Sunday 27 July 2008

The Sneeze is Back!

http://www.thesneeze.com/ ! The Sneeze is back! Welcome back Steve! Lemme explain - the Sneeze is what got me into blogging in the first place. I could never hope to be as funny, but I just loved the concept of a chatter to the masses. So yeah!
http://www.thesneeze.com/
http://www.thesneeze.com/

Hurray for the Sneeze and the awesome theme tune!

Thursday 24 July 2008

SOTP and Surprises!

Ever had one of those days? I spent an extra hour and a half unpaid at work trying to get customers interested in something they weren't interested in. From a total of about 35 calls, I got a grand total of lots of "No.", one dose of verbal abuse, and two appointments. Quote the Hives. (Oh go youtube it.)Never mind. My laptop charger has given up the ghost and lord only knows where my phone has gone. I still haven't any rent back, but that's a story for another time and I'm still poor. But I am happy.

Oh, I was delighted to find that the raspberry cane with flowers on has borne just a couple of fruits, they've been big and juicy with the rain, sweet and tart with the sunshine - the South West is ideal raspberry country. When I picked them, they were so ripe they fell into seperate pink beads in my hands; His Lordship and I enjoyed them greatly - even the lizards had a little nibble of the lush fruits, Tsam LOVES raspberries!

I do have a message for my siblings however - I was most surprised but only fair to pass message on as requested. I got this photo in an email from clarise@birdlover.com! Clarise says she misses you all and she's pleased to have found a way to say hello to you at last! She says sorry to have left in such a hurry, but she was going to be late for her lift and she hopes you weren't too sad - she had been speaking to the sparrows for some time (Jeanie was translating) and had met another budgie across the country called Howard. As you can see, he's very handsome and she's very happy living in Shropshire with him *tweet!*. Clarise looks forwards to hearing from you via email, with a big "chirrip" to Jeanie too.

"Have to say I've never made nipples before, big pink sequinned and beaded ones" - Mum - making novelty t-shirts.

Saturday 19 July 2008

Edible Wildlife...

Hurray, I got bought flowers today! A pretty bunch of white chrysanthemums. I had to laugh though, they were selling off. 5p BARGAIN! Woo! I am chuffed to bits, Tesco came up good again! We often have a giggle with some of the staff and it pays off with cheapies - we also got a big bag of fresh noodles for 2p, some lovely asparagus and baby sweetcorn for 5p, a box of stirfry for 2p, salad onions for 3p and some rocket for the beetles for 2p as well.

GADAM:
Becks not being thrown out of BB again, even though she's got the attitude and mentality of a small child.
Nan's Birthday and her lovely party.

"I have a spot on my hip. Blegh" - His Lordship.
Raw Springbok on a plate with leafy things and some sauce.

His Lordship treated us both to dinner at Mulberries on Wednesday, where he discovered four more foods He'd never tried before. Pinenuts - fair enough. I quite like pinenuts, my mother loathes them, and He says they're a little like peanuts but with different flavour. I've never had Springbok Carpaccio before and we both decided it had a good flavour - I can't say I liked the texture of very thin, raw meat, but it tasted great when you eat it with onionbread and vinegarette. He was amused by the Buffalo Biltong (chewy) and pleasantly surprised by the Ostrich steak. I adore ostrich anyway, so it was wonderful that He enjoys it too. We had fun trying to define seperate flavours; ostrich tastes a lot of pork with beefy tones and a hint of turkey. The waitress had a good giggle with me, trying to explain the qualities of an avocado, "it tastes like pale green but creamy."

On Friday I nipped out at lunch to get my hair cut. It started off raining a little as I walked down, and then started raining a bit more. Then it started raining a lot, but I was nearly there. All of a sudden, it was like the sky vindictively threw a bucket of cold water over me. The hairdressers took one look and laughed, dripping all over the floor. But, I got £5 off as I didn't need my hair washing, which was nice. I got home to dye and highlight it for the party, and was very pleased with results - especially when same evening I found this photo with exactly the same colours and highlights...

I met a lot more of His family over the weekend at His Nan's birthday party, where I had a marvellous debate with His uncle Robin about relativity in airfall physics. His Nan was delighted with the gift we'd chosen for her - a big stack of various dark Green&Black's chocolates; mayan, ginger, mint, cherry, orange and plain. Dinner was good too, the passionfruit cheesecake was lovely and the fresh pineapple burnt my mouth as usual. He was most amused by one peice of fruit - or rather the pronounciation - my sister always calls them "syphilis" and it's stuck. Physalis - sort of a big orange berry in an almost chinese-lantern leafy case. "It was sort of like a little tomato with lots of pips. Worth trying, but not something I'd have every day."

