rest of christmas

So what did I do over the rest of christmas, then?

Not much.

I had quite a short to do list:

• Couple of friends to see.
• Do my file back-ups.
• Sort my gaming machine - it had developed some problem where it crashed constantly.
• Try to make a dent in all the recorded stuff on my PVR.
• Watch some anime - preferably downloaded fansubs in order to clear the hard-drive I use, which is full.
• My traditional New Year's "full clean" of the bedsit.
• Do plenty of walking.
• Work out plans for next year.

I did most of these, though not fully in most cases.

I saw most of the friends, but unfortunately the weather poxed up some of my plans, with cancelled trains and blocked roads.  The weather also poxed up the walking plans, obviously.  I've put on 4 pounds across Christmas - obviously this was mainly due to the over-eating, rather than not being able to walk, but this won't have helped things.

I did an "update" file back-up, rather than a full one.  this was mainly because I decided that the gaming machine problem was software based and the cleanest solution was to wipe and re-install.  This was fine and appears to have worked perfectly, but of course it took well over a day with all the updates and putting the games back.

I did make a significant dent in the PVR, though it still groaning with stuff.  I now have about 35% of the drive clear, with about 65 programmes to watch.  I know this is a lot still on there, but you have to remember that over Christmas there was a lot of stuff to watch and none of this was left.  Also, I focused on things that didn't have ad breaks, so although the programmes are mostly 1 hour, there are a lot of adverts that will reduce the actual watching time.

I also watched a chunk of anime fansubs.  If I'm honest this was one of the least successful areas, though, as it wasn't a big proportion of all that I've got.  However, I also had a sort out and there's stuff I could take off for other reasons (OAVs of series I didn't like, have been licensed so I only need a 2 episode sample, rather than the full series, sequels so might as well burn them to disk for later, etc, etc).  I still need to attack them, but I've certainly created a bit of breathing space.

I also did the full clean, though this seemed more hard work than I remember from last year.  It took me 2 full days (one for the Kitchen & Bathroom and one for the living room / bedroom) to do the actual cleaning, but the impact was more extensive - they weren't consecutive days, as I was shattered after doing the kitchen.  After the bedroom I was basically crippled - I'd put my hamstrings through so much that I could hardly walk the next day.  This was due to the hoovering, mainly - I go at it with a special attachment and it's really effective, but also inconvenient to use and so I end up bent over in a bad way.

The "plans for next year" was the really big failure.  I've not really got a plan, and will have to give it some thought - there's a big event that I'm not really sure how I'm going to work around.

So the holiday was pretty mundane - nice to not be at work for an extended period, but not exactly exciting, and mostly poxed up by the awful weather where it might have been.

There was also some unpleasant stuff.  My landlord has decided to put up my rent by 5%.  This is particularly annoying as it now means the bedsit is uneconomical, but I'm left in a quandary as to moving, owing to the aforementioned unclear plans for the year.  I also scratched one of my alloy wheels on my car - some penis pulled up in the station in front of me at the petrol station rather than wait the 10 seconds it took for me to pull away and in going around him I caught the curb.  There was also a break-in where I live: they only got into the garden, rather than the house or shed and didn't take anything, but another reason for me not to stay.

christmas

I thought I'd give a bit of a wrap-up of the Christmas holiday.

We had the company christmas lunch quite late this year, but then the positioning of Christmas Day is a little unusual, so it wasn't as late as it seemed in terms fo the acual date.  If I hadn't had quite so much leave left over I'd have had to work some odd random days or bring them forward from next year.  I guess the flip-side was that I got over two weeks leave and have only used up 3 days of my 2014 leave.

I had so much leave left over for several reasons - one was that I carried a couple of days over from the previous year, but the other was that I kinda saved it up with the anticipation that I might be attending interviews, but in the end it was quite late before I properly went back on the job market and then had to effectively stop looking a long way before Christmas.  Anyway, I'm goign to need that leave this year, but more on that another day.

We used to spend Christmas at my Dads, down in Deveon, but he seems to have decided that he doesn't like doing this anymore, and my sister hosts.  I find this really quite unsatisfactory, particularly as she lives ina tiny flat, which she shares with her flatmate, so it also becomes a double-Christmas thing with the flat-mates family too.

