Emergency trip to the vet

 Josie fell out of a top floor window last night.  April heard her scrabbling for grip from her office but couldn't find her.  I was sent outside to see if she was okay.

I found her and although a little timid seemed okay.  That was until I put her on a pillow.  She started to wee, and the we contained blood so April headed over to Sevenoaks out of hours vets.  She was x-rayed and stayed the night. I went to pick her up this morning and thankfully she seems okay.  I've dropped her off at our local vets for further monitoring and if everything is okay will take her home later today.  

Stupid cat!

Tonbridge Food and Drink Festival

 After a quick trip to the park for the kids and a dog walk for Arwen we went along to Tonbridge Castle for the Food and Drink Festival.  It was good and the food was great.  I had some sort of South American steak wrap with chimichurri.  Lovely. 

Slay Duggee

 Shaheen, Kate and their kids were down over the weekend as we'd managed to get tickets to see Slay Duggee at the Forum.  Apart from the hour delay in starting which is pretty hard work with 4 agitated kids it was good fun.  The lead singer accidently dropped the 'f' bomb at one point too which was amusing.

Flo waiting for things to start

She's not as light as she looks

Face paint

Arthur was a little confused

April on her second can of red stripe to avoid having to drive home

On top of the bar

Rock!

Fun

Sleepy Bunnies

Rugby tots

 Every Saturday Flo goes to rugby tots for the best part of an hour.  She's been doing it since she was 2.  She enjoys it and is certainly one of the best, however I think she's getting to the stage where she's almost out growing it and it might be time for the step up to real rugby.  I was chatting to one of the other dads and he thinks they can start at my club from September.  I'm going to take a look as it would also be a lot easier as it's closer than rugby tots (same venue as her school).  

Now that Arthur's 2 he can start but he's on a waiting list. Which is a shame.

Today's walk

I got back from dropping Flo off to school a little early today so did a longer walk with the dog.  Tonbridge really is beautiful.

Tree in the middle of a farmer's field

A strange red bug

Arwen trying to find the ball she found

 

Rendering done

 Or at least, almost.  They're coming back next week to tidy up.  Next Tuesday the last bit get done on the garden.  The balistrade, taps, outside power and replacing some fencing.  Then it's almost done!

Still a couple of snags but we're almost out the other side!

Tired child

Both kids dropped off unharmed after spending the night alone with Daddy.  No issues really although Arthur was up at 4:30am again this morning and refused to go back down.  Great.  Here is fast asleep after dropping Flo off at her school.  Yesterday he fell asleep in his breakfast at the nursery.  Maybe stay asleep a little longer next time bucko.

Earache

 Flo's been sent home from school a couple of times already this week with earache.  She's now been subscribed some antibiotics so hopefully that will sort her out.  She seemed much better this morning so hopefully that's a good sign.  April's staying over in Folkstone tonight for some works thing so i'm home alone with both kids.  Arthur's sleeping has been terrible recently and wakes up and stays up at around 5 every day.  This morning it was 4!

New game

 Last night my local game group created our characters for Vampire the Masquerade (5th ed).  We didn't get to do much other than that but it should be fun.  Rombardo Lazerous makes another outing, this time as a vampire.  I've played the game before briefly when we were much younger (15 or so), but it didn't really catch on so we reverted back to other games.  I've ordered 10 blood dice (D10s) that the group can share for when hunger takes over.  I might need to order some more.

In other role playing news, one of the barmen at my local pub also plays and wants me to play in one of his games.  Unfortunately I just don't have the time or more importantly the commitment to play a second weekly game so had to decline.  There was another barmen at another pub that also plays but he's since moved over to Bristol.

500 hours

 Just passed 500 hours on the latest Football Manager.  The previous version I totalled 700+.  There's at least 5 months till the next one comes out so i'm on track.

Birthday / final day of the fantasy football competition

 It was our friend's birthday party on Sunday and it also coincided with our annual meet up for the fantasy football group we're in.

Here's the trophy, won this year by Stuart Penney

Watching the Liverpool game

My friend's had a bar fitted into his house.  Awesome!

Arthur trying to get served at the bar

Who's going to win

 We went on a family walk on Sunday morning with the kids and the dog.  Arthur's getting much better but we still have to carry him for much of the way.

Vapour trail.  Not sure what the plane was doing to cause this.

Race!  I know who my money's on...

Arthur's birthday

 It was Arthur's 2nd birthday on Saturday and we hired a local hall for him and some of his closest friends from the nursery to enjoy the fun.

