Life in the Bus Lane

I’ve eaten and drunk far too much, and that’s about it really. After spending several hours on Sunday playing Mario Kart on the Wii I decided I had to have one, but luckily all the shops round here are out of stock so I’ve not been able to buy one, something for which my bank account is eternally grateful.
Work has been very quiet so far apart from the box which part-broke on Boxing Day causing me to come to work, which then broke properly once when I came back in yesterday. I’m now waiting for a replacement to wing it’s way from Scotland.

It’s a short day at work tomorrow, then I’m off for the rest of the week. Lots of sleep is in order I think.

A broken proxy server at work meant I got to take the Uncle John out on a trip into work this morning. Other than a minor tweak to the angle of the saddle, it feels fantastic. I didn’t even have to adjust the saddle height from the guesstimate I used when I built it. I might treat it to a nice shiny Thomson stem at some point for no reason other than they look good.

All the bits have been transferred across from the XO, and it’s is now all finished apart from a bit of fine-tuning.

Time to watch Santa as he traverses the globe.

Norad tracks Santa.

An obvious choice for our christmas film, and another film I’ve never actually seen.

Play have just started their “monster” sale, and so far it’s cost me £70 or so today. It helps fill a few holes in our top 250 films project though.

I finally collected the new frame today and it’s now been unboxed, sat on the sofa, and looks massive. I still need a few parts such as forks, a SFN, and a new band for the front mech before I can think about starting to build it. Hopefully everything else from the XO will swap straight over with no troubles.

I seem to have had a day of finding things. So far I’ve found

• the house keys that went missing three or four months ago, which turned out to be caught up in the seal around the washing machine door.
• enough cable inners and outer to probably recable every bike I’ve ever owned, soon to be added to by the new cable set I ordered for the Uncle John.
• three boxes of christmas cards left over from last year which will go nicely with the box and a bit left from this year. No doubt I’ll find them again this time next year just in time to add more to the pile.

If the measurements are to be believed, my P2 forks won’t fit on the Uncle John as the steerer is too short.

Time to come up with Plan B.

Delivered to the lovely Mr Porch, whoever he is.

18 Dec 2008 11:57 Yate (west Coast Express) Delivered, signed for by PORCH, using Saturn

Obviously my chimney sweep has insomnia. At least that’s the only reason I can think of to explain why he arrived at a rather uncivilised 6:30 this morning.

We’ve not had one of these for a while, but it’s nearly christmas so why not do it all over again?

It’s not actually being delivered to me this time, so I won’t get to see it until the weekend anyway.

A birthday choice for me this week, so what else could we watch except my favourite film of all time? Actually we were going to watch Apocalypse Now Redux, but it turned out to be a bit too long for this evening.

Since we started this list a few months ago, The Shawshank Redemption is back in it’s rightful spot at the top of the chart.

There’s an XL Planet-X Uncle John frame on the way to replace the slightly-too-short Trek XO I’ve been riding on and off for the last five years.

It’s an early christmas present to myself.

At long last, The Dangerous Brothers are available on DVD. Go and buy it now, you won’t regret it.

36 doesn’t feel that much different to 35 really, although the hangover might be masking things slightly.

The ticket for this was an early birthday present. After eating our fill in Nandos we headed for my first visit to Komedia, a converted old cinema in town. On stage tonight were Waterson:Carthy with Mike Waterson standing in for his pregnant niece Eliza Carthy, along with Lauren McCormick, Emily Portman and Jim Causley. We were presented with about 100 minutes of traditional Christmas tunes, and more than a few bad jokes. Mike Waterson took on the role of the stereotypical folk singer, in wooly jumper, flat cap, pint of ale on hand, and a finger in the ear whilst singing. Plenty of references were made to Yorkshire carol singing which would have kept Father happy, but we were only blessed with on version of “While Shepherds Watched”.

A very civilised evening washed down with plenty of red wine.

If I die a bacon-related death, I’d like it to be because of this.

I think that’s tomorrow’s lunch sorted.

Another film I’ve never seen, which came as something of a surprise to the others.

Can sausage and chips help cure the common cold? We may find out later.

My perpetual cold is making a resurgance at the moment so I feel like crap. This isn’t helped by the fact the heating in the office is broken so it’s a bit chilly here at the moment.

I should really just have stayed in bed today.

The Blu-ray version is fantastic, especially the IMAX-sourced parts which you didn’t get to see at a “normal” cinema. I still think they wasted an excellent opportunity to use the line “Gordon’s Alive“.

Our second subtitled foreign-language film, and one that was far more amusing than I was expecting, especially considering the subject matter of the latter half.

Pinched from Boing Boing