Sock Sorting Is Fun

This post is not about something exciting.  To be frank, I have a different view to some people as to what is enjoyable.

For example, I've never understood people that like horror movies.  I don't like being scared, and I'm reasonably easy to scare (wave a piece of moldy fruit at me, making it seem that you'll touch me with it, and that'll do the trick) so I wouldn't choose to go watch something that is intended to scare me - I'm sure that it's good for the soul or something metaphysically positive like that, but I'm quite happy to enjoy nice emotions, like laughing.

I have a similar view when it comes to books.  I don't mind there being some tough situations on the way, but by the end there had better be a happy ending or I'll be most disappointed.  Actually, that brings to mind my mum (do check out her blog by the way, currently she's talking about bellows), she's known to read the end of a book first to make sure that she likes the ending, and then read the rest of it.

Anyway, we were having a discussion in the office about socks, and basically a couple of my colleagues put forward the argument that people don't want to spend time pairing up socks, and that they would essentially wear whatever socks came to hand (albeit one of my colleagues only had black socks so they all look the same anyway)

Well, I have a confession.

I quite like balling up my socks.

Not, I have to say, to the extent that I would turn down the offer of a properly cooked medium steak for balling socks.  Or a session in the pub.

But there is something quite relaxing and soothing about having a good session pairing up all of your socks.

When I decide to sort out clothes and socks (which I should do as the clothes come out of the dryer, but I don't, it happens when time allows and often when there is a distinct lack of clothes available in the wardrobes) I'll put something funny on Radio 4 - The News Quiz, Just A Minute, or Chain Reaction are my current favourites, although when The Unbelievable Truth returns it'll be in the mix as well.

And pretty much as long as I've got something decent to listen to, I'm quite happy to potter away balling up socks and putting away clothes.  Black socks are always a challenge, finding ones with the same shade of black, weave, elastic content... yes I get a bit geeky about getting the right two black socks together :)

I feel as though this post has gone on long enough. Maybe next time I'll pick something even more exciting to write about, like how I always wear the same jacket else I'll lose my wallet / work badge / phone.  Stay tuned :)

The Wedding

So, I got married last Saturday.

It was an awesome, awesome day, absolutely perfect - we were married at Lazaat hotel in Cottingham, which was a great venue and the staff there were really helpful.  My wife undertook a huge amount of planning for the big day, which made it run like clockwork and I just have to say really could not have gone better!  A lovely ceremony, brilliant food (the hotels' handmade profiteroles are worth a mention - generally hotels buy in ready made profiteroles, but these guys make literally hundreds of them), great guests - thank you to all the family and friends that made it on the day or sent their congratulations, I got to do a speech (I do love being the centre of attention), my wife is wonderful and looked even more amazing than she normally does, my son looked very cute in his suit, so many people came and helped doing stuff on the day too... it was just a brilliant day.

Plus, I keep discovering new bits about the evening celebrations, mainly due to the fact that I drank far too much on the night, and whenever anyone says to me "Hey Mike, do you remember when xxx happened?" only then do the memories start to come back - there was a lot of dancing going on that evening.

My mum wrote a brilliant blog about the wedding, if you want check it out at http://ravenmagical.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/a-wedding-to-remember.html

In other news, I slept with socks on.

For some reason for the last week or two the skin on my hands has been really dry, no matter how much skin cream I keep putting on, so my wife hit on the idea of literally coating my hands in cream, and put socks on to allow it to soak in.  My hands are actually healing a bit now so that's a good sign.

The good news is that the guest posts will be continuing for the near future, supplemented by the odd post by myself - we're going away on honeymoon at the start of July (a weeks cruise around the Norwegian Fjords) so fortunately the stack of guest posts people have kindly provided will keep the blog going in my absence.  Feel free to send me more! :)

And finally I heard today that one of my travelling books (#tbook18)is headed for Chicago, it's really nice to hear that they are on the move!  For more Travelling Book Project stuff go to the website - http://www.travellingbook.eu/, I might take the opportunity to distribute the last couple of travelling books I have when I go away next month.

April Fools - the answer!

So, what was the answer to my April Fool post?

As a recap, in my last post I gave nine truths and one lie about me, and invited people to guess which one was untrue.  The ten statements were as follows:

1) I can't swim or ride a bike.
2) Sneezing out of a window seems logical to me.
3) I once eBayed a cherry that had been kicked by Dylan Moran, the Irish comedian.
4) I massaged a Moroccan chap called Abdul.  Multiple times.
5) Stephen Fry once called me "Mark" instead of "Mike".
6) I once planned to travel around the country in a van.
7) I wrote a skit about Tony Blair.
8) I wrote a short story about a fruit machine, and a mans love for it.
9) I once conversed with Robert Llewellyn about the state of Starbug in later series of Red Dwarf.
10) As I write this, an uneaten doughnut is on a plate next to me.

