Woo Hoo!

About to embark on a glorious 4 day weekend in honour of 60 years of Queen Elizabeth.  God Bless her!

The weather is supposed to be good tomorrow but seems to be getting worse as the days pass, so we will be having the barbeque tomorrow just to be safe.

Yeah.

Been busy at work - the room I work in (which has a bunch of PCs, reading material, map library, etc) is being refurbished in a week or so's time, so I am clearing the decks.  A massive, dusty job, but it will be well worth it  in the end.

Talking of things being worth it, you might remember that last year I won the University award for best member of support staff, as voted for by the students.

I just won again:

I love that I won this award  again - the students are, after all, the most important people in a University.  Without them there would be no Profs, research, etc etc.  This is a little bit of proof that I am doing my job right.

Have a great weekend!

The Breakfast Cereal Phenomenon

I don't know what it is but people in my family seem to be very reluctant to finish off a box of cereals.

They will happily use them until near the bottom - then they will carefully pour a bowlful, but manage to leave a couple of spoonfuls in the box.

Anyone picking up one of these more or less empty boxes will shake it and then put it back, moving on to another one.

So, every so often, when I realise it has happened again, I finish off all of these more or less empty cereal packets - yesterday I had a really strange mixture of about 4 different types!  Suddenly that part of the food cupboard looked very empty...

Of course there is another downside to doing this - those boxes have to be recycled too, and the recycle bin is ALWAYS full when I go to it, so I have to empty it and put in a new liner, etc.

Maybe I should just do what everyone else does and just leave those more or less empty boxes in the cupboard?

UFO sighting in Kent

There I was, out walkiug the dogs when this huge flying saucer went zooming along, just over our heads.

I grabbed the camera and took a shot, but I was just a bit too slow - it was already through the clouds - but you can see the glow!

None of my family believes me - they think the glow is the sun!  Hah!  That isn't the sun, the sun looks like this!

But they will believe me one day - what if the aliens abduct me or something!  They they will be sorry!

Weekend

In contrast to the previous weekend, this weekend was just about perfect.

Wonderful weather was a good start, of course, but everything else seemed to be excellent too.  Trimming my dad's hedge was the first job, but he had a electric trimmer that just made it fun rather than hard work.

The new tent went up really easily and we can't wait to try it for real.  Custard got all excited when he saw it - he loves going camping, I guess it is the sort of outdoor life he is made for.  Unless it is the daily trips to the butchers that really does it for him.  Either way, he loved the new tent.

Had a great barbeque on Sunday too.  The weather was blazing hot and we had far too much food.  We had pork chops, sausages and spicey chicken wings.  It was the wings that did it - we totally under estimated the number of wings in each pack, but who can complain about that, eh?

I also got some time playing guitar - I hope to get some songs written down in the coming months.  They vary in style - old fashioned heavy rock (surprise surprise), a power ballad, a really gloomy one or two and even an Irish jig that has been rattling in my head for years (literally!).  It will be good to get them nailed down, maybe even recorded!  Who knows?

I have also been re-vamping some of my toy soldiers for games set in King Arthur's Britain.  These will be fun, watch out for photos and stories of Arthur defending his realm...


PS

While looking for a video for my comment on Abby's blog, I found this - with the Euro 2012 soccer tournament coming up, I think it is perfect...

More photos

My camera is a nice and cheap Panasonic, but I am constantly amazed by what it can do.  All I do is stick the camera up close and hit the button! 

The arrival of the sun has produced lots of nice photo opportunities...

And it looks like the sun is with us for the weekend too, so we will be firing up the barbeque, setting up the new tent to make sure it is all there and that we know how to do it, and trimming my dad's hedge.  OK, so I am not so keen on the last one but, hey, that's life isn't it?

Have a great weekend!  More next week!

Greetings from Sunny Canterbury!

Not much time to write, but I took these as I arrived at work this morning.  The smell from the blossom was amazing...

I am sure you will agree that our grounds keepers do a great job!

The Horde

Thought it might be fun to show you how the horde is looking these days.

This is Possum - you have seen this pic before, but as she was not in the mood for a photoshoot this morning I decided to reuse it.

Then we have Pebbles, who is great fun and is by far the most active rabbit I have ever seen.

This is Cinnamon Bun.  We thought we were going to lose him when we lost the others, but he pulled through with some tender care from Mrs RC.  As you can see, he is doing really well now.

This is Houdini, the mom of the 3 babies above.  She still resents being called a boy for the first few months of her life...

This is Panda, father of the babies.  He is mega suspicious of everyone and everything, and sometimes hides from food that he does not recognise.

 

Here is Bubbles, mother of Panda and Houdini and Grandmother of the 3 babies.  She likes an easy life thees days, but she does like to eat all of her greens and then pretend that she has not been fed.  I often fall for this and feed her again...

This is Frou Frou, who resented my appearance with the camera while she was trying to get some of the bacon that my daughter was cooking.

Custard was also hopeful, and less bothered by me and my camera.

Off to lunch now with some colleagues.  I think it is Italian...