Happy Halloween!

This year, I was bored of staying in waiting for trick or treaters who never turn up. So we kitted up and went out.

I'd spent ages puzzling over what to wear, when I hit on a very easy one. I already had the long white wig (a quick haircut and some spray sorted that), silver cream eyeshadows and black liner for the triangle...

I then pinched His Lordship's sunglasses from His FoneJacker costume last year and teamed it with one of my sparklier corsets, matching fishnets, favourite strawberry red boots and my funky little tutu. His Lordship lent me the Dalmation jacket from his "pimp" costume to finish the look - he found THAT when he used to work as a recycling collector a few years back, loved it and had it dry cleaned. Peculiar bloke, but perfect for this look. One extra large Gaga to go!

In return, I lent him my professional House of Pan prosthetic daemon horns, which subtly rolled into his hair and matched deliciously with his plum maroon leather jacket. One soft black shirt and his black velvet pirate trousers (yet another costume raided) finished the rather suave look nicely.

I would have taken pictures at the party, but didn't take my phone because He was taking His... But then he did the same thing. Never mind!

The musical abilities of the DJ wasn't great, but we had a fun evening, with lots of dancing, piles of people recognised who we were supposed to be and one very drunk guy sidling up and muttering: "D'ya think I'm Judas?" I replied "Sometimes dude, sometimes." and got the best hi five. We also got given a bag of sweets by The Godfather, met a mummy, Edward Scissorhands and a wolf in a nightie.

Sadly my old red boots have finally given up the ghost - I don't think I can rescue these any further, as the pleather finish has been cracking and splitting for some time. I've been patching it with silicone polish and Sharpies, but they've had it - the toes are shot and leaking, the heels are battered... For such cheap boots, they've done me a good few years. I will miss my lovely reds, they're the most comfortable things in the world.

Oh, I'm not chucking them out though. I'm keeping them to see if I can find a good shoe maker to replicate them. Shoes that good should never die.

I'm on a ROLL!

Even if today was a bit naff, over this weekend I have:
Rewritten a friend's CV to bring it up to date, punchy and snappy.
Fixed the bathroom light. (I used minty green ribbon instead of cord this time)
Written a whole new article from scratch and submitted it. (About carrot growing, before you ask)
Cooked sirloin steaks and the best damn stew I've done in AGES.
Finished my "expose newspaper" style competition article which is WAY out of my writing style comfort zone, and submitted it.
Done not one, not two, but three whole loads of washing and drying.
Nearly finished a novella that's had a writers block on it for over four months. And my goodness, I have NAILED that sucker - I expect to submit it for release within the next couple of weeks.
Played with, fed, ordered more food for and bathed the lizards, as well as negotiating discounts for friends.
Researched some more for a different article that's been on the back burner for the last year.
Scored a complete fluke, searching Kuleana's name on Neopets - I found "Kuleana" in the pound for just 87 points. Madness. I adopted her and put her on my side account with two new ones, Tsammy and MochaChoca. (Updates on those coming later. Hyphen and Ampersand names already taken.)
Oh, and I've lost three pounds. Weehee!



Sticky the Pickulsaur; story entered for Petpet Spotlight competition.

Raising the Stakes on the Steaks.

With a content sigh, I can tell you that the last two days, we have dined like kings. Nay, GODS in fact.

It started off as a plan for stew, ostrich stew to be precise, so I asked His Lordship to fish some steak out of the freezer. But when I got home on Friday evening, I discovered... well, he'd got steak out, but he'd picked the good sirloin. I'm not sure how he mistook the posh cream and green wrapped parcel for the vacuum-sealed, boldly printed with "OSTRICH" packs, but never mind.

So instead, on Saturday night, I threw some red wine with mushrooms, garlic and onion in a pan, made butter and herb sauce to go on steamed new potatoes and made him fry the perfect steaks - on the dangerous side of medium rare. Oh god, and they are ridiculously good. Put fork in meat, move fork sideways, meat falls apart. Well worth the money, it is SO tender...

I also got the correct bags of ostrich steak out to defrost, so we could have the stew tonight. With Lea and Perrins special reserve fuller flavour Worcestershire sauce...

So very simple. I can't understand how my sister professes to dislike stew. What is there not to like? Meat, vegetables, sauce. Bam! Dinner.

Update: I've been carefully mushing my icecream and eating it slowly - got to the last bit when His Lordship finally asked what I was doing. "Looking for the jalapeño" says I.

Great.

It turns out I've been squishing my favourite icecream for nothing. So I smooshed the last spoonful into and up his nose. Revenge is sweet - literally. Hehehhehee!

