Angél’s Babble

The alarm went off at 4.45am this morning (Are you mad? I hear you asking hehehe) so that I would be up in time to watch the Australian GP. It was an eventful race and I felt sorry for Jensen Button… what a place for his engine to blow up! It looked spectacular though, finish line in sight, his car racing towards to it, with flames belching out behind him!

Why did I get up so early to watch the live race? Well… that’s because I won’t be at home to watch the re-run this afternoon, as my daughter & I are off to the final day of the Ideal Home Show.

I love going round looking at all the gadgets and sampling the freebies (alcohol and foods). A couple of years ago, me & my friend managed to get a lil tipsy from all the free samples of alcohol lol. I’ve saved a fair bit of cash to take, so, no doubt, I’ll end up buying gadgets that’ll get used once or twice and then be relegated to the back of a cupboard along with all the other gadgets I’ve bought in the past hehehe.
Maybe I’ll ‘fess up to what I’ve bought in a later post

Having set off for Liverpool at about 8.30am, we didn’t have time for breakfast, and my youngest son, who was coming with me to see his older brother, was getting hungry. So I promised him we’d stop after driving 90 minutes to get something to eat.

We pulled into the Motorway Services and ordered two cooked breakfasts and a pot of tea, I nearly fell over at the bill… a couple of pence short of £17!! It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if half of it hadn’t been cold. I couldn’t eat all mine, but my son finished it off for me (that child can eat for Britain and still not put weight on! One of the benefits of having ADHD I guess).

On the way home the next evening, (not having learnt my lesson) we stopped at another services, about halfway way home, to get something to eat, this time I had egg on toast (remembering the adverts suggesting you don’t eat a large meal when Motorway driving, as it can make you feel drowsy) and Dom had two sausages & chips, that along with a pot of tea cost just over £10!! When I peeked at the receipt I saw they charged £1.09 for a sausage! £1.09!!! You can buy a really good quality & fancy sausage for 37p in Tesco and this was just a basic normal sausage! it was 99p for a slice of toast, a whole loaf of bread costs less than that one slice of toast, and I’m talking Kingsmill or Hovis, which I bet that toast wasn’t made from! The egg was 99p too, half a dozen eggs can be bought for about 50p, so that’s one heck of a profit margin! The egg wasn’t even cooked nicely, the white was still ’snotty’ (euuuuuugh).

Of course the Motorway Services can charge what they like, as they have a captive audience, you can’t turn around and threaten to use the services up the road, because the next one can be miles away, and it will be just as expensive!

Motorway services have become the modern equivalent of highwaymen, the only difference is, they’re not outlaws!

I have to admit I was pretty nervous about the drive up to Liverpool, because the last time I was up there (Sept 2005) my car was written off when I was rear ended on the M6 and even now I still get twinges in my neck & shoulder thanks to the whiplash injury I suffered. This latest trip was the first serious motorway driving I’ve done since the accident, but I had to face it, I couldn’t expect my son to be the one to do all the travelling all the time if we wanted to see each other.Thankfully the drive went fine & without incident, although I was amazed at how stupid some drivers are, and the risky manoeuvres they take. I guess I’d never noticed it before because I wasn’t really paying as much attention to the other drivers when I was driving. I hated it when I had other drivers driving way too close behind me at such high speeds, and when it got too much for me I either pulled over into the slow lane or (if it was clear) pulled over into the fast lane & put my foot down until I’d managed to put a couple of other cars between me & the suicidal idiot(s).

Anyway, at least my nervousness of Motorways has been faced and dealt with, leaving me with just a healthy awareness and concern while driving on them. I’ve always said “my driving is fine, it’s the other idiots on the road I have to be worried about” whenever someone has said “Drive carefully” to me.

I think it’s crazy that when we learn to drive we’re not given lessons on Motorway driving. Ok, so learner drivers are not allowed on the Motorways here in the UK (I don’t know about other Countries), but a person can pass their driving test and immediately go and drive on the fastest roads in the Country! What on earth is the difference between the driver 5 minutes before their driving test and 5 minutes after? Have they suddenly gained the knowledge & experience to handle Motorways? Maybe the law should be changed, and new drivers should have to take two courses and tests… the first being for ‘normal’ driving, and once they’ve passed that test, they then have to take a course on how to drive on Motorways, followed by a test. I bet that would help cut down on the amount of deaths & serious injuries in accidents caused by dangerous driving at such high speeds.

It’s been a while since I’ve had time to add anything here, but I hadn’t realised just how long it has been! The time seems to fly by when you’re busy and/or having fun.I’ve been lucky I guess, as it’s been both hehehe.

Since I last posted in this blog, in my “spare” (that’s a laugh!) time I’ve been working on two commercial web sites, updating the web site for my local ADHD support group (add+up), working on add+up’s latest newsletter and getting it ready for printing (my role on add+up’s committee is web site editor & newsletter editor), been to visit my son in Liverpool for the weekend, which involves a 4 hour journey by car (including a stop to be ripped off at Motorway services - I think I’ll have a rant about that in another post hehehe) there and a 4 hour journey back home, a three hour visit to the hairdressers, and last night I went to a quiz night to raise funds for add+up.

