Not a good start - we’re an hour later than intended and it’s bucketing down. I hope that things improve when we get the other side of the severn bridge!!
Mind you, if I wasn’t blogging now we might have just left a little earlier. So I’ll stop waffling - before incurring the wrath of Mrs DDWT - and catch up with the blog later in the week. Adios amigos, Center Parcs Longleat here we come!
Not much to report really as our day has been mainly a case of getting everything ready for our week long stay at Center Parcs Longleat. It’s quite funny that DDWT Junior says that he isn’t going on holiday, he’s going to Center Parcs! No doubt this is partly due to the fact that there are so many CP adverts on the NickJr tv channel all the time.
Surely the marketing people can’t be targetting the kids tv channles can they? I mean little Johnny see’s holiday place x and then nags Mammy and Daddy about it incessantly (replace holiday place x with toy called y if you want - same difference). You can call me a cynic if you want, but hey c’mon.
16st 5lbs was my tale of the bathroom scales today, so it’s been a good week on the weight front. Must have been all those runs *wink*
I took delivery of my much anticipated new toy today, a TomTom One Great Britain GPS - all for the exceedingly good price of £162.99, inc. delivery from my good friends at Amazon.co.uk.
Whilst we don’t do a huge amount of driving during the winter months, the summer often sees the house of DDWT galavanting to various far flung places around the UK. Besides as DDWT Junior gets older and his passion for the Swans gets as intense as his Dad’s - we’ll be touring the various football grounds that the Swans visit I’m sure.
For those of you reading this and thinking - “Yeah right! What a load of bollocks, he probably just wanted a new technological gadget to play with” - there is probably an element of truth in your thought process!
After the excitement of testing the TomTom (oo-er missus) out had passed, I proceeded to spend the best part of the morning helping DDWT Junior make animals with his treasured box of Lego Duplo.
That’s a giraffe and an elephant in case you didn’t know! Fortunately for me, I managed to avoid spending all day doing Lego by a story telling session - mainly around the Julia Donaldson books - The Gruffalo and Gruffalo’s Child. If you’ve got young children (between 3 and 6) believe me, they will love the whole range of books by the same author.
Do you ever get cheesed off at the about of junk mail and unsolicited telephone calls you get? Well if you’ve tried the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and/or the Mailing Preference Service (MPS) you’ll know that they’re a good place to start in terms of fighting back. But, my mate Lance has sent me some other interesting stuff, which is rather interesting and cheekily funny at the same time! Read on…..
REVENGE ON THE TELEMARKETERThree Little Words That Work!!
(1) The three little words: “Hold On, Please…”
Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that sales would practically grind to a halt.Then when you eventually hear BT’s “beep-beep-beep” tone, you know it’s time to go back and hang up your handset …. You have efficiently completed your task.
These three little words could help eliminate telephone soliciting.
(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?
This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone
Calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.This technique is then used to determine the best time of day for a
“real” salesperson to call back and get someone at home.What you can do after answering: If you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialled the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!
3: When you get those “pre-approved” letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope.
Most of these come with postage-prepaid return envelopes, right?
It costs them more than the regular postage “IF” and when they are returned. It costs them nothing if you throw them away! In that case,why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-prepaid return envelopes?
Send an advert for your local chimney sweeper to American Express … They might need one!
Send a pizza coupon to HSBC … In case their canteen packs up. You get the idea.If you didn’t get anything else that day, then just send them back their blank application form … After all, it is their form!
If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn’t on anything you return.
You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them, and it is their envelope after all .. You are just returning it!!!!
The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the post, but folks ….. We need to OVERWHELM them, in order to stop them.
Let’s let them know what it’s like to get lots of junk mail,
And best of all they’re paying for it … Twice!Let’s help keep Royal Mail busy. Since the Royal Mail are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, let’s help them so they will not need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!
Well I know one thing for sure, I’m going to be using some of those little gems from now on - it’s payback time.
It was a great feeling leaving work at 4pm today, especially in light of the fact that I’m now off for a whole week - and making the most of it with a visit to Center Parcs Longleat. Cooool.
