Had the worst trip to Ikea ever yesterday. We have to really plan it when we go, because it's quite a drive into London, so we had yesterday all planned. We knew what we were looking for, a side table type thing for the dining room as wellas some small items.

We went, and we found one that we liked, so we made a note of it's location in the pick up area. We also noted the location of the slightly smaller version of it, because we weren't sure which to get at that stage. By the time we reached the pick up area we'd decided, we wanted to get the larger version, so we headed for it's location.

It wasn't there.

Not in the sense that it was sold out, but it just wasn't meant to be there, we looked up and down the aisle, but nothing. Thankfully, we'd noted down the location for the smaller version, so we headed for that instead. The larger version was there too! Now, if we hadn't looked at the smaller version at all, we wouldnt have found what we wanted. So, we picked it up, put it on our trolley, and headed for the checkout.

At the checkout, I forgot to remove the yellow bag from the trolley, and the checkout person accused me of attempting to steal it, but we eventually got the table out and to the car.

We drove home, opened the box, and discovered that some of the pieces were split. We had to go all the way back to Ikea, and exchange it. Of course, simply exchanging it would be far too simple, no, they refunded my payment, and then we had to go back into the shop, get another one, queue at the checkout again, and then pay again!

Anyway, we now have a nice storage side table in the dining room.

Had a lovely couple of days, although midnight service Wednesday night took it's toll, and I'm still rather sleepy as a result, early night last night, probably another tonight. Yesterday was great, church in the morning, I was doing CTP, then pressies, lunch and Die Hard (favorite Christmas movie, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...). The rest of the day was pretty lazy, as today has also been.

Can't believe Clare blogged twice on Christmas Day, even I'm not that sad, all I did was check my email and pop onto Asylum briefly.

Liverpool won 3-1 today, although I have a horrible feeling I may have left it too late to get tickets for the Spurs match next month (again - did the same with the Chelsea game). May ring the ticket office tomorrow to try to find out, otherwise not much on for the weekend, probably going to go for a Chinese tomorrow, then I'm making a chilli Sunday night, I do enjoy cooking

Oh my word, RotK rocked my socks! What a movie! Definitely the best of the three, and I cried for a large part of the latter half. If you've seen it, you'll know at which points.

Afterwards, we bumped into Alex & Bev in Asda, which was quality, love those guys. Gonna be a not-quite-full day at work today, which is good, cos I still have a few small things to buy, as well as all my wrapping to do.

Amanda's parents arrive today, and they'll be sleeping in the same room as our computers, so I may not get much online time this side of next Monday, and I'm not back in the office till the 2nd January, that's next year!

Nadolig Llawen

enough said

I think it's about time I wrote my own blog software really, not 100% happy with what I'm using, and the code is near unreadable, so I can't even realistically hack it to behave how I want. What I want are the following:

• A MySQL backend
  
• Categorization of posts
  
• RSS output
  
• Pretty display of posts, easily themable to match any future site redesigns
  

Not much to ask, but of course, the software I'm currently using does none of them. Of course, first order of business will be to set up a MySQL server at home, I have a spare box, and a spare largish hard drive, which could be combined for just that purpose, just a case of when do I do it... Not likely to be this side of Christmas, Caz is coming round tonight at some point, and I need to think about wrapping some of Amanda's presents, if not all. Then, tomorrow night, we're going to see Return of the King. Then it's Christmas Eve, and Amanda's parents arrive. They'll be staying in the same room as the computers, so I can't do it while they're here.

Ah well, it's a thought, add it to the TODO list...

Yesterday was a really odd day, lots of good stuff, and some kind of hard stuff too. It was another half day, which was good, and I was chilling out at home when I checked my email in the middle of the afternoon, and there was a piece of very good news there for me, relating to the ordination plan. When Caz arrived in the evening, we toasted the Bishop (can you guess what the news was?) with a very good bottle of Wolf Blass 2000 President's Selection Cabernet Sauvignon which we'd laid down about six months or so ago, it was delicious.

