Samuel in his Play Pool

Originally uploaded by Korvar

This weekend, I went up to Arbroath for the traditional Christmas lunch with Adam and Amy (now with added Samuel!), with Brad in attendance as well. Alas, due to a sudden influx of snow, nobody else was able to come up, but it was a great time nonetheless. Amy always puts on a great feast, and I think I’ve not only broken this diet, but my next three!

It’s Samuel’s first Christmas, and he really seemed to enjoy his first Christmas present, a set of bath-time ducks from me. He had a great time unwrapping them and playing with them (and the box!), and one of them was his chosen post-bath-time toy! I feel honoured.

I got some photos of him in his little padded sitting ring, which I called his Play Pool but is apparently officially known as the Toy Hoard. He’s extremely photogenic, so he made even my bad photography skills look good!

This is also a semi-test post coming directly from Flickr; I shall have to see if this is something I do a lot…

Looking for the Apple Store in Glasgow...

I was looking for the Apple Store in Glasgow, to get some doodads for my iPod touch. I walked up and down the street I don’t know how many times…

Mouse

This is a mouse that was annoying me, by scrabbling about right underneath my bed at night when I was trying to sleep. I cunningly trapped him by having a bathtub that he couldn’t climb out of. Actually, I’m not sure how he got into the bathtub in the first place – I’m pretty sure there’s no mouse-navigable path. Anyway, once he was in the bathtub, I captured him (using the lid of a CD-cake, much as you would use a glass to trap a fly) and transported him to a wooded area, where I released him onto a fast food burger container. I thought that might ease his transition from a man-made world to a natural one. However, he was quite shy, and I never really got a good shot of him.

Spud Harvest

I harvested some of my spuds – the first of the three planters. I’ve been neglecting them shamefully, and the plants are basically dead, so it was time. Plus, I cunningly managed to leave my freezer door open, which meant I had to suddenly cook a whole bunch of food, and adding potatoes to the mix seemed a good idea. I think some of them were trying to sprout, as they had odd little manky bits on their skins, but some swift peeler action soon dealt with that. I’ve used about half of this pile in a stew, which should last me a few days. I have now eaten one of the stew portions, and the potatoes were quite tasty!

Spud plants growing happily on my balcony

The journey up was longer than expected (signal problems, apparently), but it could have been worse – apparently, trains heading north through Preston were being turned back, which means we were lucky we got through! In the end, most of the delay was caused by having to take on people who otherwise would have been stranded and taking on extra stops. I have to say, the Virgin staff on board did go the extra mile, heading up the train checking with each passenger to see if they had any trouble with connections, and helping get information on what trains they could get. It was a nice change to the usual state of affairs, with no information at all…

Once I got to Shotts, I had to get a bus to Harthill – fortunately, I thought to check the travel helpline mentioned on the bus stop with the last few ergs of power in my mobile phone, as it turned out that the bus I was expecting to get (Blue Bus 701) had finished for the evening, and the bus I wanted (Stuart Coaches 366) left from a different bus stop, going the other way. Could have been a bit of a pain otherwise.

I treated myself to a Chinese take-away, not feeling terribly like cooking. I wish I’d gone for an extra portion of chips, as it turns out that travelling takes a lot of energy…

Looking forward to sleeping in my own bed! Nothing wrong with my brother’s place… but there really is no place like home!

However, I’ve been particularly away recently, as I’ve been Down South visiting my family. This was triggered by my youngest sister Rachel making me an uncle, which in turn caused my next-youngest sister to haul herself all the way from Australia to visit our new nephew. Thus, it seemed a good time to roust myself from my settled nest and go a-visiting.

I have been staying with my brother, Damian, in Oxford, with occasional forays into Guildford, which is where almost everyone else is based – Rachel permanently, Mum and Kate for the duration. Kate managed to get herself a bit ill, so that complicated things, but I got to see and cuddle little Alex (the nephew) and see members of my family I haven’t seen face-to-face for up to eight years.

Photos can be found here – these are from Damian. I didn’t have a camera at the time, although I now do. We’ve just been down to see Dad, and photos from that should be available soon.

It’s been tiring, but a lot of fun. But I shall be home soon.

Snow outside my window

Well, it rained, it rained, and then it rained some more. The lawn, and everything else, seemed to like this. So I cut it all down again.

I forgot to take “before” pictures this time (d’oh!); there was a lot of green, but much of it was leafy weeds. But after I mowed, there was no evidence of them. Muahahahaha! And if I can’t see them, they don’t count as weeds. So there.

The patio area is actually looking not bad – still a fair amount of work to do, and I’ll have to prune things fairly viciously in order to clear enough area to actually sit at the table. But I figure if I laugh maniacally enough while I do it, it will actually be fun.

I first had to go to the hardware shop, as my strimmer had run out of strim. Several quite sturdy long-stemmed things had taken up residence, and mower-power wasn’t going to be enough to deal with them.

While there, I had a look at various noxious chemicals that are supposed to help one with one’s lawn, somehow magically killing weeds yet leaving the grass untouched. I didn’t get any of them, though, as they all had dire warnings about not using any clippings for mulching or composting, or even putting them into the Council “garden waste” bins. On the one hand, I vaguely like the idea of going “organic”, at least on my lawn; on the other, I need to have it looking as good as I can in just two weeks. I’ve got a couple of days to decide though, as you’re meant to apply it three days after mowing.

All in all, I did two passes with the mower, bringing in the strimmer for the tougher vegetation when required. The strimmer was a pain though; the string kept breaking off and not replenishing itself automatically like it’s supposed to. Possibly I reloaded the thing wrong, but it was still irritating having to stop and start all the time. I got there in the end, even if I did entirely fill up the Council gardening bin in the process…

Anyhoo, I thought I’d document the process with some before and after shots, taken on my camera phone. That was easy enough, but getting the photos off my phone and onto the computer and thus onto flickr.com was beyond ridiculous. Motorola, the makers of my phone, do have a connection kit. However, it’s always been flaky about whether or not it will deign not notice the phone, despite being connected with a proper Motorola USB cable. This time it decided to pretend it knew the phone was connected, until I actually went to the file manager to transfer files. Only then would it start going on about “processing failed” and “no connection” and “Phone? What phone?”

I do so love technology.

In the end, I found out it had an update option, so I started updating the software – all that really seemed to do was trigger more updates, which in turn triggered more updates, and further updates… I think I’ve gone up two versions and finally, after a reboot and a recharge and reinstalling the modem drivers and getting the software to find the modem from scratch again, I got the nice new spiffy version 4 Multimedia Studio to actually give up the photos.

Stones and blood ain’t in it.

Anyway, after all that, I got them all up on a flickr.com photoset, so you can enjoy the fruits of my hard labour.