The buffet trolley is stuck

Finding it amusing that the Salisbury train to Cardiff is as packed as the train I used to take when commuting into London!

Cashback sites

I've been using this site for about 2 years now and have got around £576 in cashback from them.
Not bad - it's mainly been on car / home insurance and mobile phone contracts, but definitely some good deals here! 25% cashback on Skype credit has been pretty handy too!

http://www.quidco.com/fifth-birthday?uhmm

How much? My head Hertz.

Picked up a hire car from Belfast International and was scratching my head about estimated rental cost.
It took meticulous inspection of the invoice to find that apparently £100 of it relates to bringing car back with an empty tank, having not paid for a full tank.
So, I guess I'd better not forget to fill 'er up before dropping the car back at the airport.

KiA 2010

A taster video from Les 2 Alpes.
The main omission is footage from the Coupe de Yop and anything of interest from Ian's video.
I've not included the audio soundtrack for this, but for the full effect, try playing Have a Nice Day (Bon Jovi) in the background.

Pancake day photo

time to move...

Given that I'm paying money for a website hosting service, I've finally uploaded some blogging software onto that website and will probably be moving away from blogger.
With the new website, I can add additional people as guest bloggers, add all kinds of customizable and pointless widgets and potentially, only cede copyright, data protection and privacy rights to my web hosting company rather than to Google and the whole of the interweb. :-)

Pancake pizzas

Pancakes served with tomato sauce, bacon and melted cheese. Mmmmm.
just a bit different from chocolate pizzas...

Somewhere near bridgend...

There's at least one robin in Wales which has no fear.
Hence probably the best wildlife shot I've ever taken so far...

For-Ethiopia

A fund raising event for For-Ethiopia went ahead on Saturday and was a great success, combining Ethiopian food, information about the charity, 'Irish Bingo' and a charity auction. Also had the inaugural speech from the charity patron, Dr Alice Roberts who is sometimes seen on BBC TV.

I was somehow roped into giving a 5 minute presentation about what the charity is doing during the evening too. In actual fact, it took about 9 minutes... :-)

At the end of the day, the event raised nearly £4000. Partly helped by some great auction items - including a week's holiday in a holiday cottage just inside Dartmoor National Park, sleeping 8 people (to be taken anytime except July & August). And all the proceeds from the auction go directly to For-Ethiopia projects. There are some generous people out there. Even in a recession!

Bristol Half Marathon

Me at 9 miles...

Bristol Half Marathon

It's done! The training paid off and I did a Personal Best (PB) for a half marathon - 1hr 37mins and 9 secs.
Just for fun, I quickly did a spreadsheet to calculate my split times and so graphically, you can see how I did. Generally a poor start and slowed up at the finish (mainly because that's where the course went uphill and downhill and also where the cobbled sections started...


It's amazing how you can quickly make a blog boring by the addition of graphs!
OK, for some amusement here's some video footage of the morris dancers who morris danced 13.1 miles!

Training run

Went running today... Apparently there's an iPhone app which uses the phone GPS to track your movements. Just waiting for the iPhone app which actually burns the calories for you.
I plotted my route today manually. 2 laps of the Downs in Bristol is apparently about 9 miles.
I got passed by someone while running, but then tweaked my running style and passed him again. I think I run a better when I've got some competition...

Running (again)

Well, I'm running in the Bristol Half Marathon on 6th September.

Been training fairly solidly for the past couple of months.

Raising money for a charity that I'm a trustee of: For-Ethiopia

GROPOs

I've been doing a lot of GROund POunding these past few weeks as I train for the Bristol Half Marathon. I'm up to around 6-7 miles now and running a rather circuitous route home.

My flagging motivation levels were boosted this week by the arrival of a fresh pair of trainers and free socks. Apparently these socks are part of an 'Integrated Shoe and Sock System', with a Y-Heel construction to provide superior fit and 2x2 mesh ventilation provides added ventilation. Apart from the issue of using 'ventilation' in a sentence twice, I'm not sure whether I've got socks or the latest Sports Utility Vehicle. Well, if it doesn't make me run faster by 10% I'll demand my money back. Oh, wait a sec, they were free. Darn...

In between running, went to see Ice Age 3. I know a lot of people panned Simon Pegg's character, but me and the missus loved it. Not entirely sure what substances he'd been ingesting the night before doing the voice overs, but we thought it was worth watching just to see what would happen if you made a cartoon version of Jack Sparrow and crossed it with a raving rabbid and plonked right in the middle of Jurassic Park. We went to see it in 3-D too, which was the first time I'd donned 3D glasses in the cinema since going to see 'Starchaser, The Legend of Orion' when I was about 10. I found it particularly ironic given the Simon Pegg character has no depth perception. Yet can still pilot a But the music for the chase sequence was quite reminiscent of Star Wars...

It was our wedding anniversary last weekend. Feels kinda like it was only yesterday, yet at the same time feels a long time ago because of everything that's happened in-between. We even got cards. Which makes me feel bad, because I never remember to send out anniversary cards. It's bad enough trying to keep track of birthdays.


Anyway, as the photo shows, flowers were purchased, I remembered to buy an anniversary card AND remember to give it to the missus on the day. We then went off for a photo shoot (which we'd won a £99 discount off by filling in a form at their stand in Cabot Circus shopping centre). That was a laugh and a year on, Ally found herself having her hair done and wearing makeup. Unlike last year though, I got some makeup to cover my shiny nose and even out my skin tone. Well, we'll see if it was worth it when we get the pictures in 6-8 weeks time...

Avebury Henge

I've worked out how to post blogs from my phone now. So here's a picture from the stone circle at Avebury where we've also been today! Gutted the Lions lost though. Was a good first half.

2020 Cricket

Had an enjoyable if somewhat deafening experience at the cricket 2 wks ago, followed by another wknd in London last week! Currently watching the Lions in a pub in Devizes...

Ordering Pictures

550 pictures came in the post yesterday. We're going to do a scrapbook which will include snaps such as:And, imagine a weird parallel universe where everyone forgot to dress up for the wedding...

Sheffield

Visited mattandjules in Sheffield over the weekend.
Alongside seeing some of the sights of Sheffield, I got to see my wife play pool for the first time. I also got my best ever score in ten-pin bowling of over 150. It's a shame that the actual ten-pin bowling place was booked until 11pm (!) so we ended up playing on the Wii instead.

Statistics

I was rubbish at statistics at school. Ironic that my job involves trying to remember my A-Level statistics at the moment.

I'm actually trying to backup my blog. Just in case Google decide they want to make some money out of this service at start charging bloggers for their entries. Plus, sometimes you just can't beat having something to read where you don't have to turn a computer on to access.

So, in copying all my blogs to a word document, I've found that I've written approximately 13,000 words over the past 3 years. I'm sure that nearly amounts to a PhD thesis. But instead, I've wasted all that time writing a blog of inane ramblings.

I guess I've got to smile!

Is this my book? You know what they say, "everyone's got a book inside them". Now, I didn't say it would be a particularly good book!

Valentines Day

Was spent signing up to do the Bristol 10km, watching about half of a womens' hockey match, followed by a trip to Costa Coffee. Then off to Marks and Spencer to do the shopping.
It was then rounded off with burgers for dinner.

Best Valentines Day ever! ;-)

The 1st Valentines Day I've spent with my wife. I did at least cook the burgers (homemade too).