Windy Weather

I had to rescue the bins today. Its bin day and they were being blown down the hill. Loads of them in a stream down the road inbetween cars. The trees were all being bent over by the high winds. Wild winds tho are not nice to drive in and I had to drive to work. There was loads of traffic too and normally its a straight run to work. I think the lorries were having to drive very slowly cos of cross winds and that was making everyone else slow down so we had a traffic jam. I am not used to that since I moved to Kilsby. Its a horrible day altogether here. The weather is looking really awful. Its hailing now too. We were hoping to get on with the garden fence this weekend but if its like it is today there is not much chance of that. I bought a heated propogator in Sunday to start off some seeds. Dont want to put it in the greenhouse until the garden is fenced incase it walks. After all if someone will nick a £20 angle grinder from Aldi ( they do very good cheap powertools by the way) they will certainly nick a £30 heated propogater. The angle grinder went walking about a month ago so we are being careful what we store in the garden shed now. Atleast until we have a better fence. Tho if the shed had a proper door it might help. Its just a bit of polythene at the moment. You have great intentions but all these DIY jobs seem to take so long! At the moment anyone can just hop over the garden fence which is infact a bit of garden wire which was put up by the last resident to show where the boundary is. So far we have only managed to fence about a third of the garden. We need to get it finished not just for security reasons but because we moved there so the dogs could have freedom and they wont have till the fence is done. We had a disaster yesterday .............or M did!! Dropped a saucepan on the floor and damaged a floor tile. It would be in the middle too and not on the edge where we haven`t finished tiling wouldnt it. I suppose thats cheap tiles tho. Damage easily. Still we have enought to do the kitchen 3 times over thanks to B&Qs chart which told us we needed 17 boxes when we actually needed 5!. Even accounting for a few mistakes we do not need 17 boxes. I thought since we had bought so many we could use them in the entrance hall which sounds grand but is actually about 3 tiles deep and 4 tiles wide so not very big at all. I dont think it will be a good idea to do that now tho since the entrance is used quite a bit and if they damage as easily as that we are going to be stuffed having them just in the kitchen. Maybe they are only any good for bathrooms. There wasnt anything either in store or on the box to say they were not up to kitchen use. Or is it just that my familly is very good at damaging houses? I cant help but wonder. It would have been nice to finish the tiling before we damaged the floor tho. Still hopefully we can get the damaged tile up and replace it without damaging any of the rest. I will let you know what happens when we attempt it! I suppose if it is really horrible weather we can finish the kitchen floor this weekend.

