Work.....meh

Getting a bit hacked off with the whole work / job thing at the moment, but just stumbled across this online which made me giggle a bit:

We're in the paper!

Merchant beer festival in the Rugby Advertiser. See the gallery.

St George in the Merchant

It was never going to be pretty - St George's day celebrations, in The Merchant, possibly one of the best real ale pubs on the planet which also happens to have a beer festival on this week. There were 66 real ales on tap, conveniently served in 1/3 pint glasses. There was singing, dancing and a whole lot of fun. I managed to befriend a photographer from the Rugby Advertiser too, so might end up with my mug all over the paper later - hmm.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words - check it out.

To the top!

Next month, I am completing the Irish 3-peaks challenge with a team from work, for charity. This means that I am going to climb the 3 highest mountains in Ireland in under 24 hours. Which means I need to get my lazy butt to the gym between now and then, or take up running along the towpaths. Ideally both.

I've made myself lots of promises, including gym visits and not eating junk food any more, and just stumbled along quite a cool tool - an "online pedometer" where you can check how far you've walked/run. Works on roads, canals, fields, paths....everywhere, as far as I can tell. Check it out: Gmap Pedometer. Now I know how to check my progress, I just need to MAKE some progress!

Being as I failed on the second training mission to Cadair Idris in Wales (poorly muscles in my knee), I really do need to get some serious training in very soon.

Slow down!

When moored using mooring pins, people speeding past too quickly do more than just spill your wine by causing the boat to rock - they are also capable of tearing your mooring pins from the ground, which was exactly what had happened to Muddy Waters yeterday. I returned home from work to discover my boat floating around by the bank, with both mooring ropes hanging down into the water. Two of my mooring pins were missing, but retrieved after a few minutes "fishing" with my sea-searcher magnet. Those things are worth every penny.

Once the boat was safely moored, I took advantage of the relatively nice evening and decided that a spot of magnet fishing was in order. An hour later, I had retrieved a rather impressive haul from the bottom of the canal: 4 mooring pins, 1.5 lump hammers, a fishing rod rest, and what I *think* was once the arm of someone's tiller!

Men

Will I ever understand them? Will Mr Right ever come along? The ones I have met recently fall into 2 basic categories: The ones I am not interested in, and the ones who are not interested in me. Or at least, play so hard to get that I have no clue whether they're actually interested or not. I thought that maybe things were a-changing, but now I'm not so sure.

They say they come along when you're least expecting it - I'm going to stop looking now and see where I end up.

Sunburnt...again

Since arriving at work this morning, 2 people have asked whether I went on holiday somewhere hot for the weekend! In fact, I went no further than the pub, but spent a few hours on Saturday out in the great outdoors, cruising the boat in a mixture of wind, sun, rain and hail. The weather was far from fantastic, yet I still managed to get sunburnt on my face for the 2nd time in two weeks. Clearly need to invest in some decent sunscreen for the summer if I can manage to get burnt in March and April!

Something good happened too, but I will write more about that when the time is right. Don't want to tempt fate right now.

Also just noticed that my blog has over 100 hits since I added the counter a couple of weeks back - who is actually reading the babble that I write?!

B
x

Becky's smokey bacon and paprika risotto

Discovered this by accident whilst trying to use up bacon and peppers, but it turned out alright so I cooked it for Jonno and Helen last night. No exact quantities, it just tastes good.

Couple of packs of smokey bacon
Onion
Garlic
2 red/yellow peppers
mushrooms
Smoked paprika
Chilli
Risotto rice

Chop bacon into bits, cook in big pan with onion and garlic. Add roughly chopped peppers and mushrooms, cook some more. Add risotto rice, paprika and chilli to taste, plus a bit of boiling water. Keep adding water / stirring occasionally until rice is cooked. Add more paprika, or some black peppper. Eat.
I think this would work well with cherry tomatoes added at the last minute, but haven't tried that yet as I forgot to put them in yesterday.

Heaven is a place on earth

I want to live here forever!