iReinvention Of The Wheel… perhaps?

{ February 4, 2010 @ 20:14 } · { Angry Stuff, Nubbins }
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iPad?

What?

I love Apple, I think my MacBook is great. In terms of operating systems I’d take MAC OSX over Windows any day. Apple know how make things that flow nicely, that work how you want them to work, how you’d instinctively try to make something work if you didn’t know how it worked in the first place. They’re good, there’s no getting away from it. But I can’t help but feel incredulous at their latest effort, the Wheel. NO, sorry, I mean the iPad.

Wil is immediately going to think I’m having a dig at him here because he lives with the self-inflicted paranoia that I hate anything he likes and he likes the iPad. We do have quite different tastes but Wil is very partial to jumping on the Next-Coolest-Thing bandwagon only to buy said ‘Next-Coolest-Thing’ and then rapidly lose interest after 5 minutes of owning it.

In actual fact if you studied Wil carefully you’d come to the conclusion that Wil doesn’t actually like the ‘Next-Coolest-Thing’ as much as he enjoys ‘just wanting it’ or being part of that crowd of people who want it. Wil isn’t a techie minded person, there is no inner geek in that body – it simply cycles in well trodden familiar circles encompassing cars, bikes, eating, sleeping and the part where his 8th magazine of the month gets read cover to cover before being dumped on the floor along with the empty toilet roll. Rinse and repeat.

The lack of nerdiness in him actually pointed and laughed at me once upon finding out I knew the name of Nokia’s operating system at the time – Symbian 9 and I still get the odd Alan Partridge style ‘AAAHHHHH Symbian 9′ shouted at me across the room if I show the slightest enjoyment in something geeky like being able to text our Sky box to record a program from my mobile phone. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. However, nerdy gadget or not I generally shy away from wanting something that everyone has until it’s popularity has dropped.. goes along with being bloody awkward and as Wil would say – a bit Ginger.

So forgive my naivety here – iPad – They took an iPod and made it bigger?. Took a MacBook and made it smaller?. Took an iPhone and gave it less functionality with a bigger bastard screen all the better to knock against those keys in your bag?.

BUT THAT’S OK!!! Because guess what?….. YOU CAN BROWSE THE NET ON IT!.. oh.. um HANG ON, YOU, YOU CAN VIEW PHOTOS ON IT….eerrr, yeah um – HERE WE GO, YOU CAN WATCH YOUTUBE. Damn… Ummmmm? Type emails?, read ebooks? Use Apps? RECURRING THEME HERE? Listen to music?…. Whatever next eh? I’m amazed they didn’t put a nice big antennae on the top to pull up in order to get better reception and maybe a slot in the side in which I can listen to my cassette mix tapes through my wired headphones. Or instead just put a massive subwoofer on it so that I could carry it on my shoulder to hear my phat choons. Corr, the future just gets brighter – perhaps next they could install a large spiral corded handset with some buttons on it that I could dial someones phone number – a phone number that I have written down in a paper pad, stuck to the back. Oh. Hang. ON… get this… a pad made from small yellow square bits of paper that have a slightly sticky strip across the top!!! YOU GET ME? We’ll call them iStick’ems, and yeah anyway, dial a phone number and order a pizza and pay with a fricken CHEQUE. For the love of GOD….

WHAT

HAS

GOTTEN

INTO

PEOPLE?   iPad….

Two words – ‘Emperors New Clothes’.

You’re right, that was three words, but you see what I did there? It’s not 3 anymore because we’re calling that two from now on, three can become eight – it’s cool right? Come on everyone join in.. Tell you what, you call number 2, ‘three’ and I’ll charge you £500 for the pleasure.  What? You think it’s stupid? How? Why? I see..right… works better if I stick an ‘i’ in front of it..

Seriously, iGiveup.

Where Did I Leave My….

{ January 6, 2010 @ 20:59 } · { Nubbins }
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I don’t know what’s wrong with me this week – I’m unorganised as hell.

Yesterday was a blunder from start to finish. Cam had stayed at my mums overnight but would need to be picked up from Ipswich when I left work. From there we would need to go straight to running club, where I would go off with the club and Cam would stay at the leisure centre to swim. For this to happen I would need to take our sports gear with me to work. Note to self – get it organised the night before.

In the middle of this someone at work in the Ipswich office bought a stair gate I’d advertised on the noticeboard. I would now  need to leave a little bit earlier and drop it off there on the way to pick up Cam. Note to self – put gate in car.

