Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Eleanor Blair's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, May 17th, 2008
12:09 pm	Book swap I have these two Discworld novels in hardback. I have all the rest in paperback. This bugs me, I'm a sucker for things matching. If anyone likes hardbacks I'd like to either a) swap these for the paperbacks or b) sell them for what the paperbacks would cost me, say a fiver each. Any takers? Oh and if you click through the rest of the gallery has lots of photos of my mum's garden, and a photo of the lads as close as they got to flying. The weather didn't co-operate, so they just got to have a look at the plane and be shown the controls instead, we'll be trying again the first weekend in June, since we're up for my grandparents' diamond wedding anniversary. It was a nice weekend anyway, good company and good food. Last weekend was nice too, with Jan and Owen's birthday party being easily good enough to make up for the 7 hours on very hot coaches getting there and back. This weekend will be a quiet one to catch our breath a little. Shame the sun didn't last though, although our garden is happy for a bit of rain. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, April 28th, 2008
7:15 pm	A Journal I've not been using LJ much as a journal lately, so thought I might try and work backwards and blog a few weekends in brief. Starting with the weekend just gone: Weekend of 26/27 April: Quiet night in Friday. Gardening Saturday morning, gig in London on Saturday evening as Mike's birthday treat (Opeth, Arch Enemy, Devil Driver and 3 Inches of Blood, at Brixton), stay over at City Inn Westminster. Excellent breakfast then train home Sunday morning, bump into Si and Nesta at Cambridge station: they've come up to celebrate their 6th year anniversary. Mini pub-crawl with them: Kingston, Blue, Mill. Late lunch/early dinner at CB2. Watch Mike finish Zelda when we get home then bed, knackered. Weekend of 19/20 April: Weekend off, do almost nothing beyond pottering to the shops and watching DVDs. Bliss. Monday is Mike's birthday, so we go out to CB2 for dinner which is lovely, and spend the rest of the week eating cake. Weekend of 12/13 April: Bristol for Joe's return to UK party at John and Heather's. Takes up most of weekend once you include traveling. Weekend of 29/30 March: Glenys' housewarming in Worcester. Great party. And boat race of course. Lovely mix of people from all over. Weekend of 21/22 March: Easter weekend: as already blogged we bought a wii and played many games on it. I think we must have gone for a bike ride on the Saturday, on the principle it can't possibly have been any other weekend, and we just avoided wet weather in the afternoon, and then on the Sunday it snowed and we built a snowman. Weekend of 14/15 March: Up to visit mum and dad while my grandad was visiting them too from Larne, and had a generally nice time. Chinese takeaway on Friday, dinner out on Saturday (having spent the day mostly watching the rugby while people were out) and family Sunday lunch. Next weekend we're off up to mum and dad's for the bank holiday weekend and for Mike and the other boys to have their Christmas presents from my parents: an hour's introductory flying lesson. Then the following weekend hopefully we'll be over to Oxford for Jan and Owen's birthdays, and then we actually get another weekend off after that. It's fun, but we aren't half tired. I have updated my lists of books 2008 and bike rides 2008. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
12:59 pm	We can has gardening Click through for more, including the rather drastic change we made to the back lawn. Some general tidying, plus a bunch of pansies, daisies and heather planted, and a few bulbs and seeds which obviously haven't come up yet. It's looking nice though, especially when you compare it with the photos from before we moved in. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
5:59 pm	Square eyed poll Poll #1175343 What do you call the remote control for the telly/whatever? Open to: All, results viewable to: All Pass me the ... View Answers box 2 (2.9%) buttons 7 (10.1%) clinker 1 (1.4%) dibber 2 (2.9%) dingetje 1 (1.4%) flippit 1 (1.4%) gun 0 (0.0%) mota tole 0 (0.0%) nemote 0 (0.0%) remote 53 (76.8%) remote control 21 (30.4%) wand 2 (2.9%) zapper 24 (34.8%) other (please comment) 18 (26.1%) (33 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
1:02 pm	Not the dialect meme Poll #1164580 Dialect Open to: All, results viewable to: All How do you pronounce scone? View Answers As in gone 80 (77.7%) As in own 23 (22.3%) Something else (comment) 0 (0.0%) I'm familiar with these terms for a small bread product: View Answers roll 105 (100.0%) bun 102 (97.1%) bap 103 (98.1%) cob 72 (68.6%) scuffler 3 (2.9%) barm 38 (36.2%) other (comment) 13 (12.4%) Edit: Others so far: teacake, breadcake, farl, barmcake, batch, stottie, flour cake, stotty cake, kaiser. (67 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
