Category: #Weekend

An evening at The Bear.

Img_1577My fantastic Wife, after a period a few days off four years, has mentioned to me, after my own discovery, that we live around the corner from a village full of pubs. What fantastic news! Pubs! I moved here after the last pub in the immediate area had closed (Makes me sad!). The pubs ‘around the corner’ are a five minute drive away, so either means one of us staying sober, or having a taxi back.

One of the pubs, my discovery of the night, is The Bear, in Llantrisant. The Bear is a small independently owned and run pub, with an attached mini-restaurant – for want of a better expression, a small gastro pub. The menu isn’t mega amazing, a quite small menu, however what is unusual is that the dishes are all freshly prepared on the premises – no bought in frozen, pre-cooked food!

We had some dishes from the special menu, and wow – just fucking wow. The food came to £22 a head, the drinks were average priced – soft drinks supplied in cans though :-/ We will be going back again – best go early or book though as I feel this can be one very busy little pub. Now I have to, I have to, explore the rest of the pubs in the village full of pubs; this mission may take a couple of months, but, I feel it’s my duty 😉

Round and round she goes, where she stops…

Time has not so much flown, as just vanished; the last couple of weeks seems to have been compressed into a blink… where do I begin?

Ever have one of those moments where you glance at a clock and you swear it’s moved backwards? I have them all the time, it’s probably my brain already looking ahead to what’s going to happen, then the reality catches up; either that, or I’m the only one to notice minor glitches in time. Makes me twitch.

Events are a good start. The following things happened…

Bought a new laptop for £300 from tier1online.com. Spent the entire weekend building the software up and getting everything exactly right – over 200 bloody updates from an unpatched newly installed Win7 64 Pro! Glad I take the steps to image the entire system at every stage… I could not go through that again. Mind for £300, I’m well happy with the purchase. Got an USB3 card from Amazon for £10, plus a disk caddy which fits in the CD bay for another £10, again from Amazon. To fit in the caddy, I have a 1 TB 2.5″ drive – all have now been installed and I am the proud owner of a laptop with an extra 1TB of storage 🙂

Visited the parents last Sunday, they’ve started to get the house in order, however a lot more work has to be done! Found dad a car online – we’re off on this coming weekend to go take a look and buy, if he’s happy with the thing. Nice looking car, a 03 RAV 4 with 74k on the clock. Just have to check the service history, as at that age the timing belt and water pump, plus clutch should have been done.

Work continues to be a gigantic clusterfuck, I have been told by a 3rd party that I have a new manager, this news comes one week off annual review time, so not the best in the world. It’s an issue that the news came via a third party and not from the new manager himself. I could be wrong, but this is a couldy start to an important relationship.

An edge of undue stress

Imagine the edge a great blade, bight silver for the most part, but dull and chipped in parts, a blade of unimaginable size, sweeping through the space, motion provided by some unknown swing, bisecting even the air in one great unending arc.

Undue stress. I have undue stress. Don’t know why. If I knew why, then it wouldn’t be undue. Is there anything such as due stress? Hummm.

The weekend was ace, no problems with the weekend. Shopping in the morning on Saturday, where I made My Wife happy with a small present of a Coffee Machine, and I say with a smile, it is a small price to pay for such 🙂 The remainder of the weekend was quite OK, kids dropped round with Peanut, who was a lot better behaved than the other week, we ate, a couple of take-outs – Kebab and Chinese, watched the X-Factor (Not a bad round up of talent!), a fine time.

The Sky box is fucked, despite a firmware download and reformat – Sky are sending out an engineer on the 5th October – £30 to fix it, even if we require a new box (Which I think we will).

Work was OK today, if slightly tiresome. Got most of the charity-shit preparation out of the way, all technical testing done and all the logins, both PC and telephony have been generated; just to survey the work-floor where it’s happening and prepare to disable the call-recordings on the night. Easy.

Tomorrow, work brings a visit to one of the other offices to sort some problems, Wednesday a visit to yet another office to test some systems in the afternoon. Thu is nothing, as yet. Fri is a training course I have to run for engineers in Africa.

The “Fucking Parents” have mostly moved back, only a little more of their crap to be delivered, plus exchanging a French shit-mobile for a real car, and they’ll be fully back. They’ve got the message that neither myself or My Wife are builders, and have made some kind of agreement to have an actual builder in to do builderish stuff, not badger it into submission – this is a good thing.

So, back to the subject of stress? Why do I feel unduly stressed? Why am I slurping from the alcohol nipple tonight (All be it low level consumption)? Meh. Time will tell.

A mixed weekend

This weekend just gone has to be one of the most mixed weekends I’ve had for some time now. I was in pain for most of the weekend due to the bad back, but fuck it, I wasn’t doing nothing for the weekend… So we ended up going to the market in Splott, which turned out to be shit… Just nothing there 🙁

So we leave the market and have the great idea of skipping Tesco and going to Adsa, which was all good, but on the way home we were delayed over an hour in roadworks, which made the back pain even worse… Stopped off for dinner, where I had to wait half hour at the bar to order food – you can see where this is going, more bad back and a lot of frustration, for both My wife and myself.

