I found an MMC card, which included some old blog postings I’d not finished since 2004.

Ahhhh, it’s the Mas home straight. In five days, it’ll all be over, except for the turkey. But then, as Daddykins is going up Lynne’s for Xmas, there’ll be no Turkey is THIS household. Hurrah!

It ended there. I didn’t stop drinking.

(Comments disabled on this post due to spammage)

Technorati Tags: drinking, old post

Woohoo! That’s “it” almost until Decmber 25th 2007, folks! Maybe next year, I’ll be in a little more of a Christmas spirit.

It meant nothing to me this year. In fact, we didn’t even put the decorations up properly this year. This was mainly due to the fact that when we opened the box with them in, they were all ruined.

The tree was OK, so we put that up. On the 22nd December.

We switched it on.

Once.

And then we never bothered again after that.

When you come to my age, with no immediate family other than my dad, it’s all a bit pointless making an effort over it. Especially when I appear to be on permanent nights. In fact, even Xmas Day itself was spent mostly in bed. And I’m not kidding.

I awoke at 3AM on Xmas day, bursting for a crap. You didn’t need to know that, but I thought I’d share anyway. I’d only had about 3 hours sleep, but I didn’t feel like going back to bed, so I stayed up and carried out some much needed hard drive clearance. I also upgraded to the new version of Audacity during that time. Again, that’s not really important, but I’m just trying to point out just how boring it was.

Daddykins got up at 11am, and we went down and opened our prezzies. I already knew what I was getting from my him, because Santa didn’t deliver this one, a nice, big bookcase, purchased from Staples because that was the only place we could actually get a decent sized one. It’s been sat in its box at the bottom of the stairs since Thursday or Friday.

Next door to Staples in the “Discount Fiurniture Store”, a term that should be used loosely. We went in there before Staples, just to see how cheap they were. After all, it was a discount store. There was a bookcase in the middle of ths store which looked ideal.

“How much for this one?” we enquired. It didn’t look anything special, and it was about the right size.

“That one’s £440″.

Two simultaneous jaw-drops later, we were heading out of the door faster than what the doors could physically open. And I’m not kidding. For whatever reason, it took 30 seconds for the doors to open all of the way.

So, into Staples we went. I immediately clapped eyes on the biggest bookcase they had in the place. It was still expensive, but 4 times less expensive than what it was in the… ahem… “Discount” furniture store. We paid half each. Now the only struggle was getting it into the bloody car. That was fun. The box is huge. I didn’t realise until that very moment that the back seats on our car can actually fold down.

Anyway, enough about the buildup. I’m sure you’ll all want to know just what happened on Xmas day. I bet you’re wetting yourselves with anticipation.

I’ll tell you what I did, oh yessiree. I slept for most of the day. As I mentioned before, I got up at 3 AM, and stayed up until about 1ish. I thought, that seeing I’d only had 3 hours, sleep, I’d have a quick power-nap to get me through the rest of the day. I’d only planned to go to bed for an hour.

At 11PM, I woke up. The entire Xmas day was flushed down the proverbial toilet. Bloody sleep pattern.

Sadly, I was in work Boxing day. Needless to day that Boxing day, without doubt, is the busiest night of the year. In fact the whole 3 weeks after Xmas are hell. This year, for reasons I won’t go into, is planning to be more hell than usual. Sigh.

Anyway, I’ve been trying my best to stave off the effects of professional depression by scanning lots and lots of photos. I don’t know whether Chad still reads, as he’s not commented for a good few months now, but it makes me wonder if he remembers this:-

The rest of the set is located here. There are more images up, but I’ve restricted those to family members who have a flickr account, which is only me at the minute. If you have a flickr account, let me know and I’ll add you to my friends.

I’m really getting into the whole photo thing. It’s something I’m really starting to enjoy. The price of digital cameras and the supporting media to store the images on, is getting ridiculously cheap these days. I’m never going to be a professional at it. I wouldn’t even know where to start. I can press a button, that’s about it.

Anyway, this will probably be my last post of 2006. I’m planning to tidy quite a bit today.

Technorati Tags: chad, flickr, photo, Reminiscing

I can’t believe my luck!

Clicky bigger

I’ve been waiting to get a shot like this pretty much all of my life. I was lucky enough to be woken up by my dad at 5AM who stuck his head round the door to see if I was in bed (normally, I end up on the sofa). After that, I couldn’t get back to sleep.

Either way, at about 7AM, it was starting to get light. I noticed some red sky on the horizon, so I dashed out, grabbed my camera, and began taking photos of the sunrise. This particular example was taken with the camera balanced on the washing line to help keep it steady. I’d been out for about 10 minutes taking photos, and considering the frost was thick on top of the cars, I was shivering my bollocks off.