2:07 pm	Answers to the snowman problem A security chap in bright yellow coat came up to us and asked us nicely if we could move him, since he'd take a while to melt and he was currently taking up a parking space. So we lifted off his head and rolled the body several feet right and up a kerb before replacing his head again and taking the second shot. So the differences, in order of obviousness are: Different companion :-) Different hat Different location Scarf retied Head at a slightly different angle Body slightly different due to picking up a little extra snow in the move I hadn't even really noticed the last of those myself! So well done everyone for spotting he'd moved, well done rjk for noticing the scarf as well as the hat, and well done Sion especially for spotting the last two. This was the best userpic I had :) (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
11:37 am	Snow! We were woken this morning by a burglar alarm going off around 8:30am. When it eventually stopped at nearly 9 Mike got up and opened the blinds, to find it was not only snowing but that it had been doing so for some time and had settled. We got up and dressed and wrapped up warm in record time, and decided it was time to take our recycling to ASDA as an excuse to go out for a walk in the snow. On the walk over we drew a picture on the front of a car and Mike tried waltzing in the street to see what the footprints would look like, then once we'd posted all our tetrapacks in the bin we made a snowman in the carpark. We walked home through the cemetery. On the streets it was all beginning to melt, but it was still lovely here. Click through for more photos. Can you spot what's odd about the two photos of the snowman? (17 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
10:50 am	Shopping Yesterday we went shopping. And to post a DVD back to lovefilm on Burleigh Street on the way. We were walking along the street and I posted the DVD and Mike said "what are you doing?!?" and I was like "what?" and then I realised instead of posting it in the postbox I'd posted it in the rubbish bin 5 yards away. D'oh. And the bin turned out to be nearly empty. It's one of those which has a lid and four slots (one on each side) and which has a door to open in order to empty it - we couldn't think of anything which we could use to open the door. I tried sticking my arm in, and couldn't reach, because it was sitting right on the bottom. Mike tried sticking his arm in and couldn't reach. We called directory enquiries and got a number for the council, but their switchboard is only manned on working days 9 til 5, and it was 10:30am on Good Friday. Mike tried using his railcard wallet to extend his reach but still couldn't even touch the bottom. We went in the Cancer Research shop looking for something which would work better, and ended up buying the 7" single of "Double Dutch" for 25p. The lady at the till asked me if I were going to do aerobics to it, and I said "no, skipping". We went back outside, and Mike tried again, with my directing, since he couldn't see anything while his arm was so far in the bin. Eventually success, he got the edge of the single under the edge of the envelope and managed to prop it up against the side of the bin instead of the bottom, and was then able to grab hold of it. We posted it in the real postbox with some relief. I have rarely felt so idiotic. Then we went and did our shopping. We bought 2 tablespoons, insoles for my shoes, the new We Are Scientists album, a set of steak knives, 3 wii games and a controller in one shop (Zelda, Mario Galaxies, Resident Evil 4), and then went 2 doors down and bought a wii along with guitar hero 3. We came home and spent all afternoon playing games. I is rubbish with the guitar but having great fun. So much so I forgot to even listen to the CD. I still feel silly though. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 21st, 2008
9:41 am	Moar Cake I'm sure you'll all be glad to know that the cake tastes as nice as it looks. If not better. And so did chocolate croissants for breakfast. Mmmm cake. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 20th, 2008
