All that comes with it Rotating Header Image

June, 2008:

Empty House

Jun 13th, 2008
by Dan.
18 comments

Recently I’ve expanded my repertoire of walks to include a few more hills. I’m still basically walking from Slaithwaite to Marsden and back, but now I’m trudging up the valley sides rather than the valley bottom.

The other day I came across a rather dilapidated abandoned farm house. Despite my anxieties about being murdered by a lurking drug addict I had a quick poke around. I liked what I saw, so this morning I went back with the camera.

I can only think the reason that the house is abondoned rather than converted into a swish executive home is that it isn’t accessible by road. Well, that and there is no water or electricity. Didn’t stop me fantasizing about buying it and renovating myself though. A man can dream, and an empty house in the middle of nowhere is the ideal place to do so.

IMG_2179

IMG_2210

IMG_2267

IMG_2199

IMG_2232

You can see the rest of the set here (and yes Oli, I was using a flash. Stop nagging me)

Next on the list is “Confabulate”

Jun 12th, 2008
by Dan.
11 comments

I thought it was time that Evan widened his his vocabulary.

Dan: “Evan, say nincompoop”

Evan “flurble”

Dan: “Nincompoop”

Evan: “flurble”

Dan: “Say nin”

Evan: “nin”

Dan: “com”

Evan: “com”

Dan: “poop”

Evan: “poop’

Dan: “Nincompoop!”

Evan: “COLIN!!”

To be fair that isn’t quite as random as it would appear. Colin is the name of Evan’s keyworker at nursery and he adores him. “Colin” is his favorite word in the world and shouting it at every opportunity is his default setting.

Strangely enough Evan’s second favorite word is ‘Dolphin”. Since he first saw them at a sea life center in Spain he has been borderline obsessed. We must have watched the YouTube video of the Orlando Dolphin show nearly as much as we have watched Amy’s copy of “High School Musical 2″. Oh yes, it’s a culturally rich environment in our household.

Don’t read this, read this

Jun 11th, 2008
by Dan.
9 comments

Greg pointed out to me yesterday that I haven’t posted in about five days. That just might be a new world record for me. Although the comment feels a bit rich coming from someone who updates his own blog whenever Brigadoon makes a reappearance.

I’ve got various amounts of stuff on my plate at the moment, both good and bad, and the impulse to babble on this blog just hasn’t been there recently. Don’t worry, it will come back, but it’ll probably be pretty quiet here for another couple of days.

But that’s not the reason I’m posting today. The reason I’m breaking my silence is that I wanted to point you all in the direction of my favorite new blog discovery:

I’m Ian. A 30 year old widower, and parent to the most brilliant young boy in the world. Max is 3 and his name really suits him. By day I’m a freelance writer and child dropper-off-er/picker-up-er. At any other time, I’m trying to be a superhero dad, albeit hindered by dodgy knees. Enjoy this blog.

Ian from Single Parent Dad has a touching story to tell and he does it with great writing and humor. This guy deserves to be warmly embraced by the Daddyblogging community.

Go to it.

Planning logistics

Jun 6th, 2008
by Dan.
11 comments

Oli, Dave, Kerry and I had a planning meeting for the Dales Walk last weekend. If you’re really interested you can see what we discussed here, but it’s rather dull.

Oli sent me some photos that he had taken during the meeting, and his captions amused me somewhat so I thought I’d share.

_MG_8675

I think it sums it all up very well.
Dave, the Quartermaster was looking at “Things to Eat”, stroking the crinkle cut crisp.
Evan was pottering around, handing us things.
You were trying to work out which of the four maps to open first.
I couldn’t even focus the camera.

At least I didn’t get a bit of lego stuck in my foot!

———-

_MG_8676

This shows the true cohesion of our planning group.  You’re pointing at a path, and Dave’s indicating the motorway.  Marvellous

———-

_MG_8670

And finally, a photo in focus, and with a big smile. (are you actually sitting on Amy?!)

————————

In July of this year I shall be walking 78 miles in 6 days in aid of the Joseph Salmon Trust, a charity founded by my close friends in memorial to their son Joseph who died aged 3 in April of 2005. Please look here for further details and consider sponsoring me. Thank you.

All things bright and beautiful

Jun 5th, 2008
by Dan.
22 comments

The kids and I were driving back from the supermarket and I was suddenly struck by the magnificence of the countryside we were passing through.

“Just look at that Amy” I told her “Just look at the beautiful green hills and trees. Isn’t it wonderful!”

“Yes” she told me “And look at the cows. They have to sleep all night in a field but they don’t even get dirty!”

We all marvel at nature in different ways I suppose.

grass.JPG

Obama

Jun 4th, 2008
by Dan.
22 comments

So it looks like America has now elected Barack Obama as its president. It’s been a long road but there is now a African American in the White House and it is time to reflect on how far the USA has come since the days of…

What?

Primaries? John McWho? It’s not over?

Oh for fucks sake.

Can’t you Americans get a bloody move on? How long does it take to elect a president anyway? Can’t you just take a leaf from South America’s book? They get through about three new ones a week down there, far more efficient.

Still I suppose I better resign myself to reading about the American election for the next hundred years or so. I wouldn’t mind, but I recently made some enquiries and apparently I’m not even allowed to vote. Pure blatant racism, that’s what I call it.