Best quote of the day: "It's like you've been licked all over by a panther after it's had 15 Fantas..." Russell Howard, on tangerine shower gel.

Birthday Boxes and Electric Detection...

I sent my friend Hanny a box in the post, so that her beardie Noa could have a birthday party.

Apparently Han was already in Singapore mode and got the address muddled up... But thankfully the nice lady five doors down from her sent me a lovely letter to let me know she'd received it. I promptly phoned her back and she kindly dropped it down to Noa's house the next morning.

Hanny asked me to make Noa a party hat in green, so I made a lovely textured foil paper cone with a glitter thread pompom on top. I also sent his little sister Delilah a similar one in silver. I also sent him a ready made party-in-a-tin dinner of dragonflies as well as a birthday bar of dragon soap for his bath, and a glow in the dark star for bedtime - just like my spiky little angels have.

Ooh, I've been playing with a new little programme. I've discovered that we've currently got about 12 networks switched on around here that I can "see" at the moment - and I can walk round with the programme on my phone to "feel" the signal strengths.

Next doors DJP (in their dining room against our joining wall!)

TalkTalkk3k3aa (the Romanians the other side)

Livebox822d (I'm pretty sure is Brad, out back)

virginbroadband (which is a nickname - we don't get virgin here)

Sky71336

O2wirelessF2E7BD

Linksys

bthubb3-RX8x3x

Sky61182

PortableHotspot

Sky50679...

and our own "DragonzDen"

I also renamed my phone's portable wifi hotspot. It's now called "surveillance van 6" to spook the neighbours when I switch it on.

My comfy chair has the lowest signal in the house, sadly.(There's also a Geiger counter style version that does hot/cold beeping.) But I don't do any live streaming, so no big.

Lizards on Leashes

We've had both Hyphen in leash training and Mocha trying on a leash for the first time. He's getting used to it slowly and she has discovered that, actually, it doesn't impede your movement AND it's made her brave too!

She's been trotting up and down the middle of the room with Hyph and having a proper look round, even to the extend where they both got comfy in the dragon travel basket. Megawin!

Mocha is slowly learning to socialise - at least that is when Sandy doesn't clip her round the ear for being impudent.

Hehehehe, I found a dragon whom is even more disturbed than guilty little Hyphen.

Can anyone else hear "MY PRECIOUS" sibilantly hissing through their head?"

Mind you, talking of pervy lizards, it turns out Tsam's got a soft spot for being dominated. He gives it all bluff and bluster, but the moment I play "bigger dragon" he goes all weak around the knees. He melts like butter when I "bite" him using my hands, nibble down his ribs and the top of his ear...

Tsammy keeps trying to get Sandy to stand up to him, but she's a bit scared - understandably so, as huge as he is! Poor boy misses Kyle - she would happily kick him in the head.

Bags, Boxes, Bummer...

Awww. The house we really wanted turned out to have LOTS of problems, including improperly supported chimney breasts, damp proofing only round half the house, wiring needs ripping out, wet rot, dry rot, mould... Oh, and asbestos throughout the internal walls. Thankfully we accepted subject to survey...

After all, we had already brought the standing price down by 17k, but the surveyor says it's worth 3k less than we had offered! It's going to cost way more than we can afford to fix, and ripping asbestos out is a specialist job, so it's all the way back to square one. Nuts. I wanted to be home by Christmas, and my dining room is full of boxes...

And yes, that IS a big bag full of gift wrap. There are about thirty rolls in there; I LOVE the stuff. I even have some red silk brushed paper with black velvet flocking, in a Victorian style - it's expensive but beautiful.

My favourite ones are the Chinese double colour rolls, one side blue, one side orange, and another roll in red and yellow. Makes a great effect if you use complicated folds on your parcels.

But the real gem of my collection is THIS beauty - a matt black foam paper and gold glitter fleur-de-lis... Horribly costly even on sale price, but totally worth it. I may have to do black gifts this year and finally use my favourites. I've had some of them in my bag for years because I can't bear to use them, but on reflection, it wouldn't be right NOT to make the most of it.

Sedimentary, my dear Watson!

Hyphen is feeling very guilty, as I caught him with his forbidden love - the hearth stone. He's been bearding at "her", displaying, then jumps and pins the corner down. Bloody strange little boy - but he's really nailed this macho display bearding thing at long last!

Hyph's now sitting with His Lordship, trying not to look like he's ashamed. Poor pervy little lizard; he's going to be devastated when we move house.

