Money Monster

In these times of hard saving, its worth noting that living on £14 a week isn't big, nor is it clever. It is however very necessary in order to maintain the flow of savings into my account so that I can eventually go on this dubai holiday in June.

However popping the christmas money into the account always helps to bolster the funds slightly, and all contributions are gratefully received.

Only two days left at work this week, and then i get three days off, yay! Although i will be required to surafce rather early on two of those three days, which is not so good, and will probably leave me rather tired and more than a little bit cranky. Always a nice feeling to wake up and realise that despite having already done a hard days graft at t'mill you only have the two days left.

That about sums up my mornings rambling, so i'm off to do something else, then go to work

Hermit's very rarely surface

Contrary to popular belief, i'm not dead, nor have i been abducted by little green men in flying saucers, no i'm still here.

I've been having a break from all things internet recently and have retreated away for several days to just "get away" as i don't get much time off from work, and decided this time for the 4 days i did have off, i'd make the most of it and basically sleep as much as possible, but aside from that, vegetate and relax.

I think with the hectic shape of life as it is at the moment, none of us really relax as much as we'd like, culminating in lots of sick days. Just my thought. I don't do sick days, as i don't believe in having the day off as sick unless i'm a: in a hospital, or b: at home, but so ill i either don't know where i am, or so ill i can't physically get out of bed, which may explain why two days after i'd sprained me foot a while back, i hopped up and went back to work only to find four days later my foot decided to let me know in no uncertain terms it wasn't fully healed yet, and kept me up all night in pain. I had the next two days off.

Today i return to work and will probably regret it later, but still, only three days this week and then i get two possibly three off, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Have fun, and a furthur announcement will follow shortly, we thank you for your patience

Naf....

...all to report, going to bed, 'ave it

Partly cloudy and very cold

So says forecast fox, an excellent little plugin for firefox which dougal alerted me to, which will tell you what the weather is doing round your area now, tonight, tomorrow, next week, whatever you ask it to do. In case you are interested you can find the relevant information here.

Considering its so damn cold out, you'd have thought my work may have had the sense to have a half decent repair policy for the central heating system for when it breaks down. Like today, when it did...and nobody seems able to work out exactly what we are supposed to do with a broken boiler. My suggestion of calling a repairman out asap went unheeded, and i ended up sitting there wishing i wasn't. I tell you know, if its this cold out tomorrow and some half dead repairman hasn't been out to fix it, im gonna do as little as possible and then come home, citing health and safety law as the reason behind it. And yes i do work on a saturday, normally only about 4 hours, but i do. And only every other saturday at that.... who shouted lazy bastard?!?! I'll see you after, take that man's name Wilson.

And on a final note before your concentration dwindles away to nothing, i've come up with not just one but two sketch characters for a show, if it ever gets written that is...

There's northern bastard, who is best described as a cantankerous git who is permantly angry and wants to put the world straight, and says "bastard" a lot, with a strong northern accent and plenty of emphasis. Wears flat cap and has a pipe, looks a lot like that photoshopped picture of dougal i did a while back

Secondly we have Jean-Claude, the french art student (complete with wonky beret) who insists that everything about france is great, and all art should be upheld as wonderful, especially his own and he "reserves ze right to smack you on ze bonce if you do not appreciate ze art".

Must dash, i've got an appointment with a bed i don't want to miss

Breathe easy, it's never as bad as it seems

After completely winding meself up yesterday because me computer refused to complete a simple operation succesfully, and thus buggered the rest of the evening up for me whilst i sorted it out, it has now been done and everything within the world is right again.

There are now officially more parcels coming into this house than at any other time of the year. Admittedly most of them are for me, with christmas gifts for the family in, but its always interesting to see somebody elses parcel arrive. You always get that nosy feeling, and peer all round the parcel in a mostly futile attempt to decern what it contains.

I managed to catch one parcel bloke in the act of delivey, but missed another one due to the complete farce i had down the doctors trying to collect a prescription. Not something i usually have a problem with, as its a simple enough task, but today was not so easy....

