Top 10

Yesterday on a Starfleet call we were honoured by Leon the cleaner which is a great film and prompted Golfy and I to talk about our Top 10 lists.

One of my motivators for this is a great book - High Fidelity.  The film is however not as good, but then that can be said for a few book to film conversions.

So I will start with books and although this is a Top 10 there is actually no order to them.  This list is actually quite tough as most of my books are boxed up and in the loft.

1. High Fidelity
2. Deception Point
3. Digital Fortress
4. The Tesseract
5. The Beach
6. About a Boy
7. Fever Pitch
8. Man and Boy
9 Boy Called It
10. Notes from a Small Island

Actually # 10 was going to be a different book, which I read recently but I annoyingly can't remember the name of it.  It was one of those books I read in 2 days and I lent it to a friend -  I am sure I got it back, but now it is in the loft.  I have to say that has got me in the mood, to A. finish my current book by Jack Dee and B. find a new book for my impending holiday.

I was going to write a Mystery Book, or was I?

So Top 10 Films (again in no particular order)
1. Groundhog Day

1. Groundhog Day (see what I did there) :-)
2. Ferris Buellar's Day Off
3. Stand By Me
4. Leon
5. Remember the Titans
6. Shawshank Redemption
7. Pay It Forward
8. Good Will Hunting
9. Twelve Monkeys
10. Kill Bill II

and in closing an album to try and listen;

Ups and Down Under

Well my friend whom went on Recon to Australia has returned - we will now call him Ozzy.  I met up with him and his wife Sharon the other night and enjoyed a lovely bottle of red wine Black Stump.  Now this wine was recommended to me by a member of Starfleet, now you would not let him recommend ties or blue blazers to you, but he knows his stuff when it comes to wine!  We tend to invite them over for a "Coffee and cake" night it is like a cheese and wine night but we don't eat cheese, actually we didn't drink coffee either!  So a bottle of wine later and we discussed how the recon trip went and it seems that it is a viable option and now it seems there house is going on the market and they are preparing the cats for deportation.  Can you believe it costs about £2k per cat for their trip - however much I like my cat, if I had 3 then they would find a nice home with someone else and not be struggling with jet lag!  I could fly business class instead!!  I would love to go now with them but I need to wait 2 years and then reassess it.  Hopefully by then they would have done all of the research for me and I will have a base of operations too :-) such a cunning plan!

So it is Ozzy's birthday next week, so we are out for dinner with Ozzy and Sharon

on Saturday to celebrate, which I have been told will be at Zizzi.  The jury is out on restaurant choice, but I will see and assess.  So I was charged with finding Ozzy's birthday present.  So of course I have gone for Australian theme hunt for a pressie and hopefully he will be pleased with the result!


So when it comes to Starfleet, my Harry is still in captivity.  It seems other opportunities are not as available as I first hoped, but I will keep digging and practicing vaulting!  Maybe my call on Friday will open another door.

But the good news is that I am on leave next week, then back for a week then on leave for a week, then back for 2 weeks then away for a week.  I think this Summer might just fly by!

Last year the family stayed in Norfolk and we managed to find a Country Show and wow it was amazing!  We really did stick out as the "City people".  We didn't have our 4x4 (which was actually needed to park in the field) and  our flat caps, our wax jacket, sheepdog or shotgun - yes there were a couple!  However it seems we have missed it this year.  So we hopefully be returning to BeWilderWood which is a great day out.  So with things to get tied up at Starfleet I bid you adieu.