Moving on, we had Peanut for the weekend, who due the mood of her mother (Her grandfather died!), was in a bad mood herself, and seemed to me to be continually crying. A baby crying is a mega horrible sound to me, and I just can’t do anything whilst a baby is crying, throws me off completely, everything has to stop! So I was grupmy and upset for the rest of Saturday and Sunday morning… The daughter was also down, and to be honest, I’m not all that relaxed around her since the alcohol fuelled event of a couple months back. Long story cut short – a bit of a blow up, but with happy ending. We were up most of Sunday night drinking, I managed a bottle of Southern Comfort, my Wife did a couple of bottles of wine!

Taking of the daughter, I do plan on getting back on a more even footing, but it’s going to take time, and possibly more exposure than usual.

Anyhow, started good, went bad because of a couple of factors, and ended up good.

… And that was the weekend…

Here and gone again in a shorter time than I might imagine, The Weekend, the GRAND two glorious days of freedom, the in-between days, the days where one doesn’t trudge. But gone it is.

Struggling (As usual) to remember what happened, but this time, I have clues, grand pictures as at the bottom of this article!

The day part of Saturday was a little frustrating; whatever I’d imagined myself doing on Saturday morning, you know, things like a nice breakfast, some downloading / gaming etc… Didn’t happen. After the complete exhaustion of Friday night (Chopping up and old bed and building the new one in 2 hours!), I was perhaps more zombie than me. Anyhow, it happened that there was blur between getting up and going out, I think it lasted a few hours, but I can’t remember the blur very well, or it wouldn’t have been a blur. Anyhow, post blur I find myself and my good wife at Uplands Audio in Cardiff – we discussed and agreed to have the second-hand-new head unit bought from e-bay, fitted to her car. The woman wibbled on for a bit, said things like £35+VAT, and one o’clock. My head said: PUB.

Then there was PUB. The pub in question turned out to be The North Star on North Road in Cardiff. Breakfast was had; oh such a breakfast I’ve not been fortunate enough to see before in my life – it was cooked, by cooked I mean fucking perfectly. Bacon of crispy resolve as never before tasted or seen, perfectly cooked everything else, sausages, tomato, egg, mushroom and toast. Wow. I’m still in recovery – it almost brought a delicate tear to my eyes, such was the perfect nature of the breakfast; my wife agreed without reservation – best breakfast, ever. As the Breakfast been cooked in a pub, I was able to have a couple pints of Cobra with it. Wow. REALLY need to do that again.

Pub-time, as pub-time does, evaporated in a cloud of bliss and it was time to pick up the car. I’m glad to say the people at Uplands did a good, if slightly pricey, job of fitting the new unit. My wife is now enjoying an endless audible carousel of her favourite music, whilst hammering down the roads between Cardiff and here, at a rate which is only slightly exceeded by her fuel needle going down…

Saturday drudge continued in Ikea (NEVER do this on a Saturday afternoon!) where some furniture was bought and duly delivered to the children, together with a chest of drawers which I only just managed to ram into the back of my little car!

And we wizz forward to the point where we’re both back in the house, the kids have been seen to and the time, the remaining weekend-time is finally ours. And the point of this? Time for Spabbit-Fun!

I had bought, as part of the post-ppi-splurge, a bottle of Southern Comfort Lime… Talk about LETHAL – the stuff barely hints at alcoholic properties, yet claims to be 20% alcohol. I shall leave the following pictures tell the story of the night, that is all.

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FUCK YES.

All good with an edge of potential tension

It’s the weekend. My wife volunteered an overnight babysitting event for the grand daughter, Peanut. Well, it’s Sunday morning and that’s almost over. I’m out of bed early whilst my wife is “having a lie in” – this involves me making and transporting buckets of tea to her whilst she plays on her phone, looking on as the baby sleeps – we don’t want her to wake up too soon now lol 🙂 Anyhow, gives me some much needed time to blog!

The daughter is also down, got her yesterday after returning to the house from a day of shopping. Anyhow, I’m surprised there hasn’t been in “incident”, as this is the first time she’s been here since the whole alco-blowup thing a few weeks ago. I’ve banned her from drinking alcohol in the house when she’s with us; my wife kindly had that uncomfortable conversation with the daughter before she came over. Anyhow, I’m surprised, pleasantly as she coped sober for the evening – more importantly there was a distinct lack of the usual alco-induced histrionics and a “normal” evening was had by all. I’m sorry that my wife couldn’t enjoy a glass of wine or two during the evening, but the benefits outweigh the hazards on a massive scale when it comes to not drinking with the daughter.

I said to my wife that I’m not going to allow her to damage us or the family, and have remained consistent in my statement of the daughter not drinking when she’s with us – happy that the actual reality of the thing is working. I just have to stick firmly to it and ensure that there is no back-sliding!