Internet shopping and loony canines

Changed jobs recently, and now get paid in the middle of the month. It seemed brilliant since I used to be paid on the last day of the month. It had been 6 weeks since my last payday so I really needed some money. We were almost out of food. Also had no fresh veggies at all so nothing that could be called healthy. One of the recent big disasters was a falafel mix. I made it up exactly as it said on the packet.........It was an add water job..........but it was inedible slop and not at all like falafel is meant to be. Anyway decided to go internet shopping since there are no health shops within about 20 miles worth visiting and even the local Tesco isnt up to much. Mind you I was spoilt when we lived in the city since we were about half a mile from what is one of the biggest Tesco in Europe! Not that particularly prefer Tesco over anyone else. I dont actually have any allegiance to anyone but convenience does count for a lot when you are busy. I paid nearly all my money to bills anyway since I hadnt been paid for so long and the account had got into overdraft. Sometimes I really wonder. I go to work and then give nearly all my wages away every month! Well the food stocks had been running pretty low. Even basics such as dried food like soya were running out so it was internet shopping time. Visited Redwood food and Vegan store.co.uk and bought a wide variety of strange foods. Many we havent tried before but I have heard great reviews of a product called " Dixie not tuna" so I have bought that. You just add water I think and can use it to make sarnies or fish(type) pies. Cant wait for it all to arrive. Ofcourse it could be another disaster like the falafel. So far bought food from 2 websites and also went sale shopping at an eco site. Tho about half of what I bought there was washing up liquid and samu soap nuts (I use these instead of washing powder and conditioner and they are brilliant and actually work out to be about half the price as well as not polluting the planet so really good to get into). Also bought some bird houses, recycled fluorescent green glass dinner plates and a top for M. He doesnt know yet so hope he likes it. Its made from Hemp! he never buys clothes tho so I feel its ok to spend on stuff for him. Last night visited nearest local supermarket which turns out to be Aldi. Well very impressed. Didnt spend much and seem to have loads of fresh fruit and veg. Though tomatoes are very expensive there. Shop was pretty empty too so easy to shop there. Mind you it was 7.00pm on a Monday night so it could be a totally different matter at the weekend. Anyway at least now we wont starve to death. Then after shopping decided to take my darling dogs for a walk to post my Grandma`s birthday card. Reggie decided to have a freak out when he saw a spaniel. The spaniel hadnt done anything it was just there and my dogs both hate every other dog they see. This is a pain since firstly it is very embarrassing. And secondly he sets his brother off. Ronnie is fine when Reggie is not there but he seems to think if Reggie starts screaming at another dog then he needs help or protect his brother. The pack instinct takes over. So anyway there we are dragging our not very big but totally loony dogs down the road. The spaniel is soon out of sight but will mad dog shut up? he just screammed this horrible noise till we got to the house. So he didnt go a very long walk last night which was good for me but not so good for loony canines. Poor mad creatures virtually never get to be free off leads. We just cannot trust them not to attack other peoples dogs and I would hate to be responsible for them hurting someone. Does everyone with a rescue dog have problems like this? I mean they are adorable darlings and so soft and they just change character every now and then when other dogs come into sight!

Steep learning curve

Well having had an ipod for several months and only ever managed to put a couple of songs onto it I decided this was the weekend. Spent friday night ripping music. Saturday decided to put it onto it. Now I know they are supposed to do it when they synchronise but mine just wont do that so I have to do it manually. Probably me being rubbish with computors. Anyway finally get all this stuff onto my ipod and to M`s which was brilliant for- sight tho I didnt know it yet. Anyway then I decide I am having problems with finding new stuff so I will delete all the old music I already have and start again so I can just add album by album. ( have a laptop and not much disk storage space) Plug in ipod to add next album and it wipes everything else! Depression or what. So I had a rest and took dogs a walk. Then came back and had a look on the internet and look up how to restore music to itunes from ipod. Loads of posts saying cant be done but then: lo and behold theres a post with directions. Detailed dierections cos else couldnt have even considered doing what I did. Anyway 4 steps later I have learned how to make ipod separate storage device and extracted all of M`s music ( which didnt have as much as I managed to wipe but saves days of time downloading) and have restored at least 80% of what i wiped. Hey hey success. I actually feel I might be able to use ipods from now on. And I have loads of music to play in my car on journey to work!

Other than that met a good friend S and her boyfriend on Saturday night and went over the road to our local and indulged in lots of real ale. Felt disgusting on Sunday morning. Even a long country walk with Ronnie and Reggie ( my two "stray" dogs) didnt really make me feel much better. Couldnt do much on Sunday cos M had to go to work. They have changed his work so he now has to do rotating shifts and the night shift starts on Sunday night which really doesnt give a very long weekend! No idea why they had to do that cos hes been working there for years and the 3 shifts sorted it out amongst themselves so that in the yard each person only had to work one shift. Now a manager has decided they must all rotate. Not only does it muck up 3 different familly lives its not good for your health and I have heard it said it knocks years off your lifespan too which is not good. Still hopefully something will come along and M will find a better job. Especially since he works 25 miles away anyway. The main reason for staying there was he liked it and the shifts were ok. When management drop stuff like this on you you may just as well move to a different company. So anyway we had a very short weekend and I didnt drink anything on Sunday ( alcoholwise anyway!)......... probably good for my health but not much fun.