When worlds collide

Evening.  I've just about reached the point of feeling human after a rather jolly night out last night.  Part one was a meeting of bloggytweety people in Brizzle for @MammasaurusBlog's twenty-first birthday.  A finer bunch of people I could not have hoped to meet.  I'll be honest, I'd been worrying about it a bit.  I'm not generally too good with meeting new people.  I needn't have worried, I got a warm welcome from @SAHDandproud, @jbmumofone and @motherventing who were there when I arrived, and everyone else turned up once I'd had a couple of beers and was feeling more comfortable.

There was plenty of chat.  Chat about blogs and blogging, about Twitter, about everyone's kids, about lots of other stuff that was nothing to do with the internet or parenting.  It was just a night out, like any other, with some really lovely people.  I also got to try cauliflower puree (which, for the record, tastes like thickened air).

Mammasaurus' Cupcakes

I've only been blogging for just over a month, so it was fantastic to meet some more established bloggers this early on.

Part two was a house warming party about a mile away, with people I've known for years.  Because I arrived late I was asked where I'd been.  Because I was a bit drunk I let people know I'd been meeting up with some people I'd met online.  Probably because they were drunk they found this hilarious.  Thankfully, after a bit of piss taking we moved on to other topics.  It got me thinking though; clearly it's not yet accepted as the norm to mix and match the online world and the offline one.

I hadn't told many people I know in the "real world" that I'd started a blog until last night.  My wife knew (hello!) and that was about it.  I'd told a few I was writing it, but not where to find it, and everyone else had no idea.

I like my little corner of the internet, and I like being able to write what I want here.  It pissed me off when people I like couldn't see that meeting up with people from the internet is NOT weird in the slightest.  So I've decided, I won't be telling my "real world" friends where to find my blog, in case they annoy me enough to want to say something about them.  There's an exception to that of course, because I'd like to think I can now count the strangers I met last night to celebrate a birthday as real world friends as well as online ones, which has to be the best of both worlds.

Huge thanks to everyone who was out last night, it was a true pleasure to meet you all, hope to do it again soon!

Silent Sunday

Challenging

There are moments in life where we are faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges, either as individuals or as a race. Climbing Mount Everest, visiting the north and south poles, putting footsteps on the moon. All these and many more bear testament to the will and ingenuity of humankind.

We're pretty damn awesome when you think about it; pat yourself on the back quickly, bask in the glory of being a person, take a sip of whatever is your favourite tipple and permit yourself an indulgent moment of self congratulation.

There.  Feels good right?  Good, you've earned that.

There's something else that, if you are a parent, there's a good chance you've done. Something which you might not often think about, might not wish to recall. You may well have fitted an Isofix car seat base, plus the associated seat.

I was feeling masochistic tonight, so I decided to take on that particular challenge for myself.  I'd heard the stories about how annoying it is, how awkward and frustrating. But there was a little sticker on the base. It had pictorial instructions, like you get on Lego kits. There were numbers next to the pictures and the biggest of those numbers was five.

LIES.  PICTURES OF ACTUAL LIES.

"It must be easy" I thought to myself "there are only FIVE instructions, and they all look really simple!"

DO NOT BE FOOLED.  There is false security deeply ingrained within those bright, cheerful instructions.  Here's how it went:

1.  Push the button on the front of the base.

(Done.  Easy.  This is going to be a piece of piss.)

2.  Slide the seat base forward, exposing the two Isofix mount thingies. 

(Bit of a struggle.  Hmm, this is harder than it should be isn't it?  Am I doing this right?  Oh, for the love of Jesus, why won't this farking thing mov...*smack of plastic on knuckles*...*Swearing*... Oh, good, done it.)

3.  Push the Isofix mount thingies onto the Isofix bracket thingies in your car.

(I don't see the bracket thingies.  The car definitely has bracket thingies, doesn't it?  Are you supposed to take the seat out or something?  WTF?  *rummaging in depths of car seat*...*scraped knuckles*...*more swearing*... AHA!  There they are.  Now, just push them in until they click.  Done.  *mop sweat from forehead*)

4.  Slide the seat base back until snug to the back of the car's seat.


(*pinches tiny piece of skin on hand between sliding parts of Isofix base*...*VIOLENT swearing*... Done.)

5.  Slide the stabilising arm doofer until firmly against the floor of the car.


(*shaking in anticipation of mishap*...Oh.  That bit was actually easy.)

Feeling a strange mixture of smugness and resentment I went back into the house.  That was when I found the two little pieces of plastic which go between the car's seat and the Isofix base.  The two little pieces of plastic which meant I had to go back out to the car and start again.  The two little pieces of plastic which I may well one day tell my therapist about.

Yeah, it's all smiles for you...

