You can track my blog posts by when I’m on holiday. Once I’m back at work, they dry up. Go to work, come home, play EQ, avoid the world, that’s the plan.

Probably doesn’t sound very healthy I guess?

Anyway, here’s my half-year update for the 2 people left who still read the blog. Had two weeks holiday, felt relaxed, got back to work and now it’s nearly the weekend. Yay. We’ve landed on our feet with car stuff. The Mondeo is getting long in the tooth. Gear box is on the way out (struggles to go into first and reverse), we’ve banged it, scratched it, bumped it, dragged it, the boot arms can’t hold the boot open any more, the rust is starting to spread, the fan’s picked up a cute high pitched whine. Last MOT cost us a bit to get it through the emissions and I basically said then that the next major mechanical failure and we’d dump it. It’s dragged on another 10 months though, bless it’s huge two litre soul. Anyway, we know someone who sells cars (fairly recent thing), and they had a Renaul Migane up for sale, and we finally had a bit of spare cash, and the numbers matched up.

The Mondeo was due tax at the end of March and we basically managed to get it sorted so they took the Mondeo yesterday, we got the Migane, good timing and a decent car. It’s second hand so there’s the usual array of ‘little things’, but it’s mechnically sound and hopefully it’ll do us as long as the Mondeo did (seven years)!

For the historically minded, here’s my ‘blog’ post from the day we got the car,

[29th September 2001 – 20:31]
Ages

Once again, ages since the last update. But, here I am.

Still have a house I don’t want – are you sure you don’t want to purchase it? 3 bedroom terrace, Stockton-on-Tees?

Got my tax return in and done in the end, and in time for them to work out how much I owe, rather than having to do it myself. Their on-line system leaves a lot to be desired, only covers 1/10th of the forms and you have to work your tax out yourself. Hmm, might start scouting around for some tax-aware home-finance software at some point.

Got a new car, probably didn’t mention it previously, 2 litre Mondeo. Nicer than the previous cars, seems ok. Too expensive, but then all cars are.

Work alternates from being terrible to terrific in the space of 30 minutes, which is interesting. We’re moving desks at the moment, so Monday may be hectic.

Rented Shaft and Pitch Black on DVD, both of them quite entertaining, although Pitch Black was probably more enjoyable overall.

Lord of the Rings – the trailer looks amazing! I have very high hopes. I mailed National Amusements in the UK (they run our local cinema), asking if they had plans for Lord of the Rings, and got a very nice reply telling me that if I wanted tickets for the Harry Potter movie, I should simply purchase them at the right time. Oh well 😉

You should notice a theme with how that blog started!