Thursday, August 27
James will arrive tomorrow, that's exciting and a little scary. :) Haven't seen him since we got married 5 years ago, and now he's visiting from Australia for
Ali's wedding. Hopefully I will get stuff done so we can do as many things as possible in the short time he's in the UK...
Wednesday, August 26
Have been feeling less tired but other stuff's come back that I kind of thought had gone away. Might be feeling a bit stressed. Have a holiday in a few weeks though, woo! But before that it's
Ali and Mat's wedding, so...
Haven't done anything particularly exciting since blogging last. The
Ukulele Orchestra's Prom Concert was really good, their version of Danse Macabre was amazing. I will never be that good a ukulele player. :)
The European GP was ok, didn't see the beginning, it was great to see Rubens winning and happy though. He's very funny.
Oh, the series finale of
Dollhouse was totally mindblowing. I guess Joss Whedon didn't think he'd be coming back with a second series!
I should get on and do some of the stuff I need to get finished. Bye!
Tuesday, August 18
Lots of birthday fun over the weekend - spent most of Friday with
Ali, which I don't get to do so often these days. Mum, Dad and brother John turned up in the evening and we all had Chinese takeaway. Played
Guitar Hero World Tour a bit, which was a present - so far doesn't seem as good as
Rock Band, but maybe that's just because it's different. If that makes sense. :)
Saturday we did various things including visiting a farm shop, having lunch at a garden centre type place and looking round a music shop for a ukulele. My family are buying me a really nice one for my birthday, made from Mango wood. We did see it in the shop we looked in but Dad's ordered it from somewhere else where it's a bit cheaper. So that'll be interesting, I'll have to practice more! (Looking forward to the
Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain playing the proms tonight, woo!)
Sunday we went to
Donington Park to watch
Formula 2. It was fun, though I kind of enjoy things less when I'm not sure if the people I'm with are enjoying it. I know Mum, Dad and John did, not sure about Rob and Rachel! We sat in a grandstand by the start/finish straight for a while, which was good because you could see in the pits and (obviously) see the grid, but not so good because you couldn't hear the commentary so didn't know what was happening most of the time. Then we sat near Hollywood, where you could see a lot of the track and hear the commentary. I will have to watch the races (I recorded them on Eurosport) to see what actually happened - going to see it live is more of an experience than an informed sporting event!
And then Monday it was back to work. Today I went for my yearly dental check-up, a very cheap and relatively painless event that cost £16.50 (including a clean/polish), guess I'm lucky I have an NHS dentist. She suggested I think about having a retainer type brace thing to try and straighten my teeth out a bit, but not sure how that would work unless they took more of my teeth out. I already have 4 less than I should. I think she might just be trying to make me spend money, I hope so anyway, if it was needed to keep my teeth healthy then I might think about it. I'm not so bothered from a cosmetic point of view.
Weird bus-related thing of the day was that there was a ticket inspector! First time that's ever happened to me - apparently we might be seeing more of them. Just like the old days...
Friday, August 14
So, I am 30 years old. I suppose technically it's not until 8.15 or something tonight, but no-one cares if I'm that accurate. :)
I had been planning to go into work as usual but haven't been feeling brilliant this week and figured I might as well use one of my holiday days on my birthday. Nice not to have to get up and there are quite a few bits I wanted to do around the house. Mum, Dad and John are all arriving later so should have some birthday fun this weekend, if all goes well!
Not really that bothered about the whole '30' thing, in my brain I never think I'm as old as I am. I think I got stuff somewhere in my mid 20s and haven't aged mentally since then. On recent form it would appear that I am getting more decrepit, though!
People do say that you get broody when you hit 30, though. Will have been married 5 years in a few weeks, I think most people have given up asking when we're having a baby. :)
Had an amazing card from work with lots of different pillboxes on it (the military type, not the drug-storing type). I don't remember anyone getting a homemade card before so it seems extra special. I didn't guess what types all the pillboxes were, though. (It's a sort of in-joke, I've been putting a lot of 'modern' stuff on the archaeology database, WW2, Cold War, that sort of thing - I know it doesn't seem like an amazing thing to have on a card but I think it's brilliant!)
Looks like the weather might be ok, too. Not raining at the moment, which is something...
Wednesday, August 12
I'm not entirely surprised to hear that Michael Schumacher
won't be driving in F1. I'm sure Luca Badoer will do a solid enough job - at least he's driven their 2009 car. And it's hardly his fault he never achieved amazing results in F1 when he was driving for teams like Forti and Minardi!
Had a most irregular journey to work. The bus I caught had a de-mister problem so the driver was constantly trying to clear the windscreen - wiping it, driving with the doors open, etc. It was a losing battle, it's very grey and damp this morning. (What happened to yesterday's warm sunny weather? I had to turn the lights on this morning!)
Another irregular thing about the journey was that I actually talked to another bus passenger. (That doesn't happen very often...) He started with the old opening of 'still raining?' (which it was, obviously). He then talked about some timber ship that's apparently been hi-jacked (hadn't heard anything about it). Then went back to the weather topic a couple of times - 'you wouldn't believe it was August' and 'there are some countries in the world that would love weather like this'. Stuff like that. Ah... weather's a nice safe topic. What would we talk about if we didn't have such changeable weather? :)
Still feeling very tired. Fell asleep when I got home from work yesterday, went to bed early and feel shattered this morning. Boo.
Monday, August 10
Been ill for a bit, I'm at work but still very tired. How is it possible to keep having almost 12 hours sleep and still feel tired? Had a blood test but I expect it's just a 'virus'. Had it for about three weeks, bit fed up now. Feel like a pathetic layabout. Ho hum.
We've had various things to eat from our garden lately, which is exciting. Had a few Alpine strawberries (small ones) that were especially nice floating in jelly. Ate half a marrow stuffed with chilli last night. And a baked suet pudding with blackberries. (I love suet, hooray for low fat vegetable suet!) Made an apple and redcurrant crumble as well, though the apple wasn't from the garden. I have some damsons, not sure what to do with those. I suspect we will get fed up with blackberries and marrows. And there's at least one pumpkin growing.
Went to a birthday celebration on Saturday - it was Rob's dad's 60th, Rob's sister Emma's birthday and also my 30th (this Friday coming up), so it was a combined celebration. I have a helium balloon with '30' on it, I like helium balloons. Yay! I don't think I'd ever met some of the people there - Rob's family is quite big. But I was on a table with Emma, Rob, and their cousins Angela and Elizabeth, who were both very good company. So it wasn't as scary as I thought it might be. :)
Not sure what I'll do to celebrate with friends, not feeling very energetic at the moment. We're hopefully having a family trip to Donington Park on Sunday. If the weather's like it was this weekend it'll be ok - looking a bit grim again today. You never can tell.
Sunday, August 2
Have had a really nice time alone while Rob and John were away camping in the rain. :) This weekend I discovered the wonders of
Spotify - and it's even more amazing now I've worked out how to scrobble to
Last.fm and display which song's playing on my
G15 keyboard's display! Woo!
Highlights of my time alone included a very close to the TV, in the dark, with the stereo speakers plugged into the TV, viewing of
Stargate on Blu-ray. Woo! And I did some productive stuff for Ali's wedding. And a lot of tidying, which made me happy because I like it when things are tidy. Won't stay like that for long. And had my hair cut. Not that I enjoyed that particularly, but it has to be done sometimes. :)