I noticed my lip gloss was on the window sill in the bathroom where I’d used it last – that needed to go back in my handbag else I’d leave without it and then suffer an entire diabolical day where my lips dried up and felt like they were going to crack up and fall off. Note to self – why didn’t I do it there and then?

The other thing – food. On days I’m going to run after work I need to make sure I eat enough during the day. Not just ‘enough’ but the right stuff. Since Christmas my guts have not been quite right so from New Years day when the decorations had been packed away I decided no more stodgy, sweet and rich food would pass my lips.

I left the house in a bit of a hurry wanting to make sure I got my bowl of porridge in before the 9am meeting I was scheduled to attend. I knew damn well that meeting table would be laden with the remnants of biscuits and sweets that everyone wished to discard from their own Christmas overhoards at home! I wasn’t wrong – when faced with the 95 calorie per biscuit box of Scottish shortbread my belly full of hot porridge found it fairly unchallenging to look the other way – job done!. However when the mid morning slump hit me I caved in to an offer of a chocolate muffin which had been brought in on a colleagues birthday offering – job undone!  It’s ok, I thought – I would run a single chocolate muffin off in the club session, no harm done.

When I discovered I’d failed to pick up the bags containing my running kit and Cam’s swimming gear that morning I made a call to Wil hoping he’d be able to run them over to my office on his lunch time or at the very least meet me at club that night. Good as gold he turned up at 12:30 holding the bags I’d forgotten and my shoes and a jammy, creamy cake in a paper bag from the bakers.

I’m always skeptical when Wil makes gestures like this – Is it his assurance that I get fat while he loses weight? That I get fat so he has an excuse to get fat? Or a simple romantic gesture that he’s bringing his loved one (whom uncategorically stated days earlier ‘NO MORE SHIT FOOD’) a little gift?

Either way that creamy, jammy donut filled greasy sugary bag sat on my desk screaming to be thrown away. A scream that was rebutted fiercely by the pit of my conscience that doesn’t allow me to waste food – even shit food. So I ate it. And then felt horrible over the next few hours whilst the porridge, chocolate muffin, salad and donut bobbed about in a sea of tea – clashing awkwardly with eachother like the housemates on the first night of Big Brother.

I wiped the sugary granules away from my mouth and reached for my handbag to reapply my lip gloss, only to find I’d forgotten to put it back in my bag. A search of the other bags, the car and my desk turned up some lip balm and panic stations were stood down.

It wasn’t until I was on the way to my mums I played back a little sketch of me packing my running bag the night before – the night where I discarded one pair of running leggins for another warmer pair in the wardrobe – the pair I never actually remember grabbing – the pair that were now missing from this bloody bag!

I stopped on the way to mums and dropped off the stair gate – hurray! Something I’d managed to remember! And went onto arrive at my mums earlier than expected with time for a cup of tea. Cameron had made bread rolls and was excited to have me sample my own bread roll. With calorie intake already smashing the boundaries of what I should have consumed over two days I hesitated, but wasn’t going to let him down – so I gorged the delicious bread roll down and made a vow that I’d put extra effort in on the run and start again tomorrow with a clean food slate.

Thankfully since Wil was meeting us at the leisure centre he was able to save the day once more by bringing my running leggings. Fortunately this favour didn’t come punctuated with another cake. However, by this time I’d noticed I was missing another bag. My handbag. On my rush to leave the office with a bag full of newspapers I’d been given (for the guinea pig hutch), my bag of running kit, Cams bag of swimming gear and another bag which I’d brought my packed lunch in – I couldn’t remember picking up my handbag. Had I taken it out of my drawer? Was it now sat on top of my desk for the cleaners to wander around later that night? Did I have any money in my purse? I couldn’t remember. Either way I wasn’t going out of my way to go back and check. So I called my mum to see if I’d left it there and she confirmed I hadn’t.

Somehow it all turned out ok – Cameron went swimming, I went running and my handbag was found in my desk drawer where I left it.

The lip gloss however, is still AWOL along with my organisational skills.