Quote of the Day: "Can you move my house a little to the left whilst you're at it?" - Customer at work; not a phrase I was familiar with, but apparently I was being very efficient at my job.

Wednesday 9 July 2008

Welcoming The Give-A-Damn-A-Mometer

This week, work has been pretty good. I mean, let's face it; I stay out of the rain and get paid for it. Also, we're finally starting to make a good impression on our customers, they're not asking where the previous girl is so often now and ... and get this: I got given a box of chocolates by one customer! At last! I know that sounds odd, but that's pretty much the biggest compliment a CO or CA can get on the shop floor. (I've left them at work to share.)

His Give-A-Damn-A-Mometer:

Madly in love with Her.
Outbreak in Iraq.
Stu on BB's morning-wood issue. Funny.
"Something I can't remember, that's how much I gave a damn."
Won 3 out of 4 games on the computer...

Movie: Be Kind Rewind - in honesty? A bit of a letdown. There were big gaps in the film/plot, where you'd expect there to be stuff there isn't, and the montages were a bit oddly placed. There were maybe two points of laugh, but only at how silly Jack Black looked in tinfoil and when the car was on fire. "About what I expected, worth the effort of watching I suppose, just about justifies existence." - ouch.
Superbad - definitely a lad's film. I appreciated it, but the boys laughed a damn sight more. I was most amused by the Geek's triumph. "Not quite what I expected, but not bad. It was all a bit American Pie."

Lizards: Happy. Little Dragon starting to shed again already and tried some purple basil. Big Dragon very independent now she has a whole lot more room to run about and more things to lick! In fact, now when we get her out of the tank, we leave her door open. That way, she can run around where she likes until she gets tired and then she'll take herself back to her tank to snooze. She's smart like that and it's probably a good thing - His Lordship cleaned her tank whilst I was at work one morning, forgot to close her door and she went for a walk. He comments "I was typing up on the computer when I suddenly saw Ky walking back to her tank from the hallway..." I wonder where she'd been.
Quote of the Day: "I had a cushion attached to my head, I was that pissed." - H, a colleague. Classy. Very classy.

Sunday 6 July 2008

Mayonnaise, Mocha, Movies and Marmite.

Books: The Red Dwarf Omnibus - An absolute bargain this week, 25p! Alright, someone's jabbed it repeatedly with a long spiky implement of some form, but it's still highly readable. A book on cats - Meh, not much to comment. Cheap. Needed something to read. Have hidden it in a workmate's bag so he can enjoy it over his holiday (more his cup of coffee than mine. I prefer tea.) Haruki Murakami - downright ruddy weird sums it up nicely. In fact, His Lordship says "It's like Salvador Dali vomited on some paper." Maybe not that gross, but you get the idea. You could present a copy of the book in the Tate and no-one think anything of it. I'll have to buy Norwegian Wood soon. (And yes, that is a bunch of buckets on string. I saw them in a shop window.)

Odd Moments: "Well, I'd take all my clothes off if you asked, but I'm not sure you'd like the result." - from a reputable local councillor of all people! Also, clickie this here photo ---> and tell me what's wrong with it. No, it hasn't been photoshopped - it's exactly as we saw it on the shelves of Woolworths. Marvellous, just marvellous. Puzzler of the week: "Why is it when you dry clean hands, the towel gets dirty?" - Local faffer. Comment board open.

Lizards: Big Dragon has been going through some temper-tantrums in her teen years, Little Dragon is learning lots. We took them both into the town centre where they were fussed over in Shirabells' and then slept in my bag in Tom's Mocha.

Lordship: Happy that I look after His back. Also, whilst massaging said back, discovered that one particular spring resonates with his voice. "Hmm. It's almost like I could be in some sort of box..." He's had to put back the driving test as He's pantsed it up a little, but He's determined to improve.

Food: His Lordship's outdone himself this week. I'd picked up some asparagus, as regular readers will know, I adore asparagus and then we picked up some red peppers, baby sweetcorn, chanteray carrots and fresh salmon. I showed Him how to pan-sear whilst He blended up a simple lemon glaze. I blitzed up some mayonnaise with chive and garlic for flavour. Then we quickly blasted a bunch of wild mushrooms and threw it all together. Hey, I'd be happy to be served that in a restaurant. I wouldn't pay £50 like, but I'd be happy to eat it. We also had fajitas the other day, with sesame and lemonthyme chicken, chestnut mushrooms with a spot of rosemary and lots of my mayomix.

