James & I got married On the 12th December 2008 and so today is our one year anniversary, yay! It’s been a stressful but rewarding year, I think.
I realised recently that I never wrote a proper blog post about our wedding. I think it was the post wedding relaxation kicking in, with no more planning to do! I just needed a break from all things red & silver… I did write about our fantastic honeymoon in Mexico, but I neglected to write a recap of my wedding day. Our first year anniversary seemed like the perfect opportunity to bore my blog readers about our ‘big day’. (more…)
Aussie have put together a fab personalised gift package for me, which I can’t wait to receive…
Lifestyle – Zoe from www.zoecorkhill.co.uk. We set a particularly hard task for this category, which was to think about where some Aussie thinking would be best applied in life. Zoe rose to the challenge though, and applied some Aussie thinking to Christmas, and all that it entails. Click here to see her winning entry..
Zoe has a varied lifestyle and we wanted to reflect that with her prize. We have put together a gift pack including the Pet’s Eye View Camera for her gorgeous dog Homily, a refresh charging station for her phones, and a ‘Slanket’, for ultimate snuggling on the couch with the hubby! Well done Zoe!
The Pet’s Eye View Camera should be brilliant for seeing what Homily is getting up to whilst I’m a work! Check out a review of it over at the Daily Mail website. I’m really excited to see what pictures we get, lately we have been coming home to evidence of all sorts of mischief so photographic evidence will be really funny, I have no doubt.
I’m very excited – I love seeing live theatre & musicals, and I have never seen A Christmas Carol before. My experience with this story comes mainly from the Muppets adaptation, which I have been watching religiously every Christmas Day since I was a child (with one exception – last year I was too jet lagged and at my sister’s house!). My parents even bought it for me on DVD a few years ago so I could continue the tradition, after they threw their VHS player out! Other than that excellent education, I have seen the film adaptation with Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean Luc Picard from Star Trek).
The adaptation we’re off to see tonight is a musical, so even better! There are quite a few comments on the REP website saying it’s fantastic, with a couple of people even saying they are booking addition tickets so they can see it twice.
This Christmas Charles Dickens’ heartwarming family favourite A Christmas Carol comes to life in a fabulous new stage adaptation.
Bah! Humbug! It’s Christmas Eve and the meanest and most cold-hearted man in London, Ebenezer Scrooge has no time for merriment or mistletoe.
But just as the clock strikes midnight his world turns around when he is taken on a journey through the vivid and enchanting worlds of past, present and future.
Will Scrooge change his ways in time for Christmas Day?
There is nothing quite like a bit of Dickens to get you in the mood for Christmas.
Oh, and we are having a bit of a naughty treat – yum McDonalds food before the show, yay!
While I am at work, Homily has free run of the house.
Yesterday, there was a bit of an accident (click the link to see Homily’s take on things). And when I say ‘accident’, I mean Homily broke stole a jar of mint sauce that James had left on the table, and proceeded to somehow get it open. The silver lining in this cloud is that at least she did it on her rug, which was due for a wash anyway!
The rug in question is a Spot the Dog rug, which my Mum made for me when I was a toddler, so it’s had quite a tough life this year! It was thrown in the washing machine overnight & is currently drying on the radiator. Of course, Homily loves it so much, she still went & tried to sit on it! It was so funny, I couldn’t resist posting a picture:
Now that it’s winter, I’m willing to bet that there are a lot of people spending their evenings curled up on the sofa watching TV. In my opinion, anyone who voluntarily goes out in this chilly & wet weather is mad – are they looking for a cold?! Luckily for us, Homily hates wintery weather as much as we do, so we are free to slob out during the cold dark evenings without any dog walking guilt! And so James, Homily & I curl up together on our three seater most nights to watch a few hours of TV. Ok, so Homily mostly sleeps!
My picks for some great TV this winter are:
Glee
This pick is a no brainer, and there are people gushing over this all over the place at the moment. Glee is a brilliant musical comedy currently airing on FOX in the USA. Coming to E4 in the UK next year, it is a fabulously entertaining 45 minutes of fun each week, peppered with some excellent musical covers.
In Glee, a group of high school students who have formed a musical show group deal daily with the trials & tribulations of typical high school life, including the cool kids class system, teenage pregnancy, disability, and so on. The characters in this show are brilliantly written – from the slightly neurotic Rachel desperate to be a stage star, to the crazy cheerleading coach Sue, who is determined to bring the Glee club down. You simply have to watch this, it’s fantastic!
I am not homophobic. In fact, I have two gay dads. See, I was born out of love. My two dads screened potential surrogates based on beauty and IQ. Then they mixed their sperm together and used a turkey baster. To this day we don’t know which one is my real dad, which I think is pretty amazing.
Gossip Girl
Set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan & based on the books by Cecily von Ziegesar, Gossip Girl is a weekly dose of guilty pleasure. Torrid affairs & teenage dramatics combine to make an amusingly inappropriate touch of drama to liven up your evening. The main character, Serena van der Woodsen is an It girl who never seems to learn from her mistakes, and who has been blessed with a completely non functional family!
My favourite character in the earlier seasons was Jenny, who is (let me see) Serena’s boyfriend-now-brother’s little sister, her brother’s ex best friend, and also the successor to Serena’s best (some of the time) friend as Queen Bee of the posh high school for Upper East Sider girls, Constance. Yes, it really is that complicated. But don’t let the complexities of the plot put you off, as this one is really worth a watch, if you haven’t tried it already. I would recommend starting at the beginning though!
And who am I? That’s one secret I’ll never tell. You know you love me, xo xo, Gossip Girl
Numb3rs
Now for some slightly geekier picks. Numb3rs is one that James & I just discovered this year, although it is already in it’s 6th season. The brothers Eppes are a strange sort of crime fighting duo; an FBI agent working in homicide, and his math genius brother who helps him to solve problems & hunt down the bad guys. The plots are good, the characters and the relationships between them are evolving well, and I’m really (and very nerdily*) enjoying the mathematical bits! If you’re after a bit of geeky entertainment, then you should definitely try this!
We all use math every day; to predict weather, to tell time, to handle money. Math is more than formulas or equations; it’s logic, it’s rationality, it’s using your mind to solve the biggest mysteries we know.
*that’s not a word, but never mind.
Fringe
Another geeky choice for you, Fringe is a cult sci-fi classic in the making. Dawson’s Creek bad boy Joshua Jackson plays Peter Bishop in this fantastic show about the fringe of science. His father, the nutty professor Walter, has been taken out of a mental institution in order to help FBI Agent Olivia Dunham to solve mysterious cases assigned to the ‘Fringe Division’. The various weirdness has included spontaneous combustion, parallel universes, telepathy, hypnosis, communicating with the dead.. you get the idea! The wackiness of the Walter character adds a fun comedic element to the show, along with the bantering between Peter & Olivia. If you’re into science in any way, I suggest you give this a go.
Only thing better than a cow is a human. Unless you want milk. Then you’re gonna need a cow!
I am also loving:
Bones, Grey’s Anatomy, Top Gear, Veronica Mars re-runs, Dollhouse & the guilty pleasure that is America’s Next Top Model.
On my list to catch up with/try out:
Stargate Universe, How I Met Your Mother, Sanctuary, Flash Forward, and House.
I am 25 & a self confessed geek. I am a recently married self employed web designer, with a 9-5 desk job to help pay the bills. I love reading, puzzles, my iPhone (and everything else mac!), web design & blogging. I have a very sweet Norwich Terrier called Homily.
