Poor, poor, lonely blog. I'm sorry I abandonded you. I promise to make it up to you.

We've Lost Our Lease!!!

Everything must go!!

Well, actually, I'm just moving sites. I haven't been real thrilled with Blogger so I'm off to another site. You can find my new blog HERE.

So, I hope you will come and see me at my new home.

Until then...

Just a little pee...

I loved Phil Hartman and even tho I never knew him personally, I miss him to this very day. I've never felt attached to a celebrity before, but there was something about Phil that you just couldn't help loving. You just knew how incredibly smart, talented and funny he was and genuinely nice. When he was killed I remember being at work, listening to my radio and they announced he had been shot. My first reaction was that it was a joke, but they kept giving details and it soon became apparent that he really was dead. I was stunned and so very sad.

I bring Phil up today because I wanted to change my quote over at Cherry. For a long time I had a line from News Radio there that said: "Dave, I stand still. The conclusions jump to me." I still crack up every time I read it. I can just hear him delivering that line. lol So, I Googled News Radio Quotes and it brought me to The Great Sir Lord Bill McNeil Page. They have quotes from everyone on the show on this site, but I just sat here, reading the Bill McNeil quotes with Phil's voice in my head and was literally crying with laughter...and quite frankly came very close to peeing my drawers. So, to close today's entry I leave you with the quote that almost brought on a flood of urine...

"I remember one time...my father came home from a night on the town which, of course, had turned into a week...and my mother said "John, is there anything you won't drink?"...and my father shot back, "Poison. I'm saving it for you." (laughing) And I and my brother, who is now an alcoholic himself, just about died laughing." (from the episode Led Zepplin Boxed Set)

Brain damage or Adult ADD...

When I was about 2 years old, I got my head rolled up in a car window and was without oxygen for a couple of minutes. From what my Mom has told me, they thought I was going to be brain damaged and handicapped for the rest of my life. Now, some would argue that that is the case with me...hardy har har. I guess it was fairly traumatic and quite frankly I wonder if it did affect me to some degree. Not with my IQ, but with my ability to grasp things quickly. In some cases I'm able to do that, but sometimes it takes someone two or three times to tell me something before I actually get it! These aren't complicated things either, I'm not talking about Geometry, Calculus, Chemstry or Physics... it' s more like:

"My last name is Deeley"...
"Ok, that's D E A"...
"My last name is spelled D E E L E Y" ...
"Umm...D E A..." ...
"No, D E E L E Y. 3 E's" ...

I sit and think for a minute and try and process that..

"Oh. Ok."

Then I made out the check.

This conversation happened not 10 minutes ago. It's just a small example, but I find this happening more and more all the time. It happened all throughout my childhood too. I'd like to blame it on the accident when I was a toddler. That way I wouldn't have to take complete responsiblity for being a complete moron.

I dunno, maybe it's nothing at all.

I'm going to be warm....

This is the week of the new heating system. New radiators, new combi-boiler, thermostats, the works. I.WILL.BE.WARM!!!! I'm pretty surprised at how fast things are moving along. Lee, the installation guy, says it will be done by Friday. Quite frankly, there has been a minimum of mess. We've run across a few problems like plaster coming off the wall in the smallest bedroom, holes in the wall where the old radiators were...but nothing that can't be fixed. With a 70 year old house, you've got to expect some problems here and there. It's all going to come together, slowly but surely. The budget this year is going for double glazed windows in the back of the house downstairs, new carpet in the living room, having the walls and ceilings skimmed in the living room, dining room and small bedroom upstairs. Depending on the cost, I may try to convince Martyn that the hallway and stairwell needs doing too. Hehehe...

Right this very minute we're getting a new heated towel rack that also works as a radiator installed. It's taller than I am and is a really nice chrome ladder. I'll post a photo when he's got it installed. It's a start to getting the bathroom redone at some point in the future as well.

