Another weekend.

T’was a nice weekend visiting Rachel, Graham and little Christopher.

I travelled up to Yateley on Friday evening, basically cycling home and dumping stuff, picking up my bags and throwing them in the boot of my car. 1.25 hours later (7pm) I arrived just in time to wish Christopher a good night.

Having been plied with tea, Alec turned up, we had a nice dinner, talked and generally chilled out. Ths included watching Christopher’s school’s nativity play graham had videoed on Alec’s DVCam.

Saturday started quite late and involved lots of construction of Lego and Lego technic and the watching of “The Princess Bride” before Fiona and Alec turned up (not together). We all had a thoughly nice lunch of very thick soup and some strange bread. Afterwards we toddled off to the local park where us blokes played “football” whilst Rachel and Fiona talked and acted as goalposts. Once Christopher had got fed up with football it was onto the swings etc. Alec enjoyed the swings too and the wooden beam didn’t bend too much under his weight to everyone’s surprise. The women wandered home early so that they could privately talk out of the way of the men. We followed later.

We watched the school play again which Alec had transferred onto VHS, mostly so that Fiona could go ah at all the kiddies. After which first Fiona left and then Alec, who had to go of to Ian’s party in Hemel Hempstead.

Rachel rustled up a dinner, we ate, we lounged, we went to bed.

Sunday started with Rachel, Graham and Christopher running around getting ready for church whilst I lay warm in bed. I finally got up at 9am and listened to “Breakfast with Frost” whilst improving the half-track dumper truck I’d constructed the day before. Had breakfast and then dozed dreaming of what I could do with my house if someone gave me £50000. The family arrived back at about 11am. The rest of the day was idled away.

After a lovely roast chicken lunch, cheese on toast tea and a number of mince pies it was time to go home.

I finally got home, feeling very tired, at about 9:10pm, put the rubbish out and flopped into bed.

It’s a good thing it’s my last week at work, I need the rest.

Friday at last.

Although it’s not been that busy at work this week, it has been strangely tiring. That and having someone call me up the night before last at 11:15, 45 minutes after I’d got to sleep, just so they could tell me that they had a wrong number. Some people can be most inconciderate.

Still, tonight I’m off to see Graham, rachel and little Christopher in Yately for the weekend. Alec is likely to pop over there tonight also, so it’s likely to be a fun, relaxing weekend.

I can’t believe it’s only a week ’til my last day at work before Christmas!

Brain power

Yesterday I had one of those days where my brain had a flat battery. I’m sure you know what it’s like, a negative IQ and fluff for brains.

I did manage to jump start my cognative processes in the end with two mugs of coffee from the Klix machine (and this example is a classic, biege, chocolate brown with day-glow orange details). I usually only need at most one cup of Klix coffee to wake me up on my most tired days.

I think the Twix bar also helped with its sugar and chocolate.

Anyway, by 3pm I actually had some brain power, which was useful.

The only problem with all this wake-up drug intake was that I couldn’t get to sleep easily last night, so read in bed, then channel hopped a bit, finally getting to sleep at 11:30pm.

I slept well, so this morning I feel fine. Well, I did until about 10 minutes ago when I started feeling drowsy again. :-/

Still, I do have to look forward to one thing, reverendgrim, h0llym0nst3r, sleipnir_ and myself are going off to see Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring next Wednesday evening in Reading. 🙂

Monday morning again.

It’s Monday morning again.. I think. Well, it would be if I were awake rather than being in the zombified state I am in currently.

I’m guessing the lack of brainpower is due to going to Bob & Jos’ housewarming party at the weekend, staying up ’til gone 3am sunday morning chatting in the kitchen. Then again, I did sleep well that night with a nice little pussy cuddled up on top of the sleeping bag.

I have to congratulate Bob and Jos on a splendid house warming and wind down day yesterday. it was very enjoyable, despite the copious amounts of washing up.

I’m sure they won’t have to cook for the next few days as they probably still have a number of baked potatos and other such things.

Phew, what a day!

Having been awake half the night coughing, I gave myself an hour’s lay in bed later than normal.

Just as I got into work, the main server decided that it was bored of serving things and just wanted to play with its SCSI bus. I gave it a nice sharp power-cycle for its troubles (it was otherwise unresponsive). After the reboot it showed no indication in dmesg what the problem had been.

I was then able to get to my e-mail.. but before I had a chance to read very far one of the secretaries called me shouting “HELP!” ‘cos she couldn’t log in. There seemed to be no reason for this but a quick reboot worked wonders on the Windows box.

So, back to the e-mail.. where there was a report of a box in teh Uni getting broken into using the SSH crc32 hole and being used to scan the rest of the Uni.. so I had to check out all our hosts, just in case.

With all that, plus Sun Maintenance Schedule organisation loveliness (which I’m not going to rant about), the glossy photo paper and normal paper being exchanged like nobody’s business in the A0 printer and a colour laser printer which mailed me lots saying that the paper was empty when it wasn’t, my day wasn’t that fun, really.

Still, it’s now time to go home. Thank goodness!

Where did the weekend go?

Well, it’s back to work this morning, though I did lay in for an extra half an hour ‘cos it’s out of termtime now so the bike racks won’t be full.

The weekend was fun, though a little short.

Saturday was spent first doing the normal shopping at Sainsbury’s followed by travelling to London at lunchtime to meet some friends ready for the “By the Gods” Xena fan club meeting in the evening. Although I’m not really a “fan” as such, I enjoy the show but I’m not fanatical, the bunch of people who Alec introduced me to are really nice and fun to be with.

Anyway, I got rained upon just before reaching Charing Cros Police Station. The foyer of the Police Station is where we arranged to meet as one of the people is a sargent there. Off we went to TFI Friday’s around the corner where we had a good lunch, though the service was a little on the slow side.

By the time the food was consumed it was pretty much time to go to Page’s Bar in Westminster, though Jo couldn’t resist taking us to a couple of Aussie shops for supplies on the way back to the nick (to pick up Maureen’s car).

Once at Page’s, Maureen and Jo went ahead taking the copious amounts of sweeties she’d been asked to get from Makro’s by Dean into the bar whilst the rest of us queued outside.

Much fun was had by all during the evening, including the Sing-A-Long to the musical episode “Liar,Liar” which includes a very amusing cover of “There’s Always Something There to Remind Me” which is nothing like Burt Bacarat(sp?) would have imagined. Then the “Techno re-mix of Zorba The Greek” Dean forced us to dance to was landed upon us, which was rather exhausting and in the smokey air left my throat rather sore and my voice non-existant.

The drive home afterwards was uneventful, thankfully, so it was to bed at about half one.

Sunday morning was spent in bed reading “The Truth.” This was not planned. I’d woken up at 9am and thought “I’ll just have a little read and get up at 9:30” then started reading. The next I knew it was 11:45am and all my plans for the day were out of the window. It was a good thing I didn’t need to talk to anyone as I’d lost my voice from the cold I have and the night before’s excesses.

Idid manage to wash the car and scrub most of the wax I’d accidently got on the plastic bits the last time off so it doesn’t look so horrid.

At 7pm I felt a little tired so decided to have a lay down for a bit.. and woke up at 9pm! I watched a little telly, put the rubbish out then went back to bed and started reading another book as I’d finished “The Truth.”

I think I need longer weekends when I have social things on.

My cold, although not entered the nose, is happily playing with my throat and my sinuses.. I hope it gets bored and goes away soon!