We're Back

Well we're back from the Orient and all is well. The little man had a wonderful time in Taiwan with his Asian relatives, and he was so well behaved on the 15 hour flight home. He's now back at nursery with gifts of sweeties for his little friends and teachers.

Our new bedroom in the sky is now finished. We just have to decorate it and put a floor down. I bought some laminate flooring on special offer at the local DIY place and we're going to have a go at laying it ourselves. It looks fairly straightforward and I'm quite looking forward to it. We have to paint the walls first howeer.

I managed to screw up recording the first three episodes of the final series of Lost while we were away - Doh! I have however managed to download copies of the missed footage from variuous dodgy locations and I did remember to record episode 4 on Friday when we got back. So I should be ready for episode 5 when it airs this coming Friday. I have too much invested in Lost to drop it now. I'm completely fed up with Flash Forward however. They stopped airing FF abruptly just before Christmas and promised it would return in the New Year. It's now racing towards March and I can find no information about it at all. I may give up on it.

Talking of March, what's with the cold weather? I left in the snow, and returned to snow. It's been a compeltely foul winter and I really would like Spring to show up. We visited Hualien in Taiwan while we were there and the temperature hit 30C! I think I got used to tropical weather while living in Asia. I can't be doing with British Winters now.

We bought a new laptop while in Taiwan. It's not really completely up and running yet, but it is working and it is fabulously good. We got a 500GB external disk to go with it, which is about the most useful thing on earth, and about half the price you'd pay in Britain. I wonder if we should have declared it and paid duty on it. Oh well, we didn't anyway.

Coming back fromn Taiwan I was convinced we were going to go past our baggage weight limit. We didn't have scales to check before we left for the airport however. I had visions of us paying astronomical excess baggage fees. The dragon's plan was simply to leave all our clothes behind. Sure enough, we checked in five, yes five, bags and by my calculation we were around 13.2 kg over our limit. I was adding the weight of each bag as it was displayed on the weighing machine, "Shit", I said as the last bag went on, and I felt the dragon kick me in the ankle. As luck would have it however, either the check-in bimbo really was a bimbo and didn't notice, or she just fancied me, because we got away with it. She didn't even mention it.

Coming back to work was a bit of a struggle yesterday. I had 300 emails to read through. I hate going through masses of emails. As I start to look through them I always develop the nagging suspicion that there is one buried in the middle with really bad news, like "you're fired", or "we're moving you to our Angola office", and that everyone around me already knows. I'm happy to say that I've been through all of them now and I'm not scheduled to move to Angola and I haven't been fired. In fact, I got news of my bonus today - hooray. It wasn't that great actually, but it's better than nothing.

I want to go home and watch Lost. I've watched episode 1, and half of episode 2. So I still have 2.5 hours of footage to cover before Friday. I'm positively moist with anticipation.

Our office manager has just sent a scathing email to everyone because, "There is a male individual in this office who appears to be incapable of using a toilet cubicle in a civilised way". She didn't elabourate further but curiosity got the better of me when I went for a pee just now. One of the cubicles has a big 'Out of Order' notice on the door, so I had a peek inside. I was expecting to see excrement smeared up the walls or something, but in fact the problem appears to be a huge turd stuck in the U-bend. Admittedly the turd is about the size of a family car and it is pretty foul, but I have two questions; what is this individual supposed to do when this occurrs, and what is to be done about it now? I know the cleaner has been there, and presumably refused to attack the monster. Does this mean the cubicle is out of action forever? That's a scary thought actually. I'm not sure I want to go back in there until there's been a full exorcism.

I think I'll use the disabled lavatory. I have a cold coming, does that count as a disability? Whatever, I'll limp as well.