The Short Epic

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I've started staying with a friend in Notts two nights a week. It's working out really well so far (on week 2 now) so long may it continue. I enjoy getting to Nics and having a bit of time to potter in the kitchen, sorting out dinner etc while she goes to the gym, then when she gets home we have dinner and chill out for the rest of the evening. I like the electric power shower as well :o)

This weekend has started well, a chilled evening last night with yummy stir fry courtesy of my Mister, the Season finale of Doctor Who and then an early night, but we woke up this morning just after 10am and had no electrickery at all. Our landlord Elmer started up a huge yellow diesel generator right under our window at about 11am so we were going to give up and go into town for breakfast, however, it's BullDog Bash this weekend and we didn't particularly fancy doing battle, plus the weather is awful and the power came back on so we stayed at home, had cereal in bed with cups of tea.Red got up to go down to work and sort out the servers after the power cut, I stayed in bed and dozed.

I eventually dragged myself up at about 16:00, the sky had been dark and everything was cold and damp, there was no real incentive to get out of my nice warm bed, but I did get up when Red headed down to see Rosie. I did a bit of pottering about the house, washed up, tidied a bit, sorted out my bookshelves which are groaning under the weight of my books now :o) and was just making a cup of tea when Red came home. The weather was just too dodgy for him to carry on so now he's happily ensconced in his den, tidying up and finding stuff to sell on his new ebay account.

I think it's going to be a lazy evening and with the weather so terrible I've decided to get the cross-trainer out and do some time on that (once the laundry is finished) to get some exercise. I've only been out on my bike once this week because of the weather, but I need the exercise to keep losing weight, so the cross-trainer it is!!

Hope everyone's ok, I'll catch up on my reading later xx

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Poor Horace didn't get a new windscreen yesterday :o(

I spoke to Autoglass a couple of times after the tech didn't arrive at 11am as he was supposed to, but didn't get any joy, so I called the Redditch branch directly. Spoke to the very nice Tech who said that their warehouse had sent out 3 windscreens, all of which had arrived really badly scratched. Horace has the curviest windscreen in the world, it could stand by itself on it's edge without toppling over it's *that* curvy. The warehouse aren't coping particularly well with packing my new windscreen so that it doesn't scratch in the glass frame so the branch have had to send them back.

He's expecting 2 more screens today which he will inspect and when he's got a good one he'll call me and we can set an appointment for him to fit it. He's a classic car enthusiast so he understands my desire for Horace to stay authentic and is happy to help me out with that so that's a good thing. Bad-ish thing is not knowing when the new screen will be fitted :o(

Ahh well, there's nothing much I can do about it.

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Starting with a cute picture:



Today is a good day. It started at unholy o'clock but I got loads of work done in the first hour, I'va managed to cross a ton of stuff off my "To Do" list and generally have a very positive head on. Hoping to get some important travel packs finished today and handed out, then they're off my mind and off my list :o)

Last night one of the cannister filters (the one for the cichlid tank) was leaking all over the floor and behind the lovely cabinet that G built. Instead of spending a nice relaxing evening eating dinner and watching a movie, Garry spent the evening trying to make the filter cannister not leak all over the floor, he got very wet, dripped on lots and was very late in bed :o( He's starting to feel the late nights, and there have been some really tough days at work as well, so I think it's gentle, restful night for both of us tonight.

Luckily, the fish don't usually require this much in the way of crisis management, but lately we've had the seam split on the old cichlid tank, two heaters burn out (one with tragic consequences) and now the filter business as well. It seems that when things go wrong they do it all at once. I won't state my hopes for fear of bring the attention of the fates onto us, but I bet you can guess what I'm hoping...

Today I have booked our campsites for the trip darn sarf in July, I'm really looking forward to it and have been collecting a couple of extra bits of kit to make things a bit more comfy. I'm hoping we'll be able to camp more over the summer this year, since last year was rather wet!!

Well, that's about my lot, it's nearly 2pm so I'll be getting cut off by Websense in a few minutes. Hope everyone is ok.

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We're just back from Beltane/JJs House Party. It was fab, there was a Beltane fire to jump, there was seed planting, bbq-ing and lots of tasty food and drink, there was also quite a lot of rain later on, but only when we were all basically too cold to be outside anyway, even with the blaze that was going on. We came inside, dried off, had more to drink and started the usual trawl through youtube. I fell asleep for about an hour just after 2am but woke up again and carried on taking part until after 4am when G and I decided it was bedtime.

We slept very well and woke up shortly after 12pm. We had a lovely lunch of various things with cheese and pate, leftover quiche and salad, followed by chocolate log, but then it was time to come home. We're both a bit shattered, I'm going to do bits of washing and water-changes on the fishy tanks in the bedroom and call it a day on the chores front, too tired to do much else but veg for the rest of today, possibly even a nice hot bath and an early night I reckon.

Now though, must go run fishy water!!

Happy Beltane everyone xx

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I've been terrible at keeping up with the blogging since we got back. Years start has been incredibly stressul and hectic, both at home and at work so although I've been flitting about online here and there, I haven't really had the inclination to sit and blog properly.

So, that's what I'm going to do now, starting with the text from the Egypt Diaries, which turned out to be much longer than I thought it would be, so I'll break it up into chunks, read them at your leisure:

( Travelling Day: )
( Day 1: )
( Day 2: )