Still, I've calmed down now and realised that, actually, all the manufacturers of these things are trying to do is prepare us for the arrival of the child itself: poor instructions, lots of mistakes, trials and tribulations, swearing and pain.  I ought to be writing to thank them.

Memeology - My Birthday Meme - 14th July

Last time I did a meme I got more visitors to my blog in a day than I ever had before.  It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like an inverted teddy bear which had been microwaved for a bit.  So, when I saw that I had been tagged in another one by Mr @SAHDandproud my heart fair jumped for joy at the prospect.  It’s quite obvious I’m still new to this blogging lark isn’t it?

So here’s the basis of this meme:  Kate, of The Five Fs Blog, is compiling a list of birthday related information for each day of the year.  This is dead good, because not only do I not have to think of a topic for a proper post but I also get to learn stuff about what happened on days.

I’ve known of one event that had the audacity to be on the same day as my birth for some time.  But now, thanks to my in depth and time consuming research* I have learnt that the day of my birth has, historically, been quite eventful.  Without further ado then, I present to you “The My Birthday Meme”:

When is your birthday?

I made my earthly debut on the 14^th of July 1982. 

Pick three people who share your birthday and share what you know about them.

Former US President Gerald Ford (1913) – The only US president to achieve his place in office without being elected, he replaced Richard Nixon (who was ahead of the phone hacking curve, should have been a NOTW reporter) and subsequently didn’t do anything all that noteworthy.

Billy McCool (1944) – I have included Billy McCool because of his name.  He definitely has the best name of anyone born on the same day as me.  Had he been a good example of nominative determinism he could have been as awesome as James Dean (or a refrigerator salesman).  But actually, he was a fairly mediocre baseball player.  What a wasted opportunity.

David Mitchell (1974) – English comedian and writer of funny columns in the Observer.  Star of popular sitcom Peep Show, as well as numerous other lol-worthy productions.  David is half Welsh, has a hairstyle disconcertingly close to Hitler’s and currently sports a beard which is a little bit dodgier than mine.

Is anyone listed as being born on the same day as you (ie the same year). If so, what do you know about them?

Outrageously, yes.  Dmitry Chaplin, a Russian born American dancer.  He was a finalist in “So You Think You Can Dance”.  Does this explain why I can’t dance?  Did Dmitry get all the dance skills that day?  Perhaps.

List three people who died on your birthday and tell us what you know about them?

Billy the Kid (1881) – A frontier outlaw in America’s “Old West”.  He killed people, somewhere between four and twenty-six depending on who you believe, and was killed himself after a bounty of $500 was placed on his head. 

Richard McDonald (1998) – Co-founder of the McDonald’s fast food empire, purveyors of dirty cardboard burgers which aren’t very nice but do a good job of dissipating a raging hangover.  Didn’t die sat on a toilet eating a Big Mac.

Octave Lapize (1917) – French cyclist from the days when cyclists were proper hardcore, not espresso sipping, leg shaving, EPO doping prima donnas.  Won the Tour de France in 1910, on a bike with one gear and racing on unsealed roads.  Accused some of the tour officials of being murderers while doing battle with the Col du Tourmalet, though in fact he actually died seven years later after being shot down while he was a fighter pilot in WW1.

List three notable events that took place on your birthday.

1789 – The rising of the French proletariat!  Storming of the Bastille in Paris is the flashpoint for the French Revolution.  They were mostly after gunpowder to put in their muskets, but I expect the seven prisoners held there were pretty pleased.  France is now well known for making tasty cheese and wine, and for that we should all be glad.

1933 – The Nazi Party passes a law which makes all other political parties illegal.  No flippant remarks on this one, as we all know what this (and other things) led to.

1965 – Mariner 4, an American space probe, takes the first close up photographs of another planet in the solar system.  Largely dispelling the idea of life on Mars, which probably made a lot of people sad.  Still, pretty cool.

Tell us about a holiday that falls on your birthday.

It’s a flag day in Sweden, what with it being the birthday of  Victoria, the Crown Princess of that fair nation.  How nice.  Maybe I’ll move there so I can have the day off.

There we go, meme memed.  It just remains for me to tag five fortunates to further the fun.  Here they are:

@_firsttimedaddy – because revenge is a dish best served via the medium of meme ;-)

@mycuntrymanor – because I have no doubt she will just tell me to fuck off and I respect her candour.

@thecrumbymummy – because she put the theme song to the Poddington Peas in my head yesterday with this blog post and…oh, dear, this is revenge again isn’t it?  Seriously though, lovely bloggage over there, you should read it.

@bodfortea – because I didn’t tag her in the other meme and then felt bad about it.  Which is probably the direct opposite of how she felt about it. 

@OneDad3Girls – he took a picture of a tiger which made me smile.  Also I think he’s just tagged me in something…

*Looking on Wikipedia for a bit.