I don't really like Christmas, and spending it with someone else's family makes it quite uninteresting.  The biggest problem is that they all know each other - the flatmate is a long term friend fo my sister, and my dad knows her and her family quite well as well.  This leads to long periods of them rabbitting on about people I don't know "Did you hear Fred has moved in with Brenda?" "I have no idea who Fred and Brenda are, and care even less."

It would be far easier if they just put the telly on and then I could watch that and they could natter.

It doesn't help - and I'll be upfront that this is not a nice thing - that they're not my sort of people.  I mean, I'm a nerd.  They're not.  I wouldn't have anything to talk to them about, even if they weren't twittering on about people I've never even heard of.

My hope is that by next year my life will be sorted out and I'll have moved somewhere where I can play host to my family.

Having said that, there is another less-outspoken reason why my sister hosts, which is that she's tight.  By hosting she doesn't have spend the petrol money to drive down.  Instead my Dad pays for a hotel for me and him (her place is too small for us all to stay and he knows I would refuse to pay for a hotel) and we both drive to her.  There's even a bizarre situation each year where he then takes her to one of her friends "on the way back" (it's nothign fo the sort as it's at least 100 miles out of his way).. and then a few days later drives her home again.

She kinda has him wrapped around her finger, as she's always been his favourite.  Note that I don't care as such, but ti woudl be nice if he at least realised she was doing it because she's tight - Indeed, I think he'd be pleased, as he's of the "careful with money" persuassion himself.

Well this wasn't so much a round-up of Christmas as a moan about the day itself!

I'll try to cover the rest in another post (if I can be arsed), although one thing just to note - the joruney down to my sister has been horrendous both years.  Last year it was because it was on Christmas morning and kinda poxed up the day, but this time it was because of the horrible weather.

The A31 was closed on one part as a river had burst its banks, so they sent us down a diversion to rejoin it about 2 miles further down.  This distance took me 3 hours.  The whole journey took me 5 and a half hours.  Not fun.

happy new year... i guess

I'm finally back to work.

Big inhale... huge sigh.

I think I lulled myself into a bit of a false perception over the holiday period, which is to say the crappy bits seemed to dull and become less "urgent".  Of course as soon as I got back it all swam back into focus, which is to say that there's basically nothing but crappy bits.

This is partly why I stopped blogging towards the end of last year - I'm a bit stuck for anything to really say apart from how I'm really not enjoying work, and that's such a big part of any given day/week/month, it doesn't leave me with a lot else to talk about.  I was also getting a bit fatigued, so the idea of writing anything became a bit of a chore.

Actually, there was one specific thing with the work blog posts that gave me a bit of a scare (shock might be a better word) and was probably the main catalyst for stopping.  I posted a blog entry that let a few of the "cat's" out of the "bags" - in other words I gave a few specific details about things that previously I had only really skirted around or touched on.

You could possibly have worked some stuff out and certainly got the general feel from what I said, but this post was quite specific.  Now usually my posts get around 5-10 hits.  I take this to be one or two people who read the odd post or click on it via a google search and the rest to be bots crawling the blog for indexing.

I've had a couple of posts that got significant numbers of hits (there's one I've actually blogged about to do with BMI that's obviously ranked highly in a particular search as it has hundreds of hits), but this one posts had well over 100 hits in the space of two days.  This worried and puzzled me so much that I moved it into drafts - particularly as I can't see what about it might have caused it to get so many hits, but the content is a bit sensitive.  If/when I move on from here I'll take it back into normal circulation, but it was also a big part of why I cooled off with blogging.

Note, I'm not sure I'm going to start properly again, but I figured I should at least post a "happy new year" type post.

chrimbo period

I’m on leave on Monday and then Tuesday and Wednesday are Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

However, this year I am not having my usual two weeks holiday over the Christmas and New Year period.  There are a couple of reasons for this.

Firstly, the Chrimbo period is rather different this year.  Usually I would go and see my Dad for a few days and then take the rest of it away from home until New Year's when I would return and have a week at home.  However, my sister is hosting us for Christmas day, although this really is just Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

As such I have decided to work the period between Chrimbo and New Year.  I’m then taking the week after New Year off.  There are other reasons, though.

Firstly I used up a lot of my holiday while job hunting.  This meant I would have struggled to take the full two weeks - I had some left, but not enough for two weeks.  Indeed, by taking the week in New Year I actually get to punt some of my 2012 leave into 2013.

