watch tHe skies

Well after a day down in our Bristol office I come back to see serious progress on our kitchen. The worksurface is in and so is our lovely Franke sink and triflow tap with integral drinking water filter.

Appliances go in tomorrow so we are almost there, we just need to decide what the hey to do with tiles and flooring. Getting there, slowly but surely, but will it be done before baby arrives?

When I was a kid I planned to be an astronaut. To sail amongst the stars, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no-one had gone before and still be back home for tea less my Mum get annoyed. I remember wondering what I would be doing at the end of the millennium, what 30 year old Matt would do, and whether I would have my own hover car or spaceship.

Then as I grew older my ambitions changed. As I moved in to my teens I dreamt of being Arsenal’s star midfielder, stepping out at Highbury and slamming in an awesome 30 yard drive to win the First Division. As I got past my ‘O’ levels my ambition became becoming a chartered engineer, a dream that I pursued at University and achieved back in about 1997, although I still secretly held out for a long shot that Arsene Wenger would spot me playing five-a-side and sign me.

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So today our kitchen began its facelift. Being without a kitchen sink is more alarming than you would expect, but there you go having to fill the kettle up from the bath is something that we will get used to over the next week or so as our kitchen is transformed in to a wonder to behold. In the absence of any baby news i’m going to bore you rigid with our kitchen upgrade project.

Most of the units are in, roughly, and all of the hideous flowery tiles are gone. Fortunately they (I say they, who I mean is Groby Kitchens, our preferred contractor for said renovation) have left our electronic water softener despite them being very dubious as to its actual effectiveness. The ceiling is a tangle of cables that will soon be spotlights as we wave goodbye to the nasty fluorescent striplight. No sign yet of the new appliances which I believe should come later in the week.

All in all a good start, we just need to decide on tiles and floor now…

Following on from yesterday’s thoughts on starting a Ninja training school, my ADD addled brain found time to surf for Ninja sites, and I found this very interesting one. The least I could do was put a link in after stealing one of their images.

In addition to lots of crazy Ninja stuff, it also has a fun test to see what type of Ninja you are. Fortunately it confirmed that I am a good Ninja. This pleases me. Class site

The nice thing about training people in a secret art is that those being trained have no knowledge of what the training will consist of. So I could charge £20 an hour to train them to balance on one leg or camouflage themselves in a dining room.

Of course the local police would probably be displeased to hear of a training school for oriental assassins, but then once they saw what I was actually doing then they would probably go away laughing. (more…)

Is it just me or did anyone else find it funny that the NFU livestock chairman and much interviewed beef farmer  Richard Haddock isn’t a fish seller?

Ok perhaps it’s just me then, but it amuses me when people with names that are clearly linked with items, creatures or activities don’t actually perform those activities nowadays? Of course at some time in history their ancestors must have been involved with something related to gain the surname. So how does one gain the surname haddock? Surely his great (times x generations) grandfather, was a fisherman renowned for his haddock catching skills, so why should good old Richard be stuck with sitting in a fishy boat all day? (more…)

So this is my test of whether I’ve managed to get the new website to accept e-blogs. Hopefully this will arrive on the blog without me having to log in, hence circumventing any surfnazi issues from the company web blocker.

I’ll reserve my evil laugh for the moment that this arrives on the interweb [hands rubbed together in anticipation].

Well I thought it was about time to move my blog to its own home, so here it is. I’ll copy across old blog items that are of interest,  or if I have a few spare minutes, I might even pull across the uninteresting ones! Stay tuned for witty commentary and incisive analysis of everyday issues, although I wouldn’t hold your breath…

Saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last week. Actually it should have been the week before but for a slight misunderstanding on tickets (we wanted 9pm tickets and got 9am tickets, damn the British resistance to the consistent application of the 24 hour clock!).
For me, it is definitely the best Harry Potter movie, but even so, for non-readers of the books (yes I know that I’m probably the only person in the northern hemisphere who hasn’t read them, but I figure that I will read them to the baby anyway so why start now?), they aren’t that great films in their own right, because they rely on you having additional knowledge about the stories. (more…)

Attended a leaving do for work-mate Mark last night. This involved meeting at teh Bakers’ Arms for a couple of guinnesses, followed by a trip to the excellent Double Dragon restaurant in Blaby, for a slap up chinese; duck, ribs, yuk sung the lot, plus five or so pints of Sunlik, a chinese beer that, although purporting to be 5% must have a secret ingredient such as whisky in it. (more…)