Christmas Feast

{ December 26, 2009 @ 14:47 } · { Family }
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I was really pleased with how Christmas Dinner turned out. Mum made our customary Christmas Cranberry Chestnut Ring which is made with leeks, carrots, onions, cranberries, and chestnuts with a vein of feta cheese through the middle. The outside is then wrapped with pastry and decorated elaborately with pastry holly leaves and sprigs of rosemary and cranberries for colour. Never fails to gain a gasp of awe when it’s brought to the table. It’s a stunning piece and knocks seven shades of sh*t out of a dry old turkey carcass any day.

For the meat eaters I made Christmas Kebabs but substituted beef for smoked ham. This was ideal particularly for my nana who struggles to feed herself these days, so the bitesize chunks of meat and veg on the kebab sticks was perfect as it didn’t require use of a knife and fork.

http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/166641/Christmas-kebabs

To accompany I made:

Red Cabbage with Apple and Raisins which was spiced with a very festive flavour of cinnamon.

http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/137549/Red-cabbage-with-apples-and-sultanas

Maple Glazed Sesame Parsnips

http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/137914/Glazed-parsnips-with-sesame-seeds-and-maple-syrup

Lemon, Ginger and Honey Stir Fried Sprouts with Cashews – I used baby frozen sprouts which I warmed through in some boiling water briefly before cutting in half and stirfrying. They turned out so nicely that 3 of us who are avid sprout haters actually ate more than one (and enjoyed them).

http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/281252/Stir-fried-sprouts-with-honey–ginger-and-lemon

Butter and Rosemary Roast Potatoes

Dessert was courtesy of a Jamie Oliver recipe and went down an absolute treat. Winter Pudding Bombe looks stunningly elaborate but is actually very simply put together with Pannetone, icecream, pistachios and glace fruit. I also used some frozen fruits of the forest as I had trouble sourcing different glace fruits.

http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/chefs/jamie-oliver/winter-pudding-bombe-recipe_p_1.html

Today I used the left over red cabbage & raisin dish and blended it with chickpeas, lemon juice, cumin, tahini and olive oil to make the best tasting hummous which Wil and I scoffed with some veggie sticks, crackers, cheese and a glass of red wine. A welcome treat after the bingeathon we had yesterday!

Ain’t No Diva Like A Gay Diva

{ December 23, 2009 @ 15:44 } · { Nubbins }
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Finally a snippet of news that left me feeling rather pleased for a change. I don’t normally *do* news but I couldn’t help noticing a link flickering away at the side of a page which led me to read a story about how Boy George has been refused suspension of his probation order  so that he can partake in the last Big Brother series. A fact in itself that left me confused because I thought they’d had the last one already – assuming this is the celeb BB?.

Anyway – too bloody right mate. Why should he be allowed to partake? I get a bit fed up with these buggers, especially the celeb buggers who think they’re above everyone else and deserve special treatment. You’re on parole, you’re on parole because you repeatedly cocked up, not least, handcuffed a man to the wall in your house thus imprisoning him.

What justice would it be to allow Georgy Boy to go against parole and continue to make money and raise his profile?

No justice – that’s what. And in a country where there is very rarely justice served to the right people, I for one am quite pleased that someone in an awful wig made the right decision

Boy George – take your silly hat, handcuffs and your ankle device and behave.

It’s for your own good – we don’t really want to hurt you.

2009 Facebook Status Collage

{ December 22, 2009 @ 22:18 } · { Nubbins }
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So I finally gave up fighting the universe and got stuck into Facebook. What tipped me over the edge was having that damn FB application already installed on my mobile when I got a new one – way too convenient.

Anyway, this little widget claims to summarise your year in FB status’ – in actual fact this is more like a summary of a week if we’re honest.

Nightmare Before Christmas

{ December 15, 2009 @ 21:47 } · { Family }
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Well it’s that cheery time leading up to the Christmas Holidays when people are being made redundant from their jobs, money leaves your pocket faster than it goes in and people in shopping centres turn into total assholes by dismissing any scrap of manners they were raised with. To add to the pleasure the weather turns dreary and freezing, food and sweets are the focal point of every waking moment and there seems to be an endless stream of jobs to do in addition to the ones you normally have. Ahhh… magic.

Hello all, the Grinch here.

So blogging material has been at a bit of a low recently and when anything remotely interesting has happened I haven’t had time nor inclination to sit and write it down.

Wil and I entered a Duathlon together as a mixed team. Duathlon is a Run/Bike/Run event – Wil did the biking and I did the running. There were about 60 entrants altogether comprised of 30 individuals and 30 teams split into female/male/mixed.