6:11 pm	Domestic goddess I took today off work because I was feeling lazy and fancied turning a four day weekend into a 5 day weekend. So today I spent working pretty much non-stop from 9:40 til 5:40, with just a break for lunch and one for a glass of water. I think I must have got a bit of spring cleaning bug or something. I cleaned the bathroom properly including the loo, threw away some cardboard from upstairs, jogged to the postbox and back, put away the washing up, cleaned all the surfaces in the kitchen including the draining board, cleaned the dining table and mats, did the washing up, cleaned the top of the cooker, cleaned the inside of the fridge, started cleaning the inside of the cooker, put away the shopping which Tesco delivered, made a note of best before dates to work out what to eat first, finished cleaning the inside of the cooker (it's a lot better if not perfect), had lunch, washed up again, did two loads of washing, mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors, hoovered upstairs, downstairs and on the stairs, dusted everywhere: shelves, skirting boards, windowsills, electrical appliances and even the tops of pictures and doors, stopped for a drink, got out recipe book, walked to ASDA and back in the rain to get some ingredients, baked a cake, washed up again again, took cake out of oven, had a shower and iced the cake. I was just finishing that off when Mike got back and did the last load of washing up :-) Look, cake!: Current Mood: satisfied and proud (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 16th, 2008
7:25 pm	Photos Irises While we were visiting my mum I took some pictures of her garden. There are also a couple of pics of our walk to Waterbeach. Click through for album. (Comment on this)
Monday, March 10th, 2008
2:58 pm	Stuff for sale / giveaway I have a bunch of stuff we just don't need any more. Any offers (including nothing) for any of the following: bin with separate compartments for compostables and standard waste 14" telly with no remote, could possibly use a universal remote. Otherwise can't be tuned in, but has scart socket so good for DVDs, videos, freeview, games etc. And of course after next year the "terrestrial" signal won't work anyway, so it won't matter. (free) 14" telly with indoor aerial, has remote, but some buttons not working well. (free) universal remote control (unused) - with manual freeview box - with manual scart switch box and scart cable kef coda bookshelf speakers and c 6m speaker cable (£1.50 a metre new) separates cd player - LCD display no longer works, but plays fine - with manual, and a remote if I can find it Basic toaster. Slightly chipped and with a red mark on one side, but still works fine, replaced for aesthetic reasons only. stereo midi system cd/dual tape/record deck (radio believed broken) includes very cheap speakers (free) Basic kettle: not cordless, no fill level indicator, works fine, but needs occasional descaling (free) 13.5 tog double duvet - about a tenner, it's in good condition Remaining items have now been places on ucam.adverts.forsale and ucam.adverts.giveaway (31 Comments |Comment on this)
12:44 pm	My weekend On Friday we went out for dinner at the Ugly Duckling, and had nice chinese. Then we came home and watched the last disc of CSI season 3. On Saturday we had a lazy day at home, we walked over to M&S to get a bit of shopping but otherwise just pottered round the house and geeked a bit. We watched the England/Scotland rugby match in the afternoon, while knitting and doing puzzles, since it wasn't exactly riveting stuff. Then we watched Barnsley knocking Chelsea out of the FA Cup, and that was much more fun. Barnsley ran circles round them and Chelsea looked like they were barely playing for 3/4 of the match. It was good to see that Barnsley could still hold them off once they picked up the pace near the end, because they thoroughly deserved the win. Finished off the evening with the last disc of CSI miami season 1. Sunday I had a nice lie in, before leaping out of bed in a hurry to meet up with Bridget, Adam and Duncan in time to go out for a walk to Waterbeach along the river. I even dug my old walking boots out of the cupboard, which I don't remember having used at all since our school expedition to the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco in 1992. We kept a fairly brisk pace really, and reached the Bridge in Waterbeach to find it heaving for Sunday lunch - though our 20 minute wait for a table turned out to be a bit quicker. We had some nice food, and were just finished our main course when it started tipping it down outside. Duncan and I bravely shared a pudding to pass some time, and before long it had stopped again though, and we set off home again in bright sunshine, and traced our steps back the way we came (route on Bikely). One nasty blister on my little toe by the time I got home, but at least it hadn't burst </tmi>. It was about 5 when we got home, and we spent a quiet evening geeking and reading until we thought we really ought to have some dinner, which was accompanied by the first have of Red Dwarf series 2. It was a nice weekend :-) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 1st, 2008
