Ouch

So, today was the first day back at work. Being completely honest I had been dreading it, I could quite happily have stayed in bed this morning. That said, I did get up, looking out my window to find it had snowed at least three centimetres of snow.

Katie and I walked tentatively into work, making sure not to slip on the patches of ice, getting to the station so that I could see Katie off as I walked the remainder of my journey. I get into work pretty early as it is, I don’t mind it as I can relax, do a few bits online before I have to work.

At 8:45am I received a text, a message from Katie saying:

I’ve fallen over, I think I’ve broken my ankle.

My heart races, there’s nothing worse than hearing your loved one has hurt herself. I keep texting her and making sure she is ok, with her updating me on her journey to hospital in an ambulance.

Well, I didn’t have my car did I?! I text my mother, asked her if she could take me home to pick up my car or even take me to the hospital to meet my wife. Luckily she opted to take me to see Katie, luckily when we got there she was 75% of the way through the diagnosis. The physio had looked at her X-Ray’s and it turned out she had two fractures of her ankle and a torn ligament.

How did she do it? Well, the station employees hadn’t bothered to grit the station platforms, so when people walked snow into the station, pools of water and ice had collected on the marble (yes marble) floor inside the station. The station employees had then not bothered to put up “Wet Floor” signs, with one of them admitting that he had been told specifically not to get rid of the surface water.

We have managed to get hold of the station representatives and lodge a complaint, meanwhile Katie is laid up not being able to work at least for a couple of days.

Good start to 2009 eh?!

Update: Now with added X-Ray goodness!

New Year

Sorry for the lack of updates, was it me or did Christmas just fly by?! I have been active on all things that my iPhone allowed but it meant I never really got around to updating my blog.

Christmas in my house was a quiet affair, just myself and Katie. It was how we wanted it, we wanted to spend our first married Christmas in our own house, free from parents and little children. Katie managed to surprise me present wise, getting me a spy day where I learn to shoot machine guns, learn spy tactics and generally just run around like a big girls blouse shouting at the top of my voice. I got some new clothes and a few other bits that I had asked for. Her parents got me a HD camcorder, one that is brilliant for just pointing and clicking and capturing anything and everything.

I spoilt Katie as she had opened most of her presents before Christmas Day by way of a massive cock up by the couriers. I asked Katie to get them to change the address of the delivery, instead the couriers proceeded to tell Katie the exact details of the order. Katie let them know they had ruined one of her Christmas presents but the dippy woman on the other end didn’t seem to give a crap.

We enjoyed a lovely three bird roast that we purchased from Aldi which consisted of Chicke, Duck and Turkey, filled with Pork stuffing and a cranberry sauce. I have to say, it was one of the nicest Christmas dinner’s I have ever had the pleasure of eating!

We watched a few girly Christmas films and the following day headed over to my parents where we proceeded to eat even more and drink til our bellies ached. My mother was spot on with her choice of presents for Katie and I, purchasing the Xbox game; Lips. This had us in hysterics as we belted out songs at the top of our voice.

Since then it has been back to normality, Katie worked the Monday and the Tuesday this week with me off until today, so we have managed to miss each other the last week. Luckily, it’s reduced working hours for me today so I am able to head home at 3pm.

Plans for NYE have totalled to nothing, I think we will sit in and have a night of bad singing, drinks and food. I hope a few friends will share it with us but if not, we will see in the new year in our own special way.

For everyone who reads this blog, I do wish you a Happy New Year, thank you for inflating my RSS subscriber numbers and I hope to bring more in the way of pointless drivel in 2009.

Burnout

I am really glad that Christmas isn’t far away, I am starting to feel like I cant catch up on my sleep. The cats have been doing their best to try and keep Katie and I up during the night, work is increasingly busy and I have been underaking more and more work in the form of internet writing.

The Christmas break should allow us to have a few lie-in’s, generally chill out and spend some quality time together. Keeping on the subject, Katie has been taking the train to work so it has allowed us to walk in together, with her getting on the train just as I head off up the hill to work.

As I write this, Katie is hopefully enjoying her Christmas works party, which is brilliant as she has only been there three days. They seem to be genuinely interested in keeping their staff happy and motivated, proof coming in the form of a £20 Topshop voucher just for working there three days! I on the other hand enjoyed playing some more Fallout 3 on the Xbox and updating various blogs.

Finally, I would like to introduce my latest attempt at conquering the internet:

WillINeedIt.com is a tech blog that aims to provide tech tips and tricks, reviews and general information. If you would be so kind to take a look, comment or even subsrcibe to the RSS feed, I would be eternally grateful.

Exciting Times

Things have been moving quickly this week, with Katie and I keeping ourselves busy both inside and outside of work.

This weekend we took the opportunity to head out on a miserable Saturday to get Christmas presents for Katie’s parents, managing to head into a very busy Argos to get her Dad an Xbox 360, a present bought for him by Katie’s mother.

That evening we popped over to them to drop the presents off and we stayed for a couple of drinks, taking in the X Factor final and the Strictly Come Dancing semi-final. I have to say, I’m not a massive fan of the reality shows but having watched a duet between the winner of X Factor and Beyonce and witnessing my first ever Argentinean Tango, I am surprised to say, I could watch them if they were that good.

My Sunday morning was yet another football day for me, we managed to lose to a very poor side, but I took comfort in the fact we only had ten players.

Katie received some good news, her checks and references passed with flying colours and she starts her new job on Wednesday, so it was a cause for celebration in our household this evening.

I am pushing on with my writing efforts, today was a good day for me, having two articles published. One of MakeUseOf.com and one on LostInTechnology.com, with it looking like one might hit the Digg front page.

With only 8 days left at work, I’m counting down the days until Christmas.

Catastrophe

  
If you visited this site from about 2pm last night you may have noticed the site was unavailable. In my rush to setup a new installation of Wordpress for another site, I accidentally deleted the SQL tables for my blog, meaning I lost nearly five years worth of posts!

Luckily I was able to secure a backup from Tim, which allowed me to try to restore 80MB of SQL in the smallest amount of time possible.

On a side note, I have installed the DISQUS comment plugin which means that if you have visited a DISQUS powered site before, you will be able to track your comments on wherever you have posted. It also allows you to vote up or vote down a comment, so if a topic gets heated, you can show how much you like or dislike someone’s opinion.

I seem to have a really achy back, too much hunching over a keyboard I reckon!

The Closing of Woolworths

Hands up who is surprised?!

My only fond memories of Woolworths seem to be back when I was knee height to a grasshopper and bugging my mother to get me some of their Pick and Mix. Since then, I can honestly say Woolworths had become one of those shops you hoped one day would have a good deal, but never really materialized.

The little known fact is, Woolworths was founded by an American, a Mr. Frank Woolworth who came to England after tracing his ancestry back to a little town near Stoke On Trent.

The other little known fact was that Entertainment UK, the most recent owners of Woolworths are one of the UK’s biggest CD, DVD and games suppliers, so when this crisis hit, stores such as Zavvi were left with a very low supply of stock.

Today, Woolworths are launching their closing down clearance sales (I will pop in to see if any bargains are to be had), after losing out in the marketplace to stores like Wilkinson and suffering huge losses in revenue from the digitization of music (their biggest money spinner was selling physical copies of music), it’s sad to see such a big name disappearing from the high street.