sunday was brilliant, most exciting race of the season! The first laps had me literally on the edge of my seat. I could hardly bear to watch it. Whatever else you say about the man, he's pulled off some brilliant overtaking moves this year. I'm glad he's World Champion. Hopefully next year will be as close as this year has been!
Thursday, October 15
Some people seem to post a lot of intelligent thoughts on their blogs. I guess I'm not one of those people, never have been, never likely to be. My blog tends to be me rambling on about stuff that doesn't really matter. If you hadn't noticed. I have been feeling a bit sad lately, for various reasons, nothing in particular, just kind of down. Haven't played the bass guitar for ages, I kind of wish I had fun people to play with - sometimes I really miss my the church my brother goes to, they were brilliant. I suppose with an instrument like the bass guitar there's a limit to how many bass guitarists you need. And if I'm not amazing, why should I be the person who gets to play? I only started because there wasn't anyone else playing it. I taught myself, though I had had a few classical guitar lessons (kind of similar in many ways). So... I dunno. Haven't even played the ukulele that much, which is a shame since my birthday ukulele is a thing of great beauty. :)
Rob's been poorly with some sort of cold, or man flu, pretty sure it's not swine flu! There's a limit to how much sympathy I feel able to give. I was very sympathetic to start with, when he seemed really rather ill. But it's worn off a bit. That's awful, I know. I start feeling annoyed that my daily routine is shattered. I treasure my half an hour alone before he gets home. I make some coffee, watch
Neighbours, and lately I've been doing my stupid
Facebook farming. I really like being alone. I go out of my way to avoid people sometimes. That can't be a good thing. Ho hum.
I think the main problem with the whole 'not playing the bass guitar' issue is that the one event I
would get to play at (church music practices) I'm terrified of attending. I psyched myself up last time and couldn't go because there was another meeting I didn't know about. I really am terrified. My heart's speeding up just thinking about it. Pretty much every time I've gone I've ended up wanting to cry. I end up feeling a) useless at playing the guitar and b) like I don't have any friends. I'm not very good at friends, really. At church there's always people making small talk, but at stuff like the practices everyone has friend groups that they congregate in. I just feel old and useless. My inability to talk to people face to face is (let's face it) the reason I used to spend so much time online. Much easier talking to people if they're at the other end of a computer.
Aargh, well, I shall stop rambling. And in posting this, I'm not looking for sympathy or anything. Sometimes I just feel like I need to post stuff because it's inside me and I don't know what to do with it. I find it hard to explain out loud when I have things bothering me. Much easier to think it through and type it out. So there we go. :)
Tuesday, October 13
Here we are again, finally blogging. I started this
Farmville thing on Facebook, which means I have to keep logging on to look at my farm, but I still don't manage to blog regularly! Dreadful. I wanted to talk about two things -
Stargate: Universe and, hmm, something else. What was it? Can't remember. Might have been the new
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book, 'And another thing...', which came out yesterday.
On the subject of
Stargate: Universe, well, I liked it a lot! It's certainly a lot darker than previous Stargates. It's hard to see how it'll turn out, but it's an interesting idea (easiest way to get an odd bunch of people together, the old 'ship a long way from home' premise). Okay, it's sort of Star Trek: Voyager, but hey. It has Stargates instead of transporters! I bet you could go through the cast and match them up.
Hmm, that's too tempting not to try:
Nicholas Rush is kind of like Chakotay. He's a bit scary and you're not sure what he's up to. To begin with it was hard to know what Chakotay's motives were - was he Starfleet or Maquis?
Everett Young, the man in charge - I guess he's got to be Captain Janeway.
Matthew Scott, well, he's competent and clean cut so he has to be Harry Kim.
Eli Wallace is the comedy relief but he's clever and has to get used to doing things the military way. I suppose he's most like the EMH. Either that or he's Neelix, but that would get irritating.
Chloe Armstrong (intelligent female) - bit harder to work out, but possibly Kes. I guess if she gets together with Eli then we'll know for sure...
Tamara Johansen, she's most obviously a sexy medic, so she'd have to be 7 of 9 purely because of the 'sexy cast member' tag.
Ronald Greer, the 'angry airman', has to be Tom Paris. Their circumstances were almost identical - they were both in prison until given a new chance on Voyager/Destiny.
Wow, the similarities!
Anyway, I should probably go and find some dinner. Not a lot has happened really to blog about, we went out with John for his birthday on Friday night. Most of the weekend I looked after pathetic Rob, who has been all poorly. Aah.