Wandering into the doctors and up to the pharmacy i asked to collect my prescription, saying that it would be a large one, and would therefore most likely be either off to one side, or kept with other large orders. Lady behind the counter duly nipped off and scrabbled round on the floor for five minutes before reappearing and saying "Sorry, i can't seem to find it, i'll have a look in the small section", heaving a large sigh i watched as she dragged a stacker box out from under the counter and proceeded to drag all these little paper bags out. Bearing in mind my prescription contained upwards of 30 items, the chances of it all fitting in a small paper bag were remote to say the least.

Managing to discover that the box did not contain the said prescription, she now proceeds to duck back under the counter before popping up several feet furthur along it and muttering under her breath. "Any joy?" i enquire trying not to sound annoyed, as this has now taken 10 minutes, and i haven't had any lunch yet and need to be at work within about 40 minutes. "Not yet, im just rechecking these on the floor" comes the reply. I rest my head on one hand on the counter and prepare myself for a long wait thinking they've either not ordered it, or lost it, which would not please me at all as i need some of that medication today...

"I'll just check the computer" she says hurrying off to jab at some poor keyboard or other. Coming back several minutes later from somewhere she informs me that yes it was ordered and it "should be around here somewhere". By this stage 15 mins has elapsed and im starting to think this may have not been a good idea. Drafting in extra help from other nurses behind the counter, it eventually transpires that mine has been placed off to one side, errrr right then, so i wasn't far off with "most likely be....off to one side".

A slightly more muted sigh this time as the bag is handed to the head pharmacist to check that all is present and correct, which after she's been off to get the insulin from the fridge, she duly informs me it is, apart from one antibiotic which they haven't managed to get. Bearing in mind that i was told this order would be complete yesterday when i handed the thing in on monday, i was not best pleased with this gem of news. Noting that i've now spent 20 minutes standing there, i decide what the hell, lets round it up to half an hour. Taking the bag and peering diligently into it for a minute, i ask where the 'dnase' is, and that i can't see the repeat prescription for ordering next time. "Oh, err just a minute" off she pops.

Returned a full minute later she tells me, that the 'dnase' was never down to be ordered and repeat prescriptions have nothing to do with them, i'll need to go back to the main reception and speak to one of them. This is news to me, as i remember paying special attention to ticking everything twice, including the 'dnase', and as for the repeat ones, "they've always manged to put one in before, whats changed?" "I've no idea, as far as i know its nothing to do with us"

Great, so now i have to go to the main reception for two things, a repeat prescription and a second prescription for reordering what didn't get ordered the first time round. Glancing at me watch and seeing i've now spent 32 minutes in here and haven't got time to piss around, i leave, rather annoyed that such a simple thing as ordering whats been ticked on a piece of paper, then reprinting a new piece of paper for future ordering can be made quite so complicated.

Returning home i cooked sausages in 4 minutes and gobbled some precooked vege that i had left keeping hot down all in under 5 minutes. Got to work late, apologised and stayed over to make the time back and keep everybody happy.

Never mind though, everything is ok now, mother has said she will graciously pop in and grab these prescription's for me tomorrow, instead of me having to go down and do it meself, as she's going down anyway for christmas shopping purposes. I'd be lost without her i swear...

Deep Dish - Say Hello, great little choon, used on the latest bacardi advert with loads of people wearing costumes going to a party, well worth listening to. Im off to relax and then go to bed, have fun

Old Trafford Manchester

And go i did, and i came back again to show people the pictures.

I had a good time, but the match wasn't up the high standard i was expecting. First half was a cracker, but the second half was a bit dull to say the least.

It's wierd though, watching them live is a completely different expeirence from watching them on the tele. On the tele they seem somehow removed from you, whereas live they look just like normal people kicking a ball round, obviously with a lot more skill than you or i but still just normal people.

Anyway enough waffles, and plus im tired, so here are the pictures.

The stadium empty
The opposition warming up
Both teams warming up
The opposition reserve keeper doing something or other
The stadium name, just in case you'd forgotten
A slightly fuller stadium
A full north stand
The place where all the commentators sit
The teams walking out onto the pitch
The teams shaking hands
Just before kick off
Kick off itself
A foul
A corner
And finally the score at the end of the first half, rather blurry though

and there you have it, not the best pictures in the world, but im still learning after all...

