Still around

  Yes I'm still around, just been busy/ill/doing other things for the last couple of weeks. Lets start with Christmas shall we, it was just before that that my wife came down with a cold. That necessitated some looking after of her and canceled going out to the cinema plans. Still by the time Christmas rolled around and we were planning on me cooking the Christmas dinner that she felt well enough to do most of it. Although with her being so organised most of the dinner was already prepared before the day and all that was left was turkey cooking, potato peeling and a little bit of arranging everything in the oven so it would fit. As usual my wife's cooking was splendidly scrumptious and wonderful. So good in fact that we had the very same dinner on boxing day.

  Anyway, Christmas was fun, food filled, loot filled and only slightly interrupted by parents/in laws and other relatives. It was a brief day of excess followed by more eating of nice stuff for the rest of the year. My father's birthday falls between Christmas and New Years so that required a quick Skype call on the day, and due to my works miserly attitude I had to work that week as well. Luckily with my job I can work from home so I did that which also mostly involved thinking about my design for my new project and keeping on top of any emails/IMs that came in. That made for an easier time of it. Oh and we applied for our US passports too. We had to cringe slightly at the appointment though when our nice new crisp naturalisation certificates were stapled through. I wanted to try and keep that pristine but for a passport the state department wants the original copy of the certificate.

  So after the father birthday I came down with a variation on the cold my wife had. No sniffles for me just a very sore throat and a general meh feeling. Fortunately that allowed us to skip out to the cinema to see the new Sherlock Holmes film (or was it Mission Impossible, although we may have watched that earlier, I forget, we watched both over the break). Unfortunately that meant I was down for the count and only actually came back to work today even though I was meant to go back to work on Tuesday. Good for me and my wife to spend time together, bad in that we were both sick.

  One accomplishment I did do was build my Lego Tower Bridge, a huge structure of 4287 pieces. I tried to get it finished last year but after 6 hours of continuous building on New Years eve in my ill state I just couldn't take anymore and had to give up. My wife, champion that she is, sat with me through all that. She also sat there while I finished it the next day, another 4 hours worth of building. The end result though is pretty impressive and looks really good. So many of the pieces though are only one or two bricks in size and the towers are so intricate in their construction.

  And I'm back although I doubt you would have noticed. Just got interrupted for a meeting at work where they announced they laid off some people. Mostly people involved in our federal business since the US government doesn't want to buy anything anymore. Now the company really is just behind the product I work on, it is growing and bringing in the expected money, it just needs to continue to do so.

  Where was I? Oh yeah New Years. Slackers that we are both my wife and I were in bed come actual midnight on New Years eve. Being ill really takes it out of you and we couldn't make it through.

  The rest of the time off was spent playing Skyrim for me with my wife watching. So far I've played an inordinate amount of that game, over 60 hours so far. The scary thing is I could easily go for another 100 or more and this is only with my first play through. I want to play it again, trying different things. There is just so much to do, you can wander around and run in to things to do, to see and to interact with (ok, mostly fight and kill) it is amazing how good Bethesda have gotten at making this type of game. It is also one of the few games that my wife doesn't mind (too much) sitting watching me play. She even can play it better than I can, when I get to something that gives me trouble she comes up with a strategy that works whereas I simply keep trying over and over sure I can get it to work and not die again. I did play some other games I got for Christmas over the break, even finishing Uncharted 3, but most of my time was spent wandering around Skyrim killing dragons.

  Then we come to yesterday, a day that last year I did something stupid. I was in a bad place mentally and hurt people around me. I can still see it clearly and don't think I'll ever forget it. I'm not going to repeat it all here since I've already documented it but it got my wife down a lot yesterday. I'm not sure how I can ever make up for it or get over it but there it is. Time to move on.

  Now for something happier, our super smart hamster Andy. We give her these yoghurt treats every so often. Within a few seconds of us putting one in her expansive habitat she will be out of her nest and sniffing around. Within a minute she will have found it and be happily munching away on it, she really can hunt them down quickly. Considering she is a small 2 inch hamster in a habitat that is something like 4 feet long and a foot or two tall with various tunnels and areas to explore she really is the expert in finding these things. It is nice to know we have another happy pet that we can look after now that we have 5 of them in the house.

  So there we go, a quick recap of the last bit of time. I should try and put more posts up here in the coming weeks and get back in to the habit of doing so. It helps me keep things in perspective in the long run. It also keeps my thoughts in order usually. Now if only I could get our hamster to be a little bit quieter running at night in her wheel, she can rattle that thing around like crazy once she gets going.

  Anyway, bye for now. I'm off to find some way to get a new job and/or more money and/or move us somewhere nicer than where we are. Until next time.

  *last minute update* Just got reminded about a couple of things (very important). We saw MI before Christmas and Sherlock after. There aren't you glad you know that now. Also I built another Lego set, a really cool looking Emerald Train which seems to have shot up in price now the Lego have stopped selling it. Grrr bloody "collectors".