The second reason is I am hoping it will be relatively quiet and I will be able to catch up on some work stuff that I’ve also had to put on hold while I’ve done the other stuff these last few weeks.

The final reason is that I’m still not sure about staying with the company - the promises I was made haven’t manifested and I've a sneaky feeling the boss is going to throw a bit of a curve ball and do something different.  As such, I've decided that I will probably give it until a couple of months into the New Year and then go job hunting again.

In that case my transferred days will be particularly useful.

Now whether I will blog next week I kinda doubt, so I will leave you with my best wishes for the holiday period!

it's christmas

I was actually planning to blog about this a few weeks back, but Christmas seems to have arrived already.

I noticed while I was on holiday at the end of September that the big supermarket already had a few Christmas things out, but I kinda dismissed it as it's a huge supermarket and it was only one or two tins f biscuits that looked a bit Christmassy.

However, while shopping in the local Sainsbury's last week and then the big Tesco up the road a couple of days later (nowhere seems to sell Crunchy Bran, which is one of my favourite cereals) there were some proper areas that seemed to be sprouting multiple Christmas things.

Every year it seems to get worse - I mean, seriously, September is ridiculously early isn't it?  That's a quarter of a year before the event.  And both Halloween and Bonfire night still a month away - it's just taking the piss.

The thing is though, people must buy this stuff.  I'm sure supermarkets wouldn't waste space on Chrimbo stuff if nobody bought it; so who the hell buys it this early?

The other thing I wanted to mention on the Christmas front is that it snowed this last weekend.  And I don't mean in a general sense in the UK - it snowed where I live.

Every Saturday morning I do my washing at the laundrette and once I've transferred it over to the Tumble Dryer I usually go for a short walk around the estate (while it's washing I read a book).  Well this time weekend it was bitterly cold and as I was coming up the hill a small flurry of snow started.

We're only talking tiny bits and it wasn't settling or anything, but still snow.  It had stopped by the time I got to the top of the hill and I don't think it snowed again.

It's a bit of a worrying sign, actually - I was hoping we might finally get a mild winter, having suffered really cold ones for the last few years.  I've also not really been prepping for winter; particularly in terms of electricity - there's only a little bit of electricity on the meter and when it gets properly cold heating really sucks away at the power.

To be fair, given I was expecting to change jobs and therefore move, I've been tending to keep the meter quite low all year, but I'd better ramp it up just in case winter is a cold one.  I'm now certainly not going to be moving or doing anything change-wise until next year.

back to work

First day back to work today.

It feels a bit weird, as I’ve had quite a long time off.  Well, actually it’s only just over two weeks, but it feels like it’s been a nice long break.

So I guess I should talk about Christmas and the new year and holiday.

Christmas I went to see my dad and my sister at my dad’s.  We had Turkey for Christmas lunch.  It’s a bit weird having Turkey as my Dad and sister have both said they aren’t hugely keen on it before, so I don’t tend to expect to have it.

However, we’ve had it for the last couple of years, where usually they like to have lamb or beef.  I think part of it is that my Dad has found a good butchers and buys what I think is called a Turkey crown.  Whatever it’s called it’s basically just a huge hunk of breast meat.

I’m assuming it’s from the one bird - that’s how he described it - but it must be a monster of a bird.  He’d basically chopped it up into three huge chunks and frozen two of them, sending me and my sister away with one each.  The third bit was what we cooked and it was a whacking great chunk of meat.

Unfortunately we got the timing a bit wrong.  We tried the thing where you skewer the meat and look for the colour of the juices, which was clear, but then when my Dad started cutting it up it clearly wasn’t quite done.

I mean, it wasn't a long way off, and we could probably have eaten it as is, but it’s always better to be safer rather than sorry with poultry.  As such my dad cut off enough for us to have then and we nuked those bits to finish them off (everything else was on the table, so we couldn’t really wait) and put the rest back in the oven while we ate.

In hindsight we should have cut it open when it came out the oven before resting it, just to make sure t was cooked and then we’d have known.

There’s normally one mistake for the chrimbo lunch, and otherwise it all went smoothly.

Unfortunately the rest of the time at my Dads was a little marred because I caught another cold!

My sister was riddled with cold when I arrived and was coughing and sneezing a lot and I could start to feel it come on within about 36 hours of arriving, so I think I caught it off of her.  Since she lives a fair way away that also would tie in with a different strain.

