Happy Halloween!

Right, before anyone feels tempted to complain that I haven't posted for a while- Bite me.

Oh. You did.

Actually this is what I get for tangling with one of the most dangerous creatures known to man: A teething ten month old baby. I thought I'd go for a hug, he thought he'd go for lunch and promptly bit my arm. It still looks pretty bruised even though it's got to be over a week since he did it, although it seems to be healing quicker in the middle of the bruise so I'm soon going to look as if I was assaulted by a hula hoop.

We have had a busy time lately. G has a problem with the tendon in one of her little fingers so she had to have an operation at the end of September. The journey to the hospital was a nightmare as the motorway came to a standstill because of a lorry that had jack-knifed, shedding it's contents of golfballs across the motorway, which sounds like something from a bad sit-com.

Luckily we just managed to get to the hospital in time so everything was able to go ahead. G was in the operating theatre for two and a half hours while Spider and I nervously waited around outside. Everything went well and G was quite proud of her bandage. Even though the op was just on her little finger she had to go around wearing the bandage equivalent of a boxing glove.

Once she realised that it made a fairly servicable club she was fine with it.
We keep having to take G back to the hospital for check ups, which wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that we usually end up waiting for three hours before we get to see the doctor each time. However G seems to be far more patient than me when it comes to waiting around for these appointments.

Probably as a result of the amount of time we have had to spend hanging around hospitals we have all been really ill, first with a major dose of the flu and then with a bad stomach upset. We have to go in tomorrow, so I might go in a containment suit, just in case.

I've taken this week off work and, typically Spider's mum has come down to stay. I suppose I should have expected it- It is Halloween after all, but thankfully she has been on her best behaviour.

I hope you have all had a good Halloween, whatever you have been up to. Here is a link to a Halloween themed game-

Tomorrow it's my birthday, so I hope to be doing as little as possible.

Cat calls

Your Score:

Surprise Adoption

Cat

44% Affectionate, 56% Excitable, 28% Hungry

Calloused. Heartless. Exuberant. You carry the heavy burden of informing children that they are adopted by jumping out of their birthday cake. A difficult task, but somebody must break the news to children on their only day of happiness.

To see all possible results, checka dis.

Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid.

"Smoke what you've got to smoke; drink what you've got to drink; I will meet you at the lonely end of the rink."

Yesterday was the night of The Tragically Hip gig at the Astoria in London where myself, my brother and our long suffering partners who have to put up with our musical tastes headed off to see them.





And we nearly didn't make it.





We caught a train in plenty of time but after getting as far as one stop down the line we found ourselves stuck at that station because the Orient Express, of all things, had broken down on the track ahead of us and they seemed to be having trouble getting it shifted out of the way. In the end we jumped off the train and took a taxi to a station that did actually have trains running on it's lines. The end result was that an hours journey ended up taking us nearer to three, so it was just as well we had left in plenty of time.





Luckily the gig itself made all the extra hassle worthwhile.



The Astoria is a small venue, so you don't have to put up with watching tiny people stood on a stage. The band is right there in front of you so you get the benefit of the whole performance; and when it comes to putting on a performance not many can even come close to topping The Tragically Hip.



The warm up act, Forever Like Red, got things off to a good start. A rock band with a definite Jeff Buckley vibe and some great songs. After about the third song of their set my brother disappeared off to get us both a copy of their album.



Once they had finished playing and the roadies came on the stage to set up the stage for The Hip things got a little surreal. Over to our right, somebody in the venue had pulled out a Canadian flag and a large part of the crowd suddenly burst in to an impromptu rendition of "Oh Canada." I had the vaguely uneasy sensation of being outnumbered on home ground so it's just as well Canadians are so nice. Although it does make you wonder if The Hip always find themselves playing to travelling Canadians wherever they go. Even one of our group was from Canada and there aren't many people outside of that place that have even heard of the band.

While The Hip might be used to playing larger venues in their native Canada I would have to reccomend seeing them at a smaller gig like we did, simply so you are close enough to see what frontman Gordon Downie gets up to. Downie seems to have a limitless supply of energy (or suffers from attention deficit disorder), constantly moving around, so that you hardly watch the rest of the band. Even when he isn't singing Downie commands your attention whether he is smashing up the mike stand to hand out to the audience (having already used it as a prop for a motorbike, a dodgem car and a gun) or acting out some of the lyrics to the songs, from swimming at 'The Drop-Off' to reading the instruction manual from 'Springtime in Vienna.'

The Hip are definitely a band you need to see live and it was great to hear some upbeat, rockier versions of some of their mellower songs. I was especially pleased to hear 'Ahead by a Century,' still my favourite song of theirs, but a little disappointed I didn't have enough money on me to get one of the cool looking Hip hockey jerseys.

Anyway, here is the set list from the night, followed by my aforementioned favourite song:
1: Yer Not The Ocean
2: My Music At Work
3: Grace, Too
4: It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken
5: The Drop-Off
6: Ahead By A Century
7: Gift Shop
8: Family Band
9: Springtime In Vienna
10: At The Hundredth Meridian
11: The Lonely End Of The Rink
12: Bobcaygeon
13: In View
14: Fully Completely
15: New Orleans Is Sinking
16: World Container (introduced as 'World Contain Her' and fantastic to hear live)
17: Courage (For Hugh Maclennan)
18: Fireworks

September 19th

I hope you were all doing your pirate thing today.

