The Morning After The Prosecco

The photo above is of my breakfast today, it's hungarian pancake (with a piece of devolay) with salad and garlic sauce from one of our favourite places, Kuchnia in Hull which is a brilliant Polish restaurant.

However, it's particularly useful today because today is a special day.

Today is the day after the "bottle of prosecco" evening.

I don't drink huge amounts as a rule. Generally on a weekend evening I'll have a beer, or maybe a glass of amaretto and coke, but that's most of the alcohol I have. Last night however, there was no beer, and I thought "hey, I know, I'll open that prosecco we've got in the fridge".

It wasn't good prosecco.

It was dry, and nasty. I poured two glasses, one for me and one for my wife, she took a sip of hers and gave it back to me.

Dear reader, you'll be pleased to know that despite the taste I stepped up, and took care of matters, and was able to add an empty prosecco bottle to the recycling at the end of the night.

So now I need a large bottle of cordial and a hungarian pancake to clear my head! 😀

In other news, my computer chair has seen better days, it was a very nice gift from a friend several years ago because he didn't need it any more, and it was narrow enough to go up to our attic (which was our computer room at the time) without having to be dismantled. But as you'll see in the image below, it was pretty badly knackered.

Not brilliant.

Anyway, I got a huge pile of fabric samples a while back (see my video for more), and they've sat in a pile for about 6 months without me really doing anything with them. This week I went off a bought some upholstery needles and a thick black thread - which turned out to be elastic 😖 - and patched it up.

Ta da!!

The sewing is rough (and actual thread rather than elastic would have been far better!) but nevertheless it's still a vast improvement on the half-naked chair I had previously. I'm hoping to spend some more time completing the patchwork look as I've still got loads of samples left over.

Before I finish I must highlight my wife's current giveaways for cross stitch fans, basically she's got 3 special halloween giveaways open at the minute, all the details are in her latest flosstube update so do watch and take part! I believe entries are drawn on the 30th or 31st because we've got to do a special video announcing the results for Halloween so do get involved now :)

Right - I'm off to eat my pancake!

Your Location Is Currently In Use

Periodically a little icon appears in the system tray in the bottom right corner of the screen on my desktop Windows-running PC. It's a little circle with a blue square in the middle, and when you hover your mouse pointer over it a little bit pop up appears, saying "Your location is currently in use".

I don't mind my location being used (at least for the software that I've allowed to use my location) but I'm always faintly surprised when it appears - this is on my desktop PC, which has been in the same location for about five years, assuming you don't get into the technicalities of it now being two floors lower than it used to.

Now, let's talk ankles.

Mine, and of course the nasty bruise I wanted to show off has faded. Feel free to give me sympathy anyway.

I have a weird ankle.

Periodically, it just gives way, it somehow bends sideways and before you know it I'm heading for the ground at speed. I believe (although memory could be fooling me) that it particularly worsened as a result of one evening I was playing football, and I decided to try hopping over the ball whilst tapping it with my foot to control it, and instead stood on the ball and fell over. Anyway, it does now and again just fail to ankle.

And it seems to have a mind of its own, and do it when it's particularly embarrassing or inconvenient. From memory I can particularly recall it failing:

• In the supermarket while bagging groceries
• While running down an alley dragging a sofa
• On my neighbours footpath on the way to pick a parcel up

The most recent event I was walking through the grounds of my sons school after picking him up, so as you can imagine there was a good dozen or so other parents with children who were there to watch me plant my face into the ground., so I couldn't even let loose my favoured series of swear words and instead had to go "Whoops! Oh dear, silly daddy should have been looking where he was going!"

Funnily enough, it seems to hurt less overall if I just take the fall rather than try to stop myself falling, perhaps the time is better spent preparing for the fall rather than trying to rectify the ankle position or something.

While I'm blogging, I should point out for any cross stitchers my wife currently has not one, not two, but three competitions on the go - do check out her latest flosstube video for details!

Cake!

I don't enter a huge amount of competitions but one that I noticed that raised my curiosity was one for winning a cake that you received in the mail.  This seemed like a somewhat bizarre idea, yet the BakerDays Letterbox Cakes look great, are customisable, and (apparently) can survive the Royal Mail.  So when I saw the blog about them on Chapters of Kat I didn't hesitate to enter the competition.

And I won!  This was ideal as one of the things that my son had asked was at Christmas "Can we have cake?" and he doesn't mean a traditional Christmas cake, he just wants a slice of vanilla sponge (chocolate would also be acceptable, I suspect).

The cake was duly ordered and within a few days I was washing up at home when a box came through the letterbox and toppled onto the laminate floor, upside side, with a heavy thud.

That'll be the cake ruined, I thought to myself, but I'm pleased to say that it wasn't the case - the cake came in a metal tin just its size, along with a Christmas cracker and a couple of sheets of information about the company.

Obviously the cake hasn't been sampled yet but with any luck it'll be a great surprise Christmas present!

A very anonymous box...

Aha!

Cake customised as requested!

For more info about these cakes go to http://www.bakerdays.com/

Wiki Loves Monuments UK competition

Wikimedia UK is supporting the Wiki Loves Monuments competition, where across the globe (and in the UK for the first time this year) in September people take photos of the world's historic monuments and upload them to Wikimedia UK.  Wikimedia UK, if you're not aware, exists to help collect and distribute freely available knowledge, and is linked with Wikipedia.

The competition is really straightforward, on the website they give you a very short guide as to what to do and what monuments they accept photos of, and then you go off, get some decent photos, and upload them with a bit of a description!  Nice and simple.  If you do have a go do read the guide, common photo errors, and the rules, I fell foul of not reading the photo errors before I went out and a lot of the photos I took had a lovely big church sign in it, with lots of phone numbers and information on there which causes problems. Must try harder in future!

My first uploaded picture is available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Andrews_Church,_Kirk_Ella.JPG - to get this picture it was a bit tricky, as St Andrews Church in Kirk Ella is surrounded by lovely trees, which are great but get in the way when taking photographs.  The only way I could get a shot was by laying on the path in front of the church, taking the photo there, and breathing in so that my belly didn't get in the way!  (Bit of a subtle hint for myself to get some exercise - which the Pedometer Challenge I'm doing shortly should help with!)

Anyhow, that's my first picture, but I hope to be getting a lot more up before the end of September!  If you're getting involved do let me know what photos you're getting!