Another Day in Paradise

On a positive note, I am alive.  There you go, I think I am done blogging for today! ;-)

Okay, I will expand further on my life for today.
We have luckily managed to get a babysitter for Saturday night.  This is an achievement and more importantly the babysitter is booked for no reason, i.e. we have no wedding, no birthday party, no BBQ, no funerals and no bar mitzvahs to attend.  Actually we have been invited to a birthday party/meal out.  But we have decided (or rather Mrs Stretch has decided) that time together will be more rewarding.  This is where you get quality time!  With the increase of pitter patter and ickle stretches this is probably a good time!  So the plans are afoot and I tried to have a discussion with Mrs Stretch to discuss what film and food venue. As discussed already with Golfy, I knew I would not win on my choice.  But a wise man once said it is about having a battle to fight and not beating your opponent at their detriment.  So as it goes it looks like I am going to see Eclipse.  Now as it goes if you have to watch a chick-flick then the Twilight saga (and yes it is a Saga - see point 5) is tolerable.  Oh, for the record Mrs Stretch has also won on restaurant choice - Frankie & Benny's.  Now you see sometimes you let them think they have won, when actually you know you haven't lost!

I have a new widget on my blog of Zemanta - I will try it and see.  But no I am NOT deserting blogspot for the lures of Wordpress! :-)

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• NEW Clip From 'The Twilight Saga: Eclipse' (imnotobsessed.com)

Ouch

I have just walked to close to a plant in the Starfleet offices and got an electric shock on my ear!

GI-GO

So the term of Garbage In - Garbage Out (GI-GO) hit into effect last night and this morning. I was watching QI last night, it is probably the only good reason to have Dave channel on your TV. And for some reason they started talking about Yogi Bear. This was just before I went to sleep and so I have spent the whole night and morning thinking about Yogi Bear and his quotes. And if I get time later I will have to try and find some of his greater quotes.

Mmmm Choices

now we are in June the questions begin from Mrs Stretch for what I want for my birthday (just over a month away). I am terrible with not knowing what I want most of the time and then of course I can find the items that are out of reach either financially, storage means, or just the fact that I would never use it but it sounds like a great idea. So I have been wiser this year and kept writing a list and now I have sent that list to Mrs Stretch. I know I will still not get anything on that list!! :-) Oh Well! Worth a try.

Work is better and still on the up, except for a few errors. But I will put them down as a learning curve. There are sudden realisations that come too late, in particular when you have asked someone for some help, or even just a quick question that ends up snowballing. I knew I should have asked someone else!

Yesterday was a full day or work, and after work was daddy day care and then band practice for a wedding I am playing at on Saturday, I finally got to relax at 10.30 last night (which meant I was asleep at 10.32).

As someone who moans, and finds comfort in grumpiness, I now don't have much more to write but that is good and a blog today ends with a smile on my face...

On the up

I am pleased to report 2 good days in a row. And if you really knew my mind set you would be relieved! I could easily be bounty hunting around Newcastle otherwise at the moment!

Now not everything has gone to plan, especially as I have had the rug pulled from under my feet as I have lost my lead role in Starfleet and we still have got a buyer for our house.

But on the good news, we have seen a house we like and they are likely to accept an offer - £10 sounds good to me! Boy is sleeping well through the night, holidays are coming, and I have got some work that was lingering around out of the way. So all in all, life is good.

I even sat down last night with Mrs Stretch and watched Zodiac. A good film, although I did get worried when at 2hours 10mins the picture started breaking down. It seems blurays still can't handle jam like DVDs could on Tomorrows World! So anyway it was a long film and an interesting ending and I would recommend it.

A MASH up

A wiseman once told me a great method to help my madness and that was the daily commute. I thought he was pulling my chain (what a strange analogy) but I think he might actually be on to something. I am once again in the starfleet offices and the drive to actually be dressed before midday is nice, plus the commute in and home is therapeutic and reflective. If I can find a radio station I like then I will be even happier; there is nothing better than a good sing along in the car at full pelt, it clears the lungs and provides more oxygen to the body and brain.

So starfleet offices again results in me spending less time in the kitchen, but it does result in me spending more $$. next step is for me to get organised and prepare my lunch. I have reflected and seen that without windows I blur. So things will be done in time slots. Biggest of all being work in the day and life at night. There will be exceptions but I am liking this approach already.

