"Where every concept pleases, and only man is vile."
For those like me who are at home on New Years Eve here’s hoping that your next year is all that you want it to be. I’m determined this evening not to watch crappy ghost hunting TV shows like SWMBO forced me to do two years ago.
In case you’re worried, we have stuck to the Sydney tradition and watched the nine o’clock fireworks. The only difference is that this year we’ve watched them from the comfort of our lounge rather than live from the harbour foreshore. I am officially middle aged.
As we all know, timing is the key to good comedy. With that in mind I present to you this shot of our wall planner at home.
As you’ll see SWMBO has marked up the major holidays coming up. But wait, there’s something a little amiss. Can you tell what it is?
I think my lovely wife needs a new nickname after this miscalculation. Any suggestions?
Congratulations to the Ramsbottoms of Oxfordshire on the arrival of a son at 10:40am on the 13th of December, 2005. Exactly 94 years after his Great-Grandfather.
Good work Vikki and Mark, we expect to see photos soon.
Blimey, I’m an uncle.
Update: He’s now been named, say hello to Ciaran Mark Ramsbottom who weighed 6lb 8oz when he was born.
There is hope for Australian television. For tonight at 7:30pm SBS are starting to show Top Gear. I’ll be riveted to my seat.
The bad news, of course, is that this series is over a year old. The good news is that we will be able to watch the entire saga of Jeremy Clarkson and his Ford GT.
We bought a Christmas tree yesterday. Doing the good thing we paid hard cash to the local Scout troop for one of their trees.
As you can see from the picture it’s a little bit tired, we’re hoping that a few days of love and copious amounts of water will perk it up a bit. Otherwise we are going to have a bit of a droopy Christmas.
It’s nice to see though, that the appropriate attire was worn whilst decorating the tree.
If anyone at work suggests that I participate in any mutual gift giving this festive season (or any future one for that matter) I’m going to politely refuse and point them to this comic strip to explain my reasoning.
Excuse me whilst I go and kick a few puppies as well.
I haven’t posted a photo for a while, but I’m making up for it with this corker of the kids. I managed to catch JFGP in a rare moment of rest and HBIB not sleeping, eating or crying.
Not one to waste an opportunity I took a photo to prove that they were still and fairly quiet – at least the once.
This one is mainly for the 70’s throwback. Apologies if it makes no sense to you.
Quoted in today’s Guardian over-by-over cricket coverage, from John Peel’s biography;
"When Chris Moyles came to Radio One, I thought about strapping explosives to myself and taking us both out. I’m an old man now, it’ll make little difference."
After the excitement of last Saturday today was quite a normal day at Todd Towers.
I dragged myself out of bed at around 7:30am and roused JFGP from his pit. I had the delightful pleasure of watching Nick Jr. whilst we had our breakfasts and prepared for the rigours of the day.
SMWBO and HBIB joined us just before 9am just as the last remnants of my intelligence were seeping out of my ears. JFGP and I then got washed and dressed and made our way to the pool for our Saturday morning swim class. Today was a corker, we ducked, dived, jumped and swam like professionals. If he didn’t already have a nickname I’d be plumping for number 1 son to be called "fishy".
When we got home there was time for a quick bite of lunch before we had to get the train set out and set up so that JFGP could indulge in his favourite play activity. Meanwhile SWMBO went to her weekly tennis lesson and returned with dreams of winning Wimbledon. Or maybe the odd game at Wakehurst tennis club (web site coming soon – honest).
After that she left me with HBIB whilst she and JFGP hurried off to the mall to do some grocery shopping. The idea was that I would review some papers for the conference I’m attending next month whilst the newest member of the team had a snooze. He, naturally, had different ideas and I spent most of the afternoon feeding him formula. The good news now is that everyone’s gone to bed and I’ve managed to read everything I need to. The bad news is that rather than writing my reviews of these papers I’m writing this diary entry.
When the team returned from the shopping we started on the three hour tea time, bath time and bed time ritual. By the time both of the younger ones were in bed I had the home made pizza in the oven and Iron Chef on the TV.
Now it’s late and I’m watching the cricket whilst waiting up to give HBIB his last feed of the day before retiring to bed.
How was your day?
I’ve just had a potentially marvelous ten minutes with my headphones on. My random playlist on iTunes just offered up Afraid of Sunlight by Marillion and then Landed by Ben Folds. Marvelous.
Now if my colleagues would stop interrupting me every two minutes I can actually sit back and enjoy the music.