It’s New Years Eve tomorrow which is no doubt why I’m getting yet another cold. It’s also been raining constantly since I woke up this morning which isn’t particularly nice, and the network at work is playing up. I think I should just have stayed in bed this morning.
I’m currently sat in the office with my coat and hat on as it’s bloody freezing in here. We haven’t even got any snow to make up for the low temperatures. I think warmer clothing will be needed tomorrow.
I’m currently watching The American President on TV, and have to constantly remind myself that I’m not watching The West Wing, and Martin Sheen isn’t the President in this.
It’s not helped by the fact that both are recorded on the same set, written by the same person, and share several key cast members.
Christmas is now officially over for another year. I headed into town for a bit of shopping earlier, managed to buy a few things which I needed but weren’t in the sales, and just about managed to resist the urge to kill everyone in M&S although I did have to leave fairly quickly as my resistance was rapidly fading and I could forsee a massacre at the bottom of the escalator.
I’m headinb back to work tomorrow, and rumour has it that I’m in charge for the day as I’m the only manager daft enough to be. Should be fun.
Total miles for this year: 2401.00
Ethan, Christmas 2005
I’m currently eating my way through an Easter egg.
I didn’t want to disappoint. Christmas Day 2005.
I now have more power tools that I know what to do with, and lots more presents which I shall endeavour to unpack tomorrow.
Apologies to Denis Leary for stealing his line for the title.
Highlight of the day was In Search of Mornington Crescent on Radio 4 this morning, well worth a listen if you like that sort of thing.
This evening was spent drinking wine and swapping presents with a friend, before heading out to my uncles for a pre-christmas party where I drank even more red wine. I’ve now got home and just too keep things flowing, I’ve got another glass of red wine in front of me.
After a fairly quiet day at work, I headed out for a quick spin on the Langster. I did briefly consider doing the 24 miles I needed to reach my target for the year, but my legs weren’t working properly do I settled for a little over half that, leaving me 11.5 miles to do sometime over the next 10 days or so. I might try and finish it off Saturday morning if I get around to delivering presents in time.
It should be a good day at work tomorrow, the filing cabinet is well stocked with mulled wine and other alcohol to help the passing of the hours.
Tonight was our usual pre-christmas away match at Combe Down RFC. It’s a funny alley, reasonably honest, but you can score 48 one leg, and follow it with a 25.
We swapped legs for the first few, then started to drop behind a bit ending up at 4-2, somehow we brought the game back to 4-4, but managed to lose the last leg by a good 10 pins or so. Despite getting a 0 in one leg, I somehow managed to be top score for the night.
Engineers took the full 8 points, Housing Admin had to settle for 4.
We now get a few weeks respite before the return match on Jan 9th 2006.
Very smooth, and very very nice.
I could get to like this, but I suspect my wallet would complain.
John Spencer has died of a heart attack. His character in The West Wing, Leo McGarry, survived a heart attack whilst White House Chief of Staff and then went on to run for Vice President.
No doubt it’ll screw up the story line for a while, how badly depends on how far ahead they have already filmed as they are currently midway through the seventh season.
BBC News: West Wing’s Leo dies at age of 58
The birthday bike ride was a bit of a disaster as my legs appear to have gone on strike, so I cut it short and only did 17.5 miles or so. That leaves me about 33 miles to do before the end of the month.
This evening was spent at my parents opening more presents, which as mainly a selection of good books, and eating and drinking too much. I’m now joining Matt in his annual Nirvana Unplugged evening whilst sipping Whiskey which was another birthday present.
I appear to have survived another year without actually working out what I want to do when I grow up. I think I’ll head out for a birthday bike ride.
This morning I managed to finished my Christmas shopping, at least I hope I’ve finished it. Town wasn’t too painful thanks to it being a weekday morning, although I still despise shopping in real shops.
After lunch I took the Stiffee out round the Uni for a quick spin, the chainsuck didn’t reoccur, but the brakes are shockingly bad. The front one squeals continuously, and both brakes locked up after the descent from the downs back to the canal. I’ll have a go at bleeding the brakes and hopefully that’ll sort them out. Ideally I’d like to replace them with some Shimano ones, but that’s not really cost effective, I could steal the XT ones of the Craftworks, but that leaves me with brakes of the wrong size on each bike, so the E4s will have to do for the moment.
Not quite a record breaking match this week, but it was still all over by 21:30.
A relatively easy 5-0 victory for us again, and we won by 38 pins or so.
Housing Admin took the full 8 points, Picadillys again went home empty handed.
After a near two hour wait, I’m now on the waiting list for surgery. The maximum waiting time is six months, but they aren’t actually allowed to operate on anyone until they have waited six months because of a lack of money, so I’m assuming my appointment will be sometime on the afternoon of June 12th 2006.
