Calories, Comedians & Copies

So far so good on the diet front, I’ve gone back to the old fashioned counting calories method and I’m writing down everything I eat in the hope that I will see patterns emerging. My real downfall is the evenings – I can be as good as gold all day but when I relax that’s the hard time. I must admit that I was hungry last night and asked Peter to go downstairs to get two Laughing Cow cheese triangles (they are quite low in calories so I thought that wasn’t going to blow everything!)

Work was ok today and I managed to keep on top of everything which is cool. Peter emailed to ask if I wanted to see Lenny Henry who is coming to a small theatre near us – too right I said. BUT then he emailed back to say that no tickets had yet been sold and they were filling from the front row back – front row for a comedian notorious for picking on his audience – NO THANKS!!! Peter is braver than me and could cope with getting dragged on stage but I couldn’t so we are waiting until a few rows fill up and then we’ll book.

Had some nice post when I got home for a change. A bookmooch came through - www.bookmooch.com by Jean Dominique Bauby which is supposed to be very good and has just been made into a film.

The Weekend

Saturday

A busy day today. We had to be up early as mum and dad were coming round. My parents are always early and today was no exception as they were here at 7.30am. The reason for them coming round today was to be there to meet with a potential contractor for our driveway - dad being an ex. builder knows the game so knew the right questions to ask the guy. Anyway, he seems fine and showed us pictures of previous work he has done which looks impressive. We now await his quote.

At 10.00am we went down to the local community centre where they were having an exhibition of the plans for the new estate that is planned for behind us. It didn't really tell us much that we didn't already know as we've found out quite a lot on the internet but there was a form to give our views and it was interesting to hear other people's views.

After the exhibition, Peter went to football and I headed off to my friend's in Andover. We went to a booksale and then watched a weepy film (Beaches) in the afternoon before it was time for me to pick Peter up from the station after footie.

Sunday

Picked up the papers early as usual and checked the car tyre pressures at the garage, they were fine which wasn't what I had expected as I was convinced one of them looked a bit deflated - must be my eyes!

Spent the rest of the day doing various bits of housework, planted a few snowdrops, defrosted one of the freezers and ploughed my way through the papers.

It was actually warm enough to eat lunch in the garden today and we had one of my favourites, pasta with pesto sauce and cherry tomatoes. I counted the calories for this and everything I ate today as I've started yet another diet. This time I'm going back to basics and just writing down everything I eat and totalling the calories up at the end of the day.

End of the Week

Been quite a good week at work. I’ve caught up with everything and I’m down to about 1 inch of filing (you know the sort that always lurks in the bottom of the filing basket – where you need to make up new files and can’t quite be bothered). Also got down to about 10 emails – imagine getting down to zero that would be so strange to see just a blank screen staring back at me.

Now that the evenings are getting a bit lighter Peter and I have been thinking that we should be getting out and about a bit more. A friend has pointed us in the direction of some interesting websites that are full of details of walks – some of them even have photos of part of the walk so that you have markers so you never get lost!

http://www.walkingworld.com/home/index.asp

http://www.go4awalk.com/home/index.php

This week we’ve watched taped ‘Larkrise to Candleford’. As Peter says, nothing really happens - but it’s very watchable all the same.

Spoke to my best friend last night, the one with tendonitis, and she is now signed off work for even longer (up to mid March), with her on about £14 sick pay a day and her husband on invalidity benefit I really don’t know how they are going to manage. I’m going to see her tomorrow and get her out of the house for a few hours. I know if it was me and Peter stuck in the house together day in, day out, not working – we’d probably go stir crazy. Come to think of it, I don’t think we’d let it come to that – we’d probably go out walking somewhere – at least that is free!

I’m still addicted to past series of the wonderful BBC2 comedy ‘Still Game’ and another DVD arrived from Ebay yesterday of Series 3. Peter is rationing us watching it as he knows that if I really like something I tend to watch it all very quickly and then go “oh, I’ve watched it all now” and act all disappointed. It is hilarious though and I’ve even taken to watching sketches of the show on You Tube.

Mother’s Day is very early this year – Sunday 2nd March so we’ve been giving some thought today of where to take mum for a treat. We have decided we will go to The Vyne – National Trust Property – near Basingstoke. Although it’s too early in the year for the house to be open (missed opportunity NT?) as they open mid March, the grounds, nature trail, gift shop and tea room are all open so that should be grand.

Badgers & Buildings

Wow, it’s nearly a week since my last blog – I’m getting a bit lax in my blogging efforts – must try harder.

On valentines day Peter got me some flowers, a pot plant, a DVD of ‘Still Game’ which I love and a cuddly toy!

