Thursday 30 August 2007

Mis-selling or over-enthusiastic buying?

I went to the garden centre today and found a great deal on some gloves - £3.99 for three different pairs of gardening/working gloves. They were advertised as "All the gloves you'll ever need".

I bought 2 packs.

How does that work?


I'm so glad to see you were all busy and (mostly) present over the last 3 weeks. We generally had a good time - drove thousands of miles and saw lots of great sights. We're currently trying to get the mooselets back into a regular sleeping pattern, which this time is proving more tricky than normal and we don't quite know why.

In the land of the world obese champions, I managed to lose a bit of weight. That was mainly achieved by only ever having 2 meals a day and avoiding starters and desserts, but also by choosing hotels with pools where I could have swimming races with the mooselets. It is so fantastic to race with them, although the handicap system is complicated - at the moment we are roughly level when I do 4 lengths to mooselet #1's 2 lengths and mooselet #2's 1 length (floaty jacket assisted). Hiking in 100 degree temperatures probably sweated a few pounds off too! Zion National Park remains one of my favourite places in the world. Despite the disapproving looks of the park ranger, we all hiked up the Narrows - a hike that basically goes through a river in a very narrow canyon. At times, mooselet #2 was up to his chest and the two of us fell in at one point - entirely my fault but I pulled him in with me as I was holding his hand pretty tightly the whole time! We also went to Disneyland for a day which was nowhere near as bad as my expectations of it. I even agreed to go back sometime.

And to show just how inaccurate my predictions are:
- We didn't make it to 29 Palms.
- We didn't go to Joshua Tree NP although I did see Joshua trees
- We by-passed Big Sur due to fog and time constraints having spent an extra day in San Francisco
- We didn't go to Yosemite to see El Kapitan

I hope that blasting various 70's hits (the 70's station was the only one we could pick up most of the time) at the Grand Canyon in a thunderstorm, across the vast nothingness that is Nevada, and in the Mission district of San Francisco will suffice as suitable memorial instead...

I started back at the gym yesterday with a decent training session and I've decided that I need an event to do in October to train towards. Triathlon or 10k I think. I did the Cancer Research 10k last October so I might repeat that, even though triathlon is my preference. I will be doing the internet search for the appropriate event as soon as I've posted this...

Tuesday 7 August 2007

In memoriam...

I shall stop in 29 Palms and blast "Damn this traffic jam" from the stereo, just for the hell of it.

I shall stop in the middle of the Joshua Tree National Park and blast "I still haven't found what I'm looking for".

I shall stop at the bottom of El Kapitan and blast "Happy Talking".

I shall stop at Big Sur and blast something "Hang the DJ".


See the rest of you in a couple of weeks...

Wednesday 1 August 2007

Westward bound...even further west that is

Flights booked now for the moose family annual trip to the good ole U S of A. It will be a road trip again, once more starting and finishing in LA. For any Campari and soda fans out there, that's Los Angeles.

We have invested in bigger seats for the trip out there and still a hope for an upgrade on the way back. Am so looking forward to Santa Barbara and Monterey. I do hope my PVR thingy will cope with so many episodes of House to be recorded while away.

I have a very red face from Sennen beach yesterday. And we went to a reservoir today for mooselet #1 to have his first ever go at sailing. I took mooselet #2 out on a kayak and got a very wet bottom. We only had one near miss when mooselet #1 aimed straight for us!

I am driving back home on my own Thursday, to be joined by the others on Saturday evening via those friendly little Irish people at Ryanair. I have a man to see about a job on Friday up in London...or maybe 2 men to see about 2 jobs, as I still have one appointment to try and fit in.

Am still trying to work out if and how I can blog from hols. I am thinking that I might just take a complete two and a half week break. I'm sure you'll keep yourself going with all the poking you seem to be doing with each other (I am not on Facebook so don't bother even trying to poke me, even if you were tempted!)...hope that's OK with everyone.