Happy New Year!

It's been an eventful 2009 one way and another..

January saw me starting swimming lessons, we managed to escape to Robin Hoods Bay, had a sprinkling of snow, Debbie got a new camera and I got a huge lens for my new bird photography escapades.

In February we had an earthquake which sent our two cockatiels bonkers and had us jumping out of bed in the early hours.

For March we had gales and another dusting of snow which saw us heading to the hills of Langsett to make the most of it.

In April Debbie started suffering with ear ache which we think was down to the local pool so we stopped going swimming.

May saw us going on holiday to Primrose Valley near Filey, never again, there's no place like home and that's where we're staying!

June was quite hot and we went for numerous walks, many too far for the conditions. Lesson learned and next year if it's hot, it will be a walk to the off-licence and back for some cold beers.

We seemed to spend most of our free time at Langsett in July, taking advantage of the nice weather, strolling across the moors.

In August our new mountain bikes arrived but Debbie's chain broke and threw her off so we had to send it back an get a new one.

We had two weeks off work in September/October, I got pickled on Old Speckled Hen and we got the sofa stuck on the stairs.

The credit crunch hit home in November as Debbie was made redundant, bumped the car and Lucy emptied the bin in the kitchen.

And so back to December, Debbie was offered a job and started a couple of weeks ago, we had our fourth wedding anniversary and we had a Christmas day like something out of the Royale Family!

We're really looking forward to 2009 and will be more than glad to see the back of 2008!

Have a great new year everyone, we'll see you on the other side.


Paul.

Merry Christmas!

Just about all the pre-Christmas jobs have been done, under the stairs has been tidied so we can get in there, the baby gate has been found and fitted in preparation for a mad mutt that's coming to stay, I've blown up an inflatable double mattress and hovered everything in sight.

That's me done for today, all I'll be doing now is watching last nights gadget show and drooling over some new mobiles.

I doubt we'll get chance to post before the big day so may we both wish you all a very Merry Christmas :-)

Paul.

Wedding Aniversay Number Four

We've been married four years yesterday!

It's been a trying year with one thing and another but everything has come together in time for Christmas and we're really looking forward to 2009 :-)

Paul.

December Blues part III

Great news on the interview below:

Interview no 1: Went really well, the chappie that interview me was from my neck of the wood, Lancashire! yippee, got really good vibes from this and it ain't through an agency. Will get to know by Friday if I am the lucky candidate.

I got the job...yippee....and I start on Monday. I am so chuffed its untrue.

Down side is I am full of cold and feel like shite, Wednesday started with the usual sore throat, Thursday was raw and Friday just full blown SNOT.....YUKKY... I felt that bad I even rang Paul and suggested he have the car for the afternoon, my temperature was off the scale, this morning I am sat in my PJ's and have no intentions of going anywhere plus me head feels like it has a pea for a brain and it keeps rattling.

Hopefully, I will have got rid of the lurgy and will feel fresh as a button on Monday...fingers crossed....

In the meantime, my fuzzy bunny is snow locating and if he is not careful his mobile will blow up soon!

Debbie

December Blues part II

Right here we go....

Interview no 1: Went really well, the chappie that interview me was from my neck of the wood, Lancashire! yippee, got really good vibes from this and it ain't through an agency. Will get to know by Friday if I am the lucky candidate.

Interview no 2: Again went really well, the lady was really nice and we seemed to get on, but they will be doing second interviews next week, got feedback from the agency and they were really impressed with me. Just received another call from the agency and they want me back for a second interview on Monday.

Interview no 3: Not so sure about this one, the accounts are in a mess and they don't class Credit Control as accounts but sales! I am a bit confuddled by this one.

By the time I had done everything yesterday and the phone had finally stopped ringing it was 7pm, hey ho, beans on toast for tea, mind you Paulie loved it.

This morning we have woken up to a blanket of SNOW, yes SNOW, the side roads were a nightmare and the mains roads were just as bad, I had to nip to the newsagents this morning, boy that was scary!

