Katie Butcher

I’m getting sick of the fair amount of comment spam I’m getting at the moment, so I’ve installed a WordPress plugin called Comment Timeout. It will disable the comment feature on old posts (at the moment those older than 120 days), which in my experience seem to be where most of the spam goes. I’ll have to wait and see how much of a difference it makes; I’m not sure if it means I’ll start getting more spam on newer posts instead.

So I’ve received a few complaints about lack of recent updates. Sorry. There hasn’t really seemed to have been anything happening recently that’s been worth writing about, and it’s so easy to feel lazy and unmotivated at this miserable time of year.

So what’s happened recently? Well I bought myself a shiny new laptop a couple of weeks ago, a Dell Inspiron 1720. I’ve not got it yet, as I have to wait for a few weeks for it to be delivered. This laptop will be completely replacing my desktop so I wanted to get something reasonably substantial. It’s large, with a 17″ screen, and a better spec than my current computer, although it’ll have Windows Vista on it, unfortunately.

I debated what to buy for a while, eventually settling on a Toshiba at a ‘too-good-to-be-true’ price on Pixmania… which did actually turn out to be too good to be true. After finally deciding to buy the Toshiba laptop, my order wouldn’t complete on the website, then a few hours later the whole page about the laptop mysteriously disappeared. I was quite disappointed, and had to basically go back to the drawing board. Eventually, I opted for a Dell because they’re fairly reputable and their products seem to be reasonable value for money.

The driveway is finished and paid for (ouch!). Now about to decorate the hallway. I think I’ve decided on a colour scheme, but not sure about the colour for the carpet on the stairs and landing yet. We’re having wood flooring in the downstairs area and I’ve found a lovely little console table to go near the front door.

A few things are going to be changing at work, so I’m being given the opportunity to take on some more responsibility and ‘develop myself’ a bit. I’ve opted to take on handling some of the financial side of the business, which is no small task. Although it’ll be a challenge, it’ll be less hassle than getting a new job completely, I imagine. There are a lot of good things about my job at the moment, but I was starting to get a bit worried about lack of opportunites and money with it being such a small company. Fortunately I’ve talked about it with my boss and we’re going to try and do something about my concerns as he doesn’t really want me to leave. I’ll have to see how it all pans out over the next few weeks and months.

After getting back from Spain, we had just one day at home before heading down to Cardiff to visit my oldest school friend Eve and her husband Martin for New Year. Soon we set off on Saturday afternoon, the weather turned absolutely awful, it was so windy and rainy crossing the Pennines to Manchester it was quite scary! However, after we got to around Birmingham, the weather wasn’t so bad, and we managed to get to Cardiff in around 3.5 to 4 hours.

It was evening by the time we got there. We met Eve and Martin’s boxer dog, Roxie. Eve cooked a nice a meal and we chatted and caught up, as we hadn’t seen each other for about 18 months. We had a relaxing morning on Sunday, then in the afternoon headed to ‘Barry Beach’. Roxie got some exercise, then we stopped and had some fish and chips. In the evening we went to Mermaid Quay and had a meal in Signor Valentino’s restaurant. Afterwards, we had some posh exotic cocktails in Ba Orient.

On New Year’s Eve, Eve and Martin took Nigel and I into Cardiff city centre. We had a look around some of the shops, got some lunch, and had a walk around a fair that was being held. We didn’t go on any rides, except Eve wanted to have a go on the ‘Waltzers’ so Nigel went on with her as neither Martin or I were keen. Eve loved it so much, she dragged Nigel on again for a second go!

For the last few hours of 2007, Eve and Martin’s friends Simon and Jenny came over. They had a baby who they put to bed soon after arriving and he didn’t make a sound all night. Their Golden Retriever, Milly, and Roxie ran around madly for about 2 hours until they got tired. We had a fondue and played games, until welcoming in 2008.

On New Year’s day we spent a bit of time helping clear up from the night before (it wasn’t too bad) and then headed back to Bradford. The journey back was smooth and we arrived back mid-afternoon to get ready to return to work on Wednesday.

Some pictures here.