the V pound

I am all for traders getting their share of the V Pound, it actually surprises me when they dont make an effort...

...after all this weekend will be a real money spinner for Chelmsford as a rule ;o)

I shall remind myself of this when I am moaning about all of the festival goers tomorrow!

What we did on Thursday

On Thursday we had an another eye appointment for Evie...

...Evie was not a happy bunny while we were in there - she started to cry and James took her over to the mirror (that always cheers her up) so that she could look at her reflection ;o)

Anyway Evie is still long sighted and the lady said that it looks like she will have my eyes (poor thing)!

As James had taken the day off we were deciding what to do...

...I suggested Hylands Park so that we could go to the Adventure Castle Play Area but the area it is shut because of the V Festival! :o(

So we ended up going to Krazy Kids - Evie enjoyed herself ;o)

And then we went on to Freeport and we saw some more giraffes ;o)

We even had lunch at Chimichangas ;o)

too hot for em

With it being the V Festival this weekend I would have expected Chelmsford town centre to be teeming with festival goers.

But no it seems that the nice weather has stopped the majority of people from venturing out of Hylands Park.

We were talking to a barista in Starbucks this afternoon, and she said that yesterday was quiet but today there had been a steady stream of people.

Hee hee I wonder if it was just the more affluent festival goers not venturing out and if Greggs and McDonalds had the same lack of the festival bite of the apple.

getting v ready

As the V Festival is this weekend coming, Chelmsford is gearing up for all of the weirdos festival goers who are a coming.

We were in High Chelmer yesterday and Republic have a display with a tent, wellies and all in one suits in the middle of the store.

If you were a store in Chelmsford or Weston-under-Lizard (yes really!) you would be silly not to stock up on the bits that the weirdos festival goers are going to need.

This is another reason as to why I am so glad that I dont have to travel on the trains on Friday or Monday ;o)

the weirdos have descended

This weekend is the V Festival and Chelmsford is over run with festival goers...

I had even considered having Friday off as a days holiday as I was convinced that as I would be travelling when the cheap train tickets are still in force that I wouldnt be able to get a seat.  I was all ready to thrust my bump into someones face so that I could have their seat, I need not had worried as I got a seat in the very first carriage, I happened to be sitting with a few French Foreign Exchange Students though!

Here is a photo of a festival goer on his way to Chelmsford...

now back to the French kids...

...as we were passing the Olympic Stadium I heard a voice (from further down the carriage) shout out that on the left is the Olympic Stadium and then she translated it into French too, the kids that I were sitting with just vaguely looked up form their smart phones to have a glance out of the window.

We pulled into Chelmsford and a few obvious looking festival goers got off of the train, Im guessing that loads more were going to arrive later in the evening.

We normally go into town early on Saturday morning so managed to avoid the influx of people

Following on from buying maternity trousers the other week I bought a few tops yesterday, and will have to look to buy a few more online.

You really would think that more shops would sell maternity stuff!

I will blame it on the scrambled egg on toast

This weekend Chelmsford has been overrun with festival goers for V, we have only seen a few people walking about, so they havent been too much of a problem (which is good), I will have to see how many people are lurking at the train station tomorrow morning waiting for the first cheap day return train ;o).

We were coming back from going into town today and was casually looking in the window of the The Old Court Theatre, and I saw in the window a sign for a show that I thought said Transvestites, it actually said Travesties (LOL I would hate to think what this says about me as a person!).

I weighed myself this morning as part of my 8 week challenge, and I have put on 300 grammes, I felt really gutted then I remembered that I had met a friend for lunch on Thursday and I had scrambled egg on toast! I felt better after I had rationalised it ;o).

Anyway Im doing things slightly different this week. Last week I had some roast potatoes and split them over 2 days (thus still having the same amount of calories) and this week I will be making James eat the other half of them (force feeding them up his nose if he refuses to open his mouth hasnt been ruled out) ;o)

Friday was an interesting day

The day started when I was walking to work and saw these movie lights down Fenchurch Avenue...




We later found out that they were filming an advert for Go Compare, I would look out for the advert but as it was filmed inside an office Im not really going to know which one it was!


One of my bosses came in just before 9am and said that the V Festival tickets were going on sale at 9am and he wanted me to try and get two tickets with camping for his daughter. And if I could book the two tickets then he will give me 10% of the ticket price as a bonus ;o) That soon got my interest I can tell you ;o)


So just before 9am I get onto the relevant website and kept on refreshing the page until it said that the tickets were on sale, I then clicked on the tickets that I (or rather he) wanted and was held in a queue. The website then said you could either wait or keep refreshing the page, so I kept clicking refresh until it let me book the tickets. After about 5 minutes I was then taken onto the booking page, and managed to book the two tickets with camping that were required. My boss was well chuffed and texted his daughter who said I should get a pay rise ;o).


We were well lucky because all of the camping tickets were sold out be 9.20!


My boss is going to Brazil next week, and wants to take with him a summary of our website in Portuguese in leaflet form to hand out to potential clients, we have some leaflets that we had printed in Spanish a few years ago, so it makes sense to have some Portuguese ones too. Our printers said they could get them done in a couple of days.


I phoned the printers hoping that they would have a word version of our leaflet (to save me having to faff about too much) I had already gone through my colleagues old emails and could only find a pdf version. But no, because they use art packages they save any documents straight to pdf. Oh well, there went that theory! And to top things off their e-mail was down too!