However, there are a couple of other possibilities.  Firstly it could have been my first cold making a comeback.  This is certainly possible, but y the time I wet away I was almost over it.

The second more likely possibility is that I caught it off someone else at work.  When I went on holiday almost everyone else in the office had a cold.  Now I had obviously assumed this was the cold that I had caught off of our “typhoid mary” (the introducer of the virus) that had then been past on, but apparently someone else’s partner had also got a cold and so there could have been another strain kicking around.

However, as I say, my belief is I caught it off my sister.

I’ll continue later in the week.

merry wishmsases

I hope you have a good Christmas and New Year period :)

I am away on holiday now until the 10th of January, so I thought I'd post my usual Chrimbalo message for over the festive season.

As I mentioned earlier this week I will actually be going on contract next year, so the blog will almost certainly switch to being a weekly one next year.  The contract doesn't actually start until a little after I'm back, so initially I'll be blogging as usual, so see you then.

a week to go

Wow, it's only a week until I go on holiday and then a couple of extra days and it's Christmas.

As I mentioned before I'm quite looking forward to it this year and the news there's less than a week to go is very pleasing.

I've pretty much done all my Christmas shopping now.  A few things are still to arrive, but all should be here by the time I go away.  If not, it's not a disaster, as I can just post those bits that don't arrive in time.

I'm hoping we don't see a repeat of the snow we had over the last few years.  Fundamentally I like snow, but it's best when it happens when you yourself don't have to get anywhere or do anything.

Or, even better, when it snows you in from work.  Although that always has the difficulty of knowing when it's safe to go back.  It's best when it knackers you mid-week, but then goes away over the weekend.

I sort of sympathise with those who moan about how the country grinds to a halt when it snows, but I can fully understand why.  I mean, yes we've had a few years in a row of bad snow, but then we could easily have five or ten years of really mild winters, so spending loads of money on gritters and ploughs and stuff would then be seen as wasteful.

The best compromise idea seems to me to be the suggestion that farmers be provided with ploughing equipment that they can easily store and then they're brought in when it does snow to clear the roads.  Not sure how much that would cost, though.

Anyway, plans for the weekend are to try to clear the decks of some domestic stuff ahead of the break, so that when I'm on holiday I can spend more time relaxing, rather than fiddling about with that sort of stuff.

I'm also planning to do a bit of cleaning and washing - this'll be two weeks in a row and I think I might need to make it weekly over winter, as the colder weather means I wear more clothes (jumpers and vests and stuff).

turned out well

Well that was a good weekend.

And I don’t mean that with any sort of sarcasm - the weekend went well.

The work chrimbo lunch was okay.  We went to the same place as we did last year and I have to say the food itself wasn’t as good as last year.  It was okay, but it was better last year.

However, it was slightly marred by the fact I ended up sat next to someone who, well, they were nice and all, but they never stopped talking.  I mean, I’m obviously not the most talkative of people, but I know that, in order to have a conversation, you need to stop talking for a bit for others to say stuff.

Indeed, conversation is almost be definition about not talking in certain bits - if you do all the talking it’s a speech.  But this person didn’t seem to know that, and it became a bit boring a bit quickly.

Saturday I decided I would do a wash out of sequence, taking advantage of the lack of Grand Prix.  It should hopefully pay dividends next weekend where it’ll reduce the normal clothes amount so I can wash a couple of bits I’d like to before the Chrimbo holiday.

It was weirdly quiet in the laundrette.  I always go just as it’s opening and usually there’s a short bit where few others are in there, but then when I go there’s loads in there.  But this time there were a couple of us to start with and when I left I left one guy in there.

And that's not with machines going and people having left them - we were the only ones using machines at all.

The rest of the weekend went okay.  I was obviously still a bit coldly, so I wanted to take it easy in order to try to recover.  This went pretty well and by the end of Sunday I was staring to feel fairly normal.

Today I still seem to have a bit of snotty nose for some reason, but I’m not really suffering with the cold anymore.

And then yesterday of course I took the day off, with the intention of doing chrimbo shopping.

In reality I decided to buy most of it online.  I did look in shops but it was all more expensive (though surprisingly close in some places).  However, I did buy almost all the other bits I needed to - cards and wrapping paper for example.

