Twas the weekend before Christmas...

... and I've still got a fair few things to sort out before the big day.

Mainly wrapping presents, there's a few left to buy which my wife is doing today (in return I've been posting parcels for her latest sales from her Etsy shop - do take a look at www.denkaidesigns.com) but I'll need a good couple of nights of wrapping presents next week.  I quite like wrapping presents, if you've got some good Christmassy shows on the television it's quite nice.  I do need to buy a few cards also, we don't generally do cards for people, except for close family and friends, I'm feeling a little guilty as my son received loads of cards from his classmates which showed up in his book bag from his last day at school, it simply never occurred to us to do cards!  Perhaps we might get some "New Year" cards for everyone for when school starts again.

I'm writing this blog post whilst having some small amount of glitter on me - last night a few people from work went out (well, a lot of people from work went out actually last night, in various groups) and at one point I had glitter liberally sprinkled on me.  This morning I woke up, and my wife said "I think you need a shower."
 "I do?"
 "Or a wash at least."
 "Why, do I smell?" I asked - I didn't think I did, although I was feeling rather dehydrated from the night before.
 "No, you're covered in glitter."

I took quite a few photos last night, I have no idea why I took this one which appears to be of peoples feet.

For lunch me and my son went to the local cafe for a snack, I ordered him beans on toast and a bacon sandwich for me, when they arrived he declared that we should "split it" which, I discovered, doesn't mean share, it means he eats my sandwich and I can eat the beans on toast, unless he's still hungry after the bacon sandwich, in which case he eats both of them.

Looking far too happy as he eats my bacon sandwich

How are your Christmas preparations going?  Let me know if you're all sorted and just waiting for the big day, or if you're yet to start!

Finally, some excellent news, this is probably the last post where I say "Time is running out to vote for me in the UK Blog Awards 2017!"

Votes for the awards do have to be in by the 19th of December so if you haven't already voted, please head over to http://www.blogawardsuk.co.uk/ukba2017/entries/blog-thog and pop a vote in.  I'm shortlisted for 2 categories, Lifestyle and Digital & Technology, you can vote for both categories in one go from the link above.  It's only by your votes that I have a chance of getting shortlisted, so please do vote if you haven't already :) Apparently you can vote regardless of where you live, although it's the UK Blog Awards all that means is that the blogs have to be in the UK, not the votes.

Windows Network Diagnostics

This evening I was editing a video to be uploaded, watching a YouTube video to pass the time, when my internet connection inexplicably died.

"But wait!" I hear you cry (maybe). "What about Windows Network Diagnostics?"

Yes, my browser suggested that I try Windows Network Diagnostics, and like a fool, I did.

I'd love to hear from anyone who actually had Windows Network Diagnostics fix their internet connection for them.  As far as I can see, what it does is showing you progress bars optimistically filling up, and in the meantime it tells you that it's doing various technical and positive sounding things, like "resetting IP configuration" and "flushing DNS".  It also makes you wait long enough so that you think it's actually tried to do something, and then finally it says "Troubleshooting was unable to automatically fix all of the issues found"., the result being that you think it's done its best to fix the problem, but the problem is beyond even the technical expertise housed within the Windows Network Diagnostics tool.

At any rate, I've no idea what my problem was, but restarting the computer fixed it.

Anyway, the main news today - I am absolutely delighted to be in for the public vote of the UK Blog Awards 2017!  What this means is that I need as many people as possible (yes, that includes you reading this) to vote for me, if you have 30 seconds, a name, and an email address, your vote could be the one that gets my blog up into the top 8 which will then be looked at by judges.  So it'd wonderful if you'd head over to http://www.blogawardsuk.co.uk/ukba2017/entries/blog-thog and put a vote in for me.  I'm shortlisted for 2 categories, Lifestyle and Digital & Technology, you can vote for both categories in one go from the link above, I would really appreciate each and every reader taking a minute to vote for me.  Thank you :)

Finally, I've got not one but two new videos out on my YouTube channel - one is me telling a couple of stories from when I went to Dublin a few years back, and encountered a Chinese health practitioner, and the other is from my recent Robin Hood's Bay roadtrip, and shows me and my dad's epic mini pool tournament, so if you want to relax watching two grown men tackle a tiny pool table, that's for you.