It's Sunday!!... oh, hangon... it's Saturday?


TBL: "You don't go out looking for a job dressed like that? On a weekday?"
El Duderino (as I'm not into the whole brevity thing): "Is this a..? What day is this?"

Yes, it's a bloody Monday again. And yes, I'm on the bloody train again. And yes, I'm off up that Laandan again. All a bit boring and repetitive really. However, I will do my best to make it somewhat more interesting given that it is our capital city and there's plenty to see and do when you're not chained to a desk.

The weekend was a cacophony of birthday celebrations with a slap up dinner (sadly not at Mrs Miggins pie shop) with the inlaws, outlaws, kids and even my sister (who travelled down from that Manc with her other half) in the Tivoli - a sort of gastro pub in Cheltenham. I'd highly recommend the place for everything it offers apart from the service.  Rather lacking in members of staff and therefore a bit bloody slow at getting the job done, with one member of staff in particular being bang out of order and treating some of the others with a certain amount of disdain.  She come across as a larger, more female version of Basil Fawlty crossed with Miranda.  Aside from her antics though - it was generally excellent and as it was my birthday lunch, I thoroughly enjoyed it too.

I don't know any of these people

On Saturday night I met up with Stan and Juglar, two core members of the WTC at our local haunt and received my birthday presents. They've all very generously clubbed together and bought me a Harrington from Warrior Clothing (recommended if you're looking for mod gear) which was extremely generous of them, and of course, the now traditional disgusting aftershave which you have to wear a splash of before passing onto the next member of the group on their birthday. Luckily for me, that's Stan's in February - and I'll be only too glad to see the back of it.

On Sunday, Mrs G and I had a bit of a walk, through various parks and around the city picking up a couple of bits and pieces and pressing our noses up against the glass of the cake filled windows at "Patisserie Valerie" (ok, that might be a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea). It's definitely taken a turn for the colder and there is allegedly some snow on the way, although personally I've yet to see any of it.

Sunday afternoon saw Mrs G creating some good winter warming food in the shape of a Stew and the kids came round to help polish it off.

I also spent some birthday amazon vouchers (always useful) on an external Blu-Ray drive for the iMac with a view of converting the now infamous video library to HiDef over a period of time. I know how, I just haven't actually done this with BluRay yet, having not had the drive. I will however, share the method when I get round to doing it...

Blu-Ray has most definitely come of age having well and truly won the format war (HD-DVD or BluRay...  Just like good old Betamax and VHS) and we are starting to see the prices of the format come into line with that of DVD such that buying them is more bearable. Of course, in the long term this model has no hope of surviving as we'll all be streaming everything everywhere (maybe someone should use that as a brand name for high speed mobile connectivity) - if only they actually could. That future is going to be a little while yet I think.

A bit of packing - some reasonably rubbish Sunday night TV and here we are at 5.30am ready to get off to the station all over again.


Oh look!  Snow!!...  
Until next time....

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