Unfortunately it then turned out that one of the things I wanted to get wasn’t actually available for quick delivery online.  I’m crossing my fingers, but my guess is that I wont have it by Chrimbo.  It’s not too bad as I’ll have other stuff, so I can just give it to them afterwards, but it was a bit ironic as I’d seen it in one of the shops.

So yeah, a good weekend.  I even lost two pounds, despite the huge Chrimbo lunch!

chrimbalo lunchings

It's the work Christmas lunch today.

Some companies have a full-on bash, and we used to do that when I first joined, but a few years back it turned into more of a long lunch at a pub thing.  It's usually okay, marred only by the fact that we have to go back to work afterwards.

I went for traditional Turkey and Christmas Pud of course.  I know some people don't really like turkey - the breast can get quite dry - or can get sick of it, but my viewpoint is that it's Christmas, so you should have a Christmas meal.  Also I think Turkey is okay and I don't really have it any other time of the year, so what the hell.

Also, on a more fundamental level, Christmas meal is basically just a roast with a few more trimmings than usual, so since I love roasts I actually quite like it.

It's been a particularly horrible week, having been suffering with this cold.  Things have been getting better in the last couple of days, but were I not so busy I'd have taken a couple of days off at the start of the week for sure.

Hopefully, the weekend should prove relatively quiet.  We're now out of the Grand Prix season, so I kind of get my weekends back for a bit, if you see what I mean.  I've also got a days leave booked for Monday.

The plan is to do some Chrimbo shopping, as previously mentioned, though it may well be a case of looking at things in shops and then buying them on line.  I mean I will definitely be buying a few bits in the high street (plus things like wrapping and cards) but you can just get more bang for your buck online is the simple fact of the matter.

So yeah, I won't be back blogging until Tuesday.

chrimbo look forward

I'm really looking forward to Christmas this year.

Well, I'm looking forward to the holiday.

This year has been absolutely manic - I've never known a period like it since I joined the company.

I've booked a smidge over two weeks for holiday - my first day off is the 23rd and then I don't come back until the 10th.  I've actually also booked the 12th off so I can do my last few bits of Christmas shopping, so that means from the week of the twelfth I have two four day weeks, followed by two weeks completely off and then a four-day week when I get back.

The only real plan I've got for that period is to go visit my dad over the Christmas weekend.  I'm not planning on staying for very long - just until the Tuesday, when I'll head home.

I have to confess a part of not staying very long is my Dad tends to have a bout of depression at Christmas.  It's fairly obvious this is linked to the fact that Christmas is the time of year my mum passed away.  Although I suspect it also punches a bit of a whole in his traditional "I hate Christmas" thing.

Not that I'm saying I think he secretly likes Christmas, it's more that he liked certain aspects of our Christmas - the family gathering and, in particular, the big meal my mum would cook.  I miss that too, of course, but I think it all just reminds him too much that she's gone.

My sister will also be there, though hers will likely be a flying visit again.  She works in a pub, so she tends to take advantage of the overtime and extra hours, I think.  Well, she could also make it a short break for the same reason as me.

I'm also not staying over in Devon for any extra days or anything, so the rest of the time I'll be able to chill, watch lots of stuff and get some of the jobs done I like to do over Christmas, like give the flat a good clean and do a full back-up.

So yeah, I think I'm actually looking forward to Christmas this year - especially if it stays quite mild like it has been.  we've had way too many super cold winters in recent years and it would be nice to have a mild one for a change.

Plus of course that will help reign in my heating bills even further, which would be a nice Chrimbo present in and of itself.

chrimbalo cheer and merry wishings

Well, this is pretty much it for me for the year.

It's my last day of work until a good way into the new year and I should imagine I won't be blogging again until then.

So to anyone that reads the blog, hope you have a good Christmas and New Year period and I hope 2011 turns out to be a good one for you.

it's officially christmas

Well, it's officially Christmas - the Radio Times Christmas listings came out this week.

Nothing makes Chrimbo feel like it's here quite like buying the Christmas edition of the Radio Times. To be frank, not even the day itself feels quite as Christmassy as going through the Radio Times seeing what's on and marking out the stuff I want to watch.

And speaking of Christmas, my sister has pulled one of her classic manoeuvres.

For some reason, my sister has this weird attitude whereby everybody else is made of money, but she's so poor she can't spend any of her own. So usually I'll receive an e-mail from her asking me what I want but, either via subtext or an outright statement she'll suggest that she's not got much money to spend.

