Things are very routine and not a lot is happening at the moment, though we are slowly getting things planned out for the next few weeks. I'm going to Antwerp in two weeks to attend Javapolis, a week-long java programmer conference. I'm going to join Katy in Leicester the weekend I get back because she's having a tea party at her folks' place for an early birthday celebration. The following week, Katy and I are going to spend a few days in London for her proper birthday do, and then it's xmas. In between all of that, we have to fit in lots of cooking for xmas prep, a bit of home DIY and home decoration and get the xmas shopping done. It's going to be a busy time.
Tag: slice of life
Bit of a weekend update
Had a bit of a busy weekend.
In a nutshell:
– took last friday off to wait for our new fridge to be delivered
– painted the pantry in preparation to get shelves fitted in
– removed fresh paint off the cat (stupid animal)
– went to the gym for the first time in months. Happily, I'm not in as bad a shape as I thought I'd be after the wedding, the honeymoon and LA (where my diet went basically out the window for the whole time).
– the whole Smoked Meat affair, which has been mentioned previously.
– started installing the shelves in the pantry, where I concluded that my drill is not up to coping with British masonry walls.
That's about it, really.
Feel meh today.
Don't really know why.
Bimonthly desk clearup
I've just finished clearing the piles of paper that tend to accumulate on the office desk. This lot was particularly impressive because of all the wedding bumf and assorted paperwork. I've finally gotten to the point where we can actually see the desktop and we don't need to shuffle piles around to get to the laptop. I'm quite happy with myself.
Now all I need to do is to apply the same zeal to cleaning out the 3 sheds out back and I'll be a happy man. Unfortunately, those sheds are way bigger than our desk, so it might take a bit more time to get me motivated.
Notes from the eSAHM
I am in Nottingham today, attending the eSciences All Hands Meeting until thursday. It's an interesting meeting, though the scope of it is not really my thing. Any conference that can gather archeologists, astronomers, social scientists, computer scientists and biologists under one roof is bound to be a bit ecclectic. There's some interesting tidbits, but most of it I find uninteresting. I'm here to give a demo on PRIDE/OLS, so basically I'm losing 3 days of useful work time to give a 25 minute presentation and waving the flag a lot. Ah well, thems the breaks.
Getting here was interesting. Taking the train is still a novel experience, especially when it's not a route I'm used to. I'm always worried I'm on the wrong train (this is especially confusing when the trains are identified by their final destination and it's not always obvious you need to take the Norwich train to get off at Ely to then take the Liverpool train to get off at Nottingham). Still, I made it in one piece on time, though at one point I had to disturb a One employee who was busy oogling a rather bust-enhanced page 3 girl.
The hotel I'm staying in is ok, but you'd think I'd be used to differences in classifications and ratings between Canada and the UK. You'd think a 4-star hotel would be a bit more posh than having plastic cups in the loo and small, lumpy beds. Still, it's clean and the food is good.
Speaking of, you'd think I'd know better by now to steer clear of the full english fry-up. But no. I'm stupid that way. I went a bit overboard with the bacon this morning and my body is now voicing a rather harsh opinion that this was indeed a very foolish thing to do. I'm going to be drinking a lot of green tea today to try and bring my GI system back in line. For now, I just hope that my subsonic gas releases aren't disrupting the keynote speakers.
In other news, we're seeing the light at the end of the wedding prep tunnel. We finally heard from our cake decorator last night, and the last things to do are getting Katy's hair cut, the music and the final fittings for the suit hire. yay!
Yet another weekend update
In two weeks and a day, I will get married. This is starting to scare the living crap out of me. Not for the decision or the act, but for the fact that I want everything to go well! I have nightmares that our guests will not enjoy the food or the music or will call us cheap bastards for not having a live band or an open bar. This is what I get for reading those bridal magazines.
