Last Saturday evening, we went to my brother’s house for a small get together. It was a celebration of his and his wife’s twentieth wedding anniversary. As my brother often says, ten years of blissful matrimony, but he’s been married for twenty.
During the evening, we played a game of Mr & Mrs. Now you might imagine that this is a recipe for disaster, with several drunk couples arguing over whether their partner is “sweet or savoury”. You’d be right! We came second. You can only imagine how hard I had to fight not to show my outrage and disappointment at this, to preserve the fragile facade of a nice night out.
We lost (yes, lost, not came second) by half a point. This was naturally all Louise’s fault. Well, Louise plus half a bottle of Bacardi.
We both missed out on questions about each other such as “Who would your partner want to play them in a movie of their lives” as they are quite subjective, and hard to guess at. By the way, for me I said Paul Whitehouse. Louise said Angelina Jolie…to play her…not me, whereas I said Megan Fox. Wait, here is a chance to post a picture of Megan Fox.
Those slip ups are fine, as the questions have a million different possible answers. But when I get asked what was Louise’s first job, and I get the right answer and she doesn’t, then my allergy to losing kicks in. The night trundled on from there, filled with Tapas, which was lovely, and alcohol, which did for Louise, and saw us revisit the Tapas at around 2am. I was delighted.
This week at work has flown by. Whilst it is always nice to get to the weekend a little quicker, the trouble is that those weekends shoot by at high speed too.
The reason for the whizzing week has been work. As I alluded to last time round, my role at work is changing, and I have spent most of last week in summit style negotiations with other manager types, sorting out who works where, and does what. Add to that the doing of actual work as well, then the week passed in a blur. This of course has meant a few late finishes, scuppering any plans to get to the gym and write any further trip report days. I finally got around to one yesterday.
So by the time Friday evening arrived I was knackered, and ready for some relaxing, eating and fun.
We ticked all the boxes with a trip to the local Cineworld to see The Other Guys, preceded by a visit to the local Frankie and Bennys. My one regret of the evening was eating too much there to allow me to unleash my full power on the Pick n Mix. I had a decent bash, but found myself having Pick n Mix left at the end of the film, which is a crime really, but fear not, I finished it off for breakfast the next day.
Will Ferrell, much like Jim Carrey, appeals to me, as they usually turn up in silly, funny films that allow you to let them to wash over you, without having to worry too much about complex plots.
The panel that hand out Oscar’s will not be troubled by this one, but it is great fun. Ferrell, again much like Carrey, tends to play the same character in many films, but I for one am not bored of it yet. His pinnacle will always be Ron Burgundy, (closely followed by the scene in Elf where he belches and says “Did you hear that?), but this was a good one too.
There are also some cracking cameos from the likes of The Rock, Michael Keaton and best of all Samuel L Jackson. His appearance is brief but just fantastic.
Whilst we enjoyed the film we left the girls and one of their friends (Mikey…and he is a friend who is a boy rather than a boyfriend) at home to watch Camp Rock 2. Having seen trailers for it both in the US, and again back home, I would rather watch a 24 hour marathon of Heartbeat, so our escape was well-timed.
The girls enjoyed it and I suspect Mikey endured it, but it also seems that they were inspired to create their own cinematic masterpiece. Frankly, I think that this beats Camp Rock too.
Looking to next week, the major event will be Louise’s admission to hospital tomorrow for an operation. We have been here many times before of course, but it is never something any of us look forward to. It is a fairly big one this time, and she will be in for the week we think, and then off work for a good few weeks after that.
I know you are all immediately feeling sorry for me, having to manage the household single-handedly, but please spare a thought for Louise too!!
The girls are staying at Nana’s all week, as I will be a blur between work and hospital, plus it means they can stay in bed longer of a morning as Nana lives about two minutes stroll from their school.
Hopefully (as we always say) this will be the one that gives Louise a decent run at a healthy existence.
An unfortunate side effect of this of course is an anticipated complete lack of trip reportage, for which I now apologise, but some things are more important even than that.
On a positive note, and one for Louise to think about in the next few days of pain and drugs, is that we absolutely have to return to the US for our next holiday. Why, you might ask? Well, yesterday, Louise found $33 left over from our holiday. We cannot be so frivolous as to let that sit festering in a drawer, as that would be an incomprehensible waste.
The fact that the credit card bills have arrived from our latest trip this week, delivering with them a complete shock to the systems as to how we could possibly spend so much in such a short space of time, had slightly dented our ambitions to book our next trip quickly. But now with a full $33 at our disposal, the die is cast.
Hopefully, with my next post will come news of Louise back at home, along with the girls, and some sort of debt restructuring package in place to allow us to consider another trip overseas.
Till the next time…..
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