Away we go

Tomorrow will see me standing in Old Trafford camera in hand watching Manchester United play Everton. Should be a good afternoon by all accounts although the stairs up to the seats could just about cripple me....

In other news, me sister has passed her driving test, so beware if you are out on the road. She hasn't got a car yet, but its not going to take her long at the rate she's going. Did take her three attempts to pass though...

Did some christmas shopping earlier and to be honest it wasn't as busy as I expected it to be, managed to get a parking spot without any trouble and got what I went for without any problems.

One thing I did notice is why does it take women so much longer to do the shopping than men? Men go down and know exactly what they are going for and go straight for them, take them to the checkout and pay for them and then move on to the next shop and repeat until shopping list is completed. Women seem to adopt a different approach even with exactly the same shopping list. Women will go into the first store, same as the man, and then wander up and down the aisles and pick things up and then put them down again and move on to the next item.

There is no reason for this and eventually the woman will take a liking to a certain item and will buy it, despite the fact that its not really needed, and so therefore, what takes the man 30 minutes to do a shopping list and he comes home with exactly what he went for, takes the woman 2 hours and she comes home with an entirely different trolley load of crap.

Sometimes in really bad situations, the woman will return with nothing off the list at all, and everything is an impulse buy, great for the shops she's been round, but crap for everybody connected to the woman. Instead of a toaster for christmas, you get a toast rack with a free tea cosy. Completely useless...

Lets face it, we'll all seen this strange behaviour, and doubtless it will continue onwards.

Never mind though, I'll be back tomorrow to let you know how me footy match went, hopefully with some accompanying piccys too.

Suited and booted

Well today saw me getting up and stumbling forth at the faintly absurd time of 7:30. The reason behind this was due to the fact that i was going off to birmingham to be measured for a couple of suits.

It must be stressed that these are not the usual run of the mill suits either, these are hand made suits from singapore/honk kong's finest and are bespoke obviously, not the off the peg jobbies that you can buy down matalan for £20.

These sorts of things don't come cheap though running at far more money than you need worry about although i think when they come through after about 6 weeks it'll be more than worth the outlay.

All in aid of my little dubai holiday which i am popping off on next year, which if you've spoke to me at any stage in the last year, you'll know all about. For those what don't know, staying in the worlds only 7* hotel, in a delux suite spanning two floors, cost to me £haha silly money, and again, far more than you need to worry about.

Speaking of expensive things, i was peering at watches the other day, and liked the look of this one, although try not to fall off your chair.

Anyway due to my early start, im going to fall into bed and get some serious kippage before tomorrow, whilst im asleep check out this computer...

Photo jiggery pokery

It's not every day that you get the chance to do something that you actually like doing, and I don't mean like in the sense that you like eating cake, you do that because its tasty not because you truly want to sit down and do nothing but eat cake for half an hour.

Today I managed to sit down for half an hour and had great fun editing a photo of dougal taken at college many moons back. The original photo had dougal peering into camera and ewan sticking his great big long fingers up behind his head, and in previous editing sessions when I was just starting out with photoshop I managed to get rid of his fingers and that was fine.

However I looked at the picture yesterday and thought, you know what? That picture needs a hat, and further more its a flat cap it needs. So today I thought I'll have a go at that, it'll probably turn out really daft and obvious that it's been edited but what the hell, it'll keep me busy for a bit.

A swift google image search later and I was in proud possession of an image of a flat cap, albeit with ears(?). I nipped into photoshop and set about cutting off the bits of the hat I didn't want or need, and then tracing round the outside of the hat so I could place it carefully upon dougal's noggin. Having successfully managed to blend it in slightly, so it didn't stick out quite so much, it was just left to possibly add a final touch to finish the image off.

I'm quite happy with the result which can be found here. The original, before edit is here.
And that's quite enough of that sillyness for one day, all comments welcome, I'm off to do something else

Smile for the camera

I felt it was probably time to have a picture of Sooty!!

I dunno why, i just felt that we needed one, purely cos he's such a damn good bear

Anyway in other news, i still feel ill and require much paracetamol to get me through a day, still i spose it could be worse.

Wave at sooty!!

Sorry, i think i'll go to bed now, as im not making much sense, and i'll make even less the more i go on...