Then Paul insisted the car stay at home, so Hench yet another journey taking Paul to work, even more scary as more people on the roads, we had to wait a good twenty mins for Paul's boss to arrive to open up, I managed to park in a lay by and we watched all the other cars slip sliding all over the road.

I managed to get home OK, just took it steady even thought I had a pillock behind me trying all the way to get me to go faster, not a chance in hell, now it raining very hard at this rate the snow will have disappeared by lunch time.

Debbie

December Blues

Well, I worked my notice and finished my job Friday 28Th November....yikes.... Tears were flowing freely especially when I had to make a speech!

The Chief Executive has taken my number and says he will be ringing me to let me know if the business gets over the dark side of Christmas as they want me back!!

Saturday and Sunday seem to just fly by as usual, lovely walks with Lucy and Paul, I even managed to take me camera with me and got some cracking shot, Paul please put them on the computer.......

Monday morning came, I took Paul to work then returned home to scour the web for jobs, applied for another job but hey ho its through yet another agency so I have got another interview with them today.

I am going STIR CRAZY with all this time on my hands.

I cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom then started on the living room and dining room, put some washing in then made corn beef hash, all the time willing the phone to ring with interview dates, nothing at all, then 3pm it all went hectic, now I have got three interviews tomorrow, one is looking very promising, fingers crossed.

I picked Paul up from work and set off home for some well earned chill time, Paul was over the moon with his evening meal and is looking forward to see what delights I muster up today.

Debbie

BAD LUCK! IT COMES IN THREES!!

Well, just when I thought life could not get any worse, I had a bump in my car on Tuesday evening!

Coming home from work (yes i have agreed to work my notice as my employer asked so nicely) the FOG and rain were a nightmare, I always come home on the country roads as the M1 is too busy, I was so careful and kept my speed down as did most of the other drivers I followed.

I was almost there another 3 mins and I would be picking Paulie up, going on to a duel carriage way me and the car in front were waiting to join, I looked his way and saw him set off then looked in the direction of the on coming traffic and set off only to find he had hesitated and STOPPED and my ickle car ran into the back of his!

Shaking like a leaf I managed to control my nerves while we swapped insurance details, he was very nice about it all and agreed to ring me later with policy numbers etc.

I rang my insurance company and they said someone would call me back the morning after, about 10.30 not hearing anything I rang and they sorted me out over the phone, the lady said she had rung me at home leaving a message on the answer machine, I gave her my mobile number for all future calls.

I am really chuffed with my insurance company and my ickle car is leaving home tomorrow to be mended and will return after a nice stay in the car hospital. I just wish the job hunting was this easy!

Arriving home on Tuesday evening was the final straw, still shaking like a leaf, we found the entire contents of the kitchen bin scattered across the floor and a white scruffy thing on four legs scampering past us to hide!

Just hoping that was number three and there are no more nasty surprises lurking round the corner!

Debbie

Redundancy

Yikes, I can not believe it, but I have just been made REDUNDANT, me really I am GOB SMACKED!! I feel like my heart has been ripped out!

Friday morning went into work as normal, big smile on me face as weekend is here and some chill time with me Paulie....yippee....then 11.30am comes the phone call from HELL!

Hello Debbie please can you attend the Board Meeting Room......YIKES....HEART POUNDING....I went and there is the Financial Director, Commercial Director and HR Manager all waiting for me.....We are sorry to tell you this but unfortunately we have to make you REDUNDANT, the company is running at a loss and we can not afford to employ you anymore!

Even though My Credit Manager and myself are doing an outstanding job collecting monies in, the construction industry is drying up and the bills have to be paid even if sales are down.

I sat and looked at all three of them and before I knew it the water works had started, each man shifted very uncomfortably in their chairs, they say that they might not be able to manage without me and if so will find a way to keep me on, so if this is the case they would have tried harder in the first place.

