Fin

This will be the last post on League Against Boring Lunches. It’s been going since 2004 (!!!) and started with no real idea of a direction. I’ll continue to blog at KnitCookSew. Please come over and check it out, and thanks for reading!

Friday funny

Woman at work asks the team what they think might be wrong with her heating as there’s a tapping noise. We suggest bleeding the radiators.
Woman: ‘Blee-? Bleed? As in blood?’
Us: Yes, you need a radiator key, you turn it to let the air out and then close the valve again when water starts coming out.
Woman:
Us: Look on youtube
Woman: But it’s in the boiler!
Us: Oh!
Us: Well it could be air flapping a vent. It’s been windy. Or a bit of solder come off and ticking against something.
Woman: Sol-? Solder? What is that?
Me: Perhaps a very small person has got trapped in there and is trying to get out?
Woman: Ahahah! Hah.

Later, Woman calls the boiler man.

Woman: Hallooo? Halloooo? Yes. My boiler has a problem. I think it might blow up. Or perhaps there’s a little person in there trying to get out.


I’m serious. This happened.

HMOG people. HMOG.

Post Chrimble Corral (like a round up but different)

Have not blogged for a while and now we’re back to work. Nooooo! I was really enjoying being at home and having some free time. Things got done! I could sleep in and relax occasionally! Spend some time with my darling husband! (Who is totally not neglected at all, whatever he might say.)

Before Christmas we had more snow. My parents went away abroad to a wedding and their 12hr return flight ended up taking two days with a stopover in Marseilles. How delightful. Our road was inpassable to anything other than 4x4s for about three days (unless you were going downhill) and the rest of town’s roads were a mess, and the pavements sheet ice. I don’t know if it’s because of inner wranglings in the Council but I saw nary a gritting lorry the whole time. The best we got were a few poor chaps with a flat-bed van hand-gritting the steepest slopes.

We hosted Christmas at ours this year, for ten of the family. Mum got the turkey for me, and stuffed it, and it was delicious but HUGE. Ten of us, including two second helpings, did not manage to make it into the second side. Therefore the freezer is well stocked with leftover turkey ready to throw into stir fries and whatnot. We had a great lunch with enough trimmings to please people from all sorts of family traditions. That seems to be a sticking point when you have to start going to other family’s Christmasses – will they do it right? Will there be bread sauce and cocktail sausages wrapped in bacon? When will presents be opened? Will they make us play Charades? (shudder)

All was well. I even got the Man and his cousins to come to midnight mass on xmas eve, which was an achievement and only done I think thanks to a timely mojito in the local trendy winebar. The Man did take a bottle of beer in with him but to be honest I was just pleased they were all there. Christmas isn’t Christmas without singing some carols.

And now, decs are down, snow is gone, back to work and January Healthy Eating Plans (snore). My friend Clare has had her baby, welcome to the world Alexander! My brother and the Man’s brother are both moving house. We have workmen booked in to come and sort our house out – electrician and plasterer so far. Things are popping up in one of the bulb pots – I can’t wait to see how many of the 200 bulbs we planted actually grow.

I am still knitting the tea leaves cardigan because I had to do some frogging and go up a needle size in an effort to make the yarn last. It seems I only bought four skeins, unless I’ve lost one, which is totally possible. The body is now done, so I need to do sleeves and button band with just over two skeins. Will it happen? May have to do some juducious juggling and perhaps have ¾ sleeves or something. I also started a cowl in some really yummy silk / alpaca yarn which I am beading (remember last time I beaded anything I said never again until hell freezes over?) but I just hope it will (a) fit over my head and (b) not be itchy. The yarn is like butter in your hand but you know how things get when they’re next to your skin and you start getting a little warm. Eeeeech.

I also visited Loop while slightly drunk after our team Xmas meal (which some genius booked in a restaurant in Islington) and bought way too much Madelinetosh sock, and then the Man and I went to the first day of the sales after Xmas and I hit the John Lewis yarn sale. Got yarn for a couple of jumpers / cardigans and also a heap to design something with. That’s a goal for 2011. I started doing the maths yesterday and my brain started to melt; probably full of mince pies or something.

In other news, with some wedding vouchers we bought a handheld vacuum thingy. Can you tell which is which?

And the Man and I went for a fish pedicure.

These things are springing up all over the place at the moment, I believe there are two in our town now. How it’s supposed to work is that the water makes the hard dead skin on your feet soft and then the little fish (about 2 inches long) suck all the skank off and eat it. Mmm, yum. I’ve heard the sensation described as ‘relaxing’, ‘like bubbles’ and ‘a bit tickly’. Riiight. It’s frikking weird. I felt like I needed a wooden spoon to bite down on. Do you remember when you were small and before you were trusted with scissors your parents had to cut your toenails for you? I remember my mum sitting on the edge of the bed with my ankle firmly pinned under her armpit while I thrashed in hysterics behind her, trying to keep my foot still so she didn’t cut off a toe. It tickled! And not in a good way. Well fish pedicures are like that, crossed with the prickly sensation from the little electrical zappy machine the physio uses. So I was laughing and crying and trying to keep my feet still do I didn’t either crush a fish between my toes or kick one out the tank. And then sometimes one fish really scrapes its teeth into your skin. They tell me the fish don’t have teeth, well that is LIES. I felt them. Little sharp pointy teeth. Seriously.

I’ll stick to the Body Shop foot file, thankyousomuch.