Now, let me see – what has happened in the last week……. On Saturday we went to see mum and dad and spent most of the day there. It was a beautiful sunny crisp day so we went for a drive to a small field that dad owns and had a wander through there. The field is on a hill and at the side are a couple of badger sets – sometimes dad says he can see steam from the badger’s breath rising out of the hole on a cold day. Peter and I decided we are going to go on a badger watch some time and camp there for the night……..

Part of the field is also getting a bit over grown with heavy brambles – you know the sort – the ones that are very prickly and hoop over and bury themselves in the ground and then pop up again and start new growth all tangled in with the rest. Anyway, Peter and I both said simultaneously “we will help you clear it” – so sometime soon we will be up there in our very old clothes getting ripped to shreds on brambles. Peter said we should make the day more pleasurable by having a bar-b-que which sounds good to me.

On the way back from mum’s we called into the Garden Centre with the feeling that we wanted to buy ‘something nice’. However everything was too expensive and we left with just two packets of seeds – oh well!

Yesterday we received a letter from the Council inviting us to an exhibition of the new housing estate that is going to be built just over our garden wall. We shall go along just to check how much we will be overlooked and object if necessary (not that this will do any good I suspect – as far as I can see Councils are under such pressure to build build build they don’t really care about existing residents). Still, we are hoping it is going to be better than what is behind us at the moment which is a huge cable factory – which although it is not very noisy at all, it is an eye sore and does attract crime.

Peter heard from his sister last week and they have put an offer in on a bungalow they like - it looks like just what they need – so much more space both inside and out. I do hope they secure it – it’s a roller coaster buying property and they have to sell theirs yet.

We have now watched all of my ‘Still Game’ DVD and we weren’t disappointed. It is hilarious and I’m going to try and buy the other series on Ebay. We didn’t cotton on to it until about series 7 so we have lots of enjoyment to come.

It’s reading break at work so quieter than normal – so lots of clearing out of cupboards and sorting out of files – yawn.

Red Pandas

Well it's Wednesday night and I've got through all the horrible things I had been dreading this week. The first was the dentist; as I hadn't been for about 4-5 years I was convinced that our new dentist (a rare NHS one) would find something - particularly as Peter has had to go back about 5 times for treatment. However, I needn't have worried as he pronounced my teeth as 'not bad' and not needing any treatment other than a booking to go back and have a scrape and polish. I don't think I have ever been in a dentists for so little time - I was in and out in 15 mins flat and that included 2 xrays. I was home so early, I had plenty of time to give the grass its first mow of the year.

The other two things I had been dreading were both work related and involved complex meeting and visitor arrangements that I had convinced myself were going to go wrong but actually both went ok - so I worried for nothing there.

Today I actually managed to get out of the office at lunch time and my colleague and I walked across the campus to see the two red pandas we have on campus. They are so cute - they move very slowly and have the prettiest teddy bear like faces.

I extracted myself from work a bit later than usual but still managed to get to Lidls at the time I had arranged to meet Peter to do our fortnightly shop. We still get most of our shopping by online delivery but occassionally, if Lidls have lots of special offers on, we go there instead. They are cheaper than Sainsburys by at least 20% which is quite a saving. You just have to put up with there being queues at the chekout and them having very deep trolleys which kill your back when you take stuff in and out.

I'm dog tired tonight as it was a late night last night as I picked Peter up from the 11.15pm train after he'd been to football. Still, there is no pressure to do anything tonight so I can relax and tomorrow is Valentines Day and we are going to treat ourselves to a Chinese - yum.

Hair Cuts, Freebies & Soup

Today I did something I don't do very often - I went to the hairdressers. I know some women simply love going but I seriously hate it - I rate it just behind going to the dentist, doctors and opticians in that order..... Anyway, I had a good 4 inches chopped off and it feels good. I must really make the effort to go more regularly in future.

Before heading home I got the papers and the man we know as 'happy chappy' in the garage not only gave me a free DVD that I was entitled to with the Mail but all the DVD's that came with that newspaper during the week - nice one! And, the car wash which is always broken was actually working so I stuck our filthy car through it pronto - it's funny how cars seem to run better when they are clean!

Got back home and sat in the conservatory for a bit with Peter - the weather has been fantastic today - we had the doors open and later we sat in the garden. We think our garden birds are getting frisky as they were chasing each other all over the place .................

Tackled a bit of housework during the afternoon and then Peter dug up some leeks and I made leek and potato soup (with our own potato's too) for tea. We watched a taped episode of BBC's 'Wonderland' which was all about eccentric men living on Bodmin Moor - it was highly entertaining. The most eccentric of the bunch spent his time gathering road kill from the highway to eat at home (anything from hedgehog to badger). He wryly commented that his wife is a vegetarian - I wonder why?

Feeling Springy

Gosh, what a beautiful day - it really lifted my spirits. Where I work really does come into its own when the weather is good with baby lambs dominating the fields - lovely.

