All the bits and bobs have been cleaned, vacuumed, polished, de-moulded and put away. Most of the prezzies are wrapped, all the clothing is packed. We're ready to leave for Leicester, which means that we are officially on vacation. Give me a hoo-ah, please.
Tag: slice of life
can i sit down now?
So tonight, I have:
– washed the dishes, twice†
– made two loaves of bread
– done two loads of laundry and folded one
– wrapped up all the presents for her parents and her secret santa
Organized me is scary.
†I swear, when Katy is feeling better, she owes me a month of washing up!
On another note, I've been stupidly burpy all day. I really need to shake up my diet because something is giving me gas, to the point where it's painful and I'm burping for hours on end. I'm so sexy when that happens too…
On fish and logic bugs
Katy had her interview at the Sanger today. From what she told me, I think it went well. Apparently, her boss is known to the powers that be here so that went quite a long way to soothe some of her anxieties. After her interview, I bought her a celebratory muffin and mince pie (cause it's a rule, you have to treat yourself to something nice after an interview) and I went to show her the fish that congregate in the little lake on the grounds.
And now for something completely different, I found a really really nasty logic bug today. I ran across it totally by accident, which does not please me. It's nasty and will require me to reload all the ontologies in the OLS (which will take about 2 days – joy). On the plus side, it's a quick fix and also allows me to implement something I needed to do but wasn't that critical and didn't warrant reloading everything.
The weekend
We were in Leicester this weekend to have an un-birthday celebration for Katy. The drive down on friday was crap because of tons of roadworks and traffic and rain but we made it in one piece while enjoying some Pink Floyd along the way. We chilled out on saturday (well, they did – I traipsed into town to get a haircut) before Rita, Anna and Rhona came for tea and sweets. Anna is very quiet, especially when you put her next to her girlfriend, a loud and exhuberant scotslady who has a big thing for Canada. There was serious lobbying for us to get married there so they'd have a reason to go there :)
Katy, her parents, Rita and I went to see Goblet of Fire. I still maintain that the new Dumbledore is crap is ruins the movies for me. The look of the movies themselves are actually more edgy than the first two, but Richard Harris is a head above the new bloke. He sucks. Dumbledore is not supposed to be a manic, headless-chicken sort of person. Nor is he supposed to be a stoner giving out meaning-of-the-universe advice. Poo, I say, pooo!
Sunday was spent doing tech support on the computer we bought for Katy's parents for xmas. A bit of meatball surgery and I had all the files transferred from the old HD to the new one and then spent the next two hours or so patching and updating all the security holes in XP. The usual.
This week should pass quickly. I was working home today and I'll be working home again on wednesday when the car is supposed to be delivered. No real other plans, except that we're going to be doing a cleaning blitz next weekend because the weekend after that, we're on HOLIDAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
woo-a-hoo.
It's official
I do a damn good roast. I've been told by a certain somebody that lives with me that my roast chicken is actually better than that of said person's parental units' and I also a better crackling pig roast. My method is simple. Everything roasts at 400F for 30 minutes then 350F for the rest of the cooking time, with 35 minutes per pound total cook time. Works everytime.
Had a slow day today. We had our own little wine&cheese. We were supposed to go help decorate Penny's flat for xmas (Penny being one of Katy's workmates) but Katy was too tired to go out. She ended up napping part of the afternoon away. She didn't sleep well last night because her car got posessed and her alarm kept going off at random moments (I, of course, sleeping with ear plugs, heard nothing). Turns out that a door switch was faulty. A nice man from the RAC fixed it in less time than it took him to finish his tea (a local custom that I've picked up: offer tea to any serviceman that comes to your place)
Should be a slow week this week. I need to start working the paper I'm writing for BMC Bioinformatics. S'about it, really. Three weeks until Canadia, woot!
Guess I should update
I realize that I've been less than chatty online recently. Slow news week, really. Things are ok for the most part. My back's been acting up a bit and Katy and I aren't really sleeping well. Her cough wakes her up at night and she's been having weird dreams. She's also been trying to roll me out of bed during the night and I have to poke her to give me more room so I don't fall out of bed.
Things at work are going nicely. Got my confirmation that my contract is extended past the probation period for the full 3 years. Got a raise. Playing with lots of new technologies which will look good on my CV when the time comes (though I honestly have no idea where I want to go after this place – but that's not for the here and now). Hopefully I'll be able to release a new version of my project live early next week implementing some nice new features and performance improvements.
Things on the home front are going well too. Our xmas tree is nice (though we need to buy a nice star to put on top of it). People keep harassing me to know what I want for xmas. I don't know. I don't want anything, really. I have everything I need, and most of what I want. I'm in reasonably good health and good spirits and I have love in my life. I'm truly blessed.
I was acutely reminded of this earlier this week. I went to the chippy near my place to get some chips for dinner a few days ago. It was a pretty chilly night; the first frost of the year. I was bundled up, so it wasn't really a problem. As I was walking, I ran into a little old lady at the crosswalk. I didn't really pay much attention. I got to the chippy, ordered and waited for my food. While I was waiting (and for a reasonable stretch), the old lady hobbles slowly into the chip shop. She was walking with a cane and had to brace herself against the door frame to walk up the step that leads into the shop.
