That was full at the weekend

The bloody WI has a lot to answer for!

All of the cats

Poppet and Biscuit making the most of the weekend and me.

Just ordered some American cider

I cleared them out of the variety I bought.  I hope it's nice.

I bought them from here

http://www.beersofeurope.co.uk/

A pretty cool site and would be a nice job.  I guess all you would need is a small warehouse and a connection or two to wholesalers.  You might need a fair amount of capital to get the stock in plus the self control not to try all of the bottles first.

They can do it if they really wanted to

My train was 6 minutes late leaving Tonbridge this morning but still managed to get into Cannon Street 2 minutes early.  This is the first early train i've had this year in fact it's only the 2nd train in the morning that hasn't been at least 5 minutes late.

Well done SouthEastern!  It almost makes the £4k i'm about to give you for my season ticket worth it.  Almost.

Super bowl night

I'm holding another Super Bowl night next Sunday.  Should be fun.  There's 5 of us this year which will be good.

My brother bought me a big box of American craft beers for Christmas so have held them back and will grab a load of Buds.  There will be 2 cider drinkers coming though so have been doing a little research on that.  I don't think America really does cider.

I'm going to do a trial run on pulled pork, ribs and sweetcorn fritters this weekend.  I've already perfected chicken wings, deep fried and with hot sauce.  I might make some chili so I can do chili dogs too.

Appraisal 2015

I had my annual appraisal this morning and all went well.  As expected, I got the standard score of 3/5 as in fully achieved.  Phew...

I'll have to wait another 2-3 months to find out how much i'll get in my bonus.  With any luck it'll be a bit more than last year.  We shall see.

Burns night

I went to my first burns night on Saturday.  Despite feeling ill and getting forced to down lots of drink it was good fun.  The hosts even managed to get one of their friends who pays the bagpipes (but lives in New Zealand) to send us over a special recording his noise.

The haggis was surprising tasty. Although it could have done with being flambéed a little less though. The poor thing was pretty much on fire for the best part of 5 minutes.

More hand troubles

We were thumped at rugby yesterday.  52-22. Quote a good game for the neutrals, and I guess, also for the winners.

My thumb on my right hand had not really healed since last week's game but too late for me to call off so played anyway. I hurt it again, and also the index finger on the same hand.  It's pretty sore.

I also got a bloody nose when one of my own players stood on my face by accident. I hope it was an accident...

I'm not playing next week as I'm giving my hand a chance to recover.

Not feeling great today

So have mostly been lying on the couch.  The cats have been keeping me warm though.

But I'm an equal opportunity cat owner.

I guess you have to grow up at some point

We picked up our new car yesterday. Not quite as fun as the old TT but it's still pretty quick.  I guess you have to grow up at some point.

I wonder what this is?

I bought a kindling axe on ebay the other day. It's just arrived. 

Watching the world go by

On the train yesterday morning on the way into work. If you look closely you can a glint of joy in my eyes.

When is it my time to win the lottery?

Rearranged work lunch

The lunch that was cancelled last week is back on today. He's still got 20 mins to cancel.

Yesterday morning the temperature was

18 degrees C.  But that's after having the heating on all day.  It's only a few degrees warmer but it certainly feels much better. It's warming up now so back to normal where the heating's on for an hour in the morning and an hour at night.

Look-alikes

Is it me or does Esther Ranson now look a lot like Jack Nicholson as the joker?

It's all very well

Having a nice big old house with loads of original features but when one of those features is it gets fucking freezing in the winter (I know the whole country gets cold in the winter) something had to be done. The app on my phone said it was - 6 in Tonbridge when I woke up and the house thermostat said about 12 or 13 but there's no way my house should lose that much heat over night.

People do know who I am

It's nice to know people know who I am at work. If not for the best reasons.

Our network went down this morning and who was the first person they called?

Me

It was my fault but originally it was IT's fault. My team's out of space on the network and there's no budget for more so I have to do manual archives else where. My work ended up slowing down the network so much that IT'd had complaints from other departments.

I deal with IT issues in the team so they called me to see if we were doing anything heavy to the network.  I had to own up and say it was me.

Oops.

Hand photos

The bruise hadn't really come out on the photos but it is sore.

Minty minty chop chops

I made these today.  Far too many and I didn't need the mash.

Lovely though.

Sore hand again

Both hands.  One was stamped on the other is more of a strain. It seems like every game I hurt at least on of my hands.  We won 32-12 though so that's good.

New car

Paid the deposit on our new car today.  Picking it up next Saturday

We're trading in the TT and replacing it with another Audi this time a more sensible A3.

Doh! Lunch has just been cancelled at the last minute

That's a shame, I was looking forward to that.  I'll hold him to rearrange!

Taken out

Myself and 2 colleagues from the cat modelling team are getting taken out for lunch today as a thank you for a piece of work we did a couple of months back. Excellent!  We're going to a Loch Fyne, so nothing too fancy but none the less it's been a while since I was taken out by a client. It's got to be back when I worked for a broker 7 years ago. Jeez.  Where did the time go?

Shaheen is an expensive friend

We had a couple of pints last night after work then decided to pop into a new wine bar,  St Swithins after. £184 later...

Update on the building work

Here's a photo update on the building going up on the corner of Lime and Leadenhall Street.

Our 2016 cat calendar has arrived

Prolific

I played for S&L vets in Saturday and I scored.  2nd of the season.  I didn't score in any of the previous 4 or 5 seasons.

My brother scored too.

Spoiler Alert

Spoiler alert:  If you want to watch a great documentary series made by Netflix

a) Don't read any further
b) Don't talk to April

Last night, thanks to April, the show i've been watching To Make a Murderer ( 2 episodes left to watch), was spoilt by her telling me that he was found guilty and sentenced for the crime the show was all about.  This is despite me telling her to be quiet and that I didn't want to know as I thought what she was saying was about to spoil it for me. Ridiculous!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5189670/

Needless to say I will now be watching all of her Don't Tell the Brides to find out the endings and spoil them for her.

... hang on a minute, that sounds like I lose at both ends.

P.S.  The show is excellent.  Very similar to the first series of the podcast Serial, which again I heartily recommend.

Feeling a little better today

I managed to drag myself into work this morning only to find out that my trains were delayed by up to 1h or even better cancelled.  In the end I got on a slow train to London Bridge.  It should have taken a little under an hour.  It took 1h30.  And then I had to walk from London Bridge rather than Cannon Street.  Yeah!

Well done Southeastern.  (although this train was Southern).

I've started reading Stewart Lee's book How I Escaped My Certain Fate and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian, so not that bothered really. It was only work I missed after all.

Not feeling great today

I think I've got a bit of a cold coming on.  Not a great start to the year.  Hopefully it'll come and go by the weekend.  Lots planned.

I am not a cat cushion