Friday, April 07, 2006

Birthdays and baseball

Happy birthday to our brother, 46. OMG, 46.

As well as birthdays, April also brings the start of the baseball season. NASN & five will get well-used in the coming months I’m sure. Go Red Sox!

Of course with it comes fantasy baseball. My Ponty Red Sox are facing off against 11 other teams run by guys who live in the US and know what they’re doing. Never mind, it whiles away the odd lunch break.

A few evenings out this week. Wednesday night was a lovely evening spent at Lorna and Wilco’s. Wilco runs the Readers Sheds website in his spare time, bizarre but brilliant (www.readersheds.co.uk). Thursday was quiz night at the Cwm Conservative Club. Jon’s tough questions were interspersed with chips, scrumps and tinned salmon sandwiches.

Travel notes

Enjoyable – a leaflet landed on the mat this week for the summer sailings of the Waverley, the last paddle steamer operating in the UK. Went on a trip last year from Penarth to Minehead and it was great fun. The average age was around 60, and flasks of tea and sandwiches in cling-film were in plentiful supply. I’m sure I’ll be getting a picnic ready sometime this summer for a trip to nowhere in particular on the Waverley. (www.waverleyexcursions.co.uk)

Rugby notes

Scrum V again provided the entertainment again this week. David Moffat (ex-chief executive of the WRU) laid into Eddie Butler pretty well, and the boys at the beeb didn’t like it. They can dish it out but they don’t like it up ‘em.

Magnificent ending to the Leicester/Bath European Cup quarter final on Saturday. With Bath up 15-12, Leicester camp on the Bath line. A series of collapsed scrums lead to two yellow cards for Bath props. Bath play the last ten minutes with 13 men, and through a combination of their determination & Leicester’s inability to use an overlap somehow held on for an amazing victory. 32,000 stunned midlanders looked on in shock.

TV notes

My Name Is Earl – top comedy from the US. In a complete change from the usual trendy apartment dwellers of sitcom-land, this is set amongst redneck trailer trash. Earl’s task is to make amends for all the bad he’s done in his redneck life. Karma, he says. Some extracts from the list of things he has to atone for:
Had garage sale while house sitting for neighbours
Faked death to break up with a girl
Replaced birth control pills with tic-tacs
Snatched a kid’s Halloween candy when he came to my trailer to trick-or-treat
Planet Earth – OK, I know I’m a bit late in getting to this since the run on BBC1 has just finished, but I know that the beeb will rerun it and when they do – watch it. I’m not normally a big fan of natural history programmes, but Planet Earth is in a different league. The photography is absolutely amazing. It is simply the best thing on TV. The episode that had the first ever TV footage of snow leopards in the wild was breathtaking. As was footage of half a million bats in a cave in Indonesia.

The Apprentice – haven’t got around to seeing it yet, so it’ll be a double review next week.

Running notes

Scamp on Monday, but aching like heck (it’s a family website) after gardening work on Sunday.

Garden notes

Now that spring is well and truly here, its time to widen outdoor issues away from the squirrels (furry-tailed bastards that they are) to all manner of garden issues.

The big project at the moment is to lay a patio where the lawn is. I say, lawn, it’s a collection of weeds and dandelions with grass interspersed. Spent last weekend digging all the grass/weeds up, and trying to level the ground. Tricky when you are perched on the side of a mountain in Pontypridd. Nevertheless, it’s not a bad approximation to flat right now. Upcoming weekend job is to get stones for the patio; trips to quarries have been scheduled prior to the Ponty game on Saturday. The big push to complete will be the Easter weekend, which is a five-day weekend thanks to the generosity of the civil service.

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