The last details are starting to fall into place, thank god. We met with the catering chef from Chilford last friday night. He's a lovely man, and is even more paranoid about allergies than I am, which is saying a lot. In a sense though, I'm really happy about that. Even though he can't guarantee that the food will be 100% allergy friendly (mostly because a lot of stuff if subcontracted out), I know that he's going to try his damndest to accomodate everybody. He's going to make a special menu for one of our guests who is lactose intolerant and has IBS. I mean, yay! We didn't expect them to go that extra mile, but they are. Chalk one up for good customer relations! At first, he was worried that we'd have too much food, then later, not enough. In the end, it's going to work out that we're going to have canapes with the toast round, then a buffet, then cake (provided by our cake decorator), then another buffet serving around 7pm.
All in all, we hope to be eating and drinking from 2:30 to 10pm. This makes us happy :)
In other news, Katy's dad has been here since last thursday doing the finishing touches on the painting we'd started over the summer. We hired a stairwell access scaffold tower so we was able to paint the walls in the stairwell, do the bathroom in total and finish off all the woodwork with gloss. The apartment looks really nice, but smells of paint :) The good thing is that the cat is not covered in paint, even though he was trying his damndest to help out. The last bit we want to do this year is to paint our cupboard downstairs and get some shelving done (though that will have to wait until after the wedding).
I'm going to Nottingham for a meeting from tuesday to thursday. I so can't be arsed. I'm leaving for 3 days to give a 25 minute powerpoint presentation and demo. Joy. Ah well, after that, there's only one ore week before people start arriving :D
I can't wait.
God, it smells like shit in here
When I left the shed last night, all was fine with the world. I get in this morning and the shed smells like stewed toxic waste. Somebody's plant decided that it would spontaneously mutate to produce a smell that is frankly indescribable though gut-wrenching horrible comes to mind.
All the windows are open and we're spraying this piddly little peach-scented air freshener. So now the shed smells of peaches and toxic waste.
Not really an improvement.
Worrying about the girl.
I'm worried about my sweetie. Maybe more than I should, but I still do. She's not feeling well and there's not a lot I can do about it. It's not life threatening, but it's eating away at her and making her miserable and tired, which is not helping her general mental well being.
I don't know what to do, and neither does she.
Weekend wrapup
Went to the pub for our monthly pub meal treat – good as per the norm. They're changing the menu shortly, which is worrysome because they've already taken away something that I loved. I was dead on my feet from the previous crappy night's sleep and I ended up falling asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, round 8:30. Got up 14 hours later, which felt really nice.
Saturday saw me doing the chunky chowder recipe, which was scrumdelicious, if a tad rich and hella costly. It contained freshly steamed mussels in white wine, crab meat, thick-cut bacon, king prawns and cream. Ooooh, baby. It's going to go in the category of luxury meals though, cause it cost about £20 just in ingredients… To work out some of the calories, I cut the grass at 8pm, which is now my preferred time to do it because the amount of livestock that I need to deal with is at its lowest and I'm not sweating like a pig while I'm doing it.
Today, Katy and I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2, which is ok but I only give it a 7/10. At places, it's trying too hard. As I'm writing this, our evening meal is roasting away so I should probably be going back to it.
It's hot and it's wet
… you know the rest.
The air conditioning in the shed is straining to keep us all alive and not roasting at the moment. It's forecasted to be like this all week, joy.
A few random thoughts, in no specific order:
– Peppercorns, salt and mace makes a really, REALLY good dry rub for a beast roast. We tried that last night on a prime silverside roast and it was glrmph! Roast beast that tastes like sausage!
– People have started receiving the invitations, yay!
– We've sent off a cheque for the wedding cake, so that's one more thing that's settled for the moment.
– it's too friggin warm to think straight.
Hopefully today will be better
it's too hot to do anything useful. Katy feels like shit because of her IBS and the strain is starting to show physically and emotionally. I'm going to make another appointment for her on monday to see if she can get something a bit stronger then peppermint oil to try and releive the pain. It's a nasty cycle though. She feels like shit, so she doesn't sleep. She gets stressed, then exhausted, then depressed, all of which aggravates her IBS. Lather, rinse, repeat. I don't know what to do to break the cycle.