I'll happily oblige by providing a list that contains a variety of options, none of which is that expensive, but that can also be sensibly combined to make whatever sort of value she can spend.

Which is all fair enough, and sometimes she does a reciprocal thing. But also sometimes she executes one of here classic manoeuvres.

I should note here that my family long since abandoned the notion of guessing what we want - we all just ask each other. So much easier. And my tactic of providing options maintains some element of surprise to the gifts.

So this year she's asked for an FM transmitter. These are small things you attach to an MP3 player and that broadcast the signal so you can then pick it up via your car aerial. In other words they let you play your MP3s through your car radio.

The reason (well, if you can call it that) she wants this is because the CD player in her car has apparently packed up.

But here's the thing - she doesn't actually own an MP3 player.

So what she really wants is an MP3 player and one of these transmitter things. Only she's decided on which model she wants, and of course she's picked out what are about the most expensive versions. So we're talking Apple.

Being one of my sister's classic manoeuvres she actually wanted an iPod Nano, but specifically not the most recent version of the Nano, but the previous model Which of course they don't make anymore and so is at a premium.

But even if we don't get her that we're still talking an over-priced Apple Touch or something like that.

And that's all that's on her list - there's no "If you can't afford it here are some options for books or DVDs."

Classic.

chrimbo is when?

So this Saturday it is, almost unbelievably, exactly four weeks until Christmas.

I think three or four weeks to go is the point where it becomes okay to actively start thinking about this particular holiday. I mean, it's okay to book holiday and stuff, as I generally need to do this some way in advance, but in terms of actively thinking about it as being 'just around the corner', three or four weeks is the time.

I also think this is the point at which Christmas advertising become legitimate. As everyone I get rather annoyed at the steady encroachment of Chrimbo backwards into the year. I genuinely saw my first Chrimbo related shop stuff about a month back and that is way too early.

I'm not the biggest fan of Christmas. It's okay as a point in the year to see your family and friends and I can see the point of celebrating the mid-winter solstice, although the whole Christian side of things does leave an unpleasant taste on my atheistic taste buds. But the whole excess consumption and forced frivolity and joviality doesn't really do anything for me.

Anyway, point is I was thinking about potential gifts this last week. My family has thankfully fully abandoned any sort of ritual f having to guess gifts. We all specifically ask each other for things and it tends to save a lot of hassle, although there's obviously the loss of the magic of the surprise perfect gift.

What I try to do is provide a wide range of options across a broad range of prices. So there'll be a few books on the list, which will only be around a tenner, then there'll be a few DVDs heading up into the £20 bracket, and maybe a couple of games, which are more around £30-£40.

That way the family can get me a combination that suits their particular budget, but also maintains an element of surprise for me as there's more stuff on there than they could sensibly all buy me.

There'll also be some specific gift requests for my Dad, who likes to buy a bigger, more substantial present. Usually this revolves around some particular gadget - my bread maker, for example. But this year I have to confess something of a difference. This year I want clothes.

See, recently I've really noticed that my body is changing.

I know that's a fairly obvious thing to say, given the extent of the weight loss, but it's only really recently that I've been able to actually see changes in my body. And more specifically and important, my trousers are getting to the point of proper looseness.

In particular, there's a pair of jeans that only stay aloft due to a thoroughly tightened belt. Then there's the work trousers, where I have one pair that's slightly looser and I'm in danger of loosing them on occasion. And with my work belt I regularly find myself tightening it to the fifth hole, which was previously unimaginable. Even my elasticised tracksuit bottoms are more reliant on the drawstring than the actual elastic.

This is all really good, but it means I'm going to have to start buying new clothes. Trouble is I know they're only going to be temporary. In however many months (three or four) I'm surely going to need a whole load of new clothes.

Hence I've actually asked my dad for cash. Hopefully I can get some really cheap clothes that I won't mind replacing. Maybe there'll even be some cash left over that I can use to offset the next wave of clothes buying? Or perhaps my birthday present and next year's Christmas presents are also pre-decided!

seasons well wishings and a happy new year

And there we go.

So today is my last day of work for the week, the month and, indeed, the year. Since I generally write this blog at work, it's highly unlikely I'll be posting again until the new year, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to leave a festive message up.