I also brought out the dragon basket to start acclimatising the lizards to the idea - I don't want a car full of panicky lizards when I move house! It's second home to Tsammy, but a new experience to the other three, so Mocha's first to have a go at getting used to the dragon basket. She's a bright little dragon and quickly worked out that you can jump in and out of the drop leaf lid.

Quote of the Day: "Silly Hyphen, stone is for fiar! Dragons iz for luff!" - Hanny. Reminds me somewhat of "Silly dragons. You cannot fly internet spaceships."

We're back, babies!

His Lordship is sharing a rather disappointing minestroni soup with me, by blowing it cool first. I was hoping to be able to buy creamy tomato and basil soup, but this was all Bristol had to offer in takeaway form at 8pm. It has a lot of icky celery and not enough anything else. I wanted croutons.

When we finally got in, I discovered a very ruffled little Hyphen waiting up for us. He's now stuffed down my shirt and is very cross with us for leaving him on his own.

Tsam was deeply grumpy and resentful - he went back to sleep with a sullen black beard. He will forgive me after baths and butters tomorrow, I'm sure. He's just too sweet natured and stupid to hold a grudge.

Mocha was delighted to see us, as we brought home moths and cleaned her grubby tank, removing the grey strawberry that had prevented her getting into her tunnel - very cheery, even though it's really late. She will enjoy her bath tomorrow.

Sandy twitched in her sleep. That's good enough for me.

What's in a name?

These... These are like chocolate hobnobs with golden crunch biscuits and honeycomb mashed together. They are the most amazing things. So hands off! These biscuits are MINE. They have my name on.

Speaking of which, I just can't believe that in the FOUR YEARS that I've used Kyle's name on FailBork, they haven't thought to mention that it's supposedly a "violation of terms". And now I've been booted from my account with no warning or notification. I had the same problem with Google at first, but they allowed me to change it to my real name.

Facebook wants me to upload government issued identification to them to prove who I am! Hah, load my passport to your site? With your security failures? I think not! It was the push I needed to leave FB permanently. No skin off my nose - I have G+ and I'm proud to be a 1st Gen User!

I then went and emptied my "facebook email" account. In just two years, I have over 3,500 bits of junk from them - EXCLUDING what had already been netted out by my junk filter. There were 16 items in today's "catch".

Holy WOW. Update: The reports coming back from the new Android Facebook update are terrible! I'm glad I'm not an FBer now: FB have really screwed up. The app won't work unless your GPS is on - which chews your battery. The file is huge and doesn't transfer to SD. It doesn't update, fails to deliver notifications (still), you can't like or add to friends walls directly from the ones you DO get. The tags are broken and it has serious memory leak issues which cause it to crash. A lot. Reinstalls don't fix the problem.

Quote of the day: "No apostrophe, so unfortunately not! Hand them over, they look tasty!" - Ben, on "Ambers" biscuits. Where's my permanent marker..?

Pizza, PCs and Purchases.

Today's pizzas were brought to you by Pizza Hut. King prawns, bell peppers, chicken and spinach on a bechamel sauce for him, chicken, pepperoni, mushrooms and sweetcorn on a pesto bechamel base for me. The Italians are geniuses. Plenty left for lunch tomorrow too! Custom pizza is the best.

We'd spent longer than I expected at Nana Cats before we made it to @PC computer store - His Lordship is VERY pleased with the new PSU he picked up there.

I've been trying to work out what the owl is near my mother's house. I'm pretty sure it's a tawny; Strix aluco - because I can always hear the end notes, when it goes "to-hoo". Does this sound about right Mum? Hoo. To-hoo. Apparently, there's about 75,000 pairs in the UK.

We also found our ideal house, and our second offer has been accepted (subject to survey) - saving us over £17,000! More on that later.

But check out the beautiful bathroom!

Barge, Beers and Barbecue

The lads met us in the Barge for a swift few - they're looking forwards to us coming home, and I'm looking forwards to bunging some burgers under the grill and popping some bottles for 'em. I love the Barge, but the volume level isn't exactly conducive to conversation!

I think we'll have a LAN party and make an awesome Killing Floor team. Yeah, you can do it at different addresses, but this way we wouldn't have to bother with TeamSpeak servers playing up and dodgy mikes.

Anyway, we ended up heading home a little early, as His Lordship was still suffering from cat allergy disease - but we did take a stroll down to Domino's for a quick pizza. The range is a little different up North as it is down South, but they still do the Texas Barbecue. Yomnom - tangy BBQ sauce topped with smoky bacon, succulent roast chicken, onions and green peppers.