Thanks to the joys of a generous holiday allowance, I’m enjoying a week of leisure. After a nice lie-in I headed out on the Langster for a quick spin around the lanes of Saltford and Keynsham. It was partly the usual Saltford - Burnett route with an extra trip up double-gravity, and a scenic meander back through the lanes and round the edge of Keynsham, a very pleasant if slightly chilly 20 mile ride.
Despite being off work, I’ve got to head in to the hospital this afternoon so they can work out what size carving knife or chainsaw they need to cut the lump out of my back.
The Stiffee hasn’t had much use recently, partly because the last two times I rode it in anger it suffered badly from chainsuck to the point that the chain got jammed above the chainstay and needed to be split and rejoined to free it. Given that this takes ten minutes or so to fix it’s not an ideal situation. The problem is that thanks to the generous tyre clearance and beefy chainstays, there is just enough room between the middle chainring and the chainstay to squeeze a chain through, but not enough room to get it out again. I have various plans to alleviate the problem, and today was the chance of the "free" one.
The Deore cranks and BB were removed and replaced with RaceFace Prodigy cranks and a RaceRace BB from the Craftworks. The ISIS BB is adjustable so that I can move the chainset out a bit to give more clearance. I also swapped the beefy 34T chainring for a more slender 32T one which should also give a bit more room.
If this doesn’t work the next step is to "upgrade" to a nine-speed drivetrain, it’s not strictly necessary, but if I’m replacing the chain and cassette anyway it seems silly not to get new shifters as well for not much more money.
Whilst I was waving my tools around, I also replaced the front mech on the cross bike with a 9spd one which will hopefully sort out the dodgy front shifting.
The Hobbs Cup is more commonly known as the pins cup, and in the initial rounds is played over seven legs, with the team with the highest total of pins being the winners. We last won this cup eight years ago.
To be honest, tonights game was a game I never expected us to win, however after four legs we were tied on 202 pins each which was a bonus. However Larks scored an average of 60 pins in each of their last three legs and we didn’t. We went into the last leg needing 80 pins, which was never going to happen, and we ended up losing by 30 pins or so partly because we sort of gave up trying mid-leg when we realised each player needed to score 14 or more.
Somehow I ended up with top score partly due to an 11-spare in the first leg.
One good outcome of the night was that our pair of Den and Rob knocked their pair out of the pairs cup.
No proper ride tonight as the weather is consipiring against me. It started raining about 10 minutes before I left work and hasn’t stopped yet. I think I’ll settle for a pizza, the last bottle of Old Speckled Hen, and possibly a DVD of City of God.
Tonight was my first proper ride for a week. I headed out after work on the Langster with the aim of doing a few loops of double gravity, however after the first climb I realised I’d managed to leave all my tools at home which would make a puncture somewhat problematic, so settled for just the one loop followed by a slightly extended loop around Bath where I was a bit nearer to home if things went wrong. I ended up doing a fairly chilly 17 miles instead of the 20+ I was aiming for.
Only three more days at work then I’ve got a week off, hopefully the weather will be good enough to finish off the last few miles I want to do before Christmas gets in the way.
A nice early start tonight for a change, and we soon headed into a nice lead. Picadillys were very consistent with the first three legs all totalling 47 whereas we had 50, 58, and 50. A couple more decent legs and we cruised to a 5-0 victory. The match finished at 21:18 which is a new team record for the earliest finish.
Housing Admin took the full 8 points, Picadillys went home empty handed.
Next match is a Pins Cup match on Thursday.
Having just had a pay cut at work as part of Agenda for Change, it looks like we’ll be getting another pay cut next April. Gordon Brown has decided that NHS pay rises must be based on the governments inflation target of 2%. Given that their inflation target doesn’t include factors such as housing costs or council tax, it means an effective pay cut in real terms even if they do reach their 2% target. It looks like Labour are doing their best to kill off the NHS.
Friday night was a work outing. It used to be known as the network support christmas party, but some of the other people in the department complained that we didn’t invite them along, the fact they didn’t actually work in network support seemed to escape them, so we renamed it as "Carl’s birthday" because Carl happened to have the nearest birthday to the meal that year. This year we went for a curry. We met up in the pub first for beer, most of which was sponsored, then headed off for the curry and more beer. I was still feeling a bit ill so after the curry I was only intending to stay for another pint then head home early, however 5 or 6 pints later I ended up staggering home about 2am.
Due to the overindulgence of Friday, I was intending to have a quiet night in on Saturday, but Ali next door popped his head round about 5:45 and I ended up going out for a quick beer then the cinema. Somehow it didn’t go entirely to plan and I ended up staggering home about 1:30.
Sunday so far has involved a walk out to Bathampton for Sunday lunch, then back home again, it’s probably time to catch up on some sleep now.
I’ve not ridden a bike since Tuesday, something I must attempt to rectify this week.
