iPad

Did I mention that we got an iPad last week?

This is the first time I have used it for blogging so we'll have to see how it works out for that but it is really convenient not having to turn on a pc every time you want to check mail or loom something up and it is a lot more convenient than using your telephone.

In other news, I interviewed 2 people in Danish this morning. It should have been 3 but the last guy was Swedish so we had to switch to English.

Fingers falling apart

When  I started playing the guitar I had some problems with the ends of the fingers on my left hand. They got quite sore from holding the strings down, but after a short while I developed some hard skin on the ends of them which solved the problem.

However, I have not had much time to play over the last 2 weeks and now all of tha hard skin skin is falling off my fingers and snagging on odd things. Last night I payed the guitar for a while and the thin strings helped to remove a lot of the lose stuff...

I am planning on playing some more over the weekend and getting my F chord a bit quicker and slicker so that I can learn some more songs to not sing out load. Maybe when I have got the Danish out of the way, I'll take some proper lessons.

Working out

I was too tired to train on Tuesday evening after several days of consecutive riding, but had planned for a session last night. The problem was that I had to take the train to work yesterday for an early meeting in the centre of Copenhagen which mean that I spent 2 hours getting home in the evening. The result was a late supper after the kids were in bed and no time to train. I will have to do a good session tonight to make up for it.

Making cakes last week

Just to cheer things up a bit.

Flash Back

This morning we were back at the end of last week again. J was up during the night with ear ache again and MK has conjunctivitis in both eyes. I just hope that DK and I can avoid all of this sickness whilst J's antibiotics and MK's eye drops do their business.

Kartoffelkur (Potato Diet)

Since Christmas we have decided to metaphorically tighten our belts a little (oddly enough mine had literally tightened itself during Christmas anyway) in order to prepare ourselves for a potential house move.


Having sifted through our bank statements for the last half year, we could see where we spend our money and I was pleasantly surprised that I don't actually waste as much of it as I thought, but we do get through a lot of stuff. As a result we decided to cancel the expensive vegetable deliveries and get rid of the cleaner (although MK can't bring herself to do that for some reason!)

Another concession has been to start shopping in Netto for what we can and then going to the other "normal" third world supermarket for the things we can't get in Netto.

The most boring part of it though is that I know that I can't buy anything frivolous even though the sales are on and I have developed a longing for a new work bag. The ones(s) that I have are all somewhat un-grown-up and I have decided that I should have a more grown up bag now that I am out seeing more customers.

This is the one that I really want if anyone is interested:

Ear Ache

It's been a nice relaxing weekend.

We had friends visiting us for dinner on Saturday evening but otherwise little planned. I went for a very cold and alarmingly slippery bike ride on Saturday morning. The studded tyres helped a lot, but eventually I had to abandon the smaller country roads in favour of the safer main roads. I managed 2 hours of riding and it did me good to blow out some more cobwebs. The training regime is sticking and I have managed to ride on 8 of the last 10 days.

The guests didn't manage to leave on saturday night. Their car was making "funnyt noises" and my reasurances that it was just a small hole in the exhaust pipe wasn't enough so all 4 of them slept in our living room and called a tow truck on Sunday morning. To my smug satisfaction, the guy toild them that it was a small hole in the exhaust and that they were perfectly safe to drive home.

J had a bad night on Saturday complaining of ear ache. That went away to some extent on Sunday morning when his ear drum burst and releaved the pressure. He is home today with MK after a trip to the doctors but seems to be well on the way to recovery after a day on the sofa with a fever.

This was the outfit for the gala party at the nursery last week. Apparently he attracted a lot of female attention with the pink/purple tie. It's odd that it never worked that well when I wore it...

Never ending month

January seems to have been going on for ages already and there is still another week to go before we get paid again.

We heard a couple of days ago that the owner of our estate agent will cease to be the owner with immediate effect. Apparently that won't have any effect, but we are getting rather tired with the whole house moving project and beginning to wonder if it is worth the effort and expense involved. I suppose time will tell, but our conditional contract on the house we want expires at the end of March and we are not going to extend it again as the bank guarantee is costing us a fortune and we don’t seem to be getting anything in return.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Last night I watched this film on Blu-Ray. Firstly, the bluray is really good, the picture quality is superb and unlike our old dvd player, the film didn't stop or jump at any point.

The film was made by Terry Gilligham (the American guy from Monty Python who did the crazy animations) and is suitable strange. It was also notable for being Heath Ledger's last film, he died whilst it was being made and to overcome this his character changes appearance every time he enters the "imaginarium" so in some ways his death just added another dimension to the oddness.

Not bad, but just a touch too odd for my tastes

House viewing

At about 5:00 yesterday evening we got a call from the estate agent that someone wants to view our house at 10:00 this morning.

Having not had a viewing since December, we had gradually shifted back into our normal way of life and whilst the house was far from a tip, there was still plenty to be done to get it up to scratch for a viewing.

Whilst MK was at gymnastics I tidied up quite a lot and then she took the kids off to nursery this morning fairly early and I did a whirling dirvish job on the whole place and took a load of cardboard boxes and empty wine bottles to the tip before heading to the office a little late.

