Office move

My team's moving desks today (too big for current area) so we've been clearing away rubbish and packing up.

At the back of one set of drawers we found six unopened presents, so being curious we shook them. They sounded as if they had some sort liquid in them so we opened them up. Uninterestingly they're liquid filled paper weights from one of the companies we bought. They have little floating boats in them that you can make go up and down the waves.

What a waste of money.

No more graduate loan

He, he! I've just paid off the remainder of my grad loan. It took me all morning to get done but now i'm £205 better off each month. Woo hoo! Adding my student loan, pay rise in April and other bits and pieces. It totals about £670 per month!!!

The bank balances of my credit card companies won't know what hit them.

Cross dressing

I'm in Krakow this weekend on a stag do, on the Saturday we have to dress up in golfing attire (comedy) for a round of pub golf. Not being part of that scene I don't have anything suitable, luckily April is amazing and went shopping for me yesterday evening and brought home loads of tat for around £20. Brilliant, i'll fit right in.

The was a golf sale near work today that had a few bits and pieces in but they were still too expensive so we went to a discount sports shop near work. I found a girls cardigan that looks like it could be used as a tank top for £5. Bargain. I'm sure there will be photos floating around after the weekend so watch this space.

Tax

I've been taxed £2968.45 this month. No bloody fair!

What do I get out of it? Bugger all.

Busy, busy, busy!

I've been really busy at work for the passed few weeks, I guess it makes up for all the quiet weeks (years) i've had in the passed. This is coupled with the fact that out of the next 26 days i'm only in the office for 13 of them (Stag do this weekend, Spain in two weeks and bank holidays). I finished a big project for the board yesterday so hopefully it'll calm down once i've completed a few more pressing tasks.

Poor cats

We've been to Bristol this weekend to see my friend John and his new wife Ros. They've also got two cats and I was shocked how little they were fed. Ros is a vet so I think she knows what she's doing.

I probably feed ours twice as much, twice as often and considering it's mostly Biscuit that eats it she's one greedy cat. April's even began calling her fatso which is a bit mean but she has a point.

It's my fault though as I should have read the labels but the cats are in for a new regime of food intake. Poor little things. They'll have to eat more mice.

Found it

I found the Chris Moyles photo mentioned here

http://watdefu.blogspot.com/2009/04/museum-of-curiosity-recording-vedict.html



Twat

Another year another award

This time it's not for best player or clubman of the year (3 times and 1 time at junior level), it's for the

Simon Pegg Run Fatboy Run Award for Deceptive Pace
For some blistering midfield breaks and strangely elusive running.

Cheers guys, I didn't know you cared. He, he.

Lunch with April

I've just got back from a lovely meal with April. Since she changed jobs a couple of years ago we've rarely met up for lunch as she's now a mile away from the city. Getting in and out in an hour is pretty tricky.

To get round this we decided to meet in the middle and went to a nice Italian (I think..., half of the menu seemed Thai the rest Italian) restaurant on Bow Lane, near St. Paul's.

http://www.bowwinevaults.com/

April had calamari I had veal, yum yum. I did want a nice steak as it's been ages but I was told it was too busy. Boo! Oh well, at least the wine was nice.

Killers strike again

yesterday morning we had another death in the house. The cats had brought in another mouse, I think that brings the tally up to 5.

Eek! Poor little things.

Mmm, cherry muffin

As it's a Friday I treated myself to breakfast at work. Today it's face sized muffins.

Warning signs

There's a bit of road works that I pass each day on my way to work that has a strong smell of gas spewing out of it. There is a sign on the fencing surrounding the works not to smoke near it but surely that's too late. By the time you get up close enough to read it BOOM!

Belgian Beer

I told April that I was only going out for a few beers tonight, looks like she's in luck. A few of us are going to Lowlander, a Belgian bar near work. He, he!

Strong beer means early night for Stu

Liverpool are killing me

I had to watch another 4-4 thriller last night. Bloody hell!

The sad thing is we were all over them so should have one easily in the first half but it ended 0-1 at half time. It looks like the title race's over for yet another season.