I have since Friday applied for 24 jobs online and sent out loads of emails to various companies to see if any have any vacancies for a REDUNDANT CREDIT CONTROLLER!!

So if anyone knows of a Credit Control position in the South Yorkshire area please let me know.

Thanks
Debbie

Stuck!

What we need here is a cunning plan.

Lovely Cold Morning

No snow about in these parts but we had a lovely walk this morning with Lucy. Nice to see the sun rise again now the clocks have gone back.

Paul.

Mad About Mippin

Since getting the sluggish Nintendo Opera Browser and finding that Mippin worked really well, I've been using it alot more on the mobile as well. Then yesterday I noticed that the link to our Mippin site wasn't working, I've fixed this and while I was at it, thought it might be nice to post a little about Mippin and how why I use it so much.

I started using Mippin last year not long after venturing on the web with my Nokia 6120 Classic. It works well using the native browser but it really hurtles along using Opera Mini. This because the small pages are reduced in size even more by the Opera server and because Opera Mini caches pages, allowing you to surf backwards and forwards instantly.

Basically Mippin uses rss feeds to show any web site in a mobile format, you can use Mippin without signing up but for the few clicks it takes and the advantages gained, you might as well go the whole hog straight away.

Once signed in, you are presented with you're personalised home page, this includes your favourites which are built up by hitting the 'Add To Home Page' link at the bottom of every site that you view.

Selecting the 'My Latest Stories' link shows all the updates from your favorite sites in the last 24 hours. One thing I've noticed is that while you can search for any site and add a Mippin feed to your homepage, if it's not been added to the Mippin directory by the site owner, updates don't automatically show in your latest stories. So, if you have a site that's not already on Mippin you should head over to Mippin Maker and spend a few seconds adding it for free.

In addition to your favorites, you can also add widgets to your home page such as weather, news, popular stories etc. It is possible to add your own Twitter feed to your home page but for some reason this hasn't worked for some time, Twitter's own updates are usually about something else that's broken so the problem may be there.

However, you can still post Twitter updates from here and if you have set this up, you can Twitter any posts that you find through Mippin. This works great as it sorts out the url, all you have to do is add a short message if you wish, the resulting tweet then shows a link to the post viewed through Mippin which will work on just about any mobile, great stuff!

Something new on Mippin is social interaction, you can now add Mippin users to your connections, if they subsequently return the favour, you become friends and can send messages. I've never sent or received a message so I don't know how well this works but that's not really the best part of this new feature.

Once you've added a user to your connections, any site or post that user recommends appears on your home page, this is great because you can quickly connect to users with similar interests to yourself and follow the stories they've found interesting and in turn they can follow yours.

I can't see any way of searching for users but as you add sites to your home page, a user is shown that has also added that site. There are also 5 featured users shown on your home page, you can add these and also see who they are connected to and add those as well.

Selecting 'View Profile' from your home page shows the stories that you've shared, your favorites and your connections.

All in all, I'm finding that Mippin is a great tool for floating around the web and keeping up to date with what's going down in the world. If you've never tried it, give it a go and don't forget to add user Snowstorm to your list of connections if he pops up somewhere!

Paul.

Autumn Sunshine

We've been out for a lovely walk this afternoon in the local woods taking advantage of the Autumn sunshine. I don't know what it is about tree's around here, they seem to take for ever to turn that lovely golden brown colour. By the time we've managed to get some nice Autumn colours, everyone else is posting pictures of daffodils!

Paul.

Simple Maths

Eight times Old Speckled Hen equals one Pickeled Paul.

Nintendo DS Lite Browser

I've just got the Nintendo DS Lite Browser based on Opera Mobile. It's
a strange beast, if you stick to mobile sites it faster than Opera
Mini on my mobile. However, straying on to non mobile sites results in
page load times of up to 5 minutes!