1:22 pm	Lisbon Last weekend we went to Lisbon for the weekend, to celebrate my sister's 30th birthday. You can see more pictures in the gallery but here are a quick selection. The party consisted of Steph and Dave, mum and dad, John and Em, me and Mike, plus Steph and Dave's friend Natalie, who must have been a bit overwhelmed at having to cope with the whole family! The others all arrived on Friday lunchtime, having been on the same flight from Liverpool, and spent a pleasant sunny afternoon exploring. We flew in later and joined them in time for drinks and then dinner, which was fabulous, before a fairly early night. On Saturday it dawned grey, and we walked down to the Praca do Comercio to get ourselves tickets for the tourist bus, which sheltered us from the rain for a while as we travelled through the city and out to Belem. Here we visited the Belem Tower, and then got drenched walking down the road to the Monastery, where Em, John and Natalie found a bus and headed home to dry out, while the rest of us looked around. In the evening we had a few drinks in a big pastelaria on the Rossio square before finding dinner in a little restaurant near the hotel. Then we found another little bar which would sell us some wine to take out and headed back to the hotel and sat up drinking and playing cards in the TV room. On Sunday the rain had given up and we spent the morning going round the castle and enjoying the views from the top, before finding a very cheap and excellent four course lunch in a nearby street. We voted to skip the cathedral and headed back down to the waterfront where we caught a train out to Caiscais on the coast. On Sunday they stop at every station so it took about 40 minutes. Here we had a wander round, some cocktails by the sea, a paddle in the harbour (well, Natalie and I did anyway) and then headed back for the train home. Mike was too ill to join us for dinner, which was a shame as we went to Cafe Nicola which was lovely, even if we were really a bit too full, especially for the enormous fish platter ordered by Steph and Dave! Then we headed back to the TV room again and had Steph's birthday a day early, so she could open her presents in front of everyone without having to get up at an unearthly hour the next morning. Steph and Dave were staying for the whole week, but us and the others were only staying for the weekend, so on Monday they all had to dash off for their plane. This left Mike and I to have a lie in before joining Steph and Dave for breakfast out in the square, which was lovely. After that the weather started to really hot up. We headed up the escalator (which was fab) and went for a wander in the streets that side, and managed to find the area of Lisbon that's meant to have a lively night life - hopefully Steph and Dave managed to check it out properly later in the week. The sunshine was lovely, and we just had time to have a nice lunch before heading back to the hotel to pick up our bags, hoping to stop for a coffee and an icecream before we had to get the bus. This plan was slightly scuppered by 3 of us getting stuck in the lift at the hotel, where they had to call out an engineer, but thankfully he arrived quickly and we were free in about 15 minutes. Still, we only missed out on an icecream, and we found the bus stop with plenty of time to spare, and waved the others off to enjoy the rest of their week. I wish we could have stayed longer too! This week I have had a blood test (still not diabetic), given blood, watched some DVDs and generally been a bit knackered. This weekend is going to be a quiet one! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
5:15 pm	e-day ? I've just heard of this on Facebook: http://www.e-day.org.uk/ The idea is that for 24 hours starting from 6pm today we should all leave off any electrical appliances that are not in use. And on their webpage they'll try and chart the day's energy usage compared to a normal day. In my case I think all I can do is: Turn off microwave at wall. This will reset the clock. Turn off computers at wall: this will make no difference to computer, monitor or speakers, as they're turned off properly instead of on standby anyway, but will turn off the camera charger. Be a bit more careful with lights. The stereo is off at the wall, phone chargers aren't left plugged in, the kettle and toaster don't use any electricity except when in use. Ah, I can also unplug the video from the four-way block when we've got it turned on to use the telly and DVD player. They're all in the same strip and we turn that off when not in use. Edit Oooh, and we can turn off the ADSL modem too. Can't really turn off the DECT phones or we'll have no handset upstairs. It's really not going to make much difference, is it? (23 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 17th, 2008
6:09 pm	Weekend and another To continue writing up last weekend... ( It got a bit long... ) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
9:42 pm	Recent Photos Click through for more of the crocuses (taken Thursday morning) and a couple of Bath in the sunshine on Sunday morning. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 11th, 2008