So I spent Friday afternoon with three versions of our website open (in English, Spanish & Portuguese) , with a pink highlighter in hand (to highlight the text needed) whilst reading through the Spanish leaflet with what is on the website in Spanish. It is well hard trying to read through something in a language that you dont understand!


I printed off the pages needed in Portuguese, having numbered the sections on the Spanish leaflet and numbered the corresponding passages in Portuguese and highlighting them for effect ;o). All of the pink made it look pretty too ;o)


I showed my boss what I had done, as I didnt want to confuse the printers when I e-mailed the relevant sections.


So I have e-mailed them scans of the original Spanish leaflet with the numbered sections, the pages in Portuguese numbered and highlighted and the same pages without the highlights in case when they print it they cant see what has been highlighted.


My boss was also taking the hard copies into the printers yesterday morning as they are only down the road from where he lives.

evil outlook

Since James has been temping he has needed to complete timesheets showing his hours worked. I have been doing him reminder e-mails to complete them. I did six (one, two, three, four, five, six) of them before getting fed up. The sixth and last one was Thursday.

I then had a tiffany moment (a bit like an epiphany but with bling), that I invite James to a weekly meeting, meaning that he will get weekly reminders and I dont have to keep e-mailing him! The idea then hit me that as long as I can get him to "accept" my invites, I can then manipulate his calender - such as 11am Friday (half an hour before he goes to lunch) "buy Amber a huge bar of nice chocolate" ;o) I wonder if Bill knows of my evil intentions ;o).

Back in January our Sky+ Box had a hissy fit and was saying that there were no programmes in the programme planner. We rebuilt the planner and all was fixed. Last night we were watching something we recorded, and the skybox kept on freezing and would then reboot itself. After several goes of this we then decided to rebuild the planner. The skybox wouldnt let us record anything either, and still wouldnt after rebuilding (this course of action had worked back in January). We then decided that it may work out cheaper to upgrade to Sky+HD as we didnt take out the extended warranty.

So after coming back from town I call Sky to upgrade to HD to be told that there is a six week waiting list (one, two three, four five, six), I was dumbfounded! Six weeks (one, two, three, four, five, six) of not being able to record stuff! We then hit upon the idea of calling an engineer out to get a replacement box, that will cost us £65.00 (around $100.00) and the guy is due Tuesday afternoon between 12 and 5pm! And what would you know, after booking the engineer the skybox is working ok! Aaaargggghhhh If its still ok tomorrow morning I will probably cancel!

So this morning while doing the exercise bike (with the absence of being able to watch something I have recorded) I put on a Sesame Street DVD it really made the 35 minutes whizz by ;o) What surprised me was at the beginning of the DVD they said that this show was for adults only and shouldnt be shown to pre-schoolers! Surely learning is learning. In the episode I saw it didnt show anything that I would call questionable. Did you know that Oscar was originally orange? I was quite shocked! In all honesty I dont think I will ever get over this, and may have psychological repercussions ;o)

The sausage lady came up trumps again yesterday, by having my chili chocolate sausages ;o) How many other people have sausages made especially for them? The Queen may give Royal Warrants to companies but I bet she doesnt have many things made especially for her!

Its been the V festival this weekend, I havent seen too many of the festival goers myself as I guess we have been in Chelmsford before many of them have been bothered to get out of their tents. And thanks to NXEA not allowing off peak tickets to be used between 4.29 pm and 6.34 pm this means all but the more affluent festival goers arent going to be travelling on my train ;o). Typically I was sitting next to one of them!

I weighed myself this morning and was well chuffed that I have lost the two pounds (one, two) that I put on last week ;o)

This post has been bought to you by the numbers two and six and the letters l b and s ;o)

Bolognese... Chili... Whatever!

The chili that was made with what turned out to be a Bolognese sauce turned out really well.


First of all I browned the turkey mince, then I added the sauce and the chunkily chopped up peppers and the kidney beans. I left it simmering whilst the potatoes and pasta were cooking - just a handful(ish) of each.


After feeling incredibly greedy the previous week by eating two thirds of what I had cooked, I had the bright idea of eating the chili over two nights. This was a much better serving size.


I know your thinking "so how did this effect your weight?". You'll be pleased to know that I lost the 200 grammes I put on last week and lost an extra 100 grammes. I'm still at the same weight in stones and pounds though.


Anyway this week I'm going to try and do a thai green chicken curry...


this is what I have bought...

• a jar af thai green curry sauce
• two organic skinless boneless chicken thighs
• leeks
• one tin of chickpeas
• mushrooms

I shall again cook it with pasta and potatoes, and will let you know how I have got on next week.
I can tell you're riveted ;o)
This weekend Chelmsford has been host to the V festival, I thought my journey home Friday night would be a nightmare, but luckily it wasnt too bad. NXEA in its wisdom won't allow people with cheap day train tickets to travel on trains leaving London between 16:45 and 18:00, hey presto most of the weirdos will ether travel early or late ;o). So glad this has finally worked in my favour.
At Chelmsford station there were about seven coppers and two police dogs. I guess the dogs were sniffing out people with drugs. There were only a couple of ticket touts outside the station too.
Going into Chelmsford High Street early yesterday morning we didn't see any of the revellers, and I had to go into town again yesterday afternoon and the High Street didn't seem any busier then either.
However, this morning Starbucks was overrun by the more affluent festival goers. We still got a seat though ;o)