When my wife got home we sat and watched the nest box a while. We saw both the male and female blue tits entering and exiting the box. One of them came over to the tree and stripped some bark off until it had a mouth full – so we know they’re building a nest!!

At last, I finished the paper I’ve been working on. It turned out 15 pages, so now I can submit it into the conference and hope we get in.

I then went outside to do some glueing on my woodworking project. When I was walking past our nest boxes, I noticed the edge of the hole of one was wearing away – I thought something had been trying to get in – chewing the corner, like – but as I stood in the garage I was amazed to see a blue tit pop its head out and fly away. I stood there a while, and it came back. As it popped back out again, I took this photo:

Blue tit using nest box

It’s true. Time has flown for me this week while I’ve been striving to get this damn academic paper written. It has to be submitted today, and much as I hate conferences, I wouldn’t mind going to this one – as long as I don’t have to present – as it’s in Galway in Ireland, and I do love Ireland.

It’s been a nasty couple of days weather-wise and the Sun’s now poking its warm head from beneath the grey blankets, which means only one thing – time to put the washing on the line /

Hopefully, I’ll get back to posting daily again once this paper’s in.

Ahhh, damn, I knew it would be too good to last: yesterday was the first day I didn’t update my blog since I started.. boooo..

I was rather busy yesterday trying to knock up (i.e. cut and paste together) an academic paper for my work. It was seriously boring, but I managed to get it to a decent 12 pages straight off. Along with my woodworking course in the evening and some good TV (CSI and CSI: Miami) I just didn’t quite get time.

Unfortunately, today is another day of attempting to finish of that crappy paper. It needs to be submitted on Friday (thankyou to my boss for the short notice!), so I’m trying to get it complete so I can give it to some collegues to proof read.

Look at this little git breaking into the peanuts we leave out for the birds. He does this everyday – in fact, a number of times everyday – and everytime I have to frighten him away. I like squirrels but I don’t like them breaking stuff!

Squirrel

We get two wood pigeons in our garden quite often. They’re big dopey birds and this one found out it can sit on our table and get to the sunflower hearts.

These were taken with a point-and-shoot digital camera through a set of binoculars )

Chicken in the Oven

Getting the Parsnips and Spuds Ready

Steaming the Carrots and Swede

Boiling the Sprouts

Mashing the Swede

Chicken’s Cooked

Ready to Eat

PS. Looked better in real life… The flash does nothing for it

Done and Dusted

It was most yummy

This morning I was playing around with my instruments, but couldn’t seem to get my bass to work. Turns out that I’d forgotten it was an active bass, and that there is a battery inside. I opened it up to find a dead battery, but didn’t have a replacement.

Insides of my bass guitar.

My wife and I went over to Haskins garden centre this afternoon. It was lovely weather when we left, but it’s now got pretty nasty. We succomb terribly easily to buying stuff at that place, despite being rather poor gardeners. But we went over there especially for some fat snacks for our garden birds, and for a venus flytrap to eat the flies that we enevitably have hanging around our compost bin. Here’s the one we bought, and it’s already had a nasty little fly that was batting around our bathroom:

Venus Flytrap

We both also took a fancy to small gardening set to grow mexican-style vegetables – peppers, chillis and ‘love apples’ – a kind of tomato. As soon as we got back my wife planted them up:

Mexican Windowsill gardening kit.

I also bought a tiny little kit (really for kids) that grows what they call a sensitive plant (a Mimosa Pudica). I planted this up, and it had to be covered up until the seeds germinate:

Mimosa Pudica seeds

So, that’s pretty much all we’ve managed today. Tonight we’ve got a lovely looking roast chicken we bought at Somerfield yesterday… and why not have a picture of it and make your mouth water too (if you’re not vegetarian that is – apologies if you are):

Roast Chicken – yummy

I had the weirdest dream last night. It started with my town suddenly moving to a beach-side location and there being the threat of a tsunami. In our beach-side house an expert picked up a small lump of black stone as if to prove it happened once before.

At some point later in the dream, I was in a city building, on about the 4th floor, where they’d built a set for a new Batman film. It was late at night and they were testing the new bat mobile and Wesley Snipes, who was the new Batman, was there. I told him, “Come on, let’s have a go”, and we leapt in and started driving it around – by joystick, of course.

Later, I was on the next floor up which had been converted into the costume department for the film, although it looked much more like fabric shop. I walked around and said hello to someone who was working on a costume, who looked at me as if to say “Who the hell are you?”. Anyway, I carried on regardless and remember talking to someone who insinuated I was getting married and whoever it was I was getting married to should’ve chosen someone with more money. I said, “Not all people without money are bad, and vice versa… I mean, look at Donald Trump.”

There was a rather underlying anxiety with all the people in the film – like they were family, but bearing a grudge with each other — except Wesley Snipes of course.

Anyway… weird dream. Just like a weird movie, like Bruce Willis new one looks.

Just got back from a tiring 2 hours of salsa dancing at our usual class. However, there was a large influx of newbies into the class today, and so our teacher suggested that the couples that are in our group all move up to the improvers class, that takes place when our usual class ends. She suggested we stay on and see how it goes, and so we did. We spent the first (beginners’) hour doing really basic stuff for the newbie beginners. Suddenly, at 9pm, the class became the improvers, the beginners left and the old improvers turned up. We learnt a salsa turn and, uh, well, I guess it’s another turn with arms everywhere. My wife had a bit of trouble, although I didn’t find it too difficult. In fact, once we were going I was really enjoying all the spinning about. It was very knackering though, compared to the previous stuff we’ve done. I’m really enjoying salsa, and would really encourage people to take it up.

Office Space

Last night I watched Office Space. It’s a film based, unsurprisingly, around an office and centers on a guy who, like most of us office-workers, are thoroughly fed up with working in one. The plot revolves around Peter who, disenchanted, gets hypnotised. Suddenly not caring any more, he plots to rip off the company, while vowing to not go to work anymore.

However, it’s the general well-observed situations that are the best part of this film. Sure, the office and people in the film are exaggerated, but not by a great deal (at least, not in my experience), and the script provides great gags line after line. Although I thought the ending was a little weak, the rest of the film makes up for it.

At only £5.99 for the DVD, it is far cheaper than paying £5.95 each to go to the cinema. It’s a must see if you are a software engineer, work in a cubicle office, or have an annoying boss. Unfortunately, all three apply to me. This film will really make you wish you had the courage to do what Peter does.

As the main character, Peter, says, “Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.“. Absolutely.