I’m increasingly seeing alcohol as a real problem for those without control – I have both the daughter and the Father in the same boat, OK, he has some more control being a seasoned alco of many years, yet I can clearly see the gargantuan amount of long term damage it has and continues to inflict on his health and relationships.

Sometimes I think that I’m wrong and can’t sit in a white-castle overlooking those with alcohol problems; but I’m not wrong, I’m just different – I have a massive amount of self control concerning addictive drugs – I can and frequently say no and just stop my intake dead. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a drink the same as the rest of the populace, and on occasion have used it as everyone does, as a crutch to help with difficult times, but I have always stopped and always shown control, plus never had it impact any relationship I had or still have.

As my wife points out – I have this level of control and other don’t, so perhaps I should think more before I act. Maybe she’s right, but sometimes I can see the problems where others can’t – so I am duty and honour bound to act when events, relationships, or the health of people I care about, are in the process of degrading – anything less is simply unacceptable. Perhaps she means that I could be more gentle in my actions and I’d still reach the same outcome; perhaps she’s right. Time, as always, will tell me with all the subtlety of a punch in the face…

Death by takeout

Well… It IS payday and I have a little money left over…

Going to attempt ‘Death by Takeout’ this weekend. Have had a good run up this week already, Tuesday was pizza / kebab, Wednesday (Not strictly a take out), lamb burger and chips, Thursday Indian, Friday (Tonight) will be a Chinese. Might continue with takeout tomorrow, or might actually go out and find something. Either way, it’s payday, I’ve some cash, as my Wife would say, ‘Like fuck am I cooking’.

I’d normally (Try) to put my foot down a little, after all I have been REALLY fucking good lately, not this week, obviously! In this instance though… this time… I’m working overtime tomorrow, my wife is working overtime on Sunday, and to boot she is working on the bank-holiday Monday as well – I’m probably going to end up doing housework on Sunday… so in a short, well rehearsed phrase – fuck it! 🙂

Another day, another dinner.

Sunday has been and gone. As the second half of the weekend I suppose it wasn’t that bad. The morning was spent playing computer games and legally (sic) downloading materials from the Interwebs, and waiting. Waiting for what, I hear you ask, what could you possibly wait for on a Sunday? THE PARENTS.

Not the worst visit from the parents ever, however they both chose that day to bend my ear about each other… I can understand some of the points, but, fuck, I ain’t a marriage councillor! Anyhow after the ear bending they took myself and my wife out for lunch at The Three Elms, not a bad meal, but there was a slight atmosphere between the parents which degraded into open insults during the journey home. It is a persistently fucked up feeling when I have to tell my parents, in the back of the car, to shut the fuck up!

The meal out was worth the wait for, especially as they paid – I ended up having the Mexican sizzler, consisting of two chicken breasts, salsa, sour cream, served on a bed of fried peppers and onions, all with some chips and Doritos to go with. Don’t think it’s my favourite dish there, but was tasty all the same. My carnivore Wife (LOVE Wife!) had her usual 20oz steak 🙂

The remainder of the day was spent chilling and watching Maleficent (Yes I know it’s a Disney movie… But fuck it)

Weekend down!

Half way through the weekend, at the end of a largely do nothing day…

We had the baby all day, so we didn’t end up doing a lot – ate, watched random programs, finishing off the day with a family meal for us, the Ginger one and Giggles – a Chinese takeout provided by said Ginger one.

Managed a fair bit on the PC today – got the new webcam up and running after a few teething issues, backed up both mobile phones and organised the backup files a bit.

I have a choice of sausage sarnies or Singaport Fried Rice with Sweet’n’Sour Chicken for breakfast in the morning. Talking of tomorrow, it’s going to be the usual Sunday morning, then the parents are arriving at about 12:30, not all bad as they’re taking us for dinner at The Three Elms. Am dog tired now though, so it’s bed for me.

The weekend has arrived.

Will I be disappointed?

So many times I’ve waited and longed for the weekend to arrive and when it does, I’m disappointed; don’t know what to think most of the time, but hey, so long as I’m not in work with all the pressures. Today the pressure of work hasn’t been too bad – I set out to have a day doing largely nothing, which I must say, I accomplished fully 🙂 Went in for the usual time and proceeded to waste time on an epic basis; don’t get me wrong, I did enough to tick over, but nothing to stress even a single mental muscle.

Anyhow, I’m home and the weekend has kicked off gently with a sausage sarnie; now you may be wondering why the sausage sarnine? It’s due to the fact we have the grand daughter, Peanut, for the evening and the day tomorrow – this means we won’t eat until late, and the turkey breast lumps, plus doughnuts of the earlier parts of today wouldn’t have lasted until tonight’s pizza (The cheque I got earlier in the week is paying for a takeout tonight!)

We’ve finished off House as of last night – can’t believe we’ve watched the entire thing from beginning to end with hardly a break in programming in between! I’ve been obtaining some movies, yes, even chick-flicks for my wife, so we’ll probably have a couple of days worth of movies.

Weekend Ho!

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