30 December 2004

I don't know whether to wish you all a late Merry Christmas or an early Happy New Year. I'm hopeless at this journal lark! We had a great Christmas though, some much needed relaxing, some excellent presents (no socks this year!!) and too much rich food, and no actual hostilities breaking out over the dining table for once.

One thing I will say is Happy Birthday to my fiancée Sarah who turns 30 today, glad to see that you're still happy playing console games and collecting fluffy toys and haven't developed any expensive tastes! I can finally relax after the subterfuge involved in making sure that Christmas and birthday presents were surprises.

30 October 2004

Happy Halloween!

Bit of a problem this morning, our car wouldn't start! Fortunately it was only a dead battery and we got going with a little help from the RAC. We drove to Halfords to get a replacement battery and had half an hour to kill whilst it was installed so we wandered around DFS. As fate would have it, we found a suite we both really liked, so that'll be a result if we end up getting that.

I've been spending a lot of my on-line time playing a game called Runescape. If you like RPG's try it out, there's a limited version that free to play.

16 October 2004

It seems to be the year for visiting zoos! This time we went to Colchester Zoo, which has changed a lot since we were there two years ago. The enclosures have been enlarged so the animals have more space to roam, so they look happier, except for the orangutans, who always look pissed off anyway.

Midgey got to see another baby elephant, an African one this time, but I put my foot down with regard to cuddly toys as our bedroom has reached bursting point.

4 September 2004

Sarah and I went to "Whipsnade Animal Park" today. It's about an hour's drive from here, but it's well worth the trip as it's a massive place with open paddocks for the animals. The main draw this time was a newborn baby elephant called "Aneena". As we contributed to gift aid we were given a free cuddly elephant on arrival.

Not content with this, Midgey bought two further cuddlies, a red panda and a (guess what) penguin. We got a free teddy bear at the till too, result! Got to see the bears being fed to, or at least having vegetables thrown at them. Tomorrow we're going to the Cheshunt traders fair, hope we have as much fun there as we had today.

21 August 2004

Heh, I'm hopeless at this journal lark! Since the 9 July I've had a birthday, seen a couple of excellent films including Zatoichi at the cinema and visited Rochester, see the visit guide for details of that!

9 July 2004

We've seen a couple of good films this week, Tuesday we went to see Juon and we saw Harry Potter 3 today. Juon was excellent, very creepy, and having the cinema to ourselves added to that, and meant we could discuss the non-linear plot as it unravelled, we want to get the sequel now! Harry Potter 3 was also good, darker than the previous two films, but well put together and enjoyable throughout.

8 July 2004

Just heard from Jetsonik that his attempt to record the Bill Bailey show with a cunningly concealed MP3 recorder wasn't very successful. I think his exact words were "it sounds like a mouse farting in a giant toilet", which I assume means that the sound quality isn't very good. Shame, that would have been a good momento!

5 July 2004

Well My week off has had a great start, along with Graham and Paul, Sarah and I went to see Bill Bailey at The Cliffs Pavilion last night. This is the same venue and almost the same seats where we saw Harry Hill last year. We all agreed that we found Bill funnier than Mr Harry, although I was somewhat disappointed that he wasn't sporting the tail shown in the promotional pictures (shown opposite).

My exam seemed to go well, there was only one question that gave me any real problem, but I'm hoping that I managed to bluff my way through that. Still don't know how I did on the exam I did last month, hopefully I'll get both sets of results soon.

We're hoping to see some films at the cinema this week, maybe Juon and Battle Royale 2 or Harry Potter.

1 July 2004

What happened to June? Can't believe how fast this this year seems to be going - it's already half way to Christmas! I'm back in Enfield today as I've got an exam in Potters Bar tomorrow. I think I'm feeling a little nervous about it, it could just be the dodgy pasta I had last night, the effects are similiar. Once that's out of the way though I've got a week off. No plans on what to do yet, whill be good just to kick back.

We went to visit our our friend Sarah Jane last weekend. First time we've seen her for years, really must make more effort to get over to Kent to see her. Shame there's not a bridge connecting Essex to Kent as that would drastically shorten what's otherwise quite along trip. I did take a couple of photos but they won't be delevoped until I use up the rest of the film, which hopefully won't be too long!

29 May 2004

I've just had a week off work spent housesitting my parents place in Enfield. Very nice having the place to ourselves, we got to have some late nights with Paul and didn't have to worry about keeping anyone awake!

We've been keeping an eye on Piglet our "pet" squirrel this week. He's got a place of his own too, the bird feeder my folks bought a couple of weeks back. He seems to have pulled too, as he's got a lady friend that sometimes visits. We're hoping to see baby piglets in the near future!

2 May 2004

Sarah and I went to "Paradise Wildlife Park" today. It's not far from here and we've been meaning to check it out for a the past couple of years. It's not a huge place, and it's not very well known so we've not bothered to add a page about it to the visit guide section. It's mainly for kids, but being a couple of big kids, we enjoyed it!

