davidrickard.net

Well, it did snow around here. Not a massive amount, but enough to stick around for a few days. It snowed on Tuesday in the wee hours, so when I got up I looked outside and everything was covered in white stuff. I popped into town with my mate Luke, and driving along the snow started to come down quite heavy. It wasn’t – it just looked like it was falling a lot more heavily than it was. We had a good wander around town though, with little brief falls of snow whilst we wandered. Didn’t last long though. I think it snowed again overnight. I don’t think it’s snowed since – the snow seems to be disappearing and I’ve not noticed it come back much, if at all. I think it’s forcasted to snow a bit more this week. We shall see.

I’m on the look out for a new desk at the moment. My current assortment of old desktops sitting atop cupboards could do with replacing. Yes, it works, but I want something better now. I’ve looked at suppliers of proper office equipment like Staples, Roc and Bowyers, but they seem pretty expensive. I’ve tried the other places like Homebase, Argos and MFI, but they all have the typical home-office desks – postage stamp sized affairs. My sister went to the new IKEA store in Milton Keynes today, and said they had a load of nice desks. I looked on their website and didn’t really see much, so I think I need to either look in their catalogue, or actually go visit.

A little jaunt over to MK is in order, methinks.

Snow – it’s a funny thing. When there’s a chance it might come, we all leap around like little kids. When it first falls we’re all so happy to see it. About 20 minutes after, we all start whining and complaining about it.

It’s been a very long time since I last saw a white Christmas – I’m guessing about 10 years or more. Even then it wasn’t much, probably some that had fallen a few days before hand. The current weather prediction is that it will most likely snow in parts of the UK early next week, around Monday/Tuesday. I don’t know if it falling on Boxing Day counts as a white Christmas, but it will be damn close if it does. Thankyou global warming!

Yes, I know I’m a week early. We had our work Christmas dinner today. It was quite nice – I had Roast Red Pepper soup, followed by Roast Turkey, finished up by Christmas Pudding and Brandy Butter. It was a nice occasion; there’d been a plan to try and mix tables up a bit by placing people together who didn’t know eachother. It failed somewhat on our table as we ended up with Librarians we knew. We didn’t care much though – we just got on and ate our lunches!

We all ran away about 3pm, and I was home not long after. Worked for me! I also got my car battery fixed this morning. I need to get a new tyre and wheel rim, but that shouldn’t be too expensive. I’ll probably get that done after Christmas. There’s no rush to fix it. At the moment at least.

Well, the Nizlopi boys have done it, and managed to get JCB Song to the number one spot! I’m really pleased at it proves:

1. The British music-buying public aren’t morons after all.
2. An independant band can do it.
3. It truly is a great song.

If you have no idea what I’m on about, go look here: linky!

Double posting tonight… woo!

Today was an annoying day. I did some little jobs on the car, like check the tyres and such. I’d cleaned the wipers and did a quick wash of the windscreen – the wipers moved, but the pump didn’t do anything. This made me think something was up, so I thought I’d start the engine. I turned the key, and the best the engine could do was clunk. ‘Odd’, I thought. I tried again, a slightly weaker clunk.

I spoke to my Dad about it and we concluded the battery had died. Our first idea was to pull the battery out and put it on charge. That was a no-go as I couldn’t get the bolt off that restrained the battery. I called Green Flag rescue, and one of their guys turned up and jump-started the car. He suggested I drive around for an hour to charge it back up – it seemed the alternator was working fine, it was just the battery that needed recharging. The only problem with that idea was that I only had a tiny amount of fuel. I drove out to Wycombe on the main roads, and went up to Stokenchurch to give it a good run. I turned around in Stokenchuch, and whilst doing so managed to whack the kerb quite hard, so put a big dent in the wheel and broke the trim.

I got myself to a petrol station, filled up and luckily it restarted. I drove home after that. I wanted to go via somewhere that could replace the battery, but it was far too late to find anywhere open. So, I’m going to have to go get it done first thing Monday before work. It’s annoying, but these things happen I suppose. I was more annoyed about whacking the kerb than the battery thing. Cars are always fun.

This last week whizzed by pretty quickly for some reason. I wasn’t especially busy or anything. Still, we’re a week away from Christmas, and only two weeks away from 2006. Oh how time flies! Talking of which, I’m tired.

6am, I was lying in bed. I’d just woken up, and was stirring, and just about to try and get back to sleep. Suddenly I heard a loud sound – some sort of cross between a thud and an explosion. At the same time, my window rattled, and a car alarm set off. I laid in bed wondering what it was, and eventually fell asleep.

In the morning, I flipped on the TV to look, and it all became clear. A fuel depot had exploded in Hemel Hempstead, some 15 miles away! Watching the news reports, I stood agog at what I was seeing. I was amazed at how big this must have been to travel as far as I am, and bring a slight shockwave with it to shake the window. Even watching it now on TV, I’m still amazed.

Of course, we’ve now got to endure the idiots panic buying fuel, even though people are saying this is just one of a whole network of fuel depots. I’m going further toward it tomorrow, so I’ll try and take my camera and see what sort of picture I can get.