SC Movie Review 26

In the Loop (Spin off from The Thick of It)

This film is one of the best films I have seen in ages, it truly made me laugh out loud all the way through the film (much to the announce of the other cinema goers i'm sure).

It's basically a behind the scenes look at the US and British governments who are trying to wage war on a country. Spin, swearing and stupidity are rife, I don't know whether to laugh or cry because imagine if this sort of stuff really went on. Oh dear, it does and could quite possibly have happened in the period before the Iraq war. Jeez.

Anyway, ignoring that scary thought there are hundreds of funny moments in the film, most notably instigated by Malcolm Tucker. He is a senior member of the press officer in the government and is a tyrant to his fellow government officers one memorable quote is here

"I'm going to tear out your shinbone, split it in two and stab you to f**king death with it"

It was directed by Armando Iannucci, has Tony Soprano and Steve Coogan also had a small amusing part. What more do you want?

IMdb Rating: 8.3 (199 votes)

SC Rating: 86 (1 vote)

St Georges Day tomorrow

To celebrate that it's St Georges day tomorrow our chef is making St George special Roast beef rolls. What makes them special, i'm yet to find out but I will be sure to let you all know when i've stuffed my face with one.

Free pint of beer at The Lamb certainly brings in the punters!

Last game of the season

I had my last rugby game of the season on Saturday and despite the loss quite enjoyed the day. It was another lovely day so I got burnt once again and to make it all the better I didn't get hurt, so much so i'm going to go to the gym later today.

Trust me to take until the end of the season to become fit enough to recover from sore muscles within two days. It's usually Wednesday by the time that I can stand up without groaning.

Friday's our club's presentation dinner which i'm looking forward to, i've really started to get to know a handful of the lads now, playing rugby is a brilliant way to meet people with similar interests (rugby and beer) and seeing as i'm new to the area it's nice to have 14 like minded friends.

Boy, do I feel rough today

I went out with my old team at Gallagher last night for a curry. It was really good fun but I ended up getting back to mine at around 12:30. Urgh...

That's two big nights in a row, I just can't do it any more. Poor old Stu needs a break.

Light at the end of the...

... loft. We've lived in Tonbridge for nearly a year now (May 23rd 2008) and have just found out that my loft has a light! When I was up there on Monday putting stuff away for April I spotted a switch right in front of me. Being curious I switched it on, hey presto, we have light. Doh! How did I miss it? I guess it was probably dark... Previously, I either used a torch or at one point I actually bought two crappy battery opperated light bulb type things so that I could use two hands up there but they only lasted about 5 minutes.

It's not the first new thing i've found in the house recently, i've also found a new cupboard. The cupboard wasn't somewhere obscure, it was in the kitchen right next to the oven. We simply never used it. How did I miss that?

Next week I expect to find a Fabergé Egg underneath the bed, or an alternate universe through the wardrobe in the spare room.

I think i'm either going blind, senile or both. I guess that comes with age.

What a bargain

I had a fair few beers last night so was (still am) feeling a little tender this morning. Being a little dehydrated I bought a lucozade from the newspaper stand inside the station.

Stuart: “Can I have a bottle of lucozade please?”
Shopkeeeper: "We have a special offer on lucozade sir, it's £2.50 for two"
Stuart: "No, one is enough thank you. How much is that?"
Shopkeeper: "£1.25"
Stuart: "What? The bulk buying offer you suggested was hardly a bargain idiot! Who do you think you are? Were you trying to con me? I am quite within my rights to report you to trading standards or maybe even to the newspaper sellers guild. Tosser!”

I’ve used a little bit of artistic licence there but I think you can get the gist.

Hayfever troubles

For the last few weeks my hayfever has really flared up. Constant, sneezing, runny nose, itchy eyes and wheezing is not a good look. I think I missed it last year as we were in London until late May, now we're in Tonbridge we're getting the full effects of country living. Hopefully the pollen will get soaked up in the rain we're having / due to have in the coming weeks, as I don't think I can take another month of it.

New dentist?