Whilst not in the same league as London Zoo or Whispnade, there are some nice animals there, they look well cared for and you can get a lot closer to them than you can at most other parks. The food was okay too!

17 April 2004

We had a good Easter. Went to a local antiques fair to look around, played "The Simpsons Hit & Run" a lot and started learning Japanese! This weekend we've bought a few more 2nd hand books (surprise surprise) and a couple more DVDs (gasp) and are planning to go see a film (Gothika). Gnomes have invaded the garden and there's what appears to be a pair of gay bikers in the kitchen, apart from that, everything is pretty much as usual!

4 April 2004

We went to Edmonton Green yesterday to visit a secondhand bookshop we went to last year. It specialised in SF/F and horror books so we were both hoping to get something from our wants list there, but when we got there it wasn't there any more. Arse. Sarah did manage to find one of the books she was looking for in another shop there though, so not a total loss. We decided to get off the bus at the other side of Enfield on the way back so we walked home a different route than usual and as luck would have it we found a secondhand bookshop I had forgotten was there (because it was always closed when I passed it before). Loads of books in there, but very chaotic, horror books on a table next to romances on top of scientific journals. Managed to find a few books I liked the sound of though, and will definitely go back there when we have a few hours to spare!

21 March 2004

Yesterday we went to Southend to see the 7th Century Saxon king display on show at the museum. There was a find of a burial chamber a couple of months back with some artifacts in it. There wasn't an awful lot to see, just some glasswork, a couple of gold crosses and a buckle, the rest of the find having been shipped to the Museum of London for a clean up and exhibit later in the year.

After that we went for a bit of a walk and were invited to watch a trailer for the new Johnny Depp film "Secret Window", for which we were given a Kit Kat each (double result). Trailer was only 30 secs long but we were asked questions afterward such as "Do you think Johnny was playing a believable character?". Huh, he had one or two lines of dialogue!

6 March 2004

We went for a stroll round Enfield this morning. I took my little camera as I felt like taking a few photos of the place. We had a good walk and saw several cute dogs, which made up for the lack of books worth buying at the market bookstall. Got a couple of 2nd hand games to try in "Game", they may be a giggle, will have to see!

20 February 2004

Sarah and I have been playing Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance and Gauntlet Dark Legacy on the Gamecube most nights since we got them cheap a couple of weeks back. Great fun, but as the games are vaguely similiar and we play similiar but opposite characters in each, it can be a bit confusing going from one to another as we get our characters mixed up!

We went to see "School of Rock" last night. Wasn't expecting it to be my thing, and it wasn't really, but I enjoyed more than I was expecting to.

17 February 2004

I'm reading "Escape from Deathrow" by Harry Hill at the mo'. Sheesh, if you thought he was surreal on paper then wait until you read this. It's a real headfuck in places, but at least I'm used to the erractic nature of the narrative and lack of what would normally be called a plot by now, so it's not giving me a headache whenever I read some.

This has been a difficult couple of weeks. Sarah and I have both been ill with 'flu (or something like it). Despite feeling lousy, I only took a half day off work sick, this is what happens when you work on the same section as your boss' boss' boss. On the recovery now though thankfully.

7 February 2004

Please excuse the gap in my journal entries, this website is on a Freenetname server, which I only have access to from Enfield, so I am only able to update when I'm there! I was supposed to come back for last weekend, but the weather was dire so we postponed to this weekend.

It's nice to be back here for a couple of days, had a good walk around the town this morning and checked out the bookstall in the market. Only bought three books this time, including one by Asimov and one by Heinlein. Got a few cut-price Gamecube disks in Game too that should be worth a play.

Since my last entry, I completed a subtation course on how not to get mutilated and/or incinerated when dealing with high voltage electrical equipment, went to see "Last Samurai" (bloody marvellous film!). Sarah and I have made a casual start to learning Japanese, we watch enough films and anime from over there that it would be very handy if we could understand the language. Would certainly save our eyesight some, some of those subtitles are bloody hard on the eyes.

I've bought my season ticket for the year now. It has a nice little bonus on it that allows Sarah and myself to travel anywhere on the local train network for free at the weekends. Hopefully once things are a bit more sorted and, er warmer, then we'll be able to get out and about a bit again this year.

14 January 2004

I started my new course at work yesterday, NC Electrical Engineering. So far it's been mainly maths, which has been fairly straight forward as I've done most of it before (albeit a long time ago!). We did do a practical today though, which was fairly amusing and nobody got electrocuted, that's always handy. Good to see some old friends from the Potters Bar office whilst I was there too.

1 January 2004

Happy New Year everyone!

Been taking it easy today and making the most of being back in Enfield.

Friends Reunited have added a few little things to their site, including the option of creating a cartoon version of yourself for your page. Sarah and I have rattled off versions of ourselves then run them through PSP to make a few changes, here's what we came up with, we're be using these on Palace in the near future!