There and Back Again

Gosh - it's been over a week since the last post.

My evenings have been pretty busy over the last week, plus a weekend away. Let's see :

Tuesday and Wednesday were chill out nights, aiming at clearing the box of enough recorded stuff to allow the stuff over the rest of the week to be recorded. That sounds bad doesn't it ... My cable box has enough space to record 80 hours and you'd think ... that's plenty right ? How much could I be watching to fill up all of that ? It's not that bad. I record most of my stuff in HD, which takes up to 4 times the space of everything else. So recording 10 programmes (Killjoys, Agents of Shield, Agent Carter, Occupied, NCIS, Elementary, War and Peace plus more) can take up half of the box.

So that's Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday was spent socialising. It was good fun actually. One of our graduates was moving on and we'll miss her. She's a good character who is smart enough to ask all of the right questions and translate the answers to things that are in her frame of reference. That's really important, you rarely have the same knowledge as other people so to understand them, you have to translate what they're saying to what you have experience of.

Oh yeah, this is also the one who was threatening to do something that might kill me (kidding) - yep. Play badminton again. That said, my outsides are improving to the point where I could do the running around thing again, although I am a bit old and broken to do that to a level where I would be satisfied with my performance.

That brings me to another old age pensioner ...

Hello Ben. Ben says hi back (in slurp form) and was rewarded with many bellyrubs.

It wasn't just Ben though, my dad's birthday was this weekend just gone, which was a good excuse to head over there again. He's in his 70s now and I hope he'll be around for a good while yet. Same as my mum. They're glad they're retired but they still get out and about doing stuff.

And they have little Ben to keep them company as well.

The old puppy is getting on a bit too, so he reserves his energy for when it's needed and then he'll disappear off somewhere quiet and out of the way for a little snooze. He does like to be around his people though, so here he is waiting for bacon scraps.

As the Facebook caption said : "Good morning, you don't want those bacon sandwiches in the kitchen, give them to MEEEEE!"

Whatever could be on that plate that has our Muttley's undivided attention ?

All the Ben pics go on Facebook first, although it can be tough getting decent shots of him because I don't think he's too impressed with cameras. It's rare that you can catch him still enough for a good shot, except for when he's off snoozing and then you wouldn't want to disturb the old fella.

But when meatscraps are involved it's :

Muttley at rest ... and Muttley in motion.

And Muttley hoping for a few more meatscraps.

If only there were something for humans that had the Turn Old Dog Into Bouncy Puppy effect on humans. Oh wait !!!! CAKE !

Lush.

And just out of shot on this one ? Our sunday lamb dinner. With ...

Cook's helper encouraging the cook to use bigger portions. Cos leftovers mean munchies for pooches.

Oh and look at that tail, whenever I get that tail in shot, it's disappearing into motion blur. I like that. A happy dog should have a tail in perpetual motion. It's not always like that though sadly,

This is Ben seeing us getting ready to head out and you can tell he's poised to come with. But sadly (supermarketredacted) and (DIYstoreredacted) wouldn't understand. Pubs are precious about dogs too, even though the dog is likely to be hiding from all the strange noisy people who are otherwise in the pub.

All good things come to an end though and it was time to head back. (I picked up what feels like a quick and messy cold, hence not posting anything last night - if it's from hugging the Ben, WORTH IT)

Yep. Time to say see you in a while :

With Ben doing his equivalent of Goodnight World. The family's getting older but they're still going strong. All 3 of them - mum, dad and the geriatric puppy.

Good night, see you later and I'll leave you with something taking the mickey out of UK's biggest telecoms company which is currently undergoing an out(r)age :

Hey I just met you.
And this is crazy.
But here’s my number.
So wait until the temporary BT phone outage is fixed and call me maybe?

Here's a link to the original. (watch to the end!!!) It's from Carly Rae Jepsen's album Kiss, I think I'll be following her music for a while.