Happy Christmas to everyone! And I doubt I'll blog before the new year happens, so Happy New Year as well! And thanks to the elusive Mark Weldon for gracing us with his presence last night. :)

Perhaps I will do something interesting this year with the internet. I never got very far with my 'taking pictures of Leicester' idea. I have all these ideas but never get around to things. Terrible. And the aforementioned elusive Mark and one other person who messaged me seem keen on me posting more stories. Perhaps I will dig something out. I doubt I will ever get around to writing anything new. Though who knows?

Today we tried to dye the settee covers purple, but overfilled the washing machine and did NOT achieve an even colour. So we will have to buy two more packets of dye and do it in two separate lots. Annoying, since I bought the dye in Essex and don't know where to buy it in Leicester. Annoying all round really. I thought we were being optimistic but Rob seemed to think it would be ok. Oh well. This is what I'm spending my holiday doing. *sigh*

Apart from stuff like dying settee covers, I suppose a fair bit of Christmas fun has occurred, with more to come. We went to my parents for the week leading up to Christmas, then came back to Leicester on Boxing Day. We spent Christmas Day with my mum and dad, brother John and my mum's mum. We popped to my aunt's to see my dad's mum. So we saw pretty much my entire close family, excluding my other aunt and uncle and two cousins who live somewhere else. I don't have a big family. :)

We had another disaster as well - 'fixing' John's iTunes library resulted in the deletion of all his mp3s, only some of which (a small proportion) were backed up. Oh dear... So I am ripping mp3s whilst I blog. (I'm using his shiny laptop, which has the added benefit of keeping my lap warm.)

Boxing Day we went to Rob's parents for dinner and saw his sister Emma as well, which was nice. Emma's really into knitting at the moment so we had some lovely knitted presents. Some of the stuff's really cool - knitting seems to have moved on a bit since the old days when it was all cardigans!

And last night we had Mark, John, Rachel, Ali and Mat round. Hooray! We're getting together again New Year's Day for a Christmas related day, since we were split up a bit on the actual Christmas Day. So there will be more presents. Woo!

Christmas presents weren't that exciting though I was given some CDs I'd wanted for a while, DVDs, that sort of thing. Mum and Dad didn't do presents this year so I've got some money burning a hole in my pocket. John bought me an Indiana Jones Mr Potato Head, though, which is interesting. :)

Now I can't help but think about this song: Cash in my Pocket - the video's genius!

Anyway, I shall be off for now. Bye bye!

posted by Fiery Fred @ 7:22 PM 1 comments

Oh, also, I see that Yes Man will be out soon. It's one of the best books I've ever read. It made me cry. But I wonder whether it will be as inspiring with Jim Carrey playing the lead? :0

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:32 PM 0 comments

We bought a new hamster, she's called Heidi because she kept hiding. She's not hiding so much now though. We've had her, hmm, nearly two weeks now. She's pretty cute. But all hamsters are cute to some extent, so...

Have been busy with work, had a few meetings to go to (seems to be the time of year for that). I went to the British Museum for one, Lincoln for one and today I went to Bakewell. Luckily though there was a bit of snow on the ground up there it wasn't enough to be a problem. It's supposed to snow a fair bit tonight though. Brr.

Today's meeting was taking place while the Queen was making her speech, and the implications of that speech are potentially massive. We've been waiting for the Heritage Protection Bill to go to Parliament - it's a big change to how heritage assets will be managed. Unfortunately, it would only go to Parliament if the Queen mentioned in her speech, and (as we suspected) she didn't. The 'Economic Crisis' has meant other things have taken its place. So... who knows what will happen now? From my point of view I was looking forward to Historic Environment Records becoming statutory, but that won't happen now. If they became statutory then councils would have to have them and my job would be more secure. And also there'd be money to make them better. Ho hum.

I've been playing Fallout 3 quite a lot. It's not perfect (pretty imperfect in places, weird stuff happens) but it's great fun and looks very bleak. I can hear Rob playing it now, lots of stuff sounds like it's dying. :)

Ah, what else... went to see Max Payne, which was much better than I thought it would be (I had low expectations!). It was very well done from the point of view of being like the game - shot in the same style etc. I enjoyed it. And it had a bit after the credits, which helps justify my insistence that I always stay until the credits stop rolling!

Better go now, getting late. Bye!

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:13 PM 0 comments