Don’t faint from the 2 entries in one day shocker…

E4 have their first look Sundays back… so I get to see the next episode of Desperate Housewives tonight instead of having to wait until Wednesday. Straight after it, the first episode of the new new series of Brothers And Sisters is on, and I have 12 bottles of Stella in the fridge. It almost makes up for the loss (scuse the pun) of Lost from Sunday nights for a few weeks, almost.

I’ve had no internet for a few days due to a dodgy modem. Thank god for my idiot neighbours who are too dim to protect their wireless network and let all and sundry use it. I managed to get on a few times using their wireless, but it was a bit sketchy, and I could only get on for any length of time if I sat my laptop on the windowsill. Hardly inconspicuous when it’s pitch black outside and I have the lights on.

Anyway, I have a new modem and it’s all fine now, so all is well with the world. I really missed not having the internet, my level of addiction is quite alarming. I didn’t know what to do with myself when I was in the house. I had my mobile so could facebook/twitter from that, and also check my forums on my opera mini browser, but it was so slow. I missed catching up my ever expanding blog feedlist, being able to check my email every 5 minutes. (I have a compulsion to click the send/receive button every 5 minutes exactly, it’s not funny), being able to check my online banking, ebaying, window shopping, and the list goes on…and on…and on. And on.

We had a quiet weekend this week. On Friday I went shopping with my mum, then we went for an Italian for Dinner. They had an offer where you got half a pizza and some pasta for x amount. So I ordered linguini carbonara, and a bacon and mushroom pizza. Only when it arrived did I realise what I had done. DOH. Hmmm bacon and mushroom pasta and bacon and mushroom pizza, I’m all about the variety… Anyway it was lovely and I had a nice beer to wash it down. Callum was an angel and ate some pasta and his bodyweight in garlic bread as usual. Friday night I drank far too much wine… and paid for it on the Saturday. I felt so dodgy all day, I only started to come alive about 7pm, then ate like a pig until bedtime. Today we went to my mum’s for dinner. It was a nice chilled day. We drank coffee and ate biscuits while Callum dug up her garden looking for wiggly worms. We had delicious steak, then I vegged ont he sofa while Callum played on the floor with his gran. Perfect Sunday really.

Oh and we’ve decided we are going on a wee holiday in a couple of months. We haven’t decided where yet though, although we’re swaying towards the Balaerics or the Greek Islands. As long as there is sun/pool/beach and restaurants we’ll be happy. I can’t wait to get back to the beach, I think I was a fish in a former life, I just feel at peace when I’m near the sea. Also can’t wait to get The Boy back into his swimming. It’s been bloomin’ freezing since we got back from Oz, so this will get my ass back into gear, and set him up for the summer.

Leaping stingray kills US woman

Holy Moly, this is bloomin’ scary! I thought that The Steve Irwin death was a freak accident. IT’s positively normal compared to this!

A US woman on a boat off the Florida Keys has died after a stingray leaped up and struck her in the face. Judy Kay Zagorski was boating with her family in the Atlantic Ocean when the 75lb (34kg) spotted eagle ray hit her.

The force of the blow knocked the 57-year-old over and her head struck the deck of the vessel, in what officials called a “bizarre incident”.

The stingray died in the impact. Mrs Zagorski, of Pigeon, Michigan, was pronounced dead in hospital.

“It’s just as freakish an accident as I have heard,” wildlife official Jorge Pino told the Associated Press news agency.

Mr Pino said she did not appear to have been pierced by any of the ray’s barbs.

The incident occurred near the town of Marathon in southern Florida.

In September 2006, Australian TV naturalist Steve Irwin died when a stingray’s barb punctured his heart as he filmed at Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef.

A month later, an 81-year-old Florida man was lucky to survive after a stingray landed in his boat and left a foot-long barb in his chest.

The stingrays are revolting! It reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons where Lisa frees the king of the dolphins from captivity and they take revenge of the humans and take over the world. EEK

Oh, I’m in love.  I know everyone has been Twittering for ages, but I never really got into it as none of my friends used it.  They still don’t, but the more I think about it the more I love the idea of it.  My favourite thing about Facebook is reading my friend’s status updates, and Twitter is a way to do not only that, but to have the updates sent to your mobile as a text, or on their mobile site, their normal website, your messenger program, your desktop, your browser, even your Facebook page!  And you can update your own status via any of these methods too. You can also Twitter @ people in your friends list, and choose who sees what. And they have loads of cool Downloads and Wordpress Widgets too of course on their download page or  Wiki site, which I’m just about to explore in more detail.   I still have no friends, but surely when people hear how bloody fantastic it is they’ll join up and follow me so I have people to stalk.*  Surely???!!!!

*And yes, to the 2 people or so who read this, that means YOU!!!