I’m amazed at how this one turned out…

Technorati Tags: cold, flickr, frost, photo, red, sky, sunrise

Hurrah! It’s officially Christmas! Which means, just like I was last year, I’m working almost permanen nights. At least I do 3 days on 3 days off now, so it’s not going to be as depressing and solitary as it was last year. I hope not anyway.

As I said no more than a few words ago, I ve been on nights for the past 4 weeks, so you’ll be unsurprised to learn that while the works unofficial Xmas party was on, I was stuck in the dank, cold, horrible atmosphere of Employment Place, therefore you can imagine just how much I wasn’t looking forward to this particular shift. Now, before we continue, I must mention that about 3 weeks ago, I lost my wireless dongle, so I’ve been a bit pissed off over it. For those who have not seen it, it’s a little silver thing, with “safecom” printed on it. There’s a picture of it on the complog if anyone can be bothered reading it (probably not). Either way, I just mentioned it so the next bit actually makes sense.

I had no idea where this dongle was. The last time I remembered having it was when I was finishing my shift. I’d forgotten to put it in my laptop bag, so I put it in my coat pocket. I was due my 3 days off, so I didn’t use the wireless dongle for those three days.

I returned to work, 3 days later, and rooted through my laptop bag. Bugger! It wasn’t there. Not impressed. So, where was it? It certainly wasn’t in my coat pocket anymore.

3 weeks pass, and the dongle was still at large. Nowhere to be seen. At all. I was spitting blood. It was just after I’d invested in a wireless router too, which I hadn’t had the chance to use properly because of this. I was in work last night, and accidentally emptied the contents of my laptop bag onto the floor. Liuckily, the laptop was already out of the bag, and set up on the desk next to me. Amongst the rubbish and various USB cables, what’s on the floor next to me? Only that bloody dongle. I couldn’t believe it. I’d searched the house up and down. I’d ripped the sofa to bits in case it had fallen out of my pocket, and all this time, it was bloody sodding sat there in the frigging laptop bag, despite the fact I’d opened every zip and velro fastener that there was on it. Grrrr.

So, that was a good start to the day. I knew my dongle was safe.

Work itself went rather quickly, and not without an amusing hoax call. For those who don’t know me, part of my job is to take calls on one of those 24-hour shopping channel things, who I’ll not name. Usually, on Fridays, and Saturdays, you get all of the people returning from nights out calling up who want a bit of a laugh. These calls are easy to spot. They always call from mobiles, there’s always a group of people listening in, and as soon as they get through, they tell everyone to shut up bcause they’re through. Usually, some drunk woman can’t stop giggling in the background.

At precisely 6:17, I received one such call, from a broad Glaswegian. After getting the opening stuff out of the way, the conversation went like this, before he hung up.

Me: “What would you like”
Him: “I’d like for you to go and take your face for a shite”

I think I was creased laughing for about 20 minutes. I think it was the broadness of his accent, and the hilarity of the phrase “take your face for a shite. Shortly, it was time to go home, so just like I’d done all week, I ordered a taxi to take me and Rob (the other guy who was on the phone) home. It turned up at 8:10, just as I’d ordered. That was, of course, good news. I’ll be home in time for a good sleep. Half of the ride was uneventful, as we chugged our way through the town, listening to some local brass bands murder timeless Christmas classics on Radio Cleveland.

We dropped Rob off, and just as we were driving away, there was an almighty thud, the driver swore to himself, and the taxi shuddered to a halt. O-hohoho! So much for getting to bed early. I sat there, wondering just what the chances were that this happened.

Now, the only thing I know about motor mechanics is “the wheels on the car go round and round”, and these wheels weren’t going anywhere, so my overall analysis of the situation was that it was totally fucked. The driver called in to get me another taxi, and I sat there wondering what the odds of this happening actually were. By the time I’d came up with a figure which didn’t involve chocolate, the replacement taxi had arrived, and was ready to whisk me away, once again, back to Mercuryvapour Towers, and my lovely warm bed. Apparently, the clutch cable had gone on the original taxi. Not that it actually mattered, as I got the journey for free.

Technorati Tags: broken, christmas work, dongle, employment place, taxi, xmas

The music from the current Marks + Spncers advert, “This isn’t Christmas, this is M+S christmas”, with the sexy-voiced Dervla Kirwan, is “Samba Pa Ti” by Santana, from the album “Beyond Good And Evil”.

I’ll write a proper post later, don’t worry.

Technorati Tags: advert, marks and spencer, Music, santana