Thanks for the reminder Xulub!

Fire!

So much for a quite night in. A group of local children discovered a car. The strange technology confused them so naturally they had to burn it as a witch.

We were sitting in our flat when we heard a couple of bangs. Assuming it was some idiot letting fireworks off I just ignored it at first, as we get a lot of that around here. As you can see it turned out that it was a burning car just a little way down the street... Unfortunately we get a lot of that around here too.

We did have a good view of the resultant fireball when the petrol tank went up.

Typical Man

Water, water everywhere...

We woke up this morning to suspiciously brown water coming out of all of our taps.

"It's perfectly safe to drink." said the nice person from the water company when we rang.

"That's lucky, because I wouldn't want to bathe in it."

The disadvantage of having interesting people listed in your email address book...

Most people have mates that send porn to their email.

Not me.

My friends send me pictures of wild animals displaying their disturbing swellings.

What? It is totally different, what are you on about?

Click here for tongue action.

Current Music

I'm currently addicted to the song 'Flagpole Sitta' by one of the lesser known Seattle bands of the 90's, Harvey Danger.
In the UK unless you have seen 'Peep Show' then you might not even know the track, so have a listen and enjoy.

A knackered computer, somewhere in Kent....

I've just been watching University Challenge where one of the questions was a picture of the Rebel Alliance logo from Star Wars, and the teams had to identify which sci- fi film it came from. The guy that answered looked very sheepish at having to admit he recognised it and then the team proceeded to cringe their way through three further sci- fi logos. Why are people so embarrased by sci- fi? How did it come by this reputation where it is something to be looked down on? It's not all bad. True- for every 'Empire Strikes Back' there is a 'Phantom Menace' but you could say that about any genre.
The same group of students later went on to answer a question about the game invented by AA Milne and were clearly far prouder of the fact that they knew the answer to this than they were about being exposed as freakish sci- fi geeks.
I live in a world where it is more acceptable to shout 'Poohsticks' on national television than it is to enjoy a particular type of genre.
Bloody students.

When Badgers Attack

Thanks to Xulub for pointing this one out to me-



"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."



This could well be the greatest news story ever.



I wonder how long it will be until somebody bags the film rights to this?

Lairy Zebra

Strangely not part of the display in Rochester Cathedral in spite of ball balancing capabilities.

Angels... with balls

Okay, that might not have been the name of the exhibition hidden away in the basement of Rochester Cathedral but I'm sure it had something to do with angels and there was a definite mis-shapen weeble vibe going on...

Jurochester Park

Here are some continued pics from Rochester and some pretty cool dinosaur costumes. Although they did make a rather disturbing shrieking noise, possibly designed specifically to frighten small children.

Mythology quiz

You scored as Angel,Angel: Angels are the guardians of all things, from the smallest ant to the tallest tree. They give inspiration, love, hope, and positive emotion. They live among humans without being seen. They are the good in all things, and if you feel alone, don't fear. They are always watching. Often times they merely stand by, whispering into the ears of those who feel lost. They would love nothing more then to reveal themselves, but in today's society, this would bring havoc and many unneeded questions. Give thanks to all things beautiful, for you are an Angel.

Angel		84%
Faerie		75%
Dragon		58%
WereWolf		42%
Mermaid		25%
Demon		17%

What Mythological Creature are you? (Cool Pics!)
created with QuizFarm.com

That was close. Thank god I wasn't a faerie.

Rain Stops Play

I was only at work for two days this week as I have just had a week and a half off, but I feel so exhausted, I keep nodding off before I even get online.
We went up to Sheffield for the first week, so the long drive there and back probably hasn't helped. We were staying with the outlaws, which isn't as bad as you might think, because they are different people when we go up there. All of their drinking buddies live down by us.
Unfortunately the highlight of our holiday turned out to be a visit to that bastion of British tourism- Asda. This was because there was absolutely nowhere we could go while Sheffield suffered from torrential rain and flooding. I think I need another holiday already. We had a close escape on the day it all kicked off. We had gone to Meadowhall, a large shopping centre, when the bad weather kicked in. Spider's mum came out to meet us, in case any roads were closed so that she would be able to guide us back a different way if necessary. We went to leave to find one of the car parks had been closed down due to a fire at a nearby steelworks (how it even got the chance to start in the thick rain, I'll never know). Luckily we were able to get out a different way and slowly crawled our way in to the ques of traffic where everyone was deciding to give up and go home. We got back safely and then saw on the news later that some of the roadswe had taken were now completely flooded, including Meadowhall itself. In fact they weren't even able to get Meadowhall open again the whole week we were up there for.
On top of this Spider was ill with tonsilitis, GF having suffered with it the week before.

Luckily the one day we did have good weather was GFs birthday. We went out for a meal as there was a nice restaurant nearby but if there was anything else anyone wanted to do it would have had to have involved a boat.

Rochester oddness

There were various street performers wandering about when we went in to Rochester.
At one point we were walking along the high street when we saw a washing line hanging in the street with a large pair of y-fronts pegged to it.
Presuming that there must be more to it than that (and hoping it wasn't just some weird fat naked guy) we wandered over to have a look.
What we found was some weird Stepford Wives vibe going on as you can see from the pictures below.







Art? Protest? Irony? Washing?
I have no idea what it was about.

Stained Glass

Inside Rochester Cathedral

Outside Rochester Cathedral