My lunchtime run with Razor today - along our usual seaside scenic route known affectionately as SA1 - took us 23 minutes 40 seconds, a wee bit quicker than Tuesday’s effort. However, it was instantly forgetable due to me, ahem, being taken short - pretty much as soon as I’d finished the 3 mile run.
It’s not the sort of runs either of us want to become accustomed to in all honesty. But it’s my own fault really as I’d decided to take on some fluids and a banana some 20 minutes or so before starting the run. I should have learnt my lesson by now, as it’s not the first time my legendary metabolism and digestive system have come up trumps - albeit at the most inappropriate of times.
The p*ss taking from my comrades in the changing rooms afterwards was quite intense as well, with comments such as “hit the fan will you”, “you were poetry in motion today”, “Have you lost anything?”, “You could have waited until we’d changed” and “that’s lunch down the pan then”. Charming eh.
You can tell when half term hits these parts as riding down to Mumbles becomes more of an exercise in avoiding people (and their kids, pets, bikes, scooters, etc, etc) than head down and pedal like hell.
Obstacles aside, it was a pleasant enough ride down to Verdi’s and back (a 9 mile roundtrip) this lunchtime and it was nice just to be outside in the lovely sunshine. A fact which no doubt was emphasised by the number of other bikers I saw en route.
Mrs DDWT had a nice surprise this morning when those lovely people from Venture Photography phoned her up to say she’d won a competition they were running - which she entered in Morrisons down at the Morfa retail park the other week. The prize, a free family setting and £75 voucher to spend on the snaps.
I finally got back to doing some training during lunchtime today and eased into it - although it sure as hell didn’t feel like it - with a 3 mile run around SA1 with Razor (another training buddy of mine). Our time of 24 minutes 23 seconds was quite satisfactory considering the 10 day lapse since the last session.
Seeing as it’s Shrove Tuesday, Mrs DDWT made some homemade pancakes (which we lush by the way) and enjoyed by all. Well everyone except DDWT Junior who took more pleasure in washing the dishes than trying the pancakes. What is it with kids and water? Talking of the nipper, the mrs took him to the docs this morning to get him checked out as he’s still under the weather to say the least. They got the usual retort of “it’s a virus” and were basically told by the doctor to let it run its course like everyone else was doing! Well that’s all well and good if you’re an adult, but not if you’re a 3 years old toddler. So Dr. Osbourne if you’re reading this (which is highly unlikely) you are indeed a 1st class MUPPET.
I headed off to the Liberty tonight to watch the Swans take on the table topping Irons of Scunthorpe - more in hope than anticipation to be quite frank. Unfortuantely, the 2 nil scoreline (to the visitors) didn’t really do justice to what was - compared to recent weeks - a much more gutsy and passionate performance (in the 1st half at least).
If the truth be known we were sleeping for the 1st goal (after about 4 minutes) and Willy made a howler for the 2nd (time for Oakesy to have a go surely?), so once again we gifted a rather ordinary looking Scunthorpe team 3 points. Having now seen the two top teams in League One during the last few weeks I personally felt Oldham were the much better of the two sides. Anyway, if you want to read the match report it’s in its usual place.
As for the talking points, well Bayo was stretchered off with a suspected broken leg to be replaced by the (currently) un-flattering Pawel Abbott (or should that be Russ?). Our attack looked weak before, it’s decidedly non-existent now and I for one think that this injury coupled with the result has pretty much put the final nail in our promotion coffin (play-offs included). Why, well simply becuase the state of affairs off the pitch and confidence on it - looks to have taken a pasting.
O’Leary was the pick of the bunch tonight on the whole and typified the tenacity which we have been lacking of late. To be fair to all of the other players they were all committed - in the first half especially, which resulted in the crowd getting behind them. It’s a point worth dwelling on - all to often players ask the fans to get behind them, well we will guys IF you show us your up for the fight as well.
No doubt the rollercoaster of life that is being a fan of Swansea City will take a few more twists and turns yet. Swansea ’til I die indeed.
With Valentines day long since gone, I’m amazed at the amount of love that is still in the air and being shown to me (and everyone else no doubt!) by total strangers. Don’t get me wrong, a little bit of love goes a long way, but in this the day and age of cyberspace, lurve and affection has taken on a whole new meaning.
