KING KONG (1933)

Woo Hoo! It's great being off work at Christmas, I haven't even got dressed yet, been sitting on my bean bag in the middle of the living room floor playing SNES9X on my Xbox since about 0730hrs munching on cold chicken tikka slices and (joy of joys!) got the original 1933 version of King Kong to look forward to at 1325hrs on BBC2! Just got to try and finish Super Castlevania IV before then, so if you'll excuse me, I must get back to thrashing the unquiet dead with my steel whip...! ;)

Decorations Managed...

Decorations Managed...
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...Okay, just a quick pic, we did do the decorations earlier in the week and here is the proof...long exposure with tripod... :)

The Christmas Holiday...

...starts here! No more work until (well, New York seems to be off the map at the moment so I will have to catch up on Monday briefly, but...) the 3rd of January! Hurray! :)

Josh in Japan podcast...

...been listening over the last couple of days to Josh talking about what it is like to move from America (courtesy of the US Navy, with whom I am guessing he is a medic, although he doesn't admit to it) to Japan...his good, and bad experiences with food, what it's like to stay in a hotel, what it's like to drive a car out there, and a multitude of other really interesting subjects (including what it's like being married to a Japanese woman and bringing up kids as a "gaijin")...

He's also very funny to listen to (even if he does over-use the words "nasty" and "kinda cool" in the first few of episodes)...give him a try... ;)

Feed...

Work Christmas Lunch update...

- (not wishing to seem ungrateful, but), with paper plates and with plastic knives, forks and cups we set to eat, the turkey was good (with the right amount of cranberry sauce applied) but the potatoes that I were served tasted burnt on the outside and weren't quite cooked on the inside, so a bit of a small lunch for me as a result -

- not a lot of cheese left (and this was at about twenty past one) either, I did manage to scrape a smear of stilton off the bottom of the tray and onto one of my crackers though -

- oh well, it was probably miracle-work for what it cost to put together (as we have learned with Jamie)...and this *is* only the first turkey dinner of the season... ;)

Oh, one really good thing - Secret Santa bought me a nice flat bottomed mug for my USB Cup Warmer, excellent... ;)

Work Christmas Lunch

...in the staff canteen today! Looking forward to Turkey with all the trimmings (although if it looks like that I'll eat my keyboard) followed by a selection of cheeses...

Toilet...

Toilet
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...defacement spotted on the Celedonian road...hehe...the offending wag really should have used a black marker pen though... ;)

Can't estate agents pick a less easily modified phrase? "Lettings available"? It's tantamount to encouragement to offer such low hanging fruit to pen wielding street comedians, really... ;)

Hemel Hempstead explosion

6.00am on Sunday I was woken up by what I *thought* was someone trying to shoulder barge their way in the front door (we are about 50 miles away from the site of the blast), I was just drifting off to sleep again, when I heard what I *thought* was the roof subsiding (being half asleep)...didn't think anything more of it until I was speaking to some of the kids outside on Sunday afternoon and they told me that their dad had come rushing into their room in the early hours thinking one of them had fallen out of their bunk bed! That was one hell of a bang!

Update - can you believe this picture (not mine, see the flickr set here)? Click it for the original size...

Christmas Tree

Well, today saw us taking a little drive - after finishing off some *more* of the Christmas gift shopping (we'll get there in the end!) and me doing a little bit of work for the office which had crept over from last night - up to Priory Farm to visit their Christmas Tree World -

- (nice display as usual on Sandy Lane) - Once we got inside the number of trees on offer was frankly somewhat overwhelming, they were running mini-train journeys around the warehouse for the kids! -

- after a little deliberation, wandering through the forest of options, we settled on one that, with the power of retrospect -

- was actually a little bit big, but we can be creative with a hacksaw...actually, it's been sat in the corner of the living room there for about an hour now and it's growing on me as it is... ;)

Nice smell of "pine" in the house now too...just need a Christmas wreath for the front door now...(and and to decorate the tree, obviously)...but that can wait until tomorrow...time to relax for a bit...

Terror Suspect

...T-Shirt spotted in the window of Housmans "Porcupine Book Shop"...how would MI5 cope if everyone wore one? "I'm Spartacus!"...hehe... ;)

Bait Car...