I'm sticking with it though because the user interface is fantastic
and as long as I stick to the mobile sites, it's a dream to use.

All I need now is for the big players like Blogger and Flickr to start
making more features availabe in mobile mode.

Paul.

Tongue In Or Out?

What do you think, tongue in or tongue out?

Paul.

Time For A Break

We're on holiday for two whole weeks! We've got absolutely nothing planned, we're just going to take each day as it comes. Yesterday we just went for a stroll in the afternoon and today we made a start on getting the garden ready for Winter.

We've moved some of the trees about, mostly because the white spruce looks a little bit forlorn for most of the year with half it's needles missing. The blue spruce always looking in tip top condition so that's now nearer the house.

I got set up with the big lens earlier to get some birdy snaps but just about the only thing flapping in the wind were a few flowers enjoying the early Autumn sunshine.

Lucy seemed to be picking up the aroma of Sunday roast coming from somewhere.

We'll be having ours in a little while, time for a cuppa first though.

Paul.

Gloomy Langsett Moor

Langsett Moor
Originally uploaded by Snowbabies

We went for a walk round Langsett Reservoir on Sunday morning before the rain came. It was pretty misty and gloomy up on the moor. We saw loads of grouse, usually as they shot in the air as we walked by.

We took the wrong route back and ended up trying to evade being sucked into a bog followed by a long hard treck through the middle of the woods.

Paul.

Great British Summer

Great British Summer
Originally uploaded by Snowbabies

It's a good job we went for a walk round Langsett in the morning, the heavens opened just after we got back!

Tree & Bales

Tree & Bales
Originally uploaded by Snowbabies

Debbie's new bike arrived in the week so we've been out for a ride this morning. The new model seems to be much better built that the last one and having got the gears adjusted half way round, Debbie was gliding along without a care in the world.

We stopped just outside Wortley Hall to watch the combined harvester and got some shots of the bales left behind.

We're back home now, having a well earned chilled out afternoon.

Paul.

Dodgy Bikes

We each bought a new bike from Argos a couple of months ago, Debbie got a Challenge Oriana and I got the fella's version which is the same bike but in blue.

When they arrived the front wheel on mine was buckled, but rather than faf about sending it back I just swapped it for the wheel on my old bike. I wish now that I'd listened to Debbie and sent it back straight away.

We've only managed to get out on them a couple of times due to the rubbish weather we've had this summer.

Yesterday we took advantage of the rare weekend sunshine and went for a ride around the local woods. On the home straight along a path next to a busy main road I noticed Debbie wasn't behind me, I turned round to see her in the distance looking at her bike.

I was horrified to find that the chain had snapped, wrapped around the cogs, sheared half the spokes on the wheel forcing the pedals to bounce back smacking Debbie in the knee and throwing her from her bike.

Debbie is in one piece save a few scratches and painful bruises but it could so easily have been much worse if we had been on the road or the bike had made it on to the road from the path.

Checking over her bike, I noticed that the plastic guard on the back wheel was missing and thought that the chain might have jumped of the biggest cog but Debbie was changing from 4th to 3rd at the time so the chain shouldn't have been anywhere near the spokes.

I checked my bike and found the that the plastic guard was shattered and hanging on by a thread.

I called Argos, because we've had them over 30 days we can't have a refund, the best they can do is replace them with the same models. However, because Debbie's bike is out of stock she can have a refund but I've got to have the same model which I'm not happy about. All I can do is inspect it thoroughly when it arrives.

On top of that, they won't collect on Saturdays so we've got to wait until October so we can make sure that the new bike is delivered in one piece.

This morning Debbie's back is painful after the jolt yesterday, I think we'll be taking it easy today, gentle pottering about in the garden and a few good films on TV.

Paul.

RIP Tinsley Towers

Shot from Meadowhall a couple of weeks ago, they won't be there tomorrow.

DS Addicts

Daisy
Originally uploaded by Snowbabies

Here's a shot that Debbie took last weekend.