Or, to put it simply, I hope you have a good festive period and a happy New Year and I'll see you again when the calendar says 2010!

last working week of the year

I start my last week of work this week for the whole of 2009. It's a little weird when you start thinking in those terms, so I may not think abut it again until Friday when it'll almost be all over.

The Chrimbo meal was nice on Friday. The place we had it is kinda one of those Gastro pub jobs I think. We've been there before and the menu struck me as a little bit poncy, but not overly so, and the Chrimbo food was of a similar style.

If I was to make one complaint it would be the coffee they served at the end. I really didn't like whatever blend it was they were using. Plus it had a very powdery texture to it - like the filter hadn't done its job properly.

Well, actually, if I was to make one complaint it would be that the service was really slow. The whole meal took three hours and that was with us cutting it short because we'd all only paid for 3 hours in the car park. It was a bit of a case of throw down your coffee and go.

However, relatively speaking the chair I was on wasn't too bad, so it wasn't as unpleasant as it could have been.

I tried to do the handover with the now ex-RED employee on Friday too, but really we needed more time. He had to go at 4 and with 3 hours lost to lunch, it just wasn't enough time.

To be frank, I'm basically left with my fingers crossed, hoping nothing he handed over becomes active in any way. If it does I'm going to be having a few problems, I think.

The weekend wasn't a total disaster area. I'd didn't get the "do stuff" bug I was kinda hoping for, but equally I ticked everything off on my basic to do list.

I also found the time to finish off watching the Monty Python documentary I bought a while back. It was pretty good. The series featured 6 episodes and the last 3 focused on the post-TV series stuff, with the films and stuff like the Spamalot musical.

It was quite interesting, though I've heard much of that stuff before, as if I'm honest I tend to regard the films as being much better than the TV series, which was a bit hit and miss at times. I've therefore watched quite a few documentaries and stuff about the films.

Still, as a whole the series was entertaining and interesting. The extras were quite good, adding another good couple of hours of interviews and outtakes.

So yeah, if you like a bit of python then well worth checking out, though I'm not sure if non-Python fans would really gain much from it.

chrimbo radio times

I'm feeling pretty knackered today for some reason, so I thought I'd do a quick post about something completely random.

And that completely random something is the Christmas issue of Radio Times.

I've heard it said that for most people Christmas doesn't officially start until they see the Coca Cola add featuring Father Christmas and the trucks. Well for me, Christmas doesn't really start until I buy the Christmas issue of the Radio Times.

I actually buy RT every week as I'm a fan of television in general. I use it to help me plan what to watch and record, and I'm sufficiently anal as to be one of those people who circle the programs. Usually on Friday night I'll go through, highlighting the shows I'm already following and seeing if there's anything that peaks my interest.

My routine for the Chrimbo issue is almost identical. I'm expecting/hoping that it'll be on sale when I go into town today to drop my latest batch of washing off. I'll then scan through the articles while eating lunch and then Friday I'll plan out what I want to watch and record over Chrimbo.

Of course for those two weeks (if you've never seen it before the Chrimbo RT is a double issue that covers both the Christmas and New Year weeks) there'll be all sorts of specials and the schedules will be odd. Plus I'll be on holiday so there'll be more opportunity to catch some interesting things.

And that will be it - I'll officially be in festive mood.

Well, at least as festive as I'll get.

I have mixed feeling over Christmas.

First off I'm 100% atheist and, to be frank, the whole religious element actually gets on my nerves a bit. However, the thing about Christmas is it's essentially a winter feasting festival that was taken over by the organised religions, so I'm not totally against it.

The aspects I like are (predictably) the eating, the drinking and the relaxing, but also the spending a bit of time with your family and friends that you may not have seen in a while. The gift giving and receiving isn't bad too.

But, like most people, I get a bit sick of the saturation bombing that goes on. I'm very much on the side of people who complain about all the Christmas adverts. I caught an ad-break last week (so the first week in December) and every single ad was Christmas related.

I mean, it's not like we're going to forget about Christmas. We're well aware it's there and when it is, so the adverts are a bit excessive.

Although to be fair, the ads that really drive me bonkers are the post-Christmas sale ads, because they're fewer in number. At least before Christmas there's sufficient variety that you won't see the same ads over and over. But in that Sale period, every ad break will be identical, featuring the exact same 5 or six ads over-and-over, because the sales are much more restricted to certain types of businesses, like furniture stores or department stores.

Oops - got ranting and this post wasn't as short as I'd intended!