...hehe, just had to pass on the link to this site that was mentioned briefly on The Policemans blog today...basically it contains lots of video footage from cars loaded down with cameras and GPS devices that are left in tempting places for criminals to steal (at which point the police pounce)...in fact it's almost entrapment in my opinion, deliberately leaving a crime around to tempt a criminal into action...guess they just do things a little differently in the USA...*shrug*...(would make a great TV show though... ;)

update - OMG! Check out this one, a guy high on Crystal Meth!! SCARY! If they are going to set the car up with all that kit, why not build in a remote engine cut out though??

Interesting shops of Kings Cross #8 - Oscars

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Ricky Gervais Podcast

Yes, a new cool podcast! "The Ricky Gervais show" premieres at Guardian Online today (exclusively)! Podcast stream can be found here...

That's my journey home sorted then! ;)

Unfortunately, I am also trying to read "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis (before the movie comes out), bought it for £5.99 at Tesco (yeah, I know, but I couldn't resist)...so that will have to stay in the bag until bed time... ;)

Christmas Lights, new phone etc...

Well, lots to report from the weekend, got my replacement handset on Saturday morning with the first post! Well done Orange! It was a brand new C500, with a tiny 16Mb card, but luckily Flyingpops got a 128Mb with her C550 and promptly upgraded to a 1Gb one, so I threw the spare big card into the handset thus only missing one day of Chris Moyles New York Podcast... ;)

(Update - first christmas card today! See pic above, thank you Whittleman!)
Saturday morning we had mass haircuts, I played DarkWatch on the Xbox from start to finish in one sitting (which I enjoyed very much, but was over rather too quickly), then Jinx came over and we got the step ladders out of the shed and put up all the Christmas lights on the outside of the house -

- and planted the wonderful star, plant light thingies my folks bought us at a bargain price from Lidl -

- which look spectacular...(all the kids from the estate joined in the excitement, Flyingpops got at least one exhausted "Thanks a lot, now my kids want the same" while admiring the view that evening from a parent/neighbour)...hehe...

Sunday we *finally* managed to get over to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (which I loved), did the Tesco shop and had a tasty Sunday roast for tea...good weekend... :)

Update 2 - just plugged my C500 into my work PC and like magic all my contacts and appointments jumped satisfyingly back over to the handset...(just missing my leather case now! But it is upgrade time...thinking maybe the M600? Come on Orange, stick it in the upgrade section!)...

Oh bloody hell...

Vodka Luge
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...totally lost the plot last night, and managed to loose my mobile phone as a result *somewhere* on the way home...Flyingpops rang me at about half ten and that was the last time I saw my beloved C500 *sob*...got on the Thameslink to East Croydon at 22:55 and when I got off it was gone, might have fallen out of my pocket I guess...Flyingpops very kindly called Orange, and the Thameslink lost property numbers when I pathetically dragged myself through the door last night, so this morning it was the formality of calling Orange to tell them to kill the handset, then (on my fifth blooming phone number) I finally managed to wrench a reference number out of the Police so Orange are sending me a new handset (sometime in the next 3 days to my home address by recorded delivery)...shame about my Mini-SD card...still, can probably afford a bigger one now, what with the price drops in the interim! ;)

Similar tales of woe are arriving with bleary bloodshot eyes (if they are arriving at all), the office is half empty..! "B" was woken up by a cleaner on the train (with 20 missed calls from the Mrs) just in time to get off not *too* far away from where he lives (and he woke her when he got in and got yelled at)...

A and N from NJ...

A and N from NJ...
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...who didn't bother to dress up for the evening, just coming in their usual work gear... ;)

Chocolate fountain!

Chocolate fountain!
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

It really smells of melted chocolate now, I asked the guys running it and apparently it is, as I suspected, a nightmare to clean... ;)

Already some...

Already some...
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...suspicious things going on downstairs...hmm... ;)

Just enjoying dinner...

Just enjoying dinner...
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...Bit worried that the king prawn were on the cold side, ate them anyway, noodles nice and spicy...should kill the bugs... ;)

Sure you aren't...

Sure you aren't...
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...coming down Mr Hancock? ;)