So the weekend involved Mrs Stretch and I seeing a house we like. We still have the challenge of selling ours, but with a viewer today it MIGHT all fall into place. Following our house viewings and brief stop at the in-laws we went to Porchester Castle for a nice picnic and chill out. It was very impromptu and with boy having a sleep it was very nice as an adult time. However our journey there was not without events and challenges. Our lovely PCSO (Police wannabees) turned us away as we tried to get to the castle carpark. He could not tell us why, but he said we would want to walk a different way and the car park was full of "yellow wellies" which I had to explain to Mrs Stretch was forensics. We managed to park nearby and with boy asleep and both of us with a sick curiosity we managed to walk as near as we could to the cornered off area. We soon found the body (covered by a blanket) and our forensic qualifications granted by CSI (Vegas, NY and Miami), sponsored by Silent Witness and funded by Waking the Dead, quickly led us to the assumption that the person had died from blunt force trauma as a result of jumping from the top of the keep. Mrs Stretch then followed that up with saying "that was a gamble", this was due to the keep only be 100 feet high and a fall from the height could have resulted in near death but not a successful result. You see this is where men and women differ, she wouldn't want to leave a mess and women by default always chose tidy suicides - generally pills, where as men it is all about the scene and impact - i.e. shotguns, cars, buildings. So when Mrs Stretch pointed out the fact of it could have failed, I had to ask the question about whether he paid to get to the top of the keep and if he asked for a one way ticket? A sick joke I know, but I was curious. We were later kicked out of the castle (no, not for being too nosey) as the staff at the castle had suffered a traumatic event - hence my logic that it was a man who jumped. So that linked me to my blog title.

So on lighter news, it was my sister in laws 20th B'day. Her boyfriend had not organised anything, so Mrs Stretch and I stepped in and organised a family gathering at QEQP. It was good, sunny(on and off) and most importantly birthday girl had a nice time. See that is less interesting than suicide.

Hey Good lookin', what you got cookin'?

How's about cookin' something up with me?

So congratulations to Mrs Stretch her bun baking seems to be doing well. All we know so far is that it is a baby. We have to wait for another 7 weeks to find out the gender. And yes I will be finding out. That is like saying you are getting a new car, but I am not telling you what you are getting. We also to have wait a couple of weeks just confirm that everything is "ok", or we get a knock on the door from the midwife! But that will NOT be happening to us! I don't want that to come across arrogant or cocky, but I just don't want to entertain the thought.

So the baby has had his/her second shoot and is only 13 weeks (unborn) old. Why don't they do in minus weeks - like a countdown? T minus 26.5 weeks! oh boy!

mmm, Caffeine...

I have wheeled the coffee machine out from under its covers. Okay that it is a slight exaggeration but it was sat on the kitchen side and has been gathering dust for the last couple of months maybe even longer. I like coffee, I like latte, and even the new chai vanilla latte that Starfleet offices have just introduced. I am even a member of the loyalty clubs for 2 big coffee franchises. However as I matured into a coffee machine owner, which is a natural step after owning a percolator, the chore of cleaning the coffee machine seemed to out weigh the enjoyment of the coffee. And as it is only a single mans coffee machine it didn't even warrant an unveiling for dinner parties.

But I think a couple of things have happened;
1. Golfys blog has worn off on me and I am more intrigued into coffee, before you know it I will be asking for coffee tips.
2. I was woken up at an hour beginning with 5 and to top it off I felt like I had a bad hangover - I could probably handle that if I had had a drink before. Maybe I am getting punished for the drink sessions which didn't result in a hangover! Karma? Of course I need a clear head today, as we (me and Mrs Stretch) are off to the hospital to see how her cooking is coming along and hopefully find out what kind of "ickle" she is cooking.
3. I enjoyed my coffee at Starfleet offices, but I hate paying those prices!! (I know I am tight!!)
4. I am no longer on a stupid diet regime that included no caffeine. I shouldn't have stopped but hey-ho.

So now I need to organise a shopping trip to buy some more beans, maybe some more Guatemala Elephant.