I Need Time Off

I need to take a month or so off. No, not because I’m ‘burnt out’ or have had enough or want to travel.

I’ve simply got too much television to watch.

This is what I currently have sitting on my hard drive :

To Watch Now :

  • Heroes (2 eps)
  • Lost (2 eps)
  • Life On Mars (3 eps)

Series I Haven’t Started

  • Veronica Mars (Season 3)
  • Rome (1st half of season 2)
  • Dexter (Season 1)
  • Deadwood (Season 3)
  • Torchwood (Season 1)
  • Six Feet Under (Season 5)
  • Battlestar  Galactica (7 episodes  from season 2 and approx 14 so far from season 3)
  • Sarah Jane Adventure (Dr Who spinoff pilot movie)

Coming Up

  • Dr Who season 3 (March 31)
  • Weeds season 3

And then there are all seasons of The Sopranos on DVD to get through.

Maybe I could get an optometrist to sponsor me to stay home and do nothing but watch television.

Back. Sorta.

Argh, database problems over the past day or so have made a couple of posts disappear, some reappear and some comments end up on posts they aren’t meant to. I’ll get around to sorting out the little mess over the next couple of days.

A couple of quick hello’s to people. Congratulations to Tim and Annie on the birth of Joseph James, we’re getting up to Bendigo soon, promise, and happy birthday to Veronica – hope Steve and Jonathon spoil you!

UPDATE 1:20PM

Looks like the server is having ‘issues’. Errors popping up all over the place again.

Where’d They Go?

It seems my hosting provider has eaten two weeks worth of posts. They were there this morning, I had a comment, but when I went to look something up just now they had gone. Apparently an upgrade to their MySQL install went awry and they lost some data.

Thankfully I wrote them all in Windows Live Writer so I have local copies, and Google’s cache resurrected a beautiful post Rae had written for Bert but I’m not happy. I moved back to this host ’cause they were more reliable. Good one Tony.

Analyse This

I have a recurring dream and have no idea what it means. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have dreamt of a plane crash. Generally I will be outside and hear the noise of a plane, as the noise grows louder I will spot it and begin to watch it cross the sky. Suddenly the noise will change and the plane begins to fall from the sky.

Sometimes, although rarely, the plane will cartwheel and crash in to flames in the distance but generally it manages to somehow gain a little control, or simply defies the laws of physics, and drops gently, in one piece, to the ground nearby.

I have absolutely no idea why I dream this. I love flying, I love watching planes and have never seen one crash but at least once a month that jet will come flying overhead as I sleep and only vanish when I wake. I wish I knew why.

Clockwork Cats

We no longer need a clock in this house, we have the cats.

9.00 pm every day Bella will make herself know with a meow and start brushing around your leg and Tom will thump to the floor off whichever bed he’s made home and come jingling out. He won’t rub your leg, he just paces from the lounge to the feed bowl and back until I get up to feed them. Half the time they’ll just stare at the food and disappear until we go to bed.

Fussy, yet regular. That’s our furry kids.

It Seats 7

The New Car

We picked up the car this morning. Uncle Rob came with us as he was an integral part of the whole car shopping experience. It was all fairly quick; the car is in Rae’s name so she had to sign about 10 times, we handed over the cheque (ouch) and away we drove.

To give the car a little test we drove to Queenscliff for a coffee and morning tea then gave it a good going on the freeway back home. It’s a lovely car to drive although I find it a bit odd sitting so high. “Look at me, I’m driving a car.” is how I feel. We’ve Scotch Guarded the seats, put a cover on the back seats for the kids and tucked it away for the night. Now we just have to dispose of the Magna and our car story is hopefully over for a while.

And as Jen and Rae have pointed out this means Rae will be flying a broomstick to work every day. I fear for my life so I’m not taking that thought any further…

Things That Go "Squelch, #!@%, Wipe" In The Night

One of the dubious pleasures of living next to a railway line is that occasionally you’ll get a freight train idling while it waits for god-only-knows-what. On still nights with the windows open you will inevitably wake up as it screams back in to life and moves off.

Last night was a still night with a freight train. Of course I woke up and once awake I made the mistake of wondering if I should get up and go to the loo. Of course once that thought enters your head you’re not getting any sleep until you do get up and go to the loo.

I dragged myself out of bed and shuffled through the house. My brain was in a deep sleep fog but it woke up pretty quickly when my foot landed fair and square on a cold mass of cat chuck-up in the kitchen. Of all the experiences one could hope for on the way to the loo in the middle of the night, stepping on regurgitated cat meat is not one of them.

Somehow even though my brain was busy dealing with ‘revulsion’ I managed to get it to concentrate on ‘cleaning’ even though all it really wanted was ‘sleep’. I wiped the mess, cleaned the floor, cleaned my foot and made it back to bed where I lay there trying to get the memory to go away.

This morning Thomas was no where to be found. I think he surfaced when I was under the shower and Rae let him out. Now that’s a cat with a strong sense of self preservation.

New Home

Well, that took a little longer than expected. Lately when I’ve redelegated a name the change has happened within a few minutes, this change of hosts took almost 24 hours – back to the bad old days. Mail is flowing again now and the blogs are showing so things are good. I never should have left this host – rock solid performance for years but I thought I’d check out another local provider.

What a mistake.

They almost cost me a client when one of their servers went down – and stayed down for three weeks. I didn’t move the site straight away because they were always promising in emails and on the phone that they were hours away from going live again. Idiot me for believing them. When they did come back my client lost weeks of work as the host, despite their assurances, had no back ups. Lucky I had only the one client site with them and after a quick trip to Sydney to sort out the problems in person all was well.