Mind you, it was a good job that we DID come home early - we forgot the door keys! Someone changed his jeans just before we went out, and left them on his other trousers. Thankfully my grandfather was still up, and let us in. He didn't even steal my dinner.

Dodgy, Delicious, Delightful - and in that order.

Looked at a house. Summary: weird.
Well, for starters, there was an extractor fan in what used to be a set of shelves in the living room. And what was clearly a bathroom window in the corner of the main bedroom. But the real winner for me was that this place had a toilet in the shower in a giant plastic box in a cupboard. Very odd indeed. Pass. NEXT!

After the couple of disappointing viewings we had this morning, it was very much time for some refreshments. Though I'm not keen on a certain coffee house, they do supply the most amazing lemon and poppy seed muffin. Though I was baffled by my funny tasting hot chocolate (it had my hazelnut caramel sauce on the cream). It took me three sips to work out that it wasn't bitter hot chocolate, but actually a VERY nice mocha - nice enough for me to consider not swapping back with His Lordship.

Yes, I seriously considered tolerating the yicky coffee flavour (I'm not a fan of coffee, if you hadn't guessed). But sadly, the hot chocolate was also very good, so I had it back off him. I did let him keep his blueberry and cream cheesecake though.

We had a good raid on town too, where I purchased a gorgeous silver based with black enamel lizard brooch that had green gem eyes and clear crystal stripes, and in TKMaxx, we found THIS beauty.

It's a sumptuous chocolate velvet smoking jacket with a fun paisley plum lining, teamed with a delightfully retro Pierre Cardin floral shirt in darkest twilight purple and bright violet.We also picked up a natty multithread silk tie in patterned lilac and a divine red tie of Italian silk with a branched design.

Oscar Wilde would have been delighted. After all, it was he who said: "I can resist anything, except temptation."

Today's Quote: "Hey quit it! You're making the rest of us look bad." -Whitmore, on the new jacket.

Travelling by Train. Oh and Tesco's

Many a time the Sheffield Pumpkin has looked after us, whether it's in bad weather or enduring train delays and bad tempered customers, and still they do a wonderful job of serving hot food and a warm seat. And they do a lovely hazelnut hot chocolate... Thanks guys, I'll be sure to come back next trip!

Ah, the North. It was a smooth, hassle-free journey for once, and I'd move here today if I could.

For example I forgot how HUGE the Tesco's are here (and there's three of them). Heaven! I know, I know, I have but small dreams - but I do love Tesco's. I can't wait for Christmas, when they bring back the little herby cheesy nibble things. The biggest one just outside of town not only has two floors, escalators and a tech department bigger than my entire house, but it has THREE reduced sections. So of course we grabbed reduced-price lemon cheesecake slices, vegetable crisps and a big bag of chilli Hula Hoops.

Which was a revelation in itself - they made Hula Hoops bigger. Seems to me that it's a sad portrayal of modern day obesity when they deliberately have to make crisps bigger to fit on fatter fingers... Yes, that is my thumb.

Baby Beardie Beard!

Hurrah! My little guy has discovered that he has cohones - now he will not tolerate nonsense from the other lizards! Check out those sooty muttonchops... STAMPBOBBOBBOB

Until Sandy stepped on him. Bless, he's still wee and insignificant to her. Hyph finally curled up to sleep on my head as he's had a busy day; skinny dipping with the ladies, a three course dinner, supervising his staff...

It's only a quick post today - I have to sort our suitcase out and get the lizards ready for a few days without us. I will miss my scaly little babies, but we will be home soon!

Quote of the Day: I suddenly looked up at the tv as the announcer said: "Now we're screwing the knob extension into the orifice." Oh phew, it's ok, they're making a gas fire.

Sunflowers and Seafood

Pic of the day: blockbuster in Chard. But look closely, there in the gutter at the top of the building... There in the gutter...

Is a HUGE and magnificent SUNFLOWER!

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my lovely neighbours in advance for agreeing to babysit the lizards for me when we make a quick visit up North. Yes, you can play on the XBox, so long as our scaly babies are safe and well fed!

Oh crap. I just discovered the fishcake the woman in the store insisted I try contains prawns. That means I have about 11 hours left until I'm horribly ill. I only found out because I bought some for tea... Surely there should have been a contents warning? After all, who the hell puts prawns in fishcakes? On the plus side, I get to test if antihistamines help reduce symptoms.

Update: either the antihistamines worked, or I was lucky enough not to get any prawn in the bit I was given. Phew!