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Haystacks and inconvenience

( Dec. 21st, 2007 02:52 pm)
I am currently doing the text searching equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack. Needless to say given this is my last day of work before Christmas, I am somewhat not bothered.

I'm inconvenienced because tomorrow, Torquay are playing away at St Albans City in the Setanta Sports Cup. Hardly the greatest competition on Earth but nonetheless it's just up the road and I'd have gone along normally except I'm committed to driving down to Devon.

Hmm, what else, that's it... shopping. We've still not done any Christmas shopping. I narrowed the options down to:
1. Stop off at Cribbs Causeway near Bristol on the way down tomorrow. It will undoubtedly be chaos (there are only 7000 parking spaces and this is by far the largest shopping centre in the area - probably a catchment area of, what, easily 500,000?).
2. Use parents as babysitters and head off to Plymouth/Exeter on Sunday/Monday.

I figured 2. would be best as it is less stressful as it doesn't involve maneuvring a baby around crowded shops but I've been vetoed. Personally I don't believe that either Plymouth or Exeter will be that bad.

Okay, a poll!

[Poll #1109656]
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Surviving The Season

( Dec. 29th, 2006 06:39 pm)
We went to Watford the other day. Watford town centre is one-way-system retail park hell. I don't want to ever go back there again. The alternative was Brent Cross on the first day of the sales. I think in future I'd rather go with the devil I know.

Brent Cross was today, and from the look of the traffic queues, it wasn't going to be much fun. In the end, we parked easily, just had to wait ages for lifts, and battle through pretty packed crowds. The one good thing about the John Lewis baby department, though, is that it's the one bit of the store that is totally non-seasonal. You either need baby stuff, or you don't, regardless of the time of year. So it was the quietest bit of the whole shopping centre.

Babies are expensive. Okay, let me rephrase that. The stuff you need to buy for a first baby is expensive. Naturally, as long as you keep a reasonable gap between children (we intend to) and avoid multiple births (we kind of hope we do, at least this first one is just the one) these expenses can disappear almost completely for numbers 2, 3, etc. The same stuff is recycled for the most part. Clothes, furniture, equipment, and the like. It also means I've now got a definite deadline for clearing out the spare bedroom: January 4th, by 15:00, which is when the cot and dresser/changing table are getting delivered.

I like deadlines; they concentrate the mind. I have a feeling this is why I haven't picked a name yet. There isn't a real deadline, only a vague one. If I knew Baby would be arriving at precisely 07:36 on Tuesday January 16th, then I'd know that's when I'd have to have chosen a name by. As things stand, it's not all that clear. So I umm and I ahh and I say "I'll get around to it" but I never do. It's not like it's something difficult to do - go through a book with a list of names in it, and hopefully like a few of the same ones Alexis also likes.

This break has gone by a bit too quickly. It's Friday evening already, and there's now only a long weekend between now and going back to work.
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Humbug? Bah!

( Dec. 24th, 2006 06:47 pm)
It was my 33rd birthday on Friday. It was a quiet one. We did our food shopping for Christmas Day*, and went to a local Italian restaurant for dinner.

Yesterday was lazy, until Alexis remembered/discovered she didn't have any breadcrumbs. This is a problem: the breadcrumbs she likes are only available on import, and only a few specialist/ex-pat store stock them. The nearest such store is in Hampstead, which I hate driving to and parking in at the best of times. Nevertheless, on the second pass around, I managed to get movie-style parking: right in front of the shop. I should've known; the trip back involved 3, possibly 4, London boroughs (Camden, Islington, possibly Haringey, and then Barnet). The problem with Hampstead, y'see, is turning around to point in the direction you want to. The discovery you can't turn left at a certain point onto Kentish Town road, thus requiring a 2 or 3-mile detour to do the quick, less than a mile as-the-crow-flies, trip between Kentish Town and Tufnell Park.

Today would've been lazy as well, except for:
* Apart from stock, milk, and a few other bits and pieces. Turns out that whilst Waitrose was still opening at 11am, they had a half-hour "browsing" period from 10.30am. I mean, a department store I can understand. But a "browsing" period in a supermarket? Any road, that meant it was already jammed solid. In the end, it wasn't such a bad run, but annoying nevertheless.

Oh, and some tidying up: piles of bit of paper relating to this, that, and the other. I did find a birthday card from my Nan, though, which had a nice surprise tucked into it :-) And I arraned our presents around the "tree" (which is actually a tall lamp in one corner of the room).

Now, maybe, I can relax a bit.
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