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!
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.
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.
GADAM:
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...
His Give-A-Damn-A-Mometer:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!