Half The Time

What's your middle name?  Is there a story or history behind it?

My middle name is Michael, for my father. And my first name is for an Uncle, who I guess would have been a Great-Uncle, who passed away shortly before I was born.

I don't know where my surname came from.

If you could write a book about anything, what would it be about?

It would probably be about Scott Walker. Or rollercoasters.

Way back when, I told a little story about my nephew, and how fond he is of the cars from the Pixar movie of the same name. Well, as the last month has passed, those cars have got more and more scarce in the toyshops, and although my sis succumbed to weakness and bought a couple off of ebay, the chances of him completing his collection grow as short as do the days this time of year.

Except, last week, I stopped by TRU after work. There was a mother with two kids standing looking at the Cars toys, and there were a couple of boxes of stock in front  of the pegs. I idly kicked one of these boxes, and it said 'Cars Character Assortment', which I knew to be the Cars that we're looking for. If it wasn't for the presence of the family there, I'd have probably broken the box open there and then. Instead, I decided to kill time and check out the Star Wars toys. Nothing doing. So I moved back to the Cars section, idly caressing my car key as I walked.

When i got back there, family were still there. Mother was on the phone holding a big toy, so I guess she was seeking verification that she was buying the right thing. I still didn't feel I could open the box, but luckily, a TRU employee moved into the aisle, blue shirted, a trolley being dragged behind her.

"Excuse me," I said. "There's a box of stock in front of the Cars toys. Is there any chance you could open it for me?"
"No problem," she said. "It's going out on sale anyway."

As she opened it, I suggested that it would probably just be another 18 each of McQueen and Mater, which is when she realised what range it was. "It's a good job you asked, this stuff flies off the pegs as soon as we put it out," she said.

And when she opened the box, rather than just being 18 each of the two peg-warmers, it was 36 cars from all over the range. Of the four that he didn't have, I was able to get him two. Even better, it had the four late additions to the range that have previously been unseen in the UK. I took the three of those that he didn't have, and eagerly made my way home.

Apparently that evening, he took Sarge upstairs with him when he went to bed, gave him a cuddle, and set him down besides the bed, to guard over him while he slept.

Ahhhh.

There is a wasps nest of undefinable size somewhere around the doorframe / fascia to the house. We noticed a few of em climbing into this tiny gap between brickwork and uPvc and went to the diy store to get something for them.

Armed with super foam for wasps nest, I returned home ready to take them on. The instructions suggest that you stand 2 metres away from the nest, not under the foam, and not downwind. I know this because I checked, shortly after spraying, and being sprayed by the foam.

But I get the impression that its designed to be sprayed from above onto a wasps nest, because, no matter how hard I try, after ten minutes or so, the foam wriggles its way back down the door frame, allowing the wasps access in and out again.

However, the first time we sprayed it, there were a dozen wasps buzzing around looking for a way in. Every time I spray it now, its down to a couple. I'm hoping this means that my gradual persistent effort is paying off because I really don't want to go nuclear.

Company cunning ruse - instead of making us all watch a 30 minute security video, they're telling us to watch a 2 minute one every month. They're either acknowledging that we're all too busy or that our attention spans suck. One or the other.

So, where was I? Oh yeah, security video.

Well, the latest one had a chap who was a) blogging about company stuff and b) doing it on company time. His boss came in, said how much she liked his writing but she was a bit concerned by what he was writing. "Hmmm," he said. "Good point, I'll delete that post."

Whereupon she said that from the dates of his posts, she could see he had been blogging on company time. "Whoops," said our guilty blogger. "I type so fast I didn't think of that." (I guess he means changing the dates and times on his posts?)

And he promised to behave and they had a good old laugh about it.

Which parts of this video seem completely unreal?

(ohmigod - I've just blogged about a company video telling me not to blog about company things - its like one of those comic books with an infinity cover)

Every day, I come home from work, unlock the front door, look around the porch expecting to see my  super new shiny free ipod nano, and every sodding day, what do I get? Another pizza/kebab menu. They're all the bloody same. Its so annoying. If I'd been saving them since I moved in a couple of years ago, I'd probably have a pizza/kebab tome to rival War and Peace. Only more interesting, obviously.

Anyway, Cars is out this week. There's a trailer for it on one of the Pixar DVDs, in fact, possibly on all of the Pixar DVDs. I dunno. And brother-in-law tells me that he's had to watch this trailer about 400 times because W wants to keep watching it. Sis bought him (W, not brother-in-law) a few of the cars at the weekend, and he adores them, so I got tasked with popping to TRU to see if I could get any of the others. Well, turns out that much like every other form of toy collecting, there's common cards, and rare cards. The two main characters from the film ? Hundreds of those. The other ten cars ? You'll be lucky. Actually, this is the case now - it mightn't have been the case a couple of weeks ago.

I found him a few cars, and took them round last night. I put a couple of them to one side, and took the other one with me, holding it behind my back.

"Close your eyes," I told him, and he did that little kid thing of scrunching his eyes up tightly. I held out the toy car for him, and told him he could open his eyes again.

He opened his eyes, and as he clocked the car, they widened in surprise and a huge grin developed on his face.

"It's Doc!". he said. And he was right.

I spoke to my sis today, and she said that she had to take Doc off him when he went to bed last night, and when he got up this morning, it was the first toy he picked up.

And yeah, this is a story about nothing, and about the miracles of kids doing things that really aren't that miraculous at all, but over the past couple of days of arsey emails and unmentionable office temperatures, that little story has been keeping me sane.

What was the highlight of this past weekend?

Saturday morning I stopped by my parents, and miraculously my old heap of a motorcycle started, and was in such a good mood that it let me take it home, meaning that its not clogging up their garage any more (its clogging up mine) and that I don't need to go see them whenever I want to try and get it working.

And then on Sunday, I stopped by my sisters. She was playing with the two kids. I was chatting to H (who is 5 months old?) and she reached out for my glasses, giggling away to herself, and as she was doing that, W (who was 2 at the start of July) started climbing all over my back. It was awful cute.

Apparently, for my endeavour last week beyond the call of duty, my manager has recommended me for a 'gift', which is probably going to be a paperweight with the company logo stamped all over it, but hey, its the thought that counts. Actually, it probably won't be a paperweight - I'd use that. It'll be something completely useless. Anybody want to guess what it will be ?

And then, checking my email, I had notification from a car manufacturer that I'd won an ipod Nano in a prize draw. I've double checked and it doesn't say what size Nano it will be, but even so, its something for nothing, and as my ancient old G2 is close to giving up the ghost, this should let me at least listen to music again in the car. 

When I showed the notification to my father, he recognised the car, so I guess that I only entered the prize draw when I was round his house and he was telling me about the million competitions he enters every day.
He's yet to win a Nano - in fact, he doesn't really know what one is

What are your three favorite album covers of all-time? Any honorable mentions?

Question submitted by Tamara

Bossanova

Scott

Power, Corruption & Lies

The temptation is huge to just pick 3 Vaughan Oliver or 3 Peter Saville pics, but I pulled back and went with one of each, and the Scott one is iconic, possibly the first picture I ever saw of Scott Walker.

But its three CDs that I picked with 5 minutes thought. I'm sure I've got hundreds of albums with better covers than these - But for now, they'll do.