Tag Archives: Friends

Spring cleaning

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We’ve been doing a bit of spring cleaning while I’m on holiday.  Grete’s been selling some stuff off on eBay (listed here) and today we dragged some boxes out of the loft and I threw away a lot of old paperwork (bills from 10 years ago) that we need to shred.

Also found a bag with a lot of stuff from my university days, mostly letters from friends during university or in the year or so afterwards.  Really brought back some memories (can’t believe it’s 20 years ago).  Would love to find out how some of the folk I knew back then are getting on (I know a few of them through FaceBook and while we don’t chat every day, or even once a year, it’s sort of nice seeing how they and their families are doing).  On the off-chance that Linda Shaw, Jane Shephard or Joy Elsender search the net for their own names (assuming they’re not married), then drop me a note!  Let me know how you are!

In fact, anyone I was at Sheffield Polytechnic / Sheffield Halam University between 1989 and 1993, drop me a note, let me know how you are (how egotistical is that – ah well, have to start finding people somehow!)

So the other thing I found was a bunch of invoices for various bits of computer (these are different to the ones I found here), can you believe these prices from June 2000?

  • 17GB Seagate drive – £66
  • 20GB Quantum Fireball drive – £96
  • 8-port 10BaseT hub (yes, 10BaseT) – £37
  • 15″ CRT – £119 (why do monitors always cost ‘around £120’?)
  • 4x4x20 CD Writer – £139
  • 40 speed CD drive – £30

Crazy!

Guests!

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Nice visit from a couple of friends on their way south from a few days on vacation.  Was really nice seeing them both even if I had to be rude and half-work while they were here.  They seem to have brought a change in weather with them – was overcast until they arrived and now it’s sunny and hot!

Can’t complain – fingers crossed it lasts the weekend we might get some more garden stuff done.

Good evening!

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Had a really good evening today, went out for food with Grete to a local pub, ate far too much including some awesome cheesecake which I’m really not supposed to eat, and then went over and saw Simes and Marie and dropped off their Christmas present and stayed for a good long chat.

All very relaxing and enjoyable.

Two more days of work then holiday!

Nearly 2am

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It’s nearly 2am, and we’ve just spent a really relaxed evening in the company of some really cool friends.  We’ve drunk plenty of wine, some of us have drunk some cider and some beer, and we’ve had a couple of decent sized shots of malt whiskey.

I can just about see the screen as I type this, although the room around me is circling in a kind of nefarious manner.

Grete is in bed, our guests are just settling themselves down and once they’ve gone to bed I’ll head up there myself (to my own bed, with Grete, in case that wasn’t obvious).

But I think I’m going to need the bed strapped down so it doesn’t zip out the window or something.

Don’t forget to put your clocks back if you’re in the UK.  See you on the other side.

Friends and Daylight Savings Time

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We have friends visiting this weekend, which means that since our house is always tidy and clean, we can just relax and wait for them to arrive in the pristine surroundings of our lovely house.

Or, it means we spend a week frantically tidying, cleaning and washing.

You choose.

Looking forward to spending some time with them both, I should think we’ll mainly stay in and eat and drink, they’re only here overnight.  It gave us a good excuse to have a solid go at the computer room (mentioned yesterday).  We’ve moved a load of crap off the shelving unit in the room, made space for all my freshly unpacked painting gear (takes up a surprising amount of space), left some room for Grete to store some stuff, thrown away more computer stuff, moved Grete’s spare monitor so she has more desk space, and generally made the place a lot less cramped.

It probably won’t last but it looks pretty good for the time being.

Working and tidying has meant I’ve not had much time to get into any painting and of course I won’t be doing any over the weekend, but I’m sure I’ll get back to it next week.  Clocks go back on Sunday morning, gives us another hour in bed (or more likely, another hour awake), but it messes with the internal clocks on the cats.  Instead of being hungry at 8am/6pm they’ll be hungry at 7am/5pm and instead of being annoying and waking us up at 5 or 6am to go out, they’ll be trying to do that at 4 or 5am.  Usually takes them about a month to get switched over but for that month it’s hell between 5pm and 6pm trying to explain to them that they need to wait for a bit to eat.

I mentioned that to a friend and she commented on her young kids, it hadn’t really dawned on me that kids would pose the same problem on a larger scale, especially when they’re young.  You just get them used to getting up and going to bed at a certain time and then the next day, it’s all an hour out.  Must be annoying for parents and the kids.

Of course, diabetes doesn’t care about daylight savings either, so for the first few days I have to sort of slowly move my meal times.

Spare time

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Scanning gives me lots of spare time, takes 20 seconds to preview a scan for three photo’s, then 30 seconds to select the three photo areas and then about 4 minutes for it to scan those pictures.  I tend to scan about 15 or so, and then save them one at a time as PNG’s.  So I have plenty of time while it scans to read the web.

Which means I run out of things to read in Google Reader really quickly.

Which means I’ll probably blog a lot during today while I’m waiting for the scanner to finish a run of three photo’s.  Simes has just posted some amazing photo’s he took this morning with his sexy new camera, I’m jealous.  Click the image to see the whole set.

As we drove to work on Thursday we passed the canal and really wished we had our camera.  There was around a foot of mist rising from the water, it looked incredible.  It’s no wonder people believed in spirits and another world when you see some of the things water vapour and light can do.

We’ve started keeping the camera within reach in the house since the cats have a tendancy to get into silly positions and then fall asleep.  If we go too far for the camera we wake them up, so within reach means we can preserve their crazyness for ever.

Close Encounters of the Fi kind

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Visitors next week (ish) and then Grete’s folks at some point in the near future (ish) means another excellent excuse to do some house sorting. Bought a set of ladders today which will get us into the loft, so we can finally box some stuff and permanently hide it out of the way.

Onward …

Caught Up!

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So we’ve caught up with friends, Andy, Chris & Christine, Sarah & Michael after about 2 years. We’ve promised them it won’t be another 2! We’ve booked Maelstrom as well, so if you knew us from the Omega LRP campaign you should see us at Maelstrom in June.

We’ve spent a week or so now seeing friends, sorting Maelstrom, testing reading some stuff for David Gemmell, getting out of the house, sorting the back bedroom, picking up one or two other DIY bits and pieces and generally moving our life forward a bit, which is a little unusual. It’s meant less time in EQ than normal but I can’t think of a psychologist on the planet who would describe that as bad. We’ve probably burned ourselves out a bit on life and I should think we’ll be a bit busy in EQ for a few days catching up with those friends.

I may try and fix the clothes rail in Grete’s wardrobe tonight if I get time, have to see how I feel, generally really down at the moment, not sure of any specific cause other than my usual ‘worrying about everything related to money’ thing.

Contact!

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What we did manage to achieve this week, is getting back in touch with the friends we lost touch with when we moved. Which is a bit scary considering we didn’t move city, and we only went about 1.5 miles, and none of them lived near us anyway.

But, still, we visited Andy last Sunday and we’re going to see Chris and Christine on Friday, and it’s good to be back in touch. I think we’re going to try and continue this period of reaching out! You could be next!