Mutterings for the Minority

Out with the old

In somewhat bizarre fashion I decided that it would be an ‘interesting’ fact to weigh myself on the last day of 2006.  So I hereby announce that I am 16st 7lbs SBN. SBN by the way is Stark B*ll*ck Naked!

Anyway, as it was New Year’s Eve, Mrs DDWT and I decided to see in the New Year with a couple of suitably chilled bottles of Magners, some chocolate and a spot of TV - wild things or what

Well boring as it may sound, it was far better than being out and about in the wind and rain which said goodbye to 2006 and welcomed in 2007.

Besides we also got to enjoy the various neighbourhood firework displays that we in full swing from around 10pm onwards - regardless of the weather!

Double celebrations

It’s been a day of double birthday celebrations, with my Dad reaching the ripe old milestone age of 75 and my niece now officially becoming a teenager at 13!

As you can see from the pictures we had a party to celebrate and it went on until late into the night - well early ours of the morning actually.

It might actually make New Years Eve tomorrow pale into insignificance!

Holiday run

Despite it being the middle of the Christmas holiday, I felt the urge to go out for a run - probably to relieve myself of some of the guilt of munching so much over the last few days. Anyway, I went for a longer than normal run (31 minutes) and thoroughly enjoyed it - despite the wet conditions. Mind you I’ve always enjoyed running in the rain, so it was no big deal.

Hitting the sales

Despite having hit the internet sales (big style), it was down to Swansea today for the house of DDWT in search of some bargains (well a half-hearted search for bargains).

We went around quite a few shops - but avoided Next as it looked like a scene from the Arms Park in the early 70’s (for those of you that don’t know what I mean - packed like sardines and rather unpleasant). The visit to M&S was also quite amusing as the Menswear department had definately been taken over by lots of saga louts - I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a ruck in M&S for mens trousers and jumpers!!

Having said all that, in recent years when I’ve ever gone sale shopping I’ve been very aware of how much that good old human trait of good manners has gone out of the window (traded in for a bargain no doubt). Not this time though, I was more than pleasantly suprised at the number of people that said “excuse me” and “thank you” or even smiled for that matter. I’m still in shock.

Upon returning home - with DDWT Junior now fast asleep - both Mrs DDWT and I decided to have an afternoon kip and recharge the batteries after what had been a very busy few days (weeks!). Some 2 and a half hours later we were all up and about again and feeeling rather hungry.

Cue time for Mrs DDWT to make the traditional Christmas turkey curry (with however much was left of the turkey). It was very nice too and the picture below certainly doesn’t do it justice.

For afters we tucked into or rather started on the M&S Christmas cake which we’d forgotten about, or rather which was buried in the cupboard! I hope we get some visitors soon though or otherwise my waist line is going to get a bit like Santa’s. Ho Ho ho.

Merry Christmas

I just wanted to wish anyone and everyone who reads my blog a Merry Christmas!
Nadolig Llawen i pawb (that’s Merry Christmas to everyone in Welsh).

DDWT Junior is still fast asleep (as is Mrs DDWT) so I’m on t’internet trying to do some sale shopping on the Marks and Spencers site. Better dash and grab a bargain.

Snow is falling

Well it’s not really, but seeing as it’s Christmas Eve I wish it was as it never seems to snow at Christmas in these parts, well not for donkeys years anyway.

With all the shopping done today has been a day of final preparation, prepare the food for the traditional Christmas dinner, make final arrangements with everyone for tomorrow and leave out a mince pie and glass of milk for Santa (oh and a carrot for Rudolph).

As you can imagine DDWT Junior is thriving in all of the pre-Santa visit activities and is like a livewire to put it mildly. We’ve managed to get him to bed at his usual time of around 8pm but I’ve a feeling we’re in for an early start tomorrow! But hey who can blame him, I remember those days well myself *chuckle*

Talking of DDWT Junior, in order to keep him amused earlier today (whilst I prepped the veg) Mrs DDWT let him loose in the kitchen and helped him make some Thomas the Tank Engine sponge cakes - which we duly ate with our lunch. I must say they were very nice - not bad for a 35 month (and his 35 year old assistant!).

