Modern Life is Rubbish

Friday, April 18, 2008 ~ 11 Comments

Kitchen is almost finished. Last bit of tiling is getting done on Monday, most of the flooring will go down over the weekend, then it’s a couple of touch up jobs with a paintbrush, a little wallpaper and we’re done!!

I’ve sent off my letter of complaint and received a phone call following up to tell me they had received it and I will receive a written response soon. So that’s moving on nicely, and my altercation with a taxi is now in the hands of the Glasgow City Council licensing board.

Work has been increasingly busy these past couple of weeks, hence the paucity of updates here, it’s all I can do to stay awake long enough to eat dinner sometimes. It’s been great though, and I’m really starting to grow into the role (now that I’ve kind of figured out what my role is!). Plenty about that on my other blog mind you.

And speaking of blogs, I’ve been making a conscious effort to get back to commenting again. Yes it’s easy to say that you are still reading but sometimes that little comment counter can make a huge difference to your blogging mojo. It’s the little things that make a difference.

So, just got my health to sort out then we’ll have a semblance of order resorted (results of tests due tomorrow). I’ve almost completely eliminated “additional salt” from my diet, it’s taken a bit to get used to it but I certainly notice it when it’s been added. Hopefully that, plus the diuretic (bendroflumethiazide if you must know) will bring my blood pressure out of the stratosphere it was operating within (195/122 at highest reading… but down to 174/114 about 10 days ago).

I’ve also made a conscious effort to relax and de-stress, but truth be told I don’t feel any different, a little easier to tire since I started the pills but… yeah… not much has changed. Aside from my diet of course, which also means I’ve lost a little weight… things are heading the right way.

In other news, our cat is growing up. Looking back at photos from January he’s noticeably bigger and today he made his first kill!! A little baby starling. Shame really but we knew it would happen. Frankly I’m a little disappointed, it can’t have been much of a challenge so I’ve told him not to come back next time until he’s got one of the bloody magpies in his claws.

And that’s quite enough of that. As soon as I get the kitchen finished I’ll be starting a book clear-out, more on that… later.

Why having a cat is good…

Friday, March 28, 2008 ~ 5 Comments

Too busy to blog?

Just show a picture of your “far too cute for his own good” cat.

Simple.

(he’s sitting in the unfinished kitchen, BEFORE we ripped out the final set of units behind him)

Laughing is good

Sunday, March 23, 2008 ~ 6 Comments

It’s fair to say that we are both fairly stressed with the ongoing ‘lack of kitchen’ saga, so it’s been good to have a hearty chuckle over the past couple of days.

The cat flap we fitted for Ollie is working fine. It uses a magnetic lock to stop just any old feline wandering in, and means that Ollie now has a small magnet dangling from his collar. I’m sure there are other cats in the area with the same cat flap fitted in their homes but it will stop the strays getting in.

Unfortunately for Ollie, having a magnet attached to collar makes life… interesting… particularly when your food and water bowls are made of metal … *CLUNK* … or you have to walk past the washing machine as it’s currently sitting in the living room … *KLANK* … or you walk past the clean dishes, lying at the top of the stairs as they are currently being washed in the bathroom, and a spoon attaches itself to your collar … *CLINK*. Cue one bemused cat staring down at this spoon as it follows him along the hall… “But I’m not carrying it! Get it off me!!”.

We shouldn’t laugh at him of course, but we do…

And then, off to see Jimmy Carr last night. We started with some teppenyaki, and then we (my sister and her boyfriend were with us), headed over to the Clyde Auditorium.

Suffice to say (without wanting to spoil the show for others) that he was hilarious. I’d say he was edgy but that wouldn’t really sum up his brand of humour. What he does is very smart of course, taking the audience to a place where it’s ok to laugh at a particularly distasteful joke and then taking you one step further to shock you.

Peppered with one-liners, and a nicely handled ‘open session’ with lead to some arsehole just shouting abuse (which Jimmy handled excellently “You know, whenever I get someone like you in the audience I get a nice warm glow. After all, somewhere a carer is getting the night off…”) the highlight was probably the consistent way in which he related the jokes to two 14 year olds that were sitting in the front row….

A great show and a very smart, very funny man. If you get a chance to see him live, and you aren’t easily shocked (there are recurring themes of paedophilia for example) then go and see him.

Just be careful if you decide to heckle him. He is quietly and lethally brutal.

Ollie update

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 ~ 1 Comment

Seeing as someone asked…

He’s doing fine.

