Miising

I meant to take a photo of this poster I'd seen just to prove to you that it was real but I think they've all been taken down now. On a missing cat poster that was stuck on every other lamp-post on the streets around my house last week was titled MIISING. At what point of staring at the computer, getting the wording right, putting the picture in the right place did they not think it would be a good idea to do a spell check? The poor cat, maybe that's why it ran away....

Frozen Mash

Did you know you can buy frozen mashed potato? Ruth introduced me to this concept the other day when we were discussing frozen vegetables - you can see our conversations are very exciting. At Tesco on Saturday while I was studying which frozen vegetables I would fill my freezer with and trying to find the frozen peppers round she came from the other aisle with two bags of Aunt Bessie's frozen mash.

So I decided for my first good meal of this week I would fill myself up on frozen veg, fish and a bit of mash potato. I had to study the packet for quite a while reading and re-reading the cooking instructions as I just couldn't believe that you just put these 3 pieces of frozen potato (which look like white ice hockey pucks) straight into the pan. I was convinced there should be a need to add some water at some point, so even though it wasn't in the instructions I put some water in with it as well. However it turns out the instructions don't tell you to put them in water for a reason - you don't need any, the little white frozen pucks just melt away and become lovely mash potato in just 5 mins! It's amazing!!

I think I'll have some more tomorrow and this time without the extra water so it doesn't go runny and over mushed like todays did :-)

At the end of the day

In my usual search around the BBC website at lunchtime today I found and article about 50 office speak phrases you love to hate. I've generally found that the phrase that winds me up the most is 'let's touch base' but the phase that I've heard a lot recently - and ashamed to say have said myself on occasion is 'we are where we are'. What a pointless phrase of course we are where we are - where else would we be! The phrase in the list that reminded me of Sally is no 13-14 - "The business-speak that I abhor is pre-prepare and forward planning. Is there any other kind of preparedness or planning?"

So then when I was on the bus home this evening I found myself listening to a woman repeating the phrase 'that's bang out of order' a number of times, which I also thought was a stupid phrase. When I got home I decided to look it up and found this site called The Phrase Finder so now I can look up all those random phrases and find out where they come from. Now I'm off to read about Ne'er cast a clout til May be out, hours of fun!

Still not finished

The kitchen is one more step closer to getting finished so I thought I'd post a couple of pictures to show the work in progress. The worktops were fitted the other day (mostly) although now that the tiles have been taken off I think it looks even more like it's still got lots of work to do on it.


The right hand side as you go in from the lounge has the worktop cut but it isn't fitted yet so this picture just shows a rough idea of what it should be like.

I blame Barry...

...for the inexplicable obsession with watching Deal or No Deal at the moment.

As Rob has pointed out before this is a ridiculous programme, there are no tactics that can be played other than the often used 'it's my special number so I'll save that until last' type plan for opening the boxes. But this week I have become obsessed with watching it because Barry is on it, so for 20 mins each day (I fast forward through most of it) I watch the programme and wait for the bit where Barry opens his box. Not exactly riveting stuff but I feel I need to do this to fully appreciated the full hour of the programme when it finally comes round to being 'Barry's show'.

Sad, yes but I will keep watching each one while I can sit here and point at the screen saying look there's someone I know on the telly!

Lovely weekend

Apart from hearing that both Sally and Ben had accidents on their bikes this weekend (but not too serious thankfully), I've had a lovely weekend as Abi and Charlie came to visit. We found the Farmer's Cart farm shop on Saturday which provided a few hours of entertainment and a lovely lunch. As well as the shop and cafe they have rabbits, guinea pigs, pigs - and piglets, pony, goats, sheep and chickens.

It was the day of the sheep shearing so that provided some more entertainment as we watched the sheep being made bald! It's amazing how quickly they can get one sheep done, and more amazingly I learned that you can have quite a jet setting lifestyle travelling the world as a sheep shearer. One of the men there was from New Zealand and he was telling us that he's travelled to Europe, America, Australia but hasn't been to Norway or Iceland yet. We also learned that they wear funny shoes while they are shearing the sheep made out of wool, I thought it would be so that if they stood on the sheep it wouldn't hurt the sheep as much as big heavy boots but that wasn't it, the wool creates better friction when they are standing on a wooden board shearing and stops them from slipping when the sheep is trying to push away.


In the evening we went to see the ballet of Sleeping Beauty as Matthew and Charlie's friend Amber was in the production which was by the English Youth Ballet. I've never been to a ballet before and I can't say that I'd rush to see another one but it was a really good and professional performance. Having never met Amber I had to wait until Charlie spotted her which took until just after the interval as a group of girls all with their hair pulled back in a bun and wearing identical outfits all look pretty much the same!

Sunday was a really hot sunny day so we had a wander around York, chasing squirrels in museum gardens, Matthew was with us by this point as well having arrived to babysit on Saturday night. As usual though a visit from Abi and I'm shattered and recovered by having a little afternoon nap on Sunday!

Sympathy or not...?

After waiting what felt like hours for a bus home this evening, but was probably only about 25 mins, there were loads of people waiting so eventually a small old bus turned up instead of the usual ftr. Thankfully there were still some seats when I got on so off I went to sit down. The last couple to get on the bus ended up standing near the front and I noticed that she was very pregnant but nobody nearby seemed to take the initiative to offer their seat to her. The woman standing next to me then made a comment about how terrible it was that nobody gave up their seat for her and I and the lady next to me agreed that it was shocking. Then I realised that there I was, also happily sitting in my seat having thought that the 20 people (yes I did count them) in the seats between me and the pregnant girl should all volunteer before I did.

While I was having a dilemma as to whether I should stand up from near the back of the bus and go and ask her if she wanted my seat, I realised that there actually was a spare seat near where she was standing so she must have decided that she didn't want to sit down. I also remember that before she got on the bus she'd walked past me smoking her cigarette so I decided I didn't have that much sympathy for her. I'm sure the distance of one stop that she had to stand up for before more people got off and she got a seat did her and baby less harm than the number of cigarettes that she must have smoked throughout the pregnancy so far. So I decided I didn't need to feel guilty or sympathetic....fair or not?

A weekend of eating out

I had a lovely day in Scarborough on Saturday visiting my old housemate Kate. Usually we end up meeting somewhere half way between York and Scarborough (last time was Castle Howard) but I decided it was about time I made the effort to go over there for the day. It turned out it was a lovely sunny day although I did doubt that for a while as I left York in warm sunshine and drove into some greyer clouds but it soon cleared up.

We had a lovely lunch in Scarborough, had a little wander round the shops before popping back to the house. We then went to Redcliffe farm shop nearby and sat out in the sunshine with a pot of tea and cake and a lovely view to look at including the chickens and the rabbits in the garden. A wander round the shop and I managed to resist buying any more cakes or biscuits to bring home.

On the way home I called in at Naomi's to give her a break from Maths planning and managed to stay for dinner as well which was lovely and nice end to the day. Sunday I went to the gym in the morning in preparation for another lunch out, this time at Gillian's with lovely chocolate pudding. I think I'm going to need to increase the number of visits to the gym or follow Sal's lead and get a bike to start cycling for some extra exercise.

The only annoying part of the weekend has been that next door have bought a bigger surround sound type thing for their TV which has quite a load bass on it so where I didn't really hear a lot of noise from the neighbours I've now got a more constant bass line trying to make itself heard over whatever I'm watching. Either I'll get used to it or I'll end up mentioning it at some point, at least it's only during 'sociable' hours so it doesn't keep me awake at all.