The answer is number nine - although I would very much like to communicate with Robert Llewellyn, being an awesome person, the writer of one of my favourite books (The Man on Platform Five) and obviously the man behind the mask of Kryten, I haven't done so at this point in time.  Everyone seems to have been thrown off by the amazing truth that I managed to not eat a doughnut, until I had finished the post!

In other news, I hate my socks.

Seriously, just look at them.  Scum.

These socks are scratchy, and don't stretch, and are just simply not really nice to wear.  I have a selection of lovely bamboo lined socks, as well as more basic thin cotton ones.

But the trouble with these other socks is that they inevitably are worn, and then separate from one another in the washing basket/washing machine/tumble dryer/sorting of clothes process, so that I only have one of my lovely socks to wear.

And these ones are always there.  So in the end, faced with the choice of once again wearing a non-paired couple of socks, or wearing the horrible pair, I plump for the horrible pair.

Finally, thanks to everyone who has viewed my blog - I've just hit 50,000 views (by Blogger statistics anyway) which is really great.  Thank you!  And do keep an eye on my YouTube channel, I'm working on a new video which is going to be quite decent (hopefully!)

Socks

I hate socks.

I mean, I like socks.  They keep your feet warm and when you drop your coffee on the floor you can use an old sock to dry it up.  But why do socks very very slightly differ from each other, just enough so that you can't make pairs?

My son is the worst for this.  I'm an old hand at the "well if the bit of sock above the ankle is black, it's all good" tactic, where the heels may be different colours but you can get away with it.

However, as an example, my son has about twelve socks which have blue, grey, and white stripes.  I like these socks because they fit him, they aren't too tight and they don't fall down when he runs around - which is particularly good because he'll take them off if they fall down.

So the blue etc stripy socks are good, you would think, except for the fact that the order of the stripes slightly differs from sock to sock.  So, unless you actually manage to have all twelve in front of you, you almost certainly can't actually make any pairs.

I would be tempted to pick two socks and hang the consequences, however now my son goes to nursery several days, a class run by the local council, and a class run by a local charity.  And particularly with nursery and the classes we try desperately to be the perfect parent, you know the one - the one whose child is all lovely, never muddy, washes up and can play the piano, and after class they're going to go and make biscuits out of freshly sourced organic flour and Peruvian honey.  In contrast, after the class me and the little one are probably going to get a bag of Quavers each, watch some Octonauts and if we really feel up to it, and I mean really feel up to it, we might have a bath.

After I found that link to the Octonauts website I spent about fifteen minutes rescuing sea creatures from an underwater storm.  My environmental side is showing :)

Thanks to my subscribers for subscribing to my blog, here's a (very bad) video I made for you!

You're welcome :)  If you're not a subscriber yet and you have some kind of RSS reader, this link should let you subscribe.  Otherwise right at the bottom of the page there should be a box that you can put your email address in, hit the button and you'll get email updates.

Or you could always subscribe for just 99p a month via the Kindle Store!

More exciting (to me) news about my blog - I passed 3000 views as of the 16th of January which is really nice.  Thanks for checking it out - basically I have a frustated writer within me (well I was hungry and he was asleep and I had a knife and ketchup) and my blog lets me do my creative thing and be happy.  It's all that trek towards self-actualisation, as Maslow probably didn't say.

(Did anyone not use Maslow's triangle whenever possible in assignments?  It was the easiest psychology theory to find and use whenever one was needed, regardless of whether it is right or not)

Slipping

So, I was stood around in the kitchen.  Nothing particularly exciting, my other half was working on making tea and I was chatting to avoid doing chores.

Anyhow, it turns out that I have slidey socks.

And when I kind of leaned on a counter, my socks decided to slidey slide on the laminate flooring, and sit me down on the floor at the speed of gravity (32 feet per second?  So for me that's something like 0.125 seconds to sit me down from standing?)

But of course to do this, physics had to push my legs forward, so that I ended up karate kicking the kickboard under the oven, leaving it with a huge crack.

I'm actually quite pleased with this in a way, because I've had a hate-hate relationship with the kickboard, it's not fixed, just balanced upright so whenever you stand near it it takes the opportunity to topple forward onto your toes.

Plus, my son thought it was a great opportunity to climb into my lap, which was very cute, but made standing up even more difficult when my socks were still attempting to replicate ice.

Anyway, a video I wanted to flag up to everyone is Nyan Cat.  This is a geek cult video, referred to in The Guild's music video "I'm the one that's cool" (another great video to watch).  If you haven't seen it before go watch it.

Basically either you'll turn it off after ten seconds or your brain will melt.

I probably ought to be reported to someone, because I let my son watch it on my tablet.

Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!

We'll see what condition he's in tomorrow.