We do have some furniture coming. We ordered a sofa and loveseat. (Go to Fixed Cover and look at 'Toledo'.) We got it in Claret. It was a perfect combination of comfort and clean lines that we both like. Plus they were half price. Ha! It's a start on getting the living room redecorated. Our goal for the house is to make it warm and comfortable, but not slouchy looking. Our other purchase (a wedding present from the inlaws) was a new bed and mattress. The picture doesn't do it justice...the finish is a bit darker. As for the mattress, we got a queen sized, Simmons pillow top. In the words of Miss Chanandler Bong... Oh. My. God. It has to be the most comfortable bed I've ever been on. I don't know how I'll ever drag myself out. Martyn said he'll have to take the first few days we have it off of work because he'll never be able to leave. Ha!

Earlier I posted about not feeling like I was at home...but now that things are changing and going in the direction of what we want to do to the house, it's more and more feeling like it's home. And ours. That's all I've ever really wanted.

Bombs, Blues and Beer...

Saturday night was pretty interesting for us. After a gorgeous, warm day of shopping and lazing around the house for some of the afternoon, we caught the #60 bus into Birmingham. We were headed to a Pub just outside the city center called The Adam & Eve. A blues band that Martyn likes was playing there so we decided to have a night out at the pub.

It was a cool evening, the bus wasn't too crowded as the evening hadn't really started. We left Solihull about 8:30'ish. It's maybe 20 minutes on the bus to the city center and we were just about there when the bus stopped and the driver yelled to everyone..."this is the last stop-there's been a bomb threat in the city and no one is allowed in." Ooo-k! So, off we got. Luckily, we were only 2 stops away from where we needed to be so we just walked there, but there were streams of cars and people being directed away from the city. We pressed onward and made it there in plenty of time to get a good seat.

Now, since we were in the Pub, we didn't really know what was going on other than there had been a bomb threat. So, we enjoyed listening to the Joanne Shaw Taylor band and had a few beers. Can I just say-Guinness Extra Cold. Dark and lovely! ;o) The band was good. Fronted by a little blonde girl who can play the guitar like nobody's business! She doesn't quite have the voice to sing blues, but her guitar playing far surpassed that little problem. The whole band was great. We had a great time and left the pub close to 1 a.m. We contemplated getting a bus back home but that was about a 1 minute conversation until we decided to take a taxi. The best £12 ever spent! We questioned the taxi driver about the bomb scare but he really didn't know much other than they evacuated the city center and no one was allowed in. I was so glad to get home. I was exhausted, my ears were ringing, I smelled like a cigarette butt and I just wanted to go to sleep.

Slept in on Sunday. I think we finally woke up at almost 11 am. We got online to see if there was any news of the bomb threat. Apparently there were some suspicious packages left in a part of Birmingham that is packed with restaurants and night clubs. There was also one on a bus. The police evacuated 20,000 people from the area and said that the information given about the bombs was too credible to be ignored.

Scary.

We're ok, tho. It made me chuckle because after the London bombings, I let everyone know we were ok and that it was highly unlikely that we would be under any threat. And really, we weren't. Even if the bomb was in Birmingham, we were no where near it and if we had stayed home that evening, we would have been even further away.
I did give a bit of a pause as we had just been to the city center earlier in the day. I'm just glad it was all a scare and that no one was hurt.

So, life gets back to normal.

Tomorrow we have a delivery of all our wedding gifts from our list on Wrapit. It's just like Christmas! I'll have to take pictures and post them. Hehehe. Saturday it's Harry Potter delivery! Martyn is going to an airshow and I will get to stay home and devour HP6!!

All in all, life is good at the moment. We're both safe and I think that's about as close to a bomb as I want either of us to be!

MIT...

Making Fiends

Making Fiends, originally uploaded by t-squared.

5 reasons I miss the States...
Charity, Joy, Hope, Kellen and Faith.

I have been Slacker Aunt and haven't written to them. I feel pretty lousy about that. I wish they knew just how much I missed them.