Archive for August, 2009

Having secured some time off work I spent last weekend down in Swindon visiting Kieran. While down there we made our way round Stonehenge, Avebury, some kind of castle ruins, a rather enjoyable meal out at the local Italian and a BBQ – as well as plenty of drink and good conversation too. All in all a very enjoyable weekend.

I dabbled for the first time in Yahoo Answers last week.

The concept, for those who haven’t seen it, is that you ask a question and everyone else has the opportunity to answer it. To help keep things balanced there is also a points system where you earn for answering questions and spend by asking questions.

As such I asked can a tree get swine flu? I got a number of answers and when the time had expired picked the best one, which gave me quite a technical answer to the question (it’s no, for those that are wondering).

Good stuff.

Went to The Original Oak for lunch on Friday as usual. But unlike normal, we never came back 😀 .

First off it was a bit of a celebration as Imran is heading off to Egypt today to get married (to a woman he has met before – once 😉 ) to we sent him on his way with a rather nice gift, some champagne flutes that Holly had picked up for him despite the fact he doesn’t drink 😀 .

Secondly, Stu who manages BetOptions which is the Australian office of our company was over on a flying visit so it ended up with almost the entire office heading out to the pub. Our food was a bit delayed too so by the time we had finished eating Rob told us we could take the afternoon off. Fantastic!

I finished moving house on Thursday.

When I say I finished moving, I have now moved everything in to my new place. It isn’t sorted yet, a lot of stuff is still in boxes, I don’t have a bed or a sofa but everything that was in my old place has now been transfered to my new place which hopefully means the hard work is over.

Now I just need to sort everything out in my new place which is looking like it should be coming along – my bed should be arriving today, I have my phone line up and running, the internet has been ordered and should go live on Friday and no doubt a huge council tax bill on the way so things are gradually coming together.

Headed out to the pub on Wednesday with Si and Sarann. Having had a lot (and I mean a lot 😀 ) of mixed grills at various pubs recently I can testify that the Deer Park is really worth the extra cash for their mixed grills. That said the service was a bit shakey all night.

There is just something wrong about everyone driving to the pub though. It seems part of my decent into young adulthood. Still, at least I still managed to spend the evening gossiping about people rather than having productive, mature discussions. Win.

Here’s a few more fun adventures with the new apartment…

We only have one key fob between the three of us. So I asked my letting agent who said I would need to speak to the building management company. I did, they told me I needed to speak to the caretaker. He told me I needed to speak to some guy in Shipley.

I spoke to the guy in Shipley, he said he had some in stock. I tried to order some but apparently they don’t take credit cards. It’s 2009, but they don’t. So I have to mail them payment before they can send them out.

I got a letter through from nPower telling me if I didn’t ring them in the next 14 days they were going to cut my gass off. So I rang them, not really having looked into it, and they told me that the apartment did in fact not actually have a gass connection.

I tried to at least get my electricity sorted but I needed a meter reading for that so I rang my letting agent who said they didn’t have one as they couldn’t get in to wherever the meters are so had had to request one off Accent the building management company who hadn’t got back to them.

The car park permit people are very much like my letting agent – they don’t answer their phones even when I’m trying to give them money.

The repairs division of my letting agent do answer their phones, but not when you press 1 for repairs on the automated voice at the beginning. You have to press 2 for rent payments and then ask to be transfered.

I needed to speak to them however as I would like my door handles to be attached to my doors and screwed in, not simply pushed on as several of them are at the moment. I also need a key to the balcony door, which they don’t have, so they’re probably going to have to drill the lock out and put a new one in.

Good times.