I woke up today reasonably early (well… early for me on a Sunday :P) at about 10.30am, got washed & dressed, came downstairs to have my darling daughter whinging that her laptop keeps shutting down every few minutes. After a quick investigation I found she was infected with Blaster. Ok no problem, I’ll download the Blaster removal tool and fix that. Yeah… not as simple as I’d hoped. First of all her OS needed updating, and with it shutting down every few minutes it was impossible to do through her machine, so the express install was out of the question. I downloaded it to my computer, which meant it had to be the non-express install version, and an hour download time. So I went & did the shopping while that was downloading & she went to work.

Of course I spent way too long choosing a card for my son’s girlfriend’s birthday (does anyone else spend over half hour in card shops trying to choose the ‘right’ card?), then, while on my way to the supermarket, I pass a clothes shop with a pair of trousers on display that I liked the look off… another hour spent wandering round the shop, picking clothes, trying them on, putting them back, choosing others, finally spending too much & coming out with 2 pairs of trousers and a top (ooops) to head towards the supermarket, only I pass 2 more shops that caught my eye and just ‘had’ to pop in for a nose round. I eventually made it to the supermarket only to find the security guy starting to close the shutters to the entrance! Oh no! What to do, I’ve nothing in for dinner! I then spotted that the exit shutters were still open, so I darted in through that doorway & hurried round getting the shopping. The only trouble with staying until the shops close is you then get caught in all the queues… queues for checkout, queues for actually getting out of the car park, etc.

After arriving home & putting the shopping away I make a start on sorting the laptop out. First things first… where’s that pen drive? I eventually found it, and transferred the files I needed to it. Then I made sure her laptop was disconnected from the router and begun installing the update. Eventually that completes & I move on to the Blaster Remover tool. After checking that Blaster was actually gone I removed that useless piece of software that let it in in the first place & installed the antivirus I have on my desktop. I also installed Office while I was at it, so she could do her course work. Then I reconnected the laptop to the router & got a gazillion updates for the anti virus software and ran a scan… 7 files quarantined and 3 viruses found! And people say McAfee is the best? I don’t think so! yeah… it did notifiy us that there was ‘a’ virus, but it didn’t do anything with it to protect the system. At least Symantec stuck the infections into quarantine when it couldn’t fix them, it didn’t just leave them to carry on doing harm.

And that, ladies & gentlemen, is how I’ve spent, what was meant to be, my relaxing Sunday!

After years of wanting one, I finally have one… a flat screen monitor!
Now, instead of over one third of my desk space being taken up by monitor, I have loads of empty space! Those people who know me are probably cynically thinking now “yeah more space that won’t stay empty for long”. I admit I do tend to collect a lot clutter on my desk, usually only leaving “plate space”, but for a few weeks now I’ve kept it fairly clear & tidy and I intend on keeping it like that. We’ll see if I’ve managed to keep it tidy clear in a few weeks time hehehe

I hate being nagged! And this guy is just one great big boring nagger! He wants his web site up & running last year and is nagging me to ring the States to get answers from them about the bl**dy software, despite me telling him that there’s no point in ME ringing them as I would get completely confuzzled by all the techy talk! Doesn’t he realise that other people don’t live in his perfect little bubble world?

I’d be more than happy to donate my two to anyone who wants them right now (I don’t even care if it’s to a good home or not). Having one at home at a time is fine, but the two of them together? FORGET IT! It had been quite a pleasant evening until Dom arrived home about 15 minutes ago, then WWIII broke out! There they were… screaming & yelling at each other, as usual.

Is there a law or something that states that teenage siblings must not get on with each other?

Usually I can cope with them carrying on like this, but today I’ve been fighting a headache, earache & neckache and them fighting is more than I can take right now. Of course, to make me look a liar, as I’m typing this they’re actually having a conversation at an acceptable volume. They seem to be fascinated by a program on TV about kids with an illness that ages them rapidly. These poor kids look like little old men, so maybe my two are realising how lucky they are (not that I expect this peace & harmony to last much longer or for them to remember their ‘luck’ for much longer).

Complete silence from them now… why? Because they’re watching a nice ‘gentle’ film… Die Hard 2!!

Ok… I know I wasn’t the easiest of teenagers for my mum, but surely I was never as bad with my brothers & sister as these pair are with each other!

Today begun at about 1.45pm for me and although I’ve been busy I’ve hardly got anything done!

I have managed (with some, ok a lot of, help from Liz - Thank you Liz :D) to get this blog looking a little presentable. I haven’t managed to finish off a price list that I promised to have ready by tomorrow morning (ooops). But would you enjoy trying to convert over 2000 lines of products/prices from PDF format to Excel format? It’s a completely boring & tedious task that requires a lot of concentration, which I just don’t seem to have today. The lack of concentration skills is probably why I’ve spent the day flitting from one task to another & back again and ending up feeling like I’ve achieved nothing all day.

OOOOH! I’ve just had an idea of how maybe I can get that price list completed a lot quicker than the method I have been using. I’ll let you know if the idea was a good one or not in a lil while (that’s if ya interested of course hehehe) [Update: Ok my idea worked... kinda, but an even better & faster idea was to ring the company who made up the pdf format price list & ask them for an excel version ;)]

Look I’ve never said this blog would be interesting have I? hehehe

Look at the time! (it’s 01:42am GMT for those of you not in the UK) Maybe I should consider getting to bed! I guess seeing the time would explain why none of this stuff is making any sense to me and why I feel so light headed.