Films: Hancock - a little predictable in places, but I'm certainly not going to ask for my money back! "It was jolly good I thought. An interesting differential on the traditional superhero storyline." As promised, we also saw Kung Fu Panda. One word: Awesome. As quoted from Jack Black a.k.a Po.

Big Brother & Other T.V.: Dear GOD I hate Bex's laugh. Please, please can we get rid of her already. She's whiny, vindictive and plain unpleasant. Come off it darling, if THIS ant can manage that, you can manage to cope with razor rash. Sadly however, Doctor Who's grand finale was a bit of a let-down too. It would have been nice for them to have killed her off outright. And it's all very well Rose getting her own version (and myself my Leige *pokes Him*) but what about all the rest of the women in the world?! (I know a certain Mum of mine that'd adore her own Depp for example...)

Garden: The raspberry stalks actually have raspberries on! The tomatoes have little tomatoes round the lower branches and we will have to pick some of the chunkier rhubarb stalks. The herbs are about as mental as usual - the chive has made a surprising comeback after I used half of it in the mayonnaise for the salmon and the fajitas... Talking of raspberries, Little Dragon has discovered he likes them too. We did a mixed fruit mush (to go on crumpets) and fed both beasties a fair spoonful. They also like Marmite because it's sticky and you can keep licking it for aaaaages.

Bizarre Quote of the Day: "The most reliable temperature interval to carry out ultrasonic measurements in Cheddar cheese is identified as 0 to 17 °C." - A. Mulet, J. Benedito and J. Bon; Polytechnic University of Valencia; 2006

Wednesday 2 July 2008

Livin' It Longleat

One of the first things we did at Longleat was to discover we were getting wet. Very wet. So we dived into the queue for the shelter of the butterfly house and got wet for a bit longer. He was most amused by the fact that you had to queue through the giftshop to get in and go through it again to get out. Dammit though, it's a strategy that works - I bought a big jelly wiggly centipede. (Which the dragons have been most baffled by, all those wobbly tendrils!) The butterflies were very pretty though, orange ones, black and red and blue ones - even ones like these, with seethrough wings. Augh - Ninjaflies!

Yon piccie here -> giant green iguana, happily dozing in the window on that rainy morning. He really was big too, taking up the entire widened windowsill and probably about five foot long. As I sat on a wall. watching him contentedly sleep and His Lordship tried to get a good angle with the camera, the creature half opened his eyes, shut them again and stuck his tongue out. Charming!


This animal sent His Lordship off on one for a good few minutes, merrily singing the "Llama Song". Trust me to be sat on the same seat as a loony. But then again, it IS very catchy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08BRy0MoIA8 - catch it here.

True to the lyrics, we saw ducks and the like, but I was most amused by the big group of pelicans. (You might be interested to know, a plural of this species is a "squadron of pelicans".) Not the pelicans themselves, but the heron that had convinced himself he was also a pelican. It makes a lot of sense - he figured if he hung with the other birds and acted like them, the keepers fed him fish at the same time. There's also a bunch of ducks in the flamingo enclosure - yet none of the keepers can work out how they got in there, as the enclosure is... well. Enclosed. It's netted all round all the sides, the 'goes can't get out and technically nothing can get in. Duck logic.

The lions were pretty much as you'd expect them to be on a rainy day with a sunny patch in the afternoon - the majority of Charlie's gang were all laid in a splash of sunshine slowly drying out. We also found out that a lion's mane gets darker if they're the dominant one but as soon as it's deposed, it gets lighter again. I wonder if rain affects it in any way - is a damp lion darker or lighter? The tigers made me giggle because they sit right over in the far corner of their enclosure, in a perfect position to keep an eye on both their tiger and wolf neighbours.

The monkeys were particularly marvellous - we'd opted to spend a little extra and go in on a bus rather than attempt to take the little Fiesta round. By were we all glad. Some muppet had taken his car in, leaving the big taxi aerial on the roof. The monkeys were de-li-ghted! One sat on the roof the entire way, pulling at it and chewing off the big powerboost pack, and ran away with the ruins. I would have paid to see the owners reaction. So yes. Longleat. Hard to find (but we always get lost if driving more than 30mins so I suppose that doesn't mean much) and very expensive (£70 odd for some season tickets that only let you do each attraction once...) but well worth it for the beasties!

Related Quote for the Day: "GRANDPARENTS: The people who think your children are wonderful even though they're sure you're not raising them right." - butlerwebs.com