She looked old and frail, dressed in typical old lady clothing: a battered fake fur coat and a fake leopard fur hat with flaps. There was this aura of sadness around her. I don't know what makes me say that. It just really hit me. She was holding an empty plastic 4L water jug in one hand, which she bent over slowly to put down, and a sainsbury bag in the other, which seemed pretty heavy as she was transferring it from one hand to the other, slowly flexing her hands to try to get circulation going back into her hands. Her hand was all red and marked (you know the feeling, when you're carrying lots of heavy plastic bags and they bite into your hands).
I really noticed her feet. She was wearing open toe sandals, the kind that are really just one sole and are held in place by loops between your big toe and all the rest of them (like flip-flops, but not the cheap plastic ones). Anyway, she was wearing sandals in weather what made me glad to have my winter coat and boots. She'd wedged some a bit of fleece between the loops of her sandals and the top of her foot to try and keep warm (I guess), but her toes were open to the rather frigid air. Her feet were grey. This might be pure speculation on my part, but I'm thinking that she has trouble bending down and those sandals are the only shoes she can put on.
The whole encounter lasted maybe a minute. My order was ready and I left. I don't know who the lady was and what her story was. She was a complete stranger and for all I know she's the happiest woman on earth. She just made me realize that I have a hell of a lot going for me right now, and that my complaints probably don't add up to much in the grand scheme of things. Here endeth the lesson.
Things that happened today
Things that happened today:
1. We got tailgated by Jamie Oliver and Jools
2. Storm Troopers told us to move along in front of Virgin Megastore
3. I had my brain chewed on by a madness hamster.
4. There are fucking fireworks going off everywhere and it's driving me insane.
5. We bought a xmas tree and an assload of baubles to put in it.
Randomly hitting my keyboard
p489tuaefdoiwjepfiojawgia'sdfj
That's all I'm going to be good for today, I do believe. Had a rough night last night. Woke up at 1am when Katy was coughing up a lung, or so it seemed, then got caught up in a loopy dream that kept my CPU usage in the redline and prevented me from getting back to sleep. I hate that sort of fugue state, where you're kinda sorta awake but still dreaming and you know you're dreaming, but you can't do anythign about it. Then dinner came back to haunt me and I started burping like an idiot – dead sexy I was. I finally managed to get my mind off of what was keeping me up and I got a few hours of decent sleep, but I'm braindead today and my shoulders and chest are stiff. Not good.
Weird assed shit
Shit like this freaks me out when it happens. Katy was channel surfing and stopped on Family Guy. My only exposure to that show has been through LJ icons and the random bits that Sara's quoted. I was only half watching the show when I thought of one of those Sara quotes: “I've licked my share of peanut butter”. 5 minutes later, I kid you not, Brian the dog says that exact line. Woah, dude!
Katy and I spent ooodles of money today on xmas prezzies. Yaay! Funfunfun. Pretties and shinies and tasties and smellies. Still have a bit to cover, but most people are well under way. It's been a weird day. The Grogan clan and I spent the day outside and shopping to change our collective thoughts. Other interesting incidents occurring today were Katy poking me in the eye with her finger and being offered a Star wars balloon, finding out that all of the computers we wanted to buy were discontinued and out of stock and me spending over an hour in a bookstore and coming out bookless. How sad is that?
What to do when the people around you aren't feeling well
Katy's not doing well. Her throat is giving her grief and the antibiotics she's on are making her feel queezy. I think she's caught my cold. She's had a rough day. Make that a very rough day. This was supposed to be her first day back at work but when she managed to get in, they turned her around back home. She feels bad about all the time she's been off work. The good thing is that though her boss is scary, she also has a good head on her shoulders and realizes that the leave is justified, not frivolous.
As if that wasn't enough for today, we went to get the damage estimated on the car. It's not looking positive. Since the Rover plant went belly-up, the car value dropped like a stone and parts are getting scarce. That means that though the damage isn't *that* bad (mostly scratches all along the passenger side) and some bodywork, it comes up to about 1500 pounds worth of work and parts. Since the car is now worth only about a grand, that means it's probably going to be a write-off, even though the car is still mechanically and structurally sound. This sucks the big, pus-filled, boily ass. What's worse is that her driving confidence got a beating along with her car :(
We just had a little conversation, and I have to agree with her, she's due a hell of a lot of good karma in the next year cause this last one has been crappy. She's convinced she's jinxed. I'm trying hard to make her realize that if you get into that sort of frame of mind, you'll always focus on all the bad stuff and overlook the fact that some good stuff has happened as well. Still, I don't want to make light of the fact that the last year has been really, really tough on her.
Right now, she's not feeling well and I don't know how to make it better, except to ply her with tea (which makes everything better), ply her with hugs and generally try and give her a hand wherever I can.
Cause I love her.
And I'm worried about her.
So *hug*