{"id":163,"date":"2004-12-18T18:49:03","date_gmt":"2004-12-18T18:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/?p=163"},"modified":"2004-12-18T18:49:03","modified_gmt":"2004-12-18T18:49:03","slug":"and-relax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/?p=163","title":{"rendered":"And relax&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The laptop zipped up in it&#8217;s case.&nbsp; The&nbsp;(damnable)&nbsp;Windows Mobile company cell phone is switched off and the battery detached.&nbsp; The security swipe card, photo pass and office key are on the shelf.&nbsp; The pre-dawn&nbsp;departures and post-sunset returns&nbsp;are finished for the year.&nbsp; Yup, I am on&nbsp;annual leave&nbsp;until January 4th.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">So far, I have celebrated with 12 hours of (almost, we do have kids after all) uninterrupted sleep followed by&nbsp;a lazy read of the newspaper.&nbsp; Suitably prepared, I then took a&nbsp;trip with sprog&nbsp;No.3&nbsp;to the pet shop for rabbit food and onto Argos for a new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.electricshopping.com\/img\/43550.jpg\">water-filtering kettle<\/a>.&nbsp; This last purchase was precipitated by the old kettle dying just hours after I had seen an advertisement for a filtering kettle.&nbsp;&nbsp;Once cleaned and assembled, this little wonder has proven it self capable of&nbsp;turning our hard&nbsp;lime scale-ridden London water into stuff that makes a superb flavoursome cup of tea.&nbsp; After enduring endless recitations of &#8216;Tomorrow&#8217; by sprog No.2 and friend (auditioning for a show), endless tickling attacks by sprog No.1 and a nice snoozy cuddle with No.4, I staggered to my feet to assist SWMBO with the portage of shopping from car to kitchen.&nbsp; Duty done, I have sought refuge from the fearsome five females in the spare room, busying myself with ripping MP3s from CDs to iTunes and chatting simultaneously with three friends on Trillian.&nbsp; In no particular order, these&nbsp;were:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">PinkFairyCat, who also blogs to <a href=\"http:\/\/london.metblogs.com\/\">London.Metblogs.Com<\/a> wanted to ensure that, as I&#8217;m not at work,&nbsp;I didn&#8217;t miss <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mobile-clubbing.com\/pillow.html\">London Pillow Fight Club II<\/a> as I had missed the last mobile clubbing event at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoffmanphotos.demon.co.uk\/Paddington\/\">Paddington<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.justasimpleonlinenerd.com\/\">Jason<\/a>, a longtime cyber friend and PDA addict, who pointed me towards the most excellent &#8220;Underwear Goes Inside The Pants&#8221; video by&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lazyboytv.com\/LAZYBOYhome.html\">LazyBoyTV<\/a>.&nbsp; In return, I swung him by the morphed wonders of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bandbuilder.com\/korn_greatesthits\/index.php?ref_code=D56037\">Korn&#8217;s video<\/a> for their cover version of Cameo&#8217;s Word Up, which Jason mentioned when I told him I was ripping <a href=\"http:\/\/members.tripod.com\/rant58\/id476.htm\">Gun<\/a>&#8216;s cover of the same song.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.yatescentral.com\/\">Andy<\/a>, a Michael Stipe look-alike dislocated North Of England football fan, who nows lives somewhere cold and snowy in the US.&nbsp; After some idle banter about the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.yatescentral.com\/september_2004.php#1095431375\">ongoing boycott of InterBrew<\/a>, how crappy American-imported Tetley&#8217;s teabags are and other important subjects, Andy buggered off to watch&nbsp;a UK&nbsp;football match that was being aired for free &#8211; a rare occurence in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paleoresearch.com\/Maps\/USA%20States\/Pics\/Minnesota.gif\">somewhere cold and snowy in the US<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p align=\"left\">Having just looked at the clock,&nbsp;it would seem that I have exactly 14 minutes to get ready for an evening out.&nbsp; In a very rare clash of dates, we have been invited to two parties on the same night so, once the babysitter arrives, it&#8217;ll be canapes and vino with our friends to the west and beers and snacks with the friends to the east.&nbsp; Make that 13 minutes.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><font size=\"1\">my lo-fi ears are listening to <a href=\"http:\/\/phobos.apple.com\/WebObjects\/MZSearch.woa\/wa\/advancedSearchResults?songTerm=Moonlight Sonata&amp;artistTerm=Ludwig van Beethoven\">Moonlight Sonata<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/phobos.apple.com\/WebObjects\/MZSearch.woa\/wa\/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=Ludwig van Beethoven\">Ludwig van Beethoven<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The laptop zipped up in it&#8217;s case.&nbsp; The&nbsp;(damnable)&nbsp;Windows Mobile company cell phone is switched off and the battery detached.&nbsp; The security swipe card, photo pass and office key are on the shelf.&nbsp; The pre-dawn&nbsp;departures and post-sunset returns&nbsp;are finished for the year.&nbsp; Yup, I am on&nbsp;annual leave&nbsp;until January 4th. So far, I have celebrated with 12 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}