A musical weekend

Gosh, where does the time go? I feel like we havn't posted in ages. I suppose it's a combination of both being busy, but not with interesting stuff!

Anyway, what have we been up to? This weekend was nicely musical, with my choral society concert on Saturday evening and Tim's first band gig of the summer on Sunday. Both went well - I've now got no more rehearsals until September, while Tim is booked up almost every weekend with various gigs. We're also heading into graduation season, with Andy's on Thursday and Tim's next week. I'll make sure I get some good photos of Tim in a silly hat! I think we're getting some more fish this weekend too, so hopefully there will be some pictures of those too. Look at all these things you've got to look forward to... ;-)

'tis the season to be sneezy...

So the hayfever season has started in earnest now - lots of sneezing all round the offices today. I've been suffereing for the past few days with itchy eyes and mouth and a very runny nose, but I'm keeping going with the thought that it's much better than when I lived in Reading. Plus, my hayfever usually goes after a couple of weeks and then I'll be fine for the rest of the summer. I suspect Tim can't wait - being woken up every two hours over night when I blow my nose can't be much fun!

Still, at least we're having a bit of summer. Our garden is in no fit state to sit out in at the moment, but we're working on it - Tim karate kicked the pampas grass out of the ground on Saturday, so the bed is ready for digging over. I'm starting to plan a vegetable patch for next year... how domestic am I?

A geeky advert

I hope those of you with televisions will be tuning in to channel 4 on Saturday night for 'The World's Biggest Airliner: Building the Airbus A380' - a two hour documentary! It starts at 7 p.m. so yes, it does clash with the finale of Doctor Who. But you know the daleks won't win, and the A380 is much more exciting :-)

Sorry, geek-moment over. We spent some time today talking about the aircraft-after the aircraft-after the A380 - planning ahead just a bit...

On a non-work-related front, Tim's brother Andy came to visit last night so I cooked a meat bolognese for the first time - another culinary milestone. We spent the evening looking at wedding photos and playing our new formula one board game . I won on a two lap race of the monaco circuit - I like to think it was all down to my tactical use of gears and brakes, but really it was just luck with the dice rolls...

One of the many questions of life

Why is it that the chain only ever falls off my bike when I'm wearing a cream top and have no tissues with me to clean my hands afterwards? And why didn't I notice I had my gloves in the side pocket of my rucksack until after I'd put the chain back on? These are the imponderable questions of life.

Still, at least I'm cycling to work these days. It's quite a nice route, up a fairly steep hill but mainly on cycle paths or quiet roads. The last part runs along by the fields - I nearly ran over a pheasant the other day. I've been noticing a lot recently how generally pleasant Bedford is as a place to live. It's a nice small town, so everywhere is easy to get to, there are some lovely parks and walks along by the river and the surrounding countryside is lovely - gently rolling hills and picturesque villages. OK, Bedfordshire isn't on any tourist trail and it's not great for WALKS but I think it's a pretty good place to have ended up in - for the moment at least!

Fishies!!!

Yay! I have finally, after years of waiting, got myself a fish tank! Well, that is, Elspeth and I have got a tank, but it is most definitely mine from the point of view of looking after it. I'm perfectly happy with this: as long as I can watch my fish all day long.

Here is a photo of the tank taken last week when it was sitting with no fish in:
 

For fact fans, it's 125 litres and is maintained at 26C.

After leaving it all of last week to equilibrate to temperature and for me to wait until I could get to the local fish shop (Mr Fish - a quite different prospect to Mr Cod), on saturday I went and bought my first fish. You have to start off with only a few fish and build up slowly, so that the happy bacteria which break down the toxic ammonia the fish produce into nitrites and then nitrates have time to build up in the filter (and yes, for you chemistry fans, I do mean nitrosomonas and nitrobacter).

Anyway, I have five of these little fellas  

(for photography fans, taking good photos of fish is bloody difficult) in my tank. They are red wagtail platys and are currently about an inch long, although they'll be about twice that size when they're bigger. They are absolutely fantastic and I can sit for ages just watching them swimming around. They really do have lots of character and are lots of fun. I haven't had any noticeable problems yet, so I'm rather happy.

Expect to see a lot more on the blog about my fish in the future!

Marks out of ten?

Just to prove we did go on one walk on our honeymoon, here is a 'sports action' shot of Tim crossing a stile with style. 


Not that Tim will be doing anything so athletic for a while - he took a nasty tumble at badminton on Friday and has sprained his ankle. So our plans for a walk this weekend were scuppered. He's still able to walk/hobble although stairs are painful - just as well he's got a loving wife to run up and down them for him!

Wedding present bonanza

A large John Lewis lorry turned up yesterday, containing all our gift list presents. We spent a very enjoyable morning unwrapping them all from the acres of bubble wrap they had been encased in - there was so much of the stuff we got bored of popping the bubbles! So we now have a house full of very nice things, courtesy of all you lovely people. Thank you - official letters of thanks will be in the post in a couple of days, when we've bought some more envelopes...

We made the most of our new stuff this evening - we had roast chicken for dinner (me stuffing a chicken was an interesting experience), carved with our new carving set, accompanied by gravy in our new sauce boat. We ate it sitting at our new dining table, covered in our new tablecloth, with napkins and napkin rings as well as a carafe of water. And it was romantically candle-lit with our new candlesticks! What more could you ask for? Except perhaps dessert of home-made ice cream using our ice cream maker - yum.

You'll be pleased to know that I'm getting the planning itch again, so I'll have to start planning some parties when you can all come over and use all this stuff - after all, we got it to entertain :-)

This is a photo of Swarkestone Pavilion, our 'home from home' for the first week of the honeymoon. It was a lovely, intimate little Pavilion, with one main room with a bed, chairs and table, a staircase in the left hand turret and a kitchen and bathroom in the right hand turret. It also had a very large enclosed lawn in front of it, perfect for playing Kubb. Tim seems to have an interesting throwing action in this shot. Still, he won the game after my initial strong start, so his technique obviously worked.