I went out for a 26 minute run this afternoon to dust off a few of the cobwebs, as I was beginning to feel a wee bit rusty having not done any exercise since Thursday (shame on me!). This was also on the back of finding out this morning that I am now 16st 5lbs in weight, so things can’t get much better in that department.

Right, with the big event just hours away I’m off to do some research on the Marks and Spencers sale which starts tomorrow. Yes I’m sad enough to be doing some shopping on Christmas day, but with most things being 50% off and me now being a lot trimmer around the waste - I need to invest some money in a new wardrobe!

Swans v Millers

I’m knackered today, but hey what does one expect when they’re in Tesco’s getting the Christmas Day veg at 1am in the morning. Yes I was mad (dull?) enough to go and do the very thing I laughed and joked about with Mrs DDWT yesterday. Still at least I got the fresh veg I wanted and without the hassle of saga louts or trolley dolleys to contend with - in fact I had more hassle trying to avoid the over laden delivery trolleys that were in all the aisles ready for the shelf stackers to distribute!

In fact my tiredness seemed to spill over into the football and the Swans peformance in the 1-1 draw with the Millers of Rotherham didn’t exactly stimulate anything - least of all the crowd.

Frustration was at fever pitch until Bayo’s late equaliser. Although if the truth be said, the Swans should have had the game in the bag way before Rotherham took a dodgy deflected goal lead. A full match report can be read here. We really do need an out-and-out striker though who can score lots of goals, as at the moment Fallon couldn’t score in a brothel, Bayo is at best an impact player and as for Trundle, well it depends on which LT10 turns up on the day. Not good.

Oh well at least the Sky engineer had called this morning and we now have a fully functioning sky satellite system (as my little ‘fix’ was only a temporary measure). It was a faulty LNB as I’d thought and within 25 minutes the engineer had installed a new one. Top tip here though to anyone who does encounter problems with their sjy equipment - tell them you’d rather cancel your sky subscription than pay the £65 call out charge (be persistant) and they should arrange for an engineer to come out - free of charge. If that doesn’t work, do as I did and email James Murdoch at Sky directly with a formal complaint!

The house of DDWT went to the Harvester in Llandarcy this evening for my neice’s birthday party and we had a great laugh, especially DDWT Junior. Below is a peice of birthday cake - before it was devoured in front of my very eyes!

It was a nice place though and although the food was of the standard Harvester fare, it was very nice and the service was excellent. DDWT Junior was most impressed by the fact that they let him have loads of (helium filled) balloons to play with (and take home). Whilst on the subject of balloons and helium, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to have a go and doing Mickey Mouse impressions - much to everyone’s amusement (except my throat of course). Oh Christmas is indeed almost here!

My day in pictures

What a great feeling it was this morning to get out of bed and not have to go to work. It was even better contemplating this routine for the next 10 days as well - bloody marvelous.

I’ve decided to document my day in the form of pictures for a change and becuase I’m in a snap happy Christmas frame of mind. God how I love Christmas and all the festivities it brings. Anyway, as you can see from the picture below the Swansea Valley didn’t escape the fog that has descended across the UK (and caused chaos) and it made somewhat bleak viewing outside this morning.

My spirits were raised somewhat though by the sight of Mrs DDWT putting together some bacon and egg filled bagels. Upon munching them it felt like a flashback to the latter stages of our honeymoon in downtown New York in June 2000. I’ll stop there as otherwise it’ll get me rambling on about how I’d like to go and live there someday.

On the subject of food, it was Ryvita, cheese and ham snacks for dinner - which was to keep us going for the rest of the afternoon as we decided to join the masses in Llansamlet Tesco’s (via Wyevale) to stock up on some pre-Christmas day essentials.