My rugby playing dentist friend Tunnah is moving to Edinburgh tonight (catching a sleeper train) and is having a few beers after work to celebrate. This is good, I like beers and I like celebrating. Unfortunately he's also my dentist so my checkups etc are more or less free. I now have two options.

1) Change dentists, probably to one in Tonbridge, it would mean going in late / leaving home early to do so. Tempting, but it would cost me money.

2) Fly to Edinburgh every time I need a check up.

My teeth are generally in good shape so I think I may do the later.

Fed up

God i'm bored. Each quarter I have to update a bunch of graphs for our quarterly class of business meetings. That wouldn't be a problem as they're not overly complicated, however the guy that designed the damn spreadsheets has made it virtually impossible to do. There must be 20 different sources of data feeding these things, each having to be updated, links remapped, pivots refreshed, years added... yawn, yawn, yawn. And the people this is for have the cheek to expect it to be correct. Good luck...

3rd? Surely not...

http://www.northantset.co.uk/corby/Free-swimming-for-town39s-overweight.5165603.jp

Now that the new train station is built you're no longer famous as the largest town in Europe without one.

Where's your sense of pride Corby? You should set your sites on first place, but why stop there? What about Europe or the rest of the world?

Good deed for the day

I went for a run this morning, 4.5k. I used a sports tracker device on my phone to map my exact route on a map using GPS. Quite cool actually.

On my way back to the car, some poor guy had trouble starting his car so I helped him jump start it using mine. Luckily he knew what he was doing as last time I tried this (with Shaz) we caused sparks to fly with some poor women's car. Oops!

Bloody networks

I bought a new stereo yesterday, it's a fancy Philips one that can hook into wireless networks. It's got a 160Gb hard drive, can grab music from our laptops and play internet radio. Or at least that's what it's supposed to do. I can't get half of it to work!

I'll have to get Kris to help me out when he comes over.

In the mean time I am spending most of the weekend copying all of my CDs across onto the hard drive. Not being able to transfer the music across automatically with the network is actually a blessing in disguise. I find it quite a cleansing process as the music collection on my PC is quite messy.

Walk of shame update

Yesterday afternoon one of my team was doing their customary walk of shame. For those not in the know this is the practise of sneaking to one of the meeting rooms and walking back with a stash of chocolate biscuits (jaffas, kit-kats, penguins etc.).

As he was walking to the meeting room a director stopped to say hello, to avoid being busted afterwards he headed into the stationary cupboard to to stock up on office supplies instead.

His sheepish look on his return reminded me of the advert where a poor lad is trying to buy condoms from a chemist and ends up with various other bits and pieces. Ha, ha!

New laptop?

I'm thinking about what to do with my bonus, a lot of it is already spent (sensibly paying off loans, credit cards, put aside for flooring) but i'd like to get something for myself as it is actually me who's earned it.

I could get a tiny notebook type thing that I could play FM on my way into work but that would be it's only use. Seems a bit of a waste to blow £300 or so on just that. And seeing as i'd like to get a new laptop next year (after 3 years) I can't really justify it.

As a bit of fun I looked at Alienware's site. Wow! £3,670 on a super quad core laptop. I'd love to get one but I don't think April will let me...

Other things I could get include,

-Nice stereo

-Wireless music router

-X-Box / PS3

-Deep fat fryer

-Speed boat

-Clothes

I'm not sure though, I've got most of the things I want. It's a tough life.

Fire! Must go and buy a book.

We've just had a(nother) fire drill at work so instead of standing in the alotted area I went to the bank then on to HMV and Waterstones.

Nothing in HMV not much in Waterstones, but I eventually bought The Lone Drow. I read the first of the trilogy a few weeks ago this is the next.

The review on the back reads

"Salvatore's latest series... includes tense battles, vivid landscapes and memorable characters." - Library Journal

If that's the best quote they can find i'm in for a treat...

Saying that it is mindless fantasy nonsense. This is all delaying my Wheel of Time reading. My initial plan was to read them all (13) in a year, i'm currently halfway through the 6th and that's 15 months. At that rate by my calculations they'll take me a total of 2.95 years to read. Yawn!

I need an extra hand

I was carry too much fruit back to my desk this morning which led me to spill coffee down my shirt.

