Thursday, 20 November 2008

Insomnia, Toilet Duck and a change of clothes!!??

In line with what now seems to be an regular occurrence I had trouble getting to sleep last night. Now I don't know if this is the onset of insomnia, me stressing about something or just that my wife needs to buy some of those nose strips to stop her snoring.

What ever the reason is I found myself lying in bed staring up at the ceiling in the middle of night. As this was such a very exciting way to spend the night, nature got the better of me me and I had to go and 'spend a penny'. Not wishing to go into detail I will skip what occurred in the following 5 minutes, needless to say it involved me sitting down!!

Anyway, when I finished I got off the throne and pulled my PJ's up. Unfortunately in the process of doing so I clipped the seat with the back of my PJ's and the damn thing banged. All of a sudden I was dragged backed to my younger days when I would be creeping into the house trying not to wake my parents up after being out on the lash all night. Every single sound is magnified hundreds of times, because of this I froze with my figures crossed hoping that I hadn't woken up my daughter who was asleep in the next room. Phew...., I gotten away with it.

I went back to the bedroom and got back into bed next to my sleeping, and still snoring wife. Despite being in the bedroom I couldn't help but notice that there was an overwhelming smell of the bathroom. This puzzled me, but not enough to distract me from trying to get to sleep.

30 minutes later I was still awake, getting more frustrated by the second and there was still this smell of the bathroom. Because I had been tossing and turning for the last half an hour I was now getting hot and sweaty so I decided to take of my PJ's to try and cool down. It was at this point that I found out why I could smell nothing but the bathroom. Hooked on the back of my PJ bottoms was the flaming toilet duck thing that you hook over the side of the pan. When I had pulled up my bottoms they must have caught on the toilet duck.

Of course I had been lying on it for the last 30 minutes whilst tossing & turning, as a result my PJ's were covered in the stuff as was the sheets, the duvet and me. Luckily I had a pack of baby wipes next to the bed (for my daughter, not me!)so I managed to get cleaned up. Because of the mess made I obviously couldn't sleep in my PJ's or the bed, so I changed into a pair of jogging bottoms, grabbed my pillow, and went and slept on the sofa bed.

What about my wife....., I left her to sleep and as a result she had a lovely aroma of Toilet Duck when she got up in the morning.

Friday, 14 November 2008

Degrees of fatality!?

You'll be glad to know this is not going to be a long post, just thought I'd let you know something that was said by one of my colleagues.

This particular colleague was late into work this morning because there had been an accident on one of the roads into Douglas. They didn't actually see the accident happen or the aftermath as they turned around and took a different route. Anyway later on this morning I had a look on one of the local websites to see if there was a report about the accident. There was and when I told my colleague the details they said "I hope that there were no serious fatalities!"

Now the last time I checked there was only one type of fatality... and that is a very serious one.

Needless to say my colleague has been duly ridiculed and it has kept me amused for the whole morning.

Friday, 7 November 2008

Where in the Higway code can I find........

....where it tells you the size of car you should have.

I figure there must be a section on this that I missed when I was taking may test several years ago. Well at least that's my theory anyway.

How else can you explain the phenomenon of big people, by which I mean obese & tall, buying the smallest possible car on the market.

This has puzzled me for a while now. I often see them in Tescos car park after doing their fortnightly shop.., well I assume it's fortnightly as the amount they're buying would certainly last me 2 weeks. They cram all that food, the cleaning products and whatever else they have bought into the back of their car. They then go to the car door pull out their shoe horn or crow bar and wedge themselves into their stupid little Smart car or Micra.

Surely from a comfort point of view you would want to get a car that you don't need to rub the tub of Flora you've just bought all over yourself to get in. I don't want to sound cruel or anything but surely they can't of thought "that's the car for me" when they walked into the Micra dealership. Maybe there should be some sort of legislation passed by government so that there is some duty of care placed on car salesmen. Or maybe one of those signs that you get at the funfair, you know the ones "If you are under this height you can't go on the ride". You would obviously have to change the wording on it.

Now I used to think that this strange occurrence was limited to the larger of the species, that was until this morning. I was crossing the road outside work and a BMW X5 went past, now for those of you who aren't petrol heads these are BIG 4x4s, anyway I took a good look as I do like the X5. To my disbelief the X5 appeared to be on auto pilot as I couldn't see any one behind the wheel. It was only when it was right in front of me that I could see that there was someone behind the wheel. The only thing was they were tiny, not much bigger than a 4 year old child.

Why on earth would someone so small by such a big car..., I just don't understand. The poor man could hardly see over the wheel, I bet if he got stopped by the Police they would have to help him off his booster seat and out of the car to question him.

...so if anyone can point me in the direction of the section in the Highway code I can make sure that I have the right size car.

Monday, 3 November 2008

A long waffle.....sorry.

Due to popular demand...., well more like hassle from one particular person (you know who you are) I have pulled my finger out and found time to write a new post. I'm not planning to right about anything in particular, although it may turn out that way by the end, I'm just going to ramble about what ever pops into my head.

Well first of all I think I need to apologise, I didn't realise that it had been over a month since I last posted. Since then a fare few things have happened, my daughter has had her first birthday, I've finally managed to pay off my credit card, Halloween has been and gone with bonfire night fast approaching, Lewis Hamilton has won the F1 wold championship and something has managed to put a hole in our conservatory roof during the winds.

