Gracie’s Life Experiment

So after the party yesterday was feeling particularly lardy and sluggish so we went on a family run (me, dog and hubby).  So, trainers went on, iPods got plugged in, dog got put on lead.  First time since prob 2001 since I’ve been for a run (6 years and 1 stone heavier - yikes).  It’s quite nice running again when it’s starting to go cooler in the evenings.  Only did a 20 min circuit, but you’ve got to start somewhere.  Legs were a bit rubbery but no cramps, no stitches hurray.  John and I jogged, dog didn’t even get to running state (more of a trotting along with us) turning around every now and again looking like she was saying “come on you slowpokes”.  Our dog has turned into our personal trainer!!

Summary of the day: Groaned about hangover, Dug dog out of the bed, Cleared up aftermath of the party (who would have thought 15 people could get through so many glasses), Went to ’spoons for Sunday lunch, Wandered round town looking for a LBD (not one to be found anywhere in Lufbra!!), Ate leftovers for dinner, Went for a jog.

It was hubby’s birthday party today.  Went bowling (scored 77 today… much better than the 40 that I got at my party).  John won again, even though his first two balls were “-,-”.

Actually managed to have a BBQ.  The weather was fabulous and the food came out very well (not black, nor raw!!!).  Did some jamming at the piano with guitar which was really cool (as usually there’s noone to play with).  Played lots of Wii.

Well it’s 1.47 in the morning and I have retired to bed.  There’s still a heavy contingent playing poker with actual chips (deep fried oven chips!!) downstairs surrounded by spirit bottles.  Fab party, fab friends, fab times

Summary of the day: Had a lie in, Tidied the house, Went bowling, Had BBQ, Partied till the early hours.

Well, today marks the 1 monthiversary of my blog. This month has gone by really really quickly.

Top 5 Highlights of the month:
- Getting my first comment on the blog
- Getting a new PB at archery
- Spamalot
- Getting a new laptop
- Spending time with the family

Bottom 5 Lowlights of the month:
- My laptop dying
- Getting lots of colds
- Feeling used
- Feeling “meh”/nothingness
- Being stabbed with needles

Summary of the day: Went to work, Tidied house (again), Gave piano lesson, Went t’Tescos, Prepped lots of food for tomorrow’s BBQ.

So this week’s 10 things are the last 10 books that I can remember reading…

1. The Bible
2. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
3. Don’ts for Wives (1913) -Blanche Ebbutt (someone gave this little book to me for my birthday)
4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling
5. Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
6. The Undomestic Goddess - Sophie Kinsella
7. Artemis Fowl & the Lost Colony - Eoin Colfer
8. Final Notes from a Great Island (A Farewell Tour of Singapore) - Neil Humphreys
9. A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
10. The Jane Austen Book Club - Karen Joy Fowler

Nice mix of different books, enjoyed all of them.  I don’t seem to read books as often as I’d like.  This is probably my list from over the last year or two.  Most of the time I end up reading a book in one or two sittings (sometimes all night).

Summary of the day: Had long, long meeting at work about enterprise modelling, Went out on the piss.

I’m usually a very easy going person, who will help others as much as I can.  Why is it that sometimes people just take the piss and expect you to jump?  I don’t often get very pissed off, but today I am feeling totally used.  People expect you to go out of your way to do things for them, and you have plenty of other things to stress you out to do with your time, yet because you’re such a mug you want to help them and you make time.  I don’t think people realise just how annoying it is, or perhaps they just think I have nothing better to do then to pander to their every need and wait around.  Grr!!

Summary of the day:  Went to work, rewrote a presentation, came home early to get software loaded onto home laptop (need to bring home laptop in for a meeting because work laptop still hasn’t been fixed since nuking itself 20 days ago), fight with Vista (it seems to think it’s acceptable to take 6hrs unzipping a 120MB file), download 7-zip instead (great bit of software and best of all free, unzip now takes all of 2 mins), blitzed house, made wontons for dinner.

