[Phil] Cowboys have nagging feminine problems?

You've not seen Brokeback Mountain? Actually, I haven't, so I've no idea if that joke works or not

[Nea] They became cowboys to escape problems with nagging females. (Mine's the storm cape and stetson hanging by the door, thanks.)

[INJ]You'll be in trouble now, I hope you have better blast doors on your shed than I did.
Should you not be needing that cape later , if it could be passed over here with a pair of size wellies as the grey storm clouds in the sky over the Brunel Tower, the car park is already flooded.

Finally after all this time reached I have managed to become Top Trader at Celebdaq. The only thing being had to use my BBC login of Cleddau, it is on the banks of that fair waterway that I was raised.

[Inkspot] Ah - that's what you look like!

[Inkers] You credited evil_edna! I'm touched, and you have attained a higher ranking than I ever did - my best was No. 4, by accident, once. *Blushes* You have learned well, glasshopper.

Found out today that I didn't get the new job I'd gone for, but, hey - new car and new flat - two out of three's not bad!

Commiserations once, and congrats twice then, Uncle K.

[Phil] Ta! Of course, the new job would have helped to pay for the other two...

[UK] How did the play go? Bad luck about the job, sure there's another (and hopefully better) one waiting for you.

Which reminds me - congrats to Nadia, and thanks for the cheque.

[Lib] Play went astonishingly well, as it happens... no major cock-ups anywhere, and I managed to learn all of my lines in time for the opening night (which helps)! Still a little puzzled about the job, as I felt I gave a cracking interview, I fulfilled the criteria, and I'm a redeployment case, so I get preferential treatment (supposedly). I'm going to take them up on their offer of a feedback interview - I'm hoping that it's because they decided to employ two people who were excellent, rather than not employing me because I was crap.

[UK] Congrats. And the right job will come up at the right time :o)
In other news, I have resumed salsa dancing after a 7 week break during the summer, and I'm pleased to report I haven't lost my mojo. The plan is to do it at least twice a week, sometimes three times a week over the winter. I may need encouragement. I most certainly will need new black leather dancing shoes, as my pale suede ones just look odd in the winter :o)

I should not smile at the misfortune at others but the goings on between the England RFU and Saracens. You have the RFU trying to tell the team which position to play him so he is ready for the national side. Someone payed a kings ransom for Andy Farrell as an instant fix, but is quickly turning into a farce.

Good morning everyone. Good weekend?

[pen] Not bad, thanks, except my team lost twice, including a shut-out on Sunday. re - what you were saying about job prospects... I'm now following up an internal vacancy as a junior press officer.

[pen] Weekend was tolerable considering I had to work from 11am till midnight friday, saturday and sunday. Thankfully have today off to recover/revise. How was yours, pen?

[pen] Owwww, my head hurts - hence, yes I had a great weekend, thanks.

[Lib] Full, thanks! Thursday night = new salsa class (made my legs ache - a good thing); Friday night - party in a bar in Soho to celebrate west end transfer of a play directed by a 'friend' of mine (pay £6 on the door to buy expensive drinks in a room full of people all trying to work out who's famous); Saturday - Tennyson Society service in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, followed by lunch and a visit to the Dickens (yawn) museum on Doughty Street; then out for a chinese meal with the Bloke; Sunday - light shopping in Ealing, and my second parking ticket of the week :o(. I am not going out this week!

[pen] Going out just causes more problems than it solves, in my experience. And oddly, I've just remembered we have nothing defrosted for dinner. Curses.

[nights] I have a blog called : "So What Are you Having For Tea Tonight?" which is meant to address that problem, but I haven't written enough of it yet.

[nights] Can't you just stick something in the microwave? Or get a takeaway.

[penelope] Was the Ealing trip to seek out/purchase a light? Or do you have varying degrees of shopping gravitas? And you should avoid parking illegally, IMHO.

[Phil] We didn't KNOW we were parking illegally! The sign was tiny, high up and camouflaged against adjacent scaffolding. And I have various degrees of shopping gravitas. In fact, I bought a test-piece of cookware - a black Columbian earthenware pot that can be used on the hob or in the oven. I have to 'season' (or do I mean 'temper'?) it tonight by boiling water in it for half an hour in the oven, to stop it being so porous. Lord knows how that works.

[pen] I do sincerely hope you didn't get the two parking tickets at the same place ;-) Seriously though, aren't there yellow lines and so on in your area?

Phil, I'm not daft. I got one last weekend in Notting Hill due to lying naked on a couch still having a very expensive facial at the time the parking ticket ran out, and another in Ealing on Sunday due to parking on a single yellow line on a Sunday afternoon. Anywhere other than London, Sunday afternoons on a single yellow would be OK, wouldn't they?

Do I spy candles on the MC⁵ logo? *brings out a cake *

Since the parking came under the council here the interpretations have become very strict and a lucrative income stream. The FM manager of our office is going to bring in a clamping policy for unauthorised parking in allocated staff areas, I can see trouble ahead. Our council members tend to see themselves above such policies, no smoking in Civic Buildings inc meeting rooms and private offices seems not to apply to them only officers and members of the public.

The number of candles may be misleading - the site doesn't celebrate its 4th birthday until Jan 16th.

I, on the other hand, ...

I think someone has vandalised your menora rab. :o) MHROTD.

Drat - just missed saying it on the day itself

[Sierra, Chalky] Thanks.

More flat-based excitement this morning. The electricity went off during Mrs-rab-to-be's shower, which I thought was just a generic power cut since no fuses had tripped in our fusebox. A note of warning was sounded by the fact that our neighbour across the way wasn't experiencing any trouble, nor had anyone else called Scottish Power when I phoned them. The chap's been out and I'm told that the supply cable from the distribution box in the stairwell to our fuse box exploded as a result of too much load imposed on it by our shower (of all things - I would have thought the oven were more power-hungry). We were lucky it didn't cause a fire or disrupt the whole street's supply. Apparently it's all due to the fact that the previous owners (or their electrician) didn't inform Scottish Power that extra capacity would be needed when they did up the bathroom. There's quite a lot of things they didn't seem to do well, humph.

[Rab] Happy Belated Birthday... and commis for your water/electricity woes. You'll just have to boil up a few pans of water and take a bath together :o)

(rab) I think showers take 10 kW, or about 40 amps, which is a lot. With a 10-kW oven you could start a cottage indusry smelting iron ore.

[rab] They didn't find the homonculus you made from bits of dead bodies in the cellar or the high-voltage equipment needed to reanimate it then?
Good to see that the legendary Scottish parsimony extends to the current carrying capacity of domestic wiring. "Just enough and nae morrrrrrre, d'ye ken?".