Mark Dalton

So Sunday was a lovely Roast beef dinner with Mum, Dad, William, & Eleanor, followed by a trip to the park. More pictures available in the gallery, and on flickr.

Well I haven’t done much over the last couple of week’s except the usual work, eat, and sleep, and it was starting to get me down. Katrina had also been having a rough time with the kids not being well, and the general stresses and strains that come with motherhood, so I thought it would be good for us both to do something different.

So after checking with Rob that he was available for baby sitting duties and swearing him to secrecy, I ordered two tickets to “The Moscow State Circus” which is currently showing at the Anvil Theatre in Basingstoke.

Saturday arrived and Katrina arrived at the agreed time, still none the wiser to what I had planned. Well, after torturing her all week, I gave in a laid out the plans for the evening, starting with dinner at the local harvester, an old family favourite.

We arrived and grabbed a drink, before being seated. It didn’t take either of us long to figure out what we wanted, as we always order the same thing, and reading the menu is more part of the routine than to actually select something different. We grabbed some salad from the salad cart, one of the best bits, and usually enough to keep us from snatching the food from other peoples plates. We didn’t have to wait to long for our food to arrive, and we were both so hungry we more or less inhaled it. It was a nice change for both of us to have someone else prepare dinner, and better still for Katrina as she was able to eat her’s without having to look after the children first.

After dinner we drove into town and parked at the train station. We walked down to the Anvil and collected the tickets from the box office and purchased a couple of show programmes. We had timed it just right and within 5 minutes were asked to take our seats.

It was a great show with some amazing acts. Most of them seemed so young, but at the same time so strong, and agile. It’s really hard to describe what we saw, so I would recommend that if you get a chance to go and see it for yourself. They are currently touring the UK and the show dates and locations can be found here.

After the show we returned home and chatted over the evening over a beer, yawning until neither of us could stay awake any longer. A fantastic evening!

After being Duty Manager last weekend I had Friday off as a day in Lieu and thought I would book Monday off and enjoy a long weekend. I dropped the car off for its annual service first thing Friday morning and then headed into town for a coffee and some window shopping. I sat in Costa Coffee for about two hours, chilling out with the laptop and looking at potential holiday destinations, but didn’t arrive at any conclusions. I then wandered around the town, only buying another 500 GB USB Hard Drive, before walking home.

It wasn’t particularly warm but I did enjoy the walk. One of the problems with commuting every day is that I don”t really have the energy or time to get any real exercise, and this time of year only really see daylight out of the office window. I had a couple of PodCasts to catch up on so wrapped up warm and plugged into my iPhone

After a spot of lunch Mum dropped by as I had agreed to go TV shopping with her. She had seen my new Samsung and set her heart on one. So we headed up to Curry”s only to find that they didn’t have any in stock but said they could order one for delivery, but there would be a delivery charge. I asked if they could order it in and we would collect it but they said they couldn’t, if it was ordered it had to be delivered. Mum had really set her heart on walking away with the TV, so we headed over to Comet. They also didn’t have any in stock, but said they could order one and have it delivered Sunday with no delivery charge. It wasn’t walking away with one, but at least she would get one before the weekend was out. Mum then dropped my back at the garage to pick up my car. I drove home not noticing the software update they had performed to the Engine Management System, as they said I probably wouldn’t.

Saturday I got on with the normal chores and started to make a list of the job”s that need doing around the house. This weekend was supposed to be the weekend I started getting people round to quote for some of the bigger jobs, but after a crappy couple of weeks, I just wasn’t in the mood, so settled on writing lists. Saturday evening I was sad and ironed while watching TV.

Sunday I headed round to Mum and Dad”s to setup the TV on the promise of a roast dinner. The TV was delivered around midday and I was set straight to work setting it up. Now I believed that it had a Free View receiver built in, but quickly found that it didn’t. I then spent several hours trying to get it to work with there existing Thomson Free View box. In the end I was pretty sure it was the ariel but Mum came up with the idea of trying the portable ariel that she uses in the dinning room. This quickly proved it was the ariel and once we had swapped out the ariel cable, the setup was a breeze. We tided up and I connected the TV to their home network and showed them the Internet interaction, and then connected up the DVD player and tested that out by watching the BBC”s Earth Series.

Today I enjoyed a nice long lay in and then popped round to Mum & Dad”s as Mum looks after Eleanor on Mondays, and I hadn”t seen her or Katrina for a couple of weeks. Returning home I did the last few chores before plonking myself on the sofa where I spent the rest of the day.

Christmas was a quiet affair this year with just Mum, Dad, and I sitting down for Christmas dinner. Boxing day however was anything but as Katrina, Rob, Rob”s Mum, William, and Eleanor came to visit and proved that Christmas is all about the children.

Even though I had a chest infection (read Man Flu) I still had to take my turn having invisible cups of tea and falling down when shot with either a machine gun or a ray gun. All in all it was great fun and watching the kids open there presents was priceless. They really didn”t know what to play with first. Mum and Dad, as always, were excellent hosts and ensured we all had everything we could possibly want.

All the photo”s I took are now available in the Photo Gallery and on Flickr.

So Eleanor reached the grand old age of two on the 25th November, but as this fell mid week we decided to have the get together over the weekend. We also had Ebony, my cousin, visiting from Australia so we decided to roll both events into one. It was a great day and Eleanor was on top form despite frowning for this photo.T he rest of the photo’s I took can be found here or here.