Doh! April will be happy.

If the government put more money into the genetic engineering developments instead of kick starting the economy then this accident could have been avoided. Come on Gordon, pull your finger out.

If I have two lasagne's in one day will I turn into one?

We've got friends round tonight to watch the football so April's cooking lasagne for tea. Unfortunately that's what our chef is cooking for lunch. I don't think I can two in one day though.

Sandwich of the day Wednesday Beef lasagne. ORDER

Amusingly it's classed as a sandwich on our internal intranet site.

Tie

I'm back into Lloyd's to see some of my old team about a pie so i've got to wear a tie to get into the building. Boo!

Luckily I have an emergency one in my drawer.

Swim cap?

I went to the gym after work last night for around an hour and a half. This included a 20 minute swim. I would have stayed longer but one of the staff members told me that it was dangerous not to be wearing a swim cap in the pool.

What?

I enjoy a swim, but that so much that i'd wear a swim cap. How can it be dangerous? I'm going to have words next time I go.

Ross Noble and rugby

I was up early on Saturday so that I could get back in time for rugby. The roads were again quiet so made it home with a few minutes to spare.

We played New Ash Green and we won 51 - 19. My outside centre (i'm inside) scored 5 tries! I however scored 0. Either he's very good or I set him up for all of them. I see myself as more of a midfield general these days anyway, i'm not one for glory hunting, let someone else take the limelight, blah, blah, blah...

Afterwards, I had a few beers with the guys (a few too many if you ask April) then headed to Tunbridge Wells to see Ross Noble. I'd seen him twice before so new i'd be in for a laugh, once in London then once at a Bug Jam where the infamous (infamous as far as Kris and I saw it) fcuk Zippy sketch.

Ross Noble is a very lucky man, his quick wittedness combined with a good sprinkling of comedy gold means that he doesn't even have to prepare any material. He tends to just play along with the audience and see where it gets him. He did on occasion revert to script but the majority was all on the fly which is very impressive for a once man hour and a half show.

Friday off for the first wedding of the year

Last week was my first of three four day weeks in a row. We drove to Exeter in a little under four hours for the first of four weddings this year.

Before the wedding we had a couple of cheeky drinks to settle pre-match nerves, and sampled what was reputed to be the best sandwich in the world. It was certainly in my top 10.

After the wedding we headed to a local bar for champagne and celebrations, it was at this time when I met one of the happy couple's relatives. A designer who lived in a Buddhest commune. I don't know if it was the drink but I think I was starting to get the concept, that was until she started to compare it to a Borg Collective... I kid you not.

Breaking News

Police corridor formed so that hungry Bank of England workers can pop into Pret for a bite to eat.

Protest update 1

Our train was less packed and I think we made it in record time. Bring on more protesters.

There's a few police floating around and 80% of people are not it suits (told not to) but so far so good.

They're not due to march till 11 though.

Museum of Curiosity recording vedict

Very good indeed, the three guests were pretty funny

Simon Singh
http://www.simonsingh.net/

The other two were a guy that likes clouds and a comedian called Tim (something) who looked and acted like a cross between Richard "Hamster" Hammond and Anthony "Wozza" Worrell Thompson.

The show was very good though, perhaps a bit too long, over two hours of recording for a 30 min show. Although nothing to do with the show itself the highlight was on the way in. There were various publicity shots along the hallway of various radio stars, Wogan, Ross, Derbyshire. At the end of the corridor was a photo of Chris Moyles. Someone had kindly scrawled TWAT in biro on his forehead. He, he! I took a photo of it but disappointingly it doesn't appear to have saved.

Another thing that might be interesting to you is the airport style security on the way into the BBC. We had to empty our pockets and take off our belts so that they could be passed through an x-ray scanner. I don't know what they think people are up to.

Poor girl

Highlight of the week: Some poor girl replied to all (250 people) to our chef asking for a sandwich to be made for her.

I think i've done it once. I'm still trying to get over the embarisment.

And it's started..., someone's replied to all asking if they want it with or without crusts.

Ha, ha, ha!