Always.. be..

Cleaning?

Blogging? ( I try..)

I dusted down my Glengarry Glenross T-Shirt which was a present from the brother in law. The movie happens to be one of the most compelling 100mins of cinema I've ever seen. Profanity, bitching, endless stress.. would the audience want a career in sales after viewing this?

Love the closing motormouth Blake, Alec Baldwin's finest ever role. Whenever I watch his 'pep talk' to the staff the hair on my neck stands on end...

With fear, I suppose..

Alec Baldwin - Best performance

A change is as good as a rest..

Unless you've got four little kids to deal with..

It was gonna be so restful. The three of us exploring the New Forest, getting back to nature, relaxing and chilling out..

If only...

Are family holidays supposed to be like this? X is normally a sweet, charming dude - until he is paired up with his best buddy Samuel. Add in two younger brothers and you get childminding in a tent.. not a holiday...

It was amazing. I hoped X could hang out with his buddies, even make some new ones. Trouble is, add Samuel to the mix and you have bickering, screaming arguments and super competitiveness. We spent nearly the whole weekend firefighting and trying to diffuse tensions between the two of them. Meanwhile middle brother Richard was whinging and incredibly needy whilst cheerful, dirty William needed to be chained down to stop him running off. I kept on looking at toddler William's snot plugged and dirty face with a sense of dismay. This child was a world away from my immaculate niece - he wore his food like camo paint and had a thick layer of it.. up to his eyeballs!

I did have some moments of peace. I would've liked to have been able to share a few more with Ellen and X, but it was not to be. My appreciation of how unrewarding a 'family holiday' can be is a revelation. As is my respect for Xander's sweeter more well behaved chums. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of them in future, and less of the stressful ones...

X tells it how it is

Updates and my redneck chair...

Big, important visitors to the office today,

All the chiefs are dressed in their finery, scurrying about with busy looks on their faces. They're taking no risks. Even Dan, my office muse has been packed off down to the postroom for the duration!

Before I forget, check out my streetdaq page again. My writing style doesnt really stand out, but comparing ex-England cricketer Derek Pringle to an icebreaker was a metaphor I'm proud of.

So what's going on, with me? Well, now Ive got a place to call my own, I'm rather enjoying the simpler things in life. For months I've been looking out for a beanbag to relax on, but the pieces of flimsy, flammable cr*p on sale haven't looked too enticing. It all changed with the monster I picked up from Argos the other day. It has speakers so you can plug it into your sound system/telly and also a massage function too. Here's a pic of one very happy customer..


Yeah, I know. I look like a cola supping, potato chip chomping fool here. That was the intention.

My beanbag is a real self-indulgent piece of kit, I love it! Feels like I should be watching Nascar wearing one of those beer holding hats when I sit in it.

Alex

It's a mug's game! (redux)

Tempting fate there.

Ha ha.

A footballing spanner was thrown into the works yesterday. I had a punt on Rosenberg, who are the Manchester United of Norwegian football. Against Odd Grenland, they were winning comfortably 1-0, before putting one into their own net with 15 mins to go! Final result 1-1. I'll be putting my visits to paddypower on hold for a while, methinks.

And it keeps on piling up..

I won't bore you with the back story. It's just the gambling winnings are still coming(???!!!)

The European competitions are just starting, so I thought Id have a punt - both bets have come in - I'm £377 quid (further) up!!! All this stuns me, as my luck just keeps on running.. better touch wood as I think this. My latest jammy moment was a last minute winner for Maritimo versus Sporting Fingal. Sporting.. Fingal???!!! Sounds like a team from Craggy Island, right? Well, they held on till the 89th minute before the Portugese finally grabbed a winner for 3-2.

Out of curiosity I checked my record in the last four months. Of the 32 bets made, I've won 29 of them. I've earned 4 grand and been given me financial freedom unlike any I have ever had. So, what I'm gonna do is leave 20 quid in my online gambling account, and see how when it runs out. Will post the bets here just for my own amusement, with details on my progress... stay tuned..

Alex

My latest scheme/ sanity preserver.

Sisyphus had a hard life and it's on days like this I feel like I know what he went through. My working life feels repetitive and futile right now. All I do is push that rock up the hill and it keeps on rolling straight back down again. And again. And again.

To keep me sane, and stop my brain leaking out of my ears in a grey sludge, I often take up something creative to entertain myself. Here is my latest effort which I'd like to share with you:

Streetdaq is billed as the 'new internet goldmine' by its developers. Prospectors own a 5 year lease on a piece of 'virtual real estate' and can advertise on it/blog about it. Here's a piece of my property empire - it cost me a fiver but for my own mental health I consider money well spent.

Alex

I Am a Paleontologist - They Might Be Giants w/Danny Weinkauf

Xander likes his Beck...

No purple dinosaur s**t for him!

He also happens to be a massive They Might Be Giants Fan, remember them? TMBG have been about for about 30 years now, and recently their output has consisted of some educational (and incredibly catchy) kids albums. X, me and Ellen paid a visit to The Royal Albert Hall to catch their family show.. and what fun it was! Below is the metallic silver penguin which glided over our heads during the show, much to the astonishment of the little ones in the audience.

The band spray a massive stream of coloured confetti over the audience.. much to their astonishment and great pleasure..

X mid mosh, he had a fantastic time and was seriously bummed when it was all over.

'Avatars' of the Two Johns. Operating two puppets above their head, singing clearly and making it an entertaining experience on a massive screen in front of a thousand people takes some doing. Their creativity has to be seen to be believed.

Being surrounded by parents and their young children made me think, 'f**k me, I'm a dad now'.. and that a feeling I am enjoying greatly at the moment.

On a similar note, we've gone garden crazy recently. I picked up one of those garden incinerators from Argos to do belated battle with the garden. Everything from apples, to old thorny shrubbery to a dead hedgehog have met a fiery demise in 'Ole Smokey'. Of course, being a former firebug in my youth I find this tremendously enjoyable. Also, it gives me some satisfaction and order in my life which is often lacked...

Oscar the Grouch really should've replaced the batteries in his smoke alarm..