Talking of Wyevale here is one of the fantastic penguin displays they had in-store for Christmas. They had around 5 of these displays featuring about 6 to 8 moving penguins on each and DDWT Junior loved them. Personally I thought it was far better value watching these than paying £8 (yes I did say eight pounds) to see Father Christmas there!

After having had our dose of posing penguins, we headed off to Tesco’s to witness what can probably be best described as a mêlée of people all suffering extremely bad cases of trolley rage. That’s the one great thing about being prepared and planning ahead, you can sit back and enjoy watching everyone sending their blood pressure skyward as the big event draws ever nearer. We spent about 30 minutes plus in the queue for our paltry £15 worth of goods, safe in the knowledge that muggins here would be going shopping in the wee hours of the morning when most people will be fast asleep. Sound idea - but I’ll let you decide which one I’m referring to!

I had the misfortune this evening of the lovely Windows Update service kindly installing Internet Explorer 7 on my PC - which in due course totally cocked-up the font settings …aaargh. Basically it made all of the fonts ‘cleartype’ - which was ok in some respects, but made using Firefox a tadge bit difficult. Thankfully, I managed to Google a solution and it did the trick.
You can read more about the whole font business and how to solve it on the IE Blog - which I must confess didn’t know even existed.

The sight of Catherine Zeta-Jones (a foxy lady if ever I saw one) in ‘The Legend of Zorro‘ made me feel a lot less agitated (after my Internet Exploder experience). The film itself was ok, but as with most follow-up movies it wasn’t quite up to the mark of the original, but at least Mrs DDWT and I enjoyed a relaxing evening in front of the box.

Holiday season

The holiday season has finally arrived for me today with it being my last day in work hurrah! Ohhh the thought of no more work until 2007 is lush.

It was also my last lunchtime bike ride of 2006 and how fitting it should be down to Forte’s ice cream parlour in Limeslade again - the place where it all started way back in January of this year. In terms of my fitness (and weight) I’ve come a long long way during the past 12 months. I’ll stop there as I’ll do a full 12 month review at the end of the year. Anyway, enough of the sentiment the 11 mile ride took 46 minutes 57 seconds at an average speed of 13.8 mph.

A big shout goes out to the Bossman as well for getting all of the team a bottle of wine (a South African Merlot Shiraz in my case). Thanks to Coach DR as well - the DVD will take pride of place in my sporting collection!

DDWT Junior met Santa once again today when he came to visit the St. Joseph’s playgroup. Sanat was most impressed by the additional reindeer (i.e. a dressed up DDWT Junior) he’d managed to recruit during the morning present giving session. It’s amazing what you can get for £5 in Asda these days!

Now there’s an idea

In keeping with the recent Christmas party season, we (the office gang) headed off to Gallini’s Italian restaurant in Swansea Marina today for a spot of lunch.

Being someone who likes eating pasta - in vast amounts - I was quite at home with the various pasta dishes on offer. In fairness, despite the cuisine being Italian the local fish produce was also on offer and perfectly complimented the marina setting.

After several minutes deliberation I opted for Bruschetta to start (shown below) before having a pasta dish (the name of which escapes me) which was basically macaroni pasta in red wine and tomato sauce with little coils of beef which were lovely and tender. The main course was far nicer than the starter and although the portion wasn’t huge (I like a lot you see) the girls seemed to think it was just about right! The food was fresh and hot though and cooked by a very pleasant Italian lady.

Anyway, the service was good and prompt and I’d recommend it for a lunchtime or evening visit - especially if you are down in the vicinty of Swansea marina.

During my time at the picturesque marina setting, several business ideas passed through my mind - don’t ask me why. These ranged from selling abstract digital photgraphy to gift wrapping services and secret santa parties to being an online shopping assistant (i.e. gift sourcer). I think I’ll leave these madcap ideas behind though and concentrate on taking bizarre spur of the moment pictures such as the one below of a nearby tree beneath the winter sky.