Went into work and did a couple of hours and then escaped for a bit to look at a venue for a conference next week. It was in a bit of a backwater but I think the room is ok, although not up to the luxury standard everyone normally expects I feel. However, needs must as there is literally nothing else in the area on the morning I need it - there must be a lot going on during February 13th! On the way back to the office, I called in for a swift cupper with my friend as I was virtually passing her door - she was chatting ten to the dozen so it was quite hard to break off the converation and make my excuses to get back to work.

Got back to campus around 1.15pm and played 'hunt the parking space' for about 20 minutes. Getting in as early as I do I don't normally have this problem, but I now know what a problem it actually is. I finally found a very 'tight' space and spent another 5 minutes shunting about and trying to reverse into it before giving up and driving in forwards instead!

It's amazing how much the emails build when you are away for just a few hours - they had gone crazy! Spent the afternoon in a typiing and emailing frenzy and just about managed to get on top of things by my home time.

This evening Peter is watching the England v Switzerland game and I'm upstairs watching the portable - it seems to be property night tonight with Location and Grand Designs being on. Apparently Grand Designs is about a couple building a 'gothic' place so that should be interesting.

Pancakes and Missing Cottages

Reasonable day at work today - I seem to be on top of things at the moment.

This evening we had no 'proper' tea as it was pancake day. As soon as Peter came in, I was waiting with a warm frying pan and batter for us to start tossing (tee hee). I had two with various ice cream toppings and then one extra thick one with lemon and sugar - by the end of that I was 'stuffed' and could hardly move. Nice though!

This evening we looked at holiday cottages in Norfolk as we might book one instead of our usual Travelodge when we go up later in the year - some of them might actually work out cheaper! Rather annoyingly the one we took a fancy to in a brochure we had received didn't appear online when we put the code in - I'll phone the agent tomorrow to see what's occurring.

Later, I caught up with Damages on the box (brilliant!) and Mistresses which had a real shocker of an ending this week (well for me anyway, I bet most normal people would see it coming a mile off). I had thought that the 911 'widow' would find out her new man was involved with the American lady to try and extort money but no!

The Weekend Where Nothing Happened

I still haven't shaken my cold so barely ventured out this weekend, the extent of my outing being a trip to the newsagents.

I had fun on Saturday cutting out pictures of pieces of fence, block paving and gravel from a garden design catalogue which I stuck onto a blank sheet of paper to create a design. It's come out rather well and hopefully it will be clear what we want when we go out to contractors for a quote.

On Sunday read piles of newspapers and watched the box. I must say the newspapers are full of so much doom and gloom I think they will almost force a recession, just by panicking people, even if one wasn't going to happen naturally. One of the articles I was reading was saying "of course everyone should have at least 6 month's salary saved in their bank accounts in case of an emergency" - yeah right, we haven't even got 1 month's saved up and neither could we unless we sat in the house and did absolutely nothing for months on end.

On Sunday night we tuned in to 'Lark Rise to Candleford'. I gave last week's a miss as I thought the stories were all a bit 'non eventful' but this week's was a little better as one of my favourite actors was playing the Quack. We then watched Monty's World's Best Gardens - god, he's got a jammy job hasn't he? Being flown around the world to view gardens at the Beeb's expense. I found it quite interesting, especially the 99 year old lady in New Zealand - she was amazing and sharp as a razor. The only garden's I didn't like were the one's where they plonked a typical English cottage garden into an Australian suburb - I couldn't see the point in that.

Colds, Drives & Soup

It's been quite a week, Monday was a normal work day but during the evening I started to get a sore throat and by the end of the evening it was red raw. By morning I had a headache, ear ache and a cold to add to the mix. Phoned in sick to work and spent two days in bed or on the coach watching daytime TV.

I returned to work on Thursday but I'm still not what you would call 'well' as I still have a cold and a rather gruff voice, and for some reason, very sore lips - I'm using lip salve like it's going out of fashion. Work has been very busy since I returned, still ploughing through Governors reports but I finished them today - hoorah. At around 3.00pm I suddenly looked at my desk and my colleagues and said 'this place looks like a bomb site'. That was it, we got the clothes and polish out and went cleaning/tidying mad and the place now looks grand. It's funny how a quick tidy up can make you feel more effient too (I suppose it's like the feeling you get that your car is running better when you have just hoovered it and stuck it through a car wash!)

At home we are putting some thought into having our driveway resurfaced - it's currently in a bit of a state with a rather unlovely coating of tarmac which is breaking up with weeds growing through. We have some catalogues and have been happily 'home shopping' for fence panels and driveway bricks. I'm going to do a front garden plan with images of what products we would like to use (if they are within budget)so we can show potential contractors what we want.

This weekend there is nothing on the horizon so I'm going to chill and try and shift this cold. The weather forecast looks very wintry so I won't feel guilty for staying indoors either. The extent of my ambition this weekend is to make leek and tattie soup with our garden produce!