So that time of year has come around… dark evenings, cold, post-Christmas blues… it finally got me and I have absolutely no inspiration for a blog.

So let’s have a look what’s coming up in the not-too-distant future…

Birthday and House-Warming

My birthday, which I always look forward to through winter - and this year, it’ll be combined with a house-warming party for my most lovely lady.

I’ve home-made a bottle of Salmari - that’s vodka with Tyrkisk Peber salmiakki dissolved into it. It’s a rather dangerous drink because its sweet liquoricyness causes you to forget you’re drinking alcohol at 40% by volume.

Finland

A trip to freezyland. Just a short one, but I’ll be going to Helsinki for the first time ever (in my 7th trip to Scandinavia). It’ll also be my first Scandinavian capital city. And H’s first trip to Scandinavia.

And it’ll include seeing old friends from previous trips.

And going ice swimming (in theory).

There is a temperature gauge and a couple of links on the top right pertaining to this trip.

Scotland

We’re off up to the top of the British Isles’ highest peak in May. There are only about 150 metres difference between the Ben Nevis ascent and mount Fuji - mainly because Ben Nevis is climbed from 30m above sea level, whereas you begin walking from about half-way up Fuji. It’ll be a perfect warm-up for the real thing.

We might have a little potter round bits of Scotland on the way back, hopefully visiting the Falkirk Wheel, which is one of those feats of engineering I feel the need to visit. By the power of Archimedes, it can carry up to 600 tonnes of canal boats up and/or down 24 metres using only the power of eight kettles. Neat stuff.

A Wedding

H’s brother is getting married. Hooray!

Japan

Wow. What can I say? One of those places that was always on my “I’d love to, but don’t think I ever will” list. We’re mostly flexible on plans so far, but the trip will certainly include an ascent of Mt. Fuji, and an amount of time in Tokyo.

Cropredy

If that’s not enough, it’s then a return to Cropredy. I enjoyed it so much last year, that we’re planning to do it all over again. Despite the completely unacceptable facilities.

and…

…that only gets us as far as mid-August.

Funny… those blues have just blown away.

A colleague of mine has started making his own lunches at work. He recently stocked up and stashed everything under his desk. I thought I’d capitalise on his day off today.

I’ve just sent him the picture…

Some rooms fall naturally into place while others have silly little nooks and crannies, radiators, fireplaces and so on.

What I want is a website where you select your basic room size and shape, any obstacles (fireplace, window, radiator, doors), and features to include (three-seater, armchair, tv and bookshelves) - then it shows you a bunch of real-world examples of how people have laid out their room in plan form.

That’s what I want. Yes I do.

I seem to be lapsing slightly in my geocaching activity. Recent failures include:

1. Visiting Black Hill and not being bothered to look for Pennine No Way.

2. Visiting Worcester Beacon and forgetting to look for Three Counties View

3. Visiting Silverhill (which I apparantly forgot to blog), and completely forgetting to search for Testing for Gas Nottinghamshire’s highest cache?

4. Visiting Shining Tor, commenting at least three times at the summit that we needed to look for Cheshire’s Highest Cache, and then - once again - completely forgetting to do so.

Then again… Geocaching for me was always about the walking, rather than boxes full of tat, so that’s ok.

In fact, the last cache we found (excluding a re-find in Dungeness) was exactly three months ago yesterday - which was a good day for other reasons, as previously discussed.

The last three months have been the best of my life. I have my lovely lady to thank for that.

Thank-you, lovely lady.

NB: Please join the queue on the left if you need a sick bag

Today I have received one of the best google searches ever. What prompts someone to search for:

where is the scary man with pigtails

?

Other highlights this week:

bathing a pygmy goat

go to the gym on your own

slippiness

and

big explosion

Just imagine if, tomorrow, with no way out of it, we all had to go back to 8-character file and folder names.

What would your mp3 collection look like?

How would you sort your photos?

Thank goodness for progress.

You know sometimes you’re playing Scrabble™ and no matter how you arrange your letters, you just can’t get them to say anything else…?

Read the rest of this entry »

Banned for public safety? They should be banned simply for being freaks.

Dog leash Goths ‘hounded off bus’

I bet there’s uproar in “equal rights for freaks” circles.

Oh… and no points to the journo who came up with that pun.

Disclaimer - I’m sure they’re very nice young people really.

After a party on Saturday night, we decided we’d tackle another county top on Sunday - but a not-too-difficult one due to the late night before.

So, it was off to Cheshire very close to where we went in April.

click for full size

click for full size

There was quite a harsh start made easier by the short warm-up along the reservoir, but made harder by the previous night’s alcohol. After that, though, it was gently undulating, if large, hills. The second peak along the ridge was Cat’s Tor, from where you could see Shining Tor and Shuttlingsloe together - very pretty. Snowdonia was also, surprisingly, visible to the east.

A lovely walk - highly recommended, and much better than the ‘easy’ way we could have done it - a short there-and-back from the Cat+Fiddle.

It was also the 16th County Top we’ve visited and the 11th one at which I’ve juggled 5 balls (video evidence to follow!)