8:01 pm	A weekend in the west My weekend started on Thursday, with a train journey from Cambridge to Lydney, which was mostly uneventful apart from the fact it was standing room only to London. On a weekday afternoon. Most odd. Once arrived we spent a pleasant evening with Mike's parents, eating home made curry, opening rather belated Christmas presents all round, and putting the world to rights. On Friday we started the morning watching the birds feeding through the french doors in the living room. With nuts, seeds, water and a fat ball on offer they get quite a selection of small birds and over the course of the day we saw: chaffinches bullfinches a greenfinch a rather reclusive goldfinch blue tits great tits at least one coal tit a long-tailed tit (unusual, apparently they're usually only seen in groups) a dunnock a pair of nuthatches a tree sparrow several robins blackbirds thrushes And away from the feeder we also saw pheasants, pigeons and lots of buzzards, including one which was only 12 or 15 feet away having just landed in a tree. This was later though: we finished the morning by fettling Mike's parent's bikes and taking them out for a ride. It was a nice ride all told, but the thing about Lydney and environs, especially when compared to Cambridge, is that there are *hills*. I ended up walking several stretches, and rather stressing out my lungs having pushed just a bit too hard in places, but it was a glorious day, and much of it was in lovely gently rolling countryside, or through the woods and it was all beautiful. Amusingly we also found some hills which were too steep going *down* - I was hanging onto the brakes for dear life, thinking that if I could actually *stop* I'd rather walk, and wondering what on earth I'd do if the cables broke. Which they didn't, so all was well. Probably around 8 miles in total I reckon anyway. We had a quiet afternoon, including a nice nap, and then took Evan and Gina out for dinner in Lydney, to a chinese restaurant they'd not actually visited before. Which turned out to a) be pretty good and b) be celebrating the Chinese New Year, so we had a rather nice set meal. We couldn't stay for the lion dance though, as Mike and I were off to meet his friends in the pub. To be continued... (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
11:46 am	A cold, and other stories This week I have mostly been full of cold. It's getting better now, but for several days I was seriously bunged up. I even spent one day working from home in the morning and then sleeping in the afternoon, but I've not *quite* been ill enough to take any days off properly. It was definitely a relief to wake up on Friday and discover I could *breathe* again. I'm still a little snuffly, and coughing in the mornings, but I'm *so* much better. As a result we've not been doing very much. I've read quite a bit (see books list) and we've watched Threads on DVD plus half of the first series of Father Ted. On Friday we were very disappointed that it didn't snow at all, and on Saturday we did some serious spring cleaning (the kitchen hasn't looked as good in weeks) and then had Mobbsy, Duncan and Andrew over to watch the Rugby. It's nice watching matches with people who don't actually mind too much who wins, so long as it's a good game. And it was kinda fun watching the Welsh come from so far behind to win. But for me it would be nicer if that had been just because they'd upped their own game (which they had) rather than because England also fell to pieces. Still, it was fun. We ate half the world's supply of assorted crisps and dip, but Duncan and Andrew managed to leave enough room to join us at the Blue for a pint and some food (CB2 was sadly booked up. This has happened before. We should plan earlier!) before coming back to ours for another hour or so of setting the world to rights. A very enjoyable afternoon and evening. Today Duncan has offered to host the Scotland/France match, but I'm not sure we're going to make it out of the house. There are computer games to play, books to read, a bass guitar I really ought to do some practice on, and trashy TV to watch later, never mind the washing up to do :-) Next week we're off on Thursday and Friday, going to visit Mike's family and friends in Lydney for a couple of days, followed by meeting up with people in Bath on Saturday for Rae's birthday. I'm looking forward to it. And of course it's pancake day on Tuesday. I'm still trying to decide if I want to give anything up for Lent this year, and if so then what. I've already given up drinking diet coke at work as a New Year's resolution (if a slightly odd one) and actually I'm quite enjoying just drinking water and juice for the most part. And I still have to work out what to get my sister for her 30th later in February: we're all off to Lisbon for the weekend, which should be excellent. Life's good. Apart from the cold :-) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
12:55 pm	Finished scarf Finished scarf Originally uploaded by lnr_blair I finished the scarf! Here modeled by Mike's office chair. I'm please with how it came out anyway, even if some might consider it a bit bright. (3 Comments |Comment on this)