November Randomness

Back from Whitby, where I had lots of fun. Highlight of the trip was suebeedoo singing "Abba's Greatest Hits" in The Elsinore. Lowlight was my somewhat evil hangover on Saturday. Although I think I'll not take relationship advice from steer, I should perhaps listen to him when he gives me drinking advice ;-)

The weather has definitely turned cold, and winter is upon us. Riding my motorbike to work now features icy cold air. Fortunately, I now have HEATED HAND GRIPS, which are a fantastic invention. Sadly, I've had them before (twice) and they never seem to work for very long. It's as if there's a universal law that heated handgrips exist, and can be fitted to motorbikes, and offer so much potential to avoid numbed hands, but in reality they always stop working for me after a few weeks :-(

evie_petrol is wild and rampaging, though it seems she did miss me lots when I was away at Whitby (aw!) She's been very snuggly since I got back, and pleased to see her Daddy. Sadly, she does seem to have taken to waking up *very* early in the mornings after two years of generally not doing so. She woke me at 0515 this morning saying "Daddy! Get up! Not tired! Wake up! Glasses on! Downstairs! Watch Beebies!" The pain... She also knows the word "website", which makes me inordinately proud. Two years ago today we had a meeting with social workers in North Yorkshire, then drove off to meet her for the very first time. She was a little blob back then, who grinned a toothless grin at me and fell asleep on my knee.

Trash has effectively sold the Honda Civic Type-R :-( There's a rather convoluted car-swapping-trade-in-thing going on, involving her sister. The net result is that later this year her sister gets a new Honda Jazz, we get her sister's old Vauxhall Astra, and my lovely Type-R goes off to de Vries Honda in part-exchange. So come the new year I will be Astra Man *sigh*. Trash then gets to buy a car she can park, of whatever type she wants. She's currently quite taken with the idea of something like a Zafira, which can seat seven people! So, I could end up with my own mini-gig-bus, which would be quite handy for the giggers, clubbers and boozers I often give lifts to.

Work is a little strange. There have been lots of people leaving recently, due to an ongoing reorganisation. Their redundancy payoffs are pretty good, so they're rarely that sad to be going. Hardly a day passes without another leaving card and collection doing the rounds, or an "I'm leaving" email hitting my inbox. Leaving cards are so common that someone got a "best wishes" stamp made so they could simply stamp each card as it went past! It's lead to *ahem* a small dip in staff morale. My job is safe at the moment, but who knows? Not much point in moving on though, as if they *do* decide to get rid of me there's a good payoff to be had.

Second Life has been in the press a lot recently. If anyone does play it, say hello to Flak Wolfe, which is my in-game persona.