Ohh you want details? Well he got his booster injection yesterday and didn’t put up too much of a struggle, so he’s now all clear, vaccinated, wormed, flea treatment applied, all ready for his week long holiday in a local cattery. The vet gave him a quick check over and pronounced him fit as a fiddle.

Behaviour-wise he’s been much better this past week and we’re almost at 100% success with a simple, firm “No” stopping him from whatever he’s doing. He generally seems much calmer all round, although we still giggle at his mad half hour antics, particularly the cartoon effect squeaking of a cat trying to turn very fast on a laminate floor (in our hall, which is a hard wearing one so he’s not doing any damage).

Thank you to everyone for their suggestions, as first-time cat owners we are reading lots of books, websites and leaflets, but there is nothing like direct advice from the more experienced.

In saying that, he’s quite the laidback kitten most of the time, making our job a lot easier. Even the trip to the vet didn’t throw him, with no yelping or scratching even when he was doing his secret agent impression, clinging to the sides of his carrier as we tipped it upside-down to try and get him out!

To be honest, I’m more worried about calming down Louise whilst we are away than I am at leaving him in a cattery. He’ll take it all in his stride, whilst Louise will be quaffing gin to calm her fears (I’m only kidding… well, sort of… ).

More photos soon, although it’s hard to photograph a black cat during these dark evenings.

What of Scottish Blogs?

Wednesday, January 9, 2008 ~ 10 Comments

But first, a cat update: Ollie is fine, no cone as, apparently, they don’t use stitches any more? He was a little groggy last night but was up and hungry as usual this morning. And I said this wouldn’t become a ‘cat’ blog. Hmmmm.

And so, onto Scottish Blogs. The website lost hosting late last year, and whilst I have a backup of the database that was only a week old, most of the site details in the directory are safe. However I’m now faced with starting over from scratch which, from a coding point of view, is a good thing. When I built Scottish Blogs it was largely done piecemeal as I was learning PHP as I went, leading to problems later on that, with my lack of knowledge, I couldn’t have foreseen. So, a clean slate is a good thing and would allow me to ‘get it (more) right’ from the start.

However, to be frank, I’m not sure I have the energy, inclination nor desire to rebuild and relaunch the site and, judging from the paucity of emails bemoaning the death of the Scottish Blogs website, I can only presume that no-one else is missing it either. So why am I bothering?

At present I’m not sure what, if anything, will replace the Scottish Blogs directory. Whilst I harbour grand plans of growing an online community, I’m not entirely sure I have the bandwidth to do so at present. With that in mind I’ve quite deliberately not done anything with the website since it died late last year and the overwhelming silence confirms that it was probably about time I killed it anyway.

Yet somewhere, in the depths of my brain, I am sure the site was useful to some, so I remain unsure as to the final fate of the website. Perhaps I need to co-opt some volunteers to help get it back off the ground, perhaps I need to hand over the entire thing to someone else (unlikely, but possible), or perhaps I need to make more of an effort to illicit some feedback from others.

Regardless, this isn’t something I’ll be looking at anytime in the next couple of weeks, that’s for sure.

Today I am mostly…

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 ~ 7 Comments

He may be a new addition to our house but little Ollie is already well settled. We understand his moods and wants, and he’s already squirmed his way into our hearts.

Which made leaving him at the vet this morning all the harder, doubly so as, when I bent down to say goodbye he stuck a little black paw through the railings of his carrier cage. Bless.

Ahem.

In other news, the Conservative Party plan to make people to ‘community work’ if they have been unemployed for over two years. If they don’t do it, they don’t get their benefits.

I quite like the sound of this, given that the perception is that a fair number of people who are claiming benefits are doing so with no good reason and are quite happy leeching off others and not contributing to society then I welcome this kind of scheme.

Yes, yes, of course there are people who are genuinely unable to work, and I’d hope this scheme deals with such cases, but I like the sound it! Let’s get those lazy buggers contributing to society!

But, of course, this is likely to be an infringement on their civil liberties, human rights, or somesuch. In other words, there will be some way of getting out of this scheme as well.

And finally, I am still without Wii, thanks to Amtrak courier services for not allowing me to specify a pickup time, and as they only allow you to pick it up from their depot after TWO failed attempts, I won’t get it until Wednesday at the earliest.

Still, I’ll have a poor wee cat, tottering about with a cone round his head for the next few days, so I guess I’ll have my hands full as it is.

Ollie

Thursday, January 3, 2008 ~ 9 Comments

Other photos will, of course, follow. Including one of him asleep next to me on the couch.