Guest Post Tuesday: Lee

Jun 3rd, 2008
by Dan.
4 comments

Everyone in this world needs an Australian pop culture guru, and Lee is mine. I’d advise you to go and check out his excellent blog, Quit Your Day Job, but I don’t want you stealing him from me.

I really should sing Lee’s praises a bit more, after all he is a talented and entertaining writer and artist who’s blog entries I always look forward to reading. However I’ve had a hard 24 hours (check my twitter) and I just want to blast some aliens on my Wii and then go to bed.

So put down your swag bag by the bilabong, draw up a jumbuck, watch out for bunyips, and enjoy what Lee has to say.

———————–

1995 is already here man!

I was going to write about something pithy and full of wit for my guest post here at Dan’s place.  Instead I’ll go with talking about junk food and old Sandra Bullock films.

I remember when the 1995 film The Net came out, computers were scary because for years we had seen Matthew Broderick.  Ummm oh yeah there was more to that sentence, we had seen Matthew Broderick in War Games and saw the stupid ‘net’ almost blowing the world up.

Stupid net.

But then Sandra came along and while Sandy from the OC was sleeping she was making the world fall in love with her!  Well some of us did, well some of you did, hey we’re not talking Demolition Man here.

Then something bad happened.

The stupid net took on Sandra!

But before that Sandra was using the net the way that we all expected it to work, she ordered pizzas online.  She went to the pizza site (that I can only imagine was called orderpizzasonlinethirteenyearsearly.com), picked out her toppings, used her credit card and then some dude brought the pizza to her door.

Yes I remember when The Net came out and none of that was bloody well possible at the time.  We were watching the movie one night and all drunkenly stumbled down to the computer room at uni and logged on to this so called net in order to do some cool net stuff like order pizzas or demand NORAD blow up some goat herder.

Nothing.

Some weird search engine that pretty much brought nothing up except some text sites talking about I don’t know what, nor did I care as it didn’t look like anything in The Net.

Flash forward thirteen years (well not exactly flash forward as it has taken me thirteen years to get here) and guess what I did tonight?

I ordered pizza, I picked my toppings and paid by credit card and a surly man brought it to my door, yes he forgot the garlic bread, but he always does that even when we order in store.  The point is I didn’t have to get out of my chair and walk over to the phone, dial some number and use my voice to order!!!

Now I have some error to check on one of my websites it has the Pi symbol in the corner and when I hit CTRL and SHIFT at the same time it does something funny…

I am considering consulting a lawyer

Jun 1st, 2008
by Dan.
17 comments

I don’t often blog about my work, mainly because it would be inappropriate. For those that don’t know, I am a community psychiatric nurse working for a mental health crisis team. We have a number of different roles, but the easiest explanation is that if you turn up at casualty, your GP’s surgery, or the police station and you appear to be either suicidal or psychotic it’s my team that gets called to come and see you.

It’s an interesting job, but not as stressful or dangerous as you probably imagine it is.

As I say, I avoid the subject of my work here. In fact I’ve deleted the only two entries I’ve written about it from my archives, I just didn’t feel comfortable with them being there. However over the last six months something has been happening in our office that I just can’t keep quiet about any more.

I am being victimized.

There is a whiteboard in the office where we are supposed to write down where we are going and how long we will be whenever we go out. This is so that if we get brutally murdered our colleagues will know which lamp post to sellotape the bunch of flowers to. Of course most of of the time I am far too disorganized to actually update my section. In fact I’m pretty sure that according to the board I have been out on the same home visit since November 2007. Still, the theory is sound.

Over the past few months however various little notes have been appearing on the board next to my name. And far from being the respectful, reverential statements about how admired and valued I am that you would expect, these notes are quite frankly insulting in nature.

The current trend is for adverts cut out of magazines implying I am in some way incontinent. For example I took this one from beside my name just this very afternoon:

Waterproof Pull on Pants
Soft, quite vinyl for discreet wear
Stay comfortably dry with these waterproof pull-on pants. Made from soft vinyl they offer dependable whisper quiet protection from leakages.

There are also adverts for adult bibs and “sheath catheters”. This hardly shows the respect due to someone with a job title of “Specialist Nurse Practitioner” I’m sure you’ll agree.

What’s worse is that there are also pictures stuck up there of celebrities I am allegedly supposed to resemble:

ed_imgSNN0423I_241649a

The outrage!!

But I know who the culprit is. In fact he makes little attempt to hide his guilt for these nefarious deeds. It is this man, the dastardly Mr Ian Finchette:

davidcameron1

Just look at him. He’s got criminal lowlife written all over his face. It’s the eyes I think, far too close together. And anyway, how come he has all these adverts to hand anyway? I suspect he has subscriptions to a number of “specialist magazines”. The dirty bugger.

Reading comments left by Holmes and JenK the other day about office pranks they have pulled I decided to get my own back. Their ideas of setting a printscreen of someone’s desktop as their desktop wallpaper or sticking paper over the optical sensor of their mouse were good, but a little too tame for my tastes. So I just settled on cutting the breakpipes on his car.

The old ones are always the best ones I’ve always found.

Page 2 of 212