Gracie’s Life Experiment

Went to the cinema to watch Ratatouille tonight.  It was brilliant.  The animation was really good, yet it still had the cartoony looks (don’t think it would have been as cute with photo realistic ratties).  Also the short at the beginning was very funny (I think it was called “Lifted” and involved what looked like an alien doing a flying saucer driving/abduction test).  Will definitely have to get it on DVD to watch again.  John said that apparently when Linguine gets drunk on wine I speak rubbish just the same as him.

How come whenever we go out to the cinema and have a meal we always have some terrible service at the restaurant.  Tonight it was an extremely overpriced gastropub in the middle of the Leicestershire villages that seemed to be run by Australians.  The food itself was actually very nice but was quite dear (cost about £20 each plus drinks) considering it was pub grub!  First problem was that my wine glass arrived with lipstick all over the rim.  Second problem another person at my table had a staropramen which seemed to have baked on sundried tomato inside the glass (the bubble surrounding it gave away its presence).  Third problem when asked whether the pie came with anything we were told it only came with green beans so my friend ordered a side order of mash, the pie arrived with mash and cabbage and an extra side order of mash!!  Fourth problem, it took so bloody long (we only just made the cinema show in time).  Won’t be going back there again.

Summary of the day: Meeting cancelled so took morning off as holiday (as the MIL came to visit), Took MIL out for lunch, Went to work in afternoon, Got loads of stuff done, Went to archery, Went out for dinner, Went to cinema, Successfully avoided any trick-or-treaters!

Bloody Halloween.  Fills me with dread every year.  Trick or treaters!!  Living on an estate we get a good parade of them all night long.   Even yesterday (29th Oct) on the way home I saw a group with a parent out with them round the corner from where we live.  It wasn’t Halloween, it wasn’t even dark yet and the kids just had black bin liners as capes!  Yikes, they could at least make the effort.  I’d rather celebrate All Saint’s Day instead, kids should go out and do good deeds instead.

This year we’re staying out.  Archery training goes on till 7pm, then I’ve arranged to go straight out for dinner and then we’re going to the cinema which means we won’t be home till 11 or so (hopefully there’ll be no more trick or treaters by that time).  Still bought a big pack of sweets just in case (think it was an excuse to buy sweets for myself to eat)! 

Summary of the day:  Went to work, Meetings - blah blah blah, Designed some posters, Came home, Watched crappy telly.

Hurray the building work is finally done.  And just in the nick of time as it’s been raining - which is good as it’s making the brick dust go away.  The scaffolding disappeared while I went to work and I came home to something resembling home again.   The flowerbed is back to normal and the flowers are now different colours (rather than all brick coloured petals).  The dust is still there and I imagine by the end of the week we’ll have got most of it.

Bad news to go with the good news (life in equilibrium, etc, etc) - I got an email from the case officer this morning (we’re applying to emigrate to Oz) saying that our police checks and medicals receipt haven’t been received.  WTF I sent them on Fri 19th October.  They responded that I needed to send them all separately on different emails so I did that on Mon 22nd, now one week later they’ve disappeared.  So have sent them yet again.  Very stressful, just when you think you’ve done it all, something else happens.  Hopefully this is it now and we are just waiting for a decision.

Summary of the day:  Went to work, Had a meeting which no one attending could remember why it was called (yes, totally pointless!!), Wrote up minutes from useless meeting, Wondered where our email scans have got to, Had leftover roast chicken salad for lunch, Had a student meeting in the afternoon (I seem to be forever meeting students lately), Photoshopped something for a joke, Played piano

Well, today marks the 2nd monthiversary of my blog. Last month I said that that month had gone by quickly, this month has accellerated even more.  It’s totally true when they tell you that the older you get the faster time flies.  For example when you were at school a lesson would drag on for what seemed like hours (prob more like 30 mins) and now I can be sitting doing nothing and an hour can go by. In fact there goes the week flitting by in front of me like a tumbleweed with an all-knowing smirk on its face.

Top 5 Highlights of the month:
- Getting the chimney rebuilt and having the first open fire of the season
- Going out to lots of parties and socialising
- Sending off the last of the gubbins for our application to emigrate to Oz
- Redecorating the dining room
- Working out what I need to get done for the PhD

Bottom 5 Lowlights of the month:
- Being very poor after having to pay the builder
- Getting angry with the internet banking (or lack of)
- England losing in the Rugby World Cup Final and then Hamilton not winning the next day
- Neverending housework to do and brick dust everywhere in the house
- Having so many damn meetings (not enough time to do my actual work)

Summary of the day: Had a lie-in, Gave a piano lesson, Cooked a Sunday Roast, Vegged all afternoon

Why is there a never ending grind of housework that needs to be done?  And there’s only 2 of us.  There’s a pile of clean washing on the spare bed that actually fills the whole double bed, and there’s 2 loads on the go in the washer and drier.  Somehow I’ve managed to get to the bottom of the laundry basket, but it’s started to fill up again already even though it’s only been 5 hrs and we haven’t changed our clothes (how does that work?).   The house got a good dusting and hoovering yesterday yet there is a thick layer of dust on the piano already.  I really don’t remember having to tidy so much in any of the other places that I’ve lived (either that or I was used to living in squalor).  There are muddy/brick dust prints on the floor (both paw shaped and husband foot-shaped) and when they’ve been cleaned up they reappear magically every time the back door opens.  Grr, grr and more grr.