So I bought the Gateway MT6722b from the Tesco website last week.  There’s very little on the web about it, so I thought I would post a bit of a review on my blog.  Also to warn people that it’s not necessarily the right specification that they are expecting.

On the whole I am very happy with the Gateway.  It’s not too big, much lighter than my other Toshiba (M70).   It has a nice brushed aluminium plate below the keyboard too (my previous laptops were just painted plastic that wore off after a while).  The specs (at today’s date) on the Tesco’s website are incorrect :(   The differences are namely:

It has 120GB hard drive, not 160GB
It has 1GB of RAM, not 2GB
There is no Bluetooth

Makes it in my opinion pretty much equivalent in price to a lot of the other makes/models of the same price (~£400)  apart from this also has a built in webcam.

I sent Tesco customer services an email to check and they have passed it on to their relevant departments to update the details on the website.

Summary of the day: Sat in lots of meetings (yawn), programmed, had another meeting, went to buy extra last minute birthday presents (happy birthday Hubby!), played Wii, had a quiet night in.

Have spent the last few evenings trying to work out the best thing to use with my music and iPod.  Luckily most of the music was already ripped off the CDs and stored on our shared drive at home (thankfully didn’t have to do it all over again) so I didn’t have to fuss with that.  Previously I just used iTunes, but with a totally new laptop I thought I would try and actually sort out/organise all the different formats of music files we have (some were M4A, some mp3, some wmas, etc).  So now I have the built in Windows Media Player, iTunes and Songbird.  Question is now, which should I use?

A few stats…
# of media players : 3
# of mp3 players : 1 (80GB iPod Video Black)
# of songs : 2446
# of artists : 383
# of albums : 129
# of GB : 6.32

Summary of the day: Went to work, programmed all day long (wow a tutorial that actually teaches you something), played with music files

Finally decided to do something about the big hole/pile of soil in the corner of the driveway today.  There used to be a big lilac tree and silver birch tree, but there also happens to be a join/change in direction of the sewage pipe leading to many roots busting through and blocking it (yuck).  We’ve planted out a small bush of some sort, bought a new hebe and a whole pile of winter pansies. 

(sorry about the big rain drops on the lens)

Summary of the day: Went to church, Went shopping, Planted stuff, Gave piano lesson

Went down to London to see Spamalot today.  Was absolutely brilliant.  Hilarious and lots of fun.  If you’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail it’s sort of based on that.  The woman who played the Lady of the Lake was fabulous.  It’s the most un-PC thing I think I’ve ever seen, but I guess we’ve got acclimatised to the peculiarity of Python.  Almost bought a “Fetchez la vache” T shirt (the one with cows flying on it) but thought better of it.

Summary of the day: Went to London, Met parents for lunch at Caffe Uno, Laughed and laughed and laughed some more at Spamalot, Made amends with the grumpy dog by feeding her a sausage.

Went out on a date earlier this week.  Went to see Run, Fat Boy, Run - which was ever so funny (would prob not buy it, but worth an evening out without having to think too much).  Lots of the usual silly slapstick, body jokes as would be expected.  After the cinema we went to the Noodle Bar - this place is the normal fayre you’d expect and is usually very quick.  Have noticed it’s going a bit downhill since it opened about a year or so ago (proliferation of beansprouts and onions), but it was absolutely awful mainly because we didn’t actually get to eat anything.  We waited for 10 minutes to get served, 20 minutes to get our drinks and a further 40 minutes before paying for our drinks and leaving wondering why no food had arrived (they picked our order slip up off the floor at this point and much shouting and finger pointing between kitchen and waiting staff!!).  Not even a “sorry” or a “please stay, we’ll do better”.  Wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t been so hungry.  Also the drinks were really expensive too (£5 for 2 soft drinks).  That was an hour of our lives we can’t get back, hmppph.

Summary of the day: Went to work, got quite a way through Brahms tutorial (yey), Gave piano lesson, Bought 14 tickets to Little Shop of Horrors, Went to pub for a few swifties.