Out of the 30 teams we took 6th place and out of the 11 mixed teams we took 2nd place. A brilliant result that neither of us thought for a minute we’d achieve!

We traded our Mazda in! Wil has hated our new Mazda ever since we drove it off the lot just under 2 years ago. Since I’m the one who drives it all the time anyway and I didn’t particularly have a major hatred against it I insisted we keep it. I managed to keep that going until a couple of weeks ago when we dropped into a Honda dealership ‘for a look’ and ended up doing a deal. If it gives that angry midlander one less thing to piss and whinge about then I’m currently all for it. Now, mark my words – he’ll start harping on about trading the other car in sooner than you can blink.

Work wise I’ve applied for a new job within my department, managing the team I’m in and expanding it to take on a few new posts. It won’t be hugely different to what I do now but it would make a lot of the extra stuff I do official and the pay will reflect that. The awkward side of it is that the people I work along side now would actually report to me if I get the job – but I’m hoping we’ll all be fine. These aren’t people who need ‘managing’ and we should be able to tick along like the grown ups we are.

Changes are happening at Wil’s work by the sounds of it. Quite a few people have been made redundant as the company seems to be pulling things towards corporate HQ in Germany. No one really seems to know what’s going on and every day there are new stories of someone else being let go or more recently people in high up positions being shunted over into purpose created ‘bunce’ jobs. The kind they hope you get fed up in and leave on your own accord so they don’t have to pay you off. I’m not sensing that Wil’s job is directly inline for horrid things, however there could be some sort of restructuring and without knowing who he’s going to be reporting to it leaves things open to speculation. And speculation, particularly from Wil’s gene pool is rarely of the positive kind but more to the tune of ‘D’ that’s D for DOOOOOM DOOOM DOOOOOOOOOOOM.

Cameron decided to single-handedly attempt to set fire to our house. He took the opportunity of Wil and I being out of the house for just over an hour one late afternoon/early evening to light a candle and then proceed to carry it upstairs, in the dark and set it on the side of the bath. When it slipped off the bath and onto the brand new bath mat and set it on fire he picked it up and threw it into the bath, extinguishing the flame and scolding the bottom of the plastic bathtub at the same time.

The first I knew of this was when I saw a large wet brown mark on my new bathmat and although he denied any knowledge of it to begin with he eventually told Wil what had happened. I’m hoping he sufficiently shocked the shit out of himself enough to never do that again – because with the nearest un-manned fire station about 12 minutes drive away there is not a chance in hell any part of this house would be salvageable if it went up in flames. And if the 11 year old went up with it, well, it doesn’t bear thinking about what could have happened.

On a brighter note Wil gave me my Christmas present early – a beautiful matte black steel string acoustic guitar. I learned to play the guitar when I was 5 and continued taking lessons until I was 11. When I went to high school there were no instructors for guitar so I was left on my own with it and ended up not taking any interest. Recently Cam has been taking lessons at school and we have a little kiddie size guitar kicking around which was bought for a member of my family by his dad for £10 from a book club in the 70’s! Think elastic bands stretched around a Kleenex box and you have the tune this thing puts out. It really does sound horrendous however, it’s been great for practicing chords and getting my finger movements back on making it even better to strum away on something that sounds as lovely as the new guitar does. So far I’ve nearly perfected Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb and Wish You Were Here, Outkast – Hey Ya, Johnny Cash’s cover of (NIN’s) – Hurt, and I’m working on Oasis – Wonderwall and a number of other tracks. If I could nail quick changes to those pesky barre chords I’d be well away but it’s going to take much more practice and I imagine ten times as many blisters on my fingers. I’d also forgotten that guitarists fingernail design you have to sport. Long nails on the right hand and none on the left! What a great look!

We did have some fun on Friday. I organised our departments Christmas Lunch at a fantastic pub not too far from our office. The food was great it was just unfortunate that I was also due to attend Wil’s works do that evening which also included a large sit down 3 course meal. Planning carefully I begrudgingly only ate half of each course I was given at the lunch time meal so that later I wouldn’t have to spend the entire evening sucking in my burgeoning gut within the jade coloured snug fitting satin dress I’d bought for the occasion. It was a shame that the food at the evening meal was more like airline grub but this was more than made up for by the great people, good conversation and fun atmosphere brought about by an in-house band formed by a handful of Wil’s colleagues. They had a few people from around the department join them to play various instruments for select songs – Wil played drums for ‘Back In Black’ by ACDC (I think) and you’d have never known that he doesn’t play drums for a band it was brilliant.