Flo blew up 30 odd balloons herself

Inflatables

Cake!

The birthday boy!

He, he!

Arthur's two tomorrow!

 It's Arthur's 2nd birthday tomorrow.  We've got a big party planned at a local venue where we've got an indoor bouncy castle set to arrive.  He will never remember this but April will and that's what it's all about...

He's got 6 or 7 friends and their families from his nursery coming plus a bunch of our local friends to help out.  It should be fun.  We're all piling round back to ours afterwards so that should be fun too.

A lot has to due to the pandemic, but a lot of my friends have never met him or maybe never will, which is sad but I guess people drift away and it can't always be the same as when you were 15.

Interesting social media interactions...

 I'm off most social media these days, mostly because I feel the bad sides of it out weigh the things I enjoy.  

In order to post videos to this blog I tend to upload them to YouTube rather than save them locally then upload.  Lazy on my behalf but what can you do?  By putting them on YouTube it makes them publicly available and some get quite a few views.

What interests me is the amount of likes some of the videos get, or more specifically the amount of dislikes.  The highest views i've had for one of my videos is approximately 2.5k, but the ones that seem to get the most traction sit at around the 1k mark. I generally get 80% likes ratio which on the face of it sounds good, but when I really think about it, it's pretty shit.  Not many of my friends (who know I have a blog) actually bother clicking on the videos anyway as I can see quite a few only have 1 or two views or on some even 0.  Ignoring that, my point is who would actually bother moving their mouse to the dislike button?  95% of my videos are about my dog or my children.  Fair enough, you might not be interested in my dog or my children but to actively make the effort to dislike it???  I think there's something wrong with you.  I'm glad I don't use social media and i'm glad i'm not you

Not many out dog walking this afternoon

 

A bit damp

Although not amazing excited about heading out Arwen soon got into the swing of things

Stupid cat!  Josie is sitting on Arwen's towel so I can't even dry her. 

Last night was fun

We ended up killing the giant beholder Xanathar and won!

Next week we're making characters for Vampire the Masquerade. Should be fun too.

 

This morning's walk

 I forgot to bring Flo's school back with us this morning so I had to go home and pick that up which means i've now done 17k steps before work.  Here are some photos

Swan

Photo bomb

Some red flower

Buttercup

Field left to fallow

Rugby posts coming down for the summer months

 Not sure why they bother as they'll only have to put them back again in August / September.  Maybe it's to give the ground a bit of a rest from supporting the weight.

Steps

 I managed to download my step counter data from Samsung Health but it was in a pretty poor state to easily manipulate and make sense of.  I'm sure it all makes sense to proper developers but I didn't have the time or inclination to sort it out.  In the end I went old school and typed out the data.

I'm not that fussed about daily data, more interested in trends so just copied out the monthly data for steps and distance going back to September 2016.  That must be when I first started using Samsungs.

Any way here are the highlights...

Here's average daily steps per month.  Below is the same but with each year split by month.

I've been really upping my game this year.  It coincides with me being consistently the lightest i've been for 10+ years.  If I walk the dog and take Flo to school in the morning i've already done 12k steps before work.  I've then got to pick up Flo or Arthur in the evening which is another 3k minimum.  If April's in town and getting back late / staying over i've got to do a second dog walk and pick up another child.

Weekends are low as we struggle taking the dog out as much as we'd like as it's tough sometimes juggling two kids at the same time but once they're a bit older and easier to manage things will improve.

Interesting stats

Last year I stepped  4.6m times

Mid way through May i've already done more than a million steps more than at the same point last year.

Last year I recorded 3,490 km

I'm currently averaging 12.9km per day in 2022, it was 6.2km in 2016

Ice cream defence

 April was in town today and was picking up Arthur later that usual.  As a special treat I took Flo to the posher ice cream shop on the way home.  Here she is defending her ice cream.

Pleased walk home

What a mess

Anyone else get one of these?

I received this in the post this morning. A special bag from John Lewis to celebrate the jubilee. How strange.

Call to the sea

 Flo does ballet at her school on Fridays, I was shown a glimpse of one her new moves "Call to the Sea".  The dog was very close to getting trodden on.

Nothing better than a bbq in the rain

 Steve's family popped over for a bbq on Sunday.  Despite the forecast for the rain to be gone by late morning it persisted all day.  Grr...  Not to worry, we still went on with it.  Afterwards we took the dogs out for a walk and also had a go on the model trains.

Sunday morning means smoothie

Flo enjoys helping.