Evening Tanya, been a while

Well it has been a while (since blogging and since watching Lock Stock) - and writing this is about the only time I have had to myself since then.

The household chores are finally finished (for now). The bathroom is almost done (except the ceiling and window frame - which can both wait), the spare room no longer has a hole in the wall (from fitting the sink waste in the bathroom) and has been completely redocorated. And in record time I think - 4 evenings to strip the old wallpaper, put up the new (fibre-galss) wallpaper and give it three coats of paint. It was finished literally hours before my parents flight touched down - thankfully the smell of fresh wall paint doesn't bother them.

Spent a wonderful week with my parents, took some real time off of work - haven't read a single email in the last 8 days and won't until Monday morning on the way to the office. We didn't do anything special (except for a meal celebrating my other halfs birthday with her parents as well - first time both sets of parents have been together since our wedding day I think), just spent a few days together. Was quite sad when they took off again to go home. I thinkt the best thing was to see just how well my dad looks after his heart attack 10 weeks or so ago. That has put my mind to rest quite a bit.

After the failed shopping trip a couple of weeks a go I finally found a black dress that I liked (and fitted my rather limited budget - hurrar for H&M, they had lots). Was interesting buying it though. I was shopping with my other half (she was looking for jumpers, me a dress) and she surreptitiously, whilst "checking" the label, held it up to check the size. I have to say that was the least enjoyable part of it - size 44 in order to get a waist of the right size. And yet I can get away with skirts of size 40. Hopefully I can pull it in a little if I lose a little weight running...

Well... I think that is my head emptied again, and I need to start my studies - going for an MSTS DBA exam in the new year and have yet to actually start the training book.

Another Failed Shopping Trip, More DIY

Every week we get billions (OK English exageration a little there) of leaflets through our door from the various shops in the town center. We normally flick through all of them just to see if anything catches our eye - and every few weeks there is something.

This week we found two things, in a shop we would never dream of going in. A jumper for my other half, and a little black dress for me.

Whilst she really did not want to be seen in the shop (it's mainly used by the winklies, not 30 somethings) she really liked the jumper so we went looking.

First off, once you walk in the store you *really* see that it caters for the older generation - I've never seen such a drab shop outside of 'Mary Queen of Shops' on TV. Secondly even though I was with my wife, and shopping for her as well as me, I got a major bout of nerves and could hardly look for either item of clothing...

We found her Jumper, but as the only size they had in stock was XXXL we decided that maybe we'd leave it. The dress (whilst in the shop window) wasn't even in the store itself. When you look at the customers they have you have to ask why they would even stock either of the items - I can't imagine any of the other customers in there buying them.
Fubar :(

We are supposed to be tryin again in other stores this week (but I'm not holding out much hope - little black dresses are not as easy to find as I imagined...)

On top of that we have sooo much on our plate at the moment. My folks are coming to visit soon (read in days) and at present the spare room doesn't even have wallpaper on every wall. Why on earth I decided to try and get it decorated in a week I don't know. I spend literally years thinking 'That room really needs doing', and then with less than 7 days until it is to be used suddenly get the compulsion that it has to be done now...

As such I am covered in glass fibre from the wall paper that has gone up (I've never seen glass fibre paper before, but it does give a nice finish on the wall for paint - without having to pay someone to plaster the walls) and absolutely shot - work 9 hours (full of stress at the moment) followed by 5 hours of decorating every day is not healthy. Good job my folks are here next week - I'm on vacation for when they are here and can hopefully recover a little...