No new shots this weekend due to rubbish weather and the fact that I've been totally adicted to Animal Crossing - Wild World and Debbie has been unable to put down New Super Mario.

Paul.

Sunflower

Sunflower
Originally uploaded by Snowbabies

We've been trying to grow sunflowers for years, all sorts of varieties and all have failed.

This year for some reason we've got loads of sunflowers around the bird table from the scattered bird seed. The proper packets of seed we've sewn around the garden have failed as usual.

Debbie got this shot at the weekend, we've got two flowering at the moment with one about to open and at least ten more on the way.

Red Rose

Red Rose
Originally uploaded by Snowbabies

Not much bird activity in the garden yesterday so I had a crack at a rose instead.

Paul.

White Lilly

Lilly
Originally uploaded by Snowbabies

White lilly in our garden.

Pink Lilly

Pink Lilly
Originally uploaded by Snowbabies

Pink Lilly in our garden.

Lucy

Lucy
Originally uploaded by Snowbabies

Lucy enjoying the hot sunshine yesterday.

We've not ventured outside today yet, too much sun yesterday or too much bacardi last night, not sure...

Paul.

Friday Flowers

Flowers in our garden this week.

Langsett Reservoir

View across the reservoir on Sunday.

Langsett 2

Another shot from our walk round Langsett on Sunday.

Langsett

We had a lovely walk round Langsett on Sunday.

Father Christmas Impression

Lucy getting into the festive spirit a little too early.

Joke of the Day

For several years, a man was having an affair with an Italian woman.
One night, she confided in him that she was pregnant. Not wanting to ruin his reputation or his marriage, he paid her a large sum of money if she would go to Italy to secretly have the child. If she stayed in Italy to raise the child, he would also provide child support until the child turned 18. She agreed, but asked how he would know when the baby was born.
To keep it discrete, he told her to simply mail him a post card, and write 'Spaghetti' on the back. He would then arrange for the Child support payments to begin.
One day, about 9 months later, he came home to his confused wife.
'Honey, 'she said, 'You received a very strange post card today.'
'Oh, just give it to me and I'll explain it later,' he said. The wife obeyed and watched as her husband read the card, turned white, and fainted.
On the card was written:
Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti.
Three with meatballs, two without. Send extra sauce.'

Debbie

Firefox 3

What's it like? I'd let you know if I could download the darn thing. I don't know about breaking the world download record, I think it's just plain broken. They must be falling off their chairs laughing over at Microsoft lol.

*Edit*

Got it now and it's up and running :-)

Paul.

Here Comes The Colour

Everything really seems to be getting going in the garden now we've had a few rain showers, the flowers and plants seem to like that better than me waving a hosepipe about.

Debbie's been out with her camera and got some cracking shots despite the wind blowing everything about.

Paul.

Eddie & Champagne

Here they are, the noisiest birds in the land, Eddie and Champagne, our two cockatiels. I think Eddie is on the left, the females are supposed to be duller but there isn't much in it with these two and it's hard to tell on a photo. Champagne is definitely the noisiest though!

Paul.

Sunset Police

The sunset was lovely the other evening.

It was that good, even the police came out to have a look.

Paul.

Mad Dogs & Snowbabies

As you can see, my Nokia 6120 takes naff photos in bright light, I think I'll go for something with a better camera next time.

Anyway, we went for a walk through the woods today, sandals probably weren't the best choice of footwear and setting off in the midday sun wasn't a great idea either!

When we got back, Lucy collapsed, Debbie checked on her newly formed blister and I discovered we had no beer in the fridge.

Next time we've got a free afternoon and it's gas mark 6 outside, we'll just walk as far as the off-licence and retire to the garden.

Paul.

More Tinkering

More tinkering with the blog design today, Blogger announced a new blog list element yesterday so I've added one and moved all but one of our links across. Why it won't let me add Children, Chores & Chocolate I don't know but it was a bit of a struggle adding the others, having to retry again and again on most.

