pmsumner

Though I went back to work on Thursday and Friday, and refused to talk on the phone. I suspect it was a good thing and that if I'd have taken calls I'd have ended up even worse.

I think I might make a counter-proposal at work regarding redundancies, something along the lines of working part time or changing hours or something related. I've also got another option, which is making the EMEA support job permanent and changing job titles. I don't know how to work it best, though I've got some time to think about it.

This weekend the good lady and myself went to Tesco and traded in our Clubcard points for vouchers to spend on wine. £25 worth of clubcard vouchers equals £50 worth of wine tokens. Oh my did we go on a spree... :) We've now got enough wine for ohhhh, at least a week! I don't think 12 bottles for £50 is too bad, considering that we got 4 bottles of cheap-ass-but-decent-enough Cuvee Prestige.

Been enjoying what I've seen so far of "The Secret Life of the Airport". It's possibly sad and geeky, but I really enjoyed "The Secret Life of the Motorway". Also been watching "James May on the Moon" which was fascinating and awe-inspiring.

Read-through of act II of The Secret Garden was amusing on Thursday. I vocalzoned myself up and just went for it, those things are disgusting but work miracles. The kid playing Mary was in stitches - she'd obviously not read through the script before-hand and found out that she has some rather uhhm, unpleasant things to say to the school-teacher. "I hope you get hit by a lorry and your head falls off" had her nearly rolling on the floor!

I can't decide if I'm looking forward to this show or not! I've not got a huge amount to do, but have some key dialogue and take part in 2 important songs. I think it could be an impressive show, but I think we are going to struggle with some of the bloke's bits. The story of amateur dramatics nationwide, apparently.

Oddly enough, I was disappointed that it didn't appear to have been filmed in front of an audience! There was no audience reaction at all, not even canned laughter. It made the whole thing fall a little flat. The humour was still Red-Dwarf-ish and maybe that didn't help either - 10yrs later and they're still doing the same kind of gags...

I was a bit miffed at Dead Set on E4 yesterday. Not at the content - that I enjoyed a lot! I was miffed that it was broadcast in a 10-11:10 slot - 70 minutes - yet the show that I recorded, pausing out all the adverts - came to under 50 minutes.

Can Channel4 really justify a 70 minute slot for that? Am curious to know what tonight's slot will be.

We turned out to Tesco at 3pm today, knew it would be busy but my GOD it was insane. Absolutely insane. We suspect that it's the pre-Mother's-day rush, people panic-buying flowers and cards.

Jane was treated to a sales spiel from a man selling a "super-sharp-for-life" knife we already have one of, and got a free spiral veggie cutter out of it, whoohoo (sarcastic? me?).

Tonight I cooked salmon fillets and made couscous with pancetta, mushrooms, peppers, purple sprouting broccoli, normal broccoli, paprika and veg stock. T'was scrummy, but then was followed by the more delicious sticky ginger pudding and custard.

Then there was also gin & tonic with Babylon 5 (Ship of Tears and Interludes and Examinations), and now wine with Gavin and Stacey! Could this be a perfect evening?

What am I gonna do when I finish it? It's been a great stress reliever, the ability to kill people for no good reason! Anyhow, I'm now Don of the Corleone family, and about 50% of the way to being Don of NYC!! Whoo.

I am drinking beer, I am watching Family Guy, I have success in the gaming world, and I have the PC all to myself, mwahahahahaha! Jane's away for the weekend, what should I do with myself do you think? I've reserved Saturday morning for a haircut but otherwise...

heheheh, funniest Family Guy intro ever! Stuey morphing into Police Squad stylee rampage :)

This weekend we went to the Trafford centre for some silly reason. It was an experience, as it always is. Afterwards, however, we went for Chinese at Elements in Cheshire Oaks, which is a pretty decent buffet. Not perfect but scrummy enough. I was trying to persuade Jane to go for "all you can bowl" bowling from 10:30pm to 1am but she wasn't interested ;)

Sunday, Ruth and John came over, huzzah. We haven't seen them for ages, and they stayed for ages :) We pottered into and round Chester, then ate lasagne and filthy puddings. mmmmmmm. It's fabulous to see them, and I really do frequently feel bad we don't see them more but damnit, I haven't got my own personal jet yet ;) This week, when we win the lottery.....

We're currently watching "Dawn Gets Naked" on BBC Three. Is very funny :)

As expected, there was lots of energy around and things went well. I felt better about "Murder, Murder" though I still dislike the song because the words are a bugger to learn. We discovered after rehearsal that the second producer (Jane's co-producing with someone who's never done it before) has had a harder time than we'd expected. I'm intrigued as to why people feel that they can behave the way they do and get away with it.

Facade's sounding awesome and minus a couple of small mistakes it's looking great too.

I'm struggling with learning words, I don't do well learning things like words without repetition. I can generally grab a concept and remember it without too much effort, but lines/a script is a different kind of learning. Guess it's just going to take practice.

I'm watching Phoo Action on BBC Three. It's VERY silly. Apparently based on some comic strips around in the late nineties. Stars Jaime Winstone who I must say is hot but WAY too young (born 1985! Eeeep!) too letch over.

*hides behind sofa*
(Not from Torchwood, but from Jane!)

I realise it's nearly midnight and being tired should mean I'd go to bed, but this insurance scam program on TV is good fun. I think it's a repeat.

Tonight I made pancakes. Yummy scrummy they were, based on this recipe. They worked rather well with maple-cured bacon and maple syrup!

Tomorrow, I'm going to make my utmost effort to be fabulously calm all day long. I don't think I'm going to do it because frankly, they're mostly a bit on the daft side. I spent 10 minutes today trying to explain to someone what a "video switcher" does. Seriously, it's the simplest bit of kit we do - it switches the video feed. That's it. How that can take 10 minutes to explain, I don't know. Then there's the end user (we don't deal with the public) who waited 20 minutes to ask something that their installer could deal with in 5.

Hohum. At least tomorrow we've got a full complement back again. Being in a situation where 1 person going on holiday throws everything into chaos sucks.

Where I have nothing that I absolutely need to do. Huzzah.

I am recording the episodes of "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" on our HD recorder thingie to DVD, and will do the remaining Studio 60s after. One issue with our HD recorder is that once you've edited a recording (to remove adverts/beginning/end from timed recordings) you can't record it to DVD at anything other than 1x - fairly major limitation but you don't know these things before you buy them, do you?

Washing... anyone fancy putting my washing in the drier? It's looking cold outside and I've got no shoes on.

I heard the mashup between Eva Cassidy and Katie Melua on Radio2 while half asleep this morning. Jane leaves Radio2 on - I wouldn't be seen dead listening to Wogan through choice. I was not particularly impressed - I like Katie but Eva Cassidy just doesn't do it for me, I find her incessant fiddling with music annoying.

mmmm, I made more Stollen yesterday and ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh *drools*. Am struggling to resist ;)