Three Weeks!

It’s not how long there is left of my wife’s pregnancy (I know, surprising to see me write about something else, right?)

It’s how long my HTC Sensation* has lasted so far.  That shouldn’t be remarkable, or blog-worthy, or even thought-worthy really.  But it is.  Because I’ve had three HTC Sensations now, and three weeks is the longest one has lasted.  This is because the HTC Sensation is SHIT.  You hear me HTC?  No, you don’t, because you’re using an HTC Sensation and you can’t hear me because it is SHIT and BROKEN.

I wouldn’t usually get annoyed by a phone being so unreliable.  I’d take it back to the shop.  I’d stand around looking impatient and tutting.  I’d get a new one under warranty and that one would be fine.  But (to return briefly to the pregnancy thing) right now I feel I need a phone which works.  Just in case someone needs to get in touch.  Y’know, to let me know that labour is happening and maybe I’d like to be there to see it/be shouted at.

My first Sensation lasted just under three weeks.  It was AMAZING for the first two weeks.  I wept in joy at the AMAZING camera which actually took pictures worth looking at.  My geek senses tingled at essentially having a miniature computer in my pocket, connecting me to the world with fuss-free efficiency.  Oh, yes, the honeymoon period was glorious.  Then, one day, the battery lasted just seven hours.  Frustrating.  One full charge later I was ready to forgive it and continue with our beautiful friendship.  Three hours later the battery ran out.  Fuckingfucksocks. 

A kind word here for Carphone Warehouse.  Replacing my phone with no questions asked, and no stupid suggestions as to how I might prolong the battery life.

Sensation number two started well.  All the good things were similarly good.  Then the power/sleep button stopped working.  Amazeballs.  I wondered whether this was a new feature, to improve the battery life.  It wasn’t.  It was just another example of the HTC Sensation being shit.

Back again to Carphone Warehouse (when oh when will you change your name?  There’s surely no such thing as a carphone in 2012 is there?) who dutifully apologised on behalf of HTC and provided me with HTC Sensation number three.  Well done Carphone Warehouse, especially as you could have told me I had to have a warranty repair this time.  Perhaps you were warned off this course by my burning red eyes and polite-but-clearly-somewhat-miffed demeanour.

Three weeks on, and Sensation Three is still functional.  But I spend at least a few minutes a day wondering when that will cease to be the case.  When I will have to waste ANOTHER hour of my time returning ANOTHER stupid broken phone to the lovely, patient souls of Carphone Warehouse. 

But, if it happens again, I’ll be trading it in.  Maybe for an iPhone. 

Or, if they have one, a sniper rifle, so I can go all “Sarah Connor visits Cyberdyne” and sort this out once and for all.

Me, if I was roughly 1000% more AWESOME (and Carphone Warehouse start selling military equipment)

In conclusion: if you need a phone that works, don’t buy an HTC Sensation.




*Also, now I think of it, stop giving your phones such stupid names.

A Glimpse of the Future

Just a month to go.  One month.  Four weeks.  Thirty odd days.  That's not very long really, is it?  The baby is nearly here, he's been patiently swimming around in amniotic fluid for nearly long enough, his little body is ready to break free and begin its attack on the outside world.

So what better way to spend one of our final weekends sans baby visiting Mrs L's brother and his wife and their little boy.  At the start of the week Mrs L received a phone call from her brother, it went like this:

B: Hi [Mrs L]
Mrs L: Oh hi [brother], we're really looking forward to the weekend!
B: Yes.  Good.  The boy has turned into the ACTUAL DEVIL.  He's forgotten how to sleep, is angry all day every day and will probably soon be turning his head through three hundred and sixty degrees and projectile vomiting pea soup.  You may wish to reconsider your visit.
Mrs L: Okay, well, let's decide at the end of the week, we'd hate to miss him.

I jest of course.  He didn't actually say the head spinning and vomiting parts.  On Friday morning he phoned again and informed us the situation had not improved.  Of course, we were undeterred and, on Friday evening, hopped in the car (complete with "just in case" baby supplies) and prepared to do battle with the eighteen month old manifestation of evil.

Imagine our surprise then, when we arrived to find the house intact, no swirling fog and a distinct lack of dead members of the catholic church.  The updated situation was this: "he's gone to bed with no fuss at all, better than he has in weeks, we don't know what's happened!"