Then there was the News as far as the rest of the world is concerned, the verdict in the Soham trial, which, having followed the case quite closely (news junkie that I am) was pretty well what I expected. It just felt really strange having this celebration on a day like that.

At the end of the evening, we also let Audrey, one of our cell leaders, know that the three of us are going to look for a different group.

All in all I think it was a good day, just wish the good bits could have happened on a different day, so I could really enjoy them, but I guess that's life...

Had another half-day yesterday (and another one today as it happens), did some shopping (and a lot of walking) in the afternoon, as well as some housework.

Then, last night was the night that Amanda was doing the present wrapping in the town centre (it was coordinated by Watford Town Centre Chaplaincy). I was there too to chat with people, and help with keeping the wrapping area tidy. The response was amazing, people just couldn't believe that it was free, all in all a bit of a result.

Cell group Christmas night out for drinks tonight, Caz is coming round for dinner before that, should be a good evening all in all.

Half day today, will be knocking off at about 12:30. Got Tim & Kathryn coming round for dinner tonight, I'll be making lasagne. I also need to sort the house out a bit, cleaning Tia out last night took it's toll on the living room a bit, and the dining table has Christmas pressies all over it.

Had a great evening with Caz on Friday, she'd made this amazing curry, and we wore silly Christmas cracker hats, and talked till very late. Always good, she's a great friend.

Saturday was quite a lazy day, read the Church Times, watched some TV...

Yesterday was Clare's birfday, and we had lunch with her and some of her family after church, which was really nice.

RIP Ettore

I didn't know Ettore, I had never emailed him, nor he me, but he was one of those people who I respected a huge amount for all the work he did for the community, and I'm shocked and saddened to hear of his untimely demise.

My heartfelt condolences to his family, friends and colleagues, he will be missed.

Welcome to the back burner!

Nearly the weekend, day and a half to go, and then next week, I've got three half-days, which should make it more bearable. Tomorrow night should be good. Going to Caz's for dinner, and after an explosion in my brain last night (no doubt related to Christmas shopping) we're going to call it Christmas, crackers, the whole nine yards. (excited!).

Evo 1.5 was released last night, so of course, fool that I am, I posted straight away on SLE saying I'd aim to have packages ready by the end of the week. Going to be a serious pain in the neck to get it parallel installable with the stable packages, looksl ike I'm going to have to install it, and all it's dependencies into /usr.

Those deps include the GNOME 2.4 versions of ORBit2, libbonobo and libbonoboui, man I hope I don't break everything. Like I said on SLE "Be prepared to lose all your data, but have an enormous amount of fun in the process "

Miserable Failure

There's another one.

Watched Bowling for Columbine at last on Saturday night. A great film, if a little rambling in places. It could definitely have coped with another half-hour's worth of editting, but in spite of that, I found it very effective in making Moore's point. One with which I do agree.

There are lots of ways you can determine how close a friend someone is. The modern obsession (of which I am a victim) with SMS (text messaging) is a new one.

If you can comfortably randomly text someone from a pub, and reasonably expect a comforatble reply, you have a true [modern] friend.

Kudos to Caz and Nick.

Gonna be on my tod (well, with Tia) again tonight, Amanda's going to Gift Wrapping Training at church.

Gift Wrapping Training? What the...? It's for something that church is doing in the run up to Christmas, free gift wrapping in the Harlequin (Watford's big shopping centre), and of course they need to make sure that everyone's going to do a good job. If it were me (I don't have the leave available to be able to do it), I'd definitely need training, I can't wrap a present to save my life.

Wow, Saturday set new records for "loose-endness" I was right in my predictions about PC tinkering and and trashy TV - went to PC World to pick up some extra RAM, which simply caused muchos locking up and boot failing on weasel, so I'm going to be getting my money back on that just as soon as I get around to going back to PCW.

The weird thing was how bored I was, I like to think I'm pretty good company, but apparently when it's just me, myself and I, not that good. To be fair to myself, I suppose I could have used the time better, maybe read something, or bonded with Tia a bit.

Speaking of Tia, I did spend some time last night bonding with her while Amanda was doing Word Projection at church. She's getting used to being out of her cage quite nicely now. That makes me happy.