Summary of the day:  Thought about going to archery but went back to sleep, Went shopping at Aldi for a change, Tidied the house

Our chimney has been rebuilt and the building works should be done by Tuesday.  Tonight we had our first open fire.  It was really lovely as it’s started getting a bit nippy in the evenings.  The inside of the house is starting to get back to normal.  John finished the dining room yesterday and it looks really really different (and much bigger now it’s not pink swedish sauna stylee).  The outside of the house is a total still mess and our new flowerbed is now a bed of brick dust, but hey ho, the walls are looking a lot better.  The dog is curled up in front of the fire (occasionally jumping up and dashing under the piano stool when the fire crackles).

Summary of the day: Went to work, Created the geography model for the furniture scenario, Went to carvery for lunch, Gave a piano lesson, Rearranged the lounge (fish have moved into the lounge)

I’m quite partial to going to see musicals.  Love them and remember lots of fun evenings round the piano as a kid singing from the various songbooks.  Tonight we went to Loughborough Town Hall to watch Little Shop of Horrors.  It was fab and very funny.  Nice that they had the original ending.  FEED ME!! So this Thursday’s 10 things are the last 10 musicals I’ve been to see (as far as I can remember).

1. Little Shop of Horrors
2. Spamalot
3. Blood Brothers
4. Jesus Christ Superstar
5. Miss Saigon
6. Blues Brothers
7. Les Miserables
8. Rocky Horror Show
9. Grease
10. Phantom of the Opera

Summary of the day: Went to work, Had student meetings, Had more student meetings all afternoon, Went to Wetherspoons for dinner, Saw Little Shop of Horrors, Had a nightcap, Hung a curtain

A bit of another non-day again today.  Woken up this morning by builder angle-grinding the wall outside my bedroom window.  Not good when I’ve only just got home at 2.30am and a huge hangover.  The morning started with a rather nasty conversation with the big white telephone.  Feeling much better after that (and the paracetamol kicked in).  Went to work where everyone laughed at my looking rough and also the random scrawling that some gimp had written on my skin in permanent marker thankfully it was under my sleeve (not on my face).

Wednesday’s are quite good in terms of telly I like.  Heroes and Ugly Betty on Freeview.  It took me a while to work out what the hell was going on in Heroes to start with, but now it’s getting towards the finale in the UK it’s really getting interesting now.  Ugly Betty is great as it doesn’t involve much attention and I find myself just idly preening myself during it.  Tonight I will be scrubbing/exfoliating the ink off my skin!

Summary of the day: Felt rough, Had lots of student meetings, Came home early, Watched telly

So it was the first archery club social tonight.  Started out at the SU and ended up at the SU.  The route to the final destination was a little strange as we ended up in the GB and Phantom in between!  I haven’t been out to the SU for about 3 years (tried to go a few weeks ago for the decanniversary but couldn’t get in).  It was packed at Stupid Tuesday.  Quite an odd sensation going out with a bunch of people 10 years younger than you - wasn’t too impressed when they decided that I must be 49 though, grr!!!  Ended up with writing all over my shirt, arms, chest, and a big green X on my forehead. 

Note to self: you don’t like drinking nasty, so why do you keep doing it?  Note 2 to self: you don’t like drinking VK, so why do you keep buying it because it is on offer?  Note 3 to self: Phantom cocktails are too drinkable.  Note 4 to self: switch off phone when going out drinking then you can’t “accidentally” send drunken txt msgs to people.

Summary of the day: Went to work, Had a long long meeting about TLCM, Went out to socialise (eep)

They came and took the scaffolding round the chimney down today, and then proceeded to put it round the rest of the house.  I never realised it took such a long time, but it took about 5 hrs in total to put it up.  Tomorrow morning (8am - yikes) they are going to start grinding the mortar out and hopefully finish the repointing by the end of the week. 

Inside the house, the dining room is looking fairly good.  Hubby has ripped the pine cladding off (yikes, bye bye pink swedish sauna look) and has sunk the electrics into the walls, we also now have skirting boards again.  Tonight he’s busy prepping the walls and plastering ready for papering later in the week.  He’s suddenly got a lot of motivation (considering he was going to do it this summer in the 8 weeks of holiday he had).  Dog is wondering what has happened to her bedroom and keeps running off with John’s pencils.

Summary of the day:  Wrote a statement of work, Had a student meeting, Did process modelling all afternoon, Had another student meeting, Watched Universally Challenged