put together in the past.
But none can outrun or equal...the power of MEGABLAST!
ah ah ah ah yeah
Could I be wrong, could I be right, could that be kid of Dynamite!

Well folks, after much time away from the blog world, I decided to stick up a final post of the year.

Lots has gone on, not the least an attempted burglary on Monday night! Yep, some scallywags were out Xmas shopping in people's houses. I've gone on a knee-jerk reaction and have put up more alarm sensors (I've saturated the house) and will be doing even more!

Still at work today, a friday before Xmas, not exactly Xmasy is it?

But the train ride to work was fun. It was 5% capacity at the station, so I shared an entire carriage with 4 other people! Listening to my Zen NX - hence the Bomb The Bass snipped opener.

I've booked a half day today, to get myself out and a present for a good friend of mine. Not sure what to buy him to be honest, so will have to succomb to something rubbish like a remote control unit - boo.

Time to get one year older on New Years Eve, should be a nice day. I think Icy's been organising something. She's not good at keeping secrets in the house - I saw my birthday card, and a list of my friends and their telephone numbers on a pad. I'd like a quiet day at home, but will go with the flow as I love her so.

So, a final farewell to ye all, hope you all enjoy yourselves sensibly over the Xmas break. And heres to a wonderful new year for us all!

Merry Xmas
--
tnn

A lot has happened since I started using this blog to record my thoughts, interesting items, and events etc. As a result of these changes, my view of life is slowly changing and I'm beginning to find it hard to spare time to sit down and chronicle more of the same. I thought the commute would give me time, but I've ended up spending more of that reading magazines and novels, just to slowly wake me up and calm me down at the start and end of every working day!

Anyway, Xmas approaches and I've taken some time off to help sort out the house (here, here, here), and get the fireplace going - thanks to everyone for giving me some useful tips!

Icy bought her new car on Saturday, it will arrive in January - hopefully she'll be able to get a decent registration that makes some sense!

I mowed the front lawn (its a bit tiny) and picked up the moss-balls that seem to grow on the porch roof and land on the floor every day! I'll have to do a bit-every-day- from now until January to tame the madness.

Task list for the break:

• tidy front and back gardens - mow lawn, trim edges, hoover up leaves, and throw down more weedkiller
• understand what we need to plant this xmas to get a nice spring garden (I know nothing of gardening)
• get someone to come and fix the porch tiles - they are all loose now
• tidy up the inside of the house and sort out what needs to go in the bin from the garage - want to get some space in there for the new car ;-)
• sort out the fireplace
• fix the radiators that are broken :(
• buy a bed for the bedroom (jan sales probably)
• get fit (use the 2nd hand exercise bike we bought last weekend :)
• Visit damo's new flat (he doesn't know that yet, but Icy and I will slowly drive over and just pop in for a day-time visit)
• relax...

A lot to get done in 1.3 weeks!!!

Oh, and I get a year older on New Years Eve - like I'm looking forward to that!

Through this all I'll be keeping a beedy eye on the ID Card campaign - at a Data Centre for a large financial organisation I was given a fingerprint scan entry to allow me into the bridge area - it didn't recognise my fingerprints even though it had taken them 10 minutes earlier!!!! My confidence in electronic biometric techniques to guarantee identity were NOT improved. I said it to all and sundry that could listen and they agreed - it is not a great system - the readers are flawed, and the smallest of movements as you try to scan the finger and it goes awry. Pointless. I feel that lots of scared policemen and security forces will be on edge due to the fostered culture of fear and they will lock up innocent people for 90 days without trial just because some CRAP software from some IT firm isnt robust enough to match IDs first time.

Bah humbug.
--
tnn

Almost quite literally. We managed to find time on Saturday to head off to the local fireplace shop and swap over £200 of our most preciously scarce moolah for some quality fireplace materials:

• Lovely black fire grate
• Lovely black back fire place
• Lovely black and silver fire guard
• Lovely black and pewter fire keeing kit (on order)
• Lovely black ash tray to go under the grate (on order)
• Lovely black ash tray cover (which we forgot in the shop!)

Anyway, as you can see, its lovely. But now the hard part. For those who didn't know, I had trouble around this time last year trying to light my first real log fire in a holiday cottage. So here's where the blog world comes in to help little old me. I have some questions, and if anyone has experience, answers would be most welcome.

1. Whats the best kindling - do I need to go buy some small sticks from the garden shop?
2. What can I do about making the flames more colourful, and festive? Can I add some salt etc. to spark it up?
3. Has anyone used those paper-to-pulp-fire-log makers? Do they work? How well do they compare to firewood?
4. The owners left some firewood behind, but alas I have left it out in the open and its soaked - how long should I leave it in the garage for it to dry?

All help appreciated!
--
tnn