The Flickr widget has been changed because the official one keeps on loading images and my mobile phone just don't like it.

I changed the Twitter widget several times before settling on the one we had in the first place.

That's enough changes for now, it'll probably be 2012 before I get round to making anymore changes.

Paul.

Marley & Me

Last year Debbie read a book called Marley & Me which had her in tears of laughter and tears of sadness. It's basicaly about living with a very naughty Labrador and if you've ever shared your home with a dog, you'll love this.

It's currently being made into a film, starring Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson, hope it lives up to the book!

Paul.

Mobile Internet Junkie

I must be out of my tree trying to use the internet through a mobile all the time. The only time the PC goes on is to load pictures from the cameras.

It's getting better every day and by using certain things for certain jobs, I get by. Reading blogs is best done through Google Reader, Flickr pictures are best viewed via Opera Mini feeds, Mippin is the fastest way to view a non mobile site and Shozu gets my mobile pictures to just about anywhere.

It takes time and a whole lot of patience to stick with it but I just love being able to hop online from anywhere.

My only issue at the moment is with Flickr because opening a picture always goes to the mobile version which doesn't let you add favourites.

*Update* It can be done, just go to your own page and click the view full version link and change the bookmark so you don't keep setting it back to the mobile version - doh!

I think Debbie is resigned to the fact that I've turned into a mobile internet junkie, I've not been told to "put that bloody phone down!" for ages.

Paul.

Very Damp Day

The rain is pouring down here today, hopefully it won't be anywhere near as bad as it was last year.

Paul.

Cooking The Haven Way

Handy tip if you arrive at a Haven Holidays site and find that the cooker door in the caravan won't shut because it's broken and customer service don't want to know.

Just get the extending mop out of the little cupboard and wedge it against the oven door and the kitchen units.

Paul.

Tidying Up

I've been tidying up the blog this afternoon, updating our blog roll and the like. I tried to update the widget for Technorati and I've wish I hadn't bothered. No matter what I do to the settings, the enormous full size thing appears in the side bar and then I get warnings that Technorati is attempting to download something from a dodgy site.

I've never got on very well with Technorati, everyone seems to use it so it must just me that thinks it's slow and a right royal pain in the arse to use. More likely it's just me being a plonker! I managed to sort it out after a bit of hunting round.

Oh the joys of blogging!

Paul.

Blogger Is Best

Over the last few months I've been wandering aimlessly around the miniature web through the eyes of Opera Mini, trying to find a half decent blogging platform that's mobile friendly.

Having neglected our existing blog here in the process, I've come to the conclusion that Blogger is just as good if not better for updating from a mobile than anything I've found and that my time would be better spent keeping this blog up to date rather than asking too much of the mobile internet that is still in it's infancy.

So to bring you bang up to date, we're both sat on the sofa rooting for Gin in Britain's Got Talent!

Paul.

Holidays & Birthdays

We've been on holiday for the last week, we had a few days at Primrose Valley on the North Yorkshire coast. Our stay was cut short a little by a rather dodgy caravan but the weather was fantastic even if it was a bit nippy by night.

Robin Hoods Bay drew us back yet again for a lovely mornings stroll along the beach to Ravenscar and back. The next day we visited Bempton Cliffs, an RSPB reserve near Flamborough Head and were pleasantly surprised that Lucy was allowed to watch the sea birds from the cliff edge with us.

Saturday was Debbie's birthday and we had all the family round for a BBQ which we both thoroughly enjoyed even if we were run ragged until gone midnight.

Yesterday we did nothing at all, only straying from the sofa to make a brew or to watch the tables and chairs whizzing past the kitchen window in the wind.

It's just as windy today but the sun has been out and we've had a nice walk round Worsborough Country park. Now we're back on the sofa trying not to think about going back to work tomorrow.

There's more photos on our Flickr Photostream.

Paul