So in no particular order........

Credit cards are a pain in the arse..., don't get me wrong they are very useful but once you start to use them you tend to get on a very slippery slope which get more difficult to get off the longer time goes on. When I first got my credit card I told myself it was for me to use in case of an emergency or for when I was on holiday. As far as I know paying for a day trip to Liverpool shopping and spending £200 on a night out every weekend doesn't count as an emergency. Luckily I manage to drag myself out of that particular hole with the help of a personal loan, although the bank did sell me another credit card when I went into get the loan???!!! I managed to justify to myself that I was young, foolish and didn't know any better. That might have worked when I was 21 but it didn't quite ring true the second time round when I was 26/27 and also had a mortgage to pay.

Sorry, i just realised how utterly depressing this is sounding, especially considering the current economic goings on. I shall shorten this story considerably by saying I have now completely paid of the credit card and have managed to keep the balance at zero for two months now. This has resulted in a very nice and healthy looking balance on my current account. Yippee !!!!

On the 4Th October my little princess turn 1, which just seems crazy. It feels like it was only yesterday when me and Lynsey were coming out of the hospital to take her home. She was all wrapped up under some blankets that a family friend had knitted especially for her. She looked so cosy and warm in her car seat and I had such an overwhelming feeling of pride and happiness. A year later and she continues to make me so happy and now she has her own personality a day doesn't pass when she makes me laugh for one reason or another. I sometimes find myself sitting staring at her still wondering if this is just a dream or whether I have actually made this beautiful perfect little person. Thankfully it isn't a dream and I have made this perfect person, with a little help from Lynsey of course.

Halloween was a bit of a non event for me this year, well in terms of Hop-Tu-naa any way. I went out on the Friday to a mates house to have a night of Texas Hold em with the boys. Considering I haven't played for almost a year I was quite happy with the result, I didn't win but I was not the first out by a long way. Considering I was out till the early hours of Saturday morning and I only lost £20 it was a good night. The only downside for the evening was that it did finish so late. I know that I just said that this was a good thing but there is a reason for me contradicting myself. My Mother-in-law had come up to the house to keep Lynsey company and as it was Halloween they had planned to spend the evening watching 'Most Haunted Live'. As any dutiful son-in-law could see this was an opportunity for a good prank. My plan was to creep back after poker, this was in the assumption I would get knocked out early, and get into the house through the back door. I would then wait for the perfect moment to burst through the door into the lounge and scare the Sh1t out of the both of them. But as the saying goes, 'best laid plans...etc'

Well my Sunday ended with me first shouting abuse at the TV, or more accurately Lewis Hamilton and then bouncing around on the sofa in absolute joy when he then proceeded to take back 5th place on the second to last corner. What a finish!!
I'd felt pretty nervous for the whole race, the only time I had felt like this before was when I was racing myself. Unfortunately this wasn't in F1 but that's a different story. By the time that last 10 laps started I was in a complete mess but all came good in the end and I can now look forward to next years championship.

Well I don't know about you but my eyes are sore after typing all of that so apologies if your feeling the same after reading it. I'd also like to say congratulations for getting all the way to the end with out falling asleep.

One final thing, I finally managed to catch up with a good friend today who was back on the Island. He's been back a few times since he moved to the big rock across the water but for one reason or another we haven't managed to meet up before today. Hopefully it won't be so long till the next time we see each other and hopefully we will be able to catch up properly and reminisce about our HSBC days.

Saturday, 20 September 2008

Night Race

Well it's less than a week until the first "night race" in F1 history and I'm really excited. Not because it's a night race but because it is a new 'true' street curcuit. I know that we have had the Valencia GP but that neither used day to day roads or was anything like the traditional street race..., except the lack ofovertaking.

To be honest everyone is making alot of the "night race" gimmick, which is wat it is. If you actually look at what the organisors have done in the way of lighting the qualiy of light will actually be better than daylight! So from a drivers point of view they won't notice any difference! There won't be one inch of track unlit and there won't even be any shadows cast on the track because of the way that the lighting is constructed.

So while I think it is great that it's at night, because I won't have to get up at some stupid time in the morning, I don't think it's going to make that mugh of a difference.

Friday, 12 September 2008

Aaargh!!!


Aaargh!!!

I needed that!

Thursday, 11 September 2008

I must have been mad!!

I was at work yesterday chatting with a friend, trying to pass the time until I could go home. The conversation turned to fishing, don't ask me why but it did, anyway we agreed we would go down to Peel and see if we had any luck.

After about an hour of fishing it became very apparent that this had been an extremely bad idea. Not only were the seals out in force, meaning you had to race to get any fish on the end of your line on dry land before the seal took it. But the wind and rain were so bad you could have been mistaken in thinking hurricane Ike had taken a slight diversion.

I must admit I did know there was a good chance of rain, and I was wearing my nice big waterproof coat, but even this let me down as within no time at all I found myself soaked to the skin. I could of put up with the rain but the wind, the wind was something else. At one point it was that strong and swirling round the lighthouse at the end of the pier that much a water spout was forming in one of the bigger puddles.

Needless to say this put an end to our little fishing trip, and we all trudged off to our cars and off home.

On the plus side I did catch 4 fish!!