Wow, it’s December (by the time I finish and post this, although I thought about writing it at the start of November). Autumn turned up pretty quickly and then evaporated and turned into an early winter. There’s snow on the ground outside, and more in the air. Some parts of the country are really suffering but we’re not too bad around here. Time has flown by. Since I changed jobs at work I’ve been working harder than ever and have been much less interested in sitting behind the computer when I got home.
Speaking of which the new job is great, enjoying it much more than the last few years of the old one. Change is always scary but it’s working out okay so far. I’m lucky in that I’ve managed to hold onto my desk and so still sit with a great bunch of people from my previous team, and that’s made moving into the role a lot easier. I’m pretty sure they want rid of me but I have the window seat and I’m keeping it as long as I can!
We’re staying in Nottingham this year for Christmas and New Year, so we’re not doing the whole country wide 800 mile round-trip to our families. There are many reasons for that, but the greatest of them is that I want to have a nice, relaxing December where we don’t have to plan for two long trips, sort the cats, and squeeze the whole thing in around work and the holiday period. Frankly – if this weather keeps up it might have been a moot point anyway. Didn’t feel good telling our families, but we need a Christmas at home to recharge.
Just having a quick read back through my blog and it looks like I stopped posting The Guild episodes sometime around 6 or 7. In fact, I may not have even watched them after that – because really I haven’t been sitting in front of this computer much. I’ve been much more likely (as Grete will tell you) to be sitting in the lounge using the PS3 or the XBox. The gaming diary thing is out the window as well though, just don’t have the enthusiasm to play a game and then write an update about it each time, especially since playing a game for me might mean a good few hours before bed, and then straight to bed. On the subject of games, Fallout: New Vegas on the PS3. Good game for the most part, nice update to the franchise, shockingly buggy both code-wise (crashes, bad clipping, falling through scenery) and logically (dodgy dialog options, broken quests). A real shame and it’s totally killed any replayability for me (although I managed to actually finish the game despite the crashes every 3 hours or so).
We finally sorted out our sofas. They’ve been bugging us for ages, we can’t afford new ones but the old ones are ratty and the cats have pretty much destroyed the arm on one of them. We looked and looked for some huge throws to cover them but there wasn’t anything in the right size, so we ended up buying a bunch of small throws from Ikea and Grete made giant covers! This link http://twitpic.com/37f5wt points to the picture Grete tweeted. It doesn’t do them justice really, and while we still need to put the big sofa back together every week or so (the cushions slowly slide off), it’s a 1000% better than it was previously, and for a fraction of the cost of new ones.
We’ve bought new light fittings for the kitchen (simple ceiling roses with lamp shades) but haven’t gotten around yet to taking down the horrible 4-spotlight rail things in there at the moment. Because one of the previous house owners loved DIY but was shockingly bad at it, I’m nervous because you never know what you’ll find. Some of the things in the house truly terrify me and I wish I could afford to get it all fixed, but there you go.
Right, so ‘quick’ rambling Autumn update as if anyone cared. See you in December!