My mother has got herself a degree - a 2.2 in BSc Biomedical Science.  Congratulations, Mam!  I’m well proud!

The Hubster didn’t shout at me after all - he wasn’t really bothered because he never uses it, and also he seemed impressed that I’d got the printer working with the desktop, so that’s ok. Nevertheless, I still want the poor old laptop fixed.

Luckily, my brother-in-law is a sys-admin type, so I emailed him, and he replied with some instructions, which I shall follow tomorrow.

I went to First-Cousin-Twice-Removed Maddie’s first birthday party on Saturday in a place near, but not, Middlesbrough (so that makes her not be a Smogmonster, which is just as well). The Hubster and I drove up on Friday evening, staying at my mam’s, who was also going, along with my brother.

We had a lovely time, drinking beer and eating party food and playing guess the relative. It’s much harder with that side of the family, than it is the other. As the evening drew on, it was suggested that me, my brother and the Hubster go out in Sunderland, so after an hour or two of dithering, for no apparent reason, we set off with Possibly-First-Cousin-Once-Removed Alan and his wife, Sandi, to Sunderland. We had a good night out, playing pool and becoming very drunk, and blethering on about whatever.

Next day, we all went to visit my sister, whose birthday it was, and who’s just got engaged (hooray!), then me and The Hubster went home. Before we got there, I was most poorly and had to stop at many service stations. The Hubster kept saying it was just a hangover, until we got home, when a little while later, he started feeling all poorly bad too. We had a dreadful night, then spent the next two and a half days being ill, with my mam phoning up and saying her and Anth were poorly-bad too, and it was gastroenteritis. Don’t know how we all caught it though, because the only thing we all ate was party food, and no-one else who had it was ill. Anyway, Hubbie perked up enough to go to the shop, which was just as well, because we had nothing in. He went back to work today, all mended, and I drove to Colchester with a splitting headache for a supervision. Luckily, my supervisor was sympathetic.

All those years of blaming the postman for my Mother’s Day cards late arrival have come back to haunt me. This year, it was posted on Thursday, so she should have got it on Friday, two whole days before Mother’s Day, and I would not receive a brusque phone call enquiring of its whereabouts on Sunday.

As it turned out, I didn’t get such a phone call on Sunday, but I did get two brusque messages on Monday. She didn’t state what she wanted, so I was most puzzled. I rang her back, and she did her where’s-my-card thing. Damn postman! I told her it was posted on Thursday, and I described the card to her (she was suitably amused), and she was pleased I’d sent one, but upset that it hadn’t arrived. I hope she has words with Mr Postman.

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It was fairly traumatic this year. Nana died the week before, so we had to go up for her funeral just before Christmas. We played Spot the Relative, which was useful, as I found out who some of the ones on the wedding invitation list that I didn’t know were.

Came back down again for Christmas itself and to see Puss, who we’d left to her own devices with lots of food and water and a litter tray, which she only uses when we’re away. She prefers to go out to do her business, which is fine by us.

Henry sounded particularly unwell (the exhaust, going by the noise) during the latter part of the journey up north, so I rang the doctor’s and arranged to take him in on the Wednesday after Christmas. On the way back down, I was just accelerating away from a roundabout on the A1, when I heard a different sort of noise. A metal-trailing-on-tarmac sort of noise. This sounded bad, so I pulled up onto the hard shoulder, got up and looked underneath the car. Yup, that would explain it: the exhaust pipe was hanging off.

One expensive phone call later, and the AA man came along and patched Henry up enough to take him home, then to the doctor’s, when they reopened. That wasn’t cheap, either. Still, it could have been worse: there was one car which was going to be sent to the scrap yard because the new part it needed was worth more than the car itself (a Mitsubishi Lancer) and one car which was worth the same amount as the new head gasket it needed plus other work and a tow to London. I wonder what its owner decided to do in the end.

On the Thursday, we went back up north to visit the families, starting with mine, then up to Scotland, then back to mine. The journey up to Scotland was to be the Grand Meeting of the In-laws, in a pub in Alnwick, which is roughly half way between the two sets. It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be. C’s brother wasn’t there, though, as he’d elected not to visit his parents this Christmas. Can’t imagine why.

The cat came with us as far as my mam’s, and stayed with her while we were in Scotland. She did her usual interminable miaowing all the way up and all the way back down again that drives C up the wall so. Henry behaved himself, though.
New Year’s Eve saw us back at home, doing absolutely nothing special to celebrate it. Now, C’s back at work, and everything’s getting back to as normal as it can be.

I’ve just changed my webhosting, so there will be some disruption to my site. The domain will be the same, but my blog will be moving again, I’m afraid. The change is partly WordPress’s fault, as I want my blog to be part of my site, rather than be hosted by them, and my previous host did not support PHP, which is somewhat required. I also found their website to be somewhat confusing and it always seemed to take a tremendous effort to find anything on their site. I was therefore really quite pleased to hear that it was about to expire, unless I did something about it. I asked Derek who he uses, as he’s geeky like that (sorry), and he recommended this one to me, so I’ll see how they go (not that I used his referral link ;)). Seems ok so far, anyway. Which isn’t to say I don’t really know what most of it is talking about!

So far:

• I’ve saved my previous site to my pooter, as it suddenly dawned on me that I’d lose it all once the transfer went through.
• I’ve shifted the old blogger blogs to new directories within that site; I’ll have to put at least two back up at some point so I can import them into WordPress. This is something I’ve been putting off until I had changed my host, so now I have no excuse.
• I’ve installed WordPress onto the server. They do it by magic, which is very good, because I really wouldn’t have a clue how to do it.

I need to:

• Shift my current WordPress blog to this site.
• Do something constructive with my other blogs, such as they are. I may even update them now and again!
• Put some content up on the site!

I may have let slip a certain something to a certain someone or two…

The two certain someones left our house a few minutes ago, much the relief of the poor cat, whose bed they’ve been sleeping in.  It wasn’t such a bad visit, actually.  I made a shed load of chilli on Friday, which I let “mature” during the day, and reheated for tea, eaten with red wine.  We had a pub lunch with lager in town yesterday during a shopping session.  For tea, we were taken out for curry and Kingfisher Indian lager at place a pleasant walk away from home.  It was a very nice curry; it may have to be revisited.  We had lunch today of ham and cheese wholemeal rolls and a cuppa.

I imagine it’s chilli for tea, seeing as there’s loads left.