You've robbed me of a woe filled blog post about our weekend in hell, I thought.  Oh well.  Here's some things I learnt over the course of the weekend:

1. Even the new, improved, going-to-bed-with-no-fuss nephew's "best night in ages" still involves waking up well before 7am and ensuring everyone else in the house is awake too.
2. When your vocabulary is limited to "daddy", "mummy", "shoes", "car", "bus", "train" and "dog" you will say those words A LOT.  It's cute, but there are moments your audience may yearn for the second album.
3. Eighteen month olds have a switch somewhere within them.  The switch is easily changed from position one "peace" to position two "war".  Once switched only mummy knows how to return it to position two.  This is inconvenient if mummy happens to be in the shower.
4. Given a saucepan, a wooden spoon, a cake tin and fifty Rice Krispies, a toddler will make fifty Rice Krispies worth of dust and a kitchen floor that needs sweeping.  This particular toddler will also remain switched to "peace" for around thirty minutes.
5. Going to a park and playing on the swings gave rise to probably the most raucous laughter of the weekend.  Sweet!
6. Toddlers can fall asleep anywhere.  Including on their father's shoulders while walking back from the park with the swings.  Swings are pretty tiring.

Just add toddler...

It was far from the sleep free nightmare weekend originally advertised, but it still managed to make us both realise what an unpredictable future we have ahead of us.  That future is closing in fast, so I'd better go and get some sleep.

Memeology - 11 Questions for 11 "Lucky" People

Ooh, check it out, my first meme!  @_firsttimedaddy has tagged me, so here goes.

First off, the rules:

• You must post these rules.
• Each person must post 11 things about him/herself on their blog.
• Answer the questions the “tagger” listed for you in her post, and create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
• Choose 11 people to tag and link to them in the post.
• Let each blogger know that you have tagged them

The 11 questions are....

1. If you were to have a meal with 3 other people alive or dead, who would it be. (Anybody famous or not) - I'm actually answering this one last, it's really difficult.  Subject to change - Margaret Atwood, Tim Minchin and Bill Bailey.
2. If you could have chosen your name, what would it have been and why? - It's really boring to say it, but I've always liked my name, so I think I'll keep it.  No, wait: Xavier.  Because it's cool, and will suit me even more when I finish going bald.
3. If you could make one return trip in a time machine, where would you go and why? - It would be AMAZING to go back and see dinosaurs, or massive battles, or whether all that Jesus lark happened, or something else in the past.  But if I only get one, I'll go for today's date 2082 please, to see how my boy's getting on and whether I've ended up with grandkids/great-grandkids that I don't (won't?) know about.
4. If you were a darts player, what would be your nickname? - Something to do with how badly I suck at darts I should imagine.
5. If it became possible to live in space and travel to any planet in a matter of hours. Where would you live? - Earth, because it'll probably be quite nice once everyone else has fucked off elsewhere.
6. If you could make any film storyline true, which would it be. - Films I like are often rather dystopian, and I'm not sure that's the kind of thing I should want coming true.  So... How about Amelie, that's nice.
7. If a film was made of you life, what would it be called and who would star as you? - Average Joe: A Tale of Normality starring Jason Lee
8. If you won the lottery (Lets say £50 million), whats the FIRST thing you buy? - First would probably be something really mundane, like I'd realise I needed petrol for the car to go and inspect the island I'm planning to buy.  But that's probably not what you're after, and the first BIG thing I'd buy would be a mahoosive party for all my favourite people.  That's still not one thing.  Damn.
9. What would be you super power of choice? - I'll just be Wolverine please.  *Snicksnicksnoin*
10. Which animal would you be and why? - A Peregrine Falcon; fast, flying, cool.
11. What did you want to be when you were 7, 13 and 16? - 7: a Dalek, 13: professional mountain biker, 16: Journalist (failed on all three, I rule!)

Well, I quite enjoyed that, but I suppose it was my first time.  Losing my meme virginity has been largely pleasurable.  Here are my questions:


1.  What is your favourite language?
2.  If you had to leave your house, right now, and never return, what three things would you take with you?
3.  Do you have a particularly amazing skill which makes you superawesome?  What is it please?
4.  If you could be any age, but had to be that age forever, what age would you choose and why?
5.  Do you love TK Maxx, or think it's full of last season's unsold shit?
6.  What is the most impressive gymnastic feat you are capable of (and I'll just take your word for it, no evidence required)?
7.  Whose books do you wish you'd written?
8.  If there's an aeroplane on a conveyor belt and it tries to take off, do you think that will work?
9.  Honestly, have you at any point during this ordeal thought "fuck it, I'd rather be eating [snack of choice]" but then felt guilty and carried on?
10.  Pints or shots?
11.  Better to be too hot, or too cold?


I'll be honest, I don't expect anyone to entertain the notion of completing this, but here are the eleven people whose answers I would genuinely find interesting, if they can be bothered:


@MinistryofMum
@SunnivaAnne
@Rachellwilliams
@TomBriggs79
@thefooltweets
@SAHDandproud
@motherventing
@Expatmammy
@TheBoyandMe
@mummyglitzer
@tricky_customer


Wow, I'm going to feel like a right nuisance when I tweet all you lot...