Happy Halloween!

Right, before anyone feels tempted to complain that I haven't posted for a while- Bite me.

Oh. You did.

Actually this is what I get for tangling with one of the most dangerous creatures known to man: A teething ten month old baby. I thought I'd go for a hug, he thought he'd go for lunch and promptly bit my arm. It still looks pretty bruised even though it's got to be over a week since he did it, although it seems to be healing quicker in the middle of the bruise so I'm soon going to look as if I was assaulted by a hula hoop.

We have had a busy time lately. G has a problem with the tendon in one of her little fingers so she had to have an operation at the end of September. The journey to the hospital was a nightmare as the motorway came to a standstill because of a lorry that had jack-knifed, shedding it's contents of golfballs across the motorway, which sounds like something from a bad sit-com.

Luckily we just managed to get to the hospital in time so everything was able to go ahead. G was in the operating theatre for two and a half hours while Spider and I nervously waited around outside. Everything went well and G was quite proud of her bandage. Even though the op was just on her little finger she had to go around wearing the bandage equivalent of a boxing glove.

Once she realised that it made a fairly servicable club she was fine with it.
We keep having to take G back to the hospital for check ups, which wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that we usually end up waiting for three hours before we get to see the doctor each time. However G seems to be far more patient than me when it comes to waiting around for these appointments.

Probably as a result of the amount of time we have had to spend hanging around hospitals we have all been really ill, first with a major dose of the flu and then with a bad stomach upset. We have to go in tomorrow, so I might go in a containment suit, just in case.

I've taken this week off work and, typically Spider's mum has come down to stay. I suppose I should have expected it- It is Halloween after all, but thankfully she has been on her best behaviour.

I hope you have all had a good Halloween, whatever you have been up to. Here is a link to a Halloween themed game-

Tomorrow it's my birthday, so I hope to be doing as little as possible.

Cat calls

Your Score:

Surprise Adoption

Cat

44% Affectionate, 56% Excitable, 28% Hungry

Calloused. Heartless. Exuberant. You carry the heavy burden of informing children that they are adopted by jumping out of their birthday cake. A difficult task, but somebody must break the news to children on their only day of happiness.

To see all possible results, checka dis.

Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid.

"Smoke what you've got to smoke; drink what you've got to drink; I will meet you at the lonely end of the rink."

Yesterday was the night of The Tragically Hip gig at the Astoria in London where myself, my brother and our long suffering partners who have to put up with our musical tastes headed off to see them.





And we nearly didn't make it.





We caught a train in plenty of time but after getting as far as one stop down the line we found ourselves stuck at that station because the Orient Express, of all things, had broken down on the track ahead of us and they seemed to be having trouble getting it shifted out of the way. In the end we jumped off the train and took a taxi to a station that did actually have trains running on it's lines. The end result was that an hours journey ended up taking us nearer to three, so it was just as well we had left in plenty of time.





Luckily the gig itself made all the extra hassle worthwhile.



The Astoria is a small venue, so you don't have to put up with watching tiny people stood on a stage. The band is right there in front of you so you get the benefit of the whole performance; and when it comes to putting on a performance not many can even come close to topping The Tragically Hip.



The warm up act, Forever Like Red, got things off to a good start. A rock band with a definite Jeff Buckley vibe and some great songs. After about the third song of their set my brother disappeared off to get us both a copy of their album.



Once they had finished playing and the roadies came on the stage to set up the stage for The Hip things got a little surreal. Over to our right, somebody in the venue had pulled out a Canadian flag and a large part of the crowd suddenly burst in to an impromptu rendition of "Oh Canada." I had the vaguely uneasy sensation of being outnumbered on home ground so it's just as well Canadians are so nice. Although it does make you wonder if The Hip always find themselves playing to travelling Canadians wherever they go. Even one of our group was from Canada and there aren't many people outside of that place that have even heard of the band.

While The Hip might be used to playing larger venues in their native Canada I would have to reccomend seeing them at a smaller gig like we did, simply so you are close enough to see what frontman Gordon Downie gets up to. Downie seems to have a limitless supply of energy (or suffers from attention deficit disorder), constantly moving around, so that you hardly watch the rest of the band. Even when he isn't singing Downie commands your attention whether he is smashing up the mike stand to hand out to the audience (having already used it as a prop for a motorbike, a dodgem car and a gun) or acting out some of the lyrics to the songs, from swimming at 'The Drop-Off' to reading the instruction manual from 'Springtime in Vienna.'

The Hip are definitely a band you need to see live and it was great to hear some upbeat, rockier versions of some of their mellower songs. I was especially pleased to hear 'Ahead by a Century,' still my favourite song of theirs, but a little disappointed I didn't have enough money on me to get one of the cool looking Hip hockey jerseys.

Anyway, here is the set list from the night, followed by my aforementioned favourite song:
1: Yer Not The Ocean
2: My Music At Work
3: Grace, Too
4: It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken
5: The Drop-Off
6: Ahead By A Century
7: Gift Shop
8: Family Band
9: Springtime In Vienna
10: At The Hundredth Meridian
11: The Lonely End Of The Rink
12: Bobcaygeon
13: In View
14: Fully Completely
15: New Orleans Is Sinking
16: World Container (introduced as 'World Contain Her' and fantastic to hear live)
17: Courage (For Hugh Maclennan)
18: Fireworks

September 19th

I hope you were all doing your pirate thing today.

Thanks for the reminder Xulub!

Fire!

So much for a quite night in. A group of local children discovered a car. The strange technology confused them so naturally they had to burn it as a witch.

We were sitting in our flat when we heard a couple of bangs. Assuming it was some idiot letting fireworks off I just ignored it at first, as we get a lot of that around here. As you can see it turned out that it was a burning car just a little way down the street... Unfortunately we get a lot of that around here too.

We did have a good view of the resultant fireball when the petrol tank went up.

Typical Man

Water, water everywhere...

We woke up this morning to suspiciously brown water coming out of all of our taps.

"It's perfectly safe to drink." said the nice person from the water company when we rang.

"That's lucky, because I wouldn't want to bathe in it."