Never before have I had so many emails (legitimate ones I hasten to add - not penis enlarging ones) from complete strangers calling me ‘matey’, ’sweetie’ and always signed off with a ‘x’. I mean I’ve never even met these people (work colleagues to be precise) yes they work for the same company but I don’t know them from Adam (who is he anyway?). I had a friend in uni once who sweared he had the ideal measure for sussing out if someone fancied you or not - the gist of which was that if you received any form of communication from them (email, letter, card, txt, whatever) and it was signed off with an ‘x’ you were in! Bingo, result, lurve was on the cards.
Personally I never bought into that crap, but it was amazing to see how popular he “thought” he was with the ladies. Gawd help him in my job then *smile*
On an altogether more serious note and being somewhat of a newbie to parenthood, it’s amazing how much your little one being ill can upset you and make you worry. I know that sounds a stupid thing to say when your talking about your own flesh and blood, but you’d be surprised (as I am often) by how many parents appear to not give a tinkers cuss about their kids.
Anyway, I digress. I wrote this simply becuase DDWT Junior is unwell at the moment (high temp, stinking cold, off his food, etc) and it’s at times like this that make you appreciate what a bundle of laughs they really are and how sad it is to see them suffering without really being able to tell you what’s wrong or how they feel.
We ventured over to Aberavon beach this afternoon for what was the first ever visit for all of us - strange but true. It’s just a shame that the early sunshine had long since disappeared to be replaced by a murky overcast sky, which eventually meant light drizzle.
Considering the location of the beach is relatively near to Port Talbot steelworks (some 3+ miles or so away), the sand and shoreline is very pleasant and clean - so don’t be put off by it’s location. I can imagine the place is rammed when the weather is hot and sunny and there is always the nearby Aquadome to visit if the beach isn’t your sort of thing.
The tale of the scale saw an increase this week to 16st 8lbs, but I was pretty much prepared for this considering I haven’t trained since last Sunday and that was a weights session. On the subject of training, Mrs DDWT put me to shame this morning by going out for a run whilst I made elephants out of Lego Duplo with DDWT Junior. So the chips are down now and the competition has begun!
With the sun shining brightly outside I decided to take full advantage and do some of the many outstanding jobs on my ‘todo’ list - whilst I had the chance. First up was to repair some of the vertical panels in our fence (which actually belongs to next door). The irony being that the panels are coming off the fence due to the lad next door kicking his football against it. Oh well it’s your fence mate and I wouldn’t really bother repairing it except that it looks sh*tty the way it is!
The 2nd job and ultimately all the more messy and irritating sort of way (due to sneezing), is repairing our darn Dyson DC07 cleaner, again. It’s amazing really how much dust it actually collects - well until it cuts out and gives up the ghost that is. Anyway, a thorough cleaning and hose down with a jet spray usually gives its vital organs a damn good makeover! I also decided to replace the HEPA filter - only the 2nd one in the erm 8 or so years we’ve had the contraption.
We headed off to Fforestfach in the afternoon for some low cost retail therapy - i.e we look but don’t buy! We spend most of our time there in Borders having a good look at the cast array of books they have, especially childrens. It was quite amusing actually that whilst I was reading ‘The Gruffalo‘ to DDWT Junior, I quickly had an audience of about 2 or 3 other children - much to my amazement. Oh well, if ever I give up on the world of computing I could always go into storytelling *wink*
It’s been an odd week on the whole, not because we’ve all had the flu, but because I’ve watched so much tv and films in particular. This in itself is a rarity and I hardly EVER watch television (only sports TV) let alone several nights of it. This week I’ve managed to clock up watching - The Honeymooners (don’t bother), The Manchurian Candidate (quality Denzil W flick) and Good Morning Vietnam (a Robin Williams classic).
In fact I quite enjoyed my ‘change of lifestyle’ (ha ha) and even said to Mrs DDWT that we should watch at least one film a week from now on, she just looked at me raised an eyebrow and smiled. I don’t know what she means.
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