Looking back

Well, New Year is almost upon us and it’s been an interesting 2006. A lot of it has been a bit of a haze, but I’ve certainly done quite a bit too:

• getting a first-place in a Worth 1000 photography competition
• driving a SMART car
• going wonky and getting back to normal again
• seeing some pretty young French ladies in the park
• learning to use studio lighting
• going to France for 24 hours
• Schweeden! Summer girls! ok… C64s really
• seeing an incident
• photographing some deers
• getting published on the intermaweb
• finding a picture of a goat in a tub/bucket/bowl
• going to Dungeness apparantly just before they decommission the power station.

Looking forward

It’s going to be a very interesting 2007. I hope the divorce can get sorted quickly, leaving more of the year free for both of us to move on. My plan for 2007 is to have an opinion amnesty. All those long-held beliefs are up for adjustment, starting with a ride in a BMW Mini on New Years Day.

A year in pictures

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Finally

Happy new year to you all - I hope 2007 is your best year yet.

A little late, I know, but today I went and paid my respects…

Anyone who has visited Nottingham before his passing will probably have seen him at some point. I think it’s great that the City Council arranged this stone.

Frank, you are missed…

I haven’t been out Geocaching for ages and ages and ages - since the first couple of days in June to be precise. But there are a couple of things I love about Geocaching.

Firstly, there are those caches which are in such completely inaccessible places that they only ever attract one or two visitors per year, if at all. Caches like Ambitious Snorkeller which is on the bottom of Lake Ontario somewhere, or El Conquistador’s Treasure which requires a 10-hour round trek through the wilds of Greenland.

The other thing I love is when a member of the public chances across a cache completely by accident. The caching guidelines state that there should be an information sheet in the cache pointing accidental finders to the website so they can log their find and join in if they so desire. Often they do. Sometimes their log says something like: “Found this thing by accident, now off out to buy a GPS unit and find the rest!”

So… what prompted this blog? A ‘find’ report which came in this morning, combining the two.

The cache in question is Cone_Z, 12,000 feet up an active volcano in Antarctica. The find was by a group of scientists from the volcano observatory. How cool is that? (Don’t say “well below freezing, it is Antarctica”) .

What are the chances, eh?

So… I received a payment of 4.00 SEK yesterday for isitfriday.net. (that’s Swedish Kronor, by the way). According to xe.com, that converts to about 29.6p.

PayPal asked if I would like to

a) Convert the funds to GBP, giving me 28p
b) Start a Swedish Kronor balance on my account
c) Reject the payment

I thought it would be cool to have a Swedish balance on my account - I might then be able to pay in advance for things like Big Floppy People or things to be taken there for me to collect, but in the end I thought, well 28p isn’t a bad conversion… I’ll have that.

On accepting the payment, I was met with:

Total Amount: 4.00 SEK
Fee Amount: -3.41 SEK
Net Amount: 0.59 SEK
Conversion From: -0.59 SEK
Conversion To: £0.04 GBP

What? Four chuffing peas? Bah!

Ah well… I’ll add his name to the list anyway. It was fun.

I suppose when it comes down to it, the 3.41 SEK fee is a moderately reasonable 25p which can be expected from a premium PayPal account.

Almost every week we do the pub quiz here:

and we are given multiple offers of lifts home, to around here:

Obviously, we decline since it’s less than 5 minutes’ walk between the two, being only a couple of streets away.

Well, I can tell I had a good nihgt alcoholwise tonight becuase I happily accepted a lift from the (totally uncharacteristic of the pub in question) karaoke here:

To the same destination here:

I noted, about half-way through the lift that maybe it would take longer getting in and out of the car than it would to actually walk the same route. The problem is that I have to face these people sober tomorrow - they are my mum and step-dad after all!

Mmmm! That Cheddar Valley is a mighty fine cider. Despite it’s very ‘red cheddary’ colour.

Oh… and I fuggin love you all you’re my best mates you are!

A tree, a puppy and an intermagoogle (plus getting lunch cooked for me by my mum tomorrow)… what more could a guy need at Christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody!

…and my rebellious streak continues as I decide to use ON-CAMERA FLASH for this shot! Look at those shadows - particularly behind the star and the puppy’s ear! Mein Gott they suck!

(Ok… I know it’s not a real meme, but since this is the word people use for intermaweb surveys, I’ll use it here)

100-Question Self-Absorbed Questionnaire stolen from various sources.

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Quite literally. And not just my own. My neighbours shit and their neighbours’ shit.

It all began when I decided to investigate the pong and overflowing from our drain - it’s quite fun but alarming when you empty a warm bubble bath and the foam starts squirting up around the sides of the ‘airtight’ manhole cover.

So yesterday, work finished at 3pm (hooray!) and I rushed home eager to lift the cover and get the drain rods out. After an hour of rodding, nothing was moving so I admitted defeat, had a bath, threw the overalls in after me and phoned a drain specialist.

The drain specialist promised he’d phone at nine in the morning and get someone out to have a look. I turned down a night out due to having to be up early for the drain man. By ten o’clock when he hadn’t called I thought I’d phone another drain man. He came round at 11:15. Not bad!

We lifted the cover, he had a look and then decided to look under next-door’s cover. They’re students and are now not there, so he jumped over the wall and lifted the cover. Ugh. Not nice. Didn’t anyone tell them not to flush condoms? Anyway… a quick rod there and nothing happened. So on to two doors down - sorry… you can’t look at our drains. Ok. On to three doors down… “Hi, can we look at your drains?” “Yes…” so we went to look at the drains. Full. Stuff seeping out of the ground. Mmmm!

Next door down… this is where it meets the main sewer. Still blocked.

So our chap send me down to jump over the wall and rod next door’s while he does magical things with the one at the end. I get covered in shit. Normally I wouldn’t mind (well… you know… it’s a realative term), but by now I don’t have overalls because they’re in the bath soaking after yesterday’s “getting covered in shit” exploits.

So my combats and my fleece are covered in shit. Lots of it.

Anyway… turns out that it’s a problem for Severn Trent to deal with, which they’ll do for free and almost instantly (apparantly). And he only charged me £133.12 £113.12* including VAT and credit card surcharge to tell me that.

(*Sarah put in £20 since she’d like to use the loo, as well)

I asked if there was a discount because I had become covered in my neighbours’ shit and he said unfortunately not. He then asked me if I could write neatly, and could I help him fill in his Christmas cards. I am not making this up! I told him to fuck off. (in a polite but firm manner, of course)

I’ve been told not to internalise emotion, so I hope you enjoyed my externalisation.

It’s really not all that bad, though. It gave me a blog entry and something to do when I could have been out starting my christmas shopping (yeah… I know)

Merry Christmas!

Happy solstice!

Bring on the longer days - though we won’t really notice until about six weeks’ time.