Oh my, I was soooo ill today.  I went out with friends last night and drank far too much.  Actually that’s not totally true, I mixed my drinks which is just a recipe for disaster for me.  I had 3 different types of wine, so it’s no wonder I almost saw my pizza again this morning urgh.  Apart from that it was a great night, It was just me, my best friend Maureen, and our other friend Lizzy.  It was the first time I’ve seen Lizzy since I’ve been home so there was loads of catching up to do.  We’ve not all been out together on a night out since we were at Uni, so it was long overdue.  I cannot believe how old I felt though, I feel as if I don;t belong in any age bracket any more.  There were girls wearing mini skirts and tiny tops, parading around the place flashing their cleavage at anything, and then there was the obviously older 40+ crowd, wearing their blouses, sitting with their husbands and another couple, nursing a wine spritzer all night.  I don’t know where we fit in, it seemed to jump from one end of the scale to the other, and we were the only “inbetweenies” in the place.  Maureen and Lizzy are both married, Mo has 2 kids and Lizzy has 5.  we’re all 31, and we were the only people (that I could see) in an entire pub/club in our age bracket.  It was quite surreal.  Where are they all???  The thought that some of the aforementioned young girls might think of us as “old” really depresses me.  I still feel 25, but unfortunately the mirror tells me differently.

Oh my I really have gone on a tangent.  I think I’ve overdone the coffee this evening trying to wake myself up from that horrid sluggish hangover feeling.

I don’t seem to have much time at all at the moment, so haven’t been around the internet as much over the last few days - although what I’ve actually been doing, I have no idea! Apart from being away visiting relatives at the weekend, I seem to have lost a few days, and feel all at sixes and sevens* with everything. I can’t quite put my finger on why, hmmm.

My oven blew up the other night, just as I went to put the boy’s dinner in it. We’ve managed to live without it with the help of eating out/take aways and my George Foreman grill. It should be fixed later this week hopefully. I don’t use the oven too much actually, more the grill and the hob, but I miss the inconvenience of it just being there when I want it.

We stayed at my mum’s last night as she had a hospital appointment this morning and was also due a delivery today, so needed someone to be in the house. Of course the delivery ended up not turning up, the company didn’t casll to let us know so we stayed in all day waiting on something that is still - and will be until at least the 20th March - in some warehouse in Bolton. Great Customers sevice from lit*tle*woo*ds, NOT! Anyway, the boy was “challenging” yesterday, which is code for a complete pain in the arse. He managed to break 2 of my mum’s Lladro figures, out of pure naughtiness and nothing else. I was mortified. He just ran up to them (she had 3 of them on a cabinet) and swiped them off with his arm. It was completely deliberate, and not only that, he did it, ran to the middle of the room, looked back, saw one was still standing, so ran and swiped that one onto the floor too. That was what caused the damage, as it smashed the other two. One of them is in smithereens, one is missing a head, and the third one (smallest one of course) escaped unharmed. Little bugger. He knew he had done wrong as he timed himself out straight away. I think he feels bad as he keeps mentioning it, even still. It’s the worst thing he’s ever done, by a long shot, and I didn’t really know how to handle it other than time him out and give him a stern shouting at talking to. I also found it hard not to hold it against him for the rest of the evening. What a terrible mother I am.

Anyway, that’s me caught up I think. Riveting.

* “at sixes and sevens” - As I typed that I wondered where the phrase came from, so looked it up, and good old Wiki says:

To be “at sixes and sevens” is an English phrase and idiom, common in the United Kingdom. It is used to describe a state of confusion or disarray. The similar phrase “to set the world at six and seven”, used by Geoffrey Chaucer, seems, from its context, to mean “to hazard the world” or “to risk one’s life”^[1]. In Act 2, scene 1 of Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar”, Portia, in confronting Brutus about his state of anxiety says: “Why you are heavy, and what men tonight / Have had resort to you; for here have been / Some six or seven who did hide their faces / Even from darkness.”

There are several other possible explanations, including one mention of a similar phrase with a different meaning in the Bible (Job 5:19).^[2] However, one of the more interesting possibilities is that it may have come from a dispute between the Merchant Taylors‘ and Skinners‘ Livery Companies.^[3] The two, which were founded in the same year, argued over sixth place in the order of precedence. After more than a century, it was decided that at Corpus Christi, the companies would swap between sixth and seventh and feast in each others’ halls. Nowadays they alternate in precedence on an annual basis. This is unlikely to be the origin of the phrase, as Chaucer had used it over a century before,^[3] but could well have helped to popularise it.

Most likely, the term derives from a complicated dice game called “hazard“.^[3] It is thought that the expression was originally “to set on cinque and sice”^[3] (from the French numerals for five and six). These are the riskiest numbers to shoot for (to “set on”), and anyone who tried for them was considered careless or confused.

I had the TV on in the background earlier tonight, and heard a really cool song playing. It turns out it was the Advert for the Freelander 2, (the ad is in the link) and the song was Going Home, by a british rising star, Jon Allen. To my surprise, I found out that he’s giving the song away free on his website as a download, so I hopped over there to get it, and have been playing it non-stop since. He’s got such a great voice, really mellow. Definitely worth a listen if you like that kinda thing.

I’ve manage to find some of my posts from my old blog! I remembered that there is a website that has an archive of old webpages, and after alot of googling I finally found the Wayback Machine! Unfortunately it’s about 10 months behind at the moment, but hopefully in time I’ll be able to grab a copy of most of it. I’ll start posting some of them here once I have them in some sort of order.

I thought they were gone forever and I’m so glad I remembered about that machine!