World Called Catastrophe: December 2006

Bring me the head of Santa Claus

Sorry kids, it doesn't look like Santa's coming this year.

Just kidding. I thought I would demonstrate my outlaws appalling lack of taste when it comes to buying us Christmas ornaments. Way to scar the grandchildren. I'll leave you for now with a little festive interspecies erotica. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas

Here are some traditional Christmas Carols for you to enjoy-

O tidings of comfort and Neath,
Comfort and Neath.

God rest ye merry, gentlemen
from the Christmas Song Generator.

This carol seems to be about the most disappointing Christmas holiday ever-

O come all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant;
O come ye, o come ye
To Neath.

O Come All Ye Faithful
from the Christmas Song Generator.

And this one is pretty close to the truth-

Oh the Neath outside is frightful
But the fire is so delightful
And since we've no place to go,
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Let It Snow
from the Christmas Song Generator.

Monster

With three weeks off over Christmas the only thing I'm going to miss about work is driving in with this blaring on the car radio.
Probably Keiths favourite song, although I can't think why.

The Automatic- 'Monster'

All change

There seems to be a sudden trend for some of the bloggers I read to spruce up their sites. Aliemalie started it and Wes and Korova have followed suit. Now I can't help but think my site is looking a bit shabby but I like the classic black. Besides I'll just look like I'm copying the others now (which, fair enough, I would be).
I asked Korova why he had changed his blog address from the slightly disturbing yet unintentionaly amusing 'anal ternative reality' and he told me that it was partly because he fancied a change and partly because I had "been taking the piss out of the name, you bastard (I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but that was the general gist of it)."
So now Korova can be found at www.theresnocode.blogspot.com.
For anyone that might be wondering 'The Resno Code' is a little bit like 'The Da Vinci Code' but far more interesting. Instead of covering up the shocking revelation that someone a few thousand years ago might have got married and had kids, 'The Resno Code' concerns the incredible truth that Jesus loved to play the trumpet. Possibly.

A Resno- Tempered Bell Trumpet, such as the one Jesus may have used when playing with popular jazz troupe 'The Disciples'

My Hideous Pet

Paradogatle
You are 40% ferocious, 36% speedy, 45% curious

You're a strong-willed individual who isn't afraid of seeming normal. You're not up for glory, you're not up for power. So just what are you up for? The parakeet is smart, but sometimes loses track of what it wants. Maybe you should take some time to figure that out, because while you are a nice, charming character, (that'd be the dog in you) you might want to add a little spice to your personality. And since you've got some turtle in there, pick up the pace a bit, capice??

Link: The Hideous Pet Personality Test written by ragamuffyn

Walkies

Touching wood, life seems to be fairly quiet in the library today. Let's hope it's not the calm before the storm.
On the down side with nothing going on here I haven't got anything to talk about. I think I'll just take Keith out for a walk instead.

Quote of the Day

"It might sound funny to others, but suddenly thinking you are French is terrifying."

I can only imagine.

The (Un)dead of night

So I was wandering the blogs at night, a dangerous occupation at the best of times, when I foolishly strayed from the path and got this:

Graaaagh!
nutter4 attempted to eat your brains, but was violently repelled by someone with a shotgun.
nutter4 has eaten 102 other brains.

Damn zombies.
A big groovy thank you to whoever that was with the shotgun but it is impossible for me to let something like this go so please click here if you want to get your brain eaten.

Those of you who lean more towards vampire chic can click here to get your neck bitten. Then if you decide to sign up to play the game you can wonder around aimlessly giving love bites and drinking peoples blood for a laugh (or just to upset them).

Job Application

Things you don't want to hear when enquiring about a job you were thinking about applying for:

"The last person in the post died of course."

"Put a sock in it"

Go on. You know you want to. Touch my sock. You filthy bunnies.

I say, I say, I say, my lava lamp has no nose...

MC decided to move baby N's cot in to our bedroom for now and in doing so discovered that for some bizarre reason her parents had left their shoes in there.

Just to make her even angrier, when she was getting the baby ready for bed she discovered her parents had moved the shoes she had taken out of the cot, on top of the baby clothes she had put aside.

Anyway, let's put that behind us and move swiftly on to my own misfortunes which some people seem to think are far more amusing.

I went in to my bedroom the other day and noticed that the top was missing off my lava lamp. Assuming that an incredibly specialist thief hadn't been in our flat, I was left to wonder what could cause the spontaneous disappearance of a lava lamp lid. On closer inspection it actually looked as if the lamp had been moved and put back as it was now standing on its own lead. Curious.

