Alex's Adventures on the Infobahn - home

Is it spring yet?

2011-02-21T16:29:00+00:00

Nothing much happened this weekend apart from a complete tidy-up spring clean of the house. This may seem a little premature but when the weather finally does get better we won't have to worry about too much clutter up the house. Fliss' mum came around on Sunday and helped us Fliss tackle some of the long overdue pruning ahead of the new spring growth that would have left us drowning in overgrowth.

Oh and Fliss Prestiged, for someone who's apparently not a fan of the FPS genre she certainly seems into it!

There and back again

2010-10-01T10:01:00+01:00

We have finally returned from our honeymoon although the luggage has contrived to take a more circuitous route back. Hopefully it will arrive later today. I have left preparations for the weekend (Katy & Vince's wedding) hilariously late but we shall be driving up Saturday morning, staying in town (we thought we'd try out the Hilton) and heading back at the crack of dawn on Sunday. We shall make time for a less rushed visit to Manchester when we are, ahem, less rushed.

We will start the process of re-syncing social calendars next week and see how quickly the rest of the year fills up.

Managing Mammals

2010-07-12T15:22:00+01:00

I'm writing this post the Sunday house break-in attempt. However much as I'd like to vent and praise I thought I'd stick with some positive commentary on the weekend and save the rest for another post.

This weekend has involved a variety of mammals and their interactions with their human masters/slaves/overlords*. We started on Friday when an old friend of Fliss' came over to stay with his lovely half-whippet dog Mina. Mina is very friendly and approachable but also fairly excitable which explains why our two cats didn't really hang around for too long to get to know her. They quickly came to the decision that the wilds at the back of the house were more preferable than sharing with an unknown dog. We did shut the door between kitchen and living room to create a dog-free refuge for the cats but they seemed reluctant to trust in our security arrangements, even scarpering at high speed when I came into the kitchen to do some washing up.

I found another mammal in our garden during the evening. A hedgehog came wandering across my path before rushing into the perceived shelter of the garage. Rather than rush it out we decided to leave the garage open as late as possible. However the hedgehog persisted in hiding itself away until I eventually gave up and locked it in for the night.

Once Mina left with Thom late on Saturday it took a degree of coaxing to convince the cats that it was safe to approach the house again. I ended up taking a food bowl outside and progressively moving it closer to the house. I'm happy to report the cats are now back to fully the facilities offered by our humble abode.

That left us on Sunday evening with our hedgehog visitor having endured two overnight stays in the garage and showing no sign of leaving via the open doors during the day/evening. I ended up picking it up with some suitable gardening gloves, watching it cutely go into defencive ball position before laying down on the garden border and watching it waddle into the bushes, hopefully hungry to tackle the slugs in the garden.

* delete as appropriate

Partaaaay Aftermarth

2009-11-16T12:14:00+00:00

Well this weekend was filled with the preparation, execution and aftermath of our House Warming party. Fliss finished a number of final touches to curtains, clothes racks, and other such details while I pottered around moving cardboard to the outbuildings and ordering two polypins of local ale to keep people suitably lubricated.

We had a mixture of friends from near and far, family and neighbours attend the party. The early part was taken up with bonfire and fireworks (which I observed from the warmness of inside the house). The lack of launch tubes seemed to account for the large number of ground bursts I saw. However given we had such a large area of land to use for the fireworks the safety margins were a lot higher than your typical Dangerous Fireworks Party ^tm. However one downside of the outdoor pursuits was a grey trail of clay from the fireworks field to the back door. Luckily people were pretty good about removing shoes and our kitchen is easily mopped clean.

The new table got it's first use as a ad-hoc gaming establishment while last.fm's recommendation engine supplied the players with a large amount of hi-energy disco music. I finally switched it to my namesakes radio which was better received. I think it may have won over a new fan to the social networking music idea.

The front room had the universal entertainment system switched on to keep the kids (and some of the adults) happy with a combination of Soul Calibur IV and Super Rub'a'Dub. I was only able to pop in briefly to pwn a few of the younger upstarts before returning to hosting duties.

The kitchen proved to be the central hub of the party and benefited from it's size as well as selection of food courtesy of in house catering with relatives supplying additional dishes. The only downside was having to leave the warmth of the kitchen to pick up another pint of ale from the chilled confines of the garage.

By early morning I was starting to flag and we started allocating sleeping facilities before crashing. It proved to be a useful exercise as we realised the Library was missing a door, something that will need addressing for Christmas where potential guests may be less comatose than S&S who used it. I seem to recall I slept much like a log would.

The next day involved me cooking an excessive amount of bacon, sausages and baking bread as successive kitchen faeries whittled the large stack of washing into a manageable amount. The rest of Sunday was filled with casually directed lounging with a brief intermission watching the new Doctor Who as he turned ever slightly more megalomaniacal. Than I slept.

It was great seeing everyone at the party, especially those that travelled so far to join us. Future visitors can expect better accommodation when bed pressure isn't quite so high! I'm glad everyone has so much fun, the only real lesson I can take from the event is to keep a closer eye on the port decanter ;-)

Ready to Go

2009-09-01T12:13:00+01:00

I dropped my car off at the body-shop for it's cosmetic surgery today. It will be there for 8-9 working days. On a completely unrelated note we have a completion date now which is in the scarily close sub-fortnight range. Hopefully we'll be moved into our new house the weekend after next. This means I won't be going to the final Maelstrom of the year. Hopefully we shall have the car back in time for the move, I don't think my computer desk will fit on the push-bike ;-)