Let's hope that the effort pays off.

Back on the bike

I have finally managed to get on my bke for 3 consecutive days and my backside is not impressed at all. I rode indoors on Saturday and today and I managed an hour and half outside yesterday now that most of the ice has gone and I have studded tyres on one of the bikes.

I guess I am now back in training and getting ready for the saeson ahead. It even feels like the weather has turned as it has been over 5 degrees for the last few days and almost all of the snow has gone as a result of that and the rain.

I've fallen

This morning I took the kids to nursery. I dropped J off and then took DK on my shoulders down to his nursery. Unfortunately the roads were incredibly slippery and I managed to fall over quite spectacularly in the middle of a quiet road.

Some sort of parental instict took over and I did everything I could to catch DK and stop him landing hard on the tarmac which worked out quite well for him. I, on the other hand, landed like a sack of potatoes and have a rather bruised left knee and elbow. After sitting cuddling DK in the street for a moment, I managed to get my (by now rather wet) backside up off the ground and deliver him without any major trauma, but I am still hurting a little several hours later.

I'm using the baby jogger when I go to fetch him!

Oil problem solved

MK spoke to the oil company yesterday and reminded them that she had asked them not to deliver more oil to us last September and questioned their reasons for us sitting on 1½ years supply of heating oil at a cost of nearly £4000 ($7000 if you're interested).

Thankfully the guy on the phone seemed to have encountered this problem before and offered for someone to come and take the oil back without charging us.

That is quite a big relief as, strangely enough, we didn't have £2000 waiting to be spent on something tedious and unnecessary.

Lemon curd

Monday was MK's birthday so I wanted to make a nice meal in the evening. I dug a good bottle of wine out of the basement and took DK to the supermarket to buy some good meat whilst J was doing gymnastics (chateaubriand if you were wondering). Whilst getting the rest of the meal together I threw together a bread and butter pudding as this is one of MKs favourites. There wasn't much jam around so I tried a lemon version with lemond curd in the sandwich things and some lemon zest in the custard.

The result was maybe the best bread a butter pudding yet. The lemon curd was sweet and just a bit chewy and the overall lemonyness lifted the potentially heavy desert to a new level.

It's all gone now though.

Happy Birthday MK

Monday's are generally rather hard work for us with traffic and gymnastics to add to the monday blues. Today is a much more exciting day becuase it's MKs birthday.

Have a good one!

Oil

Yesterday we were both out all day for the first time in a couple of weeks. OK oil took the opportunity to sneak round and drop another 2000 litres of oil into our alreay full oil tank.

Towards the end of 2009 I wasn't very consistent in checking the level of the tank so we tended to run out of oil once or twice a year. MK got tired of that so she signed us up for automatic oil delivery service. I thought this was a waste of time and money (I am always right) because the first thing they did was deliver over 2000 litres of oil which (without any warning) we suddenly had to find £1600 ($3000) to pay for.

After they did this again in September last year MK contacted them to say that we didn't want any more oil for the time being as we were planning on moving house and there was more than a years worth of oil in the tank anyway (2600litres)

So after yesterdays stealth delivery, we have to find another huge amount of money to pay for the oil that we won't need until next year as there are now 3750litres in our tank and we have enough for 1½ years.

Thanks for the overdaft charges you bunch of absolute F&#KERS!!!

More snow

To celebrate my return to the office for 2011 we have had another 5 or 10 cm of snow. It is dificult to tell exactly how much has fallen but there is certainly no shortage on the roads along with ice and stranded/crashed cars and trucks. It took me 2½ hours to get to the office as well, but at least I made it in one piece.

My eyes are still completely red and somewhat swollen, but they are no longer itchy and uncomfortable and I am generally perking up a bit.

Tonight we are going to a parents evening thing at what we expect to be J's school come August. More news on that tomorrow, in the meantime I can look forward to the final part of Pillars of the Earth on TV tonight and try to remember some of the Danish that I have forgotten over Christmas.

2 eyes down

The flu is getting better, but I now have infections in both eyes wich didn't seem to respond to the first round of antibiotics so I am now on some other drops which I hope will work better.

The rest of the family seems to be healthy enough so life goes on.

My diet is going really well. I have lost 3.6kg (7 pounds) in 3 days. Good eh? Somehow I don't think this can last and I think it will go up again before going down, but you have to look for the silver lining to the clouds.

Sick

I seem to have real flu soI have spent the day at home shivering with a fever and a slightly less gammy eye. I forgot about the eye so when I went to fetch DK from nursery I was surprised to be treated like a leppar.

I suspect that I'll also be home tomorrow, but time will tell. At least I am not running to the bathroom every few minutes as I was this morning.

Blugh!

Happy New Year

There's has been a lot of nothing going on here. I have a fairly bad infection in my left eye and now seem to be coming down with flu. MK and J have milder infections in their eyes and DK has been a bit sick from time to time (most between midnight and 5 in the morning)

All that has left us feeling a bit tired and not in any way ready to get back into the swing of work next week as the rest of the country gets 2011 moving.

We have had a nice relaxing Christmas and a very quiet New Years Eve at home after we had to cancel our party plans to avoid spreading conjunctivitis to 14 other people.