To give you a clue, the lava lamp is sat on top of my bedside cabinet. The lead stretches across the drawers so that if you don't open them carefully you will end up sending the lamp flying (not the greatest booby trap in the world but I try to make the best of the materials provided). There were also some socks on the floor which suggested there had indeed been a raid on my bedside cabinet. The lava lamp had clearly been knocked over as I can see where the top of it is, behind the tv, where it had rolled.

But who could the culprit be?

Long time readers of my blog will be aware that the Welsh consider my underwear a holy relic (or possibly a delicacy, there is still some debate) and with MC's dad down I think I know where the finger of blame might lie.
New readers looking for a little background on this story of Welsh eccentricity should look no further than the (slightly angrier) post I made here.

Maybe I should be flattered? I just don't know.

Early one morning...

And you thought I was joking about the late nights with MC's parents being down.

They went out with their friends last night so MC and I had some time alone with the children. As you would expect NF kept us up most of the night but we did manage to nod off in the early hours of the morning.

-Until MC's parents returned at 4.45am, stomping around, turning on all the lights and generally waking everyone up.

Gah. Need sleep.

Distractions: Lost

Taken from Sarah.

'Lost' is a student project looking at how people connect all over the world.

If you fancy joining in go to www.lost.eu/eb14

Who Needs Sleep?

Here we are again back to sleepless nights and neverending nappies.

Yes, that's right MC's parents are visiting once more.

I was back at work on Friday and had to go through the mind numbing task of working my way through the hundred odd emails I had been sent while I had been away, as well as the hundred odd other emails that had been sent to tell me my account was over its size limit. Yes, perhaps if you hadn't sent me all of those I wouldn't be quite as over my email limit as I was. At least it felt good to delete them all.

But, enough about work- Thank you for all of the congratulations.
We spent Tuesday ringing up the hospital to see when a bed was going to be free for MC to go in to be induced. Eventually we went in at about 4pm and settled ourselves in to our little corner of the room where you have to wait before you go on to the birthing suite.
There were four beds in total in the room and the only thing that seperates you all is a rather tasteful orange curtain so if you're not carefull everybody can hear what you're saying.
There was a lady in the bed on the other side of the room who was telling the nurse about the first time she had given birth when the baby had broken her pelvis and left her in traction. Ouch. Not what you want to hear. Her partner had some sort of quiz book or something with him (at least I assume so. Otherwise it means he kept suddenly asking random questions out loud which is just be odd). One of the questions he came out with was something along the lines of 'Which prog-rock group took their name from Tolkiens "Silmarillion"?' to which he answered himself 'It must be Genesis.'
You see, what you've done there is confused epic fantasy with the bible. Easy mistake to make, but I think you'll find the actual answer is, more obviously, Marillion. At least that's what I wanted to say but I just giggled and hid behind my orange curtain. And this was before the nitrous oxide had been brought out.

From what we could hear the woman in the bed next to us had already been in once to try and induce the baby and today was her second day without any luck. To help deal with the obvious stress this must be causing her and her partner kept nipping out every two minutes for a cigarrette. Not sure that was the best plan but each to there own. Every time they walked by you got a nice whiff of ash that not even a curtain could protect you from.

There was also the comedy moment when one woman (clearly enjoying the happy gas) was heard to shout out 'It was you trying to get my knickers off that got me in to this mess in the first place!'
I wonder how embarrased that poor guy was (not much actually, I had the curtain to keep my anonymity. Maybe that is what the curtains are actually for).

MC had been having contractions off and on for a few days and once they started to induce these started to become stronger and more frequent. We still had to wait a good few hours for the next stage, so it wasn't until about 11.45pm that they decided MC was ready. Once this had been done they wanted to hook her up to the machine again that they use to measure the babies heartbeat and the rate of the contractions to make sure everything was okay. It turned out that the baby had decided this slightly crucial moment was the ideal time for a nap so MC had to move around a bit to try and wake him. MC managed to convince the midwife that the baby was definately ready to arrive so the midwife decided to take us down to the delivery suite, bringing the machine with her as she intended to hook MC up to the monitor again once we were there. MC (possibly because she was determined not to go on the uncomfortable monitor again) has to stop in the corridor because the baby decides that finally, after two weeks of waiting, the game is up and he might as well surrender and come out. We managed to get MC in to the delivery room and up on to the bed then out pops NF at 12.30am Wednesday with the midwife only just managing to get ready in time.
And if you think I made that sound ridiculously easy- believe me, that was the way MC made it look.

MC and NF were eventually able to come home later that evening. My mum collected us from the hospital and then my whole family came over with our 2 year old daughter to meet her new brother. NF was sat in his little car seat with a teddy next to him to give to his sister as a present. GF came in, made an exclamation of surprise, grabbed the teddy and then in a moment of exceptional cuteness started to tuck the teddy in with her baby brother, under his little blanket.