Right, enough rambling. Now that I’m fairly caught up I hope to update a little more regularly. If you don’t hear from me soon, just assume that the house has been burned down, we’ve lost our jobs and I’m busking on the underground with the only possession I rescued from the fire before leaping out of an upstairs window onto the bonnet of the new car. If it’s going to happen to anyone!……

Bah Humbug!

Taking The Piss

{ December 1, 2009 @ 23:57 } · { Nubbins }
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I had to ditch the Running Club sprinting session briefly this evening to answer the dire and URGENT call of nature. Unfortunately in my haste to get to the end of THE LONGEST PISS IN THE WORLD whilst squatting in a patch of woodland between a main road and an office block – trying to dodge car headlights and nighttime dog walkers, I managed to pee on the back of my trousers and partly in my shoe. Thank goodness they were black trousers and it was dark. What’s that? More info than you needed?

Half Of You – Cat Power

{ November 19, 2009 @ 22:34 } · { Music, Video }
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If you haven’t listened to Cat Power, you should….. here’s a start

Such A Good Tune

{ November 13, 2009 @ 21:57 } · { Links, Music, Video }
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PMS Has A Lot To Answer For

{ November 5, 2009 @ 20:09 } · { Angry Stuff }
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pms1I’ve been a bit of a bastard today. It all started so well where I woke up early and felt awake. The house was lovely and warm so I didn’t get grumpy getting showered and dressed in the cold and I even convinced myself to bike to work since it looked a nice morning.

Deciding IN THE MORNING to bike to work is never a good idea because if I haven’t got crap organised the night before you can count on it being a real cluster-f*ck trying to find stuff I need. As it turned out I only needed to return to the house from the garage 4 times to collect bits and pieces. What did nearly taint the morning is that my rear red flashing light had disappeared from my seat post. I was sure I’d left it on the bike but thought perhaps I’d taken it in the house with me last time I rode. Riding home without this light was not an option so if I couldn’t find it, biking was not going to be an option. I searched all over the place letting myself back in the house twice to check in different places I’d normally keep the light. Nowhere to be found.

Just as I gave up and shoved my bike back in the garage I caught sight of my light – AFFIXED TO WIL’S BIKE. The amount of times I’ve come to my bike to find it missing parts like PEDALS, LIGHTS and WHEELS – yes, he’s even pikey’d the sodding wheels out of my bike at one point, I couldn’t believe I didn’t think to look there first. (For the record William – I’m SO on Cameron’s side next time he’s nicked your stuff and left it in his room)

Ready to spit fire I grabbed my light, affixed it to my bike and stormed off down the road. Fortunately the magic of riding to work did it’s job and by the time I got there I was in a great mood.

The ride home in the winter is never as great as the ride in – usually it’s colder, it’s always darker and my legs have the remnants of the morning ride still in them. It’s also subtly uphill most of the way. So when I came flying down the final decline which I use to give me a boost sprint for the home stretch, reaching a speed of 30mph you can imagine how bloody inconvenient it was when one of the cars that had just passed me got just around the corner out of sight and appeared to be indicating to turn into a driveway – only it didn’t – it stopped dead just before the driveway.

Whilst cycling in the pitch darkness it’s a little difficult to assess the speed of a vehicle in front of you which explained my screeching halt inches from the car bumper since I’d figured she was pulling into the driveway. Moving to the side of the car I shouted at the window – “what the hell are you doing?” The woman inside the car wound the window down, stared at me blankly and replied in an arsey tone “can’t you see I’ve got my indicator on?”. “Yes” I replied, “but if you were going to stop so soon, why overtake me in the first place?”. The woman just stared at me, someone else in the car didn’t say anything. I pulled my pedal back around and blasted “use some common sense next time” and cycled off with a scowl.

That’s when I wondered – Had she actually been one of the cars that’d passed me just before the bend or had she been stopped there the whole time? Maybe she’d broken down..

I felt like such an arsehole. And then I thought – WELL she should have had her hazards on if she was stopped there and not turning! Who indicates left and stops just short of a left turn IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FREAKIN COUNTRY IN A 60MPH ZONE IN THE DARK? Answer is no one, unless they’re looking for a lambasting from an out of breath, red faced, angry PMS’ing ginger.

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