Wednesday, October 7
Happy 10th birthday, Blogger! I guess I was a few years late to the party, not starting until 2002, but still. My blog's been invaluable - since I haven't kept a diary since I was a teenager, it helps me remember what I've done! And being digital, it's searchable. Brilliant! Obviously I don't type really personal stuff on here, as I would in a diary, but I probably have moaned a fair bit. Probably have to be even more careful than I used to be now it has an RSS feed linking it to Facebook (scary).
Since my last blog entry the main exciting thing to happen was a visit by my parents. They slaved away for several days to finish off our lawn - dug it over, got rid of the pesky roots that had brought us to a standstill, levelled it, bought and laid the turf - we just have to keep it alive now. We started painting the fence as well (the one that's not falling down) and did the shed, so it's looking much smarter than it did. They did a very good job.
The Japanese GP was pretty exciting - worth getting up at 4.45 for. Looks like it's going to be a bit of a nail biting finale to the season. I hope Jenson can hold on.
In other news,
Stargate Universe started last night on Sky 1 HD. I haven't watched it yet, I will attempt to watch it tonight. I will probably post what I think about it on here afterwards...
Sunday, September 27
Kept meaning to blog about what we did on holiday, though the thought of what could potentially be a longish post has put me off... I will blog though, possibly some people care. :)
We went to a place called Croy, which is near Inverness (in Scotland) - a map is
here if you want to see exactly where! We stayed in a cottage called
The Bothy, a very neat and modern conversion with everything you could ever want - including a log burner...
On the way up we stopped at
Wallfoot for the night, had a look at Hadrian's Wall. The place was fine, nothing amazing but quite comfortable. I'm glad we did stop halfway through the journey, it's a long way to the Highlands!
On Saturday 12th we arrived at Croy. I had a bit of a wander around, but we didn't feel like doing much by the time we got there.
Sunday 13th we headed off to the Black Isle, went to the Seal and Dolphin centre (basically a little hut) and drove around a bit.
Monday 14th we went to Spey Bay, to the
Whale and Dolphin centre there. The weather was beautiful, blue skies and really warm. We didn't see any dolphins, even though we borrowed binoculars from the centre. We did learn about the largest ice house in Scotland (we had a tour) and also learnt about whales and dolphins...
Tuesday 15th we headed off to Loch Ness, where we went round the
Loch Ness Centre, learning all about the various 'sightings' of the monster and how unlikely it is. It was a very cleverly done exhibition. And then we went round
Urquhart Castle. On the way home we went to the Falls of Foyers, which weren't anywhere near as exciting as I thought they would be from the hype. I've visited better waterfalls in the Lake District and Wales. ;)
Wednesday 16th, another beautiful day, went to discover
Cairngorm Mountain. We went up the funicular railway and enjoyed a lunch in the highest restaurant in the UK (at 1097m above sea level). Was disappointed by the camera obscura. On the way home we stopped at Lake Garten where some ospreys live (though sadly they had just left for Africa). It was beautiful though, even without the ospreys!
Thursday 17th went to
Fort George, which was particularly poignant because the funeral of a Black Watch sergeant killed in Afghanistan was taking place. Bagpipes really are very mournful things. It was an experience, though I didn't feel we could look around while things were going on (seemed disrespectful) so spent a lot of time standing out of the way watching. It is an interesting fort, though, built after Culloden. After looking round we went to
Culloden battlefield, which we walked round, but it was a very sad sort of place. We didn't go into the visitor's centre (cost £10 to get in) but did buy a book to learn more about it at home. I guess the battle had to take place, otherwise it would have meant our Civil War dragging on even longer, but I'm not totally well informed, so...
Friday 18th was the best day - we finally saw those elusive dolphins! We paid to go on a boat trip - went on
this trip from Avoch. We were soaked by the spray when the drove quickly, but it didn't matter because we saw at least 10 different dolphins swimming around in the Moray Firth. Three or four were swimming in front of a container ship (apparently they like to play with the bigger ships). Our boat was too small to be interesting. :) We also went to
Beauly Priory and the
Beauly Gallery and Kirk Coffee Shop - a place full of interesting things and very good coffee...
Saturday 19th we headed off back south. Stopped overnight at
Tillmouth Park Hotel, which was easily the poshest place I've ever stayed at! It's a Grade 2 listed house in parkland with a big castley folly in the distance. Brilliant. Very posh dinner, too, did feel a little out of place! I'm not use to being waited on. Rob had haddock and poached eggs for breakfast, it was that posh. :)
Arrived back in Leicester on Sunday 20th, tired after the long drive and kind of glad to be back, though looking at lots of different things (especially dolphins and mountains) was fun.
