I had a Merry Cribo and all that

I had a very nice Christmas & took a few well earned days off work. We
started off by visiting Jo's family in Devon. One day, Jo went into
Exeter to meet up with her friend Mel & they went for a sauna session. I
had a few hours to kill, and so went to watch Disney's latest offering,
"Brother Bear". It was early afternoon on a weekday, and I was the only
adult not to be accompanied by a gaggle of small children. It really
was a very weak film, combining all of the clichés of previous films into
an uninspiring, obvious plot.

On Christmas Eve went home to Dulwich. Jo's mum stayed at my parents
for 4 days as well. It sounds like a premise for one of those family
disaster movies, but was actually no bother at all. On Christmas Eve we
went to midnight mass, and my brother contemplated joining the choir, as
he thought some of the choirgirls were quite fit. Cheeky monkey. On
Christmas in the evening we played Risk, and my dad, brother &
brother-in-law stayed up until about 3am battling it out. We all went to go see
the Chinese state circus on Boxing day. We had front row seats and saw
all manner of human dexterity. Those Chinese will bend over backwards to
impress you, literally.

For new years we were in Brighton. An Italian girl from Jo's
work invited us over and did some really nice food. Some cookoo-brain
thought it would be a good idea to go down to the beach, which was
absolutely freeeezing. We had a duvet with us, and wrapped ourselves in
that, as we walked along, looking like a pair of complete muppets.

On 2nd January, as I was about to leave for work, I was surprised to
not
find my car. I was like "hmm, I'm sure we parked it around here
somewhere". It had been parked at a bus stop on New Years eve, but we
didn't realise, because cars had parked either side of where we parked.
So my car had been towed away. D'Oh! I had to go pick it up in my lunch
break & pay a stupid great fine. At any rate, it helped me with my new
years resolution: don't get the car towed away again.

We've now got a nice digital camera - its a Cannon Ixus, with 4 million
mega pixels (or something), 3 x optical zoom, and you can do mini film
clips with sound so we're pretty pleased with that.

Favourite website of the moment: making faces. You upload a jpeg
picture, and then this site animates it and allows you to make it talk, save
it and send it to your friends. Brilliant stuff.

Kind hearts & Kidney Stones

Apparently, passing a Kidney stone is more painful than giving birth. This is the fun that I was having yesterday.

A week into my new job working as an accounts assistant at Seeboard, I leave work early complaining of a back ache. As i drive home, the pain is getting progressively worse. When I get home I have a lie down and wonder if a shower might help, then decide that an ambulance might be better placed to help as I writhe about in pain. The ambulance arrives just about as I start vomiting. As I'm taken down to the Ambulance Joanne faints, because of low blood pressure, and is helped down too. They give me some gas (as they do with pregnant women) but that doesn't help much. In fact I start hyperventila5ting and my hands lock up. When I get to the hospital they use me as a pin-cushion for a bit before they're happy they've injected me right, and give me some morphine which makes everything nice and woozy. Nap time.

Well that was the worst of it over, I have some X-Rays and blood tests, and I must have passed the stone at some point - which can be as small as just a wee spec of sand. My mum happens to be in the area, visiting the student house so is able to drop by the hospital, which is only good and right when you're poorly.

Amanda's wedding snapshots

Joanne has added a selection of about 60 of the best of the photos from the disposable cameras on the tables at Amanda's wedding reception to my online photoalbum:

http://www.photoaccess.com/share/guest.jsp?ID=A92D2328B86
&cb=PA

If you have a fast enough computer, the best way to look at them is in a
slideshow - click on launch viewer, then slideshow.
There's lots of Amanda, Chris, the bridesmaids, Tony, Penny, Peter, Me & Jo,
Sumit, Sue, David, Tom, Rebecca, Rob & Erica and a scattering of others as
well.

Tom's Testimonial

People saying nice things about me would definitely appear in my top 10 of things that I like people to say about me.

"Seddon taught me everything I know. Hail him. He brings tha bling to all he touches, much like a gangsta Midas. I now want to become a hiphop hiker and say of myself "I put the 'bling' into 'rambling'." I digress. But this is the stuff that Mark is made of. What a legend. "

From Friendster http://www.friendster.com/user.jsp?id=1178417